By Fred McCaleb
I applied for entrance at Berry College during my senior year in 1936 at
Winfield High School, Winfield, Alabama. That was sometime before school was out. The school year was cut short at Winfield High due to lack of funds. I finished the last six weeks at Fayette High School, Fayette, Alabama. Mr. John Morgan Brown was the principal there at that time, and the school was later called John Morgan Brown High School.
The six weeks at Fayette caused much anxiety on my part. My academic standing at Winfield was 3rd or 4th rom the top. By hard study at Fayette I was able to pass the final exams and was probably the only one to ever graduate from Fayette High with only six weeks attendance. The
feelings of having graduated from high school were pretty good since none of my
recent ancestors had been educated past the 7th grade.
There was high hope that I would be accepted at Berry College to work and earn
my college education. The hope was shattered when a letter came from the school
that the quota had been filled for work students for the fall of 1936 semester
at Berry. This turn down left me free to try other places of endeavour. The country was
in a very serious economic depression. There was an occasional job around home
that would pay seventy five cents to a dollar per day for at least ten hours of
work. Franklin D. Roosevelt was president of the U.S. He had begun the
socialization of the country. There were the CCC (Civil Conservation Corps)
Camps so I applied to become a member of that. They said “Sorry your dad has
a small farm and is well off financially.” That shook me up, for my dad’s
income was less than $400 per year. Some farmer’s sons were accepted, but
they had to know the right political official for that.I wrote my congressman William Bankhead about being appointed to Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md. He informed me I had no chance unless I had finished two years at a Military Prep School. What a piece of luck this was. I later found I had no aptitude for being a military officer with the requirement to lead other
soldiers to their death.
The next thing I tried in the summer of 1936 was to join the Army or Navy. The
war clouds were gathering in Europe, but the U.S. was neutral and unarmed. At
least the people were neutral. Another Fayette County, Alabama boy and I hitch
hiked to the Federal Building in Birmingham where the Army and Navy recruiters
were located. My eyes were near sighted and had astigmatism. So the Army turned
me down. The army had about 75,000 soldiers at that time. I decided to try the
navy while at the recruiting station. The recruiter there said I couldn’t
see. I sassed him by saying I could. He told me to “get the hell out of the
recruiting station.” My fellow hitch hiker was accepted. I’ve done forgot
his name or how soon he got killed or what happened to him in WWII. I had "lucked
out" again with the military, but only until late 1942 when I was drafted and had
no trouble with eyesight.
So I went back home from Birmingham, Alabama to help my father plow with mules and
do other farm work during the summer and fall of 1936. Sometime during the
summer I applied at Berea College in KY. It had a similar program to Berry.
They had no room there.
Sometime during the summer I became peeved with my dad
or perhaps just wanted to be adventurous. I thought I might find farm work out
west. I went to Winfield and caught a freight train that landed me in Memphis,
Tennessee on the banks of the Mississippi River by night time. I found a place to
sleep on the east bank under the great Mississippi River Bridge with other
hoboes, tramps, and unknown and unfortunate characters. I realized I had been
in a dangerous position ever since catching the freight. The next day I caught
another freight back to Winfield, Alabama. By then I was all black with soot from
the coal burning steam engines. I walked the 12 miles back home arriving sooty,
hungry and more appreciative of home, however poor and humble. I was to relearn
this lesson in the army when the main thing I learned there was an appreciation
for home and civil life.
Some time later in the summer I wrote another letter to Berry College saying I
would like to be accepted if anyone had dropped out. They still had no room for
me. After we had gathered the corn and picked the cotton on the farm in 1936 my
dad and his neighbor Eulas Dodson who had a joining farm decided to dig a ditch ¼ mile
long. I, Fred McCaleb was the third and main digger. By about the end of
November the ditch was about half done.
I decided to send another letter pleading for acceptance at Berry. This time I sent a picture of myself. It worked. The president, Dr. G. Leland Green , said report for work for spring
semester 1937. We hadn’t finished the ditch by then. I left my dad and
neighbor with the ditch. It was never finished. They had been doing the talking
and I had been doing the digging.
In January 1937 I boarded the Greyhound bus at Winfield, Alabama for Berry College,
Rome, Georgia, which was a little over 200 miles away. My dad gave me ten dollars
which was a big sacrifice for him. He informed me he expected me back home in
two weeks. From the ten dollars I bought the bus ticket which amounted to
$2.45. In my metal suitcase I had 3 pairs of overalls, 3 blue chambray work
shirts, 2 pairs of long handle underwear, socks, a pair of black Sunday shoes,
a white shirt for Sunday, work shoes and a brown suit and shaving equipment. My
grandpa James Franklin McCaleb had died in 1935 and his suit was an approximate
fit for me after my mother had reworked it. The Berry rules called for a black
or navy blue suit, but I hoped what I had would be accepted. It wasn’t. On my
first Sunday at Berry Dr. S.H. Cook pulled me out of the line of boys marching
into Mt. Berry Chapel. In going to church the boys marched down one sidewalk
and the girls down another and sat on different sides of the building. Going
through the door side by side was the closest encounter with girls at the
church. Five points came off one’s conduct for each church missed. Dr. Cook
was lenient with me and allowed the suit to be redyed black, which saved face
for me. Neither I nor the parents had any way of buying another suit at that
time.
I was housed in an old wooden barracks along with other work students
during the spring 1937 semester. This barracks was near the old administration
building where President G. Leland Green and Martha Berry had offices. This
building may have been converted to faculty housing or some other use or burned
by 1996 when this was written.
My work assignment for the spring semester 1937 was on the farm under Mr.
Russell and his assistant farm boss Arthur Beard. My first work there was
hauling manure to farmland using a wagon pulled by two big mules. Their names I
fail to recall. This was nothing new to me. I was now earning 24 cents an hour or $1.92 per day.
This was about twice what I could earn at home if it were possible to get a job
at all. I was in earthly Paradise. My father had expected me back home in two
weeks. I never showed up until the spring semester was over when I hitch hiked
back home. I helped my father farm the summer of 1937.
Part of the Paradise at Berry was that there were showers, commodes, and running water. Running water at home required a boy or girl to run and draw a bucket of water with windlass
and rope from the 60 feet deep well. Baths were in wash pans or washtubs. Toilets were outdoors in cold or hot weather. I was a barefooted farm boy in the summer at home. Never had the athlete foot disease until I came to Berry and caught it in the luxury showers daily to wash the manure smell away. I performed a few other jobs on the Berry farm than haul manure. Berry had a sawmill at that time and I hauled logs on the wagon for a while. One mishap
during the logging was the back wheel caught on a stump. The mules kept pulling and broke the coupling pole. My friend and coworker Ed Dickey said he pulled the wagon on to the loading area and told Mr. Beard the coupling pole had been broken trying to load a log. Mr. Beard accepted the tale and didn’t “get on to me” that day as I had expected. Mr. Beard’s nickname among the workers was “Blame Fellow”. When he caught one doing something wrong he would say
“Blame fellow, can’t you beat that?” I dreaded to hear those words used on me. He was the first boss after my daddy, so I had to get used to a scary supervisor. That was a little hard on me I suppose because of my youth.
When spring came we pulled hay mowers with the mules. There was a vast acreage of
fields to be mowed. Berry had 32,000 acres of fields, campuses, dairy farms, apple and peach orchards. Miss Berry tried to be self sufficient and have the working students produce everything needed. She had the largest campus in the world, and it took many boys and girls working at many things to keep it going. I got to view much of the fields with my mules and wagon I worked with on the farm under “Blame Fellow.” After spending the summer of 1937 back home working with my daddy farming in Fayette County, Alabama.
I came back to Berry to start my college studies that fall. For me being at Berry was like being set free. It was like arriving in the Promised Land. I had worked for $200 to pay the college tuition for 2 semesters. I still had to work two days per week to pay for room and board
which amounted to about $60 per semester. This made a total of about $320 per year to attend Berry College during my years there. Back then the students ate at Blackstone Hall. Each clear day before lunch the Berry band under the direction of Mr. Ewing played beautiful music outside the high cement front steps of Blackstone. Inside the dining hall were big square tables that seated 8 boys per table. We stood up until Dr. Cook rang a little bell for silence, and then he offered the blessing prayer to God. There was a one gallon aluminum pitcher on each table filled with milk from the Berry dairy. If it ran out a girl working in a blue chambray dress would bring another pitcher full. There were containers of biscuits (called cat heads by the boys), or cornbread or other breads and cakes, and bowls of other good foods. Most of the foods were
grown on the Berry farms and dairies. Margarine had been introduced and was served at Berry, at least part of the time, instead of butter from the dairy. Flour had to be donated by friends like Ford. I never felt a lack of good food while at Berry. I believe they tried serving soya beans, probably at the suggestion of Henry Ford, at the time I was there. One of the boys decided to
lead a strike against eating that kind of food. Miss Berry got wind of that, called him to the office, and asked him if he wished to cut off the hand that was feeding him. He quickly quieted down. I was satisfied with the food myself, and ate whatever was put out, as I did at home before and in the Army or wherever I was in after years.
The school required wearing uniforms at that time. The girls wore blue chambray dresses until the senior year after which they wore pink chambray dresses. Nobody other than seniors were ahead of anyone else except seniors changed to the pink. The boys wore blue denim overalls and blue chambray shirts until the senior year when they could wear denim pants and blue shirts. The girls wore dark dresses for church. The boys wore dark suits, white shirt and appropriate
tie. It is interesting to note that some of the latest thinking in the 1990’s for big city high schools is to require the students to be in uniform. That way there are no “dudes” or “underdogs.” Some people of my age thought it was a mistake to go off the uniform requirement. Not being too deep
a thinker, I didn’t think too much about it either way.
My choice of courses at Berry was chemistry as major. The first year I studied chemistry, analytical geometry, physics, Old Testament, English and I believe human biology as related to health and the functions of the human body. The best I recollect I got an F on the first English theme along with many other freshmen. But that didn’t discourage me from sticking it out at Berry. I had found a good home. I was one of Martha Berry’s adopted children and would
stay for the full course. Miss Berry never married, and she called all the students at Berry her children. The work in the fall of 1937 was on the farm two days a week with “Blame Fellow.”
In the spring of 1937 I worked with Mr. Bollier of Switzerland at the greenhouse and caring for the shrubs at Miss Martha’s old plantation home at Oak Hill. In the greenhouse we grew beautiful flowers to put at Mt. Berry Chapel on Sundays, at Miss Berry’s home, and for any occasion or event on campus that required flowers. Though from Switzerland and brought up speaking German Mr. Bollier did very well with English. He said Switzerland had never been conquered by military force because every male there took military training. Perhaps its difficult location in the Alps had something to do with its security.
During the 1937-38 college term I managed to pass all subjects. Better grades were made on chemistry and physics than on subjects such as English, Bible, etc. At Berry there was more competition to be the highest ranking in scholarship than back home in high school where I had ranked about 4th from the top with about an A- average. At Berry I averaged about a B+.
I couldn’t go home again to help my dad farm again in the summer of 1938. That summer I worked at Berry on Mr. Looney’s lawn crew where I pushed a lawn mower every day along with about 5 other boys. I recollect Ed Dickey, Preston Jackson and Noble Finley being three of the boys. Those lawn mowers were the horizontal reel type and required manpower to make the reels turn. I learned to set the clearance between the rotating curved reel and the fixed cutting blade of steel it swirled the grass against for easiest cutting. In other words I didn’t want to work any harder than I had to. I carried a file to keep a sharp edge on the steel for clean and easy cutting. The other boys and myself kept acres and acres of campus mowed. This included the main campus, the girl’s school campus at the Ford Buildings, the log cabin campus, and the
lawns at Miss Berry’s Oak Hill home. There was some worry about whether we were doing a good job around her house. She expected everything everywhere to look exactly right. In my mowing I probably walked about 10 miles per day under heavy pushing load for four months that summer. Perhaps this may be why my legs are still working when I am 82 years old in 1998. An hour or two a day in the early morning with a self propelled lawn mower would be about all I could stand now.
Ed Dickey was good at basketball and other types of required physical exercise and became a favorite of Dr. Cook. Ed became a physical education coach at berry later on. Physical exercise was required by the school, but was of little interest to me. I didn’t make very good grades on that. I probably should have flunked it. On unsupervised exercise I received plenty during my
stay at Berry and at other places since then. The U.S. Army for example. Building my own house. Riding bicycles, etc. My two day per week work during one fall semester was working at the Berry brick plant.
My brother, Hubert McCaleb, had been accepted to work at that plant after graduating from Winfield Hi School, Winfield, Alabama. He wasn’t delayed in being accepted to Berry. I had told him how to gain entrance to Berry by showing up in person. So he and Reuben May hitch hiked rides to Berry. Dr. Green interviewed them and they were accepted for the work program. Hubert and another boy took new molded brick off the conveyor belt as fast (or nearly as fast) as they came along and stacked them on a cart to be rolled into a kiln and to be cooked at high temperature for a 3 week cycle. Some of the brick plant workers did shift work to fire the kiln around the clock. It took one week to get up red hot temperature, another week at that temperature, and a third week to cool down to unloading temperature and a week to unload the kiln.
My job at the brick plant was wheel barrowing clay to a steam heated drying floor. It was a very hot and strenuous type of work. We made enough brick to build a new science building and a physical Ed building while Hubert and I and others worked at the brick plant. Ever since I can go to Berry and say with pride that I helped make the brick that went into these buildings. The science building was the most modern thing at Berry during my last 2 years in chemistry
there. Now it is considered obsolete (1997) and Heard hints that something bigger and more update was planned.
My success in college school work was adequate with A’s and B+s until I got into Miss Paine’s public speaking class. She was an elderly old maid Miss Berry had recruited from somewhere in the Northeast of the country. She couldn’t speak plain English, but could practice criticism to its full extent and encourage others to criticize. I didn’t hold my hands correctly, talk loud
enough, do correct enunciation, and make my points. Nothing was correct. She gave me a C on the first semester. I received a D on the second semester. So my ability to speak in public went from slight to none while at Berry. In that field I let Berry down. Some people can stand before the public and talk fluently on and on and on and never say anything. Take our present President Clinton as an example. Most everyone likes him. What a crude success. My mind
and tongue were never that agile. I wanted to speak truth if I said anything. The truth is hard to find and slow to come by. I suppose I could have blamed my parents, but why should I blame them for my short comings?
One year during my summer work at Berry I decided to take a night class in journalism taught by Tracy Byars. His objective was to try to teach the students how to write a news story. I had some acquaintance with English composition by that time. His classes seemed very easy to me. My mind didn’t have to work so fast to write. I received a high grade in his class. That was
one of the most satisfying courses I took at Berry. I have taken several writing courses since that time and have gained confidence that I can write. The quality may not be first class, but everyone has a story to tell. So if one thinks he can do something he can, if he thinks he can’t, he can’t. Perhaps I learned a little along this line of thought while at Berry.
After working two years or more on the more undesirable jobs at Berry such as farm work, brick making, lawn mowing and green house work at Oak Hill I began to get more desirable assignments. I was assigned to the print shop to work under Mr. Morris two days a week for one semester. One of my coworkers there was Roy Allman. He was one of the nicest fellow students I came in contact with. He and another boy ran the linotype machine. I mostly ran the job press
and did some hand setting of type for postcards and short letters. The linotype machine had a lead melting pot, and the lines of type were set to send in and make a full line of type. The set lines of type looked upside down and backwards. Lines were assembled into pages and the pages put on printing press. We put out the Southern Highlander for Miss Berry where she told of the plight of the poor rural sons and daughters of farmers. Her mailing lists included millionaire. I remember one time Miss Berry wanted 600 pages by lunch of a form letter to send to prospective donors. Roy and I set the letter and had it out on time. I don’t know who addressed the envelopes. That was interesting work to me because I was working with interesting equipment. I visited the same print shop I formerly worked at . (1996) None of the equipment resembled anything we had. They could duplicate a thousand pages after it was typed in about 5
minutes. (while you wait) Time and progress marches on.
I forgot to say that my friend Roy Allman was killed soon after being drafted into WWII. What a waste of young manhood! Mr. Morris, one of the finest labor supervisors, is long gone and
forgotten.
My next assignment at Berry was as a chemical laboratory assistant. Dr. Ford was head of the chemistry department and I worked for him directing the students in setting up equipment, answering questions, and grading laboratory test papers. This was an interesting assignment. I am sure I couldn’t answer all the questions asked, but tried to do the best I could. We didn’t get the lab on fire or blown up. The best I recollect I worked about three semesters as lab assistant. A girl named Marjorie Dodd worked with me at least one semester. She was good in chemistry and worked for Hercules Powder Company. She died about 1995. I understand the science building is now outdated in 1999 and there is being built a more up to date building. My brother Hubert McCaleb and I worked at the brick plant to help make the brick of the outdated building. We thought the building was about the latest thing out when completed about 1939. Time marches on. This was the last place I worked at Berry. I had enough credits to graduate by Jan 1941.
I tried to obtain a job at Tubize Chatillion Corp. rayon plant in Rome, Ga. They failed to take me, but took one of my classmates, James Lowery. I went to Birmingham and got a chemical laboratory job analyzing tin plated sheet steel for tin cans. The noise there was almost like the roar of thunder as white hot steel was being rolled into thinner and thinner strips and coming off the rollers at about ½ mile a minute. The pay was great a starting rate of $90 a month. I was now away from the care I received at Berry and out into the cruel world. My 2nd mother, Martha Berry, was no longer able to take care of me. A PHD graduate from Mississippi was running the hardness and softness metal testing machine. He had worked as a filling station employee before getting the good job at Tennessee Iron, Coal and Railway Co. (division of U.S. Steel) and working up to about $125 per month. When I was able to graduate from Berry I felt like I had rushed through the place too fast. The many subjects I was taking gave too much homework. I felt like I hadn’t mastered the subjects. I would have liked to have stayed
another 4 years and just take one subject per semester and learn all about that
subject. But that was not to be. I guess I learned at Berry how to study and learn about subjects on my own.
Each job required new learning and knowledge in areas not already mastered at Berry. I became interested in amateur radio and electronics as a hobby and became knowledgeable in that field. Perhaps I should have been in the electronic field where many of the advances were being made.
I found that an analytical chemistry job which I was trained in paid the lowest salary in the chemical field. Employees from bigger name colleges were promoted before Fred. Chemical engineers from anywhere were promoted first. I found that a good line of bull and politics moved one up whether they had knowledge or not. If a person were from a foreign country he was given first priority so he could be a good spy. I learned that who one is friends with is more important
than knowledge in the field I was in. For goodness sake don’t let your supervisor know that you have any knowledge. I failed in the political world where your success in the job world counts the most. These are some things I didn't learn at Berry. I blame it on myself instead of Berry. Others were still up conversing and learning after 10 PM when I promptly went to bed as supposedly required there. I figured if I hadn’t learned anything by bedtime I might as
well give up. I still try to hit the bed by 10PM at the age of 82. Sorry I didn’t make a great showing for the college but lucked out and had a livelihood to a ripe old age of 82. Maybe I will see the year 2000 in about seven months. Maybe I could improve if I had to do life over, but that is not a coming up opportunity. I go down still loving the school I attended.
Fred McCaleb
