One of My Kirkland School Teachers

By Fred McCaleb

On Wednesday September 16, 1998 I visited the corpse of one of my former
school teachers , Mr. John Hall Holliman , I had at Kirkland Jr. High School
in 1932. He was at Norwood Chapel Funeral Home in Fayette, Al. He had died in
Jefferson County, Al. at the age of 93. He had been around the most of this
century. I hadn’t seen him since attending Kirkland. He was an energetic
young man of about 26 or 27 years of age when I knew him and he was helping
to shape my life. I wanted to see him one more time and pay my last respects. I
thought he was an old timer at 26 while I was about 15. He managed to get my
respect long ago. Very few friends survived Mr. Holliman since he had outlived
nearly all of them. His wife was gone. His 95 year old sister was at the
funeral along with her caretaker. He had a daughter that lived in Colorado that
was present. She had already retired. It was a little lonely. A few like me that
used to know him were there.
We had moved from Miss. back to Alabama and I had the privilege of riding my
first school bus to school instead of walking. Ala. was ahead on transportation
but not on school. We rode a T-Model Ford bus to school . It had a long wooden
seat down each side of the privately owned and converted truck. It went very
slow up the hills and Murry Barns would sometimes get out the back, run along
behind, and make out like he was pushing. The sides and back had curtains that
were open in good weather but closed in bad. No modern windows. Murry was a
basket ball player and a comedian and got our attention. He would remark that
he was as active as a cow.
The thirties were the time electricity had not come to the farms in Alabama. I
was acquainted with a flashlight and its batteries and the ‘ring em’ up country
telephone hand cranked generator. Electricity fascinated me. I shocked my
little sister Clara Jean McCaleb with the phone generator. It’s a wonder I
didn’t kill her. The phone generator put out 90 volts AC I learned later. We
unhooked our telephone line when storms came up and threw it on the ground to
keep lightning from coming in on the house. If we didn’t hook back the line
was grounded and others on the party line had a hard time getting anyone else
to answer. Therefore no spread of community news. We had kerosene lamps to
give light for studying by. On arriving from school I helped with farm chores
such as slopping the hogs, feeding the mules and chickens, chopping stovewood
and firewood and drawing well water. We had running water. The farm boy or girl
ran to the well with a bucket or the spring if they had no well and ran back
with a bucket of water for the kitchen dishes, drinking, washing dirty feet
etc. Our toys were all home made by a boy like me that thought he needed
something to play with. I made truck wagons for us to ride down steep hills and
dodge trees around here. We shared them with the Dodson boys which were younger
and sometimes they would hit a tree with them. It’s a wonder they didn’t
kill themselves.
One of my home jobs was to help my dad clear ten or 15 acres of land near the
channel on Saturdays by pulling one end of a cross cut saw to cut down trees
and wielding a chopping axe to trim up the brush and pile into brush piles We
did 3 or 4 acres per winter and had log rollings in the spring. The neighboring
men and women came to the log rolling. Men to help pile the logs for burning and
the women for helping prepare the big dinner feast for the rolling. Everybody
got to talk and work. It took strong bodied men. I could shoulder a 200 lb sack
of nitrate of soda and walk across the field with it at that time. Some men
could pick up a 500 lb bale of cotton. Not much concern was given to being
safe. I was going bare footed and plowing a mule and wearing short hair in the
summer and wearing long hair and a pair of brogan shoes for the winter. We
warmed by a wooded fireplace. One side of you would burn while other froze.
Stiff warning from my dad was not to burn up your shoes or you might have to
finish the winter barefooted. Our standard week day clothing wear was a blue
chambray (or something) shirt and blue denim overalls We had brown or black long
stockings to wear with shoes in winter.It was an era of make do on your own or
die. Not much choice- “do or die.” This was an era of ignorance and
adventure for me. I picked up in John Hall Hollimans health class that we were
to keep our room well ventilated. My brother Hubert and I kept our little back
room ventilated winter and summer. We slept together on a home made cotton
mattress in the summer and a feather mattress in the winter. Plenty of home
made quilts and the feather mattress kept us warm in the winter and summer heat
kept us warm in summer. I learned in the health class things that stood by the
ignorant farm boy for the rest of my life. Things like not drinking alcohol,
catching veneral diseases by messing with opposite sex, getting rest at night
etc. One just about automatically got his rest at night. The world was not lit
up at night back then. At least the country wasn’t. The small oil light
became tiresome by about 8 pm. And one hit the bed. My dad required the ones
going to school to get up about 4|30 each morning in winter to start a fire in
the fireplace and in the kitchen stove. It was below his dignity to get up and
do that when he had a couple of big boys. My mother helped us in our school
work until we got above the 7th grade. That was as far as her schooling
knowledge went. My dads school knowledge didn’t go near that far, but he knew
lots about using reverse psychology on his children though he had never heard of
psychology. We grew up as a family in poverty and never knew the difference.
Everyone was in the same boat. Such fellows as Rockefeller, Mellon, Carnegie,
and Vanderbilt had the money. My mother said Rockefeller’s money is tainted,
it taint for you or it taint for me.
The John Hall Holliman days are gone. His early days were before sulfa drugs,
penicillin, the radio for everyone, motorized transportation for all, before
television, before computers, before any income to amount to anything, before
degrading of women’s rights, before pay above $21 per month for armed services
and pay to bring spouse along. It was before most everything we think we have
to have today. There were no refrigerators, but a block of ice could be bought
to make ice cream for the 4th of July. We had ice cream if it snowed in the
winter and most of the time on the 4th of July. We kept from starving by eating
our home grown products. .
One thing John Holliman asked in a science class was “If something that cant
be stopped hits something that can’t be moved then what happens.? I could not
answer that question then. During my life I decided there might be an atomic
explosion. A similar thing to that happened in Siberia when an object from
space came in at 240 thousand MPH. It leveled the forest for several miles
around. Another question asked was “If a tree falls in the woods and there is
no one around to hear it Did it make a noise. “ I couldn’t answer that one.
I think the scientists decided the tree made waves and the waves struck the ear
and made sensation of sound.. Maybe Mr. Holliman succeeded in arousing some
curiosity in me. I didn’t know much back then and still don’t claim to know
very much after being exposed to advances of most of this century. My brother
Hubert and I got interested in parachuting. We jumped off the barn with
momma’s umbrella. It turned wrong side out and ruined. We got punishment for
that. We survived the 10 feet jump.
At the funeral home visit of John Hall Holliman I met one of his nephews named
Theron Holliman that was in my class at Kirkland. I hadn’t seen him since the
30’s either. He informed me of the Kirkland bully named James South. Said
James South started bullying me. I got a brick bat and supposedly used it on
James. I am glad I didn’t hit him in the head and kill him. He said James
said I would kill a fellow and James cut out his bullying. I didn’t
recollect being that mean back then. I wasn’t in the habit of bothering
anyone and didn’t expect to be bothered. Sometime along about that time I
became a member of the Church of Christ at Mt. Olive . Maybe I was trying to
atone for the sins I had committed as a youngster. Who knows? Anyhow the
Kirkland and Mt. Olive days are gone and most of this century is gone and the
John Hall Holliman and Fred McCaleb era is a thing of the past. Maybe 1929
stock market failure will not repeat itself. There was another boy I recollect
being at Kirkland named Theron Black. He was smart and decent. He Joined the
Navy and was on one of the ships that the Japanese sunk at Pearl Harbor. The
ship is a memorial there. His name is on a monument in front of the Fayette
Court House. He enjoyed very little of this century. Maybe that will not happen
to someone’s future schoolmate.
Written by Fred McCaleb during 1998.