Directly following the Civil War, a Democrat named Nathan Bedford Forrest started a militia known as the KKK and began fighting U.S. Soldiers in an attempt to start another war. The longest and bloodiest battles were fought in northeastern Arkansas. And, yes, the reference to Forrest in Forrest Gump was true. Except the part about Forrest being related to Forrest. And thank God I'm not related, either!! I mentioned the Democrat part because I think it's a telling example of our country's political history. The Republican Party wanted freedom and equal rights for everyone--slaves and women included. The Democrats really did not agree. They HATED Lincoln for insisting that all men should be equal. The KKK was a militia, not so much a lynch mob. The battles went on for a long time after the end of the Civil War, hindering the rebuilding of the South.
However, my family's history in the area is an interesting one. My aunt recently researched our lineage and she traced family all the way back to the Revolutionary War. She also found that a good amount of the land in Tennessee that is now the location of Memphis belonged to our family. In Memphis, there is a street, a pond, and a park named for my family. Gragg Park. Gragg Street. Yep, Gragg. Thornton is an acquired name for me. The place where I was born is about an hour from Memphis. My brother's elementary school class went to the Memphis Zoo for a field trip once.
I remember being surrounded by farms and fields in one place we lived while there. I also remember another home we rented, which was situated between a railroad track and a highway. That was Farrville. The highway was at the edge of the front yard, and the railroad track was at the edge of the back yard. Talk about cheap rent!
We witnessed both truck accidents and train accidents. We had a goat for a pet. There were five of us crammed into a two-bedroom house. If we had my dad's family over (BBQ or whatever) the place spilled over with people, it was so tiny. One time, my uncle took so long in the bathroom that I finally grabbed an empty Gatorade bottle (glass back then) and used it. Hey, I was three. I had to GO.
I have a lot of random memories from Arkansas, and they go all the way back to when I was younger than two years old. Most people can't remember that far, I don't know why I can. My sister is two and I can recall when my mom was pregnant with her. Aaaah, the salad days. It was just my brother and I, and we didn't have to share toys. Not with HER, anyway....
I remember when this photo was taken:
That's my brother wearing a gunbelt and a baby's stocking cap. He pretty much dresses the same today.
I remember when my brother was swinging on our tire swing, and the big thick rope broke. He slammed into the ground and broke a tooth. Bloody lip. Very alarming.
I also remember when my sister had a Trencher arm fall on her and it broke her leg. A Trencher is a piece of heavy equipment with a 15 foot arm on the front, used for digging HUGE ditches. It has blades that rotate on the arm, much like a giant chainsaw. My sister was walking past it at the shop where our dad worked, and the Trencher arm malfunctioned just as she got under it. Fell right on her.
I remember the tornadoes we'd get in the spring, once we had to take shelter in the storm cellar. It had a trap door behind the house, we climbed in there and spent the night. The next day we went into town and the place looked like a pile of match sticks.
I also remember the size of the grasshoppers. They were enormous. So were the tree frogs that would stick themselves to our front windows at night. The snakes were huge, and EVERYWHERE. The toads were large enough to eat. And we did just that. They taste like a smoke-flavored chicken.
I remember we had chickens, and periodically my dad would whack one with the axe and we'd have dead chicken feet to run around the yard with. Well also we'd have fresh chicken for dinner. Not too many people even know what that tastes like.
We always had a garden, with HUGE crops. Arkansas has a very dark rich soil. I remember the eggplants were giant, and the okra was quite plentiful. We had okra all the time, but we never pronounced it correctly. We were taught by our dad that it was Oak-ree. WRONG!!! You know I just recently made myself start pronouncing it right. And I don't know how long it took me before I found out that grape tomatoes were not called tommy toes. Gee, thanks Daddy. Parents out there, it is NOT FUNNY to teach your kids how to talk like that!!!
We moved from Arkansas to the midwest in the middle of my kindergarten year. I talked funny, I got teased a lot for it. For the life of me I can't remember anything that I HAVEN'T been teased about! But my brother and I learned very quickly to lose the heavy slow Arkansas accent so we could fit in a little better.
If only we could've figured out how to dress a little less funny....
