Brother Pop, who was about 16, and I were out looking for a horse that got out of the pasture and wandered off from our farm near Gadsden, Alabama. It was a bright, clear winter day, but cold. There was ice in the fields and ice hanging from tree limbs. I was a boy, about eight year old, and I was freezing.
In the middle of a field of corn stubble we walked up on what looked like a corn crib but was, in fact, a one-room shack. Smoke was coming out of a stove pipe. Pop decided to knock and see if whoever lived there would let us in, let us warm up.
There were two people inside, a boy about Pop’s age and girl, younger, still in bed. She was wearing a nightgown with long sleeves. There was a quilt on the bed which she had pulled up to her chin.
Pop made small talk with the boy, we stood near their stove and warmed up, and then we left.
Comparatively speaking, Pop and I lived in a mansion, a big, white, three-story farmhouse. I said to Pop, How would you like to live like that? or words to that effect.
“It wouldn’t be so bad,” he said.
It was years before I understood what he meant.
Coming Monday: Did You Say ‘Crip’ School?
