Tenant Farming

Tenant Farming

I was reminded of my mother's family's background this weekend when we visited the Southern Tenant Farmers Union Museum in Tyronza Arkansas. They, the family of Will and Jessie Daffron, moved about central and northern Alabama farming lands as they went. They had no union. They often struggled and they moved regularly. 

I wish they had had a union. They had the close-knit family, but I mean something more than that. Such as 

My Granddaddy Daffron wrote all his life. Here is something that has come down to me in typescript (one of the daughters began typing up Granddaddy's "poems" years later and unless somebody else in the family has the original handwritten copy then I am afraid it has disappeared.) 

I will date it to 1934 because of the reference to the Bankhead law. 

And by the way, "dope" was a term that Granddaddy used for "medicine".

 

The Hayseeder’s Lament

By Will Daffron, Millport Alabama

What do you think 

About the gink

And all this high-brow clan

Who congregate

And advocate

Bankhead’s reduction plan

We raise our cotton

For markets rotten

We freely will admit

But it’s a fact

This Bankhead Act

Don’t help a doggon bit

We plant the seed

And tend the weed

Side dress with guano

We plow and hoe

Keep on the go

No rest so help us Hannah 

We work and sweat

Just fume and fret

And worry every day

Haul it to town

And with a frown

Give half the stuff away

We have to sign

On dotted line

At every turn we make

Then buy permits

And send remits

With that we can rake

We pay the ginner

The real winner

In this old game of chance

His biz is brisk

He takes no risk

Your see that at a glance

We count our dough

And hope to go

Right out and buy a shirt

Some calico

And thread you know

To make the wife a skirt

We heave a sigh

And almost cry

To find we’re in a pickle

A note past due

For 10-2-2

Don’t leave a blessed nickel 

No shoes, no socks

No calico frocks

Nor just an old straw lid

Not even a hope

To buy a dope

Or candy for the kid

Can’t sell a cow

A pig or sow

A turkey, goose or guinea

Everyone broke

Their stuff in soak

Nobody’s got a penny

No money to spend

No one to lend

A penny on our note

All of us busted

No one trusted

To lead a billy goat

Everybody knows

We have no clothes

Our children underfed

So tell us quick

What stunt or trick

We’ll pull to get some bread

THIS IS WHAT MY FATHER SAID OF DYING

 My father, Julius Page Allen, was a man of few words. Maybe as a consequence, I remember many of the things that he said. 

He said to me one day, "I just want to wake up dead." 

That is a marvelous attitude, thinking on arrival at that moment without thinking about suffering or guilt or any of the other things that often accompany dying. 

He had watched many people die. He knew. He knew that dying could come as the conclusion of a long days of suffering and insufferable visits from relatives who check in on you to see if you are dead yet. 

As it happens, he woke up on the day of his death. He had a nice breakfast. I think he did a reasonably good job of running a Norelco around his chin. "I'm ready for a nap." He liked a good nap and took one as often as he could. 

At any rate, he lay down. I hope he went to sleep. He did not get up. 

On Matters of Brooms and Sweeping

The title of this blog has left some, maybe more than some, maybe many, has left people wondering about the significance, if any, of sweeping yards. 

Sweeping is an old custom and for many people a lost skill. Done properly, sweeping creates a mood, a feel, a culmination of well-put effort. Done poorly, sweeping leaves a mess and causes people to reach for the medicine cabinet.

Time was, and not so long ago, sweeping, sweeping with a broom I am speaking of, was an indoor skill (please do not mention "indoor" and "yard" and such--all in due course) that would make quick work of tidying things. Patent offices worldwide must have millions, maybe billions, of replacements for the broom and for the act of sweeping. Some of the claimed replacements are plain silly. Racking my brain I find no replacement of the broom as pleasing as the broom. 

Swish is nice. Swish is more agreeable to the ear than vroom. Vroom. Need I describe? Of course not. You agree even if you sell Electrolux door-to-door. I am not sure that anybody does that anymore. 

I have never tripped over the cord of a broom and my limbs are less broken than otherwise they might be for the absence of a broom cord. Life is full of things nobler than to have broken one's bones for a Hoover. 

I fear I stray. That's okay. My cat does the same thing, though with more grace. 

If I stray it is because I am more interested in the beauty of the form and choreography of the broom and sweeping than I am in the lore that has grown up around sweeping. And that, now that I begin to unstray, is where I began writing this. Broom and sweeping lore is plentiful. Maybe some of it is useful. Maybe. I read in Shelby County Today a piece by Neal Murphy called "Broom Lore and Old Wives Tales." I recommend it if you have time and you will have time if you simply give up on trying to get the cord to retract. 

Timely to the season is this advice, "To prevent an unwelcome guest from returning, sweep out the room they stayed in immediately after they leave." Done. We may have missed this chance. "Do not sweep at all using a broom on New Year’s Day or bad luck will follow you all year long." I am safe. 

Advice and admonitions abound. Enjoy. And one day I will tell you about the title of this blog. Actually, I already have, at least partially, doing a little is better than doing nothing at all, but the description is so far back that you probably cannot find it. Don't fret. That is almost as bad as leaving the broom leaning against the bed. 

 

But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, "It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.

Kings something 

Meditation 

This Bears Remarking

 Or thinking. At least thinking. 

About

 Today

No. Not today, but back then.

It was a nice time. 2019. France  

I think it was the 

Restaurant le Carré d'Art, Nimes

Philip Glass and My Mother

I brought Philip Glass to campus for a presentation. Some time ago. A colleague and I did a short interview on our NPR affiliate about the visit. We played excerpts from the composer's music. 

"My mother would enjoy this," I thought to myself and sent her a copy.

Going through her things recently, I came across the cassette I sent. On the envelope my mother had written "Killing hogs I think."

Milton Puryeur killing hogs on his land. Marion Post Wolcott, Library of Congress, Farm Security Administration

Obedience

 

I sold that snapshot. I am sorry. It is a good one and a fine moral lesson. I should have kept the photograph and tacked it above my desk as a reminder and guilt-inducer to stay on track with my tasks. 

And this weekend, last one in March 2024, I discovered that I had a second copy. 

Money Changing

June 11, 2018

San Francisco. Visit. Early morning. Thought to myself: I probably need to change money. SF is another country. And that's good. 

Blue

Overheard at Magritte exhibition at SFMOMA: "We should use that blue in our hallway"

Finland Reads

If, however, Finland has been rated the world’s most literate country, it may also have something to do with a 19th-century decree that a couple could not marry in the Lutheran church before both passed a reading test. “Quite an incentive,” observes Halonen, “to learn to read.”

Safe, happy and free: does Finland have all the answers? | World news | The Guardian

Found

Found

The flu can kill millions. In 1918, a pandemic was fueled by World War I. - The Washington Post

The flu can kill millions. In 1918, a pandemic was fueled by World War I. - The Washington Post

My mother was eight years old when the pandemic spread to rural Alabama and the farm that the family cultivated. Mama was the only person in the family who did not contract the flu. She was the only caregiver for the family. She remembered that she had to rotate and change bedpans for the patients. Her father gave her instruction on feeding the farm animals. She was a brave little girl.

Aroma of Sounds

Were you able to breathe through your ears, presumable you could sense the aromas of sounds. 

Don't Remember, Don't Know

There's a difference between "don't remember" and "don't know"

Tuscaloosa Wrecking Co.

I enjoy seeing this photograph several times a year.

Walker Evans

Known

Things we used to know changed. Inconsiderate.

Year

Rainer Maria Rilke said of a new year, "And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been."

Unfortunately, I doubt this is going to be one of those years. 

Talking

I'm talking to the glassware if that's your concern.

Hurt

The hurt's gone but not the memory.

Pillows

You can estimate the age of a person by the number of pillows they need.