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The People Who Lived on the Land that is Now Redstone Arsenal, page 16
Like Claudie Joiner, Dock Jacobs is a World War I veteran. Sometimes, Dock can be found down in Frank's blacksmith shop. Frank has a racehorse and likes to do harness racing. He takes his racehorse to the county fair. Zera and Dock own the land on the east side of Horton School. Zera was born in about 1895. She remembers when there was no school, and the community paid someone to teach the children. School only lasted for about a month, and was usually held in a church. Zera also remembers back in the late 1800's and early 1900's when riders would come from Talucah in Morgan County by ferry boat and deliver the mail before ferrying back home. Now Madison County has mail riders who deliver the mail out to people's mailboxes. Pond Beat is on Route 4. Zera once owned the piece of land on the north side of the road (she inherited it from her father), right across the road from Horton School. Around 1933, she traded it to her brother, Booker T. Jacobs, for his piece on the east side of the school. Now Booker lives in the house, across the road from the school The house has two rooms in the front and one room, a kitchen, attached to the back. A fireplace is between the two front rooms. Most people don't have a living room. They have chairs in the bedroom, and when they get ready to eat, they take some of the cane-bottomed chairs to the kitchen. Some people make their own cane chairs. They make their own mattresses as well. The house has a front porch, but no back porch. Behind it, is the smoke house, which has a dirt floor, and a chicken house. The hen house, built with poles and a tin roof, was important to Zera when she lived over there, because she trades both chickens and eggs to the rolling store when it comes around. She trades them for salt, pepper, and sugar, and, if she has any credit coming after that, she gets some candy for the children. Most of the food she serves her family she has grown herself, and she cans and preserves vegetables and fruit for the winter. The house she lives in now is similar to the one she lived in on the land she traded to Booker. Zera and Dock don't have a refrigerator. They take their milk down to the spring to keep it cool. Some people lower it in buckets down in the well. Once in a while, Zera and Dock make a treat for the family. Dock brings ice from town and they get out the washtub and put in the milk from their cow, ice, salt, and then more ice, and make the ice cream. Not many people raise turkeys, but Dock does. At Thanksgiving and Christmas time, he loads his wagon and sells them downtown. His son Alva stays with the wagon while the turkeys are delivered. Afterward, Alva is taken to the town square to a place that has good hamburgers. As the Jacobs are “colored people,” they go in a different door to the restaurant than the white people do. A partition keeps the colored people away from the white people. Young Alva Jacobs always enjoys going to town on the wagon. Another time he gets to go to town is when cotton is taken to the gin. Bates Gin is over in Mullins Flat, but most black people take their cotton downtown to the gin. The black families all got together to start the gin, and many families have certificates 16 - (4049)