GRANNY HALL DYING RAYBURN C HALL Fourty- nine years ago, August 1964, I was staying on Sand Mountain, in Rosalie, Alabama with Uncle Martin and Ollie Bass. We had jobs picking bell pepper for a farmer named Bill. He paid us a dollar an hour. Boy, I thought I was a rich man working for a dollar an hour. Most of the work I did was for 50 or 75 cents an hour. Uncle Leonard worked at Darwins Texaco service station in Rosalie and I normally went up there and hung around after getting off from work. It was on the afternoon of August 27, 1964, when Uncle Jack Hall drove into the service station parking lot and motioned for Uncle Leonard to come out to the car. I could tell by their faces that something was terribly wrong. Uncle Leonard came back in and told me that Granny Hall ( Hattie Letchworth) had a heart attack and died. Grandpa, Carrel Jackson Tubb Hall and Uncle Shorty had come home and found her dead in the bed. Granny and Grandpa Hall lived in Augusta, Arkansas. All the family met at Uncle Jack’s house that night in Rosalie and formed a caravan and left for Arkansas. Uncle Jack had a new car, Uncle Leonard had an old, but dependable car and I rode with him. Joe Bogue, a friend of the family, drove my Mom and Dad and brothers and sisters in an old 1953 or 54 Ford. The old car ran ok, but we had to stop about every 50 miles and put a quart of oil in it. Joe worked at a Kayo station in Gurley, Alabama and we stopped there and bought 2 gallon to carry with us on the trip. You could buy a gallon of bulk oil for a quarter or fifty cents. To find a service station open within fifty miles, especially a Kayo station, at night and early morning, was rare on 72 highway in Alabama in 1964. And Dad barely had enough money for gas for the whole trip. I didn’t have time to get my pay for picking pepper before we left that night. This was before freeways and I remember our caravan going through downtown Memphis before daylight that morning. Uncle jack was in the lead and he would go through a green light, than Uncle Leonard would go through a yellow light, and Joe would follow going through a red light. The caravan got to Grandpa and Granny’s house in Augusta about daylight but Grandpa and Shorty were at Aunt Leola’s house in Fitzhugh, a few miles out in the country from Augusta. Granny wasn’t ready for viewing until late that evening and we stayed at Aunt Leola’s until late that evening. All of us being from Sand Mountain, we were used to the tradition of setting up with a decease relative at home. But it was different in Arkansas. I dont remember where everybody slept that night, but I slept in a car. Some of the others spent the night with Aunt Leola and Im not sure but I think some of the others spent the night in a motel in Augusta. Granny was buried on Sunday and we all started for home after the funeral. But we didn’t leave in a caravan this time. Daddy and Uncle Leonard left from the graveyard. I rode back with Uncle Jack and he went by to see Granny Hall’s brother and sister, John Letchworth and Ollie Mathis before we left for home. I’m glad I rode with Uncle Jack, because that was the only time I ever saw those two, and most likely I never would have seen them if I hadn’t been with him. I don’t remember anything about the trip home. When we got back home, I went to Uncle Martin’s house, and got some bad news. I had been fired from my job of picking bell pepper. Not because I wasn’t a good worker, but because I was picking green pepper instead of red pepper. I’m color blind and if the sun was shining a certain way on the green pepper in the fields while it was on the plant it looked red to me. I have quit a lot of jobs, but that is the only job I have ever been fired on.
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 14:09:47 +0000
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