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The People Who Lived on the Land that is Now Redstone Arsenal, page 385
Wesley and his wife were married on Christmas Eve in 1936. Wesley was 23 years old and his bride was 19. They had been married for two years. Wesley's father was the owner of the livestock and equipment, but Wesley had assumed the responsibility of the farm: I rented it from Lowery. During this time they built the Wilson Dam. Nobody had any electricity around the Tri-City, which is what Tuscumbia, Sheffield, and Florence were called then. Muscle Shoals was called that because up above where the dam was built, you could walk across the river. It would go dry. I anticipated the need to go to college, but I was the oldest child at home. My younger brother Cullen Thomas and sisters Ruby and Annie Glen, they were young. I handled them like they were mine. I wanted to go to college, but I couldn't get a nickel for anything. There were two boys for every job in college. John Wesley said he and his young wife Edith didn't plan to have any children because they weren't prepared financially. So he “went to pushing the mules.” Things don't always go as planned. John Thomas was born November 15, 1937. Wesley said, “He [the baby] wore blisters on his feet to get there in time for the wedding.” (As a note, John was born 11 months after the wedding.) Wesley commented, “John was born in the shadow of Brown's Ferry.” Wesley explained why he left Limestone County: Nelson Glass had a furnishing store, and he furnished homes all around Limestone County. Glass was just an old hand. He took a liking to me. He suggested I rent some more land from him and he'd buy me a tractor. Man, I was in 7th Heaven when I thought I'd get a tractor instead of them mules. We had six mules. He said I could trade in those mules on a tractor and he would pay the difference. I would owe nobody but him. I looked at the John Deere dealer in Morgan County. He heard about me wanting a tractor. In November when we finished harvesting, sometime in November, he and his boys loaded a tractor on a truck in Decatur, on what was supposed to be my farm at Brown's Ferry. I traded him old mules. Four were twenty years old. That was the down payment on the tractor, the plow, the harrow, and the cultivator??"one-third of the payment. We got in his car. We drove up to Nelson's office about 4 o'clock in the evening. I told him the details [the tractor deal]. McBride wanted his 385 - (4418)