[Granville-Hough] 14 Sep 2009 - 1 Jul 2005 - Sullivan Hollow Surgery

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Sullivan Hollow Surgery (Cousin Nola’s Problem).

Once I was with my father when we visited my half first cousin, Nola 
Herrin and her husband John at their home in Cohay Camp. (Nola was 
daughter of Aunt Nannie (Keyes) Kennedy, who was herself daughter of 
Jeptha Keyes, Grandma Nora Hough’s first husband killed at Port Gibson 
in the beginning of the Battle for Vicksburg. So Nola was not a Hough 
cousin at all, but really a Miller cousin.)
Now, Cohay was the lumbering camp for Eastman Gardner Lumbering Company, 
based nominally in Laurel, MS, but owned in Chicago, IL. The camp 
existed in Smith County for over 30 years, based first at a place called 
Wisner between Mize and Taylorsville, then at a site on Hatchitapaloo 
Creek northeast of Shady Grove Community, then finally on upper Cohay 
Creek southeast of Raleigh. It consisted of homes made from railroad 
cars, sometimes a single car, but sometimes in two cars placed end to 
end or in L shape or in T shape. When I entered grade school in 1928, it 
was probably had more people than any incorporated area of the county. 
It had a church, commissary, large barnyard of horses and mules, and the 
best baseball team in Central Mississippi. It had its railroad branch 
from Mize, and its timber crews went by rail to the remaining longleaf 
pine groves in Smith and Simpson counties. The timber was removed by 
running branch rail lines into the woods, then using skidders to move 
the logs to the rail line where they could be loaded and sent to Laurel 
for processing at company sawmills. Before I finished grade school, the 
town was hauled away, the railroad branch from Mize was removed, and the 
people dispersed.
John Herrin was chief of a woods crew of sawyers who felled the trees, 
then cut them into suitable lengths for the skidders. I believe it was 
on this visit that he described to my father that they were moving into 
their last big grove in Simpson County west of Magee. After that, the 
rail operation would be over and they would do some mop-up operations by 
truck on the turpentine farms, then the Cohay Camp and longleaf pine 
days would be over. This was probably in 1935, as my father died in 
1936. When I next visited the area, John and Nola had bought their 
two-railroad car house and part of the land where the camp had been. 
They were farming it. One of their neighbors had been the large Albert 
Russell family, and one or more of the Russells had also bought land of 
the old camp site.
In the dying days of the camp, there was no resident doctor; and I do 
not know if there had ever been. People had less and less income, and 
the one or two doctors from Raleigh were reluctant to make house calls 
where there was little income for payment. Closing of the camp coincided 
with the onset of the Great Depression, which made it doubly hard. Under 
these circumstances, Nola Herrin became a practical nurse doing what she 
could for the desperate people. It is my belief that she delivered 
babies, advised on common ailments and sanitation, and did other things 
a practical nurse might do. Her training was what she had observed in 
life, though she may have had some instruction from her daughter, Dolos, 
whom I remember as an R. N. working in Meridian. I may have that wrong, 
but that is the way I recall it from age 12 or so. Nola also probably 
remembered some things from practical nurse, Aunt Lou Hough
On this visit with my father, we found Nola with a problem she could not 
treat. She had herself developed a huge boil on one of her buttocks 
which she could certainly feel but not see well enough to treat. She 
could not lie on her back, or sit in a chair, and was in terrible pain. 
John, her husband, could not help much. He cut trees, not boils. They 
asked my father, Lisha Hough, to look at the boil, as he was known to be 
somewhat of a horse, cattle, and hog doctor. When he saw the boil, he 
knew it should be lanced, drained and disinfected at once. They asked 
him to do it, as a doctor at Raleigh was several painful miles away; and 
Nola did not believe she could make the trip. With some reluctance, 
Lisha agreed, telling Nola this was what had worked with mules and 
cattle, but he was sure it would be painful. No one paid any attention 
to me, so I was able to watch the whole operation through the door.
Lisha took his pocket knife and sharpened one blade until it would 
shave. He then cauterized the blade by moving it back and forth in the 
flame of a coal oil (kerosene) lamp. He then instructed John Herrin to 
hold Nola down still, with all his weight. Then, in a split second, he 
plunged the sharp and red-hot blade about a half inch or more into the 
head of the boil. Nola screamed in agony. It seemed like a quart of 
smelly corruption burst and surged forth from the boil. They cleaned all 
of this up using some sort of disinfectant such as diluted carbolic 
acid. Gradually the pain subsided to a lower level of intensity and Nola 
was able to stand up and move around. By the time we left, she was even 
able to sit one-sided on a chair and forget how painful it had been. She 
graciously offered to fix us some lunch, but it turned out that neither 
of us was hungry.
I do believe, however, that on the way back to the Raleigh-Mize road, we 
stopped at Cousin Spurgeon Baldwin’s store to have a cold drink from his 
ice box. He kept his drinks cold with blocks of ice delivered from 
Raleigh. (Spurgeon was a cripple almost burned to death as a child. He 
was, however, a pretty good entrepreneur. He got around on a slide 
pulled by a gentle mule.) When the Commissary closed at Cohay Camp, he 
opened a little store with life necessities not too far from the camp 
site. He supplied the dwindling population until they were all gone. 
Then he had to close his store and turn to something else.

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A Rabbi said to a precocious little boy. "So your mother says 
your prayers for you each night? That's very commendable. What does she 
say?" The little boy replied, "Thank God he's in bed."