Living on the West End (Mill Village): The school year ends
By Bill Shepard
The last day of the school year had reached its end!
It was over, done, behind me! The year that had begun last September had finally become history. Oh happy day! It was time to move on.
On that last day of May, I had arrived home from school and handed Mama my* report card. She immediately looked on the back side of the report card and read the words, “Promoted to next grade level.”
Mama smiled and placed the report card inside her large apron pocket. She would show it to Dad when he arrived home from the mill where he worked. I knew that Mama was pleased.
“Go to your room and change your clothes,” she said. I had three pairs of overalls, one pair that I wore to school, one pair for church (when I went) and another for play and work in the garden.
Halfway to my room, I turned to Mama and the words I had been wanting to say came out: “Mama, can I go barefoot?” Before she had time to answer, I followed with the words, “This is the last day of May!” Nothing but silence followed and that was a good answer.
Inside my room, I pulled off my good pair of overalls; good meant there were no patches on them and they were not faded. I dressed in my play pair and went outside. Sitting on the back porch doorsteps, I pulled off my shoes and placed them aside. I slid a step closer to the ground and allowed my feet to touch the good earth.
The lines from one of my favorite poems began to play through my mind. They seemed to be speaking my own feelings. I had heard my teacher read them many times and even read them myself:
“Cheerily then my little man
“Live and laugh as boyhood can
“Every evening from thy feet
“Shall the cool wind kiss the heat.
“All too soon these feet must hide
“In the prison cells of pride.
“Lose the freedom of the sod,
“Like a colt’s for work be shod.”
— “Barefoot Boy,” Longfellow
As my feet touched the cool earth, I relived the words over and over again.
I ran around the house and back to the steps and sat down. I felt a pang of pity for all the boys who had never had a like experience! Ah, to be a boy again!
Three full months lay ahead; three full months and a week! I would squeeze every ounce of pure delight from them.
Mama had her own rules as to what her children could and could not do. She had her own way of enforcing those rules. I headed in the direction of Dad’s car shed.
That was where I had left my fishing cane at the end of last year’s fishing season. I would need to replace the black flax line with a new one. Might as well add a new hook, sinker and cork.
Any day now I would be visiting my favorite fishing spots along Swift Creek. I knew that Mama would be hesitant about allowing me to go alone inside the murky swampland, but I knew that in the end I would win! I had gone through the process of persuasion every year since I was big enough to go alone.
Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn had his Mississippi River to explore and I had my Swift Creek!
There was hardly a space along the muddy banks of the shallow stream that I had not left my footprints buried deep into the black mud. Seldom did I meet another person, nor did I want to! This was my world, mine alone. Of course the creatures of the wild were there and made their presence known when they so desired.
The long black moccasins were plentiful and I feared them the most. I kept a watchful eye for them and avoided any close contact with them.
I had known them to eat small fish off my stringer that I kept staked inside the water near where I would be sitting. My eyes glued upon my cork bobbing up and down atop the almost still water, my mind in the treetops overhead watching a squirrel at play, the intruder would slip ever so quietly along the bank and eat my catch from the stringer.
I respected the creatures of the swamp and kept in mind that this was their world. I was the intruder!
I would return to this very spot many more times before the school doors opened again. This was just the beginning. The summer days were ahead!
Soon I would go in search of work in the nearby farmers’ fields.
I learned how to plow the soil by holding the plow-stock as the big brown mule pulled the plow point through the packed earth. Soon the soil would be soft and ready for the seed to be buried. I could earn as much as 50 cents for a day’s work in the fields.
As the early and late days of spring deepened into summer, the seed planted earlier in the good earth would bring forth the harvest. I would find work in helping to gather the farmers’ crops. First there was tobacco, then the corn, and then the fields would turn white with cotton!
All crops were gathered by hand. I knew the farmers and they knew me. I found work easily year after year.
By the time the summer was winding down, I would have earned enough money by working on the farms to have purchased my textbooks for the following year. There were no free textbooks in those days!
I would also have added a few pieces to my wardrobe for the coming school year. A good pair of overalls could be purchased for as little as 49 cents and a matching blue shirt for 29 cents, both at B.C. Moore’s on the town square. I might even have a few nickels put away in my money bank (a tin snuff box). The Darlington County Fair would arrive in October and leave me bankrupt!
I followed the above schedule year after year until I was old enough for work at the mill. The lessons I learned were more valuable than the money!