Every trip I ever as a child was big to me. Getting from one place to another was either on foot, by bus or in someone else’s vehicle. We didn’t have a car until I was ten.
When we went to Pa & Ma Davis’, we caught a Greyhound Bus after Daddy closed the store he managed on Saturday night (Yellow Front Store in Hamilton, Alabama). We would get off the bus at Ergap which is now Guwin, Alabama. We walked from there to their house which was some distance. Daddy would carry Billy Joe and Mother would carry me when we were small and tired. When we arrived, Pa and Ma were always waiting up for us and Ma had left cornbread in the warming oven of the wood stove so it would still be warm. She knew about what time we would get there so Pa would have brought in sweet milk for Mother, Billy, and me and butter milk for Daddy to have bread and milk before going to bed. The following morning, we were up and off to church at Zion Missionary Baptist church out from Winfield. Pa had two mares that pulled the farm wagon and we all rode in the wagon to church where we were met warmly and enjoyed singing and preaching. Mrs. Berryhill played the pump organ and Brother Bobo would preach. It was a long service but nobody was in a hurry to leave afterward. If Brother and Mrs. Bobo were going home with us for dinner, we would ride back in the wagon to get the dinner (prepared before we left for church) on the table before the preacher, and whoever else was coming, arrived. It was customary that certain deacons and their families would go where the preacher went.
Now, dinner was served differently then than now. Now, children each first, back then men, then ladies, then children. That meant that unless Ma had stuck back a chicken leg or pullybone, there might not be a lot for the children to eat. At any rate, we had a wonderful time.
We would go back home Sunday afternoon on the Greyhound Bus. The trips to my grandparents’ home was not a frequent event.
When I was seven and my brother Billy Joe was nine, Daddy took us to Memphis, Tennessee from Hamilton, Alabama to buy Animal Feed for his general store, Pollard and Davis. He went in their big truck and it seemed to take a long time to get there. When we finally arrived at the Feed Supply, the truck ‘broke down’. I’ve no clue what was wrong, just knew we could not go home. We had no money to find a hotel. Daddy met a man at the supply place who only knew Daddy from the supply company but he invited us to spend the night at his home while the truck was being repaired.
So, with an afternoon to ‘waste’, Daddy was able to take us to the zoo! Wow, what a treat. I’m not sure how we got to the zoo, maybe the man loaned us his car? At any rate, we had a good time. That night when the man got off work, he took us to his home to spend the night. His wife had cooked supper and we used an indoor bathroom. Another WOW. We didn’t have that at home. We walked down a path to ‘use’ the toilet and took a bath in a wash pan. I had a bath in a real bathtub. And, the lady had a small house dress that wasn’t too big after she pinned it up in the back for me to sleep in. That night, there was a really BIG explosion nearby. The next morning at breakfast, it was discovered that a gas station had blown up that night when we heard the big bang. It had shaken the house so even I knew it was something big.
We went back home as soon as the repaired truck was loaded and I had acquired a pet; I was going to take a pet pigeon to Hamilton. That was not a normal thing to have in Hamilton. I’m certain that folks in Hamilton were thankful the pigeon pooped on me and I threw it out the window. (I’ve noticed in visiting Hamilton in more recent years that someone else apparently had the same idea that I had and got all the way home with their ‘pet’, the pigeon population exploded. It WASN’T me Folks.)
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