By Fred McCaleb
I arrived at my parents home in Fayette County, Al. just in time for Christmans 1945 fresh out of three years service in the Army Ordnance Corps repairing tires on Saipan. I had been traveling home for 4 weeks and it was a big occasion with gladness that I was still alive all around. I had worked at Radford Ordnance Works before the war and lived in the barracks there and worked in powder and explosives as a Government Inspector testing smokeless powder and nitro glycerin in the government laboratory. According to a bill that congress had passed veterans were supposed to get their old job back. I decided to relax at home for about 3 months before getting back into the working world. Meantime I helped my dad build a carshed big enough for 2 automobiles. He didn’t have a vehicle other than mules and wagon and my transportation was by two good feet. My dad wanted me to stay with him as long as I desired. I had alloted him part of my army paycheck since I was making all of the big amount of $78 per month and had been promoted to technical sargeant just before the war ended or right after. My dad had saved part of my allotment and was going to buy himself a pickup truck when they became available.
Sometime during the 3 months I was at home in early 1946 I wrote Radford Ordnance about getting my old job back. To my surprise they said I could. It wasn’t the same and the barracks I had lived in were shut down. I had to find a place to live in town. At first I rented a room on the street back of the First Baptist Church of Radford and was living with another boy in the room who had ways different from mine and was also paying what I considered high rent. An ad in the Radford Newspaper by a Mrs. Charlton had a cheaper room and only for one person. I took that room. She had a handicapped son who had had been born handicapped or had some disease that had damaged some part of his brain, but he could play beautiful church hymns and other music on the piano. His name was Tommy and he played music for the First Christian Church in Radford. Mrs. Charlton persuaded me to visit the Presbyterian Church the first two or three Sundays I was there. Then Tommy persuaded me to go to the Christian Church in Radford. There the young son of Warren W. Cline and his daughter Bettie Cline and I believe Ellen were singing in the choir. By the time I had been to that church two or three Sundays their daughter Bettie made herself acquainted with me. From then on I was mixed up with the Clines. Bettie invited me to go to a concert at Radford Women’s College and I accepted. The next Sunday after that she invited me to go home with her for the noon lunch at the Clines. There I met an amazing family. I wasn’t used to seeing and associating with many decent people during the last three years in the army. I estimated that about two thirds of the average people were sorry at that time by my way of thinking. I did make friends with a Jewish boy from NYC. I wondered why the Jewish people had neglected to pull the right strings and see that he became an officer. I made friends with a couple of decent Mormon boys. One showed me the Morman Tabernacle or church in Honolulu. Had other no good friends that tried to influence me without any success as I was very well set in my ways by that time. Not that I was all that perfect myself. The acquaintance with the Clines continued with the Bettie and Fred McCaleb courtship and I got many good Sunday meals there for the next five or six months. Our courtship was done entirely without the benefit of modern transportation. We apparently had good legs and walked all around the place. Bettie was a teacher at the Radford Elementary School at the time of our courtship. She was staying at home with her parents. I was catching a bus in downtown Radford to go to and from my work at Radfolrd Ordnance Works. I hadn’t thought of any need for transportation of my own. Had owned a 2nd handed A Model Ford before going off to war and was going to give it to my dad. He tried to drive it, ran it in the ditch across road from our driveway and busted 3 dozen eggs on himself and ruined right front wheel. I fixed the front end and sold the car before going off to war being afraid my dad would kill himself with this modern high speed contraption. It would make all of 55 miles an hour and I drove it from Radford to home and back two or 3 times. Same car was selling for about 3 times what I sold for when I returned and new autos were near impossible to purchase. I am relating all of this so you can see what kind of oddball fellow Bettie Cline got for a husband. By the time Bettie and I had gone together five or six months we were ready to get married on my birthday September 7, 1946 which was my 30th birthday. My mother told me not to get married untill I was 30 and I obeyed her on that one, although I didn’t always do what she told me to do or what suited her.
The main thing I worried about before marrying Bettie was if I would be able to provide for her and family and take care of her in the manner that she had been taken care of during her bringing up. Her decency won me over. I couldn’t help but know that I was marrying a likeable girl. She was much ahead of me in many ways, especially church work and leadership. I didn’t feel up to her standards. The wedding turned out to be formal one with her in her wedding gown and me in a suit.My parents had been married at my mother’s home by a country preacher. The house was full, played here comes the bride and beautiful music. We took each other for better or for worse, in sickness and health, until death do us part etc. We haven’t dumped each other yet, but I suppose death will soon part us. After the wedding celebrations were over, Mr Cline took us to the train station where we boarded a train for Bristol, Va. We spent our first night in a hot non airconditioned hotel in Bristol. The next night we were at Montreat NC not far out of Ashville. One of the prettiest places I ever saw with sparkling rock columns and walls in the dining room. After the wedding honeymoon in Montreat we came back to Mr. Cline’s home.
Now came the break of our lives. Mr. & Mrs. Cline offered us the big room upstairs, free room and board if we would stay with them. Not many son-in-laws run into an offer like that. I didn’t accept the board part. I paid Mr. Cline what we thought was enough to buy the groceeries to feed us at that time. Best I recollect it was $40 per month. Mrs. Early Dawn Sturdivant Cline was the best mother-in-law anyone could ever expect to have. She had grown up on the farm under poor conditions the same as me. She had made good in high school and gone to Emory & Henry one summer & Radford State Normal one summer for teacher training and had taught in New River High School and at Falls Mills, Va. where she met Warren W. Cline. She thought I was a good son in law whether I was all that good or not. It was unusual to have a wife and mother in law that thought so much of me after being buffetted around in the army with nobody caring what happens and it’s only yours to do or die. Early’s brother Bill Sturdivant and his wife and children lived 4 or 5 blocks away. She and Bill took the news seriously and liked to discuss politicks. Mr Cline didn’t take happenings too seriously. He did think the economy was going to the dogs with all the deficit spending the Roosevelt administration had done and the politicians were still doing. I agreed with him. Funny how our prediction hasn’t come true yet. Money is getting more worthless each year, but still it hasn’t declined to zero as it did in Germany after WW1. That could still be in store for the generation alive after 2000. Lets hope not and that they make more and more money that buys something. Mr. Cline helped Early’s brother Bill through economic hardspots. At one time he bought a farm near Dublin, Va. He was going to build a nice house there for he and Early to live on since she was a country girl but someway she didn’t decide to live in the country and instead he let her brother Bill and family live there. Mrs. Cline had several kinsmen in Dublin and Pulaski and in Montgomery and Pulaski counties. I could never remember the names of all of them. She bought butter and other foods from one of her cousins. The Dudleys, Sturdivants etc are listed under the Cline genealogy. One of Mrs. Cline’s brothers went west after having trouble with the sheriff while drunk, worked on a cattle ranch, never corresponded with the family for a long time and died out there. Mr. Cline helped the wife and children of that family out by helping support them. Mr. Cline did many good deeds unnoticed for both the Cline side of the family and the Sturdivant side.
Mr. Cline had a Mercury automobile all the 2 or 3 years I stayed at their residence. Mrs. Cline didn’t drive and was not interested in learning how. Mr. Cline did all the grocery and most of the rest of shopping. There was grocery stores a mile or more apart at each end of Radford and he would visit each to get the lowest priced item. Didn’t matter if he burned up extra gas to get the bargains. The gas cost probably balanced out the bargains. When he got home from shopping he set down at his desk and kept up with every penney he had spent. Entered it into his records. My wife Bettie has done most of the shopping for us but doesn’t worry about the monetary details. She is careful of what she gets and hunts bargains as did her dad. I see too many good things to eat when I go along and wind up getting junk foods. She apparently has some characteristics of her dad. She is getting about unable to do the grocery shopping now and I may have to do that if I don’t also get disabled. Mrs. Cline thought her daughter Bettie was getting a great country boy Fred McCaleb, but I never was sure whether Mr. Cline was impressed too much or not. I am sure he hated to lose his wonderful daughter. But he didn’t say anything for or against our marriage. The keeping up with his finances carefully was probably the result of his training as a secretary. He was a secretary for many years for the Walton Construction Co. who did railroad tunnels in the mountains of W. Va. & Va. That put him in better shape than most people before and during the depression years. The salary he made would be nothing compared with the amount received today in cheap dollars. But it was big money in those times. Compared with my family he was a well-to-do man and I didn’t understand why his daughter would want a fellow like me.
Mr. Cline was already a grown man when the twentieth century arrived. I got to listen at him tell about some of his early experiences. He was a rare high school graduate for his time. There was an Episcopal High School in Mt. Sterling, Ky. He worked his way through that school and didn’t have to pay the tuition fees. His job was firing the stoves and doing other things the school needed doing. I thought the Episcopal Church Priests and teachers may have had a good influenc on him. Some of the subjects he did well in there were mathematics and English. He did well in using the English in whatever he wrote with maybe few or any mistakes. After high school he went to, I believe, Lexington Ky Business College. There he took shorthand and the required accounting, etc. The shorthand course was Gregg. How much of that he learned I don’t know, but he formed that into his own brand of shorthand. It took him to read it. He used shorthand at work and in notes he took about things he needed to do around the house. When he graduated from business college I never heard him say what his first job was. Anyhow he was with Walton Construction Company most of his working life. He probably started with them about 1905. He had been working there several years when he met up with Early Dawn Sturdivant at Falls Mills, Va. about 1916. He took a liking to her and they got married Dec. 15, 1917. He had been taking the school teachers out and Early didn’t know if she wanted to have any dealings with him or not. But in the long run he won her heart.
Before marriage the best I could find out Mr. Cline had been quite a sportsman and a man that the girls would like. He owned early motorcycles, early model autos, and whatever early mobile transportation that might be around while others were going horseback, in the buggy, on foot, in the farm wagon or whatever.He may also have started out with a thoroughbred Kentucky riding horse. I didn’t find if he did or not. He told me that he owned several motorcycles and the last one he owned he got it stopped about 10 feet before it went over a cliff and after that he gave up on motorcycles. Many small streams along the roads didn’t have bridges over them back then. He said he crossed them with his cycle fast enough to part the water and go over on dry land. My dad used to cross streams with mules and wagon with water sometimes axle deep and up into wagon bed if a rain had come during our trip. I didn’t find when Mr. Cline got his first auto, but it must have been somewhere around 1910-1914. After marriage he owned a Baby Overland, Austin, Several Fords and he was driving a Ford Mercury when Bettie and I got married. He drove that till it gave out on account of not having sufficient oil in it in a trip to Roanoke, Va. After that he went with a large Dodge and then a Dodge Dart. Drove autos so long and couldn’t handle very well because of age. Bumped or backed into someone in parking lot and police told him he would have to take and pass driving test to keep driving and he never drove any more. He sold his auto, which was a good one, and health and spirit went down hill from then on till death.
I gleaned some of his tales about his work at the Walton Construction Company while I was there. He started out as a male secretary keeping up with costs and income. How many people worked, what they were paid, income from the job, profits etc. He finally got up to secretary and treasurer of the company. They hired a woman secretary to do what he had done and at last he was 10% owner of the company. Don’t know if that happened same time he got promoted or not. The company paid each worker in money when he was working and he was responsible for the payroll. He told about going to, I believe, Bristol, Va. with a suitcase full of money for payroll. Besides the money he had a .45 caliber pistol which he said he hoped he never had to use. His payroll job sounded dangerous to me. He never had any trouble getting robbed. He said they built a tunnel through a mountain for the railroad in West Va. and the tunnel went right through a thick strip of coal. They made a big profit out of that tunnel as they sold the coal. Told me about sorry workers and good workers. Many of them seemed to have come from Italy. Southern Italians wouldn’t work very well but the ones from north part of Italy were as good as one could find. He was working in a company owned office in Falls Mills, Va. with living quarters upstairs when he and Early got married. They lived upstairs until after Bettie was born. Then they moved to West Graham, now Bluefield, Va. After that they moved to Roanoke, Va where Ellen was born. Bill & David were born at Winsor Ave house in Roanoke. Early Dawn never did call Mr. Cline Warren or papa or dad or honey as other women sometimes call their husbands. She always called him Mr. Cline. Maybe she thought she had an important man as her husband. I thought that about him and always called him Mr. Cline. Bettie thought she had a wonderful dad also.
Mr. Cline’s dad was Andrew Moore Cline, a bricklayer in Mt. Sterling, Ky. Made good money laying brick, was friendly with his bricklaying friends, and liked to share drinking and throwing parties with them. He was very liberal on these occasions and cost was of no matter. Mr. Cline’s mother was Mary Elizabeth Jones. Best I could find out they were sometimes short of funds and the mother kept boarders to make up for bricklayer income spent on drinking and party sharing. Drinking was in style in that day and time and still is in many places. Mr. Warren Cline escaped all that through the influence of his mother and the Episcopal High school and turned out to be an outstanding person. Andrew Moore Cline’s dad at one time owned a brick plant in Paris, Burbon County, Ky. Bricklaying seemed to be in the Cline blood. My Son James Arthur McCaleb became a bricklayer. Mr. Cline’s mother Mary Elizabeth was also said to be one of the finest of women. She had a wonderful influence on the children. Her brother was a doctor in Mt. Sterling, Ky. Mr. Cline called him “Uncle Doc.” One of Mr. Cline’s tales he told while I was there was about uncle doc and his woman patient. The woman had been complaining for a long time. I didn’t catch whether she had been going to another Dr. or not. Uncle Doc visited the woman and he told her he would make her up some pills that would cure anything. He knew there wasn’t anything bad wrong with her. Uncle Doc went to the kitchen and fashioned her some pills he made from flour dough. The patient took them, got well, and said that was the best medicine she had ever taken. Mr. Cline really loved to tell this tale and told it several times while I was there. I gathered the impression he didn’t think a whole lot of what doctors could do for a person, much of it was psychological. He drank a glass of hot salty water in the morning to keep his bowels in good shape. He bought an ointment he called Rosenheims from a fellow that had told him about it and rubbed it on for scratches, boils, sores or anything wrong. When he had a bad cold or sorethroat he rubbed on and also ate Vicks Salve. Had his own system of staying well. The newspapers reported no one should eat cranberries one Thanksgiving because they had been sprayed with bad insecticide and might kill a person. Mr. Cline went to the store and purchased the usual amount of the berries and we all had a big turkey thanksgiving with plenty of cranberries. No one died. Mr. Cline ate nearly raw, just warmed up, boiled eggs for breakfast each morning. The chlorestol in them were supposed to clog arteries and cause heart attack. They seemed healthy for him. He supposedly disobeyed many of the rules for healthy eating. He wasn’t influenced by experts that knew everything in his day and time. The main truth for him was to be found in the Bible and he was well read on that.
Another tale he liked to tell was about his father in law, Dudley Kent Sturdivant. Dudley Kent and his wife stayed with the Clines when they were old and brokedown. Mr. Cline was moving from one house to another. A salesman came along and he let Dudley Kent talk to the salesman, who was trying to sell Eugene Debbs book on Socialism. Dudley Kent already had the book and Mr. Cline thought the father in law was big on socialism. The salesman and father in law set in the front yard on 2 old chairs and argued socialism until the last piece of furniture was loaded. Dudley Kent told the salesman how sorry socialists were and that the book was no good. Apparently Early Dawn’s father could argue either side of a question. He was self educated, read the books he could get ahold of in his time and wrote a beautiful handwriting. I never saw him, just heard the tales about him. He named his only daughter Early Dawn Sturdivant because she was born in the early dawn of day one morning. That daughter made good grades at Dublin High School, Va. and had two summers of teacher’s training at the colleges of the time and taught at New River High School and at Falls Mills High School before getting married to Mr. Cline.
Mr. Cline had several other tales he told but I forgot most of them except one that he told about the Indian and his horse. The Indian trained his horse not to eat. Thought that would be a very good idea as he had very little to feed the poor thing. Finally he got him trained. About that time the horse died. Mr Cline was old when he was telling these tales and told them several times, which aggrevated at least one of his children. It didn’t matter with me.
When Bettie and I were married, her brother Bill Cline was about a sophomore at Radford High School. He made good grades and almost cried sometimes when he had taken a test and thought he had made a low grade. His low grade was generally about 93 to 97. He was active in the Boy Scouts and became a member of the Radford Football team. He served as a lifeguard at the swimming pool two or three summers. He lived in one of the upstairs bedrooms until about the last year in high school. He then moved to an upstairs room in the two story garage Mr. Cline had built on 601 First St. East. Mr. Cline liked to build something at every house he lived in. He had built a garage or two in the side of the hills at other houses in Radford. I helped him some on the two story garage construction. Best I recollect his son David helped on that building after returning from the navy in ww2. He also built a chicken house back of the garage and chicken fence to keep chickens pinned in. He most always had plenty of eggs for family consumption, even though he was in town. Down past the garage and chicken house there was an extra city lot for gardening. He had a good garden most every summer. I helped him some in the garden. Son Bill helped him some. After Bill was a Dr. and had his own place he grew a beautiful garden each year. Mr. Cline may have influenced him to do some gardening. I was a country boy that never learned to grow very good gardens and Bill was a City boy that did all his gardening the right way. I felt ashamed of my garden after looking at his. Was I a bit lazy or just interested in other things?
Here is a little about what I was doing while staying with the Clines. The first year I worked at Radford Ordnance with the Government checking on stored powder and explosives. Part of the job included going to the Dublin Va. storage area where they had about 150 magazines filled with deteriorating powder and explosives. The black powder storage magazines were in the most deteriorated shape. By the way these magazines were on the Sturdivant farm where Mrs. Early Dawn Sturdivant had grown up. She discussed with me what was left. The only things at her place were the spring house and the cherry trees. They had even moved her family cemetery to the Dublin Cemetery. There is a plot in the Dublin Cemetery (big) where Mr. & Mrs. Cline are buried that any of their descendants or kinsmen that wish can be buried at. Mrs. Cline gave the interest off a bank account in perpetuity to take care of her part of the cemetery. It is in the hands of Phoebe Sturdivant Poff at the present time. I ate cherries from the Sturdivant cherrie trees and I believe took enough home for Mrs. Cline to make a pie or two. The army had taken the place away from the Sturdivants. We burned powder that was deteriorating by spreading in a thin row in a field and setting fire to one end of the row. It burned almost instantly to the other end . One of my coworkers got severely burned doing that.
After about a year with the government they reduced force and I got laid off. I was still eligible for the GI bill. I used that to take a year of advanced chemistry at VPI, Blacksburg, Va. Was trying for a masters in Chemistry but didn’t ever fulfill all the requirements on account of scheduling, B grades etc. I caught a ride with younger students that were driving from Radford to VPI. At the end of a year there I decided to see if I could get a job in the chemical field. I succeeded in getting hired at Celanese Corp of America at Narrows, Va. about the fall of 1948. There I caught a ride to at start every day from Radford, Va. to Celanese a distance of 30 miles each way. Finally the bus stopped running and I rode with a coworker. About that time I decided I should be closer to work and bought a lot in nearby Ripplemead, Va. We decided to rent a house at Celco Heights about ½ mile from Celanese while working on the house at Ripplemead. About the time I started working on house I decided some transportation might come in handy. Mr. Cline knew the Dodge auto dealer in Radford. That was about 3 years after WW2 and vehicles were very hard to be allowed to purchase. Mr. Cline’s auto friend notified him that a Dodge Station Wagon had come in and I could purchase that if I hurried on down. That’s when I got the Old Dodge station wagon at Jamison Motors. Had transportation of my own that could serve as a pickup truck or car by removing 2 back seats. I hauled the material to build the Ripplemeand house on that and did most of the work myself. Had the house paid for by the time I finished building and at that time we left the hospitality of the Clines. They said they hated to see us go,
But guessed it was the best to get on our own. Their hospitality had given us a tremendous start in life. I made the cement blocks for the Ripplemead house and garage beside Mr. Cline’s 2 story garage in Radford. Mrs. Haslip from across the street called the police because she thought I was doing it commercially. They didn’t do anything with me. The son Bill Cline helped me dig the septic tank at Ripplemead one summer. Forgot what I paid him but I am sure it wasn’t much. He wanted to exercise his muscles and be a strong football player. His help and a man that laid the floors and a man that plastered the walls was the only help I got outside myself. I was trying to be independent financally as Mr. Cline said he had been. After moving in the house I borrowed $600 from Mr. Cline to buy an adjoining lot. Paid that back in about 3 months. Maybe they didn’t feel like they lost too much by letting us stay with them about 3 years.
I will have to say some good words about Mrs. Early Dawn Sturdivant Cline. She prepared a whole lot of good food for us while we were there. She knew exactly what everybody liked and tried to serve it to them. I liked everything, so I don’t know if she had trouble figuring me out or not. She didn’t let me starve and I ate whatever was on the table. She kept her house spotless, believed in ironing everything, even underwear, whether it needed it or not. She had a cleaning lady come in a time or two during the week to do her harder cleaning. Some were black and some were white. I didn’t get the impression that her help was much good, and that Mrs. Cline worked as hard bossing the help as it would have taken to do the cleaning herself. But I suppose Mr. Cline wanted her to have help and was willing to pay what little money they cost. Mrs. Cline was already an old lady and didn’t have much strength. Radford was an area where she was close to two of her brothers, and many of her cousins. Mr. Cline had moved back to that area after retiring to satisfy her and had offered to move to the country near Dublin on a farm. She declined the country place. Mr. Cline retired about 1938 and died in 1966. Mrs Cline died in 1971 at the Hospital in Lynchburg, Va. near her son David’s home. Mrs. Early Dawn spent much time petting her grand daughter Jean Ellen McCaleb when Jean was baby. Jean Ellen and Fredrick were both born in Radford, but we were not there long enough for Fredrick to get his share of petting. She was a good grandmother to all her children. I thought back then that Jean Ellen had the good traits of both her grandma Cline and her grandma Eza Etta Hallmark McCaleb. I hope my thoughts were right. Early Dawn told me about all her nearby kin, but I can’t recollect many of their names. She had all the Dudley kin written down and I wrote that to my family page about Cline-Sturdivant family. She was ahead of Mr. Cline on the genealogy of her family. The Methodist Church Officials of Ala. had prompted her for that since her gg grandfather Matthew Parham Sturdivant had been the first regular Methodist preacher in the Tombigbee river area of Ala. and the first in all Alabama. Her brother Bill told her not to say anything about that since they were of the Church of Christ. Mrs. Cline said she was a Methodist in youth because that was the nearest church around, but that her dad told her the Christian Church of Christ was nearer right. Her dad was well read in the Bible and what other literature he managed to get ahold of. He had heard a Dr. Bullard, an early Church of Christ preacher in that area of Va. preach. A man named Rigdon was an early member of the Church of Christ and deserted to the Mormans and helped Brigham Young set up the Church at Salt Lake City. As far as I found out Mr. Cline was a member of the Christian Church of Mt. Sterling, Ky. And elsewhere from boyhood and never changed until very old after the Christian Church joined the National Council of Churches. In his last days he attended the Church of Christ noninstrumental outside Christianburg, Va. He always gave his part to Christian missionaries and preachers he thought were trying to follow the Bible, but balked on most of the modern stuff. What he gave, I didn’t ask. I know he sent his sister, Fanny Cline (an old Maid) money every week. I don’t know how much. Women occupied an exalted place with the Clines. They thought their sister was too good to stoop to working for a living. Brother Jim Cline was too poor and spent his money as fast as earned so he didn’t contribute. Mr. Cline said if brother Jim saw a Brass Monkey and wanted it he would spend his last dime for the monkey. I deduced that Mrs. Early Dawn didn’t exactly approve of the money Mr. Cline gave his sister, but he gave to whomever he wished, including cancelling a loan to Mrs. Cline’s brother Bill. I can hear his old office typewriter clanging away now writing his weekly letter and fixing his donation to “sister.” His old office desk on which this typewriter operated is setting in my dad’s old house here in Alabama. If any of the Cline descendants want it and are willing to come get it, they can have it as far as I am concerned. Ask Bettie first. Ha!
I must say in closing that I have never regretted marrying into the Cline family. They furnished me with the best wife anyone could ever imagine marrying. I thought I might get unlucky and marry the “devil’s grandma.” Her mother and daddy brought her up in the old fashioned way, but I can’t complain about that. She has tolerated me for over 53 years now, is old and crippled with arthritis and can hardly get around, but I intend to stick with her till “death do us part.” Hope I haven’t derated anyone of the Clines.
The picture above is of Warren W. Cline and Wife Early Dawn Sturdivant and grandchildren Jean Ellen McCaleb, Fredrick Warren McCaleb and baby James Arthur McCaleb children of Bettie Virginia Cline and Fred McCaleb.The picture was taken at Fred McCaleb's house in Ripplemead, Va. about 1952.
