Jim Martin Speaks of the Lean Years

printed in the Ropesville Plainsman Newspaper

The other evening we visited in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Jim Martin of Ropesville. In their spacious living room, while their two grandchildren played and laughed, we talked of the other days and times that were pungent with emotions when the stream of life boiled and budded, when we were much younger than we are now.

There were sunshine, clouds and rain; there were poverty and hunger, the snows of other winters and the broiling sun of other summers.

Jim Martin is a native of Tennessee. With his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Willey Martin, he came to Texas in 1919. They came to help gather the cotton crop in the river bottom of Paris, Texas. It was here they learned about malaria -- the entire family except Jim came down with chills and fever. They had to get out of the river bottoms, away from the fever infested mosquito, so they moved to Paris. They remained there for four years when Jim heard talk of the high plains of Texas. It was in the fall of 1923 that he road the train into Ropes.

"There wasn't much there then," explained Jim. "The man that was to meet me was not in town yet, so I walked about the village. J.R. Evans had a grocery store and Jim Williams had a service station just down the highway from where the Texaco station now stands. There was but one or two other buildings." It was not until 1924 that the town started to build.

Jim wrote his parents about the South Plains and the next mail brought him a letter which said they were coming.

"I had to do some moving around," said Jim, "but I got a place about four miles north of Ropes, at one time owned by Bert Jay. It was not but a few days before my folks arrived. They had leased a immigrant car from the railroad and loaded the household goods and livestock in to it, and before we realized it the car was at Meadow where we unloaded."

"The place we had secured had to be cleared and put into cultivation. We put in that winter getting the scrubby mesquite off it, then we broke it. In the spring we again broke it and planted it.

"Fortune did not smile on us that year. We gathered and sold exactly $11.00 worth of cotton and our feed crop was a failure. So, we went into 1925 broke, but we did manage to get our crop in the ground. It was one of those seasonable years you have heard about. The cotton and the feed flourished -- we had a bale of cotton to the acre on the stalk, then came the freeze in early October. The cotton crop was a complete loss. Again we had to turn to our cows and chickens for a living, but we made it over."

"Nineteen hundred and twenty-six was another seasonable year. The crops were as good as we had ever seen. We were badly in need of money. We decided to sell the crop in the field. Bernard Evans offered us a $1000.00 for what we had and we took it."

"That was on Thanksgiving Day, November 24th. On the afternoon of that day came the sandstorm that no one living here will ever forget. The crop was a complete loss, or nearly so. What was not blow out on the ground was full of sand in the boll."

"Bernard rigged up a squirrel cage like contraption that would hold several pounds of cotton. He gave us nine dollars a bale to scoop up the cotton, put it in the huge cage and whirl the sand from it. We got a few bales that way, and the cotton sold for nine cents a pound."

"The next year was anything but seasonable, but this country is full of surprises. Even though we did not get our cotton in the ground until the last of June, we had a late frost and had a good crop."

We ask Jim about the depression years.

Jim smiled and said, " We had our depression before we came to Texas. In Tennessee, our life was one long depression. During the lean years, we had our milk, eggs, and meat; and that was more than we ever had before coming to this state."

"I want to tell you that in those days poor people in Tennessee were looked on as trash and treated as you would treat a dog. Although we owned our own farm, we were ragged and hungry. Our farm home consisted of a log cabin with a lean-to, where our parents slept and a loft where we kids slept. There was no stairway, but each night we climbed a ladder to sleep on pallets. We had one cow and her milk wasn't so rich. Each day my mother would churn the milk and skim off the butter -- there wasn't much of it -- and then she would cook a pan of corn bread. Cutting the slices open, she then would smear it with a little of the butter, and that was our breakfast."

"I remember I plowed all day for my uncle, and when night came, all the supper I had was a piece of cornbread and a small glass of milk. And, when I say I plowed, I walked between the handles of a turning plow, pulled by two mules, and held the plow in the ground. If you have never followed a turning plow; if you have never drove horses or mules to such an implement, you can't even guess how tired a man can get. It was not for eight hours, but from the time the sun rose until the sunset, and as long as it was light enough to work."

"There was some work in Tennessee, but wages were so low you could not live on them. Many a time I have worked for fifty cents a day, my brother Arzie for forty cents and my father for seventy five cents. We had to do it to keep body and soul together. Our farm, as was most other farms, was poor land. The corn was stunted and the ears of corn were nub bines."

"I guess you can begin to see the depression."

"There was seemingly quite a difference in the way people lived and thought in Tennessee to what they did in Texas."

"Even though the Civil War was over," explained Jim, "there was still those that considered themselves aristocrats That made it hard on us. We had to fight our way through. And, at school it was bad and we received poor treatment. The teacher seemed to be lined with those "who have" and there was no justice for the poor child. I remember that a man from the north came to our house one winter and gave me a fur cap. It was one that I could pull down over my ears and I was proud of it. The first day I wore it to school, some of the kids stole it and destroyed it. The teacher didn't even offer to do anything about it, he just shrugged his shoulders."

"And speaking of schools, the one we attended was a little one room affair, and the session lasted but three months and that was in the dead of winter. We had no shoes to wear, so we trudged through the snow barefooted."

Jim explained on recent trips back to Tennessee, he found things much improved. There were many factories and what people depended on farming are now using fertilizer, something never heard of in his day, and the land was producing good crops.

"In those day," continued Jim, " the Ku Klux Klan was active in Tennessee. The white sheeted riders were often out at night. I remember a uncle of mine. They were not looking for him, but had gone to his house looking for a boy who had been staying there."

"My uncle woke up to find the hooded men, reached for his gun and they shot him through the arm. He lay there all that night and all the next day before they could get a doctor to him, as this happened out in the mountains. However, they did manage to save the arm. If he had not reached for his gun, they would not have bothered him."

"I remember we lived in the mountains for a while, then we moved to the valley. It was rough in the mountains, and I mean rough. The people living there were a law unto themselves. Strangers didn't just come in and get away."

"I remember one time the government sent in a man to grease the cattle against ticks. That was before they learn to dip them. He was received into one of the homes and treated courteously, but that night four men came to the house, carried him into the woods, stripped off his clothes and greased him with tick eradicator, and told him to get! And, he got!"

"We learned, after we moved down into the valley, that there were ten whiskey stills ringing our place, and that they were using water from our spring. I never saw a still in operation. However, there was this about it, moon shine was the only way these people had of making a living. When the government sent in Revenue men, they were striking at the thing that was feeding most of the mountain families. These people didn't intend to have their families suffer, and as a result, many government men were killed."

Mrs. Martin interrupted here to tell of an incident that happened in Texas, down in Comanche County.

"There was an old man who help to make whiskey all the time and finally they caught him. On the way to jail, he preached, sang religious songs, and prayed for the men who were taking him in. They held him overnight and decided he was too pious to make liquor, so they turned him loose. He immediately went back and started helping to furnish the community with corn whiskey."

Then Jim told another story of the mountains:

"Two men who had sent their families by train to Virginia and they came through by wagon bringing the household goods. One night they camped in the mountains, and while they were eating supper four men came out of the bush, each carrying a long barrel rifle."

"These men questioned the travelers, who explained they were moving to Tennessee and that they were not in the least bit interested in what other people did. One of the four produced a jug and all took a drink except one of the travelers. He refused, explaining, "It's against my religion to drink whiskey." The four discussed this among themselves, then evidently decided it was alright, as they rode away. However, for a moment, the lives of the two were in danger, as it was considered an insult not to take a drink when you were asked."

"These two families lived as neighbors for several years."

"In those "Good ole days", when I was growing up in Tennessee, we had many parties and dances. To go to these affairs we either road a horse or a mule. The saddle was equipped with saddle bags that hung on each side of the animal. The usual contents of the bags were a six shooter in one bag and a bottle of whiskey in the other. I carried the whiskey, and I was never drunk a day in my life!; I carried the six-shooter but I never had to use it."

During the years, Jim got the "hot foot", but he didn't head east, he went west to California.

"On one trip," said he, "my son James, and nephew, Raymond Martin (Raymond Martin was killed in July, 1957 in a automobile accident) went to California and there was no work of any kind. We were mighty short on money when we heard there was work in Oregon gathering cherries, and I said, " Boys, if we had the money, we would go to Oregon."

"James spoke up and said, "I think I have almost eight dollars, and Raymond said, "I think I have almost eight dollars."

"When we counted all our money, we found we had a little over twenty dollars. It was a long way, but we made it. At the second place we applied for work, we were hired. The man gave us a old garage to live in and we set up house keeping."

"We were about broke. I went to buy a loaf of bread and lacked one penny having enough to pay for it. The clerk told me, "Either get another penny or put the bread back." I started to put it back when someone pitched a penny on the checking counter. I never did know who it was."

"It was rather hard living for a while. We had to draw on our wages for groceries and we ate mostly potatoes, beans and bread. When the crop was gathered, the two boys had a hundred dollars a piece and I had two hundred. The man we worked for gave us a thirty-five bonus for staying with him."

"We worked for several weeks in the community."

"You may think gathering cherries is a picnic, but it is not. It is hard work and a dangerous. We used thirty foot ladders and believe me, they were wobbly.

"Another time when James and I were in Oregon gathering cherries, one of the ladders broke with me. I fell more than thirty feet. When I came to, I could hear a siren blowing. A police car arrived ahead of the ambulance. They rolled me on the stretcher and carried me to the county hospital. They carried me in and it was hours before a doctor looked at me. He gave me a cursory examination and he said he didn't think I had any broken bones, then they took me to bed."

"I was so thirsty, I could see imaginary fountains of water all about me. I wanted a drink. All through the night I howled for water, but no one came near me. I was in a ward, and a old man next to me said, 'It ain't no use, son. I've been here three days and they have neither given me water or anything to eat.'

"When the shifts changed in the morning, a Spanish nurse came into the ward and ask, 'You want a drink?' She not only appeared as a angel, she was one. She not only brought me water, but she brought me food."

"After, I had eaten, I got out of bed and told them I was leaving and was informed I couldn't leave. They would not give me my clothes. About that time, my son, James, came in, so he went back to the pick-up and got me some clothes. With him helping me, I left the hospital and went to another one. There I got immediate attention. They set my broken arm and treated me for cuts and bruises that I had received in the fall."

During World War II, Jim and Mrs. Martin went to California where they got a job in an airplane factory, and they were frozen on the job.

"You never heard tell anything like it," Jim said. "I couldn't quit, yet on the shift which I worked, there was absolutly nothing to do. I was on the swing shift, what is called the graveyard shift. When the time came for us to go on, we marched in, and most of us were idle for the rest of the night. There was a man working on the night shift and he told me:

'I wish I could get off this job.'

'Working you too hard?" I asked.

'No sir, Me, I gambles all day and come out here to work at night, and I just lay down and go to sleep. They wake me up when it is time to leave."

Jim did later manage to get discharged and they also let Mrs. Martin go. Jim then got a job gathering lemons and Mrs. Martin worked in a packing house.

Jim has gathered fruit in most of the states where fruit is grown, but now his days of wandering are over. He and Mrs. Martin spend their time at their home in north Ropesville where they have a few calves and chickens. Jim also has several rent houses, and while he has been advised by the doctor not to work, he still does a little, and sometimes more than he should.

Carolyn Bethany Sosebee sosebee@esc14.net