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Women make up 49% of the world population.
And Now You Do
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1:30, They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof.
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
Did you ever know a barefoot boy? Lots of country kids went without shoes in the summertime. Some preferred going barefoot, and others had no shoes. Some had shoes but were saving them for Sunday wear or for other trips into town. This unshod condition was not entirely dictated by poverty, although lack of money probably played somewhat of a role, at least in certain cases!
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
There were no paved roads in Elm Flat when my family lived there during the 1940s, just dirt roads. There was no electricity either, but that is another story! You can get by pretty well with dirt roads during the dry season, but let it start raining, and the roads can get bad in a hurry. Ruts begin to form, and in low points of the road, mud holes start to appear.
It took a good deal of skill and a bit of courage as well to be a good dirt road driver during the rainy season. You needed to stay in the ruts, and you had to watch out for the mud holes. With a big mud hole looming ahead, you had to make an important decision. Do I or don’t I try to make it through? To get through a bad mud hole, you would try to speed up as much as possible in order to gain the necessary momentum to get all the way through without getting stuck. If you could gain enough speed, you would likely make it through okay . . . although the experience did not do much for the overall appearance of your car!
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
Kerens used to have the best barber shop in the world! It was a real old-fashioned barbershop with a genuine barber pole outside the front door. In the decades of the forties and fifties, the word “barber” was more than just a job description–it was also an honorific title of respect. I can remember three barbers who were graced with that appellation: Barber Johnson, Barber Mills, and Barber Seale. There may have been others, but these were the three that I remember.
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
Throughout my lifetime, whenever I have had occasion to be in contact with medical doctors or hospitals, I always remember Dr. Gurley Sanders. During the decades of the forties, fifties, and sixties Dr. Sanders provided virtually all of the medical care needed by residents of Kerens and its surrounding rural communities.
Dr. Sanders had his office in Kerens. It was on the west side of Colket, the main street of town-- on the same block with the barber shop and the Chamber of Commerce, I think. He did not confine his practice to his office, however. He made house calls, and also visited any patients that had been admitted to P & S Hospital over in Corsicana. In the earlier days of his practice, he delivered babies at home, and it was he who came to the Vernon place east of Kerens on June 8, 1940–the day I made my first appearance in Navarro County. There were many occasions when Dr. Sanders delivered babies whose mothers he had also delivered a generation earlier.
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
I don’t guess anybody living around Kerens needs much more information about black-eyed peas. Black-eyed peas are a staple of the central Texas diet! Living up in Ohio, however, I miss fresh black-eyed peas. You never find the fresh ones here, only canned peas, and these are not even very good because they are canned dried peas, not canned fresh peas . . . still I faithfully eat a batch of them on New Year’s Day in keeping with the old Texas custom.
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
Steve Vernon (my Dad) and my Uncle Lewis both grew up on the old Vernon farm place about a mile and a half east of Kerens, on the Old City Lake Road. At the time they were born, my Grandfather Vernon planted a pear tree for each of his two sons. My Dad and Uncle Lewis are both gone now, and their pear trees have also died and disappeared–but both the men and their trees remain strong in memory.
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
Anyone who grew up on a cotton farm knows all about chopping and hoeing cotton. Chopping cotton was an operation that involved the manual thinning of the small cotton plants, as well as the removal of any weeds that had sprouted along with the cotton. When the cotton was planted, the tractor-mounted cotton seeders placed more seed into the seed bed than was expected to grow to maturity. Over planting assured a good stand of cotton. Mechanical thinning was then necessary to eliminate the extra seedlings, and to prevent overcrowding. The person performing this operation was called a cotton chopper. Small armies of cotton choppers moved across the cotton fields around Kerens during the months of May and June to perform this critical task.
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
For boys growing up in Kerens, in the decade of the fifties, it was important to stay on the right side of the law. The law was both personified and enforced by our constable, Mr. Jargo Holloway. Mr. Holloway did not have a police car, or any car at all. His patrol car was in fact an old red pickup truck with cattle frames, and I believe he also used his pickup to haul cows to the livestock auction in Corsicana for small farmer-ranchers in the area. Mr. Holloway, or Jargo, as everyone called him, was an old-line Kerens citizen, and I believe at one time he had his own store in Kerens—most likely sometime back in the twenties or thirties. Jargo’s habitual attire included khaki trousers, a set of well-worn cowboy boots, and a rumpled old hat. I don’t remember what kind of shirt he wore, but probably khaki as well, or maybe blue chignon. His appearance pretty well matched that of everyone else around town, in other words.
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
NOTE: This essay was originally written as a birthday letter to my granddaughter. I first thought of revising it into an essay so it would sound a little less like a letter. Upon reflection, however, I have decided that there must be lots of grandfathers out there, like me, who might appreciate a format which involves one generation communicating with another!
Dear Hannah:
This is one of those letters you sometimes get from your grandfather. It is a vanity that grand-fathers have, to think they may be able to say something interesting to young people maybe even something useful. By now, I guess you have grown accustomed to these letters or perhaps have resigned yourself to receiving them from time to time. Anyway, here goes . . .
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
Of all the economic activities around Kerens during the decades of the forties and fifties, the most important one was cotton farming. Other crops were grown—corn, oats, vetch, and sorghum or maize—but cotton was king! Farm land around Kerens was evaluated in terms of its capability of growing profitable cotton crops. Good cotton land would produce from one-half bale to a bale an acre. One bale per acre was great for paying off bank loans, purchasing new tractors, and buying new Ford pickups from Howells or stylish new Chevy sedans from Bruners. Farmers whose land consistently produced less than one-half bale per acre, maybe even one-quarter or one-third bale, were less able to purchase new tractors and automobiles, and were more likely to have a problem when visiting Mr. Earl Seales down at the First National Bank of Kerens. Visiting Mr. Seales at the bank could be a harrowing experience, and deserves a separate essay, so will not be further discussed at this point in time.
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
If you ever lived out in the country around Kerens, before about 1950, you have most likely had direct experience with outhouses. An outhouse never provided a particularly pleasant experience, but they were really great considering the available alternatives. For example, they provided superior comfort and privacy to the open trenches of the type provided for military personnel at temporary encampments. They also offered both more privacy and better protection from ticks and chiggers than a stand of trees at the end of a cotton field during cotton chopping and cotton-picking seasons. There were lots of different sizes, types, and styles of outhouses that I can remember, although it is true that I have not made any kind of systematic study of the matter. At the outset, let me openly confess that this entire essay is based upon direct personal experience, observation, and imagination. Accordingly, emendation and supplementation will be happily received from other experienced outhouse users, but only from those with bona fide connections to Kerens and its legitimate satellite communities such as Bazette, Rural Shade, Oak Grove, Samaria, Goodlow Park, and Powell. Anyone not knowing the names of these communities and their locations in relation to Kerens may rule themselves out as legitimate critics.
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
I think everyone has searched their memory, at one time or another, in an effort to recollect the earliest events of their lives, trying to reconstruct their earliest days. I know that I have done that from time to time, and one of my earliest memories is about the big frog.
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Column by Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
Growing up on a farm near Kerens meant that we used words a little differently than city folks.
When we said "dinner," we meant the big meal right in the middle of the day. When we said "supper," we meant the meal we ate after work was done before we went to bed at night. In the country there were two big meals--breakfast and dinner. Supper was smaller than breakfast and dinner, mostly something to keep you from starving before you woke up and had breakfast the next morning!
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88 _STORIES (6 _PAGES, 15 _PERPAGE)
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 In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has
shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the Old
Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred
thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years from now the
Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. ... There is
something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of
conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
-- Mark Twain
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| Tuesday, September 09 | | · | A Bazette Hunting Trip |
| Tuesday, September 02 | | · | Sullivan’s Shoe Shop |
| Monday, September 01 | | · | Clotheslines |
| Monday, July 21 | | · | Scrapping Cotton |
| Thursday, May 22 | | · | Trombone Torture |
| Wednesday, April 09 | | · | Progress in the Cotton Patch |
| Thursday, April 03 | | · | The Day the Bus Fell into the Creek |
| Friday, December 28 | | · | Reflections upon Two Barns |
| Tuesday, November 27 | | · | The Old Yellow Fire Escape |
| Tuesday, November 13 | | · | A Trip Out of State |
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