“Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask
thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee.”
Deuteronomy 32:7

For quite some time now I have been delving into family history.  I’m
not exactly sure when this compelling interest developed, except to say
that it was some years after Uncle Bob died but while Aunt Marye and my
dad were in what might be called a “late prime” of life.  If there is a
reason why I decided to poke around in the past, it is simply that I
grew up in a family that remembered.

In particular, I grew up in a family that told stories.  One day I began
to write down some of the old, familiar tales and to look up a few
things too.  As I said, this process of writing down and looking up has
continued for many years (and shows no sign of stopping anytime soon).
I’m going to tell you some of the things that I have learned about my
family, a typical Southern family in rural early America.  I’m also
going to tell you about Old John, although you will have to wait
awhile—quite awhile—for this part of my account. . . .

At the time of the Revolutionary War, my branch of the Purvis family
lived in Chesterfield County, South Carolina.  This family group
included a Revolutionary War soldier who fought with Francis Marion and
several plantation owners who supplied provisions (pork, mainly) to
Marion’s troops.  After the war—in the early 1800s—some of these South
Carolina Purvises headed west.  I am fairly certain that they traveled
the Federal Road, like so many of the Southern pioneers.  They stopped
off in Clark County, Alabama, for a few years, then pushed on into
Rankin County in southern Mississippi.  My grandfather—Pa Purvis—always
told us that the early settlers came up the Pearl River.  My Dad always
said they traveled by keelboat.  At least, he said he THOUGHT so.

A couple of generations later James and Marina Purvis settled down in
Simpson County.  This is where the tales begin.  Whenever Dad and his
siblings paid a visit to their grandmother, Marina told them about the
hard first days in the Mississippi wilderness.  She told them about
shooting a panther with a muzzleloader when she was only a “half-growed
girl” and about the jug of vinegar her new husband gave her for her
wedding present.  When James Purvis left their small farm to fight (and
die) in the Civil War, Marina had three small children to provide for
and protect—alone.  She didn’t hesitate when she saw some Yankee
soldiers coming down the path to her cabin to “acquire” the precious
stores she had put away for her family—and her mule too, most likely.
She got out her gun and promptly, expertly convinced the Yankees to head
back down the path.

Marina’s son, Joseph Alexander Purvis, and his wife, Mettie Dorothy
Thompson Purvis, acquired land itheir life together in 1881, my grandparents lived in a one-room log
cabin, but soon Pa started work on the house where he and Mettie would
raise their ten children—nine sons and an only daughter.

The outside walls of the farmhouse were constructed of rough-sawed pine
planks, fastened into place with square-headed iron nails (“square
nails”) made by hand by the blacksmith.  The planks for the inside
walls were hand planed and put together with tongue and groove
construction.  The roof was covered with wooden shingles, called “rived
boards” because they were split (“rived”) from wedges of oak or pine
with two cleaving tools, a froe and a mallet.

The family relied on fireplaces for heat and coal oil lamps for light.
The lamps in the sitting room—the “parlor lamps”—had small shades that
fit over the glass chimneys.  When my father was about nine or ten years
old, as he recalled, Pa bought some “newfangled” (and decidedly upscale)
lamps.  They were called Aladdin lamps because they gave a bright white
light and were never smoky or smelly, as regular oil lamps were.  (It
was a magical thing.)

There was a well at one side of the house and a cistern (which collected
rain water) at the other side.  The side porch had a washstand with a
bucket of water for washing up.  The family took their weekly baths in a
tin washtub.  As for that other matter of concern, there was a “little
house” out back.  As the years rolled by, this necessary, convenient
place (boasting two compartments instead of the usual one) became a
subject of considerable pride for family storytellers.  They called it
the “two-holer!”

Most of the stories that have been handed down in the Purvis family are
stories of growing up in this fondly remembered house, which is standing
today still (though just barely).  Everyone calls the place the “Old
Farm.”  My favorite tales of the Farm—the stories that I asked for again
and again when I was a child—were the ones that had horses in them.  I
liked these stories best, I think, because they took me back to a very
different world, a very different childhood.  In my suburban
neighborhood, I could not saddle up my horse and gallop away with my
friends.  Nor did visitors to our home arrive by horse and buggy.

When my father was a child, he listened for the sound of horses’ hooves
on the long dirt road that led to the Old Farm.  Who was coming?  There
were always lots of interesting possibilities.  On a summer Saturday
afternoon, after the work on the farm was done, Pa might bring a block
of ice back from town in the wagon.  That meant homemade ice cream on
Saturday night, with lots of friends and family to share.  On the fall
morning when the hogs would be butchered, Uncle George and Aunt Dora
Thompson and Uncle Thomas and Aunt Virgie Buckley would arrive in their
buggies, to help with the work.

The country doctor came down the road on horseback whenever anyone had
need of him.  Although his credentials would look rather thin today, he
was equal to any task that was set before him.  According to my dad,
this good and faithful servant flapped his elbows as he rode.  As he
rode out the gate at the Farm, the Purvis children would run behind his
horse, flapping their elbows in gleeful mockery.  They made sure the
doctor didn’t see them, though.  They made sure Pa Purvis didn’t see
them either.  Above all, they made certain that their father (who had
strong views about respecting one’s elders) was well out of viewing
range.

The children attended the Oakdale School, a one-room schoolhouse with a
smaller room at the side.  This small room was the primer, where the
little kids had their lessons.  My father and his siblings walked to
school most days.  When it was raining or unusually cold, or when there
were other compelling circumstances, Pa would hitch the horse to the
buggy and take the children to school.  On one occasion, my dad had one
of these “special” buggy rides to school, and he never forgot it.When he was in his first year at Oakdale, the primer blew away in a
ferocious storm, and the little kids blew away in it.  The school was
closed for a couple of months while the men of the community pitched in
to repair it.  When it reopened, Dad was appalled to learn that he was
expected to return to this unsafe place.  When Pa could not be deterred,
when he hitched up the horse and delivered my father to the primer to
resume his studies, Dad set out for home right away.  But to no avail.
The moment that Pa spotted his truant son coming down the road to the
Farm, he hitched the horse to the buggy for a second time that morning
and took Dad back to school, pointing out, as they drove along, a few
things about the importance of a good education.  (Education was another
subject that Pa Purvis felt strongly about.)

When the Purvis sons finished school and were preparing to make their
start in life, Pa gave each of them a horse.  He also helped them earn a
little cash by “loaning” them a small plot of ground on which they could
plant a cotton crop.

The day before he left home, Tom hitched his horse to his new buggy
(purchased with his cotton money) and went to the train station to pick
up the iron and the ironing board that he had ordered from the Sears and
Roebuck catalog.  Marye was on the front porch of the house, watching
her older brother as he came back from the station, with his ironing
board sticking out the sides of his buggy.

Tom was just about home when something spooked his horse.  It was a real
high-spirited horse, and, according to Marye, it took off like a shot.
It threw Tom in a ditch, wrecking his buggy and polishing off the
ironing board too.  The next day Tom headed out into the world with only
his horse, his iron, and a few personal possessions (such as clothing).

Old John was Bob’s horse and the star of the storytelling show—along
with Bob, of course, who also had considerable star quality.  Perhaps it
would be more accurate to say that John and Bob shared top billing.
Although Bob’s tales were decidedly “tallish,” they were always very big
hits.

According to Bob, John was a very handsome horse.  One day this handsome
horse John fell in love with the prettiest girl in town.  When Bob rode
John into town, he had to tie him up very tightly to the hitching post.
If John got loose, Bob would know exactly where to find him.  John would
be standing outside his girlfriend’s house, waiting patiently for a
glimpse of his beloved.

Like John, Bob had some courting to do as well.  On Saturday night, he
would saddle up his handsome horse and pay a call on his best girl.

As you would expect, courting was a little different then.  After Sunday
services a young couple might walk together to the spring at Pleasant
Hill Church and enjoy a drink of cold spring water.  On Sunday
afternoon, while they were still decked out in their finest attire, a
group of young people would go to the railroad station in town and walk
on the railroad tracks.  But on Saturday night the options for romance
were even more limited, for a young lady from a good family would never
be allowed to go out her front door—alone and after dark—in the company
of a young man.  So on Saturday night, a young couple sat together in
the front room of her house, hoping to work in a little sweet talk when
nobody was listening.

Somebody usually was.  And that was why Bob always took along his
whispering stick when he saddled up his horse John and paid a courting
call on Saturday night.  As the story goes, the whispering stick was a
long, narrow stick that Bob had hollowed out from one end to the other.
His girl would sit in her place at one end of the davenport and hold the
stick up to her ear while Bob sat in his place at the opposite end and
whispered to her.

At eight o’clock, when the courting ended—at the insistent request of
the young lady’s pa—Bob and John went home.

“Tell me about YOUR horse,” I asked my father one day, when Uncl“I never got MY horse,” Dad informed me.

He joined the Army when he was not quite eighteen years old.  He wanted
to go, and Pa signed the enlistment papers when he and Mother Purvis
could not persuade Dad to stay on the farm and finish school, as his
older brothers had done.

This part of my father’s story always included strong, heartfelt remarks
upon the folly of youthful haste—sure to produce lingering regrets—and
the extreme importance of a good education, a lesson learned a little
too late.  But the tale recounted adventures too.

It was 1919.  The first world war had just ended.  Dad cleaned up
battlefields in France and Germany and was a guard on a supply train
that took provisions to the people of Russia, who were suffering
terribly in the wake of the Bolshevik revolution.  Shortly thereafter,
he marched in the Armistice Day parade in Paris.

“But I never got my horse,” he repeated.

Although many years had passed, he always sounded a little sad whenever
he told about it.