Nightflying: The Entertainment Guide

How are things different now than they were when I was growing up in my parents’ home at Mayflower, 1936-1956?

My dad was a good role model. He grew up in what I call the "horse culture" of the late 1800s and early 1900s, before the proliferation and common use of automobiles. He was 16 in 1900 and 36 in 1920. His word was his bond, in an era when that was not uncommon; no one survived in a community unless they were "good as their word." Before he became a rural mail carrier, he had worked as a field hand, sharecropper, carpenter, railroad mechanic, blacksmith and self-taught schoolteacher.

The home where I was born was a farmhouse built in the late 1800s, with no electric power, running water or indoor plumbing, like most of our neighbors. We drew our water from a well my dad dug, and farmed with a team of mares. We never owned a tractor. Dad's lifestyle was to grow or make everything he possibly could and survive on very little cash money and no credit, for indeed, in his day and time, there was little of either.

In his youth he had suffered the pangs of hunger. He said, at times, he and his widowed mother and his brothers and sisters only had cornbread and sorghum molasses 3 meals a day. But with hard work and careful planning he provided a good home and we were never hungry.
We did get electricity when I was a very small child, but even then it didn't always work and I well remember kerosene lamps as being our only light at night. We burned wood in our heating and cooking stoves, and I was responsible for keeping a supply of it cut and carried into our home.

I am very blessed, for as a part of being a good role model, Dad knew the value of education and expected me to study and learn. I developed a love for reading very early. Books and the learning and entertainment they provide, have always been a source of pleasure for me. As secretary of our town's school board (and later of the County Board of Education) my dad had a hand in the choosing and hiring of my school teachers. I attended grades one through six in only 3 rooms, under 3 schoolteachers.

When Dad finally agreed to buy a television set for my mother, my dad was fascinated and amazed. Significantly, he would not buy one until I had graduated from high school. During the late 50s, I lived in Little Rock but often visited with my parents overnight and watched television with them, shows such as "Bonanza" and "Maverick" and "Gunsmoke."

He would say, "If you had told me, when I was your age, I would be sitting and watching events as they actually happened thousands of miles away, I would have doubted your sanity." My dad, who was born during President U. S. Grant's lifetime, when there were no automobiles or telephones, lived until 1969 and knew about the Apollo landing on the moon.

Dad never used a telephone. If the phone rang and he was at home alone, he wouldn't answer it. His philosophy was, "If I need to talk to someone, I'll go see them." The only exception I recall was when my brother Jess, stationed in Florida during the 2nd World War, called us and we went to the only phone in Mayflower, an ancient wooden box with a hand crank on the wall of my cousin's home. Nowadays, with the popular use of computers, internet and cell phone communication and the hundreds of other technological wonders I have seen come into usage, I can easily identify with my dad and his wonderment.

He carried the U.S. Mail over 45 miles of dirt and gravel roads 6 days a week for 35 years, beginning in a horse and buggy and later in a pickup truck. In the early days, the mail sack was thrown off a fast-moving train, and our postmaster sometimes had to walk up and down the railroad to find the canvas bag. A few times it went into the creek. He would hang the outgoing mail by the tracks on a kind of gallows device. A hook would come out and grab it as the train flew past. I don't know if the hook was operated mechanically or by a trainman. Later, after the post office moved a few blocks east to the side of Highway 65, it was delivered by a bus called a "Highway Post Office" by armed guards.

I am grateful for all the improvements we now enjoy, especially communications and medical technology. But in many ways, things were so simple and so much easier back then.

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