Having registered at the Maxwell House—the one that presumably made a certain brand of coffee famous—I attended the Nashville Centennial for three days before looking up any of my relatives. My Uncle Thomas Cullom lived Nashville — but my Aunt Nancy Cullom-Porter had written from Wetmore to my Aunt Harriet Cullom-Lovell at Newsome Station, twelve miles out, of my expected visit—and I went there first, by train. I inquired at the Newsome store for a way to get out to John Lovell’s, five miles up Buffalo creek. Mr. Newsome said, “Just go right down to the mill, the boy there will carry you over plum to his door—you a Cullom?” The boy led out two horses, and I was “carried” over astride a horse to my Aunt’s home, arriving at about four o’clock. And here I met, for the first time, Uncle John Lovell, his two daughters, Emma and Margaret; and of course my Aunt Harriet—not however, for the first time. My mother had told me that we had been pretty good friends in my baby days.
Also, I met here the renowned spirit medium Jim Spain, of whom I had heard my mother and my Aunt Nancy tell some tall stories—but Jim got on a horse, rode away, and I did not see him again that day. Jim Spain at this me was about thirty-five years old. He had come to the Lovell home when a young man—and just stayed. I don’t know if he had any relatives; though undoubtedly there was a time when he might have been blessed—or plagued—with kin.
At eventide—maybe it would define the hour better to say as dusk settled on the hills and hollows surrounding my Aunt’s home, making the hollows thick with semi-darkness—girls, in twos and threes, began coming in—in all about a baker’s dozen. That spirit medium had made the rounds spreading the news of my arrival. The girls were too nearly the same age—sweet sixteen—to be of one family. They were my relatives — or maybe just relatives of my relatives. They were all cousins. I asked one of the girls where had they all come from? She said, “Just over the east hill—apiece.” It was a steep hill.
The Lovell home, a double structure with the usual open spacious gallery separating the apartments—a typical Southern home—was near the junction of Buffalo creek on the north and a deep gulch between high wooded hills, flowing in from the south. The building spot, about the size of an ordinary town lot, had been leveled off some fifteen feet above the wash, with the west end of the dwelling resting on piles reaching down almost to the water level. To the east, the hill above the flattened space, was so steep and high that the sun did not» shine on the house until after ten o’clock. A cook-house stood in the yard about thirty feet south of the dwelling where family meals were prepared—presumedly by a colored cook.
Here, I must explain.
After I had returned home, I learned that my Aunt Nancy had written my Aunt Harriet advising her to get rid of her Negro cook for the duration of my visit. Whatever possessed her to do this, I wouldn’t know—there was, in fact, no justification for it. I had no reason to be prejudice of Negroes. On the contrary, I may say I “owe my life” to a Negro — my mother said he was the blackest Negro she had ever seen—for having rescued me from the river after I had fallen off the deck of the boat, when coming to Kansas from Tennessee. I was about four years old—and still wearing dresses, in the fashion of the times. I was told that the Negro said he had saved my mother’s little darling girl. I didn’t like to be called a “little girl”—either with or without the “darling”—but this was no cause for me to forever dislike the colored folk.
Might say I was nearly six years old before I got my first pants—and even then I didn’t wear them regularly. They were knee pants—in style, which style endured for a long time. I knew one young fellow in Wetmore who wore his knee-pants right up to his wedding day. When I first began howling for pants, my mother said I was lucky she hadn ’ t dressed me in a flour sack, with holes cut out for head and arms, like Preacher Wamyer’s kids had been clothed, in our neighborhood. But the joke was, she did not happen to have a flour sack, and she said that in this God-for-saken country she was not likely to have one for ages. My mother made me shirts with long tails — and when around home out there in the sticks, in hot weather, I would not bother with the britches. I recall the time mother took me with her to a quilting at the home of one of the Porter women—it might have been at the home of Kate Evans, wife of Bill Evans, the famous old stage-driver; but more likely it was the home of Amanda Ann Watson, widow, who later married Brown Ellet. Johnny Bill Watson, a red headed, freckled face boy about my age, played rough, making it plenty hot for me. I pulled off my pants, went into the house, and threw my britches onto the quilting frame—greatly humiliating my mother, and creating uproarous laughter from the women.
Well, you know, I didn’t see a “Nigger” or even hear one mentioned during my visit at my Aunt Harriet’s home, That cook house was the one place not exploited. But somehow the meals got cooked—tempting meals just like my mother used to cook—and I suspect by Auntie Lovell’s regular colored woman, after the Cullom technique.
The smoked ham, produced and cured on the place, was the best I have ever eaten. Uncle and Auntie’s 200-acre farm lay in irregular boundaries—likely described by chains and links zig-zagging between blazed trees—for two miles up and down Buffalo creek. Uncle John showed me the limestone ledge protruding over the north bank of the creek, which sheltered his hogs at such times as they would come home to spend the night—and feed on perhaps the first “bar’l” of corn produced on a near-by clearing. The hogs came home only at such times as the “mast” was insufficient. This combination made for cheap pork—and delicious hams.
I had recently been in Texas—and because of that trip to the Lone Star state, I had a message from a relative to a relative to be delivered in Nashville. Here again I should explain. On learning that I planned a trip to Galveston ten days hence, my Aunt Nancy Porter asked me to stop off at Dallas and call on a relative—a Cullom of the Tennessee tribe. I believe his name was Jerry. But if he were not Jerry, he was a close relative. When I called at Mr. Cullom’s real estate office in Dallas, I was told he had gone to Galveston. I went on to Galveston, and dismissed all thought of seeing my relative. I went out to the beach, and while strolling on the sands—on the gulf side of the sea-wall — among hundreds, perhaps thousands of other strollers, fell in with a friendly man. He told me he was from Dallas, and I told him that I was from Wetmore,„Kansas. He said, quickly, “Did you say Wetmore? Reckon you might know my cousin Nan Porter, there.” And I said, “Then, I reckon you know that my Aunt Nancy asked me to stop off at Dallas, and call on you.” He grabbed my hand, saying with real Tennessee accent, “Mr. John Bristow, I’m powerful proud to meet you.” Again, I may be wrong. It could have been the Texas accent. In the course of our conversation I told Cousin Cullom that I would be going to Nashville for the Centennial, and he said likely he would go, too. The message from him was for my Aunt Tennessee Cullom-Clark, mother’s sister, living in North Nashville.