Gittin'Through sets this turning point in American history in a small southern town where traditions, class and race defined its citizens and the roles they played. It shows how the three generations coped with the conflict while they made a living, reared their families, took care of the elderly, fell in love, lost loved ones, struggled to hold a marriage together, and choose right and wrong ways to profit from the war. Like all generations, they carried the burdens of the past into their own times in order to prepare for the future.

GITTIN' THROUGH

A Southern Town during World War IIBy Roy T. Matthews

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2011 Roy T. Matthews
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4269-7436-6

Contents

PREFACE..................................................ix1. A PLEASANT PLACE......................................12. TWELVE MONTHS MAKE A DIFFERENCE.......................313. OLD FEARS AND NEW HOPES...............................614. WHICH WAY ARE WE GOING?...............................1035. SUMMER'S GOOD TIMES AND BAD SIGNS.....................1316. ARE WE GETTING ANY CLOSER?............................1637. WHO'LL EVER FORGET THIS MONTH?........................1878. RETREATS AND LOSSES...................................2259. EVENTS CLOSE IN.......................................24910. THE GRIP OF WAR......................................27111. ONE STEP AT A TIME...................................29912. SHIFTING OUR THINKING................................33113. ANTICIPATION/ REALIZATION............................36114. CAMPAIGNS: WAR FRONT/HOME FRONT......................38715. CAN IT BE?...........................................41716. THE NEXT ROUND.......................................453

Chapter One

A PLEASANT PLACE

When Jimmy Jordan's father turned his 1937 black Buick off the main highway to head toward Madison, Jimmy saw the red clay outcroppings of the scattered hills whose presence had long ago determined the road's twists and turns. He followed the lines of split rail fences trailing into the distance until they turned into thin lines and disappeared in the stands of hardwoods or pines. Farm houses and outbuildings sat on the hills' crowns or hugged their sides. After fifteen miles through the red clay hills the narrow two lane highway straightened onto the flattened terrain. On both sides of the road the fields hugged the edge of the asphalt and faded into the distance, up against stands of tall pines that changed from light to dark green as the sun and shadows played upon the needles. If the farmer had run the rows of peanuts perpendicular to the road, Jimmy could count them as long as his father didn't drive so fast that the rows became a blur. If the rows were planted parallel to the road, they looked to Jimmy like small waves rippling across the ocean on a calm day.

This state highway was called, by some people who still remembered, the Ridge Route to distinguish it from the Old Stage Route. The Old Stage Route ran down from the capital to the port cities on the north side of the estuary that separated the southern tier of counties from those to the north. The Ridge Route, more or less parallel to the Old Stage Route, was laid out on the southern side of the estuary. Starting from Seaport the Ridge Route headed inland to the west and gradually veered north through small towns and by farms to the capital. Both the Ridge Route and the Old Stage Route, built with state and federal funds near the end of World War I when the U.S. Government started subsidizing highway programs, were in constant need of repair. Jimmy could tell this as his dad dodged the potholes and cursed under his breath.

Along the Ridge Route Jimmy caught glimpses of isolated farm houses which sat on low mounds away from the highway, up long lanes flanked by oaks or cedars. The longer the lane and the wider the front porch, the more imposing the house, originally white but usually a fading ivory or dingy gray, subject to the last painting or whitewashing which, in turn, depended on whether the owner had scratched out any small profit. The bottom had fallen out of the cash crops eight years ago and since then some farmers had given up and now worked in the textile mill in Jimmy's hometown.

In those houses lived the county folks who, in Jimmy's mind, were different from town people, different because, well, living on the land or making a living on the land was not the same as living in the town. Jimmy had some friends whose parents farmed, and when he went to visit his friends, what struck him was that living in the country was just plain hard work that never seemed to end. How could those folks survive, if what he heard his parents and grandfather say was true that farmers weren't getting much for their cotton and they might as well give away their peanuts.

What Jimmy did not know was that their information was coming out of newspapers and state reports. A majority of the state's population still made their living off the land, but that number had been declining in the late 1930s. Some had gone to work in plants, but a lot more were finding jobs in banks, insurance companies and the government. White folks were getting along a little better, but the colored were not doing as well. Jobs for them were scarce, and most of them still scraped out some kind of existence on the land.

But that data was far from Jimmy's reading and thinking. And the houses and farms turned hazy and finally became a blank in his mind.

"Wake up, son. We're home. Ya musta been sleepin' for the last hour."

* * *

Six days a week Harris and Bobbie Blythe unlocked the door of Blythe Brothers' Barbershop. As Harris turned the key to the left with his right hand while lifting the door knob with the left to release the lock, he damned their landlord, Cap'n Joyner, and sent him straight to hell. Eighteen years of slamming and banging the door had knocked it so out of line that Harris's routine was the only way to unlock his shop. As the door swung open, cologne and powder scents slipped up their nostrils, reminding them that another day of work was about to begin. The black and white octagonal tiles, swept clean before closing by Amos, the shoeshine boy, reflected the dull glare of the hanging lights after Bobbie flipped up the light switch. The ceiling fixtures, with three bulbs encased in translucent tulip shades, would illuminate the rectangular room all day, although the sun would pour through the Venetian blinds hanging across the plate glass front.

Five barber chairs, with round black leather covered seats and backs, white marble arm supports, and patterned metal foot rests, alternated with the dangling lamps. A row of eight wooden seats, bought two years ago at the grammar school furniture auction, offered customers uncomfortable places to sit, to talk or to read the outdated magazines piled on the scarred wooden end table. At the back of the shop, in the corner, Amos shined shoes, and, when needed, ran errands for the Blythe brothers and their patrons, fetching the morning papers or buying a co-cola at the drugstore. Next to the shoeshine stand a door opened to a short hall. On the left side was a supply room and on the right a toilet which businessmen frequented throughout the day and customers used when they felt the urge or maybe got bored waiting their turn. The flanking mirrors along the walls reproduced and shrank the image of each person just like Jimmy imagined it was at the Fun House in Ocean View as he sat in the barber's chair.

By three-thirty Bobbie and Harris had, between them, shaved four faces, snipped twelve heads. About this time every day except Saturday, Cap'n Al Joyner dropped by and the ritual started. Grown men either sat back and enjoyed the conversation or chipped in their opinions, while kids like Jimmy looked on wondering what was happening.

"Why weren't ya at the fish fry last night, Cap'n Joyner? Cost too much for ya?" Harris asked and answered his own question before the Cap'n spoke.

"Well, you know he would never...