On Wednesday September 16, 1998 I  visited the corpse  of one of my former school  teachers , Mr. John Hall Holliman , I  had at Kirkland Jr. High School  in 1932. He was at Norwood Chapel Funeral Home in Fayette, Al. He had died in Jefferson County, Al. at the age of  93. He had been around the most of  this century. I  hadn’t seen him since attending Kirkland.  He was an energetic young man of about 26 or 27  years of age when  I knew  him and he was helping to shape my life. I wanted to see him one more time and pay my last respects. I thought he was an old timer  at 26 while I was about 15. He managed to get my respect long ago. Very few friends survived Mr. Holliman since he had outlived nearly all of them. His wife was gone. His 95 year old sister was at the funeral along with her caretaker. He had a daughter that lived in Colorodo that was present. She had already retired. It was a little lonely. A few like me that used to know him were there.
 We had moved from Miss. back to Alabama and I had the priviledge of rididng my first school bus to school instead of walking. Ala. was ahead on transportation but not on school. We rode a T-Model Ford bus to school . It had a long wooden seat  down each side of the privately owned and converted truck. It went very slow up the hills and  Murry Barns would sometimes get out the back, run along behind, and make out like he was pushing.  The sides and back had curtains that were open in good weather but closed in bad. No modern windows. Murry was a basket ball player and a comedian and got our attention. He would remark that he was as active as a cow.
 The thirties were the time electricity had not come to the farms in Alabame. I was acquainted with a flashlight and its batteries and the ring em up country telephone hand cranked generator. Electricity fascinated me. I shocked my little sister Clara Jean McCaleb with the phone generator. It’s a wonder I didn’t kill her. The phone generator put out 90 volts AC I learned later. We unhooked our telephone line when storms came up and threw it on the ground to keep lightning from coming in on the house. If we didn’t hook back the line was grounded and others on the party line had a hard time getting anyone else to answer. Therefore no spread of communityl news. We had kerosene lamps to give light for studying by. On arriving from school  I helped with farm chores such as slopping the hogs, feeding the mules and chickens, chopping stovewood and firewood and drawing well water. We had running water. The farm boy or girl ran to the well with a bucket or the spring if they had no well and ran back with a bucket of water for the kitchen dishes, drinking, washing dirty feet etc. Our toys were all home made by a boy like me that thought he needed something to play with. I made truck wagons for us to ride down steep hills and dodge trees around here. We shared them with the Dodson boys which were younger and sometimes they would hit a tree with them. It’s a wonder they didn’t kill themselves.
 One of my home jobs was to help my dad clar ten or 15 acres of land near the channel on Saturdays by pulling one end of a cross cut saw to cut down trees and wielding a chopping axe to trim up the brush and pile into brush piles We did 3 or 4 acres per winter and had log rollings in the spring. The neighboring men and women came to the log rolling. Men to help pile the logs for burning and the women for helping prepare the big dinner feast for the rolling. Everybody got to talk and work. It took strong bodied men. I could shoulder a 200 lb sack of nitrate of soda and walk across the field with it at that time. Some men could pick up a 500 lb bale of cotton. Not much concern was given to being safe. I was going bare footed and plowing a mule and wearing short hair in the summer and wearing long hair and a pair of brogan shoes for the winter. We warmed by a wooded fireplace. One side of you would burn while other froze. Stiff warning from my dad was not to burn up your shoes or you might have to finish the winter barefooted. Our standard week day clothing wear was a blue chambrey(or something) shirt and blue denim overalls We had brown or black long stolckings to wear with shoes in winter.It was an era of make do on your own or die. Not much choice- “do or die.” This was an era of ignorance and adventure for me. I picked up in John Hall Hollimans health class that we were to keep our room well ventilated. My brother Hubert and I kept our little back room ventilated winter and summer. We slept together on a home made cotton mattress in the summer and a feather mattress in the winter. Plenty of home made quilts and the feather mattress kept us warm in the winter and summer heat kept us warm in summer. I learned in the health class things that stood by the ignorant farm boy for the rest of my life. Things like not drinking alcohol, catching veneral diseases by messing with oppisite sex, getting rest at night etc. One just about automatically got his rest at night. The world was not lit up at night back then. At least the country wasn’t. The small oil light became tiresome by about 8 pm. And one hit the bed. My dad required the ones going to school to get up about 4|30 each morning in winter to start a fire  in the fireplace and in the kitchen stove. It was below his dignity to get up and do that when he had a couple of big boys. My mother helped us in our school work until we got above the 7th grade. That was as far as her schooling knowledge went. My dads school knowledge didn’t go near that far, but he knew lots about using reverse psychology on his children though he had never heard of psychology. We grew up as a family in poverty and never knew the difference. Everyone was in the same boat. Such fellows as Rockefeller, Mellon, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt had the money. My mother said Rockefeller’s money is tainted, it taint  for you or it taint for me.
The John Hall Holliman days are gone. His early days were before sulfa drugs, penicillin, the radio for everyone, motorized transportation for all, before television, before computers, before any income to amount to anything, before degrading of womens rights, before pay above $21 per month for armed services and pay to bring spouse along. It was before most everything we think we have to have today. There were no refrigerators, but a block of ice could be bought to make ice cream for the 4th of July. We had ice cream if it snowed in the winter and most of the time on the 4th of July. We kept from starving by eating our home grown products. .
 One thing John Holliman asked in a science class was “If something that cant be stopped hits something that can’t be moved then what happens.? I could not answer that question then. During my life I decided there might be an atomic explosion. A similar thing to that happened  in Siberia when an object from space came in at 240 thousand MPH. It leveled the forest for several miles around. Another question asked was “If a tree falls in the woods and there is no one around to hear it Did it make a noise. “ I couldn’t answer that one. I think the scientists decided the tree made waves and the waves struck the ear and made sensation of sound.. Maybe Mr. Holliman succeeded in arousing some curiosity in me. I didn’t know much back then and still don’t claim to know very much after being exposed to advances of most of this century. My brother Huberrt and I got interested in parachuting. We jumped off the barn with momma’s umbrella. It turned wrong side out and ruined. We got punishment for that. We survived the 10 feet jump.
 At the funeral home visit of John Hall Holliman I met one of his nephews named Theron Holliman that was in my class at Kirkland. I hadn’t seen him since the 30’s either. He informed me of the Kirkland bully named James South.  Said James South started bullyhing me. I got a brick bat and supposedly used it on James. I am glad I didn’t hit him in the head and kill him. He said James said I would kill a fellow and James cut ouit his bullying. I didn’t recollect being that mean back then. I wasn’t in the habit of bothering anyone and didn’t expect to be bothered. Sometime along about that time I became a member of the Church of Christ  at Mt. Olive . Maybe I was trying to atone for the sins I had commiotted as a youngster. Who knows? Anyhow the Kirkland and Mt. Olive days are gone  and most of this century is gone and the John Hall Holliman and Fred McCaleb era is a thing of the past. Maybe 1929 stock market failure will not repeat itself. There was another boy I recollect being at Kirkland named Theron Black. He was smart and deceent. He Joined the Navy and was on one of the ships that the Japanese sunk at Pearl Harbor. The ship is a memorial there. His name is on a monument in front of the Fayette Court House. He enjoyed very little of this century. Maybe that will not happen to someone’s future schoolmate.
 Written by Fred McCaleb during 1998.