Sue Dickerson, a cousin, is a long time friend. I grew up with her dad, Albert Dickerson, who also had a military career with the US Navy. This letter describes for my cousin how life once was.
Sue, it was Jesse Justus, my grandfather, who lived to 93 years, who had the syrup mill. It was by the spring just below our house.
He and Dad, Neal Justus, grew a field of cane each year. I learned to guide stalks into the grinders while the horse walked round and round at the end of a long beam. The syrup ran down a pipe into a huge barrel, then into a vat with divided channels about a foot wide. It took real skill to cook the cane just right to form a thick syrup but they knew how to do it. The womenfolk, Mother (Durell) and Mama (Lela), also worked to turn out fine syrup. Enough syrup cane was grown to sell some for cash money. No doubt some of the cane ended up in moonshine stills as sugar was scarce during the World War II years. If one drank too much of the raw cane juice an outhouse was nearby! It was propped up over a steep bank over a deep gulley. I never did trust that outhouse much.
Mother’s wash place was on level ground between the syrup mill and the stream that ran out of our wonderful spring under big poplar trees. I loved to cool off in summer by lying on a big rock slab where the water ran under and thru a springhouse at that time. I was told the spring was no doubt used by the Indians and our garden nearby turned up a lot of shards and arrowheads. I had a shoe box full of artifacts like that and a stone ahead. We found in the creek a round black ball as big as a cannon ball that we had tested and it was made of graphite! Where was the graphite mine? Another find was a huge stone hollowed out to pound grain into meal. Papa Jesse used it for years to keep water in for his flock of sheep. After I left for a career in the Air Force for over 20 years all the wonderful artifacts disappeared! I heard by grapevine telegraph that some young folks sold the items after the old folks died and one of my aunts moved to town.
When I was reared and spent my first 18 years in the valley our home never was locked! There was no stealing, even in the hard depression years that lasted into WWII. The main reason we got out of the depression was not Roosevelt’s policies – which extended the depression some say – but rather WWII and the “Greatest Generation.”
Before I left home, I learned to plow a two-horse team with a turning plow. I was so proud of that first day and remember the details. An early spring day and a large number of robins ran under my heels as I plowed, grabbing for fat worms and white grubs that were turned up. Papa watched me go round one time and left me and the horses alone! He said the horses would teach me! I often worked with Papa Jesse as Dad was away working on dams on the Tennessee River and old folks, women and us boys worked the fields and milked the cows. I didn’t like milking cows and brother Norris did so we traded jobs. I got all the wood for stove and fireplace, and he milked the cows and fed the hogs when Dad was away.
I knew an age when the groundwork of making the United States the great super power was underway. Certain leaders, politicians and business moguls get the credit. However, it was the young men and women growing up in the Depression and WW II eras that went forth to make America the super power and fight a great war on multiple fronts around the world. I did my share of serving our nation in the Air Force on many posts in our country, then was in Korean War at age 20, then three years in the Philippines, and finally a year in the Vietnam War. I am a veteran and my desire is always to lift up our active troops and their families, and the veterans.
We have a great task today! Our country must return to its greatness! What I mean, we must have leaders and citizens willing to obey the Constitution and do the sometimes hard things to remain safe and strong, and always to put our freedom first and see the right leaders are elected or appointed. We have forgotten or neglect those eternal principles that makes America shine like a city on the hill! Americans! Let us again unite and stand on the ramparts in defense of liberty and justice for all.
