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The People Who Lived on the Land that is Now Redstone Arsenal, page 329
Edith gave directions to the Woodward “homeplace” of Grandfather John Woodward (Parcel F-277) in the community of Pond Beat:
Coming in from Whitesburg Pike [traveling south], which is now named Memorial Parkway, turn right on what is now Buxton Road. Go six or seven miles, and then make a sharp left turn by a Methodist Church [the church is no longer there. [The current name for the road south is McAlpine.]
Go a mile or a mile and a half down toward the river. It was about half way between the river and the store [the store was on Parcel D-174, at the intersection of what is now Buxton Road and McAlpine Road]. Turn left on a lane. Our house was off the road. The house was up a little hill. The hill was right in front of the mountain. The Clays lived on the other side.
Edith stated that the Army built an igloo right where the Woodward homeplace had been.
A Description of the John Woodward House
Grandfather owned the homeplace before I was born. It was a four-room house. It faced the road. [The lane that came off the main road.] There were two doors on the front, but we didn't go in through the front. Two bedrooms were in the front. The one on the right was larger than the other one. Each of the two front bedrooms had a fireplace.
The two rooms in the back were a kitchen and a dining room. The kitchen had a wood stove. One side of the stove had a big tank to heat water. Up above the front of the stove was a place where you could put the food, just to put it away out of sight. When I got up to a pretty good size, we got a refrigerator that burned kerosene. Before that, my daddy brought home ice every time he went out.
The dining room had once been used as a bedroom. There was a Warm Morning heater in it.
Daily Life (when her parents lived in the “homeplace of Grandfather John”)
The Well. The well was down the hill from the house. “Every bit” of the water used at the house had to be carried in buckets up the hill from the well. Beyond the well, “you started up the hill??"the mountain started.” The cemetery is up on that mountain.
Electricity. Edith said there was no electricity down there “on the homeplace.” Her family used kerosene lamps. When her father's sister married a man on Moore's Mill Road, he had Delco lights. She said, “We thought Delco lights were wonderful.”
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