John Cronin Russell Davis, Sr. (My Father) Part V

Part VIIe: Four Grandchildren of Andrew Russell and Josephine Davis

John Cronin Russell Davis, Sr.
(My Father)
Part V

• During the summer of 2008, we made a visit to Alabama and I was able to pinpoint the exact time that my parents and brothers moved to Pascagoula, Mississippi. My oldest brother said that it was the 3rd month of his 4th grade year, 1947. We moved to Moundville, Alabama in the 3rd month of his 7th grade year which was 1950.
• The move to Alabama was probably precipitated by the fact that my Dad’s radiator shop just wasn’t bringing in enough income for the family. The sixth child was on the way, and he would be born in October of 1950.
• I have a few vivid memories of the move. Larry and I were sent ahead of the move to live with my mother’s sister Mabel and her husband Jesse and their two children. The Wiggins’ lived at the top of a hill just east of Moundville. I was five and a half years old and still was very much a Mama’s boy, and I got very homesick for my parents. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that Larry who is 2 years 7 months older (7 years old at the time) was stricken with food poisoning. He was VERY sick and could offer no comfort for his younger brother. I cried a lot at night when no one would hear me whimpering for my Mama.
• The move took place but the rental house was not available at the time of the move because the house had no indoor bathroom. My mother had told my father that she had grown up with an outhouse and she would never again use an outhouse especially with a family soon to have six children. So, the landlord was hastily attaching a bathroom to the two bedroom house. The construction was delayed and wasn’t finished until after the actual move to Moundville.
• We were all shifted around to various relatives who lived in the area. I remember staying at my mother’s brother’s home. His wife had either already had or was expecting to deliver twins at the time of our move. Everyone had to be crowded with this expanded family parceled out all over the town of Moundville.
• The move-in day finally arrived and I was excited about living in a “new” house. When I find a picture of the “new” house, I will post it on the blog. You will wonder how we all survived in this modest (some would rate it as a shack) house. I was happy as long as my parents would be there with us.
• When I awoke on the first morning of living in the “new” house, I was absolutely elated to know that our Dad was busy building coal fires in the big bedroom and the living room. Those two rooms had grates for coal in the fire places. A coal fire had already been started in the kitchen pot-bellied stove. Coal had already been delivered to a pile in the back yard complete with a coal bucket.
• I distinctly remember running outside to watch the smoke curl out of the chimney. I had never seen smoke coming out of a chimney. The older kids must have already been at school. Rick, the baby of the family at least for seven more months was a little over a year old plus three month.
• Our Dad had taken a job as an auto mechanic at Moundville Motor Company which was owned by his Uncle Evan Terry, the husband to Katie Davis Terry.
• We lived on Hollywood Street long enough for our youngest brother Glenn to be born and long enough for my mother to step on a rusty nail while she was fetching coal from the coal pile out back. Long enough to experience a bitterly cold winter with some snow, a first for me. Long enough to learn to ride a 20 inch bicycle. Long enough to give our brother Charles a chance to jump from a stack of cotton bales at the cotton gin across the road and bust his eye so it look like it was bigger than his head. This scared the stew out of our Dad who was trying to have compassion on a son who had disobeyed regarding the off limits of the cotton gin warehouse. At the same time he had a medical emergency on his hands and had to give in to his compassion. Long enough for me to lose my first tooth on my oldest brother Cronin’s birthday, Aug. 2 of 1950. Long enough to learn after I had had all my booster shots for school that I didn’t qualify for first grade since Alabama law had changed that summer to exclude anyone from first grade who was not six by October 1 of that year, 1950. Long enough to experience the first true love of my life, Sarah Donelson, who lived next door and who moved away somewhere down the road during that year. Long enough to bond with my Great Aunt Katie Davis Terry who cared for me many days during the week in order to give my parents a break from too many children underfoot. Long enough to learn that wind whistles around the corner of the house and causes pigs rooting down in the pasture below our house to start squealing loudly. The “cutting” wind was so sharp that it cut the pigs and made them squeal and would cut me if I went outside. That’s the way my brother Charles kept an eye on me when he was put in charge as the baby sitter. It worked.
• It must have been in the spring of 1951 when we found another rental house called the Griffin home. It was a much larger home with oak woodwork, high ceilings, ceramic fireplaces, a dining room, several bedrooms, a wrap-around porch, tin roof, and all in all a very spacious home compared to the one on Hollywood Street. I don’t know the reason for the move from one house to the other, but I could guess that overcrowding had to be a factor at the Hollywood Street house.
• If my memory serves me, the six to eight months we lived in the Griffin home, I had time to learn what The Grit newspaper was and how to sell it. I learned that when your parents tell you to avoid the old saw dust pile left from an abandoned saw mill on the hill near our house that they meant business. Walking around the saw dust hill would bring tragedy because there were sink holes that would magically appear and suck you under, and you would be burned alive by the perpetual fire that was constantly belching smoke into the air. One day I was walking through The Pines. a grove of southern pine trees that was a passageway to my uncle’s farm, with my brother Larry and cousin CD (Charles David). They wanted to have a little adventure and see if there really were sink holes and fire, but most importantly, it would be shorter to walk through the saw dust pile to get home rather than take the “safe” route. Of course, I had seen the wrath of God poured out upon older brothers who decided to take the wrong path in life and then be punished by His representatives on earth (our parents), and I told Larry and CD that I wasn’t going with them. When I got to the bottom of the hill where Larry and CD should have come out, I waited a sufficient number of minutes. When they didn’t come out, I went wailing down the street to our house and told my parents that Larry and CD had died in the saw dust pile. My mother called her brother who was the father of CD and they went tearing off up the hill in our ’38 Ford. Of course, the reason the rebellious ones delayed on the fateful saw dust pile was that they enjoyed playing in the saw dust since they could not find any sink holes at least that they could see. So, why not sin even the more since sin is always enjoyable. Well, all I remember was that my name was “Mudd” and they got what was coming to them.
• School started in late August of that year. I was in the first grade for about six weeks and my parents decided to move again. Our Dad was now working at B. F. Goodrich in Tuscaloosa about 15 miles from Moundville. They had found a rental home in West End of Tuscaloosa and so we moved a few days after my birthday in October. (to be continued)