Carl & Velma Yearwood. Farmer, Naturalist, Family Historian, Folklorist.

Velma Georgia Brackett was my mother's older sister.  Early in life, she had a child, Ann, who later married Alan "Jimbo" Murray.   In the late 1950s, she married Carl Yearwood, a widower.  Carl's first wife, Hattie had died of cancer.  All of these folks had sort of known each other.  Velma lived in "town", Toccoa Georgia.  She had lived with their mother, Nancy Garner, and another sister, Frances (photos below), and had become an LPN/LVN.  She and Carl courted for a while, and then one night eloped.  As fate would have it, I met the minister who married them years later in his retirement, while he was retired, an unpaid minister at the tiny Providence Methodist Church in the river side community of "Deercourt" where all of these girls, including my mother had grown up.

Velma Georgia,  Alan "Jimbo" Murray's father,  Nancy Brackett-Garner,  Frances Brackett  circa 1940s

The impetus for our trip to Georgia had been a visit by Velma, and a couple of her grandchildren, Michael and Wayne, to the older sister, Gracie who lived in Tampa.  Gracie is another story.  She and her first husband, Alger Kemp owned a rooming house north of downtown Tampa, and Alger also owned a small tattoo shop off of north Franklin street.   A friend of mine who worked in "ink" told me that he is well known in ink circles, having designed many tatoos that are still popular today.     

So, my brother and I went toTampa to visit Velma, Michael and Wayne, and at the end of the visit, as we loaded up in our car, Gracie stuck her finger into my mother's face, "You need to take these boys back home to meet their people!"  The emphasis must have worked because that summer, 1959, we loaded up our new Opel Caravan and drove north to Stephen's and Habersham Counties in northeast Georgia.  

The European version of our Opel Caravan.  Ours did not have fog lights, or the white paint under the middle stripe, but did have the luggage rack and white paint under it.

I would find out later that this was the first trip "back home" my mother had attempted in over a decade.  Her mother had put her out of the house at 15 (as apparently was her custom with rebellious daughters).  Her mother was now dead, so she was spared any maudlin homecomings.  Maudlin was not my mother's style.  

For we kids, this was an adventure.   Not only was the ice chest filled with sandwiches and juices, but we had luggage, so this would be a notable trip.  There were no "interstate" highways then, at least in our part of the world.  First we went north on U.S. 301, and somewhere in north Florida, near Lake City, we switched to U.S. 441 "The Uncle Remus Route."  It was so named because it went through the town of Eatonton, home of Joel Chandler Harris, who had authored the "Uncle Remus Tales."

For those of you not familiar with the "Uncle Remus" stories, a synopsis is this.  In the 19th century, before the Civil War, a young boy was befriended by an old slave on his family plantation near Eatonton Georgia (which is on 441).  The boy, Joel Chandler Harris, was told folk tales, that apparently are West African folktales about a very crafty rabbit.  All of the animals had the title "Brer" in front of their creature names, so these tales featured Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, Brer Bear, etc.  Most of the tales centered around how Brer Fox and Brer Bear were always trying to catch Brer Rabbit, and how the wiley rabbit always managed to outwit them and escape.  Like most folk wisdom, the stories taught wisdom on multiple levels.  Brer Rabbit was an "everyman" figure, Brer Fox & Bear represented mean spirited people who resented his enjoying life.  In Ghana, the character of Brer Rabbit is adapted to "Anansi" the spider.  

Southerners, at least the white ones I knew, celebrated the wisdom contained in the stories, as well as the deep affection that Harris had for Remus, and obviously Remus had for the boy.   The stories were made into a movie in the mid 50s, "Song of the South."   Alice Walker is from Eatonton Georgia and admits to the stories having significant impact on her childhood imagination and creativity.

Like all movies that deal with race relations in the south, and the south in general, the re-telling of these stories can cause all manner of controversy because they do stir up memories that some would rather not stir up.  But it was 1959, my brother and I were kids, and from our Opel, which had no air-conditioning and no radio, we entertained ourselves with thoughts of who and what was living in the woods that rolled past us as we traveled north into the bosom of "Sherman's March to the Sea."  

The landscape gradually changed as we left the last of the low country, the Okeefenokee swamp, and started our climb through the red clay.  The hills became more pronounced as the clay became redder, changing from pale orange to deep red.

At this point, conjure up an Alman Brothers song, such were our travels through the small towns, the railroad tracks lined with freight cars that had "Southern Serves the South" on the side, and corn fields that seemingly went on forever.  Corn is not grown in Florida, at least in any quantity, so seeing the acres of green stalks, leafy and filled with a growing ear of seed was very different than the sandy landscape planted in orange trees back home.  

We were devotees of the comic strip "Snuffy Smith" who was always making "corn squeezins" to keep his jug filled.  We would look at a cornfield and joke about "I wonder how many gallons are out there?"  My mother went along with the game, I'm sure lost in her own bitter sweet memories of her childhood and leaving home very young.  What we did not know was that the two principle characters in the strip could have been inspired by Velma who was a large woman, and Carl who was a lean man.  Carl later confessed to my brother and I that he had operated a still on his land during the depression.  "But Uncle Carl, I thought having a still is illegal?"  "Only if the catch you" he later admitted to having been caught, put on probation and out of business.

We found our way to Mt. Airy Georgia, and then began the arduous task of finding the Rt. and Box number that was the mailing route and location for the Yearwood farm.  Velma had sent a letter with directions, like most directions, an important step or landmark was missing.  We would end up in a strangers yard, and ask about Carl Yearwood.  "I hear tell they's some Yearwood's back over that way" pointing through a patch of trees.  After repeating this scenario a few times, we found the right road, as a described landmark popped up and then went by.  Finally we turned a corner, climbed a little hill, and there we found the small house, with a yard full of people in it, all waving at us.

The front of the Yearwood home in the 60s.

"Let me hug your neck son" Velma exclaimed as she hugged me.  I froze, we didn't hug at home, affection was new.  Afterwards the assembly fell into delightful chaos of stories, how we got lost, how we found, missed directions, length of travel, etc.  "Go get a Co-Cola out of the Frigidaire honey, your mamma looks thirsty."  "No, all I want is some water,"  Edna explained.   We took a bucket out into the back yard, turned a spicket, out came water, but it had a funny plastic taste in it.  "They just put this electric pump on the well two days ago. The man said it would take a few weeks for the plastic taste to get out of it."  So, we opened the cover on the well box (over the well opening) and lowered a bucket down the 60 feet down to the top of the water.  We heard it splash with a deep resonance, then reeled it back up again.  The "windless" was a peeled log on an axle of sorts, one end being a bent piece of steel that formed a handle.  We cranked the water up and then closed the well, pouring the fresh bucket into the house bucket.  Someone handed me a dipper full of the chilled water and my lips met heaven.  If you've never had water out of a deep well, you can't imagine how delightful it is.  No pipe taste, just pure water.  If you have a reverse osmosis filter, then it comes close.

But in 1959, the well was about 30 feet out the back door.  Between the well and smokehouse was a path that ran along the garden to the "outhouse."  The kitchen had a wood burning stove, there was a back porch with wood piled on one end, and small enamel bowls on a plank shelf between the uprights for face washing and such.  

The front porch was for sitting, and had a stunning view of the valley that we had driven through to get to the Yearwood house.  The house itself is what we would call a "Tar Paper" house, the outside covered in a patterned roofing type of paper that looked like brown bricks.  This sealed the house somewhat, though I would find out later that it didn't help warm the single floors very much.  

Uncle Carl came home from his work, driving a water wagon for a local road construction company.  He could only work in the summer because they could not pour asphalt below certain temperatures.  His work day began before dawn, so he came home around 5, a couple of hours before sunset.

For the next few days, we toured all of my mother's childhood "haunts."  We went back to "Deercourt" and visited "Jarrett Manor" (now called Traveler's Rest, a stagecoach inn just across the Tugalo River from South Carolina).  The woman who lived in and took care of the place was named Mabel Ramsay.  We have since discovered that she was a relative.  My mother's father was Edward Ramsay, but their had been no marriage or vows between my mother's parents, only the shame of secrets and things known but not spoken.

Mabel was very kind and told my mother, "Oh just show your kids around, you know as much of the history as I do, maybe more."  We were impressed that someone would defer to "Miss Edna" so easily with such important information.  

We started in the basement, which was mostly kitchen, with it's huge fireplace that you could step into.  Above were the first and second floor rooms, with small beds in them.  We were told that the beds were small because people were smaller then, lack of full nutrition (that today we take for granted) kept most men shorter than 5'10" and most women at 5'.  Finally, we went up into the attic, with it's holes for shooting out of, and a very curious pattern of stains on the unfinished wood floor.  "It's blood" my mother calmly explained.  "There were a couple of indian massacres here.  This is the blood of the settlers that had fled up here who were killed by the indians."  One of your ancestors survived, a boy, by hiding in one of the trunks up here.  They didn't find him.  If they had, none of us would be here, the entire family was wiped out except him."  We looked again and realized that the pattern was multiple foot prints, arches, toes and all, from the blood stained feet.

Stories of spirits and "poltergeist" were shared.  My mother, ever the cool one, "Oh, don't put too much stock in all that.  A ghost can't kill you, but they do try to frighten you to death."

We drove past an empty train station, upon one side of the roof was a faded advertisement, "Jefferson Island Salt" painted into the wood shingles.  I would realize years later that it was probably the place my mother had grown up in.  

We stopped at a simple home by the side of the highway.  "Hello Pearl, is Granny Lyles here?"  "My God Edna, look at you !!"  The woman dressed in a house dress, no make up, partial teeth, slippers, came out the door and gave my mother a hug.  Edna, who owned a business, bought her clothes at Maas Brothers and O'Falks in Tampa, looked like she had arrived from another planet.  I realized later, we had, Florida.  

We went inside, and there was "Granny Lyles" ensconced in a feather bed, also in a house dress.  The whisper on the way into the house had revealed that she was 105 years old.  Like Pearl, her daughter, she was a thin as a rail.  We sat around the bed while Granny Lyles and my mother visited for about a half an hour.  Lots of questions about people I'd never heard of, some short answers about our daily life in Florida, and a clear sense that for Granny Lyles and Pearl Pitts, not much changed from day to day except the seasons.

At the end of the visit, Granny Lyles started crying, "I'll never see you again, I'll be dead before you come back."  "No, I won't take so long to come back Granny.  In fact, I'll be back in a couple of weeks to get these sons of mine."

We went back to Velma's and two days later, Edna left for Dade City, and the real fun began.  During the day, we were home with Velma and a whole farm, and the woods behind it, to explore.  At night, Carl came home, we had supper, watched a little TV and went to bed about an hour after sundown.  Carl and Velma would be up at 4AM, but insisted that we boys stay in our bedroom.  Once I looked out the keyhole and spied them in their underwear, playing with each other.  It was nothing significantly erotic by todays standards, just a bit of "Give me some sugar darlin."  I never saw that at home, so I decided it must be very private and stopped spying on them.  

Velma's daughter Ann at high school graduation.

Alan "Jimbo" and Ann Murray, parents of Michael, Wayne, Tony and Walter

My brother and I had all sorts of adventures each day.  Michael, Wayne, Tony, Walter and Roger, all our cousins from town, would come up to join us.  There was 40 ares of woods behind the farm, they had a lot of fun exploring.  In spite of Velma's admonitions about "Cattymounts" (wild cats) and Coach Whip Snakes, they went tent camping by the creek.  I preferred the feather bed in the house.

I was fascinated by all of the machinery related to the farm.  Most of it was simple hand operated stuff, but I'd never seen anything like it before, like a corn sheller.  You'd put in an ear of corn, and out came a cob, and a handful of grain would be on the bottom of the box it was attached to.    I probably would have shelled several bushels if Velma would have let me.

Velma was a local historian, storyteller, folklorist, and comedian.  Her humor was legendary, which brought her welcome wherever we went.  Close your eyes, listen to "Cousin Minnie Pearl" from the Grand Ole Opry" and you have a sense of Velma, except Velma was more multi dimensioned.  A staunch Kennedy Democrat, she cried when the Kennedy's son Patrick died.  Her patent comment about politics, "I remember the depression.  Thank God for Roosevelt, if it'd been left up to Hoover, we'd have all starved."

When she passed away, stepson Odes Yearwood looked at her grave and said, "There is more knowledge of history, family and wisdom in that grave than any of us will ever know."

Velma's neighbor, Lorrie Iverson, her mother Annie Dean (almost 100) and Velma on a visit to Annie's

Velma was filled with caution that my brother and I ignored, such as "Stay away from Ole Doc, he's a killer horse" and her absolute terror at the thought of driving.  She had once seen lightening hit one of her dogs in the yard, so she believed that dogs attracted lightening.  When a thunderstorm blew up, her dogs would run under the house for protection.  Velma would panic, knowing that at any moment, a lightening bolt was going to come through the roof, ceiling and floor, to hit one of those dogs.  She would run around in the house, jumping up and down on the floor, yelling, "Get out from under there dogs, get out from under there."

Carl was filled with adventure.  On Saturdays and Sundays, we would pack up in his old Chevrolet and go riding in the mountains.  We had a glass in the glove compartment for the many springs we encountered by the side of a remote dirt road.  Carl could go for miles on one dirt road, cross a thin strip of asphalt and onto the next.  The north Georgia hills unfolded in front of the Chevrolet like a travelogue.  Next thing you know, we would be in Copper Hill Tennessee, 80 miles from home, having only crossed pavement three times.  He knew all these roads, without a map, mostly because he had helped build them.

Myself, Walter Murray, Carl  &  Velma Yearwood, early 1960s on one of our mountain trips.

Carl loved nature and all things natural.  He was a genuine man of the hills.  We found out one day that the extent of his literacy was signing his name and reading a STOP sign.  That was it.  He had grown up on a farm, the nearest school was at least ten miles away, by foot or horseback.  But of all things natural, he was gifted beyond comprehension.  He could look at the earth and tell exactly when it was time to plant.  We would walk amongst his corn, from seed handed down in his family for hundreds of years, and he would fold in wisdom about how to care for the earth, along with lessons in courtship and family togetherness.  I found out later that in the spring, he often ran his tractor in the night, plowing his earth by moonlight, in the nude, or in his "long johns."

Carl's favorite adjective was "God Damn."  He had never been a church goer, was not a fan of preachers, who he considered a high form of hypocrites, along with politicians and undertakers.  "In the end, they all want your money.  That's all they're good for.  They live off of the fears and misery of others.  I've got no use for any of em."

Once his son Charles Odes Yearwood, told me about the single time in his life that Carl had struck him.  Odes had been trying to put a horse in it's stall in the barn.  The horse balked, and tried to kick Odes.  He pulled a coil of rope off the wall, and struck it across the horses hindquarter, just as Carl was walking into the barn.  Carl ripped the rope from his hands, "So you'd hit a defenseless animal, let me show you what it feels like" as he lashed Ode's buttocks with the rope, then ordered him to "go up to the house."  All the while ignoring Ode's pleas, he was too angry.

Over supper, Odes finally got to state his case.  His father stopped eating, apologized profusely for hitting him, and was morose for weeks.  He passed those days without eating much, devoid of any joy, because he had struck his son.

My cousin Tony recalled a similar memory of his own father, Alan "Jimbo" Murray.  Jimbo was a mechanic ih the Coats & Clarks thread mill in town.  On Saturdays, he and two friends "cleaned out" wells for extra money.  Jim was small, so he got lowered into the well, about 60 feet into the earth, with a headlight and a small shovel, he would stand in the water in hip waders, digging out the accumulated mud which his friends would haul out, one bucket at a time.  When his work below was done, they would haul Jimbo out, one foot in the bucket, holding the rope, back to the surface. 

One Saturday Tony came in from playing baseball, as Jim was taking off his wet coveralls.  Jim stopped Tony with a question, "Son, are you happy?"  Tony said "Yes."  Jim said, "Well son, everything I do is so that you can be happy.  Now if all you want out of life is this (as he held up the wet coveralls) then have fun with your friends, playing ball and such.  But if you want more, make sure you crack them books and get them A's, cause all I want is for you to be happy."

All four boys completed university educations.  The oldest, Michael, won a full Governor's scholarship to Georgia Tech and became a chemist.  Wayne had a career in offender rehabilitation, Tony and Walter became attorneys.  

Carl ground his own corn into meal.  He took the corn for meal for the hogs to a gasoline driven mill, but the corn for his bread went to a water ground mill.  "I can taste the gasoline in it" he said of the gasoline mill.  If he wanted chicken, he took one from the yard, and butchered it the same way that is commanded in the bible, so that the blood would drain out of it.  "Carl won't eat a store bought chicken, says it doesn't taste right with the blood still in it" Velma would say.  The ham and bacon came from his own hogs, beef from a steer he had raised.  He knew every ounce of food those animals ate, and understood the importance of their diet as it affected both the health of the animal, and his own health.

When Velma pressed him about having a toilet installed in their home, he refused.  "I don't eat outdoors and I don't shit indoors" he would say.  

One night, Carl, Velma, Gene and I were sitting around the table, having our usual summer supper, pinto beans, corn bread, greens and fresh tomatoes from their garden.  I picked out a tomato, and noticed a black spot on it.  As I started to toss it into the bucket for the hogs, Carl stopped me.  He said, "Let me show you something."  He pulled over his bread plate & took his pen knife, and cut the tomato up into sections.  At the end of his work, he held up the section that was black.  Pointing to the plate, "Now you see, you were gonna throw away all that, because of this" holding the one black section.  "Everything in life is like that tomato, most of it's good, some of it is bad, you have to learn how to use the good, while dealing with the bad."

I contrasted his style of parenting to that of my father, whose single mother had been reared in Roman Catholic orphanages, who herself had beaten my father for most of his childhood, and who himself only knew one parenting style, abuse and shame.  Had this interaction occurred at my house, I would have been beaten for trying to waste the tomato, and sent to bed without dinner to "teach me a lesson" for being wasteful.

As I have traveled the many miles of my life, and experienced a myriad of lifestyles, I continue to marvel at the gentle loving nature of most "country people" and contrast it with the harshness and brutality of people who otherwise consider themselves "superior" to "those ignorant hicks" who live in the country, particularly the South.  

All of my relatives from Georgia came from very humble beginnings, and worked very hard, usually exploited by their employers, and had happy lives because they had a clear sense of self, and an even clearer sense of their relationship to the earth, and the people on it.

That life is generally gone now.  Few people embrace it, including the descendants of those farming people, who had hard lives, but were "pure" in ways that we can't imagine in this day and age.

In the movie "Off The Map", a tax man comes to visit the Grodin's.  At one point in his visit he says, "I think you're a genius Mr. Grodin.  You've got a beautiful wife, a great kid, your house is paid for, you have food stockpiled for two years, Your life is your own."

How many of us can say that our lives are our own?

My uncle Carl died on his way to the out house.  He had suffered with Adult Onset Diabetes for a little over a year.  Like all other intrusions into his freedom, he resented the changes ordered for his diet, and having to take pills every day.  "I've eaten pinto beans and corn bread all my life and it never hurt me.  Why should I change now?"  He threw the pills in the firebox of the stove one morning.  

The day he died, Velma was cooking breakfast on the new gas stove that had been delivered the night before.  As he left the house, she said, "Are you sure you want to go out there?"  His response, "I do better out there."  She found his body on the path, he never ate a meal off of the new stove.  Carl had died his way, at home, on the earth he loved so much, surrounded by the icons of his life, his farm, his land, his animals.

Velma in the late 60s after Carl had passed away.  "Clowning" in the early 70s at our house.

Years later my brother visited the Yearwood property, which is no longer in the family.  The new owner let him take theses photos of the buildings.  The house is now gone.

The front of the Yearwood home in the early 21st century.  This is the same front porch as in the black & white photo.

Back of the home.  A porch had gone across most of the back.  Note brick chimney for the wood burning stove in the kitchen (on the left).

Lower barn where horses, cattle were sheltered.  

The outhouse, approximately 80 feet from the main house.