[Granville-Hough] 7 May 2009 - 23 July 2005 - Loverly Letters
Trustees and Executors for Granville W. Hough
gwhough at oakapple.net
Sun Aug 8 06:18:29 PDT 2010
Loverly Letters, etc.
I, Granville Hough, have told this story several times by email, but I
do not remember who received copies. It is not exactly hygienic, but
that is the way things were. It may also indicate how hookworm or other
diseases could spread throughout a community if one is interested in
public health.
When we joined forces with Grandpa Jim Richardson, we (that is I,
Clifford, Donald, and Roland Hough) worked the land on the county line
with Simpson County. The next neighbor across the line was a Dye family
who sharecropped the Anderson Yelverton farm. In the former Anderson
Yelverton home was the family of Carl and Daisy (Bryant) Yelverton,
granddaughter of Wild Bill Sullivan. Carl did not grow up liking
farming, and he had become a house painter. In 1939, when we joined up
with Grandpa, Carl was painting houses for some contractor near Jackson.
He could get home only on weekends. Daisy was alone with her three
children, or more, in the Yelverton house.
(Historically, Grandpa and Grandma had bought their land from Mr.
Anderson Yelverton, and Anderson or his parents had built and lived in
the house where Grandpa lived, and which is now the older part of the
Travis home.)
We had a hog-proof fence along the county line as we had a hog and calf
pasture there. A hog-proof fence had thick mesh and caught leaves and
everything else which blew that way. We had a couple of small fields
there which we sometimes opened to the pigs and calves, so we had a
goodly stretch of this tight fence dividing the property and marking the
county line. One day as we worked in one of the fields, we noticed that
pages of letters had blown up to the fence and were caught in it. Out of
childhood curiosity, one of us picked up a page of one of these letters
and looked at it. We paid no attention to the brownish spots on the
pages as the soil in the field was brownish and they looked just like
any muddy spot.
We went along the fence and got different pages and we finally got a
whole letter we could read. We could see it was a love letter from Carl
to Daisy, sometimes with references to Cleta and Wanda and the other of
their children. Then we began to study the letters more closely. My, my,
this was an education! We had never read such language, written with
such fervor. So this was how you made love to your wife by mail!! The
letters were much better than the stories in True Confessions a sort
of mild pornographic magazine young women slipped from house to house in
that era. This was the real thing, Carl and Daisy, whom we had known all
our lives. So we looked at several of the letters and they were three or
four months old. So we then began think about what to do with them.
Roland was for taking them to our mother, but Clifford thought that
would get us a good spanking. I talked about returning them to Daisy,
but then realized how embarrassing it would be to do that. Donald, I
believe, suggested we leave them where they were. We knew they were
there and could come look at them anytime we wanted to. They were, after
all, lodged on a county line fence, and did not really belong to
anybody. So we carefully put them back in the fence in a way that would
prevent them from blowing away.
About ten days later, we were back working the crops along that fence
and decided to check for new letters. It had rained in the meantime, and
as soon as we picked up a letter, the brown spots had run and we had an
unmistakable odor. We had an instant realization of how the love letters
had been used. We then climbed up on the fence and we could see in the
distance the outhouse from which they had blown. That ended our
investigation. While we retained an interest in Carl and Daisys love
life, we did not pursue it through Carls letters. We just let them
develop it as they chose, and they were a loverly couple all their lives.
We did not expect such a surprise as Smith County had made a great
effort in the previous four or five years to install covered sanitary
privies, and just about every house had one. However, Simpson County had
not yet established such a hygienic program; and we were looking across
the line into an open outhouse in that county.
Was Daisy being disrespectful of Carls love and affection to use his
love letters in that way? Well, you have to think of the financial
situation. Daisy and Carl were having a hard time just feeding and
clothing their children. There was no money for a luxury like toilet
paper. They did not even take a newspaper, and the supply of Sears &
Roebuck catalogs must have been exhausted. Daisy was a town girl, being
reared in Mize, and probably never used corn cobs. Therefore, she had to
make the best use she could of every available piece of paper.
Now, in my life I have heard people use the term, rough as a corn cob,
without the slightest idea of what it meant. If Daisy tried them, she
must have decided there were other compromises easier to make.
One of the Minnesota radio comedians, Garrison Keillor, had a story
which explains the Depression problem. A Nebraska farmer was in town,
and the local newspaper owner was trying desperately to sell his papers.
The farmer wanted to subscribe but had no money. The newspaper owner
would not sell on credit, but he did need something to burn in his stove
to cook food. He said: Look, I cant sell on credit, but I will take
whatever you have. Ill even swap for your corn cobs. To which the
farmer replied in amazement, Mister, if I had corn cobs, I would not
need your newspaper!
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