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The People Who Lived on the Land that is Now Redstone Arsenal, page 17
(shares) in it. The gin is on Brown Street. Taking cotton to Huntsville. Courtesy of the Huntsville Madison County Library. Sometimes there is excitement right in the neighborhood. Once people could hear shooting and commotion coming from the woods on Kirby Cartwright's property. Cartwright, a white man, doesn't live in Pond Beat. He has a store downtown adjoining Terry's department store, but he has parcels of land here and there, in Pond Beat and Mullins Flat. The place where the shooting was coming from is in the woods north of the Farley-Triana Road, not far from the back of the house that Booker owns now. The woods go to the creek that separates Pond Beat from Mullins Flat. The police were in the woods breaking up somebody's still. That isn't the only still that is in the woods along the creek. Some of the boys have fun once in awhile figuring out how to relieve a friend or relative of a bit of moonshine. The younger children create their own entertainment. They roll a car tire or make a flip (slingshot) and shoot at birds and cans. Sometimes they make Johnny walkers (stilts). Alva Jacobs and his brothers have been making a cart. Its wheels are tin cans. They have a straight shaft. The axels are made of wood and tin cans on either side. A cord is tied on each axel near the front wheels. The cord goes from the axel to each side of a straight stick that is attached to a shaft and used to steer. Here to the west of Zera's house is Horton School. The children in the two-room Horton School are sitting at shared desks studying. The attention of one girl is held by the pictures of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington that adorn the front wall. Each schoolroom has an iron pot belly stove. Willie Joiner says that in the winter when it's really cold, her parents (Percy and Ellen) and other parents take wood, cut in about one foot lengths, to Horton School to help keep the heat. Juliabelle Gunn Toney calls time for recess, but she stays in the room to help two slower readers. Henry Torrence goes outside with the children. The children are playing stickball. Two students take their turn at drawing water from a nearby well. Some students will stay after school to take their turn at keeping the classrooms clean. Looking up at the school again, I notice small windows, one on each side of the front entrance, that illuminate the cloakrooms. A little boy, who must be standing on tip-toes, peers out. 17 - (4050)