The Red Tailed Hawk

This has been a sad day in the backyard.  Early this morning while my soul-mate was having coffee on the patio, a red tailed hawk that lives in the neighborhood came swooping down and feasted on a newborn mocking bird. No matter how hard the parents fought, they could not keep the hawk from its fine meal.

Of course, this really put a quite on the birds in the backyard and for the rest of the morning, there was hardly a bird to be seen.  Usually, there are close to a hundred birds twittering around at the feeders and bath enjoying the surroundings that we have made for them.  Maybe tomorrow they will come out of hiding and keep us entertained again, but for today the hawk has made "a sad day" for us, and a scary day for the birds.

If you would like to take a look at some of our bird friends, go to:

http://picasaweb.google.com/don.kj5si/BackyardBirds#

How Things Have Changed

Back in 1954, when I was a private in the United States Army, I was stationed at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. And we had an apartment in Columbia, the adjoining town.  Being a private, I did not get many benefits, but did occasionally get a weekend pass. 

One weekend my wife and I traveled the 500 miles from Columbia to Coalfire, Alabama, our home community.  The road was a two lane winding road that went through the center of all the cities and towns along the way and usually took us about 12 hours in the 1950 Plymouth with onion skin tires on it, to make the trip.

We left Columbia about 6 p.m. on Friday afternoon, and arrived at my home about 6 a.m. Saturday morning.  After a nice home visit Saturday and Sunday, we left heading back to Columbia around 2 p.m. and arrived back in Columbia around 2 a.m.  After a couple of hours sleep I had to get up and go to the base to report for duty at 7 a.m.

During the morning hours I received a call from my Dad, telling me that my favorite Uncle had died in his sleep and he told me that he had requested an emergency pass for me to attend the funeral.  It was about 4 p.m. when I got the message that the pass had been granted, and I immediately left the base for my apartment to pick-up my wife and head back to Coalfire.  We got packed and left Columbia about 6 p.m. and knew that we both were so sleepy that it was dangerous for us to be on the road, but knew we had to go anyway.

Somewhere around 15 miles out of Columbia, we came up on a hitchhiker.  He was a white male in his mid twenties.  I pulled over and ask him where he was going, and he said he lived in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and was going home.  I told him if he would drive I would give him a lift to his house.  It was a good deal for us in 1954 as my wife and I immediately went to sleep with him driving, and we slept all the way to Tuscaloosa.   He woke me up in front of his house, and told me thanks for the ride. 

No way, in this day and time would I think of doing something like that.  That is how things have changed since the fifties.  I often think back of how things were back then and how people trusted people and have wondered what happened to make things get so bad.  The only thing I can think of that would bring such a drastic change in morals is the supreme courts decision “separation of church and state”.  In my mind, that sentence which is NOT in the constitution, simply meant that there would not be a state or country religion forced on the people.  That’s pretty obvious when you see that the founders had the ten commandants placed in and on many of the government building.  I think that the teachers not being able to teach any Christian values to the children these days is what brought all this on.  That is a terrible change to make, just to make a few towel heads and other atheists feel comfortable.  That is my opinion, what’s yours?

POTUS

After watching a good bit of the Republican Southern Leadership Conference held in New Orleans this week-end, I came to some conclusions on my own as to who the next President of the United States should be.

I know that the straw poll picked Romney and Paul with Palin and Gingrich close behind, but I saw a different leader.  "Haley Barbour",  Governor of the State of Mississippi.  Governor Barbour having served as Chairman of the Republican Party for several years established himself as as a leader of all the people, and became familier with all of the problems facing "we the people" during his term. Not like Obama, who never ran anything, Governor Barbour as had many years of running a state government and has done it with excellent results. But the biggest plus for him is, HE HAS COMMON SENSE to go along with his educational sense.

Well, thats my opinion and I wonder what yours?  Leave a comment.

Four Nurses & Me

Several years ago, I did some typing for some of the students at Mississippi State University for Women. One such case, there were four nursing students that had me type their papers for them, and they said they needed them the next Friday afternoon. Which I told them I could manage.

On that Friday morning while brushing my partial, it broke in two pieces.  I immediately went to the Dentist to get them repaired, and he told me he could not have them ready before Monday.  

When the girls called to see about a time to come over to proof read and pick up the papers, I told them what had happened and that we would have to postpone them getting the papers until Monday afternoon. They then told me that they had to turn the papers in that afternoon.  So, I told them to come on over, but if they started laughing at my looks, we would discontinue the proof reading and they could take them as they were.

I decided to tie a handkerchief around my face to eliminate their seeing my empty mouth, and when they arrived we went right to work, two girls on each side of me at the computer.  About half way through proofing the article, the doorbell rang and one of the girls on the outside said she would get the door. Well, it was my pastor and when he came in, I had forgotten about having the handkerchief on my face.  He ask one question and then immediately left.  It was after he left that I realized that I had the white handkerchief on my face.

I caught up with him the next day, and explained why things were like they were.  We had a good laugh and he told me that this was going to be a chapter in his book when he wrote it.

Possum Town

To enlighten some of you as to why I am "The Bishop of Possum Town" instead of "The Bishop of something else", maybe the picture will do the job.

I understand that one of the early settlers of this area, Spirus Roach, who came to this area around 1817, and built a tavern, was an old gray, bent over man that reminded the local Indians of an opossum so they began to call the settlement Possum Town.  And that is how it got its name.  Actually, there are quite a few possums in this area so; the above could be an old tale. Anyway, in 1821 the North Carolina and Virginia immigrants that followed the original settlers to this area to grow cotton on the Black Prairie fertile soil showed their dislike for the name Possum Town, and renamed it Columbus.  It is also called "The Friendly City".

So,  living here, and having the name of Bishop, I naturally should be the "Bishop of Possum Town".  At least that is the way I see it.  If you see it different, please leave a comment.

Ham Radio

Most of my ham radio friends have had their licenses much longer than me.  I am a relatively young ham, having received my ticket in March of 1993.  I did have a novice license back in 1965, but was unable to advance, and it expired in 1966.

Then in the later part of 1993, almost thirty years later, a local ham persuaded me to try for it again, stating that the test was much easier, and that you did not have to draw diagrams or schematics of the different radio items.  Since I took my test , the written test are even easier to pass, and now you do not have to take a morris code test at all.

I have really enjoyed this 17 years in the hobby, and have met some really fine people.  Some I have met in person, and some I only know from talking to them on the radio during one of the two times we meet each day to chat. These chats are called QSO's, and somewhere between two of us and a dozen or so meet each day from 6:30am until 8:00am and again from 6:00pm until 6:50pm.

Our group is very conservative and we do a lot of talking about politics.  I'm surprised that some of them have not ran for something. It may happen.  Also, we do discuss our radio equipment and antenna's quite a bit.  Of course the conversations can run about anything anyone wants to bring up.  Long live ham radio.

The Ghosts of Coal Fire

This little story is about a village named Coal Fire, in Pickens, County, Alabama. It’s located on U.S. highway 82, East of the point where Coldfire Creek crosses under the highway. The village is named after the creek that runs by it, even though the spelling was different. Over the years, the spelling of the creek's name was changed to Coal Fire, which is how the village name is spelled. The creek rises in the Southwest corner of Fayette County, and runs Southwestwardly through Lamar County, and Pickens County, emptying into the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway about three miles North of Pickensville.

There is a story as to the way this creek got its name. “In the early days of settler's coming to this area of Alabama from Tennessee, the actual date being unknown, it is said that some immigrants in mid-winter, forded this stream on a very cold day. They were cold when they rode their horses up to the creek, even colder as they rode through the water, but became warm after they got across it. Going through the cold water produced a reaction and warmth, or heat was the consequence. They, therefore called it cold-fire”.
But, this village was not always called Coal Fire. As it was told to me, it had its beginning, when some of the early settlers begin calling it Fundee, after one of the first settlers in that area, named Uriah Funderburk. The date of this happening is not known and no one knows just when the name was changed to Coal Fire.

Another family that settled there very early was the Bonners. They settled the area near the overhead bridge that spanned the M & O Railroad. They received a land grant deed for their property signed by The President of the United States of America.

Another early settler there was my Grandfather Warren Samuel Davidson, who was married to Martha Jane Bonner they moved to Coal Fire from Oakman, Alabama via Franklin County, Mississippi where he lived for a couple of years. He bought one acre of land around 1877 near where the late Buck Bonner's home was, and that is where he built a shack, and raised his first family. He lived there until around 1902, when he moved his family to Stafford, Arizona because his wife Martha Jane became ill with tuberculosis and she needed to be in the dry air of the Arizona dessert. She died in Stafford AZ in 1904 and soon after, Mr. Davidson moved back to Coal Fire and brought all his children with him except for one son and one daughter who had married and stayed out West.

On March 4, 1909, he married my Grandmother, Annie Lou Estes, and then on March 23, 1910, he purchased 33 acres of land in the heart of the village from D. H. Vail, and L. C. Vail. The neighbors surrounding him at this time were, Jim Sanders who owned the land to the South, John Bonner who owned the land to the East, and H. Blackledge who owned the land to the West. The North side of the land was bordered by the public road. The M & O Railroad, which was completed in 1898, ran through the land he purchased and divided it with approximately 60 feed being south of the railroad. He immediately began to clear and farm this land, and did so until his death in 1931. There was a sawmill located on the West side of the dirt road that turned south toward Carrollton, on the north side of the railroad, that belonged to a Mr. R. G. Jones. Sam Davidson worked at this sawmill some of the time when he was not farming his land. It was at this sawmill that Ben Davidson, son of Sam Davidson let a log roll on his leg and crush the bone. He had to have it amputated, and he wore a peg leg from then on. There was another sawmill on down that dirt road across the railroad tracks, on the East side that was owned by a Mr. Blackman.

It was told to me in my childhood, that the people of the area wanted a post office, but they could not get one for the settlement named Fundee, for whatever reason, so they had to change the name. Just who was responsible for naming it Coal Fire is not known, but they did get their post office. For several years, it was located in the commissary building of Dill & Curtis Lumber Co, which was located at the top of the hill on highway 82 at the junction of the road that went south to Carrollton. A gentlemen named John T. Abrams, was appointed Postmaster. He had moved to Coal Fire from Reform, where he had worked at Stringfellows General Mercantile Store. Mr. Abrams, moved into a new house that Dill & Curtis Lumber Co., had built for him. It was located next to the house that the late Bruce Darling lived in. Mr. Abrams was the only Postmaster that Coal Fire, Alabama ever had. Later Mr. Abrams built his own store just south of the commissary, and moved the post office to his new location. It remained there until Dill & Curtis moved their sawmill operation out of the area, at which time Mr. Abrams purchased the commissary building and moved back into it. He operated a general mercantile store at this location until his death in 1945. Between the commissary building and Mr. Abrams new store was the offices of a Dr. Smothers, who was the company doctor for Dill & Curtis. Across the dirt road from Dr. Smothers office, stood the offices for Dill & Curtis. I mention here that this was a dirt road, so at this point, I should also say that highway 82 was at that time a dirt road that wound around every hill and by every little shack of a house in both directions, toward Reform, to the East, and Columbus, Mississippi to the West. It was not until the late 30's that highway 82 was built and later paved. Convict labor was used to build the highway, and a detention camp was set up near McShan to keep the prisoners in at night. It was because of the widening of the dirt road in 1937-38, to build highway 82, that several of the structures, in the village, had to be moved back to allow for the right of way, including the house my Grandfather had built. As a child, it seemed to take half a day to travel in the old T-model Ford the 30 some odd miles to Columbus, and with the road turning as it did with all those curves, it also made a child nauseated, which was no fun. And even though there may have been a ice cream cone or candy bar waiting at the end of the journey, it was still a hard decision to make to go on the trip.

Getting back to the story, Mr. Dill, one of the owners of the lumber company never moved to the Coal Fire community. He continued to live in Tuscaloosa. However Mr. N. S. Curtis, did live there, and his home was located on the south side of what is now highway 82, on the west side of the creek. The sawmill at that time had a railroad spur running from the M & O Railroad north to the sawmill, and then continuing on north for several miles. This was the means they had for getting logs out of the woods and delivered down to the sawmill. Some of the concrete foundations for the sawmill are still to be found north of the new four-lane highway that runs through Coal Fire today.

The house where Bruce Darling lived, and another house built exactly the same that sit next to it, belonged to the mill. A Mr. Howell, who was the sawyer for the mill lived in the house Bruce Darling lived in, and as stated earlier, Mr. Abrams lived in the house next to it. Mr. Abrams built a house on the North side of the Reform-Columbus road and then a Mr. McIntyre, who was the saw-filer for the mill moved into his mill house.

Mentioning Bruce Darling, he and Robert Oliver were hitch-hiking through the area in the early 1930’s on their way from Wyoming and decided to try to get a job at the mill. Both were hired, but Robert Oliver only stayed a short time and then moved on, but Bruce Darling continued to work there for a while, and married a local girl, Mamie Burgess, daughter of Lonzo and Lula Burgess who had their home just south of Blackman's sawmill. Bruce later went to work for the steel mill industry in the Birmingham area, but continued to live in Coal Fire and commuted to work from there.

Dill & Curtis's mill prospered for several years, and provided employment for many of the residents of the area, some walking as many as 3 to 4 miles to work each day. Just a few of the employees were:

     Tommy T. Sparks                                   Tony Davidson
     Bunyan Burgess (Office manager)            Otis Burgess
     Webb Hester                                          Bruce Darling
     Robert Oliver                                          Walter Williams
     Fletcher Bell                                            Bob Bell

The community was thriving so, that the residents decided they needed a school house, and Uriah Funderburk and Sam Davidson, my Grandfather each gave one acre of land to the state for the purpose of a school house. This schoolhouse stood several years until it burned down. (I was told that some boys were smoking in the back of the two room building and the fire started from there). The schoolhouse was rebuilt after that and school continued to be taught there for a period of time until the students were transferred to the Reform School. During the years school was taught there, the building was used for church services on Sundays. One Sunday each month a preacher would come and hold preaching service. He usually came by horse and buggy, or sometime on the doodlebug, (the small passenger train that ran through there). On the other Sundays of the month, there would only be Sunday School held. In 1940, 13 local citizens got together and formed Coal Fire Baptist Church. These charter members were: Judge Iverson Bonner, his wife Blanch Bonner, Mamie Darling, Vera Bonner, Linnis Bonner, Pauline Bates, Linton & Burton Burgess, Tom Collier, his wife Carrie Collier, Lynwood Bryant and Mr. & Mrs. J. L. Bryant. The state deeded the property to the deacons of Coal Fire Baptist Church on November 20, 1945. Mr. Bunyan Burgess had the school house rebuilt after the fire destroyed the original building, and then donated that building to Coal Fire Baptist Church, when the state deeded the land to them.

In 1927, Mr. Dill & Mr. Curtis, decided to dismantle and move the sawmill to Florida. When they did , Mr. Bunyan Burgess and also his son and daughter-in-law, Otis and Clair Burgess moved to Florida with it. They didn't remain there very long, and came back to Coal Fire where Otis operated the old mercantile store for several years and then built a new cement block building that he moved the store into, and tore down the old wooden building.

 

Sunday School meeting at Coalfire School

Dill & Curtis Sawmill

Mr. & Mrs. Funderburk

Three Coalfire Neighbors

Mrs. Nell (Bell) Keating