Blood is thicker than water.....

Remember I said I would come back and further explain Pa's buy and hold strategy regarding stocks?

Well, when Pa died, I got a call from Mr. Ted, the Banker. It seems Pa had made him the executor of his estate. Mr. Ted also called my brother. Mr. Ted asked us to come to Ruleville (we were both living in Jackson at the time) in order to settle the estate.

Now, I have mentioned in previous posts that Pa was not my biological Grandfather. It made no difference to me because he always treated us as if we were. I was aware of other relatives of Pa through listening to stories about his brothers and actually met them a time or two. I was also aware of a niece of which he seemed fond. That was Marcy Dawn.

When we got to the bank to see Mr. Ted, it was a short meeting. He seemed uncomfortable and slightly distant. He immediately got down to business.

Since my brother's daughter was the only child named after Pa, her middle name was the same as Pa's surname, she was to inherit $100.00. I had yet to marry, so I had no candidates.

It was about this time that I realized that I had received my inheritance during Pa's time on Earth. This consisted of: a few hundred dollars during my time in college (which was both needed and appreciated) and the heritage of the outdoors passed on through his wise teachings.
I also received the 20 Gauge shotgun he had allowed me to use to dispatch countless Quail, Doves and migratory waterfowl. In addition, he left me the .22 Cal. Winchester automatic rifle responsible for the many squirrel tails tacked to the cypress siding on the cotton seed shed.

My brother received nothing.

The balance of the estate (including the aforementioned Plough Inc. Stock) went to cousin Marcy Dawn.

You could easily put a price on what Marcy Dawn received......What I got was priceless.

"The smartest man Pa ever met"

Long before I was born, while Pa was running the ice plant in town, a man came through town raising money for a company he was starting. I don’t know how he got Pa’s name. It is possible that some banker (not Mr. Ted) gave him Pa’s name. He was not yet farming and had no need for the services of an accounting firm in Memphis or a cotton broker on Front St. It could have just been luck. If it was luck, it was a blazing lightening bolt of luck for Pa and his heirs.

Somehow, the man talked Pa into investing the princely sum of $5000.00 in this fledgling company. I remember Pa said Abe Plough was “likely the smartest man I ever met”. According to Pa, Abe Plough could do math in his head faster than a clerk could add on an adding machine. Although Pa was not a highly educated man; I don’t believe he finished high school, he was quick to learn. He could also pick a winner. Abe was, in Pa’s mind, a real winner.

As I grew up and went to college, the only stock I ever bothered to follow was Plough Inc. Over the years it would gradually go up and then it would split. Splitting is good as long as it is not a reverse split…..Plough always split going forward!

I found out later that Mr. Plough was born in Mississippi. His family moved to Memphis soon after his birth and in 1908, at 16yrs of age, Abe started mixing up chemicals in a dishpan in a room above his fathers clothing store, seeking to concoct a “healing cream or oil”. Using a horse and buggy financed with $125 borrowed from his father, Abe started traveling around Memphis and the Delta selling his “Plough’s antiseptic healing oil”. The advertising touted: “A sure cure for any ill of man or beast”.

According to the story, business grew quickly and in 1920, about the time I believe Pa met him; Abe raised money to buy the St. Joseph Company. I think Pa’s $5000 played a small role in that acquisition. As they say, “the rest is history”. Merging with the Schering Corporation in 1971, Abe became Chairman of both companies.

Mr. Plough died in 1984 at the age of 92.

Pa never sold a single share of Schering-Plough. At the time of his death, the quarterly dividend income was multiples of his original investment. This was a lot better than “Gumments or Municipals”. For that matter, it was many times better than farmland or bank deposits…..but, that’s why Pa invested in the stock in the first place!

I mentioned earlier that Pa was a “buy and hold” stock investor. I guess it’s time to talk about “The Talk”….but, that’s another story.

Sounds like Plow

The Civil War still played a role in shaping the spending and investment decisions of many in the Delta. It had almost been 100 years since the “War” and though only a very few were around who actually experienced it; it was still a wound that had closed and scarred but might never “heal.

Pa looked at land and farming in the same way he looked at Government Bonds: an instrument that provides a return on capital. Since you had to risk capital when you farmed, (and had to work) the required return from farming needed to be many times the return on Government Bonds. However, a prudent man would have some of both. Pa was a very prudent man.

One day, while “In the box”, I noticed a group of papers with the word Plough on it. Now I was always a good speller, but I had trouble with that one. Pa explained it sounded like plow. I asked “What are they, bonds?

Pa answered, “No, they are stock certificates.”

. “Do they pay interest? I asked.

“No, but someday they might pay dividends.” He replied.

“What are dividends? I queried.

“Kind of like interest, but the amount you get can go up or down, or even stop.” He said.

Now, this was a subject of interest (no pun intended) to me…..I couldn’t understand why you would buy stock when you could buy “Gumments” and never worry about the interest. So I asked: “Why would you do that?”

His answer shocked me: “You asked me the same question that Mr. Ted and Hirschberg and Ellis asked me.” I’ll tell you the same thing I told them: “They never met Abe Plough”

But, that too, is another story.

The Box

I mentioned previously that, as far as I know, Pa only made one stock investment in his entire life and Pa lived a long time. The reason I know this is from my visits to the safe deposit box in Mr. Ted’s bank.

Every now and then, Pa would pull out a brass key while he and Ted were having coffee in the back room of the bank, and casually mention: “I need to get into the “box”. Mr. Ted would pull out his matching master key and when both were placed into adjacent keyholes in a wall of similar, metal, mini mausoleum like, boxes placed side by side, execute a simultaneous twist, as if they were arming a “minuteman missile" leading to mutually assured destruction. The result of this maneuver would merely cause a “click” letting Pa know that it was safe (after Mr. Ted had departed from the room) to remove the contents from the metal container, to the marble topped island for either review, deposit or God forbid, withdrawal.

The one thing I like most about visits to the “box” was the times we clipped coupons. Pa and I would sit quietly and gently sever the appropriate piece of paper from stacks of multi page documents I only knew as “Gumments”. There were others, fewer in number, called “municipals”. These had familiar names on the front, like Greenville Port and Levee board, Cleveland water and sewer, etc. Mr. Ted would occasionally mention he had bought some bonds for Pa from his friend in Memphis. Pa had friends in Memphis too…..Hirschberg and Ellis, Union Planters and several firms on Front Street that bought the bales of cotton grown on Pa’s farm in Sunflower County.

I never saw Pa remove anything from the "box”, Many times he would place a sheath of paper or 2 or perhaps a handful of silver dollars carefully in between other contents. Pa was generally a very quiet, private man. I wouldn’t call him secretive, but I wouldn’t describe him as “open” either…..just: PA.

On occasions when we were “in the box’, however, Pa would tell me anything I had a desire to know. For instance, why he only owned a fraction of the land he farmed? Pa’s answer was: “When I started farming, I could have bought all of the land I could reasonably farm. The reason I only bought a portion was I could not make the numbers work given the fact that I could rent the land for much less than I would ask for rent on my land”

. Now at 9 yrs old, a simple “it was cheaper to rent than buy” would have satisfied my curiosity. I never forgot what he said. I later figured out, the concept of “total return” never entered Pa’s evaluation of the “rent or buy” decision. I can only surmise that the memory of the depression was so vividly etched in Pa’s (and most of the capital holders in the Delta) that the lure of price appreciation was overwhelmed by the memory of land values falling to the square root of their previous levels, was the reason that the thought that land might increase in value, never entered their mind.

The end of the day

When Pa came home at 12 noon (exactly) he would wash up, sit down and eat lunch. I said breakfast was his biggest meal of the day....that was true. Lunch was a close second. Meat consisting of beef, pork or chicken.....greens (mustard, collards or whatever was "in")...mashed potatoes, gravy, and cornbread. Pa always had buttermilk at lunch. Cold buttermilk.....I still would love it today if I had some of Mamaw's warm cornbread to break up and float on the top.

After lunch (about 12:30) Pa would take off his pants and shirt, hang them on hangers and get into his bed. He would sleep for 45 min. Every day he would "take his nap". By 1:30 he was back in his truck "keeping things going". Pa never drove a tractor, never operated a picker or combine. He was a business man, a "Planter". He wasn't a "'Wannabe", Pa was the real deal.

At the end of the day, you could set your clock on Pa. At 6 PM you could hear the gravel crunching under his pickup's tires in the driveway. Pa was home and it was time for supper. Now this was no big deal.......barely an appetizer compared breakfast or lunch. It was over quickly and after 30 minutes of conversation it was time for bed. No TV and the only time the radio came on was at 5 Am to hear the weather from Memphis.

By the way.....growing up, I often heard the "N" word. Never did I hear it from Pa's or Mamaw’s lips and certainly never from my Mother. Even then, they realized it was not a word to be used...period.

Mr. Clyde and Pa

Mr. Clyde was Pa's best friend from what I could tell. They were what could only be described as, inseparable.

Both shared that, hard to describe if you have never felt it, addiction to things that were "man like". Among the ones they inflicted upon me were...

The balance of a fine over and under 20 gauge.

The satisfaction of seeing a "green head", totally fooled, feet down, wings backpedaling, into a spread of make believe companions carefully arranged so the approach would be into the face of the wind.

The soft crunch in the leaves that wakes you up from the daydream so you can see the careful, almost frightened steps out of the cane taken by a prime 8 point buck that hasn't learned the danger that lurks from 10 feet up on a pin oak or pecan tree deep in the "bottoms".

A clean double on a perfect covey rise, after a point and backing, by birddogs you have babied through the year and love like children.

Smelling that unmistakable, almost sour smell, that let's you know that: placing a cricket or a worm to the left of that particular cypress knee will result in your quill gently falling beneath the surface, and a quick jerk on the cane pole will bring another exact copy of the last "shell cracker" you just placed in the burlap seed bag tied to the side of your johnboat

The laugh of your hunting partner, as yet another "grey ghost" flying in a squadron of doves, swerves at the exact time your # 7 1/2 shot string would have puffed him clean, further reducing your chance at "the limit"

Forcing yourself to pause, as the ripples die down from your "lucky thirteen" as it settles in after a perfect cast, to a spot near that same cypress knee, that just yells out: there is a bass lurking under here.

Of All of these experiences and lessons learned from time spent outdoors, the two I cherish most are: the smell coming from the first slice of the plow or disk into the finest most productive dirt in the world telling you that even if you risk everything, you have no choice but plant another crop....and when you begin to understand the relationship between hunter and prey and reach that "place" that allows you to accept your role not as victor, but as partner, in one of the oldest endeavors man has undertaken.

If you were raised in the Delta, and you were lucky enough to have a Father, Grandfather, or Uncle who invested the time to pass this heritage on, you are lucky indeed.

Feathers were never wasted

Every day, Pa would (unless the crop was in, then there was a whole nother itinerary) leave in his truck about 6:15 AM and get "things goin"....he always dressed the same. Clean, pressed, starched, tan work pants and long sleeved tan shirt (even if it was going to be 105 in the shade) made, of course, from: (you guessed it!) Cotton.
Then there was the ever-present hat. Pa had hats for all occasions. My favorite was the straw hat with 3 Mallard drake tail feathers tucked in the wide ribbon surrounding the area between the brim and the body of the hat. Those were the only feathers removed from a duck or goose by Pa. Mamaw, on the other hand, spent countless hours carefully plucking the outer feathers and the fine, gossamer like down located right next to the skin of the birds unlucky enough to have fallen for the seductive wailing coming from one of the custom made, hand carved waterfowl calls used by either Pa or Mr. Clyde. Mamaw would then transform those feathers into the finest pillow or comforter you have ever had the pleasure of sleeping with or under.

A simple change in routine leads to a Change of Life for the Delta and beyond

On most trips to town, the final stop was the bank. We would walk in and Pa would speak to everyone in the bank, by name. Their response was always "Good Morning Mr. O.B." then; Ted would motion to us to come with him to the back of the bank. I remember there was a curtain separating the bank lobby and the "back room". We would sit around a metal table and Ted would pour 2 cups of coffee. I just sat and listened. Pa always seemed interested in "how the bank was doing"...I later found out that he had ignored his rule of $10,000 maximum deposit with Ted. Not to worry, Ted proved to be one of the best bankers in the Delta.....outlived Pa by probably 20 years and worked until he passed.

Today was different....Pa said we were going to the International Dealer. Now this was not foreign trade.....this was the RED tractor place. Farmers in the Delta are real particular about the color of their equipment. Pa was a red man. International Harvester equipment had only one real competitor....they were GREEN. John Deere. I am sure Pa would be gravely disappointed to learn of my affinity for Green....things change. However, All of Pa's stuff was Red. When we walked in, the owner said: “I guess you are here to pick up your stuff. Pa said; "Yep". The dealer said "It's out back".

When we walked out on the gravel lot in the rear, there was a 2 row cotton picker, a row crop tractor, disk and planter, a utility tractor, a combine with a bean header and an International Pick up truck. (One of the last years they made them I think). Pa wrote a check for close to $50,000. I could almost hear Ted moaning about the loss of the deposit. I later found out that the dealer banked at Planters Bank......Ted just moved it around....he didn't lose it.

That day was the end of farming as I knew it. Actually it was the end of life as most in the Delta knew it. A large part of the "Assets" of the Delta had just become "liabilities". We just didn't have any idea how much life would just "go away".

That too, is another story.

Kate Lloyd

My grandmother, Kate, knew precious little of "woman's rights". Boy, is that an understatement. You have to understand.....I knew no women that worked outside the home. Well, not counting in the yard. All they did was work. "Mamaw" had help. All of the help she could ever need. She still worked all of the time.

She could do anything: Bake the best cakes, cookies, pies of all kinds, fry the best chicken you ever tasted. Make the best gravies in the world...there was not a part of a pig she couldn't make taste marvelous. (I am not kidding about the "not a part" part) Really. Her roast beef would make your mouth water just smelling it cook. Breakfast (5 Am thank you) was the biggest meal of the day. Bacon, Ham AND sausage....eggs, grits, homemade jelly of whatever she pulled from the pantry. It could have been figs, dewberries, muskadines, peach preserves, apple or many more. But the biscuits....OH MY GOD, the biscuits. No body has ever made me a biscuit like Mamaw....

Red headed step-child

Back to the trip to "Town". Every trip to town kind of went the same way.....first we went to the "Drug store". It was a REXALL store...It seems the contents of the sack we took home each time were the same: 2 large bottles of Listerine, 2 packs of razor blades, 2 cartons of Camel cigarettes, (it seems REXALL had a continuous 2 for 1 sale).....Pa really liked 2 for one's! In addition, there were10 packs of dentine gum, several tins of loose tobacco and several packs of rolling paper. All but the last 2 items were for Pa. The last 2 were for the "hands". By the way, I am going to use the vernacular of the time as accurately as I can remember it. (Hell, I couldn't make this up). The "hands" referred to the 13 families that lived and worked on his farm.

Second stop was the coffee shop. Now....I know from photos that I was not a particularly handsome child. I wasn't ugly or anything....just the poster boy for "redheaded stepchild"....you see, I was both. My "real" grandfather died in his 30's. My Grandmother had had my Mother by then and "Pa" took her in. Never adopted her, but by all I remember treated her (and me) like real "kin". All of this did not stop the women in the coffee shop from ooing and ahhing about how "cute" I was. It was. I am sure, in deference to Pa.

Math lessons

Pa was a not just a depositor, he was the depositor to beat all depositors in his neck of the woods. Back then, after the Great Depression, Government deposit insurance only covered $10,000 per account. Well the math didn't work for Pa. He had $10,000 deposits at every bank within 100 miles. Every time someone would open a new bank, Pa would be there with his $10,000. Farming was a very profitable venture if the crop survived the drought, boll worms, hail, boll weevils, rain, cold, heat, and the health of the "hands" didn't fail.

The fact that Pa operated the only Ice Plant and Coal bin in the county for 20 years, (it was sold 2 years before people figured out everyone was going to own both an electric "frigerator" and a propane space heater) while also loaning money to those not "comfortable" with banks...probably had something to do with him starting out as a "planter" with paid for land and capital to invest.

Remind me later to tell you the story about the only "stock" Pa ever bought. Talk about the "buy and hold strategy"......Pa likely invented it. He bought, and my cousin Marcey Dawn sold. That’s another story.

A very good year

In 1955, as a 9 year old child, my duties in life were not that complicated. I attended public school in the "Mississippi Delta" (that's not redundant...Arkansas claims to have one even though it really isn't the same) never really understanding why the school year was gerrymandered around in order to fit the life cycle of the cotton plant. I later found out it was due to the need for every able bodied person to be available for the task at hand. There was rippin, diskin, hillin, plantin, choppin, sprayin, choppin, sprayin, defoliatin, pickin, haulin, ginnin......then, in a good year, grinnin. All I ever did was grin.

1955 must have been a good year. Sometime in the late fall, after the crop was in, my grandfather (Pa as I called him) told me to get in the truck: we were going to "town". Well, that was a figure of speech. Going to” Town", consisted of driving 9 miles to Ruleville, Ms. from Pa's farm.

To me, at the time, the farm seemed to encompass most of Sunflower County. I know we could hunt birds all morning, wearing out 3 of the sets of bird dogs that Pa kept in a kennel about 12 steps from the back porch, never crossing a fence or getting off his land. Someday I will check out the facts and determine just how big his farm was. All I knew at the time was: it was big.

Judging from the way folks treated Pa, he was well respected and from the way Mr. Ted, the President of the Bank, treated him, he was a good customer. I later determined that bankers treat you one way when you are a borrowing customer and a whole nother way when you are a depositor. They are nervous as hell around the borrowers, worried they might not get their money back. They are nervous as hell around the depositors, worried that they might take their money back.

Bankers, I was to learn later, worry a lot.

An Admission and a Mission

Having prejudice probably groups me among the 98th percentile of humanity.Those admitting it and trying to understand and remedy it are, more than likely, a smaller cohort.

Having come to this epiphany, I will (not as a defense, merely informational) submit that: growing up in the 50's and 60's, in the deep South (yes, in caps) in an extended family deeply submerged in the remaining vestiges of agriculture powered by human labor, (not our own obviously) begin with the experiences in my life that lead me to my views regarding the difference between those of us who's ancestors (like mine) voluntarily came to America, wearing no hardware, with the freedom to roam the deck and breathe the salt air.... and those who were plucked up and shipped over in chains. (it is only fair that we recognize that those who collected and prepared the victims for transport and earned the first of many fees to come, looked remarkably like the victims.....but, that is a whole "nother ball of wax".








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Why do this?

Anyone who knows me will probably wonder "why in the world would he want to do this".

Well, I have written down bits and pieces of events and rememberances here and there for most of my life. I have spared family and friends the pain and boredom of having to read them by keeping them to myself.

Once I started reading the blogs of my youngest daughter and her husband, I realized that blogging is an excellent way to keep up with what's going on in many peoples lives as you have the need, desire and time to do so.

It also can be addictive.....I often find myself disapointed when I fail to find a new posting.

Having said that, I can't promise daily postings or that any of this will either make sense or be of interest.