MY LIFE ON SHADES MOUNTAIN, 1931 - 1933. By F. M. Perry

Our family life in Birmingham seems to have been divided into chapters according to our moves to new locations and periods of time living in each location within the city. During the first chapter of our family life in Birmingham, which I have already described above, we lived at 2812 Pike Avenue. Next we lived at 1651 50th Street, also described above. In the summer of 1931 we moved again, this time to a rural setting nine miles out of town on the crest of Shades Mountain.

The community on top of the mountain was called Bluff Park. The house, with five acres of land around it, was located on a side road just off Shades Crest Road. The main house was on a slight rise in the middle of the property with a block long driveway leading from the front gate up to the house. A small "branch" ran across the property in the front of the house and the driveway crossed the stream on a wooden bridge. Alongside the long driveway were tall stately Elm trees with additional Elm trees on each side of the house. The first thing I noticed when we arrived at this house was the soothing sound of the wind in those huge stately Elm trees.

The main house was quite old but the sturdiest house I had ever seen. It was a one-story house with a very high vaulted roof. The exterior siding of the house was thick vertical boards and battens. The interior walls were covered with horizontal planks resulting in a house that was virtually soundproof. From the inside one could hardly hear a storm that might be raging outside. The house had screened in porches on three sides. There were three or four bedrooms, a large living room, and a single bathroom. Strangely, the bathroom could only be reached from the back porch making it necessary for one to brave the outside weather when going to and from the bathroom. The kitchen with dining space was in a separate one-room house attached to the back porch thus making it necessary to cross the open porch to reach the kitchen for meals. We quickly became adjusted to this arrangement and came to think of it as quite normal.

There was no central heating in the house. We had a large coal burning radiant heating stove in the living room that could also heat the bedrooms depending upon the severity of the cold and whether or not the doors were left open. But during the night the fire in the living room stove was almost always allowed to go out. Consequently we learned to sleep in very cold rooms and eventually grew to enjoy it. Papa usually got up first and started a fire in the living room stove. We children would jump out of bed and rush to the living room to get dressed beside the stove. The only heat we had in the bathroom was a kerosene heater which was fired up at bath time. The kitchen had a wood/coal burning cook stove as well as an electric stove. In winter the kitchen was always comfortable when there was a fire in the coal cook stove. This coal fired stove also had an oven and a water reservoir that provided hot water.

Our water supply was from a 125 foot deep well with an automatic electrically motorized pump. The pump cycled on and off as we used water and we could hear it in operation from almost anywhere in the house. But, the water from this well was slightly red from the iron ore of the mountain and it tasted strongly like iron. We tried using it to wash clothes until we found that the white clothes were turning red. There was a large cast iron cistern at the back of the house into which the rain gutters from the roof were channeled. We used rainwater from this cistern to wash clothes. Each year in late August when rains ceased the well usually dried up and the cistern ran dry. Then Papa hauled water from town in large five-gallon containers to tide us over until rains started again.

Beside and slightly behind the main house was a small two-room house that had been used for servant's quarters at an earlier time. It was then being used only for storage. In addition, there was a smoke house, chicken houses, and a large barn on the property. The 5-acre tract was almost surrounded by woods and no other houses could be seen from the main house. The nearest neighbor was almost a quarter mile away.

Papa's income being only about $200 per month, we were very pleased to have the opportunity to live in this 5 acre "estate". It was depression time and we were feeling the pinch. But Papa's boss, Mr. B. H. Cooper who owned the place, knew that Papa had a large family who might enjoy the advantages of living in the country. He rented the place to Papa for only $25 per month.

After we had been living there a short time, Mr. B. H. Cooper again showed his kindness by selling us, for a mere $25, a Shetland pony (named Bobo) and a small three-quarter size buggy suitable to be pulled by the pony. The pony, saddle, and buggy, with all necessary hitch rigging, was worth far more than $25. However, Mr. Cooper said that we might have the pony and buggy if we would agree not ever to sell to anyone else, but to sell it all back to him when we could no longer keep it. Thus, my dream of someday becoming a cowboy or horseman materialized.

Care for the pony fell primarily to me. The pony was allowed to graze over the entire 5 acres but he had to be fed additional food such as oats and cottonseed hulls each day. It was my daily chore to feed and water the pony when I came home from school each day. I learned to saddle Bobo and to hitch him to the buggy. I used to ride him far and wide in the woods around the house. Sometimes we used the buggy to travel down Shades Crest road to the store or to the school library. The only negative memory I have of Bobo, the pony is the few occasions when I had retired at night having forgotten to feed or water him. Mama made me get up, get dressed and light the kerosene lantern and go out to the barn to feed and water Bobo.

Also soon after moving to our country place. Papa purchased a Holstein cow named Sukey. She too was allowed to graze throughout the five acres. Papa attended to the milking of the cow most of the time both morning and night and, of course the cow was fed special feed at the times of milking. When Papa became too busy with his License Inspector work to attend to the milking, he hired a young man, Andrew (Ookey) Reynolds, who lived about a quarter mile away, to do the milking. Papa never mentioned to me that I ought to learn to milk the cow. I was grateful. I never had to milk a cow. But I was called upon from time to time to "stake out" the cow, tethered on a chain, in special grassy feeding places. And, if the cow escaped from our five-acre plot, which she did on several occasions, I was sent out to find and retrieve her. I took along a chain and a halter that I had to attach when I found her. Then I would lead, or more accurately, "pull" the cow back home.

Quickly our menagerie of animals grew. Someone gave us a one-month-old kid, a mere baby, which we named Billy. We brought a cat with us when we moved in and soon we acquired another "elderly" tomcat that just happened by. Then we acquired a German shepherd dog. Later a Boston bull terrier just showed up and began to make his home with us. We searched for the dog's owner but did not find him until a couple of years had passed. And then there were the chickens!

Papa, ever ready with moneymaking ideas, decided that we should raise chickens for profit. He gathered together such things as "brooders" (to keep baby chicks warm), and feeding and watering equipment. Then he came home one night with five hundred day old chicks. It was the fall of the year and the weather was quite cool so he bedded them down in the little two-room house (ex-servant's quarters) under the brooders. The next morning some 20 or 30 of the chicks were dead, having been smothered by all the other chicks pushing in under the warm brooder. The following night a few more of the chicks died. But there were so many chicks we still had plenty. The baby chicks soon became strong enough to withstand the crush ders.

As the chickens grew Papa cut a small door in the side of the house so they could range outside the house. With the chickens came the chore of cleaning out the house, a share of which fell to me. I came to abhor that chore but continued to execute it for a number of years. When the chickens began to grow feathers we transferred them from the ex-servant's house to the regular chicken houses. It turned out that the chickens were all good stock Rhode Island Reds. There were a few roosters among the 450 or so that we had. We fed them well and, beginning at about six weeks of age, they were ready to be sold as fryers. However. Papa had not pre-arranged to market the chickens. In the depression conditions that existed at that time Papa could find no wholesale buyers. We began to sell a few from time to time to surrounding families, but, in actuality, we became "chicken poor." We had far more chickens than we needed. Needless to say, we ate southern fried chicken several times a week. And the hens became pretty good "layers" so we had all the eggs we needed.

More than two years later, when we moved back into the edge of the city, we still had about 200 Rhode Island Red chickens to take with us.

Our cow. Sukey, gave us gallons of high butter fat milk every day. At the proper time Papa took her down the road to a farmer's bull to have her "bred" so she would have a calf and "come in fresh. In due time Sukey "dropped" a beautiful red colored heifer calf. We named the calf "May" because she was born in the month of May. It was a really exciting time for us children.

Sukey was a rather "low slung" cow and the calf had rather long legs. In fact, May had to kneel down to get down low enough to suck milk from Sukey's utter. May did not get the hang of this for several days and we had to keep guiding the calfs head down so she could find the place to feed. Eventually May became a good producer of milk also. During the years that we had these cows we "drank milk instead of water." Sukey and May gave us lots of chores but also lots of pleasure. We enjoyed watching their antics in the field. Sometimes in the evening at milking time Sukey came up to stick her head right in the back porch door.

Billy, the little one month old kid, had to be fed from a bottle at first to keep him from "crying" for his mother goat at night. But he was also eating grass already. He chose only the most tender succulent grass shoots to eat. He was soft and cuddly and liked to be held in one's lap. Whenever he found someone sitting on the bench in the yard, he would jump into their lap. This was cute for a while, but within a few months Billy grew larger and harder and his hoofs became quite sharp. I remember peacefully sitting on the bench one day when Billy suddenly sailed through the air and landed on my lap almost knocking the wind out of me. We started a concerted campaign to break him of that habit.

For almost a full year of Billy's life he was very timid. He always wanted to be near one of us children. If he could not be near us, he stayed right next to the main house. He kept the lawn mowed smooth and close for about a three-foot radius around the house. But the grass shot straight up beyond that radius and Billy would not go outside that radius without someone to accompany him. We children took pity on him and used to walk with him to other areas of the yard where the grass was more plentiful. But Billy always grazed with one eye on the person who accompanied him and would not remain in the midst of the yard alone. One day I took Billy down to the bridge that spanned the "branch" so he could eat the tender grass under the bridge. I noticed that Billy grew a little careless that day and walked quite a distance under the bridge with his back towards me. So I quietly walked away back to the house several hundred feet away. Billy continued to graze for a couple of minutes before he turned around to check on my presence. When he found I was gone, he gave a pitifully sounding bleat and came running to the house as fast as he could.

Billy grew up to be a normal smelly goat with a hard head and horns. He became a bit of a bully towards anyone smaller than him. In fact we had to discipline him with a stick when we caught him coming up in the yard behind little brother Dick and butting him down. In spite of the fact that Billy became somewhat of a bully, we considered him normal and loved him very much.

We also enjoyed our dogs, the young German Shepherd (I can't remember his name), the Boston Bull named "Fellar," and a little Fox Terrier named "Tommy." Of course the dogs shifted for themselves when we were not at home. I think that we kept Tommy inside the house much or the time, but the other two dogs were outside most or the time.

One Sunday when we came home from church we noticed that the young German Shepherd dog was acting rather strangely, cowering before us with his tail between his legs. We thought this indicated that the poor dog had done something naughty and his conscience was hurting him. Then we found a bundle of bloody chicken feathers on the lawn. This was an almost certain indication that our dog had killed and, eaten a chicken. However, we were reluctant to believe it. But, lo, the next Sunday when we were away at church, it happened again and this time we found blood and feathers around the mouth of the dog. In spite of our dogs conduct, we loved him and wished that we could keep him. I had just recently read the book, "The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come," which was about a dog that killed sheep. The book had indicated, and other people told us that once a dog starts killing, no one could break him of the habit. In the book the guilty dog had to be put to death. We had hundreds or chickens and did not want to keep losing them to the dog. It was impossible to keep the dog out of the chicken yard for he could easily get through or over the fence. What were we to do?

Luckily we found another family who lived in the city who wanted the dog in spite of the fact that he was a "chicken killer." They said that they did not have any chickens. So the young German Shepherd was given to his new masters.

The little black and white Boston Bull Terrier just appeared at our house one day. He was very friendly and we all fell in love with him. We enquired far and wide to try to determine where he had come from, but no one knew him. So, or course, we kept him and named him "Fellar."

Fellar liked to chase a stick or anything else that we might throw, and bring them back to us. Actually, he seemed to prefer that we throw rocks for him to retrieve. Every time one of us came out in the yard he would bring up a rock and drop it in front of us to be thrown. Strangely, the rocks that he picked up to bring to us came to be bigger and bigger until he was dragging rocks around which he could not even pick up! In fact, he dragged big rocks into the house so as to have them ready top play "fetch" at any time. Then we noticed that Fellar's habit or carrying and dragging rocks around in his mouth was wearing his teeth down almost to the gums. At that point we started trying to break him of the habit and were successful to a certain extent.

After we had kept Fellar as our own for almost two years a family from the City happened to drove in their car into our driveway. I don't remember why this family happened to come our way, but they were soon telling us about their Boston Bull Terrier which had wandered away from their car on an earlier trip to our Shades Mountain community. We called Fellar out of the house to meet them and it quickly became clear that Fellar was their dog. He answered to another name that they called him and seemed overjoyed to have found his original owners. We had fully adopted Fellar into our family and loved him very much, but we could not deny his original owners from taking him back home with them that day.

For a long time Mama had said that she wanted a little housedog. In fact, she had decided that she would like to have one of the so-called "toy" breeds that are like "midget" dogs. So. Somehow Mama got a female "Toy Fox Terrier" puppy that she named "Tommy." Little Tommy became a fearless protector of our household and we all agreed that she was the smartest dog we had ever known. She seemed to understand everything we said and she could execute very complicated directions that Mama gave her. Tommy remained in our household for several years.

Concerning the cats in our household as we lived on Shades Mountain, I remember just one anecdote. We had acquired an aged Tomcat that came in out of the woods to our house. At first the cat was afraid to come into the house, but after being fed and petted for a while, it started coming into the kitchen. In order to warm the kitchen on cold winter mornings, Mama built small fires in the wood/coal-burning cook stove. Then she would leave the oven door open to allow the heat around the oven to radiate out to the kitchen. The fire in the stove was usually not actually built around the oven and the oven only got toasty warm. So, the Tomcat got into the habit of jumping into the open oven and going to sleep there. Of course, the inevitable thing finally happened. One day about noon Mama asked if we had seen the cat recently. She said he seemed to have disappeared. We began to look around for him. On a hunch, noticing that the oven door was closed, I went over and opened it. Out jumped the cat! He seemed not to be hurt. He had been locked in the oven for hours.

On August 31, 1931, shortly after we had moved to our 5-acre place on Shades Mountain, it was time to start to school again. I was ready for the sixth grade. My bother Bert was ready for the fourth grade, and my little sister Betty Jo was ready to start the second grade. We were all accommodated in the little one room Bluff Park School with Mrs. V. J. Hale as teacher for all grades. Actually, the school building had two rooms. But, there was only one teacher and there were only enough students to occupy one room. Five different grades sat and recited lessons in the single classroom, listening in on each other's recitations. (There would have been six grades in the room except that there was no pupil in the fifth grade that year.)

My little sister, Isabel, was only five years old at this time. But she was very close to her sister, Betty Jo, and felt that she should go to school also. The teacher, Mrs. Hale, told us that it would be all right for Betty Jo to bring her little sister, Isabel, to school sometime as a visitor as long as she didn't do anything to disrupt the classroom. At that point there was no thought of actually enrolling Isabel in school. But Isabel began going to school. She sat with the first graders and began to excel. She even listened to the second graders as they rehearsed their lessons and took part in them as well. She became an outstanding pupil and Mrs. Hale allowed her to officially enroll in the first grade. We Perry kids bragged far and wide about our little Isabel and her accomplishments in the first grade.

I remember this year of schooling as being quite a happy one. I thought it no disadvantage to have to sit in the classroom with the lower grades. Mrs. Hale gave the sixth grade (three or four students) things to read or problems to solve while she heard the lessons of the other grades. Observing Mrs. Hale teach all the grades together was a good educational experience in itself! As I remember, Bert, Betty Jo, and Isabel did quite well that year also.

The Bluff Park School was one mile in distance from our house. Sometimes Papa drove us to school in the car, but more often we walked on a path through the woods. Apparently we did not all go to school and return at the same time because I seldom walked on the woods path with the other children. I remember walking the path to and from school alone most of the time and in all kinds of weather. The winters in Alabama were not very long but were sometimes quite severe.

I remember that the water fountain for getting a drink of water at the Bluff Park School was an outdoor pipe with holes connected to the picket of a hand pump. The pump had to be primed and then operated vigorously to get water to flow in the pipe. When the water became plentiful enough it would spurt out of the holes in the pipe like little fountains. One person would pump while all the children got drinks of water. The toilet facilities were simply separate outhouses. There was one outhouse for the boys and one for the girls. We thought these facilities to be fully satisfactory and did not feel that we needed anything more sophisticated.

One recess activity of the boys was to walk into the nearby pine forest and play in the pine needles on the ground. One favorite pass time was building Indian type wigwams of sticks covered with pine needles. Another was to pile up pine needles like a haystack and then dive into the air letting the pine needle stacks break our falls.

Across the road from the school was a pond that was a never-ending source of curiosity for us. It was the only such pond so near the crest of Shades Mountain. We wanted very much to go swimming in the pond. There was a flat-bottomed boat which someone sometimes used to pole himself across the pond. Very likely we were forbidden to go near the pond for I don't remember that we ever did.

On a couple of occasions I rode our pony, Bobo, to school and tied him to a tree outside the school during the school day. But I felt sorry for him having to stand outside alone all day and decided not to ride him to school again.

The road, which was used by cars to drive from our house to the school, was a part of Shades Crest Road that ran along the crest of the mountain beside the bluffs that dropped almost straight down into Shades Valley. Sometimes we walked to school along this road. On the side of the road opposite the bluffs were a number of houses. Some of our classmates lived in these houses. There was one house built on the bluff side of the road. It was a masonry house built out of rocks. One wall of the house seemed to form part of the bluff. At one point the road went between two enormous boulders that we sometimes climbed for the view from the top.

From the bluffs beside Shades Crest road we could look almost straight down into the valley far below and imagine that we were observing the view from an airplane. The buffs were so steep and precipitous that it could have been quite dangerous to try to descend the steep mountain if one did not know exactly where he was going. At the top of one prominent bluff was a plack naming the spot "Lovers Leap" and reciting the story of a young Indian couple who, having been forbidden to wed, had flung themselves to their deaths from the bluff. But our house and its 5 acres were a good quarter mile back from the bluffs on the plateau of the mountaintop.

In May of 1932 at the end of the school year, the whole school performed a play. As I remember, everyone in school had a part. Some of the small pupils performed as trees or "flowers" and some performed as people with speaking parts. I think I had the longest speaking part of all. I had to memorize such a long part that I was quite nervous about being able to remember it all. But my stage fright seemed to disappear as the play progressed and I felt exhilarated by it all. After that performance I have never experienced stage fright when speaking before an audience; that is. I have never been frightened when I have been confident that I was well prepared. I am reluctant to stand before an audience however, if I must speak "off the cuff" and am not well prepared. The art of my exhilaration at that time was probably due to the fact that I was graduating from elementary school and was receiving my "diploma" at the end of the performance. I was to start the seventh grade in "Junior High School" the next year.

My grades for the year at Bluff Park School were mixed. I received A's and B's in subjects such as reading, writing, arithmetic, language and geography. I received mostly C's in spelling and history. My report card shows that I received an all around grade of 90% on the countywide examination given to all Jefferson County sixth graders.

After my experience with sixth grade history, I began to feel dislike for history courses. I suspect that this dislike was due to the uninteresting way in which the subject of history was taught in those days. I felt that I had simply to learn by rote the titles of events and the years in which they occurred. The events themselves seemed to be very dry and unrealistic. I had difficulty keeping my mind on the subject. After that, throughout my high school and college career I avoided history courses if I could. In my grown-up years I have regretted not getting a good school foundation in history. My later reading has ushered me into some understanding of the passion and excitement involved in many great historical events.

We got acquainted with a number of other children on Shades Mountain and, at times, had some great times together. I remember a watermelon party we had at our house one summer's day. We had invited all our friends a week or so in advance. Papa had come home from the city with the back seat of the car loaded with watermelons. We did not have enough ice to make them all cold but we put them in the cool water of the branch that ran across our yard. I guess we had other refreshments, such as cake and ice cream but we all liked watermelon and we ate the lot of them. It was traditional for watermelon parties to end in "water melon fights" when we all squirted each other with watermelon juice and "washed faces" with watermelon rines.

At other times we got together for afternoon hikes along Shades Crest Road or for dancing the Virginia Reel at the school. During the hot days or summer, I sometimes went with several other boys down the steep side of the mountain to go swimming in Shades Creek in the valley. It was very steep going down the mountain and we had to hold ourselves back by grasping trees and saplings on the way. The creek, fed by innumerable cold springs, had some good swimming holes. The water was almost too cold to enjoy but it certainly relieved us from being too hot. Or course. We swam in the buff in a secluded spot on the creek.

After swimming and getting fully refreshed from the hot weather, we had to return home by climbing back up the mountain. By the time we reached the top on the way back we would be puffing heavily and soaking wet from perspiration. At that point we usually remarked to each other that the swim in the cool water had hardly been worth the trouble.

At other times we went to a branch, called Huckleberry Branch. It was much closer to our house, to swim. Actually, Huckleberry Branch was so shallow we could do nothing but wade and splash in it. But we got cooled off in the water. Mama did not like the idea of our swimming in the buff and told us that we should not do it. But the temptation to do it on a hot day got the better of Mama's argument. Mama always knew that we had been swimming because we returned to the house so clean! But most of the time our lives were somewhat lonely as far as association with other kids was concerned.

One crude attempt to bring excitement to the Bluff Park community was the staging of prize fights on certain Saturday nights. There was a wooden platform-boxing ring constructed next to the community store at the corner of Shades Crest Road and our side road. With the promise of "a purse," some black men were enticed to come to our community, "put on the boxing gloves," and "fight" each other. The "purse" consisted of money tossed into the ring after the fight or received from "passing the hat" among those who watched the fight. Although these fights were not staged for children to see, I managed to view them from the edge of the woods on a couple of occasions.

The fights were really quite degrading to the black men who took part. No black people lived in our mountain top community so these men had to be persuaded to come up from Birmingham to take part. They were not trained boxers. In fact, many of them had probably never boxed in their lives. Apparently they took part simply because of their need for the small sums of money they were promised. The economic conditions in which many people (especially black people) lived at that time of the great depression were very poor indeed.

If the "knock down, drag out" encounters these men had with each other had not been so tragic, they might have been funny. Judging by the loud laughter and yelling, they were funny to many who watched. The men fought hard, swinging "knock out haymakers" at each other. Luckily, few of those erratic swing connected. At the end of the matches one last "free for all" was staged with several men in the ring at once, swinging at each other indiscriminately. I only remember feeling sorry for the pitiful combatants.

It was during this first year at our family's life on Shades Mountain that I have my first recollections of Papa's problem with alcoholism. Often when he came home from work he would be drunk. These were the years of prohibition. The only alcoholic drink generally available in the taverns of Birmingham was a drink called "near beer." Its alcoholic content was low enough to escape the "prohibition" laws. In late afternoons after work Papa often met with his cronies for a beer or two before coming home. Apparently drinking this beer easily intoxicated Papa. This began to happen so often that Mama began to believe that Papa was purposely trying to get drunk in order to "forget" his imagined troubles. Mama often said that Papa was a dreamer who felt frustrated because he could not fulfill his great dream.

There was a time as we lived on Shades Mountain that we lived in dread that Papa might come home drunk. If he came home early or at a reasonable time he was always sober and we heaved a sigh of relief. He was a very lovable person when he was sober and we enjoyed being with him. But, if the evening grew late and he wasn't home yet, we knew he would probably be drunk when he got home. On winter evenings I used to station myself at a front room window to watch the headlights of cars coming along Shades Crest Road. I could not see the cars themselves for there were woods between our house and the main road. But, in winter when the trees were mostly bear we could see the headlights of cars proceeding along Shades Crest Road. If the headlights turned down our side road, then there was a good chance that the car was that of Papa coming home. Then the lights would pause at our front gate while Papa got out to open the gate, move the car inside our property and close the gate again so our livestock could not get out. Would Papa be drunk or sober? It only took us a few seconds to answer that question after he reached the house. We learned to recognize all the signs of inebriation at a glance. We loved him so, but how disappointed and disgusted we were when he came home drunk.

One winter's night Papa arrived home in an inebriated state. Mama got him into bed and all of us children went to bed as well. Sometime in the night Papa awoke, still drunk, saying that he had heard a prowler outside our house. He jumped out of bed, got his handgun from it's storage place in a bureau drawer, and went out on the back porch to see who might be outside threatening his family. I also awoke at the commotion. Mama followed Papa out to the back porch but told me to just remain in bed. On the porch both Mama, and Papa saw something white moving in the distance. As Papa aimed the pistol at the white thing, I heard Mama say to him. "Don't shoot, I think that is the goat!" Nevertheless. I heard three or four pistol shots.

Then I heard the pitiful bleating of our dear Billy. Then I heard Mama say. "You have shot the goat!" I wanted to get up and go immediately to see what could be done for Billy. But Mama told me to go back to bed and that she would go herself to see what could be done for him. Papa, somewhat sobered by then and feeling remorse for what he had done, went with Mama into the pitch dark back yard to see if he could help the goat. After some time they came back in the house saying that we would just have to wait until morning to see how badly Billy was hurt.

The next morning I awoke with but one thing in mind. That was to see how badly Billy had been hurt by the shot. Mama and Papa were both up already, wearing serious looks on their faces. I felt such resentment at Papa I was unable to talk to him at all. Mama gave me breakfast and told me not to see Billy but to go on to school. She said that she and Papa would take care of Billy. At school I was able to get my mind off of Billy for a while, thinking that his wound might have been superficial and that he would be "on the mend" when I got home.

When I got home that afternoon Papa was gone to work and Mama was working quietly in the kitchen. She told me as gently as possible that Billy had died and Papa had already buried him. All that was evident of our beloved Billy, whom we had raised from a small kid, was a mound of dirt near the fence in our side yard. What a black and sorrowful day that was. Papa told me that night that he was ashamed and sorry that he had killed Billy. I forgave him. I loved him deeply. But I retain a degree of hurt in my soul to this day more than 60 years later.

I knew that Papa did not shoot Billy on purpose. I knew that the dulling of his senses by alcoholic drink had caused the problem. But I had to hold him responsible for his drinking and the misery it brought to him and his family. I have never been afraid of him, yet I have always had such an innate sense of respect for him as my father that I have never been able to reprimand him. Any reprimanding should have proceeded from him to me, not from me to him. From that time onward I have had resentment and a bias against alcoholic drinks that at times have been almost fanatical.

Mama hoped that the loss of the goat and Papa's sense of shame at what he had done might bring him to his senses so that he might quit drinking. Papa did lay off the drinking for some time after that, but in the long term he could not leave it alone. Papa did a lot of struggling with his temptation to drink. Sometimes he stayed "on the wagon" for long periods or time only to fall again. He almost always tried to take us to Sunday school and church on Sundays. But sometimes he had such a "hangover" that he did not go into the church building with us. His boss at the License Inspector's Office, Mr. B. H. Cooper, tried to help him overcome his bad habit. And others of Papa's acquaintances used to try to help him by congratulating him on being such a lucky man with a beautiful wife, many fine children, and a good job during such hard times. But still others of his acquaintances regularly enticed him to go into the taverns with them just to have one drink before going home. With Papa, there was no stopping with just one drink. Papa battled with his problem for more than 20 years before he finally got control of himself enough to refrain from drinking. There were to be many more times or misery for himself and his family during the period of about 20 years.

About once a month on Saturday, My brother, Bert, and I would ride into town with Papa to go to the moving picture show. Although Saturday was not a regular working day, Papa often had extra work to do at his office on Saturday. Admission to the movies for children was usually just ten cents. Sometimes we would see two feature movies, going first to one theater, then to another. Other times we would go to a single theater and see the same movie twice. When we went on such an excursion into town, we always wanted to make sure we got in about four hours of viewing. The movies we picked to view were usually cowboy films staring such actors as Tom Mix or Buck Jones. Papa would drop us off at the theater and then pick us up on a certain corner at a prearranged time.

Sometimes these excursions went well. We got our fill of cowboy movies and Papa picked us up right at the appointed time. But often Papa would be late in meeting us after the movie. Sometimes we stood on the corner for hours before he arrived. When this happened he was usually intoxicated when he finally arrived. Needless to say we were exasperated when this happened, and sometimes we were quite afraid of riding home with him for his driving was his driving was erratic. But once we got into town we had no choice but to wait for him no matter how long it took, and no choice but to ride with him in order to get home.

Obviously Papa did not know or think much about the intense frustration and feeling of helplessness that he caused us to have by leaving us for those hours on a street corner and then finally appearing in a drunken condition. We complained and he always apologized. But then it would happen again the next time we went in to town with him. After this had happened a few times I began to consider in advance the possibilities of what would happen should I go into town with him again. The desire to see the movies was great. But the pain I might have to endure by being abandoned for hours in front of the theater dulled my desire to see the movies. I tried to get Papa's solemn promise in advance to pick us up on time. However, even when he promised, he sometimes did not fulfill his promise.

One Saturday Papa and Mama went in to town together to go shopping. They took little Dick with them but left the other four children (me, Bert, Betty Jo, and Isabel) at home. I, being ten years old, was to look after the younger three. During the afternoon the telephone rang. I answered. A voice on the line said that Mr. Perry had just been killed in an automobile accident on the road up Shades Mountain! I was stunned, and could only say "What?" Then the line went dead. I hung up the receiver. What was I to do? I had no details of the accident I had no telephone number to call.

My only thought was to contact a grown-up person, a neighbor. I told the three children what I had heard on the telephone. They began to cry and look scared. I had them join hands and I led them outside and across our yard in the direction of our neighbor's farm next to our property. We had to crawl through a fence and then walk along the rows of a cornfield until we came insight of the farmhouse of the Williams' family. Mr. and Mrs. Williams saw us coming across the field and came out to meet us.

When I told Mr. and Mrs. Williams about the telephone report of my father's death, Mr. Williams immediately picked up the telephone and began calling to check on the accident. As Mrs. Williams tried to comfort us, Mr. Williams made several telephone calls. After a while he called me over and handed the telephone to me. I said, "Hello, and then Papa was talking to me alive, on the line. Papa was not dead! There had been no automobile accident! He and Mama and Dick were all O. K.!

Papa had many friends in the city of Birmingham. As a law enforcement officer he was known to be fair and even merciful to those who had inadvertently broken licensing laws. But he had also acquired a few enemies. Some enemy had perpetrated the cruel hoax of telephoning the false report. And, on at least one occasion, Papa came home with bullet holes in his car. Someone shot at him as he drove through a certain neighborhood. Papa knew that someone was shooting, but he could not determine exactly where the bullets originated.

The second year we lived on Shades Mountain I was in the seventh grade that was the first year of Junior High School. I had to ride the school bus seven miles into the village of Homewood to attend Shades Cahaba Junior High School. Each morning at seven AM I had to catch the school bus at the community store on Shades Crest Road about a quarter mile from our house. The ride to school proceeded along Shades Crest Road as the bus picked up other high school students. Then the bus plunged down the mountain on a steep side road that dropped in to the Shades Valley community of Edgewood. The community was identified by Edgewood Lake that we crossed on the bus route. We then proceeded on a road along the valley floor to the village of Homewood where the High School was located.

The method of teaching in junior high school was drastically different from that used in elementary school. Instead of spending the day in one room with one teacher teaching us all subjects, we began to change classrooms each hour and have different teachers. Also I remember that the teachers no longer seemed to pay close attention to each student's performance. In fact, I remember one teacher's statement to the class that she did not care whether we passed or flunked the course. Our grade for the course would be entirely up to us.

I knew, of course, that my performance was up to me. I did not expect it to be otherwise. But I remember that I thought the teachers were unduly harsh in making such statements and that they taught in an unusually detached way. They seemed not to be very much interested in the subjects they taught, and did not make the subjects interesting to the students. My recollection is that their attitude was, "Here is the information you are supposed to learn, take it or leave it!" I conclude now that my teachers for the seventh grade junior high school were trying to become independent, self-starting students. But at eleven years of age, this kind of incentive did not work with me. My grades dropped drastically.

The things that I remember most concerning my year in the seventh grade at Shades Cahaba Junior High School are waiting for the bus rides in to school each morning, playing football or baseball on the playground at recess, and one particular academic course in the origin of the English language. In this course we studied the roots of English words, and how words were constructed with prefixes, roots, and suffixes. I remember being fascinated by this study that got me interested min studying Latin later in High School.

Although we had no formal athletic teams in the 7th grade, we chose up teams and played football and baseball, depending on the season, at recess and at the lunch hour. At eleven years of age I was rather short and plump but quite strong for my age. Once during a football game I caught the ball on the kickoff. I tucked the ball under my arm and with great determination and a yell of defiance I headed down the field. To my amazement, I ran right through the opposing team all the way to the goal line, a touchdown on the kickoff. I guess 1 presented such a ferocious appearance as I ran that everyone who stood between the goal line and me was afraid to get in my way.

Each school morning one bus was supposed to arrive at the community store to pick up riders at 7 AM. The bus was not always on time so the 5 or 6 students waiting there would engage in various games until the bus came. One cold winter morning we were throwing a football around to each other. I reached up to intercept the ball. The ball struck the edge of my right hand and bent my little finger backwards in a very unnatural way. It hurt terribly. The bus arrived at that moment and despite the pain I was experiencing, I got on the bus. My hand hurt very much all day and at times I thought I was going to be sick at my stomach. I did not tell anyone about it, thinking all along that the pain would subside and that there was probably nothing anyone could do to help anyway. At home that night I think I told my mother that I had hurt my hand but I didn't think it was serious. The pain gradually subsided over a period of two or three days. My little finger became stiff but I kept trying to exercise and use it. Finally after a week or so I regained full use of the finger, but then I noticed that the little finger was no longer straight and had become permanently crooked. Apparently the finger had been broken and it had healed crooked instead of straight. I used to brag that I could then reach an extra note on the piano in the span of my right hand, and it became easier for me to play octaves. On my ID identification card, the identifying feature of my body, should I be killed in an accident, became the "crooked little finger on my right hand."

As I was riding the bus to school, someone told me of a prank that had been played the previous year to cause the bus to have a flat tire and for the bus to be late in delivering the kids to school. Someone had placed a board, with a nail sticking up through it, directly under the tire as the bus stopped to pick up riders. The tire was then punctured when the bus pulled away from the stop. There was a rumor that the same prank would be played again soon. Sure enough, one morning as the bus got underway, word went around among the riders that the tire would go flat soon. We were about halfway to school, beside Edgewood lake, before a problem with the tire was noticed by the driver. A tire was flat. The bus did not carry tools or a spare tire. So the driver had to leave the bus parked beside the road and walk away to find a telephone to summon a maintenance truck. We kids disembarked from the bus and began to explore the shores of Edgewood Lake. We thought it to be a great adventure. The maintenance truck did not arrive for about three hours and we missed all morning classes. The bus driver knew that one of the kids had caused the tire to go flat. But he did not give away that secret. Back on the bus he made an announcement to the kids that he would not tolerate another prank of that nature. It did not happen again that year.

During this year a new family member arrived from California to live with us. Daisy Evelyn Morris was my mother's niece, my first cousin. Daisy's mother had died, leaving her father, my uncle Charley Morris, with two daughters. The other daughter, whom I have never met was named June. The younger was Daisy Evelyn. Uncle Charley was getting remarried, and Daisy then about 15 years old, was feeling unaccepted in the new family and quite uncomfortable. Mama heard about this and invited the girls to live with us. The older daughter, June declined to come, but Daisy decided to come.

It must have been a momentous and somewhat frightening step for Daisy. A rather frail 15-year-old girl, to leave the only home she had ever known in San Jose. California and travel alone all the way on the train to Alabama to live with relatives she really did not know. She was a rather thin, blonde girl with lots of freckles. She was embarrassed about the freckles. All of our family members were rather dark brunettes. But I thought freckles were attractive. She was soon settled in as part of our family now numbering nine people. We had Mama and Papa, me my two brothers and two sisters my cousin Morris, and now my cousin Daisy.

I was very glad to have Daisy as a member of our family. I am ashamed now to say that I could not bring myself to show any sign of sibling affection for her in public. (I guess I was at the age when boys simply do not want to associate with girls.) Immediately upon her arrival at our house she began to ride the school bus with me to Shades Cahaba High School. I avoided sitting next to her on the bus. Secretly however, I was very proud of her. She took everything in stride and was immediately popular among the bus riders and her classmates. As we rode to school on the bus, kids would beg her over and over again to say the word "chocolate." They were intrigued by her California pronunciation of that word. I remember that Daisy turned sixteen years old during the time we were riding the bus to school together. The kids teased her about being "sweet sixteen but an old maid." (Actually, among the backwoods people of Alabama, it was not uncommon for girls to be married at 16.)

We always looked forward to the summer vacation from school with great anticipation. When the last day of the 7th grade arrived we were released from classes early in ~he day. However the bus was not to leave on our homeward route until afternoon. Some boys, who lived near us on Shades Mountain, suggested that we not wait for the bus but that we just "run" on home. We set off on the seven-mile trip home literally at a trot. I think I was able to jog along for about a mile but then I slowed to a walk. In fact, I think I finally caught a ride for part of the way.

For some reason on that final day at school our final report cards for the year were not ready. We were informed that we would have to pick them up later. I was not disappointed at not getting my report card. I was afraid, for the first time in my life, that I had "flunked" one or more courses. I never did return to get that report card. I do not know what my final grades were for the 7th grade. The next school year found our family moved back into the city of Birmingham where I was enrolled into the 8th grade without any proof that I had finished the 7th grade. Amazingly I was never challenged and I applied myself so totally to learning during the 8th grade that I made the best grades of my entire school career, becoming the class valedictorian!

Mama did not enjoy our family sojourn on Shades Mountain as much as I did. She felt too isolated and wished to have more social life with other women than was possible in that isolated community. She used to say that Papa just wanted to keep her hidden away from other people. During the two years that we lived on Shades Mountain there were occasions when we had two cars and once, for a short time, we had three cars. I guess, by this time Morris could drive a car. Mama never learned to drive. So she was confined at home until Papa took her somewhere.

Our primary car, one that Papa used in his work, was a new 1932 Chevrolet sedan. Somehow, for a few months, Papa also had ownership of a big 1929 Buick. And for a few weeks he had a 1930 Model A Ford Roadster. Making three cars parked in front of our house. But Papa and Morris were the only drivers in the family. But soon we were back to only one car. During the last year we lived on Shades Mountain, Morris rented a room in downtown Birmingham near his work and we saw him only on weekends.

We tried our hand at gardening during the time we lived on Shades Mountain. I used to really enjoy the fresh vegetables we harvested from the garden. But I hated to perform the labor necessary to plant and cultivate the garden. As the oldest boy among the children, I had to perform a lot of chores in caring for the cows, pony, and the chickens.

One day when I went out to feed the chickens a rooster who came up behind me and pressed his spurs into the back or my leg painfully surprised me. He was only protecting his harem of hens. But 1 was so angry with him that picked up a brick and threw it at him. Of course, the brick missed the rooster. But it hit the back wall of our nearby kitchen and knocked a board loose. After that I was always wary in the chicken yard and would not let a rooster circle around behind me.

I began to be an avid reader of books while we lived on Shades Mountain. Mrs. Hale, the teacher at the one room Bluff Park school, used to have a branch of the county library at her house. We used to harness the pony to the buggy and go to her house to check out books in the summer time when we were not in school. My favorite readings were western novels. But I remember sitting in our living room on one very hot summer day actually feeling cold while I read Jack London's story, "To Build a Fire." It is the story or an Alaskan man who ventured out on a journey by foot when the temperature was about 60 degrees below zero. Through a series of seemingly minor accidents, he finally froze to death. After that I read every Jack London story and novel I could find, and, incidentally I began to have an interest in the polar regions of the world that has never left me.

On Shades Mountain we lived in the midst of a very large forest. In the forest immediately adjacent to our house were the remnants of wire fences that had at one time been used by someone to pen up pigs or other animals. The fences were made by stretching barbed wire between the trees. In time the pens were abandoned but the barbed wire was left in place. As the trees grew, the bark of the trees grew around the wire making it impossible to remove the wire except by cutting the strands away from the trees. No one had ever done this and the barbed wire pens were still in place and almost invisible in the dark forest. I had found one barbed wire pen near our house and I tried to remember to stay clear of it. But one spring evening when the young wild baby rabbits were coming out of their nests and were hopping around our yard, I decided that I might catch one or them. Rabbits have a habit or running a short distance and then stopping. I had seen other boys chase them and catch them. So when I happened to "scare up" a young rabbit, I started running at top speed after it to catch it. It was almost twilight and the daylight was fading. The rabbit ran into the near forest adjacent to our house. I was after it at top running speed. Suddenly something slammed into my chest and stopped my dash. It was a couple of strands of old barbed Wire strung between the trees. The barbs penetrated into the skin or my chest and stomach and then pulled loose as I fell down under the wire. With my shirt in tatters and with blood streaming down the front or me, I made my way back to the house. Everyone in the family was gathered in the kitchen waiting for me to come in to supper. When I appeared before them there were some screams from my sisters and my mother rushed me into the bathroom for first aid. Luckily the cuts in my chest and stomach were not very deep and Mama soon had my wounds under control. I was lucky there were no barbed wire strands at face or neck level that would have caused more serious wounds. For a number or years scars were clearly visible on my chest and stomach. However, the scars eventually disappeared.

Almost every year forest fires would occur. For some reason, some people used to rid their property of underbrush by periodically setting fire to it. Many times these fires spread out of control to nearby forests. Other times I think the forest fires might have been purposely set. One day while we children were at Bluff Park School a forest fire spread out or control in the forest behind our property. Luckily our 5-acre rented property had been cleared of brush and thick trees. But when the fire reached our property it caught the grass of our 5 acres on fire and rapidly spread toward the house and barn. Only Mama, and my little brother Dick were there. Mama picked up feed sacks, soaked them in water, and went out to meet the grass fire advancing towards the house. After much frantic beating of the sacks on the front line of fire, they were able to stop the fire's advance before it damaged any buildings on our property.

After school that day as we children began to walk home, we saw the smoke of the forest fire and even saw flames as it raged in the forest we passed on our way. We passed a number of houses where families had had to fight the fire to save their houses. We began to be concerned about our own house. We were relieved to find that Mama and her helper had been able to save our property. The worst of the fire traveled on through the forest past our house. But the big trees of the forest continued to burn for several days. We could hear trees crashing down in the forest during the night as the trunks weakened as they burned. After many trees fell, the fires continued to burn the roots making holes deep down in the ground. I learned after that to be very careful in walking through forests that have once burned. There were many deep holes into which one might step and break one's leg.

Although at times my life seemed lonely at our Shades Mountain Place, I learned to enjoy even that loneliness. I was always influenced somewhat by music and during these years I began to enjoy listening to and singing the various "blues" tunes. We lived so far from any neighbors that I was not embarrassed to go into the yard and sing "The Saint Louis Blues" at the very top of my voice.

There are many little things that I vividly remember from those years: the jonquil flowers which someone had planted in the middle of our circular driveway and which blossomed out in early spring each year, the lovely sound of the breeze in the Elm trees, fruit from the pear, peach, and apple trees, the single holly tree that grew along our fence line but never had any red berries, the blue birds which nested each year in a hollow fence post and would attack anyone who came near when they had unhitched eggs in the nest.

When we had lived in Birmingham's Central Park area I had been given a tennis racket and had learned to play tennis on the courts of a nearby city park. On Shades Mountain we had no convenient access to a tennis court so we were unable to play. We had plenty of room on our 5-acre "estate" for a tennis court so we children continually begged Papa to build a tennis court. Finally, Papa agreed that we should have a tennis court and the first stage of the building began. A contractor was hired to level a piece of ground. He brought in a team of horses and a metal "scoop" which was dragged by the horses to move dirt from the higher ground to the lower ground. Then the area was dragged smooth and a large heavy hand roller was utilized to compress the earth. A very nice smooth area was built this way but Papa had no more money at that time to erect the backstops or the net. We practiced hitting tennis balls to each other on the smooth ground but had to chase the balls all over the yard because there were no backstops to keep the balls confined. The tennis court was still uncompleted when our family moved away.

It was during my life on Shades Mountain that I received one Christmas my first real bicycle. I was too short legged to handle the largest size bicycle, the ones with 28-inch wheels. So I settled for "a 26", one with 26 inch wheels. I rode it in our own yard and on our long driveway and even took long jaunts on Shades Crest Road that was nicely paved with macadam. But the bicycle was difficult to ride on the side roads covered with gravel. I also rode it on footpaths through the woods and it was on a jaunt through the woods that I wrecked the bicycle. I was going too fast and failed to make a sharp turn in the path. The front wheel rammed hard into a tree stump and threw me off onto the ground. The front wheel fork of the bicycle was bent back against the frame and we were never again able to restore proper front wheel steering.

After two years living in the rented "estate" on Shades Mountain, Mama and Papa saved enough money to make a down payment on the purchase of a house of our own. They found a house on the edge of Birmingham in a community called Avonwood, near the Avondale section on the south east side of Birmingham. I was really sorry to have left our country home that I had come to love.

Excerpt from the autobiography of Mr. Francis M. Perry, born 1921.