They started their married life in a small three room house that my father built on the farm of his father , William George Brown , better known as " Billy " Brown . This house was located on Big Spring Creek , just about where the creek runs into Piney River . My father was a farmer for many years . A leg injury kept him form going into World War I . I was born about a year after their marriage and I don 't remember much about our lives until I was five years old . When I was three , father 's brother Ross Vestal Brown , died from blood poising . I remember going to see him before he died . About this time father bought or rented the David Aaron Dodd farm a mile or two from Spring Creek on Piney River . Why we moved I do not know . Later in 1920 , we moved back to Big Spring Creek where in 1921 by brother , Max Hulin Brown was born . It was about this time that an old sow hog about killed me . Mother had made me a new dress and I went outside to show my Dad . He was watching the sow eat and when I walked up she grabbed my new dress . It was torn from my body as my Dad got me away from her . I wasn 't but very scared . The sow became bacon and ham when the weather got colder . I always helped my mother take care of my baby brother . She also begin to teach me to make beds and wash dishes . Daddy made me a little wooden box to stand on so I could reach the dishpan where it sat on the table . Another thing I could do was churn butter . I didn 't like that job very much . Once Daddy borrowed Grandfather Brown 's buggy and we went to visit my Mother 's sister , Tommye Bradford - Haywood , at Santa Fe , Tennessee . She was married to Hubert Haywood . We also visited some of Daddy 's relatives who lived nearby . Daddy 's mother , Oilie May Vestal - Brown , had been born and raised on the Santa Fe Road , near Columbia , Tennessee . My Grandfather Brown also had a surrey with a red fringe on the top . I thought it was so beautiful . I 'd sit in it for hours and pretend I was going on long trips . Once in a while Grandpa would let me ride with him when he had the time . He was quite and important man in our community , and had business in Centerville and Nashville . My mother was a very good housekeeper . When we ate our meals she always had a nice tablecloth with napkins to match . On the table she had tiny glass bowls to put at each place with salt in them . We were taught good manners and never talked while we were eating . Every week she scrubbed the kitchen floor with lye soap and it was always clean and white . When I was six , Daddy decided to go to Detroit , Michigan to find work . A lot of people he knew had already gone and found work . He left us at home and went to find work and a place for us to live . After awhile , he sent Mother the money for us to make the trip . Mother 's brother , Henry Bradford , carried us to Dickson in his Model T Ford . When we got to Dickson , Mother got Max and me a haircut in a barber shop . That was the first place I ever saw electric lights . We spent the night at Daddy 's brother , Walter D . Brown and family who lived in Dickson , Tennessee . The next day we got on the train for Nashville . When we got there we had several hours to wait for a train to Cincinnati , Ohio . I spent most of the time looking out the windows at the city . It was a sight for a little girl from the farm . One thing that stands out was a big electric sign advertising Sealtest Ice Cream . It was close to where the Nashville Tennessean Newspaper Offices are now . That sign stayed there for many years and I was to see it several other times on future trips to Michigan . Daddy was staying with Mr . Bill Estes and family . They were form Tennessee too . Many years later Mr . Bill was my school bus driver when we all moved back to Tennessee . Daddy had rented us the upstairs apartment in a house on Farr Avenue . We lived there for several months . I started to school as soon as were moved in . Mama had taught me at home for a long time . Mama enrolled me in Lyon School , a few blocks form our house . My teacher was Mrs . Ivy Younger . I loved school and learned fast . At midterm I was promoted to second grade . When school was out in June 1923 , I was already promoted to the third grade . One day a deep snow fell and I got very wet going home . I took pneumonia and was very sick for awhile . Daddy met a man at work that came from Georgia . His name was Ambrose Bowen . When Mr . Bowen got a vacation , he went to Georgia and got married . His wife 's name was Bessie . Mr . Bowen and Daddy rented the upstairs of a house that had a grocery store downstairs . It was on the corner of Mt . Elliot and Kascuisko . They had three rooms and we had three rooms and we shared a bath . Clatye Bradford - Smith , mother 's sister , and her family were to live just across the street from the grocery store during the fall of 1926 and to March 1927 when they returned to Tennessee . The Smith children also went to Lyons School . I really liked Bessie Bowen . She was lonely so her and Mama became good friends . Later she had a little girl and they named her Rebecca Rowena Bowen . I really did love the baby and helped care for her when I could . On weekends the Bowen 's and our family went to Belle Isle Park for a picnic . We carried lots of food and rode a streetcar to the park . The park was on a very large island in the Detroit River , between the United States and Canada . There were several playgrounds for the children and also a large zoo . I saw an elephant for the first time . They also had large greenhouses with thousands of flowers and shrubs . There were banana trees and tall palms . Some of the orange and lemon trees had fruit on them . Later the city built several huge fountains . They were a sight to see . Under the waterfalls they put colored lights and at night they were just beautiful . We always stayed until dark so we could see the lights . While we lived over the grocery store , Daddy carried us to the movies for the first time . I really enjoyed it and insisted on going often . Mama liked it too and she helped me convince Daddy that we should go . Max was only three years old so he didn 't enjoy it much as he couldn 't read . This was a while before talking pictures came to be . It was here that I learned to roller skate . I cut off the handle of a broom and taught myself to skate . I still have scars from learning , I fell a lot . By the time I was fourteen , I had dreams of being a professional skater . We would see the skating acts at the vaudeville shows in the movie houses . The depression put a stop that dream . In the fall of 1923 , we left Detroit and came back to Tennessee . Daddy had bought a car and we drove through . On the way Max became very ill . As soon as we got to our house at the Dodd farm , Daddy went to get a doctor . The doctor said Max had diphtheria and was dying . He said there was a new vaccine for diphtheria , but that Max was so bad he wasn 't sure it would help . He gave him a double dose . After a few hours he got better and the doctor was surprised that he made it . The doctor tacked a square of red cloth by our door and no one would come in . It was thirty days before anyone could visit us or we could leave home . It was a hard time on Daddy and Mother . We had just came home and our trunk with our bedding and most of our clothes was in Dickson . Daddy always shipped it by train , and he had to wait a month before he could go to Dickson to pick it up . Mother must have had a hard time doing all she had to do for a sick child and not much to do with . In the spring of 1924 , Daddy put out a crop and we had a nice garden . In June a tornado came through with a lot of hail and destroyed all the crops and gardens . So another year on the farm was a failure . At this time , I wasn 't going to school . Mother helped me at home . It was three miles to school and much to far for me to walk alone . Before Christmas , Daddy went to work with Mother 's brother , Henry Bradford . They went to Nashville and stayed all week and came home on weekends . Uncle Henry 's wife was named Ella and they had two little boys . They lived about a mile from us . Henry and Ella were living where their son , Billy Robert Bradford lives today , 1988 . A few days before Christmas , Aunt Ella came to visit us . It had rained for days and Piney River was up everywhere . In Nashville , the river was so high that Daddy and Uncle Henry couldn 't leave . They were to bring our presents for Christmas . So for Christmas all we had was a can of King Leo Peppermint sticks that Daddy had brought home earlier . When the waters finally went down , we had Christmas on New Year 's day . In those days all a the roads followed the streams . Our road crossed Piney River several times inside of two miles . People just didn 't travel in cars in winter and even in summer cars had a hard time getting through the streams . ? When spring came , Daddy went back to Detroit to work . Mama waited at home with Max and I until he found a place for us to live . This house was on Garadin Street . My mother started keeping boarders . She was a real good cook so she never had any trouble getting boarders . One of our favorites was Mama 's brother , Dob Bradford . He was a happy - go - lucky person . Always laughing , singing or dancing . Max and I just loved him . ? had him for Thanksgiving dinner . ? It was back to school again a Lyon . When I came home each afternoon , Mother , Max and I got our wagon and went grocery shopping . We got most everything at an A & P grocery store . We bought our baked goods at a bakery . The bakery had cream puffs for ten cents each . I liked them so well I saved all my pennies until I could buy one . We lived on Garadin Street until spring of 1926 . Mother became pregnant with her third child . Daddy brought us back to the farm in Tennessee . I was ten years old . I started back to school at Pinewood . It was a long walk , but Uncle Henry Bradford was building a house at Pinewood so I rode with him most of that spring . Sometimes the river would get up and I couldn 't go to school for days . Once in a while it got up when I was at school . I 'd stay with someone close to school . Most of the time I stayed with the Same Griffin family . They had a daughter my age so I could borrow clothes from her to wear . Thinking back it 's a wonder I ever learned anything . Went to school when I could and changed schools every few months . When spring came , Daddy went back to Detroit . Grandpa ( Samuel Davis Bradford ) , came to stay with us . He stayed the rest of the year . When Daddy returned to Detroit in the spring of 1926 , he boarded with Hollis and Clatye Bradford - Smith . They lived on Farr Avenue near Mount Elliot Avenue . Charlotte Bradford was in Detroit that summer for a short stay with Clatye and returned to Tennessee . At some time before March 1927 , all the Brown family were living in Detroit . GrandMama raised chickens . One baby chick has a solid white head . Grandpa named him white head ( what else ) . We petted him until he was so tame he would sit on Grandpa 's knee and listen to the stories . He grew up to be so mean that he jumped on us every time we went outside . One day he made the mistake of jumping on Mama . She put him in a pen and we had him for Thanksgiving dinner . ? On May 27 , 1926 , my second brother was born . Mother named him " Miles Lemarion Brown , Jr . " Daddy wrote a letter from Detroit and told Mama to " kiss my little Zoonie for me . " From then until he was full grown he was called " Zoonie " Brown . Daddy didn 't see Miles Jr . until he was several months old . Daddy came home in 1926 . I kind of draw a blank here , for after Christmas Daddy carried me to stay with Aunt Tommye Bradford - Haywood , so I could go to school without a long walk . I don 't know were Mama stayed . Maybe with relatives for Daddy went back to Detroit , just after the New Year . He told me if I would be a good girl he would send me a present for my birthday . When I finally got it , it was a gold ring with my initials engraved on it . I was eleven years old . While I lived with Aunt Tommye , I went to a one room school that was in sight of their home . I got acquainted with many of my relatives on Daddy 's side of the family . Aunt Tommye 's husband , Hubert , raised fox hounds . On night when he carried them out on the ridges to listen to them run , he let my cousin Frances and I go with him . He would build a big fire and sit by it and listen to the hounds running the fox . After school was out , Daddy came and got me . He was home again to try farming . After the crops were in , he rebuilt our house . He tore away a lot of it and built three new rooms . There was a new kitchen , a screened dining area , and a new bedroom for me . He also built a big porch across the front . I guess he spent too much money on the house for that fall we went back to Detroit . After our return to Detroit in the fall of 1927 , Hollis and Clatye Bradford - Smith and family moved into the house and lived there until 1828 , and moved back to the Smith farm across Piney River form Henry and Ella Bradford . While at the Brown farm , their youngest daughter , Jean was born , on March 6 , 1918 . This was our last return to Detroit and we remained there until I was fourteen , in the summer of 1930 . When we first got there , we lived on Dwyer Street for a short time . I still went to Lyon School . Later we moved to one block over to a larger house so Mama could keep borders again . That trip back to Detroit put me back to the fifth grade . I hadn 't learned enough in Tennessee to pass the required tests in Lyon School . One good thing came out of my setback was as a fifth grader , I competed in my school spelling bee . I won against the whole school . I didn 't do very good in the city contest as I was up against sixth , seventh and eight graders . I did win a large World Atlas and big dictionary with my name on the front in gold letters . When I was ready for the sixth grade , we moved into a new house on Koschuisko Street . It was large enough that Mama could keep her borders , and I could walk to my new school . Max was going to school now and he could walk to Lyon School which was in sight of our house . My new school was Alex Cooper Intermediate School . I liked it real well . We could have hot lunches everyday and went to different rooms for some of our classes . One class I liked best was home economics . I learned not only basic skills but to make many desserts . From then on I always made the dessert for our meals at home . Mama really liked reading and so did I . She bought a number of books and magazines for us to read . In school we studied the books of " Treasure Island " and " Robin Hood " . I guess I was the only student that enjoyed it . I kept my books and read them over for many years . One thing I liked about the Detroit Schools was there was never any homework . All lessons were studied at school . The only books we could bring home was the ones that belonged to us or library books . It was so strange when I moved back to Tennessee and teachers signed so much homework . I still went grocery shopping everyday after school . Only now I went alone . I purchased the food that would be used in the next day 's meals . With ten boarders and our family my mother sure did a lot of cooking . It was my job everyday to wash the dishes after supper . It took a full hour everyday . I always hated having to do it for by the time I was finished it was to late to go outside . About this time the Company Daddy worked for built a large park several miles out of town . In the summer we went there nearly every Sunday . Mama fixed a picnic lunch and we went in our Dodge touring car that Daddy got for us . My Uncle Dob Bradford still stayed with us and most Sunday 's he would bring his girlfriend and go with us . He name was Hazel Jones . My sister Hazel was named after her . ? In the spring of 1929 , my little brother , Miles Jr . , was nearly three years old . He liked playing outside and one Sunday he disappeared . We searched the whole neighborhood for him . Finally Daddy called the police to help . Several hours later they found him several miles form home . He was wandering around the street , so the police decided he had been kidnapped . Every who did it got scared and put him out . We were all very worried and Mama was hysterical . Needless to say we kept a closer watch on him from then on . ? That summer I got scarlet fever . Later Miles Jr . got it too . Our house was quarantined for twenty - eight days , so all our borders had to leave . Even Daddy couldn 't stay in the house with us . Later some of the borders came back but a few didn 't . ? The next year was very hard on my Mother . In the fall she found a lump in one of her breasts and went into the hospital for surgery . Her health never did get as good again . Daddy and I managed to take care of the borders and our family until Mama was able to help . Daddy bought her a new cook stove to make her work easier . It was green and cream enamel and she loved it . She had wanted one for a long time . My children will remember the stove for it stayed in our family until 1964 . That year I started another new school . It was called John Burroughs School . It was so large , it had two gyms , a swimming pool and a cafeteria that was almost as large as the other schools I went to . I learned to swim there and became a junior life saver . Years later I was able to save Miles Jr . , and a cousin form drowning . I played softball that year and was captain of our team . ? Our house had an upstairs apartment and day a young couple moved in . They had a small baby . I did babysitting for them . They had the first radio I ever saw . I really enjoyed listening to it . ? ? In the winter of 1929 , Mother burned her arm really bad . She was stoking the furnace and someway the steam burned her . Even if she couldn 't use her arm she was able to help with the cooking . So all together we were able to do what needed to be done . Times were getting very hard . The depression was starting . Most of our borders had left by spring of 1930 . Daddy stayed on until summer . Work got ? scarce so he decided it was time to go back to our farm . He took his savings and hired a truck to move all our furniture to Tennessee . Mother wasn 't about to leave her stove behind . Daddy invested in some real estate and he lost all that . He had a few hundred dollars to take care of us until he could make a crop . ? On our way back to Tennessee our car had some trouble and Daddy pulled into a garage to see what was wrong . They put it on a rack to raise it up , and not knowing he was standing on the rack while he looked under the hood , Daddy was raised up . He stepped back and fell and hurt his wrist . Mother thought is was broken but he wouldn 't go to a doctor . Mother bandaged it tightly and he drove home with one hand . It healed up all right in a few weeks . ? When we got home stayed with Grandfather Brown for a while . Our house had a family living in it and they didn 't have to leave until New Year 's . The man 's name was Francis Marion Crawford . He lived there with his wife and daughter . His nickname was " Uncle Duck " and he would be counted on to tell a tall tale or two . His daughter 's name was Vivian Christine . She was three years older than I was . We became very good friends . Just across the river from Daddy farm was a man named Albert Sullivan . His wife was Christine 's oldest sister and her name was Ruby . He had several children , but the two oldest girls were the same age as Christine and I . In the next year we were together a lot . Just up the road from us was a family named Wrenn . They moved that year and Christine 's father , " Uncle Duck " , moved to the Wreen house just before Christmas . That fall of 1930 , before the Crawford 's moved , we lived with my Grandfather Brown . Mother was expecting her fourth child , but she helped my step grandmother can fruits and vegetables and for her help we got part of them . Daddy worked for different people that needed help and for pay he took what ever we could use to help make it through the winter until he could make a crop the next year . When school started , my parents carried me to Mother 's sister that lived near Columbia , Tennessee . I was starting the eight grade and loved going to school at my Aunt 's . We road a bus to a new school , that had replaced the one room school I had attended before . I got acquainted with may of my relatives . I was older now I could visit them more often . Even after I married , I went back a few times . Mother and Daddy worked very hard that fall to gather enough food for us to eat in the winter . They worked for people gathering crops and Mother helped can fruits and vegetables and they took a share for pay . Everyone was glad of their help for no one had money to pay hired help . We moved into our house just before Christmas . We were all glad to be home at last . By now a school bus ran over on Highway 48 , so I only had a short distance to walk . We still had the river to cross , but Daddy kept a small boat and when our foot log washed out , we used the boat to cross . I was fifteen and was allowed to date on the weekends . Christine Crawford , her nieces , Doy and Virginia Sullivan and I spent a lot of time together . Once in a while Mr . Sullivan would give a square dance . He played a fiddle and someone usually came that could play a guitar or banjo . Once Daddy let me have a square dance in our yard . When my sister Hazel was a few weeks old , she became fretful and lost weight . The doctor said she needed to be bottle bed with rich milk . We had a cow but she was not giving mild . My Victrola was the only thing we had that was worth enough to trade for a good cow . Daddy found a nice Jersey cow with a young calf . It belonged to James and Florence Cooper that lived on Plunder 's creek . Daddy said that if I would trade my Victrola for them I could have the calf for my very own . It was very hard to give it up , but in a few weeks Hazel 's cheeks grew rosy and she was fat and healthy . I knew then we had done the right thing . Mother never got very strong after Hazel 's birth . I took on a lot of extra work helping her . To repay me for all my help , she managed to make me two new dresses . The depression was really bad so anything we got was a treat . She was a very good seamstress . I had lots of friends and we had swimming parties and fish fries all summer . Before school started in the fall , my Grandfather Brown became very ill . All of Daddy 's brothers wanted us to move into our old house on Spring Creek and take care of him . They told Daddy that if he would take care of him as long as he lived they would deed him their share of the farm . So we moved again . It took a while but we finally got everything moved . I started to school again that fall , but Mother 's health go so bad I had to quit and stay home to help her . My Grandfather Brown died on Saturday , November 7 , 1931 . We had only taken care of him for a few weeks . All of Daddy 's family decided that he hadn 't earned the farm , and wanted him to pay them if he wanted the farm . Daddy sold the Dodd farm to Doctor John Edward Wood . He paid his brothers and sisters for the farm . It was a huge old two story house and had three big fireplaces . We still almost froze for it was a cold house . We got most of Grandpa 's things . His widow took what was hers and moved to Centerville to live with her children . As Christmas grew nearer , Mother became very ill . She had to go into the hospital at Nashville . Max and I kept things going with the help of one of Daddy 's cousins who came and stayed with us . Her name was Annie Lou Harbison . She was a lot of help to me . She taught me to sew and help me make what clothes we got . In mid - January , Mother came home and we cared for her until she died on Thursday , February 16 , 1932 . Charlotte Bradford - Brown died at home on Piney River in Hickman County , Tennessee , and is buried in an unmarked grave in the Brown Cemetery on Big Spring Creek . On January 11 , 1932 , I was sixteen years old . On my birthday a new family moved into our neighborhood . They were from Nashville and everyone was excited that something new was happening . For me this family was to become my future in - laws . They were well liked and the woman came to help me take care of Mother . In this family was the father . His name was Hurshel Benton Gibbs . The mother , Lela Arizona Gibbs , two daughters , the oldest was Mettie Lee . She was already married to Harvey Young . The other daughter was Sadie Geraldine . She was married to Rufus Gallaher , Jr . In March , Mrs . Gibbs said her son was coming for a visit . She had told me so much about him before we met , I think I fell love with him before we met , and on the last Friday of March , 1932 , I met my future husband . He was twenty years old . I think even that day we knew that we would be together all our lives . We discovered we both liked the same things , especially fishing . From then on for over forty - five years we have been fishing , together . Later on after the team of little blue mules I first owned , I had another pair of larger mules . The off mule ( the mule on the left hitched as a team ) was mean . You had to always watch her to keep from getting hurt . Uncle John Buttrey was working with me , he was getting to be an old man , probably 65 years old at the time , and we were hauling spoke timber . By the time Gilbert was 12 he was a professional teamster , and would hire out with his team to haul what ever needed to be hauled in the surrounding area . At times this was the only income the family had . By the time he was 16 he had become an expert teamster , maybe as good as there was around . He continues his story about working with Uncle John Buttrey hauling spoke timber . We called the cuts tough butts . They ( the men cutting the timber ) only cut two to four 36 inch cuts off the butt log of a tree . This was the very best wood in the tree . Usually straight clear grain and was probably White Ash . We rolled them up on skids from the back of the wagon and loaded them cross ways in the wagon frame . On the haul we had to make , we had a pretty steep hill to go down to get to the spoke mill which was about 200 yards down the road . It was a short haul so we loaded pretty heavy . We would lock the back wheels going off the hill . The lock chain would run from the coupling pole back to the wheels . They would either tie the brake pole down in a lock position , or tie up the back wheels with a log chain so the wheels would not roll , but scoot going off a steep place to keep the load from pushing on the mules . Where the road went off the hill we had to straddle a big stump . They would cut the trees close to the ground to get the best timber from the base of the tree to make spokes for wagon and buggy wheels . With each trip down the hill the back wheels , which were locked and scooting , would cut down into the ground a little deeper leaving less and less clearance over the top of the stump . Finally the ruts cut down enough to where on one trip the lock chain hung the top of the Rowdy Friends and Homemade Whiskey Some time near to this period , the new road that was called Cox Pike was being built . It was in the winter and I hauled creek gravel on the road . It was about 5 or 6 miles from home , and I would leave the wagon on , or near the job and ride the mules to and from the job . After some two or three weeks going home at night , I started staying with uncle Nat Pewitt and his family at night . Guy and Ray Pewitt , ( I assume they were sons of uncle Nat ) had a still up a hollow from the house . It was a large still and they called it Steam Shot . One or two nights a week I would go with them to cook off a run of whiskey . Guy was working for a man they called Slim . I must it is inferred here that Guy had some business arrangement with Slim , where Guy and Ray would make the whiskey , and Slim would distribute it . Slim lived near Nashville , and Slim was the only name I ever heard him called . While hauling gravel , I broke a set of haimes , and so I borrowed some from uncle Nat . One Sunday morning when I started home Guy and Ray rode with in about __ miles of home . We had some whiskey so I was feeling pretty good , and Guy wanted to race me . He had a real good saddle horse , and he was fast . I was drunk enough I suppose I didn 't care , so I took him on . My little mule ran out of the road under some low hanging limbs and I hurt my arm . Soon after that we stopped at a friend house , and he brought out a quart of red whiskey and wanted me to have a drink . I did , and that is the last thing I remembered until I got to Liberty Church of Christ . That is where Ray left me and went his way . I don 't know when Guy left us . When I got within about a mile from home I came to myself , and I was walking and leading the mule . I wondered why I was walking , so I got back on the mule . When I got home it must have been about 12 : 00 o ' clock . I unsaddled the mule and turn him loose , and went to sleep in the corn crib . I woke about 4 : 00 and went to the house . Some time after the job was done , I went on a Saturday evening to carry the haimes I had borrowed bWhen we got back to where my mule was tied , we stopped and I got back on the little mule . Guy wanted me to get out in front of the wagon , as we wet on down the road . The way we were going , there was a long hill , down grade for about a mile all the way . A deep gully had washed out on both sides of the road , and the road was narrow . Guy had a real goad team of mules and fat as mud . All it took to get them to run was to kick the front gate of the wagon , and they would run for life . Going off the hill , when we got to a place where I had no where to get off the road on the side to let them pass , Guy began to kick the front gate of the wagon and holler to get his team started running . I had to run my little mule flat out to keep from being run over . I was scared half stiff . I kept thinking what if my mule fell . There was no way they could have kept from running over me and my mule . Guy ran me all the way down the hill . I remember 2 or 3 years after that I was riding along Parker Creek road , and I saw a fairly large still in plain view of the road . There were some 25 to 30 wooden 60 gallon barrels of mash . The still was operated around the clock with 2 shifts a day . They would blow the steam whistle when it came time to change shifts . They operated with a steam boiler just like they used in those times to run a sawmill . The steam was piped to the boiler to heat the mash . One time when I was bout 14 , two other boys and I stopped in at Uncle Jim Green 's store . Dewey Beshears stopped by the store too . So we were on our way home and Dewey wanted to race his mule against mine . There had been some lose rock put in a mud hole in the road , and his mule hit them rock and fell against my mule 's chest , and she turned a complete flip . I flew though the air about 15 feet in front of her . When I went back and caught her there was dirt caked on top of the saddle horn . Neither me or the mule was hurt . This story took place before World War I had ended . Dad was logging , and he sent Grover and me to buy some corn from Mr Giles Paige . Corn was $ 10 . 00 a barrel . Mr . Paige lived where Matt Sullivan had lived for a long time , and was living there when he died . On our way back , when we got to where Dave and Nettie lived , we met Guy and Ray Pewitt in the forks of the road . Guy had a real good pair of mules but they had never worked very hard , and was not use to pulling very much . Our mules were a little heavier , and were use to pulling in the woods , and were much slower . Guy wanted to tie the back of the wagons togMules , Wagons and Long Roads When I first started hauling on the road , Grover would go with me . We would haul spoke timber , staves bolts , lumber , and cross ties . I would always do the driving . In the summer time the roads would be real dusty , and in the winter lots of mud . One day in the winter it started turning cold , and the mud started freezing on the wagon hubs . By the time I got home that night the wheels were froze solid with no openings between the spokes . Once in the summer I was hauling lumber , and the mill where I loaded was close to where 100 Highway crosses the Hickman county line . That was long before the Highway was built . When I got to the top of the hill I ran in to the first crawler tractor I ever saw . It was pulling a large grader , grading the road all the way to Bon Aqua . The grading had left two or three inches of loose dirt in the road . I was already too heavy loaded before I hit that loose dirt . The loose dirt made the load pull all the more harder for the team . I should have left the wagon until the next day , and let some other wagons open up the tracks , but I kept going . I got to Bon Aqua about three hours late , and the mules were about give out pulling in the loose dirt . I watered them good and fed them so they could eat while I unloaded . That took about an hour . So they made it back home all right . One summer it was hot and dry . I always carried a bucket to use to water the mules with . One day about three miles from the station , ( Bon Aqua Station ) there lived a man named Gennis . He had a pond beside the road where we had stopped many times before to get water for the mules . On this day I was alone . No other wagons were with me . I stopped at the pond to water the mules , and had got over the rail fence ready to get the water , when Mr . Gennis saw me and made me get out without the water . I sure felt bad about that . I think Dad may have meant he felt that , it was mighty little of Mr . Gennis for not letting him water his mules . On a Saturday morning , I had gone up on the hill close to the house to get a load of firewood . Work In Nashville The year I was 16 when I got the crops laid by , I went to Nashville to work . I was probably the first part of July . I had my clothes in a small suitcase and walked to past Hillsboro , where the road crossed the creek . ( Leipers Fork ) It was a little after dark , and I had pulled my shoes off to wade the creek when I saw the lights of a car coming . I flagged him down and he stopped , and asked me where I was going . I told him I was trying to get to Franklin to catch the Interurban into Nashville . The Interurban was a little commuter rail line that ran between Franklin and Nashville for several years , but after Franklin Road ( U S Highway 31 ) , and Hillsboro Pike were built , and automobiles became the prevalent means of travel the Interurban went out of business , probably in the late 1930s . The man 's name was Mr . Cannon . He carried me into Franklin to the Interurban Station . I was real tired , and when I sat down to wait for the Interurban , I went to sleep . When the car came by and was ready to go the conductor woke me and asked if I was going to ride that car . I told him I was and he said he was ready to go . When I got to the transfer shed in Nashville , while waiting for my street car , I got on some scales and weighed . ( probably the kind that were around in public places where you could put a penny in and weigh ) I weighed 109 pounds . The car I wanted to go out on was called the Buenavista . I went out to 22nd avenue where I boarded with Uncle Charlie Lampley . Monday morning I went over into west Nashville and got a job with John B . Ransom Box Factory . I got into a real hot argument with the hothead I was working with . He went and told the foreman I was giving trouble . The foreman came over and said for me not to come back the next morning . I said I would quit now if he wanted me to . He said no , for me to work on till time to quit . Later on the foreman came back around and said for me to come back next morning . I did , and that was Friday . Friday night I told the foreman I was going home over the weekend , and might be a The Last Story Dad 's journal is a randomly remembered , randomly written collection of stories in no particular chronology . The journal was written in a bold but shaky hand about 3 years before he died . From the time I was just a little boy , on up until the last days I lived at home , and even after I left home and returned for visits Dad would tell about things that happened in his childhood . As you can tell from this recreation of his journal he especially loved to tell about rough and rowdy days with his mules and wagons . This is the last memory he recorded and was short , but no exception , it was about working with his mules when he was just a boy . A boy by age , but a man by deed . . One summer I helped build the road from Fernvail to near Linton . We graded it with mules , and then hauled creek gravel with wagons . It was a very hard summers work . I rode a mule about 7 or 8 miles there and back , in the morning and evening . I must have been 15 years old . At times I ponder the question . How do you measure the worth of a man ? I 've asked Mary that question several times . I know the immediate response of many , perhaps most would be , " it 's simple , look at his financial statement " . Or others may suggest that you have to look at the totality of the man . Nice try , but that one can be debated for as long as man has the capacity to think . Comprehending , and then measuring such a thing becomes cosmic . The definition of the word cosmic as used here is , " the inclusion of everything , but the description of nothing " . We then are left simply with our regard for the man , or if you will , our feelings . My world is limited I know , but Gilbert R . Sullivan was the greatest man in my life . I know that measurement is based on feelings , on love , and respect , but it 's all I need to know . A part of him was reborn in each of five sons . I think all of us had similar regard for him , and each in their own way struggled to measure up . I think each of us knew the futility in that task , and dealing with that , played out in it 's on way . Yet having something of him in each of us , even if only a fraction , is enough to cherish the life in us , and the ability to pass a bit of that on . Within hours of my Father 's death I sought to be alone , and found myself in a bedroom of my parent 's home , the one away from the rest of the house , the one over the garage . As I grieved his death I felt all of a sudden very much alone , and I asked : Where have you gone Father , and why have you left me alone . Who will I turn to for advice and counsel for the thousands of choices I must make . Who will teach me of the old signs . When to plant corn . " Gib " , as some close friends called him in the early days , was born in a small frame house on the banks of Turnbull Creek , about one mile above where Highway 100 crosses over the creek . It was the fifth day of January , 1907 . " Gib " was the fifth of ten children , but as was so common in those days two of the children died at birth . Turnbull Creek drains a section of the western " Highland Rim " in Williamson County Tennessee , near present day Fairview . The soil along the ridges was never fertile like the deep silty loams of the " Middle Basin " , a few miles to the east . It took a hardy group of people to settle and survive there . A few years after James Robertson and John Donelson lead the Cumberland expedition to settle the territory around French Lick ( Nashville ) , Jeremiah Sullivan brought his family to settle those ridges and hollows of the western highland rim . They with other families like the Lampleys , Mangrums , Lankfords , Buttreys , Whites , Tidwells , Thompsons , and others raised livestock and lived off the land . I can remember it being said in my family that they settled there because there was plenty of water and the game was plentiful . I suspect there were other reasons , like the land being cheaper there or that some had land grants in that area . By the time Gilbert was born to Allen Judson Sullivan , and Liza Elizabeth Roberts , generations of the Sullivans had been there for over 100 years . As my father wrote years later of the place he was born , this was my Grandfather Green Sullivan 's farm . Green Sullivan ( William Green Sullivan ) was the Grandson of Owen one of the original settlers to the area . In 1984 at the time Dad wrote about his childhood the house and barn still stood on the left side of the highway going west , about one half mile below Union Valley Methodist Church , one mile from Hudgins School where I went to school . He wrote , I went to school very little . I never finished the fourth grade . The first thing that I remember in my life , he writes , I must have been 3 or 4 years old . I was trying to follow my father , and I got up the road to Mr . Robert Stinsons home , ( he lived about 200 yards from Union Valley Church ) where there was a large Mulberry tree . Mr . Stinson knocked off some mulberries and gave them to me to get me to go back home . . My father bought and sold livestock , and he was going on a trip to buy livestock He was going with Mr . John Wess Sullivan . My father and Mr . John Wess Sullivan worked and rode together . Several years later , I remember when I was about 14 years old riding to Columbia ( TN ) on a Sunday to take mules to the big mule sale there . I had 2 mules on my right and had two tied behind to my horses tale . I don 't remember how many my father and Mr . Wess had . Dad wrote about another recollection when he was about four . We went to my uncle Londe Sullivan 's to visit , and I was playing on the stairway , and found some tobacco stamps in a can . I took a big yellow one with the name Old Statesman , the name of the tobacco pouch it came from . I put the stamp in my pocket and when I got home I showed it to my mother . She scolded me for taking it and said I would have to take it back . So the next time we went to see uncle Londe mother made me carry the tobacco stamp back and give it to Ante Hattie . Gib told about other troubles he had about that time . Along about that time we had two goats . Every time I would go out of the house by myself , those goats would get me down and really work me over . I hated those goats . Children learned about work early in life in those days . When I was six years old I would go to the fields with Nettie , Dixie , and Grover to chop weeds out of the corn . It seemed that Gib became a good hand with horses and mules at a very young age . When I was about 7 or 8 years old , he wrote , we had a big brown jenny , ( female donkey ) and Dad had several yearling mules and some were probably near 2 years old . I remember on several occasions in the winter ( on trips to sell mules or to move them to other pastures ) Dad would get me to ride the jenny and the young mules would follow the jenny , and he would follow behind the mules on his horse . I recall my Dad telling me on several occasions that as a young boy many of his friends were years older than he . I always had more friends of people being much older than I was . One of the best friends was Albert Brashears a large man , about 40 at the time . He would always play very rough with me . One winter day we went out with young mules to do some trading for older mules to sell . About dinner time we stopped at Mr . George Lampley 's , and were out at the barn showing young mules . A real steep hill covered with large trees sloped away form the barn . There were two or three other boys there about my age . Mr . Brashears grabbed me and said out loud so the other boys could hear that he was going to chew my ear . He started chewing on my ear and told me to start hollering loud like he was chewing my ear off . One chubby boy was lying in the sun on a bed of leaves . About that time Mr . Brashears turned me lose and started for the big chubby boy , and the boy started rolling to get away from Mr . Brashears . He started rolling down that steep hill and couldn 't stop , but before he got to rolling very fast he rolled against a big tree . That probably kept him from getting hurt real bad . It must have been a long way to the bottom . One of Dad 's sisters , Dixie Clara , had married Monroe Buttrey on December 25 , 1917 at the age of 16 . On April 15 , 1919 she gave birth to a son , Harley , and she died one month later , apparently from complications form the delivery . When Dixie died she was sick for some weeks . I was eleven years old at the time and would walk with Nettie , ( an older sister ) about 3 miles along a path through some old sage fields and woods at about 12 O ' clock at night to sit with her until daylight , then walk back home . It was in the early spring . When I was 10 or 11 years old Grover ( a younger brother ) and I had two hunting dogs . In the winter we would go rabbit hunting and the dogs would tree rabbits in hollow trees or logs . We always carried an ax so we could chop them out . Some times we could run our hands in or jab them out with a small pole and catch them . When Dad would tell stories about his childhood , he would talked about his Dad 's drinking from time to time , and what a burden it was on the family . He would tell us how hard it was for his mother and the chGood Times With Dad on the Road When I was 8 or 9 I would go with my Dad to Nashville on the wagon . We usually carried a mixed load , shelled corn , molasses , dried peas , hams , and sweet potatoes . Coming back home , most of the time we would be just about empty except for a few odds and ends , probably coffee , sugar , a few yards of cloth , or a few house wares , except in the spring on 2 or 3 trips we would bring back a load of fertilizer . Mother would fix a box of food and we would sometimes take a piece of side meat to fry at a camp on the road . When staying over in Nashville , we would put the mules and wagon in a large stable . At that time in Nashville there was some 8 to 10 large stables that would hold twenty or thirty wagons . We would sleep in the wagon at night . On two or three of those trips I remember going to a silent movie . One time we had a pretty team of sorrel mules that were not well broke . A section of their route between Nashville and home took them down Harding pike through Belle Meade . Out in Belle Meade on the Harding Pike where the road crosses the railroad at an angle , the railroad ran parallel to the road for a good way . We were close to the crossing when Dad looked at his watch , and said it was about time for the train . We looked and sure enough , here come the train chugging down the grade . About that time the whistle blew . We must have been some 30 or 40 feet from the crossing . The mules got scared and started raring up and jumping and got turned across the ditch by the road . Grandfather Judson must have been able to hold them in check while the train went on by . Dad continues by saying the train passed and we drove on . Shortly before World War I , there was an army base on Whites Bridge road just outside of Nashville . I remember from there on into town we would meet now and then an army freight wagon coming out of town . There would usually be six mules to the big wagon , and they would always be at a fast trot . Two men would be on the seat of the wagon , one to drive and one to brake when it was needed . To me that was a grand sight . On one of those trips to Nashville , we left from down town in the early morning and drove to a fertilizer plant in West Nashville and loaded with fertilizer . We came back across the Whites Bridge road to the Harding Pike . On the way home it was beginning to get dark about the time we got to the top of Whippoorwill Hill . We stopped and made camp for the night . It was right cold , probably in the middle 30 's , and the wind was blowing right sharp . We hung a blanket between some trees to brake the wind and built a big fire , made some coffee , ate supper and bedded down for the night . There was another wagon with us , camped near by . The next morning when we woke we noticed that the teams had got lose and went down in a hollow to get water . Dad and the other man went to hunt the horses . When they found them and brought them back , we hitched up and were on our way home . On another trip with Dad it was a Monday and the weather was hot . When we got near the backbone hill on Harding Road , we came up on a Mr . McPherson . He had one of his mules lose from the wagon , and had pulled the harness off . The mule was rolling in the dust , and was grunting and groaning something awful . Mr . McPherson asked Dad what he thought was wrong . Dad said she acted like she had the colic . He had turned the mules out on grass on Sunday and thought she must have eaten too much grass . He ask Dad what should he do . Dad said if she had the colic he could bleed her and she would be all right . Mr . McPherson told Dad to go ahead and bleed the mule . So Dad got out his knife and cut little gashes in the mules upper mouth along the first ridge behind the upper teeth . The mule would wallow her tongue around and swallow the blood , and in a few minutes she was up . Mr . McPherson hitched her back to the wagon and drove with us on to Bellevue . He stopped there to unload . He was hauling lumber . Mr . McPherson would talk about that every time hHeycuz . net