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The People Who Lived on the Land that is Now Redstone Arsenal, page 19
something??"a rubber ball, a cap pistol, oranges, nuts and lots of fruit. Everybody in the community helps each other. Neighbors watch and help with each other's children. When people get their work done, they help others with theirs. They visit their sick friends and neighbors to help with chores and take food. However, the black people do generally keep to themselves. There is less opportunity for problems that way. Yancy Horton is a pillar of the Pond Beat Community. His land goes from here along the Farley-Triana Road (Buxton) by the school, down the east side of the road (McAlpine) that goes south toward the river. He has another, smaller, parcel closer to the river. Yancy has a big, colonial style house with a porch around the front, one side, and the back. It has six rooms and a dining room. The house is wood, but the steps leading up to it are brick. When they enter the house, they walk into a hallway. Three of the rooms are bedrooms, each with a closet. A fourth room is kept for entertaining. The floors are hardwood, except in the kitchen and dining room. They have linoleum on the floor, which is more practical. Three cement steps go up to the back porch. The back door opens into the kitchen; from it the dining room is entered. Oil lamps light the house. To get water for the house, they crank the wooden handle of the pump. A pipe from the well runs out to provide water for the barnyard. Sometimes the men work at night. Yancy has a gas light up on a post, and a Delco light in the yard, lighting the way from the house to the barn. The lamp is like the one an automobile has. Yancy uses the Delco battery system for running equipment, and when he does, you can hear the “pat-pat-pat-pat” sound of the motor. It runs on gasoline and has a big flywheel inside. It has to be cranked to start it, and once in a while the oil has to be changed to maintain it. In the barnyard Yancy Horton has a big tank of gasoline and a pump. Yancy and Frank Jacobs fill up their tractors here instead of buying gas at the store. Frank and Addie Jacobs are Yancy Horton's neighbors. They live in a big house to the east of the Hortons. They built a brick house after their former house burned. The Jacobs' property and Horton's is divided by a dirt road. Addie's sister Zera lives on property to the north of hers, and Addie's brother Ernest has a small piece of land to the south of Addie. Going down the road (McAlpine) toward the river, past Yancy Horton's place, there is a number of small houses. Shab Tolbert lives down there in a sharecropper house; he works Schiffman land. Roy Hastings lives south of him. Wattie Timmons lives close to the river. About a quarter of a mile south of Hastings is Deliah Clay's place. He never uses that first name, though. He signs his name as “D.L. Clay,” and 19 - (4052)