My Hill Country Assurances, Part 2: GARFUS SHERMAN THORNTON

by Terry Thornton
email: hillcountrymonroecounty@gmail.com

My older son, William Terrance "Teb" Thornton, Jr., always said during his growing-up years that he had two loaded pistols as parents --- that if he got into trouble, all he had to do was to point either of his pistols at the problem and it would be solved eventually. And he always said that if he pointed both his pistols at the problem at the same time, then we blasted it away immediately.

His reference to his parents as loaded pistols is what led me to Pistols For Two.

In the 1917 biography of George Jean Nathan and H.L. Mencken, Pistols For Two, author Owen Hatteras builds a case for writing not a standard biography of an individual but rather to present only those known facts about the individual. And from a recitation of those facts, the reader arrives at his own conclusions about the worth of the man.

Hatteras' book is still so unconventional an approach to biography that it is interesting to read if for not other reason than to see his structure (Hatteras, Owen, Pistols For Two. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1917. Available on Google Fullview Books.)

I am attempting to use Hatteras' approach in this article and the one following to present an overview of the persons I was fortunate enough to have as parents, Garfus Sherman Thornton and Letha Doris Hollingsworth Thornton.

Although I never thought of my parents as loaded pistols ready to be used in my defense, in retrospect they were just that. And a real loaded pistol figures into this set of recollections too!

Although Garfus and Letha were my parents, I could never know what was in their minds --- although they gave me life and nurtured me to manhood, what I truly know about them is based upon a never-ending series of snippets of their behavior which I directly observed or of events which they discussed with me.

This biography then of my parents will list only the things I observed about them or which they told me about and from that list perhaps you and I can independently arrive at some picture of them as individuals. Following the lists are selected photographs of my parents.

GARFUS SHERMAN THORNTON (1902 - 1976)

He was born November 12, 1902, in Walker County, Alabama.

He didn't know the origin of his given name, Garfus, but only knew that all his siblings informally called him "Gar." And if his brother and sisters called him Gar, chances are his parents called him Gar too.

He was named Sherman after his father, John Sherman Thornton, who was named "Sherman" by his father, James Monroe Thornton, in honor of the Union General William Tecumseh Sherman. It is not known what hand his mother, Rebecca Maria Williams Thornton, had in selecting the names "Garfus" and "Sherman" for her eighth-born (of twelve) children.

He never, in my presence, used his middle name --- and he signed most all his bills, receipts and checks as either "G.S. Thornton" or as "Garfus S. Thornton."

He named his first son "Sherman" and never once told him where the name came from other than from his father.

He was extremely pleased when my wife and I named our second son "Garfus" --- and "James" after my son's other grandfather. But to my father, we also named our second son "James" after the other James Thornton, my great-grandfather.

He carried Sweetie and me and new baby to Lann Cemetery and discussed with Sweetie for the first time that his Thornton ancestors were Southern Unionists. He never really discussed that fact with me prior to telling Sweetie about it. The trip to Lann Cemetery to show us the grave of his grandfather and grandmother James and Nancy Thornton was the first time he had ever told anything about his grandparents in my presence. It was my first trip to my great-grandparents grave and that visit and the information he revealed as a result of us naming our son James Garfus is what ultimately led me to family research and genealogy.

He had been told as a child that his grandfather, James Monroe Thornton, had served on General Sherman's staff --- and that he carried the rank of Colonel. Only after his death did I learn that at some point that James Monroe's rank had been vastly overstated --- he was a Private in the 1st Alabama Cavalry USA, not a Colonel --- and only after my father's death did I learn that two of James Monroe Thornton's brothers died while also serving in the same military organization.

He laughed the one time I heard my mother call him a "Damn Yankee."

He was not a demonstrative man --- rarely going out of his way to let anyone know what he was thinking or feeling.

He cried only twice in my presence --- once when he left me during my tenth year in the hospital in Memphis awaiting surgery with only my mother for company because he had work to do at Parham and livestock to feed and water --- and the other time he cried was the day my brother and I carried him from his bed upstairs at May House to the hospital. As we physically carried him down the stairs he cried and said he was crying because he knew he would never see the inside of that house again. And he didn't.

He cried, according to my mother, they both cried at and neither could eat breakfast for a week in July 1957 when my brother and I left for the army. Breakfast was usually the only meal of the day which my family took together --- and his nest emptied all at once as both his sons were "fledged" into the world beyond Parham on the same day.

He, at some point in his younger years, joined the Church of Christ but he almost never attended his local church at Parham, the New Hope Church of Christ.

He closed his store in deference to the church during church hours on Sunday morning --- but if someone had an emergency and needed gasoline or whatever, he would open for individual customers.

He sold part of his property across the road from his store to the church for space for a new church building and a new parsonage. He had discussed with mother in my presence that he was going to donate the land to the church but when he found out that the church was paying another member for a narrow strip of land beside his, he changed his mind and declared that if they were going to pay a regularly attending member for property then they could pay him for his.

He was estranged from his larger family --- and rarely saw his younger sisters. Often they would come to Parham, especially for First Monday in August (Decoration Day nowadays on First Sunday) but would not get out of their cars to visit him. Their spouses and children would come inside the store --- and Garfus would walk to the car and speak to his sister. In later years they reconciled and visited most years at the annual family reunion --- but they never visited in our home nor us in theirs. I never knew the exact source of the estrangement --- but have reason to believe that it involved a conflict between his sisters and my mother. He never talked about it.

He was a medium-tall, stocky man during my childhood. During my final spurt of growing, I exceeded his height by about one inch. As he aged, he became much thinner.

He had long graceful hands and fingers, long narrow feet, and a larger than average head.

He wore his hair combed back straight making his large forehead seem even larger. I never saw his hair with a part in it.

He was a trained barber and had a diploma for successfully completing barber college in Mobile Alabama. He bragged that part of his training was to shave the soap off an inflated balloon with a straight razor without bursting it.

He used a safety razor to shave with each morning for most of my time in his household although he had his straight razor, soap and cup, and a leather strop to sharpen his razor. One of my earliest memories of him is hearing him each morning sharpening his razor on the strop. I do not know when he switched over to a safety razor but believe is was about the end of World War Two.

He operated a barber shop in the back of Thornton Store until the state passed regulations prohibiting such a combination. His barber chair was eventually sold but it was a source of great fun when I was a young boy. His barber tools he kept --- and would "trade" haircuts with a friend who knew how to cut hair. They bartered their barber skills outside sitting either under the Chinaberry Tree or under the Walnut Tree with an extension cord providing current to power the clippers. I don't recall anyone cutting my hair but Garfus for the first ten to twelve years of my life.

He stated that his earliest memories were from when his family was living in Indian Territory and that their nearest neighbors were Native Americans.

He often stated that he was too young for the First World War and too old for the Second War. He never said if he consider that fact with regret or with happiness.

He pulled a gun on someone only once in my presence. A distant and older cousin, once when drunk, verbally accosted me in public while I was on a job, a situation which I ignored because one, he was drunk, two, because he was related, and three, because the company I worked for had advised me to walk away from any sort of confrontation while on the job. At the time I was about 20 or 21 years old and the cousin was in his late-30s. But, because the verbal assault was in public and portions of it were aimed at my father, I reported it to him. A few weeks later the individual, sober, stopped at Thornton Store and my father demanded he apologize to me. When the individual refused, Garfus pulled out his "store" pistol and said that "you will either apologize or I'll shoot you" at which point an apology was forthcoming. I never saw that individual again.

He told me after the man left that, yes, if he had to, he would have shot "the son-of-a-bitch."

He loved lemon ice cream. It was a seasonal treat and available only from his ice cream supplier during the summer --- and I always knew summer had arrived when I saw Garfus eating hand-dipped ice cream. It was his favorite.

He grew melons almost every year of my childhood --- watermelons and cantaloupes. He stated that he grew them primarily to sell in his store --- but I knew how much he loved to eat melon. His favorite way to eat watermelon he taught me --- in the patch, cut or break open a ripe watermelon and eat the heart of the melon in great huge chunks using your fingers.

He showed me how to cut out the heart of a melon using only my hand.

He had a passion for cantaloupes --- and his favorite method of eating a cantaloupe was to take a knife and cut it into half, scoop out the seeds, and to fill the bowl of the melon with ice cream (vanilla would do but his joy was to fill it with lemon ice cream) and then to consume the half-a-cantaloupe and cream with a spoon discarding only the outer rind.

He consumed milk in huge quantities --- drinking at least a gallon a day for those years when I lived in his household. He had one or two large glasses of milk at each meal --- and often his evening meal consisted only of left-over cornbread over which he poured some of his milk. I have his favorite glass from which he used to drink milk and eat cornbread --- a large, heavy "thumbprint" goblet on a short stem.

He milked the cow he kept in the pasture at our house at Parham. Each morning and each evening he would meet the cow in the front left-stall of the barn and would bring a large pail of milk twice a day to my mother. We drank the milk, strained, straight from the cow. Leftover milk was refrigerated --- but if any of us wanted milk from the leftovers, it was warmed back up to cow-temperature in a pan on the store. When Reece's Dairy began a delivery to Thornton Store, it took some time to get accustomed to pasteurized cold milk rather than warm whole milk. But pasturized or whole, he loved milk to the point that I would say from the vast amounts he consumed that milk must have been his favorite food.

He always helped my mother do the family washing --- which was done once a week. That effort was enormous --- and took the better part of a day even with his help and the help of two additional ladies he hired. Washing was done outside by hand during my early years. At some point in the late 1940s, a detached garage of concrete and cinder-block construction was built and a wash-room was included within that building. An electric washing machine was installed --- the rinsing and wringing of clothes was done by hand --- the water came from the hot water heater rather than from a huge iron pot with burning wood beneath it. Although the drawing of water into the washpot and the building of the fire and getting the water to boiling was his primary contribution to their more primitive method of clothes washing, Garfus continued to assist with the laundry for the remainder of his life.

He was tickled when pants stretchers were invented and became available after the war. He bought several pairs made of aluminum --- and from that day, his pants were not ironed but stretched. When wearing clothes were washed, the wet clean clothes were dipped in a starch solution and wrung out again. As the starch dried with the cloth, it provided sizing, stiffness, and a protective coating on the cloth. Such dried clothes were then ironed in those days before permanent-pressed cloth. To put pants on pants stretchers meant they dried smooth and with a crease --- and if the starch was thick enough, those stretched pants could stand alone and could be worn for several days until they became too soiled to continue using.

He ran the automatic washing machine and dryer when they finally acquired such devices --- and as my mother sank into Alzheimer's and forgot what the machines were called and forgot how they functioned, he did all of the family laundry during his final years.

He never liked having his picture made and would avoid most attempts to take his picture. No studio picture of him exists --- the only "bought" picture I have of him is one made by a traveling photographer who took a picture of the entire family when he was about twelve or thirteen years of age. His image was cropped from that photograph by a professional photographic shop in the 1960s.

He woke me early one Sunday morning to get up and talk to him. I was about 13 or 14 years old. The evening before, I was helping him with the store and just before closing time, the store had several customers including several women who were there buying supplies for the Sunday dinners they were planning, looking at some of the cloth and talking with mother who was also at the store. A pickup slowly drove up to the gasoline pumps and Garfus went outside to pump the gas. The customer, a man my father knew, was very drunk and still about ten miles from home. As it was his habit to drive drunk, my father consented to sell him gasoline. He wanted three dollars worth and paid for it with a five dollar bill. While my father came inside to make the change, the man walked up to the front plate glass window and proceeded to undo his pants and to start urinating facing the store. Within saying a word to my father, I grabbed him and simply pointed to what was happening. Garfus ran outside and I watched him start to strike the man with his fist --- but Garfus stopped the blow and instead hustled the man into the cab of his vehicle and told him to go home. The man made it home; went to bed; and sometime during the early morning hours, died in his sleep. As soon as my father heard about the man's death, he wanted to talk to me about the incident and to wonder aloud to me about what stopped him from beating the man to a bloody pulp --- he said that some inner voice told him to use restraint. Garfus told me that he would forever be grateful that he didn't follow through with the beating he wished to give that drunk. He was troubled by the event for some time.

He loved to drive large heavy cars. The only car I knew him to buy new was a 1950 Packard. It had an automatic electric clutch feature that could be engaged or turned off --- he insisted that it be kept turn off preferring instead to clutch and shift (or double clutch and down shift) as the need arose.

He drove fast and preferred modern highways at speeds of seventy or eighty. His favorite time to drive was after midnight --- straddling the center line, fast, with an ever wary eye on his rear-view mirror. My brother is chasing a theory that our father got his love of big heavy cars and midnight driving from a stint of running whiskey during the years before he married. I have no information from those years of my father's life --- except that his sisters told me that he loved to drive up to his parents old place leaning on the horn to announce his arrival.

He disabled my mother's car when she became too confused to continue driving. He removed the distributor wires --- and never told her why her car refused to start.

He drove us to the Mississippi Gulf coast one night about 1946 --- I remember our arrival there early the next morning because he stopped for gasoline. After it was pumped he went into the station and when my mother grew impatient, she went in and pulled him out. They had a major argument as to why he was playing the slot machine in the store rather than helping her locate where her sister and her family lived in Gulfport --- that the trip was to visit family and he should not be wasting time on the slot machine. Garfus said nothing but when he looked at me in the rear view mirror I think he winked.

He did not approve of credit for himself or for any of his family --- although he had many customers who had credit accounts with him. He didn't believe in credit cards and was amazed that while I was still in undergraduate school I had both clothing credit accounts as well as a Sears charge card and two gasoline credit cards in my name. He didn't approve that prior to my getting married I had an account with a local restaurant where I took the majority of my meals paying once a month. He believed that easy credit would be the undoing of everyone.

He never had a credit card, not even one for gasoline. He believed in the use of cash --- and in saving your money until you had enough to pay for what you wanted.

He loved to fish --- and when Sardis Lake was opened to the public, he found a passion for snagging fish in the spillway. His largest fish he snagged and landed there was a spoon-bill catfish which weighed about fifty pounds.

He loved to deep-sea fish best of all fishing, however. Annually he would go to Panama City Florida to fish from a boat which headquartered at the pier at Captain Andersons. On rare occasions he would take his family along and we would have a great time playing on the beach while he spent the days on the boat fishing. He carried mother, Sherman, and me deep-sea fishing once in the early 1950s --- Mother got sea-sick --- but Sherman and I loved the thrill of fishing with hand-lines over the side rails of the boat into water about 100 feet deep. Red snapper was his favorite of sea fish to catch.

He, next to fishing, loved to eat fish. He wanted his fish fried, served with hushpuppies, and French fries and with plenty of iced tea. I have observed him eating fish with such abandon that I feared for his very survival based upon the amount he would consume.

He thought the fish which Sweetie fried were the best he ever ate --- and we always tried to have one meal of fried flounder when he would visit.

He read the local papers, The Aberdeen Examiner and The Amory Advertiser, and he subscribed to the Memphis daily Commercial Appeal which was delivered by mail on the day it was published. Sunday papers were not available by mail except on a delayed basis and Garfus refused to pay for a daily newspaper that was old.

He got to read the paper first, then my mother had her turn with it, and then and only then were Sherman or I supposed to touch the paper.

He said columnist Lydell Sims wasted too many eggs each summer writing columns about "it is hot enough in Memphis today to cook an egg on the sidewalk."

He did not read the sports section of the paper.

He never, in my presence, read a book other than to just look at something someone called to his attention. I don't know if he ever read fiction for pleasure or if he ever read a novel.

He attended school for a few years at Greenwright School, the nearest public school to his family's home-place at Weaver's Creek. He walked to school and to hear him tell it, it was always cold and raining for the uphill walk both ways to school and then home through the woods.

He embarrassed me dreadfully only on one occasion --- and that embarrassment still makes me hang my head in shame for being associated with the event. Once on a late autumn afternoon as he was driving us home from a visit to some of my mother's people at Vardaman, he approached a slow moving line of cars. As we got behind the last car, the row of vehicles topped over one of the low hills and down we went into the flat prairie-land of western Monroe County. The highway was as straight as an arrow ahead of us; the highway smooth concrete. He could see to the horizon ahead and no car was approaching --- so Garfus started around the line of cars. Faster and faster we went --- and uglier and uglier the looks we were getting from the drivers we were passing. By the time we hit 85 miles per hour Garfus realized, far too late, that he was passing a funeral procession. Mother, Sherman, and I slid down into our seats hiding our heads in shame as Garfus passed the hearse. I still turn red about that event which occurred more than fifty years ago --- the day that Garfus passed a black family's funeral procession.

He carried me to Ole Miss on the day I moved there in to start to summer school in 1959. He planned a fishing trip to Sardis so the day wouldn't be completely wasted. He carried me to downtown and assisted me with setting up a checking account at an Oxford bank, helped me unload my possessions in my dormitory room, bid me farewell and left me. As far as I know he returned to that campus only once about a year later to pick me up for some family event. Oh --- the money I placed into my new checking account was none of his --- he believed strongly that young men should make their own way.

He, as a young man and accompanied by his favorite nephew (they were the same age), made his way across the United States all the way to California and back. He and his nephew would stop and work to earn enough money to go a tad further --- and on and on until they made it there and back to home in Mississippi. He loved to talk about when they picked cotton in Texas on the way home just to buy their food.

He and the same nephew later applied for and took jobs at a coal mine near Birmingham. The starting date was set --- and they acquired the proper equipment and clothing to work the mines. They arrived at the mine to start their new job and as they were going into the mouth of the mine with the early morning shift, they saw coming out of the mine bodies of two miners killed that night in a cave-in. Garfus and his nephew turned and walked out of the mine behind the two stretchers laden with dead miners, solemn and with the intent to never go underground. As far as I know Garfus never went into a cave.

He smoke cigars, King Edward brand. And when he wasn't smoking one, he was chewing on one. He may have smoked cigarettes some in my childhood but that might have been roll-em-yourself cigarettes during the war when cigarettes and tobacco were rationed. I never saw him use chewing tobacco or snuff --- but cigars were more or less a permanent fixture during his waking hours.

He wouldn't eat certain foods complaining that they "hurt him." Onions was one of his major "do not eat" foods --- but I personally observed him eating creamed onion soup and asking for seconds when he didn't know what he was eating.

He loved to bird hunt --- and to train bird dogs. For several years he bred and trained Red Irish Setters --- and my pride and joy of a dog was the pick of the litter he let me have. Late in life he learned to enjoy deer hunting and was fortunate to kill several deer before he got too frail and sick to hunt.

He, at the time of his death in 1976, owned no property, owed no debts, and had no outstanding obligations to anyone. He sold his business and house; he gave the farm to my brother and me; and all of his assets were transferred to others prior to his death.

He left no will; he had no insurance other than Medicare coverage. He never, during my lifetime, bought insurance policies of any sort --- not fire, not storm, not health, not liability nor any sort of automobile insurance. He excuse was that he served on too many juries when policy owners had to sue to get the company to honor their claims --- so he dropped every insurance policy he owned and never bought any more.

He bought U.S. Savings Bonds --- and held several of them years beyond their maturity date. He had, at one time, checking accounts at two different banks.

He was a Mason and attended lodge at Splunge.

He was often the voting precinct chairman of the Parham voting box.

He served a term or two as a member of the Board of Trustees for Hatley School.

He owned only one piece of jewelry, a Masonic ring which he rarely wore.

He did not wear a wristwatch; the only pocketwatch he owned of which I am aware was the one Sweetie and the boys and I gave him around the time of his 70th birthday.

He never wore suspenders.

He could not whistle a tune although he could whistle. Apparently he was tone deaf and could not distinguish a high note from a low note or tonal qualities in between. His attempts to whistle a tune produced a set of sounds totally unlike any melody ever heard.

He never sang aloud in my presence.

He never danced that I observed.

He seemed a good listener and with his few close friends, was an animated talker. But to most, he was somewhat aloof and distant.

He and I rarely talked except for his giving directions/commands and my asking permission to take certain liberties.

He sat directly across the length of the table for all of the informal meals we ate in the kitchen at the house in Parham. As I grew up, I had more eye contact with him because of this seating arrangement that I did with my mother or with my brother.

He wore a full set of dentures.

He loved to make and to drink sweet wine, the sweeter the better. His home-made wild cherry wine was the best cordial I ever tasted. He always shared his wine and offered me tastes of it even when I was very small.

He drank beer on rare occasions and again, would share a taste of it with me when I was little.

He drank, in his old age, a strange vile-tasting drink of locally brewed whiskey in which a ginseng root dug from Weaver's Creek Bottom had been soaked. It was a strong stout drink of which he consumed only small portions at a time. Yes, he continued to offer me samples of it.

He was never drunk as far as I know.

He would never tell me the name of the local whiskey maker he knew and from whom he bought his brew.

He never once discussed the "facts of life" with me.

He always kept secrets and if I told him something in confidence, I knew he would never ever discuss what I told him with anyone.

He enjoyed, back in the days prior to television, listening to the radio especially on Sunday evenings. He loved comedy shows --- Amos and Andy was one of his regular radio programs. He also listened to drama programs on the radio but he disliked music programs.

He bought one of the first television sets ever installed in Monroe County. He loved to watch television --- most any sort of programs except musical ones --- and built a high tower of galvanized waterpipe to which he attached the antenna to pull in signals from Memphis and Birmingham.

He was the one who told me that the distortion on a television screen was called "snow." We all watched a lot of snow back in the early 1950s before local television stations were operational.

He had but few dress suits but owned a closet full of sturdy washable twill clothes of cotton. In his later years, he was fond of corduroy and flannel in the winter --- and he also adopted some really strange color combinations. He once appeared in a set of permanent-press slacks that could only be described as dark orange.

He loved to wear the neckties which Sweetie made for him and he wore out several of them.

He had difficulty with knotting/tying his tie each time he wore it --- so he would, through trial and error, get it tied properly. Then he would slip it over his head without undoing the knot and hang it up for use again. Sometimes my mother would tie his necktie for him.

He never wore a bowtie that I saw.

He believed in vigilante activity if conditions warranted such.

He rarely wore a hat except when outside in the elements. For cold weather head-wear he preferred a cap with ear flaps.

He appeared, much to my surprise, at my wedding although he maintained up until just a few hours before the church ceremony that he didn't wish to attend. But attend he did spiffed out in a new suit he bought just for the occasion. He even seemed to have enjoyed himself at the wedding reception.

He adored my wife and often surprised her with small acts of kindness never before displayed to others. He would bring her pumpkins because he like to eat pumpkin pie; he would grind her fresh whole-wheat flour because he enjoyed eating hot yeast rolls made from whole-wheat. He taught her how to prepare quince preserves from trees he nurtured at his parent's old home place at Weaver's Creek. He gave her a bundt baking dish because he wanted her to have a special pan in which to bake pound cake which he loved to eat.

He avoided medical attention and almost never went to the doctor. He enjoyed good health and during my years of living at home only saw a doctor on one occasion and that in the late 1930s or early 1940s. For some reason he was at the bridge at Weaver's Creek on the Hatley-Detroit Road and needed to get off the bridge. He jumped off the low end of the bridge and landed on some of the old timbers and a large nail stuck through his shoe and into his foot. He went to the doctor for a tetanus shot. As far as I know, that was the only doctor's visit he made until the mid-1960s when he consented to have a medical checkup.

He, along with my mother, had a healthy fear of lightning. When they first started living at the house at Parham, he stretched a metal clothesline across the backyard and attached one end of it to the house. The other end was attached to the smokehouse all the way across the yard. Lightning struck the line and a ball of energy traveled the line toward the house, knocking a hole through the wall. When it was lightning nearby he made us disconnect all electrical appliances and to stay away from the outer walls of the building we were in.

He had some cypress timber cut and dried. When it was seasoned properly, he carried it to a carpenter and had a large rowboat built of cypress. That heavy boat was so ungainly that it was rarely used --- I remember it was once in Sipsey River --- and I remember that it was kept at the small pond he had built on Thornton Farm.

He went swimming with us once on the Fourth of July. The only time I ever saw him swimming he had cut off a pair of his pants and used them as trunks. During that swim I nearly drowned --- and he watched me go under the third time yelling for help each time I surfaced. My brother pulled me out --- and when I asked Garfus why he didn't reach for me, his reply was "Well, you said you could swim. I thought you were just playing."

He, on another Fourth of July, came immediately to the scene of the accident where I had been injured in a collision with a fire truck while riding in a neighbor's vehicle. He scooped me up and rushed me off to the doctor and comforted me with his presence.

He refused my enrollment into a preparatory course that would have lead to admission into one of the larger schools of music in the United States saying that "music is not a fit profession for a man." I was bitterly disappointed and we never discussed the issue again.

He always voted and was a firm believer in that only landholders/property owners should enjoy the franchise to vote. He never objected to the poll tax.

He insisted that I have a pistol for self protection and that of my family after we moved to Alabama. After more than a year of prodding me to acquire such a weapon, he finally just gave me a pistol which I still have.

He sold the store and house in Parham and he and mother moved to a house Sweetie and I owned in Amory, the May House. He loved living in town and found many friends and acquaintances in and around Amory

He didn't like to talk on the telephone and would go to great lengths to avoid such conversations. He telephoned me only once although I talked to him on a few occasions when he could be cajoled into coming to the phone. When the telephone rang in my office at Troy State University in Alabama and his call was announced, I almost had a heart attack as it was a first --- my dad, and on the telephone! Something dreadful must have happened. But he was telephoning me to advise me that he had found the "perfect" spot for me and Sweetie to buy and to operate --- the water gristmill near Red Bay Alabama on Bear Creek, complete with house and electrical generating equipment from the flowing water, was for sale for a reasonable price. He wanted me to consider giving up my university teaching career and run a water-powered gristmill as a tourist attraction in the hills of northwest Alabama. And he was offering to be the miller.

He was disappointed that his dream didn't become my dream. But although he rarely articulated his dreams and wishes and wants and desires and feelings and only rarely expressed his disappointments and anger, the one telephone call from him proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that his mind was always plotting and he was always planning for the future.

He never wrote me a letter.

He was my dad.

Garfus Sherman Thornton died February 18, 1976. Three ministers, one from the Church of Christ, a Baptist, and a Methodist, spoke at his funeral service. He was buried beside his parents at New Hope Cemetery in Parham, Monroe County, Mississippi.

Below are ten photographs of him.

Garfus Thornton at about age 13; cropped from family photograph

below made by a traveling photographer circa 1915.

John Sherman Thornton and Rebecca Williams Thornton

and some of their children, grandchildren, and one son-in-law.

Garfus Thornton is standing far left. Photograph circa 1915.

Garfus and Letha Doris Hollingsworth Thornton, date unknown.

Garfus Thornton holding son Sherman, about 1938

Garfus, Letha, Sherman, and Terry Thornton circa 1941.

I'm the toddler at left.

Garfus Thornton circa 1950s.

Garfus Thornton close up of hand showing ever present cigar, a King Edward.

Garfus Thornton and dogs, 1960s.

Garfus Thornton wearing one of the ties Sweetie made for him circa 1972.

Garfus Thornton at about age 72.

My Hill Country Assurances, Part 1

by Terry Thornton
email: hillcountrymonroecounty@gmail.com

My Hill Country Assurances is a continuing series in which I will present information about self, family, and ancestors. Using the pHOGS approach (photographs, History, Observations, Genealogy, and Stories) I will attempt to explore some of my history and that of my family. Part 1 lists all I am attempting to do with the series and then proceeds to give some of my early life history from my birth to seventeen years when I left Parham for the Army and then offers a brief look at my life through the 1960s.

My Hill County Assurances

• will take a look at events, persons, and activities which gave me the confidence, audacity, and composure to attempt such a series of articles;

• will examine some of the individuals, institutions and experiences which shaped and influenced my beliefs and faith;

• will attempt to present information which will serve as collateral evidence to explain my effrontery, egotism, and determination;

• will present information to provide alibis when needed or to give credence to my life history;

• and will collectively present information which explains why, even after seventy years of living, I still have a deep dependence upon and a huge appreciation for the Hill Country.

In this series perhaps I will find a explanation for "me" by looking at all of the assurances from my Hill Country experiences.

And I shall start by establishing the fact that I recently celebrated my 70th birthday. I suppose this event (which I celebrated with so much fun) actually means that I have now officially reached "old age." And with my advanced age I know I am required to start acting the part --- and perhaps even speaking with great authority on subjects large and small whether I have any real knowledge of them nonewithstanding.

Does being seventy mean I have to "act" seventy?

A sage I'm not --- nor am I sitting at the top of a mountain dispensing wisdom (although we do have some tall hills in Hill Country). Not yet anyways. And acting the part of a wise old sage --- no, not me.

But I am taking lessons for becoming a genuine curmudgeon and have just completed lessons one and two. One was how to spell it and two was how to pronounce it and my mentor says that lessons three and all the others to follow are things I just do naturally.

Oh joy! The prospects of doing well with something again pleases me no end.

I digress. Lets return to the beginning.

I was born in Gilmore Hospital (Gilmore Memorial Hospital). The building survives --- it is now a museum in Amory, Mississippi. I don't think the fact that I was born there had anything to do with the building becoming a museum. But it is a singular honor to walk into the room in which I first breathed the clean pure air of Hill County.

My parents at the time of my birth had one older child, my brother Sherman who is twenty-two months older than I. He and my parents lived ten miles east of Amory in the small country village of Parham where my father ran a store and a gristmill and operated several small farms and from where my mother had, on occasion, served as an elementary school teacher.

The road through Parham was a historic one --- earlier it connected the first organized place-named village in Monroe County, Cotton Gin Port, east to the small town of Millville in Alabama. The famed naturalist and man of letters from early Monroe County, Dr. Gideon Lincecum, called the road "the great thoroughfare to Tuscumbia" as indeed, it connected the wilderness settlements of the northern Tombigbee River basin with the Tennessee River ports in northwest Alabama and to the rest of the world.

Parham was about mid-point between Cotton Gin Port (which moved itself lock-stock-and-barrel to a new town called Amory) and Millville (which became known as Detroit, Alabama). The road became known as the Amory-Detroit Road. It was paved east of Amory for four miles to the little town of Hatley --- and then it was gravel surfaced most of the way to Detroit.

[On a historic note, prior to the construction of Highway 278 in the 1950s, a gravel road also went east from Hatley to Quincy and Greenwood Springs --- Old Highway Six. Portions of its graveled surface still exist in the county today --- but with the demise of Highway 6, Hatley has never since been connected to the rest of the world via a state highway. Hatley may currently be the only incorporated town in all of Mississippi not on a state highway.]

Huge clouds of dust followed the few cars and trucks that traveled Amory-Detroit Road through Parham in my childhood. About 1950, the road was upgraded and paved the six miles from Hatley to just a few yards east of Thornton's Store putting an end to the unceasing clouds of dust by our house. By the late 1950s, the road was paved the rest of the way to the Alabama line.

I grew up knowing the surnames of all of the families who lived in houses facing Amory-Detroit Road from the Alabama line to the city limits of Amory, a distance of about twenty miles. And I knew the given names of most of the heads of household, their wife's name, and often the names of their children. It was important to my father and mother that Sherman and I know our neighbors --- and as we drove pass, they would tell us who lived where and they expected us to remember. As a result, I knew the names of most folks along those twenty miles. And those I didn't know, my brother did.

Unfortunately I have forgotten in my mind's eye many of those old house places and worse, I've forgotten many family names. But I remember several times in the 1940s when authorities from various county agencies would need directions to someone's house, they would stop at Thornton Store and "borrow" me and/or my brother to direct them to the proper location. And before we left my father's presence, he would quiz us to make sure we knew the correct house.

What fun. . . me standing in the front seat of "Miss Stuckey's" new government-issue-car telling her how to get to someone's house near the Alabama line. For a five or six year old, that was some more grown-up doings.

But Miss Stuckey always made me wait in the car when she went inside for her visit. I think she was either with the county health department or with the newly formed social welfare department set up during the "New Deal" of President Roosevelt's years as president.

But back to me. I was never a lonely child --- my just-older brother was my constant companion. He was "sickly" and didn't start to school until he was nearly seven --- so even during his earliest schooling I was only home without his company for one year.

And during his first year of school I learned all of his lessons along with him. I learned to read words and to add and subtract and I learned to read music and play the piano at age five because I got to study along with him. Back in those days even first grade students had school work to do at home.

Another reason I was never lonely was both my parents were usually available --- Dad in the store just a few steps away from the house or Mom in the house or at the store. And then there were the customers, salesmen, and deliverymen who always had time to tell a tall tale to a little boy.

And perhaps another reason I have never been lonely is that from earliest childhood I was taught to find something to do to occupy my time. I grew up during the last gang of youngun's who were expected to be seen but not heard. It was expected that I find something to do and do it. For several summers my "something to do" was to read --- the bookmobile started a route through Parham and books unlimited were available.

By the time I was old enough to help, I worked in Thornton Store clerking and pumping gas. By the time I was old enough to do manual labor, my father had decreed that my brother and I would help him farm --- and he bought a tractor, cleared off some of the Thornton bottom farm land that had lain fallow for years, and put us to work.

I learned early on that I wasn't cut out to be either a storekeeper nor a farmer --- although the former was certainly more attractive as a life's work than the latter. In short, I came to the conclusion that the only escape from a life of farming or a life of store-keeping was to acquire a college degree. From about junior high school on, I knew I wanted to be a teacher.

And if I couldn't be a school teacher, I wanted to own and operate a bar, a tavern. And if circumstances force me back into the workforce, I just may try my hand at genuine Hill Country Honky Tonk with me operating the bar. Such is life.

I've often said that all I ever needed to know I learned at Thornton Store --- and back in those days when a country grocery store was the clearing house for all information in a community which didn't have telephones, some of the things I learned I'm still trying to figure out!

Seeing the same deliverymen week after week over the course of years also helped establish some really deep and meaningful friendships. A few months ago I was eating dinner in one of Monroe County's excellent restaurants, Bartahatachie Outback, when a gentleman approached me and stuck out his hand. He was one of the soft-drink route-men who called at Thornton's Store weekly for many years of my living in Parham --- he recognized me but he had to tell me who he was.

And so it is and was with dozens and dozens of people. From countless individuals either coming to the store to buy supplies or to the gristmill to have their corn ground, I learned names and history and tales and gossip and truths and half-truths from a very early age.

I lived in this environment until just before my 18th birthday. After my high school graduation at Hatley in 1957 I went into the U.S. Army for six months active duty. During those years in the midst of the Cold War with universal draft requirements, I thought it best to rid myself of my draft obligation as early and as painless as possible. As a seventeen year old, I joined the Army taking advantage of six-months active duty plus reserve time as an alternative to being drafted. A group of us at Hatley School discussed this deal --- and when the dust settled, eight friends left together on the same date heading to the same post for basic training.

It was my first ride on a passenger train --- and my first and only time to sleep in a Pullman car. While in service, I flew in an airplane for the first time and have loved flying ever since. And in the Army I learned quickly that I had made the right decision to take the short time and get over with it.

To my father's everlasting disappointment, I refused the Army's offer to go to Officer Candidates School. After a battery of tests during my first week as a Private US Army I was "recruited" to volunteer for OCS --- but that meant I had to add at least a couple of years more to my military obligation. So with just less than a week of full-time soldiering I knew it best for me to stick with the minimum program I'd joined up for and declined the offer to go to OCS.

When I returned to Monroe County at the end of my six months army training, I brought with me $400 of the $488 dollars paid to me while in service (lowly privates then received the princely sum of $78 per month). I combined that with some other meager savings I had and, with a scholarship I'd won in an essay writing contest, I started to junior college in January 1958. From that date, I lived only sporadically in Parham.

Very early in my collegiate career I became a student worker. I also applied for and got a band scholarship in junior college as a saxophone player (although I'd never been in a band). To finish my work at Ole Miss, the University Bursar Mr. John Faulkner, sent for me and said he wanted me to apply for one of the first student loans ever set up at the University --- the early National Defense Education Act loans.

My primary student job at junior college was cleaning one half of the Fine Arts Building on the campus of Itawamba Junior College at Fulton, Mississippi. I cleaned the classrooms, chalkboards, halls, and bathrooms on the south side of that building in return for my room and board. A band scholarship paid for the rest --- and I completed my studies at junior college in three semesters and one summer term.

My high school principal, Herbert Nix, wrote a letter on my behalf to the University of Mississippi requesting student employment for me. Thanks to his influence, a job was forthcoming in the Library. I worked for the next year and a half in the Periodicals Department of the Ole Miss Library for fifty cents per hour, usually working 20 to 30 hours per week. Back then I could buy a $15 meal ticket discounted to $13.50 which would buy my meals for a week in the University cafeteria if I were careful in my choices. But in order to finish my senior year with its requirement for student teaching and extra expenses living away from Ole Miss (including a car, apartment, food, etc), I knew I was in a major jam.

My brother Sherman came to the rescue; he gave me a car with the provision that we re-paint it. I bought the paint and tape and sanding supplies --- he borrowed a sprayer --- and in short order I had "wheels" do go do my student teaching a couple hundred miles away from home down near Jackson, Mississippi.

And then Mr. Faulkner stepped in and invited me to apply for the first batch of student loans at Ole Miss --- I was approved and with $1,100 borrowed money, I completed my undergraduate degree.

By continuing the process of going to school year-round and by always taking the maximum credit load (or more with permission from the Dean), I completed my four years of study in three calendar years and at a cost I could manage. When my transcript was submitted for a teacher's license, I was certified to teach Biology, English, and History in high school.

Working as a janitor taught me many lessons --- and working as a Periodicals library clerk opened up many avenues I never knew existed. And throughout it all, I stayed busy.

Perhaps my life is proof of the old adage that "a busy lad is a happy lad."

Little did I know when I left for basic training at Fort Jackson South Carolina in the summer of 1957 that my time in Parham was practically over. Had I known I would have taken a better look around and made sure that in my mind's eye I had looked upon all to be seen in my little corner of Hill Country.

By 1961 January I had completed my first degree; by 1961 (January) I had started my first biology teaching job on the day after I completed my final exams at Ole Miss; by the close of 1961 I was married; by the summer of 1962 I was accepted into the Summer Institute of the National Science Foundation at Ole Miss working on a masters degree; by the fall of 1962 I was the educational television studio teacher of science for the first regular scheduled ETV lessons in Mississippi; by the close of 1962 I was a father; and by 1964 I was employed to teach in the biology department of Troy State College (now Troy University); and by 1967 I was awarded an NDEA Fellowship to complete my doctorate in science education at Ole Miss.

Little did I know during this busiest of time in my life that soon the house in which I had lived, been nurtured, and knew every squeaking floorboard would be gone. Little did I know that soon the store my father built in 1950 to replace the older one would be gone. Little did I know that the barn, smokehouse, garage, garden, orchard, pecan trees, apple trees, and countless flower beds my mother had tended for years would be demolished and replaced with a voting precinct building, a volunteer fire hall, and a small walking track/park.

Had I know that the physical presence of my home would have disappeared so quickly, would l have taken a longer look about when last I was there? But when last I was there, I didn't know it was my last time.

Do we ever know when it is the last time?

The earliest photograph of me is the only picture I have of me as a baby, an informal snapshot of me sitting on a blanket in the side yard at Parham. As the second child I was rarely photographed so there is only this one view of me as a baby. I was a solemn and sad-looking child --- some say I am a solemn and sad-looking old man and that nothing is new in this world.

The most recent photograph of me is this one made on my 70th birthday holding two birthday presents, my favorite snack food and a painting of the product label (which now hangs in my office to encourage me to eat more).

Copyright © 2009 William T. "Terry" Thornton. Fulton, Mississippi 38843. All Rights Reserved.