The Way It Was by Charles Hunt, Sr. Part 2

The Way It Was by Charles Hunt, Sr. Part 2

The Storm of 1940.
I was 10 years old. This storm was a BIG one. Back then, we didn’t have all that fancy weather tracking equipment. If the news said it was a big storm,  that was because it had already torn up somewhere else first. Well, a big storm was coming, but we had no idea how bad it was going to be.
Pop had bought a new car! It was a 1940 Chevrolet 4 door sedan. We had been to Wilmington, N.C. to see some of Pop’s old friends and we were coming home. While we were there, that storm had hit the coast at Savannah,  turned up north and headed for Charleston, S.C. , flooding the whole Low Country. We set out that morning and it was reported that roads were flooded all along the coast. My Pop said he had to get home that night so he could go to work on Monday.
The Charleston police stopped us right on top of the Cooper River Bridge and all night long that bridge rocked and swung back and forth. Mom got in the back seat with me and cried. She thought it might help me sleep if she was holding me. Sleep!! We were holding Prayer Meeting while that old bridge rocked. The rain came down in buckets but it drained off the bridge. As soon as daylight came they let us drive on. Then we found out why they stopped us. There was a big hole about 30 feet across at the bottom. It must have been 4 or 5 feet deep. You couldn’t drive around it. There wasn’t room to turn around either. Some colored men came up from under the bridge somewhere and charged Pop $20 to push that car back to the other side of the bridge. Pop paid, turned the motor off and rolled up the windows.. We got out on the other side. Pop didn't know which way to go, but we wound up at the bus station.
 Pop talked to the bus driver, who was headed out to Savannah, and asked if he thought we could make it. He said the roads were underwater, more than 1 foot in some places.  Mom and I got on the bus and the driver told me to sit on the back seat and watch and let him know if pop stalled out. He followed us all the way. The highway went right thru Port Wentworth, so the bus driver took us right to the end of our street and let us off.
We walked all around our house and the oak tree in back had blown down on the garage. It was a wooden garage and it was all caved in. My dog Beau was alright and happy to see me. He ran out from under that squashed garage with his tail wagging 90 to nothing. Pop declared it in good shape so we went in. A few shingles had blown off but all in all, it was ok. We were so glad to get home! Mr. Palmer came over and helped Pop and me cut up that tree for firewood and I stacked it. Mr. Palmer drove off with a truck load .Pop later built the new garage out of cement blocks and it is still standing. ( It's still there today, solid as a rock.)

 

The only photo I could find of this hurricane , via Google:

 

"A storm in 1940 was by far the worst of the three that hit our area in the twentieth century, a little less strong than "Hugo" that hit Charleston in 1989. The storm of 1940 produced at least 105 mph winds in Wright Square in downtown Savannah and produced considerable tree and structural damage thought out the area. Prior to that time, no other hurricane had hit the Savannah area or even the Georgia coast since 1898."

This is the story my daddy wrote during the last year of his life. It isn't finished, I guess he ran out of steam. One thing about daddy, if he remembered all of this, he sure had a good memory. According to this he remembers the day he was born!
I have attempted to edit the story and add photos of the people he talks about. If you have heard the stories he tells but heard them from another point of view, I'd love to hear that version also. Email me at : lillinda3@yahoo.com
Well, here goes:


THE WAY IT WAS  by Charles Winston Hunt, Sr.

Chapter One

The year was 1930. March 9th, to be exact. Right in the middle of Herbert Hoover’s term as President. Right in the middle of what became to be called “The Great Depression”.  Everyone was out of work, no jobs to be had, and no money to speak of but somehow folk managed to keep body and soul together.


My Parents: Albert and Gussie Hunt

How I Came Into This World:

My Aunt Mary was a nurse at the Brunswick City hospital and my grandmother, (Julia Irene Hunt) was a midwife.

                                                   Mary Hunt Dahn

                                           

As the story goes, these two women came to the house where my mother was living  and wanted to examine her , as they determined it was “near her time”. Well, my mother would have none of that. Grandmother wanted her to deliver me at home.
 “No Way”, mama said “This child will be born in a hospital and not here with the likes of you two.”
 She had often said they were two old bitty gossips. Mama sent them packing. This caused some hard feelings and we were not real close to daddy’s side of the family for a long while after.
Mama said it was a good thing she went to a hospital because she was told that she would have died if it hadn’t been for Dr. Hugh Burford.  He said she had no lining to her stomach. Later she had surgery and afterward, she never had a belly button.

We lived for a time in Brunswick, Ga., quite near to where Sydney Lanier wrote the poem, “The Marshes of Glynn.”. We lived at 609 Bartow Street, close to the Howard Coffin Park, just across Hwy 17 from Lanier’s Oak. It was said he wrote the poem while sitting under this oak tree.
Dad worked for the Georgia Creosoting Company and mama was a cashier at the Oglethorpe Hotel. That is where they met, but at that time, my dad was working on a dredge for the Corps of Engineers.

While we lived on Bartow Street, Mama was in the hospital with some stomach problems. When she came home, she could not lift or do any housework. She hired a black woman to come in to do the housekeeping and look after me. She was a wife of one of the men that worked for daddy. He had borrowed some money from dad and this way, they could pay it back. Remember, work was hard to get, so this arrangement was well received by all. This house, as far as I remember, was painted gray .One front door was on the left of the porch and led to a dining room. There were three big windows in the dining room. Another door off the porch to the right led to a bedroom. You went through the bedroom to go out on the back porch. The bedroom had a closet right inside the back door.
Down the street, on the corner, lived a man that had model trains set up in his garage. He was a real train buff. He would let the neighborhood kids watch him play with his trains. I could stand there all day and watch his trains go around the track.
One day, after mom was somewhat better , she sent the colored woman home early. Mama called me in the house and when I didn't come, she came looking for me. She couldn’t find me. I must have been about 4 years old. I had went to the “Train man’s” house and watched his trains for a while.
Two blocks the opposite way, were the real trains and the tracks. That’s where she looked first. Calling and yelling out for me. Of course, I never heard her. She found me wandering back toward home. I was surprised to see she had been crying. But now she was MAD!!  I didn’t know I had did anything wrong. I was supposed to be playing on the porch, but a lonely little boy with no one to play with will go find something to do. Mama could never understand why I had to go find trouble, as she called it.
 She was so mad, she could hardly talk. She marched me home and straight to that closet. She shoved me in and locked the door. She shouted “You will never run away from me again!”
I tried to explain that I wasn’t running away. Mama just didn’t understand.
I sure didn’t like being in that dark closet and to this day, I have trouble getting in an elevator or any close spot like that. Anyway, daddy came home at some point. It seemed like weeks to me but it probably wasn’t more than an hour. He was my HERO that day. Mama never did that again. I guess daddy and her had a talk.
That Christmas, I remember, I got a train. It was a Marx wind-up train that ran on a circle track. Daddy had set up the Christmas tree in the dining room in front of the windows.  Was I ever thrilled!

Chapter Two

 My grandpa (Isaac Solomon) Hunt, I never did know. He died before I was born. I found an old newspaper clipping that told how he died. Mama said he had fainting spells and he took off from work one day at lunch to go see the doctor. He went home first to clean himself up and he was shaving. He fainted and fell over and hit his head on the gas heater, accidently turning the gas on and never woke up. 

 In late 1931, when I was a baby, my Grandmother (Julia Irene Miller Slaughter) Hunt died. My grandmother’s sister, Ellen Cubbadge, came to Brunswick to attend the funeral. Just ten days later, while still in Brunswick, she died, too.
They say she died of a broken heart. They are all buried in Palmetto Cemetery.

                                                         Ellen Miller Cubbadge

Chapter Three
Many Moves
Next we moved to a house on Wolf Street, right next door to Federal Judge Scarlet. I talked to him in 1959 when I happened to see him and he said he remembered my family and he remembered Aunt Ellen. The house was a small house as I remembered it. I went by there once and now it looks bigger. Maybe the owners added on. My dad would take me across the street and into the marsh to catch fiddler crabs. That ain’t easy !
Sometime after this, we moved to Doc Junction, near Arco, a neighborhood in the Brunswick city limits now.
Uncle Rayford (Pierce), mama’s baby brother, came to live with us for a while. This house was made with sawmill slab boards. They ran up and down with a small board over the crack. It was built high off the ground. I could walk underneath the house and listen to the adults talking. It was a good place to play. Down the street lived the Turner’s. He was an old man and his wife was young. I liked them. She let me pick all the grapes I wanted off of her grapevines. They had the biggest grape arbor I have ever seen. Both red and white scuppernongs. I think Mr. Turner made wine, but I never got any of that.

I can’t remember when we moved from there, but daddy got a job in Savannah at the Atlantic Creosoting Plant and once again, we were packing up and moving. A colored man daddy knew, came and put all of our stuff on his big truck and away we went. His name was Mr. Palmer. It turned out that he was moving to Savannah, too, to work with daddy.

We moved in with Uncle Irvin and Aunt Emma. Irvin was my mother’s brother. He married Emma Cox. The Coxes lived near the Pierce farm and they were neighbors. Aunt Emma was a good cook! They lived at 609 Barnard Street. They had a redheaded daughter named Reba. I think she was in the second grade about then. She took me to school with her, I guess I was her “Show-and- Tell” item.  The Barnard Street School was 3 or 4 blocks back uptown from where they lived. We walked to the school by ourselves. No one worried about us like they do the kids today.

                                                         Irving and Emma Cox Pierce

                                         Reba Pierce

 Uncle Irvin was an officer in the Savannah fire Department, a Captain in the #4 Fire House. It was a 2 story house and it had high ceilings. The stairs going down were never worn out because they had 4 bright shiny brass poles and I kept them shiny sliding down. I would go up the stairs and slide down, over and over until Uncle Irvin would run me out.
 Sometimes, Uncle Irvin, my dad and me would go to Coffee Bluff and rent a boat. We would tie 5 gallon buckets on our feet and get out on the mud bars and pick up oysters. We always took a bowl and hot sauce and would eat some right there in the boat. Dad would hull out a bowl full and I would put catsup on mine.
One thing I remember about living on Barnard Street was the bathroom had what they called a “water closet”. The tank was up high, almost to the ceiling, with a chain to pull to flush it out. Between the living room and the dining room, was a very large sliding door and there was a clock that played music every quarter hour. I guess that was Aunt Emma’s favorite. Later in her life, she collected clocks, all kinds of clocks, and when they all went off; her house was filled with sounds. Noisy clocks, galore.
There was an elderly lady that lived next to the fire house. I don’t remember her name but what I do remember is that she drove a 1928 Studebaker. I could not understand why it didn’t have a steering wheel. She showed me how it worked. It had a tiller, like a boat, only it worked backwards. It didn’t run on gas, either, it was electric. So you young folks, this isn’t a new concept! It would scoot! Most folks then, had a Model T or a Ford truck.

                                                  Uncle Irving, on the job. He's the one with the cigarette.
Chapter Four
I Learn To Live Out of a Suitcase:

 We didn’t stay on Barnard Street, too long, as Mama said she didn’t want to “wear her welcome out”. We moved about 4 blocks up Barnard and across a park to a boarding house. We were on the top floor in the back, all in one room. We weren’t allowed to cook in our room, so we had to eat in the dining room. To help with the rent, mama worked in the dining room filling plates and bringing food to the table.
Mom decided we could not live all in one room forever, so we moved across the park, to the corner where we rented again. We were back on the top floor in the back, but we had 2 rooms this time. This was a living room/ dining room/ kitchen and a bedroom. I called it a “do everything” room. All I really remember about living there was mom could have a hot plate and she didn’t have to serve others and we could eat cheaper. Pop worked from sun-up to sunset, or as the old folks would say, “From can-see to can’t see”. He would come in too late to eat downstairs, so this was good that mom could cook in our room.
Later, we moved again, closer to Pop’s job, out to Port Wentworth. This new place was on the corner of Birkenhead and Barnsley Streets, behind what was then the Red Circle Truck Stop on old U.S. 17. Dad bought a car, it was a 4-door Model A Sedan.
It rained for a week straight after we moved in. The water filled up the yard and it ran down under the house. We couldn’t get out of the house or get the car out of the mud. As soon as it dried up enough to move the car, we moved again!
This time we moved down the highway, before there was a viaduct there. This house was on Alberfeldy Street  beside the Neal’s. Mr. Neal’s favorite saying was “old by Jolly” I didn’t know who Jolly was, but I thought I might like him.
This house was owned by Mr. Pattie O’Brien. He was an Irish ice man. Now we lived in an international community. Mr. Pattie was Irish, his wife, Mrs. Della, was French, and a bunch of Cajuns from Louisiana lived in the neighborhood. They worked for the Sugar Refinery. Some people told mom to watch out for Mr. Pattie. They didn’t trust him because he was a “Mick”. Little did they know, we were “Mick’s” too.
Mr. Pattie and I got along great. He bought ice to the house 6 days a week to go in our ice box. He didn’t keep books, he was bad with money. He trusted mom to pay him and I guess she did, because everything worked out all right.
Then, the company sent my dad to Charleston. He went ahead of us and was gone about 4 months, before we moved there, too. We moved to another boarding house.  We lived somewhere down town but I don’t remember the street name. We were all in one room, AGAIN!  I remember mama spent a lot of time in Kress’s store. I remember Pop saying that they couldn’t close the store on Saturday night if Mom didn’t go there.
The railroad had a two-car train, like two streetcars hooked together. They called it the” Boogie”. It ran to Savannah twice a day and we would ride it to Savannah to  see Uncle Irvin and Aunt Emma. My Aunt Emma was another good cook. She made a carrot salad with pineapple pieces in it that I just loved.
Mama finally got tired of living in South Carolina and I think dad must have finished his job over there, so we moved back to Port Wentworth. We rented another house of Mr. Patties, this one on the highway.
One day my dad came home with a surprise for me. It was a pretty Collie dog, I named him Rex. I remember one day, sitting on top of a fence post, out by the garage, like I had seen other kids do.  Mom saw me and made me get down. She wouldn’t never let me have any fun. It seems like she was always afraid something would happen to me. I felt like I couldn’t do anything right.
I decided to ignore her and after about the fourth time telling me to get down, something did happen. She got a switch and came after me. My buddy, Rex, got between me and mom and he wouldn’t let her take a step toward me. He got that switch and pulled it right out of her hands. He kept me from getting a switching until my dad came home from work. He was my buddy!
Well, Rex was a yard dog and soon mom started leaving the gate open, hoping he would run away, One day he did. It was summer time and there were stories about rabid dogs in the news. Old Rex ran away, across the road and down the street to the “big village” to Miss Rowan’s house. There, he decided to stop and rest on her porch. She said he was mad and she shot him.
Everybody would always worry about me and tell my mom that I was “skin and bones”. You could count every one of my ribs. I was 5 years old and weighed 40 pounds. Someone told my Pop about a  home remedy to make me gain weight and build up my blood, so Mom said we must try it. They took some homemade wine, got some beef blood and some old rusted nails. They put it in a bottle and mixed it up and let it settle for a few days. They called it “Beef, Wine and Iron”. I had to drink a small glass before each meal. It worked, it made me eat, eat, eat. I got bigger and bigger. I may get sick, but I will probably never look like a starving child from Africa! Two things happened. I got bigger and I became the youngest alcoholic I knew!
Well, here we go again, we move across the street to the Gibson house. I don’t know who liked to move the most, mom or Pop. Pop said “you need to move about every three years to get rid of junk you accumulated, every three years equals a burn out”.
Then later, we moved about 3 houses down to the Daughtry house. All I really remember about this house is that it was a shotgun house and I remember playing in the long hallway in rainy weather.
Then, once again, we moved to Alberfeldy Street. This time, a little boy lived next door, Deak Davis. His dad built us a sandbox and I had a wooden steam shovel that you could sit on and work the buckets. We loved digging in that sand and we took turns on the shovel. Deak had two older brothers and they had rigged up a sawmill in their back yard. They had an old car up on blocks and had one rim on the back axel, a long belt to the saw and they used this to cut wood. They cut wood for everybody and had lots of heater wood in the yard.
Mom and Pop decided about this time, that I should go to Sunday School. They didn’t go, they just sent me. Pretty soon, I talked them into going to the Baptist Church with me. Mom even attended the Woman’s Circle meetings.
Well, here we go again! We moved this time to a house down the street from the Baptist Church. I am still confused as to why we moved all the time.
This house had to be cleaned good before we moved any furniture in. We scrubbed from daylight to sunset.  Me and mom went back the next day and the place was covered in roaches!! I still hate those things!
I remember her pulling the doorframe away from the wall and it looked like the wall was moving! No Siree Bob! We weren’t living here! She told Pop she was ready to go back to the country!
Daddy tried once more. He found a house at 120 Turnberry Street. We bought it, (of course, after Mom inspected it for roaches!!!) and in we moved. It was owned by the Port Wentworth Corporation, which was owned by the Savannah and Atlanta Railroad. It was built in 1918 for the Terry Shipyard, which was where the paper mill is now. Now, it is about the time of World War One.

                               120 Turnberry Street. This must have been taken in the 1930's
This house is a four room and an indoor bath. Earlier on, someone had remodeled it and added the bathroom with a claw foot tub. So now it was a 5 room house with a back porch. It had a front porch which Dad screened in later.
Mom and Pop paid $15.00 a month for 20 years for that house. Now I had my own bedroom!  All MY OWN!!
Mom started me in school that year. She thought I was a genius. Well I set out to prove her wrong from the get-go!
My first grade teacher was Mrs. Carter. That year, 4 of us boys flunked first grade. We made her a failure, and as far as I know, she quit teaching or got a different job somewhere where she never had to see us again! I had Mrs. Raybe the next year and then Mrs. Brown in 3rd grade. She started us on math and by the year’s end, we knew our times tables. Fourth Grade was Mrs. Jaudon, Mrs. Ingram for 5th and Miss Phillips for 6th. All this was at Port Wentworth Elementary, right across the street from my house. My mom saw to it that I never embarrassed her by failing a grade again!

                                                   Port Wentworth Elementary School

 Mrs. Rivers was the county school nurse. Sometimes Mom volunteered to help her. Fred Steele was the janitor and there were kitchen ladies that were all good cooks, but I never told mom, as she was the best.  They sure could make some good vegetable soup and cornbread! Soup, cornbread and milk all for $.25 cents!
Life was good growing up here. I had some good friends and my pop took me fishing at the Terry shipyard. One year for my birthday, Pop got me a 20 gauge single shot gun. He took me over to the sand dunes behind the Creosoting plant and we went duck hunting. We would go and wallow out a place in the sand and lie still, (the hardest part) and wait for the ducks to fly over from the marshes where the wildlife reserve is now. I shot a few down.  I would take them home for mom. She cooked them, because you didn’t waste food, even if you weren’t a fan of duck. They were greasy, but we ate them. We’d have duck for Thanksgiving and we gave Thanks for having them. Once, I killed a possum, Mom cooked that too. The way she cooked it, it looked like a small dog on that platter. The next time Pop shot one, he suggested that she stew it. It was better that way and I could eat more potatoes than meat! I soon got more discriminating in what I shot, because I knew I’d have to eat it!

End of Part I.

Gussie Melissa Pierce Hunt

 

Gussie Melissa Pierce

Gussie Melissa Pierce was born on April 17, 1907. Atkinson, Georgia, on the family farm. She learned to drive by driving the tractor and the old field hand helped her learn to drive her daddy's truck when he was away from the farm. Her daddy, Samuel Pierce, didn't hold with women driving or cutting their hair or going to college.

She said she had to work in the syrup boiling shed and her long hair would get so sticky from the sugar, that one night, instead of tying it up in a net, (she was afraid not to wash it because she was afraid bugs would get in her hair at night. Grandma didn't like any kinds of bugs!) ,she got her mama's scissors and  cut it off up to her shoulders. The next morning when her daddy saw her hair, she said he had 3 kinds of fit.! She said that was the start of her leaving the nest. She later got a job in Brunswick at the Oglethorpe Hotel. It was a big fancy place. She worked in the dining room. That's where she met Albert, he was working on a dredge. She married Albert Solomon Hunt on June 7, 1927, in Brunswick, Georgia., at the home of her sister, Mrs. James Corbett Slaughter. Gussie was 20 years old.They had one child ,Charles Winston Hunt, Sr. Later, they moved to Port Wentworth, Ga where Albert worked for the Atlantic Creosoting Plant.  She died on January 28, 1998, in Savannah, Georgia, at the age of 90.
She was a wonderful cook and everyone raved over her fried chicken and shrimp salad!