Cherry Pipe Tobacco and Cherokee Goodnight
ᎣᏍᏓ ᏒᏃᏱ (Osda enoyi)
My grandfather, Leroy Pound, got up with the sun and went to bed with the chickens. It was his lifelong habit and did not change for holidays, company, or any other circumstance. Unless Jesus himself had been sitting in my grandparents’ living room, my grandfather would turn off his radio, get up from his rocking chair in the southwest corner of the room, and head for the front bedroom. He always stopped in the middle of the door to the hall between the living room and the bedroom, filling the whole opening with his tall frame, and told us goodnight in Cherokee. He was a very modest man and slept winter and summer in red long johns. Beside his bed was a small radio turned to an AM station that carried religious programming. He went to sleep listening to Billy Graham or Braxton B. Sawyer, a hell, fire, and brimstone Baptist preacher in Fort Smith, or some other radio preacher, usually a Baptist.
Both of my grandparents had been raised Primitive Baptist and spent time together at Primitive Baptist meetings. My grandmother, Maud Bullock Pound, had come from her father’s first family. After her mother died, her father remarried and had a second family. It was while visiting her stepmother’s family that she first met Leroy, a twenty-seven-year-old bachelor. He and his twin brother Leander were coming up from the fields after working all day, looking tired, sweaty and dirty. She said if she had been looking for a handsome man she would not have been interested. However, they fell almost instantly in love. She was barely sixteen and he was twenty-eight when they were married by her uncle, who was a Primitive Baptist preacher. They were married nearly 56 years until my grandfather’s death in 1958. They would have ten children together, nine of whom lived to adulthood, married, and had children of their own. Though he was a quiet, rather shy man, my grandfather was the undisputed authority in the family. Grandma was more outspoken, but they agreed on nearly all things except religion.
Grandpa remained a staunch Primitive Baptist his entire life. The most contentious situation in his marriage was my grandmother’s conversion by two of her older married children to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It was a topic that was avoided by all in my grandfather’s presence. Jehovah’s Witnesses were not allowed to come to the house. However, my grandmother went to meetings with her oldest son and remained a Jehovah’s Witness the rest of her life.
Because his eyesight was failing during the last years of his life, my grandfather had a large magnifying glass that he used to read his Bible. He read often and had much of the scripture committed to memory. The page margins of his Bible were covered with notes he had made while reading. Before her death, his Bible was in my grandmother’s home in Alma. I read it many times and read his notes as well. I was never sure who finally inherited it, but I hope it has been loved, read, and preserved.
My grandfather made notations about angels and angelic activities. He believed strongly in the personal interaction between angelic beings and humanity. He once told family members that Jesus has appeared to him and conversed with him, standing at the foot of his bed, wearing overalls.
Someone asked amusingly, “In overalls?”
“Why not?” Grandpa replied.
Grandpa was not one to doubt himself. If he knew he was right, he knew he was right. It was said he would even have argued with Noah Webster about the spelling or pronunciation of a word.
I was very young when my grandmother’s brother, Great Uncle Scott died. I believe he lived in Dover, Arkansas. My mother took my grandmother to the funeral, and I was also taken along. My little brother, Kenner, and my older sister, Beth, stayed behind with my grandfather. Ken was an active handful, and they probably thought it best for him not to go. Grandma was also probably reluctant to leave Grandpa alone. I am sure Beth was given charge of Ken, and Grandpa was in charge of her or she was in charge of him. My older sister bore a lot of responsibility for all of us.
We were expected back by early evening, but ended up being much later. When we finally made it home, Grandpa had a miraculous story to share. He had become very concerned when we did not return on time. As was his habit, he began to pray. He claimed that a very bright, white, luminous figure appeared in the room and walked toward him. The figure reassured and comforted him. He no longer worried, but knew everything was alright. We returned shortly thereafter safe and sound. He was sure the figure was Christ or an angel sent by Christ.
Beside the connection my grandfather felt he had to the spiritual world, Aunt Mary Helen once told me he was almost clairvoyant. He often predicted accurately that something would happen and had an uncanny sense for people’s true character. This came in handy as he was often known to loan money. Somehow, he knew who was truly trustworthy and who was not. Only one time did he misjudge someone and fail to be paid back.
There was a large console radio in the corner by Grandpa’s rocking chair. During the day, he listened to preaching and his other favorite programs. He liked “Amos and Andy” and “Ma Perkins”, the first radio soap opera. He did not like to miss an episode or be interrupted during “Ma Perkins.” It seems rather amusing to me that my staunch Baptist grandfather was addicted to a soap opera.
Grandpa had a vegetable garden behind the house. Sometimes he also grew a row of tobacco. The large leaves were hung from the ceiling in the old smokehouse that was joined to the chicken house. Grandpa used a pipe to smoke this homegrown tobacco as well as a blend of black cherry tobacco than came in a Prince Albert can. I loved the smell of the black cherry tobacco, but the other tobacco had a very strong, harsh smell. The black cherry tobacco left a sweet fragrance in the room and settled into the plaid flannel shirts that Grandpa always wore. I especially remember two that my Grandmother bought from Mr. Snoddy who ran a variety store in downtown Alma. One was red and gray plaid. The other was the same pattern in blue and gray plaid.
Grandpa was a content man who required little of life. He liked biscuits and gravy with a soft egg for breakfast and always has cornbread and buttermilk for supper. He had lost his natural teeth, and his false teeth set in a cup on a shelf in the kitchen. He never wore them. In the evening, he mixed a hot toddy with whiskey, hot water, and honey. We all knew where he kept his whiskey on the bottom shelf of the kitchen cabinet on the southside of the wall. It was always a source of curiosity because we had been told that it was strictly off limits. However, I am sure that every cousin who visited the farm eventually ventured a peek at the bottle. Some of us even smelled it. Some of us may have even tasted it, and others were even more courageous, but that is a story for another chapter.
A man of few words, my grandfather usually said what he meant and meant what he said. He never used bad language of any kind, did not swear, and was not prone to be angry. I do have one very vivid memory, though, of him coming straight to the point with an expletive. The front door of the farm opened to a long hall that ran down the middle of the house straight into the kitchen at the back. On the north side of the hall was a bedroom and on the south side of the hall was the living room. In the summertime, the doors were all open, and the only thing that kept out the flies were screen doors. During the hot dog days of summer, we would come in the back door of the house onto the breezeway between the old original log cabin section of the house and the front section that had been built on at a later day. A water bucket with a big ladle set on the corner of the kitchen cabinet just inside the back door to the kitchen. We would get a drink and then exit by running down the hall and out the front door. On one particular day when there were several cousins visiting, we kept the path hot between the water bucket and the front screen door. After each exit, someone would let the door slam on the way out just as Grandpa was saying, “Don’t slam the door.” I can imagine now that I am older that each slam was jarring. Finally, after a loud slam, those of us sitting on the porch heard him holler, “Well, just slam it, damn it. You have to mind if you stay around here.” I guess he decided that if you can’t beat them, you might as well join them. We were so shocked to hear those words from his mouth that the front screen did not ever slam again in my memory.
There was very little gray in my grandfather’s black hair. He was six feet tall or more and had a very lean, imposing frame. He walked with his feet turned slightly out, and to me he seemed to tower over everything. I loved to follow him in the garden and dig my toes into the sandy dirt between the vegetable rows. He had an old hand plow that he pushed to make new rows for planting and to keep the rows clear. We always knew not to bother the growing vegetables or the Muscadine vines that grew at the western edge of the garden. Besides the pear trees in the pasture, which belong to another story, few things on the farm were off limits. Grandpa had a beehive that was off limits and little pecan tree that he tried desperately to get started. With one exception, which was once too often, we gladly stayed away from the bees, but somehow that poor little pecan tree never was able to get a healthy start. I still remember him carrying water to put on that tree and down on his knees patting the dirt around the hole where it was planted. I don’t remember that it ever grew very tall.
As children, Grandpa told us many stories about Frank and Jesse James, whom he claimed were cousins. It is such a mystery since no close genealogical connection has yet been uncovered. Supposedly the family was related through Nancy James Pound, wife of Isaac Pound and Leroy Pound’s mother. She was supposedly a fiery redhead just like Jesse. Isaac Pound was a farmer and also had a blacksmith shop toward the south end of Mountain Grove Road before it meets Highway 64. Today the older home on that site is a daycare center. I suspect it is the same house owned by Isaac Pound. The story goes that when Frank and Jesse rode down from Missouri on their way to the Indian territory, where they were known to hide out with the Cherokee Starr Clan along with the Younger Gang, they usually made a stop at Isaac Pound’s blacksmith shop. There they would get home cooked food and a good night’s sleep while their horses were being shod. Grandpa claimed to have slept in the same bed between Frank and Jesse.
A curious thing is the striking similarity between my grandfather’s ears and Jesse’s ears as shown in photos. The size, shape, and the notch on the right ear are unmistakably very much alike. I have the same ears myself complete with the notch on the right ear. Grandpa’s ears were such a source of great delight to us. They were rather large and stuck out, but best of all he could wiggle them back and forth as if they were flapping. He taught me how to wiggle my ears in the same way. To my knowledge, I am the only cousin who mastered the art, though many tried. It was some comfort for being the one who inherited the big ears.
One of the saddest days of my life was and still is the day my grandfather died. I remember crying so hard that I was blinded by salty tears as we left the funeral home. Someone took my arm and led me to a car. The Old Rugged Cross was sung at the cemetery. To this day that hymn and red carnations always transport me back to that day. As an adult, I have had many dreams about my grandparents and the farm at Mountain Grove. In my mind, I can always see them sitting beside each other in the swing on the front porch.