[Granville-Hough] 25 Sep 2009 - Uncle Sance Arender

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Great-Uncle Sance Arender is one of the pleasant memories of my 
childhood. He was older brother (1863 - 1939) to Grandma Mary (Arender) 
Richardson, and he visited her for extended periods, interspersed with 
weeks with us. It seems the rule was if we got a backlog of work, invite 
Uncle Sance to visit us. He could pick cotton, hoe the garden, and do 
light work, and he was in his late sixties when he stayed with us. He 
went along where we working in the fields, and he certainly earned his 
bed and keep. He had married Maggie Dilmore, and she had at least five 
children before she died in 1895. (I knew some Dilmore families in 
Sharon Community. They were short, stocky people whose women matured 
early, married young, and were great breeders.) Uncle Tom Richardson 
also recorded seven other children for Uncle Sance, some without dates, 
and some after Aunt Maggie died. So I think Uncle Sance had a second 
family with someone not recorded by Uncle Tom. What happened to this 
wife or marriage is not known to me. Then the wife of this story is a 
third and later one, with whom he had no children.
During his second widow-hood, I believe Uncle Sance married a third time 
to a widow with grown children and her own farm. He and this new wife 
had some altercation, and the grown sons took her side. They ran him 
off, with just the clothes on his back, not even giving him time to grab 
his false teeth on the clo'shelf. (The clo'shelf was a feature of the 
early Smith County homes, which were built with no closet storage space. 
If you became prosperous enough, you bought a clothes shelf, the 
"clo'shelf," where you hung your Sunday clothes, kept your extra sheets, 
and stored your valuables. The top was a handy place for hats, canes, 
false teeth, and anything else for overnight safekeeping.) Consequently, 
my mother and Grandma Mary had to prepare food especially for Uncle 
Sance so he could "gum it," he having left his false teeth on the 
clo'shelf when he was run off. So we had lots of pot likker, buttermilk 
and corn bread, rice, and other foods which could be "gummed" readily. 
We younger children grew fond of the same foods Uncle Sance liked so 
that it was no problem for my mother.
One day we had something Uncle Sance could not "gum," and he was 
relenting the loss of his teeth when he was "run off." My father 
suggested he would take Uncle Sance back to the widow's house and get 
the teeth. Uncle Sance said: "Oh no, It's way up in Smith County near 
Scott County, and I am afraid of those sons." After more discussion and 
apprehension by Uncle Sance, they agreed to make the trip that weekend. 
So off they went.
When they reached the road where the widow lived, Uncle Sance had my 
father stop the T-Model car out of sight of the house and would go no 
further. He described the house and the family and said my father, 
Elisha Hough, was safer to go alone. My father walked the rest of the 
way, found the farmhouse, met the widow and her sons, and explained his 
mission. The widow directed one of her sons to take a chair and climb up 
to where he could see the whole top of the Clo'shelf, which he did, and 
there, covered with years of dust, were Uncle Sance's false teeth, just 
where he had placed them the night before he was run off. Then the 
family was more sociable, asking: "How is Old Sance, anyway. We've 
missed him since he left." My father answered as best he could and soon 
left to get back to the anxious Uncle Sance. He was proud to get his 
false teeth, but he would believe nothing good about the sons. He was 
not happy until he was several miles away from that community. But, 
alas, the effort was in vain. Uncle Sance has "gummed" his food so long, 
the false teeth no longer fit, and were too painful to wear.
It was that autumn that I picked my first 100 pounds of cotton in one 
day. It was before the Depression, probably 1928, or it could have been 
in 1929 before Panic struck. It was on a Saturday, when I was not in 
school. Uncle Sance was helping us in the "Old Newground," and stayed on 
the row next to me. When he thought I was not looking he dropped lots of 
cotton into my sack. The cotton in _my sack_ through the day weighed out 
at a little more than 100 pounds. This added immensely to my ego and 
gave me bragging rights. Uncle Sance was like that with all the children.
When he stayed with Grandma Mary, he lived in a narrow hallway between 
the main house and the kitchen. (The main house had originally been 
built separately from the kitchen, which was far enough away that it 
could catch fire and burn without also burning the main house. All the 
cooking was done in the kitchen over the open fireplace, as this was 
before the days of cooking stoves When these stoves did arrive and were 
successful, people began to move their kitchens so they could would be 
part of the main houses. When this was done in Grandpa's house, the back 
porch was trimmed down so that the kitchen would just fit it. So the 
former back porch became a narrow hallway, which we considered Uncle 
Sance's space. When my mother moved into the house in 1939, she enclosed 
Uncle Sance's space into the adjacent bedroom. There was still about a 
seven inch difference between the height of the main house and the old 
kitchen, and that seven inches of difference exists to this day)
Uncle Sance then took up selling goat hide shoe strings in the towns of 
Smith and Scott Counties. When he moved from town to town, he just got 
aboard a Tri-State Bus, and the drivers never asked for tickets. He was 
Uncle Sance to them just as he was to the passengers, just a harmless 
and homeless old man, living on goat hide shoe strings.
I have always thanked Uncle Sance for understanding a small boy's need 
for bragging rights.
I overheard conversation among adult relatives that one of Uncle Sance's 
daughters had "gone to the bad." Eventually I equated that to running 
away to Jackson and becoming a "hoar," (Recently I learned that our 
neighborhood name of that occupation is more properly spelled whore.) 
After the internet era, I got a query from a distant cousin in Ohio who 
wanted any information I had on Sance Arender. She had been told she was 
his descendant. I sent her all I could remember, but I did not suggest 
she might descend from the young woman who "went bad." She did not 
respond, so I lost out on tracing that line.
I have noted previously that Cousin Mathew Arender, the oldest son, as a 
widower, married widow Cousin Nola Herrin, but they were too old to have 
children.

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Today on our Los Angeles Times editorial page, I see a condemnation of 
Uzbekistan for its three month school recess for harvesting cotton so 
that the Uzbek children can participate. This is deplored as forced 
child labor. Well, I can say I share the pride of some Uzbek six or 
seven year old who picks his or her first 100 pounds of cotton in one 
day and of their bragging rights when they get back in school. In many 
school districts in Mississippi, we started school in early August, then 
had a one-month recess in late August and September for cotton picking, 
then went back to school. Had we not done that, the desperate families 
would have taken the children out of school anyway to pick the cotton. 
The Uzbeks are lucky. It takes them three months to get the crop in. Our 
yields were down so that one month was all we needed. I never heard our 
cotton picking called child labor. My brothers and I, all under age 13 
or 14, could pick a bale of cotton each week, working after school and 
on Saturdays.

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For those with boisterous pre-tens. Every mother of Sullivan children 
wondered - If a son would become another Preacher Sullivan -
And when this future they seriously pondered - One anxious mother 
listened to her son pray - And learned what fate had in store when he said:
“Lord, if you can’t make me a better boy, Don’t worry about it !! I’m 
having a real good time like I am.”