A Country Boy Can Survive

My early youth was the best of times—and the darkest of times. Survival in my tiny world required grit and guts. When I was an eight-year-old boy, I could skin a rabbit and whup anyone my age who lived near about. I was fit as a fiddle and slicker than snot. But the innocence of my childhood was crumpled like a sack of potatoes. Skirmishes with my daddy caused emotional scars that have lasted a lifetime. The plain and simple truth could not be hidden. My daddy was a chronic alcoholic and a physically abusive monster. He was the boogieman! He was the devil—and he lived inside my house!

There were eleven young’uns in the Bradford clan. When I was a young hillbilly boy growin' up in the hills and hollers in the mid-1950s, everyone in my family worked daily to eke out a simple but muddled lifestyle. Life wasn’t easy. Growin’ up in this part of the South meant we talked with a deep southern drawl—and that we were uneducated, barefooted, chewed tobacco, dipped snuff, and wore overalls. The high and mighty folks in town called us “local yokels,” “poor white trash,” or simply “hillbillies.” But my family didn’t pay any heed to the city slickers. Being called a hillbilly was a badge of honor. The Bradford clan had an independent spirit. We had good horse sense that helped us survive our gritty lifestyle.

The Bradford clan had a total disregard for the trappings of modern society. We experienced hardships but learned how to hunker down through the good times and the bad times. By the time I was eight, mama had already brought ten young’uns into the world, and number eleven would soon be poppin’ out.

I had five younger siblings and five older siblings. There were four boys and seven girls in the Bradford clan. I hardly ever went to school—some first grade, a little bit in the second grade, and no third grade. My daddy didn’t care a hill of beans about sending his brood of hillbillies to school. The Bradford kids were important to him for only one reason: work in the fields and earn a few dollars that he used to buy more wine and moonshine. Mama told us our eyes and ears were our windows to learnin’ everything we needed to know. Our education was about knowing how to care for a vegetable garden or how to skin a rabbit—and learnin’ to spell didn’t help the tomatoes grow.

I reckon I could say the first eight years of my life were steeped in poverty. But it was the only world I had ever seen. I didn’t know how other folks lived. I had never been more than a few miles from my home. My toilet was a two-holer outhouse. I used a hand pump to get my drinkin’ water. Our homes never had electricity. It seemed like every home we lived in had a leaky roof. When howling storms came with their torrents of rain crashing through our roof, we had to quickly place buckets throughout the house to catch the rainwater that gushed through our shoddy tin roof.

Mama’s most daunting task was protecting her children from Daddy. When Daddy was drunk -- or walkin’ at a slant -- he was an absolute savage. He’d break everything in the house that wasn’t nailed to the floor. He ruled over the Bradford clan with such power that his anger and rage could never be questioned. None of us kids dared to go crossways with him. When he spoke, I paid heed to what he said. If I sassed him, he’d slap me across my face with the back of his hand or whip me with a strip of leather. Even though I was only eight, being the eldest boy at home in a hillbilly family should have given me the freedom to be carefree and resourceful —but not in my world. I may have been a callow boy, but I was wise beyond my years.

I grew up being afraid Daddy would kill Mama someday during one of his drinkin’ spells. I watched as he took a bottle of wine or moonshine and guzzled it down in one long gulp. Brutal visions of him beating and cursing Mama will be in my mind ’til the day I die. All of us young’uns knew when we better skedaddle. We cried! We screamed! We ran! I didn’t want to be anywhere near his anger or unrelenting wrath when Daddy got drunk and started looking for me. I was a young boy—I never knew what might happen next. I had secret places where I hid. My favorite hideaway was way back yonder underneath the house. I knew Daddy was too big to follow me there. When he started cussin’ at me, I’d hot foot it to the front of the house and squeeze under the wood porch. I scooched in the dirt through a tight passageway under the house without making a sound. Sometimes, one or two siblings joined me in my safe place. We lay together on the ground and listened as Daddy destroyed furniture and dishes in the room above us. I cried when I heard him cursing and beating Mama. In the darkness under our house, I could hear Mama begging him to stop hitting her. Some nightmares are real and there is no escape! My siblings and I tightly snuggled with each other as we waited for the tempest in the room above us to pass. We remained completely silent until Daddy left the house or passed out from his drunken stupor. When the horror above us finally ceased, we cautiously left our refuge to see if Mama was all right and to survey the wreckage Daddy had caused— glass fragments, pieces of furniture on the floor, and Mama crying! When I saw Mama attempting to hide the blood, cuts, and bruises all over her frail body, deep-seated hate festered in my tiny heart toward my daddy. How does an eight-year-old make sense of why his daddy is hurting his mama? How does a young boy grasp what he can’t understand? I didn’t know how to reckon with such chaos and disorder. Daddy was the enemy. He was evil — a no 'count bastard. But a country boy can survive!

Daddy demanded the entire family to work in the fields. There was no place in the Bradford clan for an ornery kid. The entire Bradford clan went to the field. We usually left our house at sunrise and often walked a few miles to the cotton field. My younger sisters brought their rag babies to the field and often fell asleep while lying on our cotton sacks as we dragged them behind us. At other times, my younger siblings would spend hours playing or sleeping under a cotton trailer where they were partially protected from the blisterin’ summer sun. By the time I was eight years old, I was expected to pick my own row of cotton and keep up with Daddy. If I fell behind, Daddy grabbed a cotton stalk and thrashed me ‘til I got welts on my back. I had no hankering to be whipped by Daddy, so I always worked hard. Even though the entire family picked cotton for hours, our combined income was only a piddling amount. After working in the hot sun all day, we walked home. We were tired and we were hungry. Nobody ever got rich pickin’ cotton!

When we got home from the cotton field, every kid had to help with the chores. While we fed the chickens, slopped the hogs, and tended the garden, Mama cooked delicious vittles for supper on her wood-burnin’ stove. We all came running when she finally called us to supper. There was always a heap of laughter around the kitchen table at supper time—at least when Daddy wasn't soused. The chatter was intense. My siblings talked about things that are important only if you’re a kid. I was excited to tell everyone about all the fish I caught yesterday—and the big one that got away. It always stuck in my craw when my little brother bragged how he could gig a bigger bullfrog than me. My sisters chatted anxiously about a heap of insects and tiny creatures they found under a rotten tree stump in our dirt yard. Sandy said she cried after finding a dead sparrow resting quietly in the autumn leaves. Jerry came up with some cockamamie story that he and Franklin went skinny dippin’ in the creek just a piece down the road. Everyone excitedly talked about a baby squirrel that had fallen from a tree. Mama was in a family way, and we anxiously asked when our new brother or sister would be born.

We didn’t live high on the hog. We never had electricity in our homes. Kerosene for a lamp cost money so handmade candles were usually our primary light source. Most houses I grew up in were wood shacks with a couple of bedrooms, a large living area, and a huge kitchen. Two or three youngsters usually slept together. During the frigid winter months, we huddled closely to stay warm until we eventually fell asleep. By early morning, the coal in the pot-belly stove had burned down to ashes. The inside of our house was almost as cold as the outside.

We usually had lots of chickens. Trying to walk barefoot around all those little piles of poop in the yard left me fit to be tied. Chicken poop constantly squished up between my tiny toes. We always had lots of roosters. An eight-year-old boy living in the Arkansas hills ain’t afraid of nothin’. When a couple of hillbilly boys had a disagreement, a scuffle usually ended up with someone gettin’ a black eye. But, as fearless as I was, those rascally roosters scared me because they attacked me for no reason. Now and then, Mama told us boys to fetch her a rooster that she would fry for supper. Fresh meat and revenge! I reckoned every rooster heard Mama when she told me to fetch one for her. Roosters began running every which way all over the yard. Catching a grown rooster ain’t easy when you’re only seven or eight. Eventually, I’d toss a handful of table scraps to the rooster I was trying to corner. After I finally caught the contrary rascal, it was payback time. I was taught two ways to kill a rooster: use a hatchet and cut off its head or hold the rooster by its neck and twist its body ’round and round’ until its head separated from its body. I always preferred the second method – I’ll admit watching the rooster’s headless body flailing about on the blood-stained ground sometimes made me snicker. I figured the rooster may have won a battle or two— but I won the war.

It was an absolute necessity for every self-sufficient hillbilly family to have a large vegetable garden. It was an enormous task for Mama to keep her offspring from going hungry. During the fall season, every Bradford kid stayed busy helping Mama can fruits and vegetables to keep us fed during the long, cold winter months. Mama told us when it was time to harvest the vegetables in the garden. She cooked for hours while canning delicious foods like okra, carrots, onions, green beans, squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, and corn. Every kid was kept busy for days shuckin’ corn, splittin’ peas, and cuttin’ tomatoes. There were lots of fun things an eight-year-old boy would rather do than fetch cucumbers and corn from the garden. But Mama would get madder than a wet hen if I didn’t do my part.

If I needed to pee, I just walked outside the house, took out my willy, and peed on the dirt. Since our homes were always surrounded by fields, Mama never got angry—although she would have a conniption fit if I dropped my drawers and tried to shickle in the yard. Instead, I’d have to go to the outhouse, a small wooden structure that was usually about thirty to fifty feet from the rear of our home. Because we were a large family, we usually had a two-hole outhouse. There were no dividers separating the two holes, so the person seated next to me might be my brother, my sister, or Mama. Absolutely no privacy! Yech! The outhouse always stank to high heaven. The god-awful smell never went away— especially in the summertime. Flies and bugs constantly attacked my little bottom as I sat on a hole doing my business. Spiders often dangled in every corner. Assorted bugs crawled on the wood floor. On more than one occasion, Mama had to remove splinters from my little butt that I got while sitting on a hole.

The trip to the outhouse during winter was a punishment no one deserved. If it was snowing or blizzarding outside, I got completely dressed before I went outside. Even though I sprinted to the outhouse, by the time I got there, I was still freezin’ cold. The interior of the outhouse was just as cold as the outside. I dropped my overalls and pulled down my long johns. After lowering my drawers, I placed my bare bottom on the cold wooden hole. I could hear the bitter and frosty wind blowin’ outside. The moment I sat down, I felt that same frigid air whistling up to bite my backside. Mama told me about a nincompoop kid over in Greene County whose rear end froze completely shut during a ferocious ice storm while he was sittin’ on a hole in his outhouse. I always finished my business quickly and ran lickety-split back to the house. I hear tell that some city folks had crappers inside their homes. That was somethin’ I dearly wanted to see!

I don’t ever recollect seeing a doctor when I was a young’un. When one of us kids got hurt or sick, Mama used home remedies passed down from Granny Bradford. When a kid had an earache, Mama told one of the boys to pee into a metal cup. She placed it on the potbelly stove to warm the pee. After using a spoon to dip a small amount of pee from the container, Mama ordered the ailing kid to lean over as she cautiously poured a tiny amount of the warm pee into the aching ear.

I still recollect the day when Mama went to heaven. I had just turned nine a few days earlier. The day began just like most other days, except Mama stayed in bed because she was “under the weather.” We knew she was fixin’ to have another baby, but we saw no cause to be concerned. There was nothing to worry about. After bringing ten other babies into the world, Mama was an expert in childbirth. Doctors were as scarce as hens’ teeth, so the wife of the man who owned our house was helping Mama deliver child number eleven. The midwife yelled outside and told the younger kids to come into the house. She asked someone to go to the cottonfield and fetch me, my brother, sister, and Daddy. We ran to the house. Everyone gathered around Mama’s bed. Near the corner of the room, I heard my new baby sister crying loudly as she protested the first few minutes of life in her new world. Mama was quiet! We were told she was sleeping in heaven… and would never wake up. The older kids began to cry. The younger kids didn’t understand. Each youngster was allowed to climb onto Mama’s bed and kiss her one last time.

Mama’s funeral was held at The Curve Baptist Church near Hornersville, Missouri on November 3, 1956. Relatives helped each Bradford kid take a bath and get dressed in our best Sunday clothes. Mama looked like she was sleeping when I saw her in the casket. The preacher told us she was going to a better place—but all I could think about was how lonely our world would be without her. I silently wondered why God took her. Why did He take the only good thing in our lives? Why didn’t He take Daddy?

After the service, a small caravan of vehicles followed the car that carried Mama’s casket to a small, picturesque local cemetery. A light rain drizzled as family and friends made their way to Mama’s grave site. It was cold and damp. I wanted to run away. “Mama! Please come back!” I saw a squirrel flittering near the hole where Mama’s casket would soon be laid. I picked up a small stone and threw it toward the critter. My aunt yanked my arm and told me to behave. I ignored her. The preacher said Mama’s soul was with God, but I didn’t know what a soul was. I wanted to ask the preacher—but I was afraid. The rain was coming down harder by the time the preacher said his final prayer. Everyone returned to their cars and drove to our battered home by the cotton field. I had never seen so many people together in one house. Local folks brought lots of good vittles that we ate the next few days. Relatives kept smothering me with hugs and kisses. I told my brother Billy that it was wrong that they put Mama in a hole and covered her with dirt. I asked him, “How could she get out of the ground and go to heaven?” Billy told me angels were magic — they would take Mama up to heaven after everyone left the cemetery. He said it was their job to take her to be with God. Billy said angels never make mistakes. He said Mama would soon be looking down at us from heaven.