Download [Page] [Document]
mcc-bc1-322
The People Who Lived on the Land that is Now Redstone Arsenal, page 308
The Longs got their water from a cistern: We had a big cistern at our house. [Please describe it.] It had a hole, like a well. It was big around and had a concreted wall all the way down. Gutter water ran down into it. We took a bath in the water. We had a hand pump in front of the house. It was a deep well, hard to pump. We didn't have any electricity. The Longs used oil lamps inside, but they also had Delco lights. James said they ran the porch light from the Delco battery. Yancy Horton also had Delco lights; it was reported that he used them for outside lighting and also for running equipment. Long said you could hear the “pat-pat-pat-pat” sound of the motor. It ran on gasoline and had a big flywheel on its side. The lamp was like a car had. The motor ran on gasoline. It had to be cranked to start it, and change its oil to maintain it. A wire was run to the lights. Along the road in front of the house, the side of the road had been layered with rock to keep it from washing. Long said the WPA came in and built some with poured concrete. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) put in a lot of terracing. Some World War I soldiers worked at it. “We built headwalls. Where it [water] emptied into the road ditch, the rock was layered in the mouth.” Evidence of this is still present today. Crops and Sharecroppers James stated, “When you cleaned up the land, you'd build a house.” The typical sharecropper house had two rooms. Sometimes rooms were added. The first room entered was used as a bedroom. Behind it was the kitchen. If there was a chimney, it was in the bedroom. The kitchen usually a flue on the side, and the chimney pipe ran up it. If sharecroppers had a stove, it was a Black Diamond stove (cheaper model than the Warm Morning). Most sharecroppers had no screens in the windows, and they had no icebox. Everybody had their own gardens and most people had a chicken house. Most women canned food in fruit jars. Many people had their own pig and cow for milk. Some people raised turkeys. Just a few raised them. You couldn't let them out. The little ones would drown when the dew was out in the morning. An old [Black] man would drive to the courthouse, heads [turkey] sticking out from the slats, and sell them. Most people were sharecroppers and not tenant farmers. Somebody else took over the land if they lost it. After 1927, people made a big crop and went out and bought automobiles. Then in 1928 the depression came. They sold or lost their automobiles or 308 - (4341)