|
Coal Hill, Arkansas during the 1960's
In January of 1962, Marvin, Pert, and I lost our jobs at the chicken processing plant at Clarksville. The company
we
were working for went bankrupt. Some of our checks we had already
cashed bounced. We had to pick up the checks ourselves. I had two to bounce, which amounted
to $100.00. This created some very hard times for Shirley and I, Claudine, my sister and her husband, Alvin, loaned me $150.00 to pay off my car. I worked in the bottoms for
Alvin for .75 cents an hour
and paid it back. Alvin was farming about 400 acres in the bottoms and doing real well at this time.
I tried to raise two acres of tomatoes in 1962. I put in my own hothouse and raised my own plants. I could have
sold the plants for
$150.00 at one time and didn’t. This was more than I made on the patch. The plants took the wilt and fell over with big green tomatoes on them. The price was real low and you could
hardly sell them.
After I failed at raising tomatoes, Leroy Douglas helped me get a job at Dixie Cup in Fort Smith. We had a two-year
old baby and another
one on the way, the $30.00 unemployment check didn’t go very far. I worked 4 months and was laid off due to the lack of work. Well here we
were back on the unemployment line again. Shirley and I went to the bottoms and picked cotton, but we would be so hungry when we came out
that we would spend the entire $5.00 we had made to buy something to eat.
In March of 1963, I went back to work at Dixie Cup. I had a job stock handling, but bid on a job printing. The
job stock handling paid
$1.80 per hour and the printing paid $2.50 per hour. The job at Clarksville only paid $1.23 and this gave me quite a raise. In the fall, I
was again laid off and we went back to picking cotton and I asked Shirley
if she seen the end of the row. She said she did and I said when I
get to the end of the row that’s going to be the last cotton I pick unless we are hungry. I took the truck to Dardanelle that evening and
before I could get it unloaded, the gin caught on fire. I had to stay all night, so that was the end of the cotton for me.
Alvin started combining soybeans and I started driving the truck for him. I would also run the tractor in between trips. After this, Ted and I bought some timber to cut and started cutting it with a chainsaw. We hauled it to
Russellville on a big truck that
Ted owned. We did pretty good until December when I was called back to Dixie Cup.
In 1963, three of the buildings that Charley had built burned down. The old Weathers house would have burn if it
hadn’t been for the
school kids putting water on it. Marvin had already tore down the theater or it would have burned too.
In 1964, I had saved $1200.00 and things were a lot better. I borrowed $1800 off of my dad, Ted, and
built a house. I built it on the
southwest corner of the block that Vina Weathers bought at the land auction in 1881. Ted helped me by hauling the lumber and other
materials. Ted also helped my working on the house. Ted didn’t charge me any interest on the money and I was able to pay it back in 3 ½
years. I gave my grandmother
$250.00 for the lot and the total cost of the house was about $3000.00.
In 1965, Jackie Weathers was playing Jr. Basketball at Coal Hill. Jack played guard and was the ball handler. The team
was coached by
Leroy Douglas and some of the players were Jack Butler, Mack Butler, David Chronister, Jack Porter, Jackie Weathers, and Howard Satterfield.
The team won 28 games in a row. They won the county, the district, and every tournament they entered. Jackie was voted the most valuable
player in the district, all county, and all tournament in the rest of the tournaments. Jackie played ball on through high school but never
on quite that good a team again. |
