[Granville-Hough] 20 Mar 2009 - Obit & Will Lack (1999)

[Trustees and Executors for Granville W. Hough]

	In 1999, just after my brother, Clifford Hough, had died, I responded 
to a query from niece June Travis about our next farm neighbors, the 
Lack Family.  She was teaching with a granddaughter of former Sheriff 
Dan'l Lack, who had triggered her interest in the family.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

I received the Magee Courier with Clifford's obituary, and I appreciate
getting it very much.

	I want to respond to your query about "Old Man" Will Lack, as he was
known in my time.  His farm bordered ours on the east.  We frequently
got off the school bus at the Will Lack home, and walked through the
woods to our property line, which we then followed home, coming out on
the road at the blacksmith shop in Cliff Hough's forest of privet.  Another
favorite place to exit the school bus during persimmon and fall
huckleberry seasons was at the Jim Wallace house, which was between
where Larry Hough lives now and the former Rufus Yelverton place.  We
could also exit at our road entrance, originally at the Rufus Yelverton
house.  We did this so that we did not have to go to all the homes, and
be the last to get off the bus.

	Now back to Will Lack.  He was long retired and never said anything to
us that I recall.  He had a long white beard and was usually sitting on
his front porch when we got off the bus.  None of his children lived
with him, and we never picked up a school child there that I can recall.

	It is my impression that he had been a strong figure in earlier days in
the Calvary Presbyterian Community.  Just beyond where he lived, which
was about three blocks east of where Larry Hough now lives, about 1/4
mile east was the infamous Lack Hill, which was a trial for mule teams,
and a terror for T-model trucks and cars.  It now looks like a mild
incline, but that is not how the original trail looked to a mule.  When
I was growing up, there were old scars of previous roads on each side
which had washed out.

	The only Lack I knew of Will's children was Virgil Lack who lived across
the road from where Larry Hough now lives.  I seem to remember Wendell
Lack as a grandson who had lived in Louisiana or Colorado, but had come back
during the Depression to live with the family.  Contrary to what I noted
above, there may have been Lack children at the Will Lack home for one
year or more, but they did not seem to ride our bus.  (Wendell later 
became a successful Air Force officer and retired after commanding a 
Base in England. After retirement, he became Mississippi State Forester.)

	It is my recollection that Will Lack's wife was a McAlpin, sister to
Lawrence McAlpin, and that young Farrell McAlpin frequently stopped to
talk to Uncle Will and aunt ????,sister to his father, then went on to
Rufus Yelverton's to talk to Aunt Seebee, who was sister to his mother, 
the best I recall.
There was another person in between that he really wanted to visit when
the husband was not home.  He used the same path to leave that house
that we used in persimmon season.

	The Lack sons of Will were big fellows, 
like their first cousin McAlpins, I
might even say corpulent in later years.  They were hunters and traders
and rather indifferent farmers.  My father and Carol Yelverton, son of
Rufus, grazed sheep on the open range north of the Rufus Yelverton home
in what we later called the Big Woods.  It is four or five miles square
and had scars of logging railroads when we were growing up.  Anyway,
they ran sheep and had trouble with the Lack men over Lack hunting dogs
which had become sheep killers.  There was so much emnity over the dogs
that my father got out of the sheep business soon after I was born.  We
were never again close to the Lack families.

	I will note one thing about the Big Woods.  There was a log cabin
cotton house on the back side of Rufus Yelverton's fields where I used
to go to load cotton to take to the gin.  When I was in the 9th grade, I
started school at Magee and we still lived where Cliff now lives.  When
we had cotton to gin, I would get it loaded on our pickup truck, take it
to the gin in Magee, get it ginned, then get it sold and put the money
in my watch pocket, and get to Magee High School by 8:15.  Rufus
Yelverton observed me doing this, and he asked me if I would take his
cotton to the gin.  Yes, I would, as I would just as soon do that as
walk over to the Simpson County line.  So I would get up at daylight, go
up to Mr. Yelverton's and drive the pickup back to the cotton houses,
load the pickup, and go off to Magee, then stop on the way home with the
cash and report for Mr. Yelverton.  Now this one cotton house appeared
to be an old log cabin with evidence of a dirt chimney at one end.  I
was told this was the place the Wild Bill and Neese Sullivan hid out
from the authorities, either during the Civil War to escape the draft,
or later to avoid the law after they had killed someone.  They had built
a rough log cabin in this no-man's land and lived by hunting and
stealing.  The nearest Wares probably knew they were there, but the
closest Ware family had married a Sullivan; so he was probably not
talking.