A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety (10 page)

My father had been moved from the hospital to his bedroom at home, and my mother and our former maid, Annie Mae Hollis, were caring for him. Except for some brief visits with my other relatives, I spent almost all my time at Daddy’s bedside, having the longest and most thorough conversations I had ever had with him. He was growing weaker and had some brief spasms of discomfort but was completely cogent and eager
to listen to my descriptions of navy duty and describe his work in many aspects of community life and also within the state government. What was most surprising was the steady stream of visitors who came to the house, mostly not wanting to disturb Daddy but just to bring him small gifts and relay their personal thanks for things he had done for them or their families. More than half the visitors were African-American.

I knew he was active in our church as a deacon and Bible teacher but had never realized that he served as a member of the board of education, was on the hospital authority, was active in the Lions Club, and was playing an important role in educating local farmers on better agricultural practices. He had become a statewide force in developing vocational-technical schools to supplement the more academic colleges and was a champion in helping rural communities share in Georgia’s economic progress. Even more significant than these involvements in public affairs were the many reports to me of Daddy’s benevolent activities, done privately and without even my mother knowing about them. It was obvious that he was putting his religious beliefs into action every day and making a profound impact on the lives of many people.

Annie Mae, who had helped my family during the 1940s, had learned about Daddy’s illness and returned to Plains from California. I remember that Annie Mae was holding him in her arms when my father breathed his last tortured breath, and she never flinched when she was covered with his black vomit. Years later, in 1994, Annie Mae’s home in nearby Albany was destroyed by a flood, and Rosalynn and I organized a Habitat for Humanity crew and rebuilt it.

One of the strangest and most unexpected events in my life was my slow but inexorable contemplation of resigning from the navy and returning home to Plains to assume some of my father’s responsibilities and emulate his activities. I realized that I enjoyed one of the most coveted assignments that a military career could offer, and I had the prospect of
unlimited advancement during the coming years. Rosalynn especially relished being a navy wife and cherished her freedom to manage our family affairs with relative independence. At the same time, I was burdened with the knowledge of the tremendous investment that had been made in my education and specialized nuclear training. Balanced against all this was the prospect of living in a tiny rural village from which I had been separated all my adult life, with uncertain economic prospects, and where I had no assurance of ever acquiring the same admirable status that Daddy had enjoyed.

I drove back to Schenectady after my father’s death and burial in July 1953 and was tormented with unresolved doubts about my future. I debated the issues over and over, and finally decided that I would prefer to return home to Plains. Rosalynn was astounded and furious when I told her of my decision, but I submitted my official resignation through Admiral Rickover. He did not confront me personally, nor did he ever mention the subject to me. His reaction was disdainful; he apparently felt that it should be the highest of life’s priorities for any of his subordinates to serve under him. Georgia’s Senator Richard Russell, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, helped me in expediting approval of my request. I left the navy in October with mixed emotions of gratitude and guilt.

Rosalynn was not reconciled to my resignation, and relations between us remained quite cool. We shipped our few belongings home and drove through Washington to conclude my discharge procedures. She avoided talking to me as much as possible and would ask our oldest son, “Jack, tell your father we need to stop at a restroom.” We had little money, and I had no prospect for an assured income, so my application had been approved to occupy one of the newly built government housing units in Plains.

We decided to take our boys to visit the Capitol, and our local congressman, E. L. (Tic) Forrester, volunteered to take us on a tour. He was an outspoken segregationist, and while with us he furiously condemned the ill-advised public housing program sponsored by racial integrationists that was going to plant unsavory and despicable people alongside decent white folks. He used racist epithets to describe the kinds of people who would occupy the units. Rosalynn and I looked at each other and didn’t
comment, then drove on to our new home in the Plains public housing unit.

Rosalynn and I had three sons while I was in the navy, our youngest a baby when we returned to Plains. I wanted to try again for a girl, and we had an off-and-on argument for the next fourteen years, which I finally won. Amy was born late in 1967, when our oldest son was twenty years old.

I
had no idea what I would do back in Georgia, except try to continue my father’s work as a farmer with a small supply business that provided fertilizer and seed to other farmers and bought and stored their peanuts during harvest season. Daddy had described his warehouse activities in general terms before his death, but neither of us at that time was contemplating my leaving the navy. I presumed that my uncle Alton, whom the family called Uncle Buddy, would be in charge of settling my father’s estate, and I was startled when he informed me that he would decline this responsibility and have the local judge designate me as sole executor. When I protested that I knew very little about farming or business and was acquainted with very few of the customers involved, Uncle Buddy responded that this was the best way for me to learn. He offered to help me when necessary but reminded me that he was a merchant, and not a farmer.

We were in the midst of harvest season for peanuts and cotton, our primary cash crops, and I had a crash course on the job in buying crops from farmers, collecting debts, and bringing in our own crops from the fields. It was fortunate that the seminal move to replace mules and horses with tractors had not begun, so we were picking cotton by hand and curing peanuts on stack poles just as when I had last worked on a farm, twelve years earlier. Except for a pickup truck, there were no self-propelled vehicles on the farm. Most payments for agricultural supplies that Daddy
had sold during the planting and growing season were expected to be made from crops sold in the fall, and I was not adequately attentive to this facet of the business. Although there was a lot of goodwill toward our family, it became apparent that when given an option of which creditor should be paid first, many of the customers met their obligations to the one who was most demanding. There were a disturbing number of unpaid accounts at the end of the season.

Another problem was that the Internal Revenue Service decided to audit my father’s income tax returns for a number of preceding years, and they demanded that I substantiate with written proof his claims that much of the income had been from the sale of timber instead of earned, and therefore subject to lower tax rates for capital gains. Contrary to more modern practices, it was customary in those days for timber to be bought by small sawmill owners, who would have fewer than ten employees and would saw lumber in the forests. Mules or oxen dragged downed logs about a hundred yards to the sawmills, which were moved frequently. There had been seven sawmill owners in Plains during the years in question, and several of them had moved away, died, or gone out of business. Their record-keeping practices were rudimentary at best. It was impossible for me to prove the sources of all the income, and the resulting penalties took up most of the cash available in my father’s estate.

Despite these unexpected problems, I proceeded to settle my executor’s duties to other family members. Using the best estimated valuations that my uncle and I could evolve, I divided the family holdings into five equal parts. My mother, brother, and two sisters met at Mama’s home with me one afternoon, and I gave each of them an opportunity to choose their portion, in reverse order of age. Then I accepted what was left. I was glad to see 1953 come to a close, and now I was better prepared for the new year. My wide-ranging and expanding responsibilities made my previous navy life—even helping to design and build an original nuclear power plant—seem simple.

Although as a farmer I had limited access to proper woodworking facilities, I made crude but serviceable furniture for our small apartment with my hammer, handsaw, drawknife, and other simple tools of a farmer.
We later gave a picnic-style table and two benches to some friends but retained some bunk beds, plus a couch and lounge chair that are still in use on our back porch. I used pine boards and wove the seat bottoms with half-inch hemp rope. We bought the cushions, and Rosalynn made the pillows. Our apartment in the government housing project was small but comfortable, our oldest son, six years old, was at ease in the same school that Rosalynn and I had attended for eleven grades, we were regularly attending the Baptist church where I had been baptized (although she was still a Methodist), and I was becoming involved in the Lions Club and some other community affairs. The Sumter County grand jury soon appointed me to fill my father’s place as a member of the board of education and the hospital authority, since these were not elective offices.

Just a fifth of Daddy’s estate belonged to Rosalynn and me, but I was responsible for managing the cultivated farmland and a larger acreage of timber owned by most other heirs, including native forests and a few acres of planted pine trees. I had forgotten all I ever knew about farming, so during the winter months before planting season I learned as much as possible about managing woodlands and producing corn, cotton, peanuts, and wheat. I studied pamphlets published by the Georgia experiment stations and traveled to Tifton to attend one-day training sessions at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College on the subjects of most interest. There were seven families living on all the combined farmland who had been sharecroppers with my father, and I talked to them about the different fields and took soil samples to determine what fertilizer formulae would be best. In addition, I made an effort to reach out to some new customers and continued trading with those who had made a good-faith effort to settle their previous debts to the estate.

With land and my future crops as security, I went to the local bank and obtained a loan of ten thousand dollars, with which I could purchase farm supplies, and planted a crop with high hopes. A fertilizer manufacturer in nearby Dawson agreed to continue the existing arrangement to sell their products to me, and I added three dollars a ton as my profit. Most of my sales were on credit, to be paid at harvesttime. Then disaster struck our farming region, as we experienced one of the worst droughts in history.
At the end of the year 1954, neither I nor many of my customers made an effort to harvest a good portion of our parched crops. I had one field of a new variety of peanuts called Virginia Bunch 67 that got a rain the first week in August and made a good yield.

Even after assigning a full value to our unpaid accounts receivable, our gross income for the year was only $280, with no salaries for Rosalynn or me. It helped that this small income qualified us to remain in subsidized housing, with monthly rent being just $31. My application for another bank loan was rejected unless I had my mother and uncle also sign the note. I didn’t want to do this, so I went to Dawson and worked out an agreement with the fertilizer company to let me have a truckload (twenty tons) or railroad carload (forty tons) at a time, but on consignment. Any cash payment went directly to Dawson, and charge tickets were payable to them instead of to me. I still had no help (except Rosalynn) and had to load all the fertilizer into my small warehouse alongside the railroad tracks and then onto customers’ trucks. When a forty-ton freight car came, I walked down the street and hired a man for an hour or two to help me unload it. I was really grateful when some truck drivers and customers would lend a hand. The fertilizer came either in one-hundred-pound paper bags or two-hundred-pound burlap or white cotton bags. I considered the strenuous exercise good for me and was proud of my new muscles. During harvest season I employed a number of temporary workers to help with unloading trucks of peanuts and corn. I expected to sell about 3,500 tons during the year, but I realized that I had to explore some new ideas about providing improved services to the farmers in our area and expanding my own involvement in agricultural affairs throughout Georgia.

In addition to growing cotton, corn, soybeans, and wheat, I decided to plant all our permitted acreage of peanuts as seed, and to concentrate on the Virginia Bunch 67 variety, which had done best during the previous year. I obtained as many seeds directly from the experiment station breeders as possible, so my produced peanuts could be certified the next two years as pure seed for other farmers to plant. We had normal rainfall in 1955 and were able to settle most of our unpaid accounts. We paid taxes on $3,600 of income. We first struggled just to make a living and
then began to invest our profits into expanding our business. During the next few years I bought spreader trucks and began to apply fertilizer in customers’ fields, and I improved the equipment used to purchase and process peanuts and corn at harvesttime. In the winter months I did as much of the work as possible in designing and building new storage facilities, dump pits, elevators and conveyor belts, and equipment to remove rocks, dirt, and sticks from harvested peanuts that came from my fields and those of customers.

Producing seed peanuts evolved into a major source of income, and I was soon contracting with other farmers to produce seed on their land for me to process in a shelling plant of my design. I sold my high-quality seed to farmers in an expanding area of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. I also concentrated on learning everything possible about the entire seed business and was elected president of the Georgia Crop Improvement Association, responsible for the statewide production and distribution of seeds of all varieties, including corn, cotton, wheat and other grains, soybeans, grasses, and even pine trees. On my own farm and those of neighbors, I continued to concentrate on peanuts, and one year I produced sixteen varieties of this one crop. I realized later that I could have enlarged my business more rapidly and become wealthier with additional loans, but I guess the effect of growing up during the depression years made me excessively cautious about being in debt.