James and the RMS (Railway Mail Service)

James applied for the mail service in 1935 and with the post office in Moultrie. And the mail clerks post office called first. Then the mail service mail RMS (Railway Mail Service) called. He resigned the post office and went to the mail service in April 1937. He substituted on different runs out of Altanta. Then he got a run from Albany Georgia to Tampa Florida. He worked there for several years.

When Sandra was born, we lived in Union Springs. He caught the train there to go to Georgia. A couple years later we moved from there to Montgomery (around 1943). I went to work when we moved to Montgomery. there was a grocery store around the corner from us and a guy I new in Moultrie had a grocery store there and since we were both from Moultrie he hired me. James made his trip to Waycross one day and came back the next day. Then he was off for two days.

I guess it was sorta in his blood. His dad carried the mail by horse and buggy when they were little. It seemed like that was something he always wanted to do. James loved the mail service.

He had a case as big as a suitcase with holes in it and they had names with towns on it and he had to stick the mail into the right holes (they wern't labeled). I had to check him out to make sure he put them in the right place. He had to study and take test on the new routes they went on. He had to find out which way the mail went on new routes. He had to know which mail to drop off at each station based on the other trains that could pick it up. That's the kind of examination it was. Like when he was running from Atlanta to Floria. The mail that was coming to Alabama, he had to put it off at Thomasville and they would pick it up to take it to Montgomery.

Then they changed to HPO (Highway Post Office). The highway Post office used a bus. It was the same job, they were just on a bus shaped thing instead of the train. He worked the route from Montgomery Alabama to Waycross Georgia. James loved his works and retired after 30 years plus 3 years in the army. He was in the army when I met him. We made friends with a lot of clerks and families. We had a great social life together. He died in 1974 at age 69. We had three Children Wayne Carolyn and Sandra. Wayne served 20 years in the air force as a helicopter pilot. He served a tour in Vietnam.

Carolyn and a Tornado!

Carolyn was born at that time in May. James was just gone to Atlanta for his new job for a couple of months. I didn't want to leave my doctor and go to Atlanta so I stayed with mama and Carolyn was born. she weighed ten pounds! The doctor said she weighed ten pounds, but he was just guessing because he didn't have a scale. My younger brother wanted to tell James that I had twins, but I wouldn't let him so he just told him that she weighed ten pounds. James didn't believe him because he knew George. But she was, she was a big baby. Mama was bathing her and she lay in Mamas lap and just turned that head around and was just looking all over. She never did cry, he had to spank her so she would cry, she never did cry much.

James got transferred from Atlanta to Albany. He was riding the train from Albany to Tampa Florida. We had a tornado in Albany that year (in 1940). He as in Florida. that was the worst thing. They kept trying to call me. I was in Albany and they had it in the paper that Albany Georgia was wiped off the map. The man that was where James spent the night just laid the paper before him . He couldn't call and so he sent a telegram. He beat the telegram. It was an awful sound, but I go both children Wayne and Carolyn on the bed and just prayed. The center of that storm was about a block form our house. The center of Albany was just flat. When he came in the next morning on his train, I heard someone running. He ran from the depot to the house until he got to me and the children.

There was a grocery store down there close to the depot and it just took the top off of it. People used to stack their oranges and apples up in a pyramid. Those apples an oranges were still in the pyramid with the roof off. And that was about a block from the house. The man in the apartment above us went to let the window down and the wind just sucked him to his knees. It was amazing to see the building just torn down.

My First Baby Wayne

Wayne was born when we lived in Columbus. Since he was premature and so scrawny looking and red, my brother thought he look kinda funny and made fun of his ears. But after he married and had a boy, his baby's ears really stuck out! So he said he wouldn't make fun of any one's baby after that!

Wayne slept for a month when he was born. I had to wake him up to eat, the milk would come so fast!

When Wayne was born, we didn't call mama or anything to let her know. He just wrote him a card and told him we had a son . I wouldn't let him call because I knew my brother was expecting and Wayne was premature. I had already had Wayne so I didn't need her, but I knew she needed to stay near home to be there from my brother's baby. She came as soon as she got the card and after she went home she told them, "Alma could have picked the world over and not found a better man than she's got."

She had given us a rough time. She just didn't want me to marry and gave us a hard time. I don't think she wanted me to marry at all but I told her I wanted to marry. But eventually she became friendly to him.

And the mill closed down so we had to move back to south Georgia. Mama wanted us to move in with her so we did. James had put in an application for Columbus at the mail service. We stayed at mamas about a year We finished that crop and started another on the farm and He and mama got along fine. Then they called him first to the post office in Moultrie. He got that job in the summer. Then the next year they called him to the railway mail service- that paid better. That's when the hauled mail on the train and clerks worked on the train. Sometimes they didn't stop, they would just put the mail off in a sack but at the larger towns they stopped.

How I Met My Husband James

Now I want to tell you how I met my husband. I was fifteen one day when I went to Sunday school and we didn't have any pump where we got our water. It broke and we were all standing around the pump this friend of mine came and her brother. And she introduced us and said this is Alma may. He said Alma May who? That was the afternoon. That night before training union he wanted to walk up the street to get water, but I said no it's time for training union to start and wouldn't go with him.

The next Sunday I was coming down the steps to church, and the shoe heal came off in the crack in the steps. I took it to the car and James followed me and my friend out there. He took his knife out and he fixed the heal and put it back on

He was home on leave from the service. Mama didn't think too much of being in the service. She didn't want me to go with him, but I did. So we went together about four years before we married. Papa told me about the first year we had gone together, "I believe I can get that man to work for nothing!" And James left to go off and try to find a job. Papa died while he was gone. And James came back when he found out. In Atlanta, this friend of mine from Atlanta told him so he came back home.

We had a rough courtship, but we went together about four years. Mama told me that your papa didn't want you to go with him. I said, if he didn't he would have told me so. He told me that about other boys but he never told me that about James. So we got in arguments about that. She finally decided she better just leave us alone and she became friendly with him. At first she wouldn't let him come to the house to see me. But she finally let him come to the house to see me.

He tried to find a job but in those days jobs were hard to find. He finally found one in a mill in Columbus Georgia. After he worked there a while we got married and we lived there about a year.

Our Move from the House where I was Born

Mr. Railey had built a new home just a mile from us. And he moved in on my birthday (the day I was born). The day I was 8 years old, we moved into his house. We thought they were kinda uppity. But they somehow or another couldn't meet their payments on their house, so papa and Mr McGee signed the contract. They divided up Mr. Railey's property and we got the house section because it was closer to our land. We moved in there the day I was 8 and the Railey's moved into our old house. It was the only painted house in the community!

We had neighbors to live down the street. One of my neighbors and I became real good friends. We went to school together and worked in the field together. I wore overalls. We hoed cotton and picked. Everything we did, we did it together. Maybe we would work in their field one day and our field the next and our parents didn't seem to have any objections to that.

When we moved to the Railey house, we had to walk to school and we walked down the railroad tracks so I learned to walk down the rails. A couple three years we got a school bus, a homemade school bus. They got a truck and put a body on it and put benches down longways on it. I was 9 or 10 when we got our school bus. We lived about a mile from school in our new house. It was about a quarter mile from school at our old house.

We had a basketball team for the girls and one for the boys. We had an hour lunch. We just swallowed our lunch whole so we would have longer to play. At the end of school we always put on a program - plays. We used the front porch of the school for our stage. In one of them, I was a mean little girl. They had a desk out there with some stuff on it, a mirror or glass and I was just throwing stuff all over and broke it.

The school we always had a Christmas tree for the community. They would get out and cut down a big pine and put it in the school and would decorate it. when I graduated at the end of the year we had special speakers. Students who had done well would make a little speech. We had around Easter time, box suppers. We would take a box and decorated up with a meal in it for two. The men or boyfriends would buy the boxes and they would have to eat supper with them. There was this bachelor, he always wanted to buy my box even though he was in his forties because he knew my mother was a good cook. They got to where they teased me about him because he always bought my box. That's how we made money for the school.

Our school went through the ninth grade. The last year I went to school there, we were playing the basketball tournament and we had won and had one more night to play and I was sick and laid down on the floor. I was sick and had the measles. Mam said, what's the matter with you? you just played to hard . The next morning she woke me up to go to school, but I was just covered with measles. But the kids when the got home from school when come see me through the window.

We had a lot of fun there at the school because of our friendships. This one girl that we were real close buddies and my brother George kinda liked her so we double dated a lot of times with some couples.

Games We Played

When I was about 6 or 7, I had typhoid malaria fever and was sick a month and the doctor would come to the house to see me. The children in the neighborhood would come and fan me with a fan with newspaper tied around a stick. She would sew the paper around the stick and cut the paper around the stick and would make a big fan. They would come in and fan me. Aunt Sally, when I got up ready to walk, she said, your legs look like sparrow legs with stockings on them. It was summer time and they put stockings on me in the summer the first day I was up. And I walked down the hall to the kitchen with mama holding me and Aunt Sally just teased me about those sparrow legs.

We played hopscotch, and we played marbles, hide-and-go-seek. And a when a lot of us got together we played drop the handkerchief and spin the bottle. Drop the handkerchief, everyone gets in a ring and you go around and around and drop it behind somebody. And they pick it up and try to catch you. And if they catch you, you go in the ring and then they're it. If they don't catch you, then you're still it. We played skip the rope. We had a rope swing in the yard we swung in.

We did a lot of running games where we got our exercise. We played hail over. You get a ball, chose sides, and have some on each side of the house. They would throw the ball over the house and run around the house. They had to catch the ball and tag as many of us as they could get before you got back to your side of the house. We played hide-and-go-seek. Let one count and then everybody hid and he tried to find everybody. And if he tagged them, the first one that was tagged had to be it the next time.

We played town ball, that's what everybody in the school would play. They would chose up sides, and they would hit the ball sorta like baseball. You would get three outs. Town ball and baseball are about the same except you had a lot more players in the field. That's one of the games we played at school.

Then we played checkers, marbles, and we played a game with corn. I can't remember just how we played that. We played thimble. You would have a thimble and pass it around. And you would not know who had it, and the rest would be trying to guess who had it. You would pass it or act like your passing it when you're holding it. I think you got out if you had it when they guessed you. We played tagged like that too. Chose it and then we would run around and tag somebody and they would try to catch you before you got back to your place. If you couldn't catch them you would try to catch somebody else, If you caught him then he was it.

In the school we would run three-legged races. You get a partner and tie two of the legs together and call it a three legged race. Your partner might stumble and pull you down and somebody might catch you.

When my mama's brother came back from the service, he gave me four or five pennies and one of my brothers said, Alma I'll give you this dime for those pennies. And I said, no you won't I've got more money then that. I wasn't going to give them five pieces of money for one. They teased me about that for a long time, my brothers did. They were big teasers.

We had a big china berry tree in our yard and we had a rope swing and we'd play that swing so many times and you'd have to give it up or somebody would push you out.

I don't believe children play nowadays like we did. The gotta have bought toys. We had a ball, but mama made that. She got an old inner tube and wrap around big piece of thread from the men's socks when they wore out and wrap it around. She would take a needle and thread and sew it up real tight. She would take the rubber and wrap the sock and wrap it around. She made a good many of them out of Papa and the boys old socks. She just had to have a piece of rubber in the middle to make it bounce good and that's what we played town ball with, the balls that our mothers made. If happened to get a little ball for Christmas, we were thrilled to death.

Born on the Farm

Well, on Dec 22, 1914. I was born. And then we didn't have hospitals or doctors to come to your house. So they sent the children to the neighbors house and then they sent a midwife to tend to the mama. And when I was born, Papa wanted a girl so bad and I was a girl so he got on the top of the house and yelled, it's a girl its a girl! They heard him about a 1/4 mile away. When I was born, I was tongue tied and they had to clip my tongue. So they clipped it and my brothers always teased me that they clipped it on both ends because I was such a jabberer when I was little.

I had eight brothers, but three died when they were babies, so I didn't know anything about but one of them. I was the eighth child and there were ten children. Four years later I had a sister, but there was a boy between us that died. We lived out in the country and farmed. We had a smokehouse built behind the house. We had cows and horses back there at the back side of the house. We had a lot of fruit trees, muscadine vines and grape vines. We had a big time when they came in. We had cows. I had to mind the cows away while the boys milked until I got big enough to milk, then I milked. I got to where I could milk with two hands.

We had the schoolteachers stay with us, board with us. I started school when I was five and they helped me a lot. I was a star student because I had a lot of help. Honor student I believe you call it. I played marbles with the boys. Everything I done I done it with the boys because I didn't have a playmate. I played basketball when I got onto third or fourth grade.


On that subject I had the measles when we was playing the tournament one year. It was next to the last night and we was going to win that tournament and two of us had the measles. So we lost.





I wanted to learn to plow, I thought it was something big to learn. Papa helped me and the boys so I could learn how. We had to pick and hoe cotton, plant it first. When it came up we had to hoe it get the grass out and then we had to pick the weevils before the cotton came out because they would eat the bowls. The we picked the cotton. One day I picked 200 pounds, but my brother picked 500. But we was going to get a nickle if we done it, so we done it! We had a cotton house where we put our cotton when we picked it until we got enough to make a bale which I think was 2000 pounds. Then we took to to the gin where we got it ginned and baled and then they would sell it I guess.

When I was about four or five, my dad was building a walkway to the house. I was eating a pomegranate, and I cut my hand on my little finger and it didn't bleed, and I mashed it and my muscles were coming out. I mashed it and said, look Papa, my guts are coming out! and that's what happened to my hand.



When I started school I called him daddy. He said, don't call me that, Papa's my name, them city folks call them daddy, but my parents were mama and papa.