The Boy on Shady Grove Road: A Childhood of the 1940s and 50s in the South

World War Two was raging and families were rationed food, gas and tires for automobiles by the government. Food was the only thing that affected us since we did not have an automobile. We only had an old farm wagon and two old horses.

As a young child, I did not know we were poor. I had nothing to compare to our lifestyle. I was never hungry or unloved. I thought this was the way people lived.

I was the last born of six kids into a poor family, in a poor community, on a poor farm with poor soil about three miles from town. My oldest brother, George, was nineteen when I was born. The next youngest to me was my sister, Mary, who was eight years old when I came along.

World War Two was raging and families were rationed food, gas and tires for automobiles by the government. Food was the only thing that affected us since we did not have an automobile. We only had an old farm wagon and two old horses.

As a young child, I did not know we were poor. I had nothing to compare to our lifestyle. I was never hungry or unloved. I thought this was the way people lived.

All I wanted was a little brother to play with. My older sister, Lucy, married and had a baby, Kenny, when I was three years old. He soon grew enough for me to play with. I was his uncle, but to me we were brothers. That was what was important.

Our house was on Shady Grove Road. You can’t find it by that name on a county map, because the county had never named it when I was a kid. They just had a number for it on the county map. The neighbors who live on it named it themselves. It was named Shady Grove Road, because at the very end of the road, down by the Little Rock Highway, there was a little gift shop named Shady Grove Gift Shop.