Tag: neighbors

Six Handshakes Rule and Mrs. Maxine’s Iron Skillet Cake

September 6, 2023 / Becky Williamson-Martin / 2 Comments

Six degrees of separation is the idea that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other. As a result, a chain of “friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps. It is also known as the six handshakes rule. This story about Mrs. Maxine’s recipe for Iron Skillet Cake might be a good example.

My son, Shane, married Mrs. Maxine Norris’ granddaughter, Misty, 24 years ago. A few years ago he was telling me about how much he liked Mrs. Maxine’s Iron Skillet cake and that’s what he wanted for his birthday. Misty got the recipe for me and I made it and it was delicious!

Fast forward. We have potluck at my church every Wednesday night and I’m always trying to think of different things to cook. I love the good, tried and true “old” family dishes that have been passed down through the generations. I remembered Mrs. Maxine’s Iron Skillet Cake and flipped through my binder that holds all my favorite hand-written recipes to find it.

It was such a hit among the Wednesday night church crowd that I barely took home a crumb and folks were running me down as I was going out the door wanting the recipe. So, now the church ladies are going to make it for their families who will hopefully share the recipe and it will be passed down to their children and grandchildren. Although I didn’t really know Mrs. Maxine, I think it is so wonderful how we are connected – and a little bit of Mrs. Maxine’s memory lives on. Once again, food, has connected us. 🙂 Remember, Jesus broke bread with his disciples? So, there is a really good reason for it, right?

Mrs. Maxine passed away eleven years ago and we are talking about her. Thank you Mrs. Maxine for sharing your family with mine and for sharing your legacy with us all. Her sweet obituary stated that she was a true example of Proverbs 31. And I believe she was too.

Always keep “The Son” in your eyes!

Becky Williamson-Martin

P.S. As it turns out, the Wednesday that I took this cake to church was the day before Mrs. Maxine’s birthday. I had no idea

Stories and Articles – Samantha Living

Samanthaliving.com
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Mrs. Maxine’s Iron Skillet Cake

For more family connections I have posted her obituary below :

“SAMANTHA Maxine Dobbs Norris of Samantha died March 13, 2012… Burial … Nazareth Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery…

She was preceded in death by her husband, Wilson Norris; her parents, Eddie Brondle and Celia Dobbs; and her brother, Julian Dobbs.

Survivors include her children, Sheila Watkins (Lynn), Emery Norris (Becky), Gail Willis (Billy), and Sharon Wells (Gary); her grandchildren, Chad Watkins (Jennifer), Ginger Roberts (Jamie), Leo Watkins, Kobe Watkins, Jeff Norris (Kelly), Misty Smith (Shane), Lance Willis (Darlene), and Tyler Wells; 10 great-grandchildren; her brothers, Buford (Sally), Solon (Vera), W.D., and Raiford Dobbs; her sisters, Loyal Farley, Christine Wiggins (Dan), Betty Stival, and Joan Turner (Dan); her sister-in-law, Mable Elliott; and several nieces and nephews.

Our mother was a true example of Proverbs 31, a gift to her family as well as others. She never met a stranger.

We add special thanks to our wonderful caregivers, Gladys Donaldson, Kathy Renfroe, Terry Bynum, and Julie Nicholson for becoming like family in their care of mother.”

Always keep “The Son” in your eyes!

Becky Williamson-Martin

Jones Mill Pond

August 7, 2023 / Nell Oswalt Naugher / 0 Comments

^Information ^{compiled from} ^{tales told by the “Jones Family”}

Contributor: Nell Naugher

JONES OR REUBEN’S MILL

In the 1870’s, Elijah Marshall Jones and his wife, Josephine Roberson, with their family left Tallapoosa County, Alabama, with a destination of northern Tuscaloosa County and

southern Fayette County. Being millers by profession, they were in search of suitable

locations for gristmills. The gentle headwaters of Binion Creek in northern Tuscaloosa

County was the choice location for the Reuben Jones family while the rest of the family

traveled on to locate on Bear Creek which is located west of Newtonville. Perhaps there

was already a mill on this property when it was procured from LeGrand Shepherd; how-

ever, it became known as Jones’ Mill.

Grandpa Rube set about building the first of several ventures on the property located in

Section 9, Township 18S and Range 11W. Local fieldstones were used to construct a dam across the creek to harness the massive energy of the water. The millhouse was built below the dam. Rosetta Jones Oswalt Logan, daughter of Rube, related to her daughter-in-law, Clara Mae (Jim) Oswalt, the story of how her dad and several men took 2-4 wagons and stayed about two weeks on North River to “harvest” rocks for the huge grind stones. The rocks were crafted into huge, round grinding stones with a hole in the center for the shaft to be fitted into.

Visions of a huge overshot waterwheel can be disregarded because the wheel was located

in a sluice box where it lay horizontally under the building. Water was let loose to go rushing down the box to turn the giant wheel which turned the cogs to which the millstones were attached.

People of the community would bring their shelled corn in sacks to have the it ground

into meal by the two huge rocks. You had a choice of coarsely or finely ground meal. Vandie (Lasco) Jones preferred the coarse. She also liked for the corn to be ground slowly so that the rocks did not cause too much friction and cause the meal to get hot and cause it to have a flat taste. The ground product was put back into the sack in which the corn was brought in. The hard covering of the corn, or bran, was left with the meal. It had to be sifted out before the most delicious product, corn pone, could be made with buttermilk and baking soda. The bran was not wasted; it was put into the slop for the hogs. As payment for the grinding, a portion of the meal was retrieved for the miller.

Along with the gristmill were a cotton gin and sawmill. Lasco Jones, a grandson,

remembers the day he had to take his Uncle Sam Jones to the hospital when his arm became entangled in the gin. Lasco had to sign for the doctor to remove the mangled

limb below the elbow. Uncle Sam did not let this injury slow him down. He went on with his life – scaring us kids with the nub of the arm, farming and driving a school bus.

Clara Mae remembers making mattresses in the gin.

The sawmill made the lumber from which the original New Hope Baptist Church was constructed. It was located on the old Fayette Road, just south of where the present

church now stands.

The isolated community received mail that was picked up at Berry and delivered by

horseback. Reuben came to the rescue once again. On September 13, 1880, he became the first postmaster of Reuben , as was in so many cases, the location was named for

the postmaster. The postoffice was in operation until November 10, 1905 when it was

removed to New Lexington. It was located in the store which was located across the

road from the mill.

Many imbedded memories remain with the few remaining people who visited Jones

Mill. The pond became a holy place as new converts from Phillips Chapel Freewill Baptist, Macedonia Baptist, Concord Baptist, New Hope Batptist or Concord Baptist

Churches were baptized. It became a place of great enjoyment as kids and parents

alike enjoyed the swimming hole as portrayed by our local artist, Willie Frank Logan.

Information gathered by Nell Oswalt Naugher and Estelle Jones Bolton Barger.

Painting by Willie Logan

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Additional contributions by Nell Naugher

Grandfather Reuben owned approximately 1500 acres of land in this area and passed it on to his children. Louvinnie, Reuben’s second wife was paid $400 for her part. The children deeded all the real property to Sam Jones and he in turn made deeds to each child. This was done to save cost and expense of recording long deeds.

Uncle Sam Jones, one of his children, lost his hand and part of his arm working in the cotton mill, and enjoyed terrorizing us children with his arm.

For years the mill ground corn, ginned cotton, and sawed logs. My mother remembers making mattresses at the mill. At one point the cotton mill closed, but the old mill continued to grind corn,. You could make a real corn pone from this meal.

There was no money in those days and the miller would take a portion for grinding. Over the years, the mill had several owners and operators. Some of them were: Grandpa Reuben and all his children, Floyd Jones, Sam Jones, Mr. Anner Freemen and Mr. Hosea Camp.

Resident men would gather here to grind their corn, chew tobacco, dip snuff, discuss the news of the day, talk about crops, and tell stories. I would imaging some of them were real stories and some were exaggerated.

It was here I took my first boat ride. My brother, James and I were going to Grandma’s (Reuben Jones’ daughter, Rosetta), and Mama cautioned us to “stay away from the mill pond”. As we passed, James noticed a flatbed boat tied up above the same and suggested we take a ride. He paddled up-creek until he had to roll his pants up, get out of the boat and push us out of the mud. He paddled back downstream, tied the boat and we continued with our trip to Grandma’s. It was years later before we told our parents.

We knew when we got to Grandma’s she would have left-over biscuits and slices of salty ham in the old wooden safe (cabinet) that had tin in the doors. And we would be HUNGRY!

Also, I remember going with my dad to get corn ground into meal. We had a safe that Grandpa Logan made. It had a bin on either side in the bottom. The let side was for a bushel of flour and the right side for a bushel of meal.

A few hundred yards southwest of the mill, a Deserters’ Den was constructed. Men who did not wan to to into service hid out here to avoid serving in the Civil War. It was a mound with a rock levee surrounding it. Someone mentioned that the men made shoes or repaired them.

The mill pond like other bodies of water in the area was also used by churches to baptize new members.

I remember young people gathering at Jones Mill Pond to go in swimming. The artiest who did the drawing The Old Jones Mill was one of those teenagers. When I contacted him (Willie Logan) to see if he had done a painting of the mill, he stated he could do it from memory.

In these days, time was plentiful and life was sweet.

Do you know anyone who was baptized in Jones Mill Pond? We would love to hear about it.

Jones Mill Pond is located on Jones Mill Road just off Old Fayette Road: https://goo.gl/maps/1wm8HmsYK2bxoq9v6. It is near Williamson-Jones Cemetery

Rev. Ike B. Cannon recalled as one of the last street preachers

July 24, 2023 / Delbert Reed / 1 Comment

By Delbert Reed

First printed in The Tuscaloosa News on October 4, 1995.

Reverend Ike B. Cannon was the kind of man they used to make Hollywood movies about, and I always meant to write a story about him and what made him the way he was. I regret that I never did, and he has been dead four years now.

A vivid black and white memory of Reverend Cannon has been stuck in my mind for more than 40 years. He was one of the last street preachers in West Alabama, and I can see him even now, red-faced and dark-eyed, mopping sweat from his brow with one hand while holding his Bible high over his head with the other, hoarsely shouting The Word to a small crowd that came and went throughout the late August Saturday afternoon in front of P. E. Robertson’s Grocery on Main Avenue in downtown Northport.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Cannon preached not only in Northport but also at the Tuscaloosa County Courthouse and on the Courthouse Square in Fayette and anywhere else the opportunity came. His was a rugged, familiar face in such places, and his daughters played the accordion and most of the family joined in to sing gospel songs and hymns.

Cannon preached for more than 60 years before his retirement and death, according to family members. He was pastor of several Baptist churches in northern Tuscaloosa County, where he spent his life, and served as pastor of two churches, Friendship and Sterling, for more than 30 years at the same time.

Cannon also had a radio ministry for a time in the 1950s and held revivals throughout West Alabama in churches, tents and brush arbors. He preached any time and any place he could. It was his calling, and he always answered.

“It never mattered to him what denomination a church was, he would always go and preach if he was invited,” his daughter Kate said recently. “But he was an ordained Missionary Baptist preacher.”

“The churches would be packed to hear that old man, too,” youngest son Jerry, who wears the same sharp features of his half-Cherokee Indian father, recalled with a fond smile.

“But he never made any money preaching,” said J. C. Cannon, the oldest son. “There was no money to be made in those days. He farmed to support his preaching.” Kate, on the same subject, said she remembered selling eggs on Saturday so he could buy gas to drive to church to preach on Sunday.

Cannon, born in 1907 near New Lexington, spent much of his young life as a tenant farmer, but in 1945 he bought the Samantha-area farm his family still holds onto today. He and Mrs. Cannon had nine children of their own and generously adopted and raised five others, supporting the large family with the farm.

“He was the best man who ever lived,” said Jerry,

“He was always a preacher,” Kate said. “I can never remember him not being a preacher. And he always took the family wherever he preached, even in the old days when we traveled by mule and wagon. I can still remember sleeping on a pile of quilts in the back of the wagon on the way home after dark. Those trips always seemed so long,” she added.

Cannon was not only a farmer and preacher; he was a talented musician, too. “He could play any instrument he picked up,” said Kate, who spent years playing the accordion on the street and the piano in church before turning the job over to her sister Carolyn.

In the 1950s, Cannon drove a big, long, black car with loudspeakers mounted on the top. The car was a 1946 Ford, according to Jerry. The younger children often sat in the car or played about on the street nearby while their father preached. The older girls and Mrs. Cannon usually joined in on the songs unless Mrs. Cannon was busy selling produce at the Farmer’s Market.

Cannon’s children, now in their fifties and sixties, remembered him for me recently, trying to help me understand why I have held onto this memory of him for so long. It is a picture of a time and a man handsome and tanned from working the fields and with a calling few of us could ever understand. My goal had been to find the man or myth that had created that lasting memory.

“I’d like people who didn’t know him to know how good he was,” Kate said. “He helped a lot of people. He kept a lot of people from going to hell. He always told a joke or funny story to get your attention when he preached, then he’d give you the fire and brimstone,” she said with a wide, proud smile as tears glistened in her eyes.

Cannon performed scores of weddings through the years, often at his home and at all hours of the day and night. He also visited the sick, even when he could no longer drive himself, and he preached many, many funerals.

“He was a good man,” Kate repeated. “I remember he brought some relatives to our house during the big snow of 1940-41 to keep them from freezing and starving.”

“He was the best man who ever lived,” said Jerry, looking away toward his youngest son, Ike, playing happily nearby.

As a boy of 12 or 13, I stood at the edge of a small congregation, some of whom leaned against nearby storefronts or sat on the fenders of dusty cars parked along Main Avenue in Northport, listening to the music and the preaching of Reverend Cannon.

I don’t remember a word he said those many years ago, or the songs the girls sang, but I remember the man with the coal-black hair and red shirt. And I remember the message, because I know now that Reverend Ike B. Cannon was himself the message.

Written by Delbert Reed, contributor
Delbert Reed
byDelbert Reed

The Inspiration Behind the Samantha Living Cookbook

June 25, 2018 / Becky Williamson-Martin / 0 Comments

Samantha Living First Edition Cookbook

Order Information at the end of post

My life’s journey has taken many detours but it brought me home and I have the honor and privilege of living in the home where I grew up. A few years ago, I would have never entertained the thought of living in Samantha again. But it’s strange how you can develop a longing to reach back and pick up those lessons learned from your growing years and you realize how rich your heritage really is. Not monetary wealth, but the love of family, friends, neighbors and community. That is getting more rare with each passing day. I was inspired to create a community cookbook primarily for four reasons.

To preserve our rich heritage and create a connection between past generations and future generations. It is my hope that someday our grandchildren will pick up this book and not only read and use these tried and true recipes, but it will prompt conversations about the names attributed to them. While I do believe we must live in the present and embrace our future, knowing our past gives us a sense of well-being and ownership. This project has given me opportunities to have precious conversations with some “senior” members of our community. Their laughter when remembering nuggets from the past is priceless to me and it encourages me to deepen my roots and strive to be able to offer the same one day when I receive such a call. Knowing stories about what others have faced, what they have drawn upon and risked. Great wisdom comes from their experiences. I believe knowing where we came from helps us understand the purpose of where we are going. Our heritage and legacy is a critical part of who we are as individuals. Embracing the heritage we were given enables us to leave a strong legacy. One worthy to be passed on.
To preserve family meals together. Ronald Reagan said, “All great change in America begins at the dinner table.” When I was growing up we always had supper every evening at the kitchen table. TV off and enjoying a home cooked meal and having conversation. When I visited with my friends, it was the same. Families, friends and neighbors sat around the kitchen table and told stories. It was a time to learn about each other’s lives. Having a meal at the kitchen table is not just a time to eat, but a time to tell stories. I loved to hear Momma and Daddy, my grandparents and aunts and uncles tell stories of the past. Families are so busy now that having supper together at the kitchen table is a lost art. I believe breaking bread together is important and I hope this cookbook will encourage us to cook more and eat more together. When I read stories in the Bible where Jesus sat and broke bread with others, it makes me know that is important.
To promote community. When folks come together to work toward a common goal, it serves to buildup and strengthen relationships. I believe communities grow stronger when folks regularly do a variety of simple things together. It gives us a chance to connect with others.
To raise funds for ministries and projects within our community.

Thank you for submitting recipes to make this cookbook possible and thank you for purchasing a copy. I appreciate you all more than you know.

Always keep “The Son” in your eyes.
Becky Williamson-Martin
Editor

For more information, send an email to [email protected] Or call (205) 233-3794

old recipes found at an estate sale in Samantha to be included in Samantha Living Cookbook

Southern cooks don’t measure, we just sprinkle and shake til the spirits of our ancestors say, “stop my child.”

J. T. Taylor Recalls Trials and Triumphs of Life, by Delbert Reed

August 29, 2017 / Delbert Reed / 0 Comments

 by Delbert Reed.  (Originally published in The Northport Gazette, March 24, 2004).

I could tell the man was on a serious mission by the way he marched directly into my office and looked me in the eye.

“Are you Delbert Reed?” he asked in a tone that made me stammer a bit before confessing that I was. “I’ve been looking for you for over 35 years,” he said, finally offering a smile that told me that he probably wasn’t heavily armed.

He told me his name was J. T. Taylor and that he had been reading stories I’ve written since the sixties and wanted to meet me face to face. Then his story and our friendship began.

“I grew up at the foot of Reed Mountain and knew a lot of your family,” he said before quickly naming several of the 11 children of my great grandfather Wes and Leona Davis Reed who grew up on Reed Mountain just north of Haygood Methodist Church in northern Tuscaloosa County.

“I knew Etta, Elliott, Ed, Evaline, Ester and your grandfather Ellis,” Taylor continued. It would have been a real trick if he had been able to continue with the names of Ethel, Elbert, Elmer, Effie, Essie and Ella. “I knew Wes Reed, too; I knew all the Reeds,” he said.

I proudly told Taylor that I actually have Wes Reed’s dinner bell and that it was given to me by the late Carl Harris nearly 30 years ago. “I remember that bell,” Taylor said. “It was on a pole in their yard and I remember hearing it ring many times.”

Taylor quickly called off dozens of other names I’d heard all my life, and mentioned places I’d known about but had all but forgotten through the years. Before our first visit ended, Taylor promised to show me the site of the old Reed home place on Reed Mountain one day, and he did so last weekend as we talked about our roots and our lives.

The Taylor family grew up about a mile and a half down the “mountain” from the Reeds, and there were ten Taylor children who helped Jim and Stella Gilliam Taylor work their 120-acre farm. Six of the ten survive today, including Wiley, nearing 94; J. T., 79; Martha Donour; Brazzie Rogers; Maxie Bryant and Gladys Franks. Martha has even returned to the old Taylor farm where she lives today in the same house in which she was born and raised.

“I joined the Navy in 1943 and got out in 1946,” Taylor said, proudly noting that he even returned to Gorgas High School after his Navy tour and earned his diploma.

Taylor was in Japan from November 1945 until March 1946 and visited Hiroshima (the site of the world’s first wartime atomic bomb blast on August 6, 1945) “eight or ten times” and Nagasaki (the site of the second atomic bomb blast on August 9, 1945) once.

“I still think they (the military) used us as guinea pigs,” Taylor said of his visits to the cities devastated by the bombs. “My feet and hands broke out in blisters—bad blisters—for years afterward. It started in the spring of 1946 and finally cleared up in the mid-seventies. My feet were sore for 30 years and I had nightmares that my feet were rotting off.”

Taylor, though only a youngster at the time, recalled the difficult years of the Great Depression, especially 1930-31. “I guess we were well off,” he said. “We had plenty of peas, cornbread and sweet milk. And we played baseball in John Tierce‘s pasture down by the creek.”

Taylor spent several years working at Gulf States Paper Corporation in Tuscaloosa before landing a job with the Postal Service in 1955. He stuck with the job for more than 30 years before retiring in 1985.

“What have you been doing since then,” I asked. “Oh, I’ve been busy,” he laughed.

Taylor did admit to having run into a few bumps in the road of life, including having trouble with alcohol for many years and having his first wife leave him after more than 30 years of marriage.

“I used to drink regular,” he said with a serious look in his eye. “I drank every day; I was an alcoholic and I still am, but I’ve been sober 26 years. But for 20 or 25 years before that I drank every day. Alcohol was the best medicine I could find for my arthritis,” Taylor added. “It was hard, but I quit. It took me three or four years to get back to a normal life, but the last 16 years have been wonderful,” Taylor added.

(Originally published in The Northport Gazette, March 24, 2004)

James (JT) Taylor 8/28/1938-3/4/2015

James (JT) Taylor died March 4, 2015 at the age of 76, at home in Bonnie’s arms. Click here to read obituary.

Samantha Living would like to thank Delbert Reed for sharing this story. We appreciate his journalism and interest in the Samantha Community. We invite your comments below or send them and any photos you might have to editor@samanthaliving.

Please comment below

August 14, 2017 / Norman Naugher / 0 Comments

by Norman W. Naugher

A while ago, we had the opportunity to visit with Norman and Nell Wright in their home. They shared a wonderful written story of the life of Norman growing up in Samantha. The writing is attached at the bottom of this page.

Playing dominoes with friends

Cowden home, old Byler Road (Old Highway 43)

The photos were captured on our visit.

“…This writing is dedicated to my wife, Nell, who almost had to get a knife and cut me open to extract these stories. To my son, Marty, whom she said would enjoy reading it, to my daughter, Jan, who keeps us all together, and my parents who had a hard time raising me…” Click here to read Norman’s Story

If you enjoyed reading Norman’s story, please leave comments below and let him know.

Becky Williamson-Martin

Visit to Reed Mountain Awakens the Imagination

August 9, 2017 / Delbert Reed / 0 Comments

by Delbert Reed
 Reprint -- Published in The Northport Gazette, April 7, 2004

I had to go back to Reed Mountain in northern Tuscaloosa County last week. Something drew me there to stand at the old home place of my ancestors and look out on the wide, breath-taking vistas to the East and wonder about the history of the Reed family.

There is little left to prove that anyone ever lived at the site now except a few rocks, likely from the foundation or chimney, and a thriving wisteria vine, which was covered with bumblebees on the late afternoon that I visited.

I listened for sounds from the past, like the tolling of the old dinner bell or the chopping of wood, and I watched for wispy images of people I might know as the sun began to cast shadows on the hill, but there was none of either.

I could see, though, why someone would want to live on Reed Mountain. That spectacular view toward the faraway bottomland beside the small, clear stream below had me dreaming for a moment, too, although the place is generally poorly suited for farming in many ways. Those red-land hills and hollows are far more suited for hunting.

But my great grandparents Wes and Leona Reed raised 12 children to adulthood on the place and farmed a large area first owned, by all accounts, by Wes’s father Thomas Reed, the first Reed known to have settled in the country near Haygood Methodist Church. Thomas likely walked or rode a mule or wagon from Georgia if he was typical of the Southern Scots-Irish settlers. All I know of his wife is that her name was Parthenia Moore and that she was from the Moore’s Bridge area.

I imagined the large Wes Reed family meal time and wondered just how much food they had to grow and can to manage through the winters. I wondered just how many biscuits Omie, as Leona was called, had to cook each morning before sending her family into the fields.

Wesley Washington Reed was just 16 years old and Leona Elizabeth Davis only 15 when they married on December 16, 1886, according to family records. My grandfather Ellis, born on December 20, 1887, was the oldest of the children, and he was 25 years old when his grandfather Thomas Reed, born in 1847, died in 1913. The youngest child of Wes and Omie Reed was Elliott, born in 1907. Three children were born dead, including two after Elliott’s birth, and another died at age three.

A photograph of Wes and Omie standing together shows tanned and hard-working people, and a similar photograph of Ellis and my grandmother Viola is quite similar. They seem to be typical of the proud, poor, rural Southerners of the early 1900s.

My dad had an old scrapbook that included several old receipts showing purchases by Wes Reed from the late 1800s until his death in 1938. One was for a yoke of oxen for $30 on May 13, 1897; many were for fertilizer and taxes; one was for a one-ton Ford truck purchased from Tucker Motor Company in 1923 at a cost of $451.40; another was for $9 as “full pay for his child’s tombstone.” Wes had signed some of the notes and mortgages with an “X” for his mark, indicating that he could not write his name.

Unfortunately, there are few photographs of the Reed family from the early days, but there are enough to trace a family resemblance, and there are markers at Haygood Cemetery that help trace the family back in time.

Fortunately, though, the dinner bell from the old Wes Reed place survives today, thanks to the late Carl Harris. That same bell that called the Reed family from the fields or marked a death in the community rests safely in my storage shed, and I promise soon to display it proudly for the memories it holds, for the hands that rang it, and for those who heard it ring so many times.

“I heard that dinner bell ring at 11 o’clock every day for years,” Brazzie Taylor Rodgers said in recalling her years as a neighbor of the Reeds. “Omie always had dinner ready at 11 o’clock. Wes Reed was a good man,” she added. “He walked by our house early nearly every morning on his way to the store to get a box of snuff, and I was at his house the day he died.”

The old Reed place on Reed Mountain was sold many years ago to some large corporation, probably a timber company, and the old house destroyed. When I visited, the timber around the old house place had recently been cut, leaving the area scarred and ugly except for the view across the valley eastward.

But the Reed place was surely a glorious place once, with hunting dogs and teams of mules and oxen and cows and a large family to care for it all. I’d like to think Reed’s Mountain in the old days was much like the mythical Walton’s Mountain depicted on television and that the Reed family was just as happy and loving as the Waltons.

I’d like to think those 12 children grew up with good memories of life on Reed’s Mountain. And I wish I had thought to ask them to share them with me years ago. Now I can only imagine how it must have been.

(Originally Published in The Northport Gazette, April 7, 2004)

Samantha Living would like to thank Delbert Reed for sharing this story. We appreciate his journalism and interest in the Samantha Community. We invite your comments below or send them and any photos you might have to editor@samanthaliving.

Please comment below

Samantha, Alabama 1963: Cabaniss Grocery John Manley Cabiness is standing to the left. His father, Oscar Cabiness (with glasses), is standing in the doorway.

The Old Cabaniss Store is Only a Memory Now

July 7, 2017 / Delbert Reed / 1 Comment

The Old Cabaniss Store is Only a Memory Now

By Delbert Reed
Published in the Northport Gazette June 19, 2002

I went looking for a bit of the past last week, following a newspaper advertisement to the old, deserted stone store on Highway 43 in Samantha built by Oscar Cabaniss in 1939 and operated by the family for 45 years. I had hoped to buy some small item from the store just for the sake of history.

But there was no sale after all. No one showed up to open the doors of the crumbling old store to the dozen or so people who showed up, just as I had, searching for a piece of history and perhaps a memory or two.

I peeped into the darkness of the store through the bars of a broken window, trying to see just what might be left after nearly 20 years of abandonment and decay. I wasn’t expecting much, and I am sorry to say that I saw even less among the dust and spider webs.

But I did remember a few visits there from far in the past when Cabaniss’ Store was the big city to me. I was just a barefoot boy of seven then, playing in the dusty fields along Wolf Creek as Daddy, Mother and a mule named John struggled to feed themselves and four small children as a tenant farmer on the old Espy Mill place.

The old store was a familiar place to me from my childhood on as we lived in ten similar tenant houses within two miles of the store during the 1940s. Daddy, older brother Lonnie and I walked to the store several Saturday afternoons a year in those days. Lonnie and I sometimes drank a NuGrape and watched the older men playing checkers while Daddy talked about the crops and weather with the neighbors. I always filled my pockets with soft drink bottle caps picked up from around the front of the store as we started back home and Daddy usually carried a 25-pound sack of flour over his shoulder.

We proudly rode a borrowed wagon loaded with cotton past the store in the autumn of 1947, headed East to the gin near the Samantha Post Office with what amounted to the product of a year’s hard work, and we likely stopped at Cabaniss’ Store for another NuGrape on the way back home. Years later, from 1952-73, Mother or Daddy stopped at Cabaniss’ Store every day for 22 years to deliver a newspaper to the store, and I was with them a lot of those days to get another NuGrape.

Now I hear that the old store, located just a stone’s throw from Northside High School, may be torn down to make way for a modern convenience store. It is inevitable, I suppose, but it seems a sad ending for the once-grand old general store that proudly served the people of that community from 1938 until 1983.

The store was built in 1938 by Oscar Cabaniss, who ran it until turning it over to his son, John Manley, in 1955. John Manley had been a part of the store from the start, having helped his father build it and run it from his teen years on. Oscar continued to spend time at the store until his death in 1968 at the age of 76. John Manley operated the store until his retirement in 1983. John Manley and his sister, Margaret Crump of Northport, recently sold the store and property..

John Manley, now age 80 and living in Northport, recalled this week that the store once handled almost anything anyone needed, including groceries, clothes, shoes, gloves, feed for livestock, plowlines, nails, horseshoes, tires, tobacco, plows, gas and oil. The store also served as the Beat 4 polling location for many years, and it was a general community gathering place where gossip and news–and sometimes even a bottle—were passed around.

John Manley recalled that former governor James E. “Big Jim” Folsom stopped at the store once about 50 years ago as he passed by on his way to visit his in-laws, who were from nearby Berry.

According to John Manley, many of the rocks used to build the walls of the store were taken from a quarry near North River, not far from the old Gorgas School. Other rocks used in the foundation were taken from the fields on Reed Mountain, he said.

“The Reeds (the author’s great-grandparents Wes and Omie Reed and their 11 children and dozens of grandchildren) piled them up at the edge of the fields and we hauled them in there by the truck load,” John Manley said, recalling that the truck used was an International.

John Manley also recalled that the first gas he ever sold was to Crockett Kyzer, a well-known farmer and basket maker from the area. He said that sale came in 1936 at another nearby store his father operated before building the stone store in 1938.

The old stone Cabaniss store holds many memories for John Manley, and he and his children and grandchildren have kept a few items from the store for themselves. Still, he isn’t overly sad to see it finally sold. “I guess it eases my mind a bit in some ways,” he said of the sale.

“It’s a different ball game now than it was in 1936,” John Manley said, noting how times have changed. “At one time I knew everybody who lived on Highway 43 from Berry Junction to Stone Hill in Northport.” And there is no doubt that everyone who traveled along Highway 43 knew that old stone store and its owners Oscar and John Manley Cabaniss, who served their community well for almost half a century.

Now it appears that the store will soon be gone, with not even a bottle cap left behind as a souvenir for a barefoot boy who thought of it as the big city itself more than 50 years ago.

This story is a follow up to a previous blog “Who Remembers Cabaniss Gro.” Published on June 26, 2017 on Samantha Living.

1963: Cabaniss Grocery in Samantha This rock store stood at the corner of Hwy 43 North and Northside Road in northern Tuscaloosa County. The store replaced one that was once part of the Stagecoach Exchange at what was then called ‘Marcumville’.

Samantha Living would like to thank Delbert Reed for sharing this story. We appreciate his journalism and interest in the Samantha Community. We invite your comments below or send them and any photos you might have to editor@samanthaliving.

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It’s the 4th of July – What Does that Mean?

July 4, 2017 / Becky Williamson-Martin / 0 Comments

Independence Day. Barbeque, hot dogs, beach parties, baseball games, and fireworks. But what does “Independence Day” mean?

The Fourth of July is our country’s birthday. The day our country’s founders declared independence from Great Britain. This meant they would no longer follow the orders of Britain’s king. To do this was extremely dangerous. At the time, Britain had one of the world’s strongest armies, and to go against the king was a crime punishable by death. But the king’s laws were unfair, so our founders decided it was worth the risk of war to win the freedom to govern themselves. In 1783, the new United States won that war, which we now call the Revolutionary War.

Why does the flag have those stars? At this time of year, American flags are easy to spot. Point one out to your grandchildren. Explain that each part of the flag stands for something. The 50 stars stand for the 50 states. The 13 stripes stand for the 13 British colonies, which declared their independence on July 4, 1776. It’s a symbol — a way to show the world what we stand for. It also shows that we are connected to one another — that we’re on the same team. And because the flag is special, we treat it with respect.

What makes our country special? That one thing that makes our country special is that it guarantees us certain rights, or freedoms. We use these rights every day when we pray (or decide not to), read a newspaper, or meet and talk with friends. We can do these things because our country guarantees us the freedom to practice religion the way we want, say or write what we want, and go where we want. These rights are spelled out in the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights. Which rights are most important to you?

What does the government do for us? We pay taxes to our local, state, and national government so that, among other things, the government can build and maintain facilities that reflect our values. Education is important to us, for example, so we build schools. Safety is a priority for us, so we put up traffic lights. And we want open places where we can gather, so we set aside space for parks. It provides the people who help the community, including police officers, firefighters, crossing guards, librarians, postal workers, and sanitation crews.

What can we do for our country? Our country is like a family: Everyone has to pitch in or it doesn’t work. As members of the U.S. “family” — in other words, as citizens — we all have certain responsibilities, like going to school, voting, and obeying the law. Being a good citizen also means taking care of the country, by keeping it clean, looking out for people in trouble, and staying informed about the problems that we face. Of course, actions always have more impact than words, so set an example by dedicating some of your time to volunteering in the community.

What does it mean to be American? In countries like China or Ireland, most residents share a common culture or ethnicity. But the United States is different. Here, what people share is a common idea — that people should have the freedom to live the way they want, and to work and earn money the best way they can. These freedoms have inspired people from all over the world to come to this country and become “Americans.” This is a profound idea many may never have considered and it should make us feel especially proud of our country, as well as more connected to other Americans of different backgrounds. It can also lead to a discussion about our own family’s journey to the United States. Why did your relatives come? Why did they stay? Every family’s story is part of the country’s story. Make sure you AND your grandchildren know yours. Comments below.

God Bless America
God Bless Samantha

Happy 4th of July

Always keep “The Son” in your eyes.
Becky Williamson-Martin

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July 1, 2017 / Delbert Reed / 3 Comments

By Delbert Reed

(Reprint -- Published in Northport Gazette, June 4, 2003)

I saw the stranger walking through the mall and guessed correctly that he had a story to go with his black hat and clothes and guitar and that hungry look in his eye. I had seen plenty others like him plodding along Music Row and Broadway back in my Nashville days. And to tell the truth, I’d seen the same look in the mirror a time or two.

“I’m looking for some work playing and singing,” he answered when I asked if I could help him. “I need a job and I’m not able to do much of anything else.”

Jack McCaffrey is his name, and although he shows the wear and tear of hard times beyond his years, he hasn’t given up hope quite yet. But if it’s true that artists do their best work when they suffer, McCaffrey just might be about to write that hit song he has always dreamed about.

“I don’t like to play in bars, but I’ll play anywhere right now,” McCaffrey said. “I’ve got to survive. I’d play at the North Pole if the Eskimos would listen to me.”

A self-proclaimed poet, songwriter and musician, McCaffrey is 59 years old, with more hair on his chin than his head and a nasty cigarette habit. “I spent my last three dollars on cigarettes,” he admitted with a bowed head. “I know I shouldn’t be smoking; my brother died of lung cancer.” But on a hot summer afternoon a few days ago, cigarettes and music was about all that kept McCaffrey’s modest Tuscaloosa apartment from being a lonely place as we continued an interview started the day we met at McFarland Mall.

“I’ve written about 200 songs,” he said, offering to sing one for me he had written in 1982 while visualizing himself as a successful musician out on the road. “I wrote the song for my wife. It’s been ten years since I played it; I hope I can get through it,” he said before singing a not-so-bad little ballad with a few memorable lines about big dreams and a broken heart.

“I’m working on a contemporary gospel song with a blues beat now,” McCaffrey said as he sang a few lines of a song he called “Rock Me, Jesus.” None of McCaffrey’s music is recorded or written down. “It’s all in my head,” he said.

By my standards McCaffrey really can play and sing a little, and sometimes a little is all it takes if the breaks fall your way. Whether he can make it in Nashville or even Tuscaloosa could be simply a matter of luck, although McCaffrey has almost given up on giving Nashville a try.

McCaffrey carries a list of 150 songs in his guitar case and claims he can play and sing all of them on cue, although he had only one formal music lesson in his life. His songs cover 50 years of music and include rock, country, gospel or whatever else one would care to hear. He can also play several instruments, he says, “but I don’t really play the piano; I bang on it.”

“My grandfather, John Williams of the Samantha area just outside Northport, was my inspiration,” McCaffrey said. “He played the bass fiddle and sang bluegrass music. He claimed to have some Indian blood, so I claim to be half-Irish and half-Indian. I’m Irish enough to like a drink of whisky and Indian enough to go on the warpath,” he continued with a wry smile. “That’s why I don’t drink anymore.”

McCaffrey’s mother helped start him on his musical career by teaching him to play a ukulele at age seven. “I worried her to death with that thing singing songs I learned off the radio,” he said. “My older brother had a guitar, but I couldn’t get my hands on it until he joined the Navy in 1956. I taught myself to play and played a lot with a buddy named Ronnie Wheatley.”

McCaffrey and Wheatley played together for several years, working in Birmingham night clubs after working at EBSCO Industries together in the daytime. “We played every club in Birmingham in the sixties,” McCaffrey said proudly. Wheatley still works at EBSCO while McCaffrey is disabled, but they both still enjoy their music.

A Catholic, McCaffrey attends Holy Spirit Church and sometimes plays music at a local Church of God. “I don’t earn any money, but the Lord blesses me for it,” he said.

McCaffrey has children and grandchildren in Birmingham, where he spent several years in construction work, and carries their pictures in his guitar case. He is divorced from his first wife and separated from his second, something he finds painful to talk about. He has been in Tuscaloosa for three months.

“Here’s one of my favorites,” McCaffrey said, breaking a somber mood and patting a bare big toe as he played a current patriotic song made popular by country music star Toby Keith.

McCaffrey’s father worked in construction and moved a great deal, allowing Jack to experience life in Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina and even California, where he said he even attended school with some of the Mouseketeers of Walt Disney television fame for a while.

McCaffrey’s brother, John McCaffrey Jr., lived in the Samantha area on their grandfather’s old place until his death. His widow, Betty, still resides there, according to Jack.

Today, Jack doesn’t often dream of that elusive big break. He’s just hoping to find a paying gig so he can sing his songs and see better days. “If I don’t I’ll starve, he said without a smile as he gently strummed the guitar he was holding onto like it was his only friend.
(Northport Gazette, June 4, 2003)

POSTSCRIPT: I couldn’t help liking Jack McCaffrey, and his music, too, for that matter, and I visited him several times over a month or so. I even bought him cigarettes and a can of soup a couple of times when he ran out of money between disability checks. In an effort to try to help him, I bought a small cassette recorder and had him record some of his songs for me to take to a friend in Nashville who had connections in the music industry there. “If you see Martina McBride, tell her I love her,” he said as he handed me the tape a week or so later. I passed the tape along but never heard anything about it from my friend. I saw in the newspaper a year or so later where McCaffrey died, taking his songs with him except for a line or two I still remember from the one he wrote for his wife and the one I’m writing about his Martina McBride line. (Delbert Reed)


Samantha Living would like to thank Delbert Reed for sharing this story. We appreciate his journalism and interest in the Samantha Community. We invite your comments below or send them and any photos you might have to [email protected]

The Barbee School which taught from first to seventh grade was located near Samantha in northern Tuscaloosa County from about 1907 to the early 1940s. After students completed the seventh grade, they were awarded diplomas and encouraged to continue their education. However, students who lived in the rural communities had farm and home responsibilities and transportation was mule or horse and buggy. Photo shows the graduation class for the 1913-1914 school year. The teacher, Annis Estelle Griffin, is on the back row in the white shirt. To her right is Carl Harris. To Harris' right may be Paul Howell.Submitted by John N. Harris.

Historical Barbee School

June 30, 2017 / Delbert Reed / 1 Comment

From Delbert Reed.

Barbee School Reunion Offers a Lesson in History

(Written by Delbert Reed – Published in Northport Gazette, June 18, 2003)

Historical Barbee School

You’ve probably heard stories told by your parents and grandparents about how they walked three miles in the snow and rain to school as youngsters. If you haven’t, you should arrange to attend the next Barbee School reunion, where you can hear the stories of the good old days from those who lived them.

A small group of former Barbee School students gathered recently at the home of Nell Howell Sheffield in Northport to recall their times together as schoolmates at the former small elementary school near Northside High School. Those attending the May gathering included Sheffield, Mary Freeman Hagler, Clytee Rogers Holloway, Lowell Skelton, Faye Maddox Boone and John Aris Harris.

“I’ll bet no six people ever had a better time that we did,” Mrs. Hagler said of the reunion. We waited until most of us were gone before we started getting together, but if we can we’re going to get together again next year and reminisce some more,” she said. The Barbee reunions have been going on for six or so years and were started mainly by Loy and Woodrow Wilson.

Barbee School, according to history relayed by John Aris Harris’s son John, was named after James and Sarah M. Barbee, who settled in the area in 1818. The school was located about a mile west of Barbee Creek and about two miles west of Northside High School. It was formed in 1909 by the consolidation of Friendship School and the Deal School and closed in 1942.

Mrs. Hagler lived east of Barbee School on the Bart Brown Road for much of the time she attended the school 1932-38 and walked through fields, pastures and woods and even across a foot-log bridge across Barbee Creek to schools with siblings Otis, Clay, Martha and Ouida.

“We had some good times there,” Mrs. Hagler said. “We had a few fights, too, but not often.” Mrs. Hagler’s memories of her days at Barbee include the school closing twice because there was no money to buy coal for heat during the winter.

“They brought our teachers out from town on Sunday evening or early Monday morning and they boarded with my Aunt Ida Cabaniss across the road from the school during the week and went back to town on Friday afternoons,” Mrs. Hagler said.

The Barbee School remembered by most of the former students had three or four rooms with two grades in each room. Earlier, a one-room school had stood on the site, according to some former students. “I saw a picture of the old school and I’m pretty sure it was only one room,” Mrs. Hagler said. “It looked like an old crib.”

Mrs. Boone attended Barbee School for six years starting in 1933 and later graduated from Talladega High School before earning master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Alabama. She worked as a nurse and teacher until her retirement in 1990. Mrs. Boone has attended several Barbee School reunions and recalls elementary school friendships with Nell Howell Sheffield and Loy Wilson.

Skelton started school at Barbee in the mid-1930s and went there through the sixth grade before attending Etteca and Gorgas schools. Skelton’s brothers Adrian, Shorty and Gordon and sister Louise also attended Barbee, as did Skelton’s father Clarence. Skelton, retired from B. F. Goodrich after more than 42 years, is nearing age 75 and still has many friends from his days at Barbee.

Mrs. Sheffield lived less than a mile from Barbee School in what was known as the old Deal home during her childhood. The house, which burned in 1980, was located near one of the two stores her father (Paul Howell) operated for many years. “That old house was made from wide, hand-hewed planks; we wouldn’t have taken anything for it,” Mrs. Sheffield said.

“I remember my first-grade teacher was Miss Ruth Rice,” Mrs. Sheffield said. “She later married Horace Brown and we went to church with them at Chapel Hill Baptist Church. “Another teacher recalled by Mrs. Sheffield was Marian Scrivner, who boarded with the Howells.

“I remember Miss Rice giving us a picture to color in the first grade and I colored a woman’s hair green. Miss Rice said she had never seen a woman with green hair. Forty years later we saw a woman at church with green hair and she (then Mrs. Brown) remembered that fist-grade incident and remarked to me that we had finally seen someone with green hair.”

Mrs. Sheffield’s brother Paul B. Howell also attended Barbee for a few years. Both of them laster graduated from Tuscaloosa County High School.

Harris, a retired telephone company employee who lives in Moundville, attended Barbee for three years starting in 1938 when it had 30-40 students in six grades. He also attended Samantha and Gorgas schools “I still have my first-grade report card,” Harris said proudly. “I carried it to the reunion and my first teacher’s name (Margaret Tatum) is on it.”

Mrs. Holloway lived about two miles north of Barbee School at the head of Wolf Creek near Haygood Methodist Church and walked along a path through the woods and fields to school with friends from the Rice and Nuchols families.

“I can remember being freezing cold when we got to school and gathering around the pot-bellied stove to get warm,” she said. “It was hard living, but there were good days. Everybody loved everybody and everybody helped everybody else during crop time or sickness. We lost our farm and were sharecroppers some, but I’m proud of my raising,” Mrs. Holloway added.

Mrs. Holloway began work at Jitney Jungle Grocery in Tuscaloosa in 1956 and retired from Food World in 1991.

Most of the Barbee School students grew up on farms in the community and many of them came from sharecropper families left poor by the Great Depression of the 1930s, as Mrs. Hagler pointed out with pride. “I’ve lived a full life for a poor girl,” she said. “But I’ve had friends and people I cared about and who cared for me. What else do you need?

Samantha Living would like to thank Delbert Reed for sharing this story.   We appreciate his journalism and interest in the Samantha Community.  We invite your comments below or send them and any photos you might have to [email protected]

Submitted by Anita Bailey – Estel Williamson (Freeman) Barbee School 1936 (Anita’s Grandmother

The Barbee School which taught from first to seventh grade was located near Samantha in northern Tuscaloosa County from about 1907 to the early 1940s. After students completed the seventh grade, they were awarded diplomas and encouraged to continue their education. However, students who lived in the rural communities had farm and home responsibilities and transportation was mule or horse and buggy. Photo shows the graduation class for the 1913-1914 school year. The teacher, Annis Estelle Griffin, is on the back row in the white shirt. To her right is Carl Harris. To Harris’ right may be Paul Howell.Submitted by John N. Harris.

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Rt. 1, Box 152

June 29, 2017 / Becky Williamson-Martin / 6 Comments

by Becky Williamson-Martin

Apparently I have always had a love for or maybe taken ownership of the Samantha Community. Recently, we did some remodeling on the home I grew up in. I came home one day during during the remodel and the carpenters asked me if I drew on the walls when I was a kid. Then they showed me the “art work” they found on the ceiling of a closet they were tearing out.

Rt 1, Box 152, Samantha, Alabama 35482

While I do not remember creating this “masterpiece”, I do remember hiding in the top of that big closet many times to try and scare my brother Ricky (pay back you know?). I also recall having a thing about drawing mailboxes as a little girl. Maybe that was a result of daddy always teaching us the importance of putting down roots. Or maybe I am a horrific artist and that’s all I could do. But my biggest fan, my Momma, said, “you have to frame it”. So we now have a mounted piece of sheetrock from the closet.

I often hear folks from the Samantha Community say they live in Northside. This is always a bit comical to me. Having grown up in Samantha and going to Northside School, I always think to myself, “do they live in the school”? I guess younger folks don’t remember or those who moved here over the passed few years didn’t know this but before the postal service restructured everything our address was actually Rt. 1, Samantha, Alabama 35482. I still remember our address was Rt. 1, Box 152. It just sounds funny to me having grown up here when I hear people refer to Northside as the community. To me it’s a school.

Mailbox topper – “Johnny Williamson, Rt. 1 Samantha”

A few years before daddy passed away, I came to visit him and found him in the barn working on “something”. During our conversation I noticed an old mailbox topper hanging on the barn wall. It was covered with dust and spider webs. He granted my request to take it home. At that time, I lived near Lake Tuscaloosa. I took it home and restored it and I proudly displayed it on my back porch, Johnny Williamson, Rt. 1, Samantha, even though I didn’t live in the Samantha community at that time. My heart and all my childhood memories are still connected to Samantha. I can’t help but think that mailbox topper had some historical value for daddy, too. After all, he had kept it all those years.

I believe we should be proud of our roots. Even if some of the memories might not be good, where we came from helped make us who we are today and hopefully we learned from it all, even if we moved away. So, for me, I am proud to say I’m from Samantha, Alabama and I now live in Samantha, Alabama. I am also proud to say I attended Northside School in Samantha, Alabama – home of the Rams. After all, we do still have a zip code and a Post Office located on Northside Road. What are your thoughts? Comment below

Samantha Post Office, Samantha, Alabama

Always keep “The Son” in your eyes!
Becky Williamson-Martin

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Days Gone By Seemed Much More Simple

June 5, 2017 / Becky Williamson-Martin / 2 Comments

Memories of Growing Up in Samantha

OUCH!!!!!!

I was reading the article by Joshua Becker: “Those Things By Which We Get Embarrassed“ and he made this statement: “What if, instead of being embarrassed because our house is too small, we became embarrassed over the amount of unused space within it?”

As I read this article I thought about my visit with a dear neighbor, Jesse Ann, this past weekend. She lived next to us when we were small and has continued to maintain her parents’ house next to daddy’s (my house), even though they have been gone many years. She spends Wednesdays and Saturdays each week at the old homeplace. What a wonderful visit we had – talking about days gone by and some more recent memories of daddy, which brought us both to tears. The Weavers were such good neighbors. Oh the magic of ordinary days!

Old 1930s church. A gift from Jessie Ann Weaver Langston

The inside of the little farm house still looked much like I remembered it as a child growing up. The beautiful pine wainscot paneling in the “front room”. Jessie Ann gifted me with some absolute treasures that belonged to her parents that I will cherish and I hope my children will too after I’m gone, knowing “the history” behind them and the memories attached. A couple of old (1930) churns and other collections that she wanted me to have.

Among them were two old books about the history of Fayette.

150 Years of History of Fayette

Sitting there in the small farmhouse having conversation with Jessie Ann, I thought about how life seemed so much more simple in days gone by. Memories came to me of running barefoot along the path from our house to theirs. She must have thought I was such a country bumpkin. “Probably still does”. It seems that people were much more relational then. And even though life was hard, the hurried pressures of day-to-day life that we live under now were non-existent.

Outdoor Fun in Fayette County in the Olden Days Followed The Simplest Form

We have enjoyed reading the stories about the history of Fayette – some from the 1900 – such comical entries in the local paper about events such as “fisticuffs” and items like “demijohns” which I had to seek the definition. As I was reading those stories it was even more magnified how much more connected folks were then and my soul longs for that. They worked hard “together” and they celebrated accomplishments together. It seems to me that folks were less interested in themselves and their personal interests. It was more about “community”.

You know, I guess we can just “wish” for a simpler life with days of enjoying lemonade with our neighbors after a hard days work OR we can purpose to create those times in our own life today.

Somehow, I think we believe it’s either one or the other – work OR play. But one huge important thing our daddy taught us – work and play go together! “Many hands make the work load light!” And even fun. Make a party out of everything!!

To quote Johnny Williamson, “It’s very simple. Now I didn’t say it was easy, but it’s simple. You just have to make up your mind to do it.”

Always keep “The Son” in your eyes.

Becky Williamson-Martin

A little interesting history

18 Year Old ‘Doctor’ Began Brilliant Career in Fayette, by Marguerite Tarwater Callahan

A reprint of Memories of Growing Up in Samantha from Stuff That Works Blog posted on 9/11/15 by Becky Williamson-Martin

An Uplifting Story about our Sister Community – Stonewall/Canaan

May 31, 2017 / DeWayne Guyton / 0 Comments

Stonewall Volunteer Fire Department Receives Donation

By DeWayne G. Guyton

Stonewall Volunteer Fire Department Receives Donation

About 5 months ago, Robert Mallory set out to improve the Stonewall Volunteer Fire Department located in the Canaan Community of Fayette County. At that time, they were operating with a 1977 forestry issued truck that was costing more money to maintain and keep running that wasn’t readily available. Their main pumper was a 1990 Ford that only pumped from one side and had constant transmission issues along with a water leak that forbid holding more than one half tank of water.

Mallory began sending out letters using a boundary from Nashville, TN to New Orleans, La to Mobile, Al and getting nowhere quickly. One day, he decided to focus on the larger cities here in Alabama to see what was available. Birmingham, Huntsville, Tuscaloosa, Montgomery and Mobile had nothing in surplus. Frustrated at the amount of work being placed and going nowhere, Mallory remembered he’d forgotten one particular Alabama City…Decatur. He sent an email to the Mayor, Tab Bolling who then forwarded the email to the Decatur City Fire Cheif, Tony Grande. Mallory was then informed there was, indeed, a truck that had been taken out of service and was being held in surplus. Grande was open about other departments who’d inquired about purchasing the vehicle for their own departments. Mallory informed Grande that Stonewall VFD was a small rural department with very little cash and pleaded with him the possibility of the City of decatur donating the apparatus.

Over a period of 4 months, Mallory remained in touch with Grande and Bolling and even sent letters to the Decatur City Council pleading with them to help Stonewall Volunteer Fire Department, who was struggling to keep their community Fire Department alive and running.

The Decatur City Council held a vote on May 1st to decide which city would receive the $50,000.00 truck. May 2nd, Robert Mallory received the news of a unanimous vote, 5-0, in favor of Stonewall Volunteer Fire Department receiving the truck as a donation to help the Canaan Community keeping them safe as well as seeing a reduction in their home insurance by living in a community that is now up to par on Fire Safety. Mallory and other members of the Stonewall Volunteer Fire Department made the trip the following Thursday to meet with the Fire Officials and the City Council to take ownership of their new fire truck.

A Good News Story by AM990 WLDX
– DeWayne G. Guyton

A Graduate’s Prayer

May 19, 2017 / Samantha Living / 0 Comments

We are publishing the prayer below at the request of several parents who have children graduating this year.

A Graduate’s Prayer

Father I have knowledge
so will you show me now
How to use it wisely
and find a way somehow
To make the world I live in
a little better place.
And make life with its problems
a bit easier to face. . .

Grant me faith and courage
and put purpose in my days
And show me how to serve Thee
in the most effective ways
So all my education,
my knowledge, and my skill
May find their use fulfillment
As I learn to do Thy will . . .
And may I ever be aware
in everything I do
That knowledge comes from learning –
And wisdom comes from you.

May God bless and watch over all the graduating seniors. Please leave your comments or well wishes for your graduating senior below.

Congratulations Northside Class of 2017

May 12, 2017 / Samantha Living / 1 Comment

Northside High School, Samantha, Alabama
Principal:  Mrs. Cindy Long 
Graduation Exercise: May 15, 2017 @ 7:30 p.m. in stadium 
Valedictorian and Salutatorian will be announced at graduation ceremony 

School Colors: 
Navy Blue, Columbia Blue and White 
Mascot: Ram 

Class Officers 
President: Stella Wilson 
Vice President: Anny Barrentine 
Secretary: Amber McCarley 
Treasurer: Karlie Colburn 
Parliamentarian: Samuel Newcomb
 
SGA Officers: 
President: Stella Wilson 
Vice President: Anna Barrentine 
Secretary: Samuel Newcomb 
Treasurer: Marian Bolin 
Parliamentarian: Karlie Colburn

2017 Candidates Listed Alphabetically

A Graduates Prayer

Shepherd Hill Opry Welcomed Guy Penrod

May 11, 2017 / Samantha Living / 0 Comments

Samantha, Alabama – Guy Penrod sang to 600+ guests at Shepherd Hill Opry this past Saturday. During his concert, which was very relaxed and intimate, he called his wife, Angie, on the phone to wish her a Happy 32^nd Anniversary. Angie kidded him about celebrating their anniversary with new friends while she

Penrod calls his wife Angie during concert

was home planting flowers. The crowd applauded when he bragged on how blessed he was to be married to “a good country girl”.

Penrod is one of the most in-demand touring artists in Christian music. His DVD, The Best of Guy Penrod is certified platinum by the RIAA. A vocal powerhouse, Penrod travels throughout the U.S. and abroad in addition to making multiple media appearances including radio’s “The Mike Huckabee Show,” RFD-TV’s top-rated “Larry’s Country Diner” and one of North America’s most popular Christian television programs “100 Huntley Street.” Additionally, Penrod hosts DayStar Television’s Emmy Award-winning “Gospel Music Showcase” program.

Known for his country styling, Penrod’s music has been applauded in the Gospel as well as country formats. He has appeared on “The Grand Ole Opry” and on numerous country recordings. His Hymns recording (Gaither Music Group/ Servant Records), debuted at #1 on the Nielsen SoundScan Southern Gospel retail chart and became the top-selling southern Gospel album of 2012. In 2011, he became a Texas Gospel Music Hall of Fame inductee; and he was inducted alongside the Gaither Vocal Band into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2014.

Penrod certainly worked his charm on the crowd in Samantha. In addition to his beautiful voice, he has a wonderful repore with everyone he meets and you know immediately that he practices what he preaches – “loving folks”.

The band had some technical difficulties and Penrod asked to borrow a car to “run to Eat My Beats”. Without hesitation, a volunteer handed him the keys. It had a full tank when he returned, she said, “and it was probably on fumes when he left in it with all the running around getting ready for the event”.

Representatives from The Good Shepherd Foundation, who sponsored the event, said folks have already been inquring about when Penrod will be back to Shepherd Hill Opry.

Shepherd Hill Opry was built in memory of Johnny Williamson by his children on the property where he

Guests enjoy the sounds of Guy Penrod

called home and created deep roots. Concerts are held throughout the year. Well-known Nashville artists Lulu Roman (former Hee Haw Star), Allen Frizzell (Lefty Frizzell’s younger brother), Marty Raybon (lead singer with Shenandoah), Clinton Gregory Bluegrass Band, Jennifer Brantley, Gerald Smith, and Addison Johnson have performed at Shepherd Hill Opry as well as Donnie Lee Strickland and Shannon Knight formerly with The Gaithers in addition to many local artists. To find out more about Shepherd Hill Opry, visit the website at http://www.goodshepherdfound.org/shepherd-hill-opry.html or by calling (205) 233-3794.

Samantha’s Boone Brothers Once Made Baseball History

May 10, 2017 / Delbert Reed / 3 Comments

By Delbert Reed

I stumbled across a couple of names a year or so ago that brought back old and pleasant memories. The names were “Ike” and “Dan” Boone, former University of Alabama athletes who went on to make a little professional baseball history.

I immediately recalled that my dad mentioned the baseball exploits Ike and “Dan” from time to time when I was a youngster. Having grown up in the same community of Samantha in northern Tuscaloosa County as the Boone boys, Dad had idolized the brothers during the 1920s and 1930s just as I idolized Northport’s Frank Lary of the Detroit Tigers during the 1950s.

Formally, the “Boone boys” were James Albert and Issac Morgan Boone, Jr., the youngest of four sons of Mr. and Mrs. Issac Morgan Boone Sr. James Albert actually had the family nickname of Jim Bert but picked up the nickname of Daniel, or Dan, as a student at the University of Alabama and it followed him into his professional career. Issac Jr. was always known as Ike.

James Albert, born in 1895, entered the University of Alabama in 1915 and played football and baseball for the Crimson Tide, earning All-Southern honors as end in football in 1917 and serving as captain of the 1918 baseball team. He was described in the University student yearbook Corolla as “a quiet, lanky Ichabod full of grit and fight.” Another comment said James Albert was once injured in a football game against Vanderbilt and had to be physically restrained by doctors and teammates to keep him from returning to the game.

Alabama baseball teams of 1917-18-19 won SIAA championships with the Boone brothers, Joe and Luke

James Albert Boone in Cleveland

Sewell and Riggs Stephenson – all future major league players – among the team stars and and Lonnie Noojin as head coach. James Albert was a pitcher and outfielder while Ike was an outfielder.

As outstanding right-handed pitcher, James Albert signed a professional contract with the Atlanta Crackers in 1919 and posted a 16-7 record with Atlanta before joining the Philadelphia Athletics at the end of the season. In six seasons as a minor league pitcher, Albert was 72-64 with a 2.81 earned run average in 168 games. He spent four stints in major leagues, playing with the Detroit Tigers in 1921 and the Cleveland Indians 1922-23 before spending another decade as an outstanding minor player and manager. He had an 8-13 record in the major leagues with 25 strikeouts and two shutouts in 162 innings pitched. As a member of the Cleveland Indians in 1922, he again played with former Crimson Tide teammates Joe and Luke Sewell and Riggs Stephenson.

Boston Red Sox Photo

James Albert gave up pitching to play first base and outfield when he joined High Point, North Carolina, in the Piedmont League in 1926 and soon became the greatest hitter in league history by winning four batting titles in five and a half seasons in the league. He also served as player/manager of the team 1927-1931.

James Albert and Ike teamed up to make baseball history in 1929 by hitting a combined 101 home runs. Ike hit 55 in a record shattering season with the San Francisco Missions of the Pacific Coast League while James Alert hit 46 with High Point.

James Albert became player/manager of the Charleston, West Virginia, Senators of the Middle Atlantic League in 1932 and led the team to the league championship with 17 home runs, 92 runs batted in and a .349 batting average. He hit three home runs in the first game of the league championship series to help his team to a 6-2 victory on the way to a four-game series sweep. He ended his professional baseball career after the 1933 season. In 14 seasons (1919-1933) James Albert played with nine minor league teams, compiling a .356 batting average in 1,336 games with 214 home runs and 851 runs batted in.

Ike, two years younger, joined his brother at Alabama in 1917 and also played football and baseball. He was elected captain of the 1918 football team but the season was canceled due to World War I. He also served as president of the A-Club and Pan-Hellenic Council. Ike played end on the 1919 football team that posted a 9-1 record while scoring 280 points and allowing only 22. James Albert, after playing his first season of professional baseball in the summer of 1919, served as an assistant coach on the 1919 football team.

Ike began what some have called minor league baseball’s most outstanding career ever in 1920 when he signed with Cedartown, Georgia, after graduating from the University in the spring of that year. He hit .403 in 72 games with Cedartown in 1920 before moving to New Orleans of the Southern Association in 1921, where he won his first minor league batting title with a .389 average.

After appearing in only two games with the New York Giants in 1922, Ike played for San Antonio of the Texas League in 1923 and claimed another batting title with a .402 average while also leading the league in hits (241), doubles (53) and runs batted in (135). He is the last player in Texas League history to bat over .400.

Ike was called to Boston at the end of the 1923 season and had four hits in 15 at-bats. He returned to the Red Sox in 1924 and 1925. He hit .337 with 13 home runs and 97 runs batted in in 1924 and hit .330 with nine home runs and 68 runs batted in in 1925 before being shipped back to the minor leagues due to what one story described as “a lack of speed and below average fielding.”

After hitting .380 in 172 games with the San Francisco Missions in 192, Boone spent 1927 as a utility player with the Chicago White Sox. He returned to San Francisco in 1928 and in 1929 won the Pacific Coast League Triple Crown with a .407 batting average, 218 runs batted in and 55 home runs. The record-shattering season included 323 hits and a professional baseball record 553 total bases, with 49 doubles and eight triples added to his 55 home runs, in 198 games.

Ike Boone at UA, circa 1919

Ike was on his way to a similar season in 1930, hitting .448 and 98 runs batted in in only 83 games, before being called back to major leagues with the Brooklyn Robins for two seasons. All told, Ike spent all or part of eight seasons in the major leagues, compiling a .321 batting average with 371 hits, 26 home runs, 177 runs scored and 194 runs batted in.

Boone played with Toronto of the International League 1933-36, and was player/manager of the team 1934-36. He won the league batting title with a .372 average in 1934 and was voted the league’s most valuable player as he led his team to the lague title. He managed the Jackson, Mississippi, Senators in 1937 in his last season in professional baseball.

Overall, Ike won five batting titles in four different minor leagues. His .370 lifetime minor league average was a record. He was inducted into the International League Hall of Fame in 1957 and in 2003 was elected to the Pacific Coast League Hall of Fame. He lived in Northport after retirement from baseball and died at age 61 in 1958. James Albert Boone died in Tuscaloosa on June 11, 1968, at age 73. A surviving daughter of James Albert Boone, Betty Jane Jackson, lives in Steele, Missouri.

James Albert and Ike were among 11 children of Issac Morgan Boone Sr. and Norma Lee Boone. The boys were George, Will, James Albert, and Issac Morgan. The girls were Ethel, Leona, Norma, Adalee, Micah, Margaret and Virginia. George, Wiley and Issac all served in the Navy during World War I. James Albert also attempted to join the Navy, but failed the physical.

According to George Boone’s son, B.E. Boone, who lives in the Samantha Community today, the elder Boones recognized the value of education early on and donated ten acres of land to Tuscaloosa County as the site for the old Gorgas School in about 1914. They also saw that all their children graduated from high school and had the opportunity for a college education, B.E. Boone said.

Baseball talent has continued to run in the Boone family through the years. Joe Parsons, a son of Adalee Boone, played baseball at Gorgas High School and at Livingston University while Gary and Larry Mims, grandsons of Ethel Boone, played baseball at Northside High School and at the University of Alabama.

This article appeared in May 3rd, 2017 Edition of The Northport Gazette. Reprinted with Permission

A Look at the Past – The Wilson Farm

September 7, 2016 / Samantha Living / 2 Comments

The following is a reprint of an article that appeared in The Tuscaloosa News on December 8, 1952, submitted by Kerry & Mary Shirley.

Good Farming Pays Off for Wilsons

Fourth Generation on the Farm by Lucia Owen (staff writer)

“Back in 1924, when I laid out those terraces, the land was full of gullies waist deep”, B.R. Houston, county agent said, as he and Lenon Wilson of Rt. 1, Brownville, gazed out over the acres of cotton land that were now sowed down the row middles with vetch, and at the 20 acres of oats and crimson clover, showing as green as a thick carpet over the otherwise brown landscape.

Today the 320 acre farm is one of the best in the county and this year, a bad crop year for most farmers, has brought a brand new barn and rat proof crib for the Wilsons and 750 bushels of corn from 10 acres, and 12 bales of cotton from 17 acres and 750 bales of hay.

“I didn’t make any money,” Mr. Wilson said, “but I paid for this barn and have my corn and hay.” He also has three fat pigs ready to kill and 25 head of beef and dairy cattle, and Mrs. Wilson has a flock of chickens.

Mr. Wilson, the son of the late Mr. And Mrs. L.O. Wilson, is the fourth generation to farm the land, and he thinks Tommy, who is now five and one half years old will be a farmer too. Of the 320 acres on the farm, 150 are cultivatable, the rest being in timber. Mr. Holstein laid out the first terraces of his career as a county agent for Tuscaloosa County on this farm for the present owner’s father, and both know the improvements that have been made.

Mr. Wilson believes in a mechanized farm, and there isn’t a mule on his place. He practices the latest methods recommended by the Extension Service and thinks this may be the reason for his mysteriously high yield during the dry season just past.

On May 5 he planted 10 acres of Dixie 11 Hybrid corn, following a turning under of winter legumes. He fertilized with 250 pounds of 4-10-7 per acre and and side dressed with 100 pounds of soda after the second plowing. The corn was planted in three and one half feet rows in 15 inch drills and was plowed only twice. No rain fell on the corn until July 28, he said, but he gatherer end 75 bushels of corn per acre, and he opened his fine, rat proof crib to show it. His cotton did not do so well, nor did other patches of corn on the place.

In the cement block barn, measuring 50×54 feet, are stored the 750 bales of hay gathered from his farm. Ten acres of Kobe produced 300 bales and the remaining hay is services, Dallas and other grasses. The barn has cement fee troughs, and is built for a life time. The base is of cement blocks and the upper part is wood with an outside covering of tin.

The Wilsons have big hopes for next year. They plan to increase cotton acreage and other crops. “We’ll remodel the house then,” they said, looking at the quaint old home, surrounded by trees and box woods.

A GOOD FARMER, AND A LUCKY ONE – Lenon Wilson, of Rt. 1, Brownville, is pictured above with Mrs. Wilson, their son Tommy, and the family dog Chuck, as they lean on the gate that leads to their new concrete block barn and crib. That barn and crib, in the background is fairly bulging, too, with 750 bales of hay and 750 bushels of hybrid corn. A part of the beef and dairy cattle on the 320 acre farm can also be seen behind them. While most farmers were hit by the drought, the Wilsons succeeded in having an above-normal corn and hay crop and 12 bales of cotton from 17 acres, thou no rain fell until July 28. (Tuscaloosa Engraving Co. Photo)

The Wilson Farm is now owned by The Hughes Family as pictured below. Please leave your comments below.

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My Granddad, Floyd Hughes, Jr. In his cotton field in Samantha, Alabama

Faith, Family and Farming: Growing up in Samantha

August 25, 2016 / Brook Hughes Snipes / 24 Comments

By: Brooke Hughes Snipes

Naomi Judd once said, “In life you have to have roots and wings.” Growing up in Samantha, Alabama, I was given both of those things. I was shown how to use my wings to fly and make my own way in the world. I also had roots that taught me that sometimes going home is the only cure for your problems. My name is Brooke Hughes Snipes, and I was born and raised in the Samantha community. My family has been living here for three generations and has made a living farming cotton, corn, and soybeans. My granddad is Floyd Hughes Jr., who has made a huge impact on the community and in my life. He has always instilled in me the three f’s in life: faith, family and farming. These three things have had a huge impact on my life and shaped me into the person I am today.

My Granddad, Floyd Hughes, Jr. And I at my wedding November 2013

I grew up in a way that would be foreign to today’s generation of young people. My summers were spent playing outside in the clubhouse built for my sister, cousins and me. We would spend hours building onto our club, where many tears, fights, and laughs took place. In the afternoons, we would gather underneath Granddaddy and Grandmother Faye (Momma’s) tree to shell peas or shuck corn. At the time, I thought it was boring and a waste of time, but now I understand that we were learning much more than how to prepare food. That’s the thing about grandparents; every task always comes with a free life lesson. On hot summer days we would go to my Mama Charlotte and Papa Norman’s pool for a swim. They too are longtime residents of Samantha. My Mama Charlotte was born and raised in Berry, Alabama but she will be the first to tell you that she is a Ram fan.

In the fall my grandmother Faye would load us up in their Dodge Ram (that they still drive to this day) and take us to the cotton field to watch my granddad Floyd, my dad Barry and Uncle Bryan pick the cotton fields.

My Granddad, Floyd Hughes, Jr. In his cotton field in Samantha, Alabama

We would spend hours picking cotton by hand, riding in the cotton pickers, running the packing machine, and jumping into big piles of freshly-picked cotton. It felt as though we were jumping on clouds. As a child, I thought nothing was more beautiful than a cotton field, and at twenty eight I still feel the same way. Weekends were always filled with cheering for Toybowl football, showing sheep for 4-H, playing softball, or spending time playing on the farm. The I-phone and social media generation of today will never understand the fulfillment that comes from fishing in a pond, playing in a creek, or spending time around animals.

Sundays were all about church. My whole entire family (which was 15 people at the time) would sit on the same group of church pews Sunday after Sunday. We would sing songs together from the Baptist Hymnal. Even today with the Contemporary music that is popular in most churches, I prefer the classic gospel. After church we would all go to my grandparents and eat lunch, and on special occasions we would enjoy homemade ice-cream. Easter was something that we looked forward to for months because my grandmother would take my sister and me to town and buy us matching dresses. Today in our twenties, my sister and I still coordinate our Easter outfits.

Throughout high school, cheerleading filled up most of my time. Now as an adult when I watch my younger brother, Mason, play for the Rams, I still remember the feeling I had on Friday nights when I stepped on that field. Football at Northside is about much more than playing a game. At Northside football is what brings people together. I remember looking up in the stands on Friday nights and thinking how blessed I was to be a part of this community, one that was really more like a huge family. Some of my friends growing up hated that small town feeling of everyone knowing everyone else. I, however, loved that feeling. I loved the fact that complete strangers would run into me and tell me that I looked just like my mother, or that people I met could still remember my dad’s first truck: a 1981 red and white Chevrolet that he still owns to this day.

I did most of the normal things that girls do growing up like sports, beauty pageants, and school clubs, but the hobby that affected my life the most was hunting. My granddad Floyd put a gun in my hand for the first time and taught me how hunting is about time, patience, and respect just like life. My granddad is the only person I have ever seen who can read the newspaper, crunch on an apple, and unwrap candy in the shooting house and still kill a deer. I, however, sit completely quiet and see nothing but squirrels; that’s just how it goes. I wouldn’t trade the days I have spent hunting with my granddad for anything in the world though. My grandparent’s generation is a walking book of knowledge that I love to explore. There is something amazing about hearing about how my grandparents first met, that my granddad broke down on the way to a date and stood my grandmother up, or that they share the same love for Johnny Cash’s music as I do. Looking back on my almost thirty years of life, I feel very blessed not only to have my family, but the family that is made up within my community.

If I am ever blessed with children these are the main things I would teach them: 1. to get outside and enjoy nature; it’s hard to beat a snow white cotton field or autumn in the South, 2. to always count your blessings, because there is always something to be thankful for, and 3. To spend as much time as you can with your family, especially your grandparents. They are the best teachers, motivators, and friends. As far as my roots and wings go, they have both made an impact on my life. I’m glad that I learned to fly. I left my hometown, graduated from the University of Alabama, got married and on my honeymoon even swam in the clear blue waters of the Caribbean. But as the saying goes, “There is no place like home.” It turns out that my roots were stronger than my wings, and my husband and I are getting ready to build a house on a hill overlooking quiet, simple Samantha. And if I ever do have kids and grandkids of my own, I will I pass along what my granddad told me that it takes to build a successful life in the country: a little faith, a little family and a little farming.

Brooke Hughes Snipes –Samantha Living, Guest Contributor
[email protected]

If you enjoyed this article please let Brooke know by leaving comments below.

Do you have memories you would like to share in a similar article? Send them to [email protected]

What Happened to Sundays?

July 12, 2016 / Becky Williamson-Martin / 4 Comments

Several weeks ago we traveled to North Alabama on a Sunday morning to visit Benny’s Mother who was very sick. This time of year I enjoy seeing how other folks have landscaped and manicured their yards, taking note of the beautiful flowers, trees and gardens. Normally, we would have been at church on a Sunday morning and periodically I would look at the clock and think about what my church family was doing at that particular time (in Sunday School or getting ready for worship). As we traveled along I started thinking about Sundays and how different they are from my childhood. Sundays are the only day I EVER remember my daddy lying on the couch. He would fall asleep reading the paper after we got home from church. Sometimes we would visit family, make homemade ice cream and have a washtub full of iced down Coke, Grapico and Orange Crush for the whole gang.

So many folks along our way that day were mowing their grass, working on their car, plowing their gardens or doing what I call “Saturday chores”. Some church parking lots were full, some had few cars and one was completely closed and the grass was grown up around it. What happened to Sundays? Can’t we check out of our daily routine just one day to give honor and thanks to our creator? To worship Him and rest our bodies and minds as He has instructed us to do? After all, since He created us He knows what our bodies, minds and emotions need. What I observed that day made me sad. Partially because I am guilty of abusing sacred Sundays, but mostly because I felt grief in my heart for the utter disregard we give to The Lord and what He has asked of us. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not legalistic about performing needed tasks on Sunday, but His Word instructs us to remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy and to rest. That’s only 52 days out of 365.

This past week, I was searching for 7th Heaven on Dish so I could set the DVR to record. When my granddaughter, Dakotah, comes to visit she likes to watch it and somehow all of the shows had been deleted. Ironically, the episode I “stumbled” on was an episode about Sundays. This is worth a watch. Lucy says, “We work 7 days a week or at least on the go 7 days a week and yet we wonder why people need drugs to relax. Could it be that we have lost 52 days a year to relax and enjoy our families?…Stressed, tired, irritable and no time to do the things I need to do and no time to do the things I want to do. We have lost our Sundays forever unless we make an effort to reclaim them.”

I suppose every generation longs for the “good ole days”. I’m no exception. How do we reclaim Sundays? It’s really very simple – we make a conscious decision to do so. Now simple doesn’t mean easy. Change is NOT easy. It’s like telling a drug addict to stop using. Yes simple – not easy.

It would be very interesting to hear how our neighbors and friends spend their Sundays today compared to Sundays from years past and how they line up with God’s word. Do you catch up from the past week? Do you prepare for next week? Do you attend church? Do you break bread with family? Do you visit the sick? Do you pray? Do you reflect? Do you work? Do you mow your lawn? No judgements please, just your personal activities of today and yesterday and your thoughts on Sunday.

Please share your thoughts in the comments section below!!

Always keep “The Son” in your eyes!

Becky Williamson-Martin

8/10/23 P.S. I heard Sundays in the South by Shenandoah while I was getting dressed this morning and I think it fits with my blog of years ago.

Millworker houses lined up in a row Another southern sunday’s mornin’ glow Beneath the steeple all the people have begun Shakin’ hands with the man who grips the gospel gun While in quiet prayer, the smell of dinner on the ground Fills up the mornin’ air, ain’t nothin’ sweeter around I can almost hear my mama prayin’ Oh Lord forgive us when we doubt Another sacred sunday in the south, alright

Oregonia Baptist Welcomes New Pastor

July 11, 2016 / Samantha Living / 5 Comments

Jimmy Holliman, Pastor, Oregonia Baptist Church – Samantha, AL

54 year old Jimmy Holliman accepted the call to preach at 52. With such a strong passion for evangelism, he thought that was God’s plan for him. He didn’t think he was being lead to pastor a church, until Oregonia called and he felt the Lord was leading him to accept. Jimmy says he grew up in church, but as is the case many times, life takes over and he was out of church for 18 years. He started working at Phifer Wire on the Sunday crew and before he knew it church and God were gradually pushed to the back. But God had plans for Jimmy and He sometimes uses different interests to draw us back to Him. Jimmy says his church started picking guitars on Sunday nights and he had an interest in learning to play so he started going, then back on Sundays. When asked did he learn the guitar, he responded, “I laid the guitar down and picked up my Bible”. He says he still wants to learn to play the guitar but for now his focus is on winning souls to Christ.

Jimmy enjoys being involved with Dax Lancaster’s Yet there is room tent ministry. (Missionaries to the USA, preaching the gospel of The Lord Jesus Christ to the lost in the highways and hedges and pointing them to a local church.)

Jimmy is a Bi-vocational Pastor. He works for Main Street Development. He has been married to his high school sweetheart, Dianna Holliman for 33 years. Dianna works at the Tuscaloosa County Courthouse in the Tax Assessor’s office. He attributes the staying power for their marriage to “knowing the Lord and divorce is just not an option. When two people get married they become one – you won’t have a whole person if you split them in two.” They have one daughter, Misty Herring.

Jimmy would like to invite everyone to attend Oregonia’s revival July 31-August 5. Ben Watson will be bringing the message Sunday morning and Sunday night. Brandon Vaughn will be bringing the message Monday-Friday. Services start at 7:00 p.m. with special music each night. Oregonia Baptist Church is located at 20369 Oregonia Rd.

Jimmy can be reached at (205) 242-0604.

Oregonia Baptist Church

Jesus in a Box? – A Samantha Landmark

July 7, 2016 / Becky Williamson-Martin / 1 Comment

Standing in line at the Dollar General in Samantha can be entertaining at times, and this particular day was no exception. I overheard a couple of fellas who had not seen each other since high school catching up. “Hey man, where are you living now?” “Oh, I live about one mile down that road in front of the Jesus statue.” I thought about that conversation on my way home and as I turned into my drive I stopped at the statue in my yard and thought about the story behind this local landmark. After the death of my grandmother, Pealie Mae Williamson, in February 1998, my daddy, Johnny Williamson, was inspired to create a representation of the 23rd Psalm. It was her favorite scripture. A Cypress log was chosen for The Good Shepherd Statue because of the longstanding belief that the Cypress is the “gopher wood” (or kopher, which is the Hebrew word for waterproof) that Noah used to build the ark. Daddy worked alongside his longtime friend and local artist/sculptor, Willie Logan, to carve the 6-1/2 foot statue of The Good Shepherd.

It’s sort of amusing how you can become so accustomed to something that you no longer see it, or think about it. This statue has just been part of the normal landscape in my daddy’s yard for years. But, a few years ago I started noticing it when I would visit him. I developed a desire to know and understand what he saw, what his intentions were, and how he viewed The Good Shepherd Statue. I began to ask questions, and we spent hours sitting in the rockers on daddy’s front porch, shelling peas or peeling apples, as he tried to teach me.

Shelling peas with daddy on his porch

Finally, after a ton of my questions, he said, just read, Joshua 4. You see, my father was a great teacher, but he didn’t just simply give you all the answers. He was a deep thinker and that is what he wanted me to do: think about it, ponder on it, dig for it, and come to know it on my own. Local newspapers had done some articles in the past on the statue, and I dug them up. He had told those reporters, “The Statue is a testimony of my faith. It isn’t meant to be an idol. You don’t worship it, but it gets people to think and do good deeds.” Hmm, Good deeds. Well, I had certainly seen him do many good deeds over the course of my life. Time and time again, I saw my daddy give to others. He was selfless. I don’t recall ever hearing him say he wanted anything for himself. Giving to others was always on his mind. And somehow, he managed to know what their needs were. A friend told me once, “your daddy was like a magnet, you just wanted to be around him.

Daddy had a heart attack in March (2013) and died four months later. I had the privilege of living in his house with him during those four months. During many long nights, when he couldn’t sleep, he talked intently about life, pouring story after story into my heart and life that I will never forget. A few weeks after his death, I was looking through his books and found A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 by Phillip Keller. I could feel my daddy’s big hands on the book as I opened it. Reading this book helped me connect the dots of what daddy had tried to tell me and it gave me a new understanding of The Good Shepherd. I went back and read Joshua 4. This time I really read it with my heart’s ears. Joshua 4 teaches us to set up memorials as a testimony of what God has done and so that our children and others will ask us “what does this mean”? If provides an opportunity to tell others about Jesus – to tell our story. Since 1999 when it was erected, The Good Shepherd Statue has caused much conversation. Some understand it, some don’t. It has certainly fulfilled it’s purpose of setting down stones as memorials according to Joshua 4. Folks from all over the United States stop by to see it and take pictures. The sheep was stolen once, but thanks to some good Samaritans it was returned to it’s place next to The Good Shepherd Statue. Some call it Jesus in a Box. Daddy never really liked that term. He would say, “everyone knows it’s not Jesus, and you cannot put Jesus in a box”. If you are ever traveling along Highway 43 in Samantha, you are welcome to stop and pay a visit. Check in on Facebook. Take pictures and ponder the meaning of The Good Shepherd.

His sheep know His voice.

Ricky Williamson talks to Sheriff’s Deputies after they returned lost sheep to it’s place beside The Good Shepherd Statue

Always keep “The Son” in your eyes.

Written by Becky Williamson-Martin [email protected]

Original printed March 2014 in Druid City Living

Links:

The Good Shepherd Statue at Pawpaw Johns

The Good Shepherd Foundation

The Little Closet Community Food Pantry – Samantha, Alabama

Shepherd Hill Opry

Articles connected to The Good Shepherd Statue

A Note of Thanks

July 4, 2016 / Samantha Living / 0 Comments

I generally don’t like “blanket” thank yous but I’m breaking my own rule. Thanks to everyone for all the phone calls, visits, gifts, songs, texts, cards, food and well wishes for my birthday. It was truly a great day of celebration. I am truly blessed with amazing friends and family. I feel so loved. I used to fib about my age and unlike most women who say they are younger than they are, I would tell folks I was 10 years older so they would think “dang she looks good for that age” LOL. (Yep vanity). But as the years have mounted up it’s hard for me to say I’m 66 so the time has come for me to be honest and honestly I have trouble remembering my real age now. Isn’t that ironic? Fortunately, vanity has faded AND I appreciate more of the real things of life now. SO, as I start day 2 of year 56 I vow to stay in the moment more and capture more of these days that are zooming away at such a fast speed.

I saw a sign in a gas station recently that said “free gas tomorrow”. It might take you a minute to let that sink in. There will never be any free gas at that station because tomorrow will always be today. So the moral of the story – BUY YOUR GAS TODAY!!! The future is simply history of all the todays. Whatever each day brings, whether circumstances are good or not so good, I will give that to My Savior, Jesus Christ – who holds it all in His Hands. All my gifts come from Him – even you, my friend. Happy 4th of July.

Always keep “The Son” in your eyes. Becky Williamson-Martin

Local Sisters Participate in 53rd Alabama State Junior Golf Championship

July 2, 2016 / Samantha Living / 4 Comments

Local golfers and sisters Karlee and Erika Allen, Samantha, Alabama participated in the 53rd Alabama State Junior Championship June 28th-30th at Bent Brook in Bessemer.

Erika Allen, Karlee Allen

Karlee led after the first day of play with a round of three under par 69. After two more rounds and a total of 223 points, she finished 3rd in the 14-15 year old division. After two rounds and tied for first place after the second day, Erika finished the last round with a one over par 73 to win the 12-13 year old division by two strokes.

Karlee attends Northside High School and Erika attends Northside Middle School. The two sisters plus their younger sister Ashlee (who will also attend NMS this upcoming year) are members of the First Tee Program at Ol Colony in Tuscaloosa.

Kay Allen, Guest Contributor, Samantha, Alabama

[email protected]

You Can Thank a Farmer

June 16, 2016 / Samantha Living / 0 Comments

Farming is a huge industry in our community and if you live here or have traveled through, you have found yourself behind a tractor. And, admittedly, some times it can be frustrating. This writer confesses. I mean we usually wait until the very last minute to leave and have no time to spare to get to our destination or frankly we all think our schedules are the most important. Tractors and trucks – such nuisances, right?

But I always recall what my brother Ricky said one time a long time ago about a driver complaining about slow log trucks, “if it wasn’t for log trucks you wouldn’t have any toilet paper to wipe your butt”. Haha. Please excuse the curtness of that. 🙂 Soooo, I always try to remember the same holds true for trucks and tractors. If it were not for them, we would not have the luxury of walking into the Dollar General and conveniently picking up those items that we can’t live with out. “From the fuel that fills your truck, To the coffee in your cup, Don’t thank the corner store, For that early morning rush, Thank a farmer”. Well, I don’t know about you but I couldn’t live without my coffee every morning.

Here’s a great song and video to help us (me included) keep the right prospective about those who devote their lives to making sure ours is more “comfortable.”

Lyrics
From the fuel that fills your truck
To the coffee in your cup
Don’t thank the corner store
For that early morning rush
Thank a farmer

Yeah I think back to that hayfield
Filled with girls and four-wheels
Sneaking off with her for that first time
You can thank a farmer

I still believe in amber waves of grain
Man on his knees praying for rain
That grew this country strong
And keep us moving on
They get tougher as their lives keep gettin’ harder
Oh I think it’s time
We all thank a farmer

From the blacktop roads you ran
That used to be his land
To big cities and small towns
That he built with his two hands
You can thank a farmer

And for this shirt on my back
And these boots on my feet
And them tank top wearin’ country girls
And them old skin-tight bluejeans
I thank a farmer
Yeah, thank a farmer

I still believe in amber waves of grain
Man on his knees praying for rain
That grew this country strong
And keep us moving on
They get tougher as their lives keep gettin’ harder
Yeah I think it’s time
We all thank a farmer

A lot of folks like me still care about the FFA and county fairs
And the folks who really make this world go round
I’d like to thank a farmer.

Sung by: James Wesley

Written by: Josh Thompson and Dustin Lynch

The story behind the song: http://roughstock.com/news/2013/04/15526-story-behind-the-song-james-wesleys-thank-a-farmer/

Always keep “The Son” in your eyes.

Becky Williamson-Martin

Welcome to Samantha Living – A Shared Community Adventure

June 6, 2016 / Samantha Living / 0 Comments

Welcome to Samantha Living. We hope you enjoy our adventures in this wonderful community we share. We will post stories about neighbors, family and friends. Some things that are going on now and some things that are from the past. History teaches us – about life – about our heritage. An old proverb says, Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters. Let’s be historians for the lions. We invite you to join in the conversation. Give us ideas of subject topics to discuss or stories to pursue. We also invite guest contributors. We would love to have you write your own memories or share what you are doing in our wonderful little community in Samantha, Alabama. None of us are getting any younger, you know. And we all have those special community leaders who have impacted our life or we know have contributed to the betterment of our community. We want to hear about them too. Let’s highlight them while they are still with us – while they can enlighten us on life. Email your story to [email protected] Let’s provide something good. With so much negative stuff in our world, a little uplifting story can go a long way. Even stories of struggle that brought healing or goodness to your life can be encouraging to others. Let’s be encouragers! Let’s start now. Check back with us often. We hope to spotlight a family soon and learn about their piece of history in Samantha, Alabama.

Always keep “The Son” in your eyes.

Tag: neighbors

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This article appeared in May 3rd, 2017 Edition of The Northport Gazette. Reprinted with Permission

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A Note of Thanks

Local Sisters Participate in 53rd Alabama State Junior Golf Championship

You Can Thank a Farmer

Welcome to Samantha Living – A Shared Community Adventure

If our heritage and lineage wasn’t important why would God have put all those “begats” in the Bible.

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The Old Cabaniss Store is Only a Memory Now

This story is a follow up to a previous blog “Who Remembers Cabaniss Gro.” Published on June 26, 2017 on Samantha Living.

1963: Cabaniss Grocery in Samantha This rock store stood at the corner of Hwy 43 North and Northside Road in northern Tuscaloosa County. The store replaced one that was once part of the Stagecoach Exchange at what was then called ‘Marcumville’.

By Delbert Reed

Barbee School Reunion Offers a Lesson in History

This article appeared in May 3rd, 2017 Edition of The Northport Gazette. Reprinted with Permission

Good Farming Pays Off for Wilsons

Fourth Generation on the Farm by Lucia Owen (staff writer)

If our heritage and lineage wasn’t important why would God have put all those “begats” in the Bible.

Recent Stories and Articles

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