| Notes |
- General Notes: The following note was a letter from James to the editor: Dec. 1, 2000 Dear Elmer, I think my memory is pretty accurate re the "early years" of my life not withstanding the subjectivity of memories and its tendencies to edit those early memories. … Father was Mother's life - where he went she "was sure to go," when possible. Eva says it very well on her page 8: Mom "was such a vital part " I don't know whether you are interested to know about Dad before his marriage to Mother, … He graduated from high school. I found his diploma when I was visiting Mom one time and she said I could have it, but for some reason I thought I should not take it then. I wish now that I had. I don't remember ever hearing whether he attended Trevecca Nazarene College more than one year, but he ran out of money and had to drop out on that account, according to Mom, but Dad had also told me this. Mother told me that Dad was pastor of the Hartford "Holiness" church at the time of my birth. My Uncle Dan Dubose, Dad's brother-in-law, may have been there, too, for two days after my birth Aunt Hanes gave birth to their third child, a girl.
[A little background on the following story: James Hardwick, in a telephone conversation, after I had received this text, asked me if I knew anything about the Assembly of God Church. Answering that I was aware of it but had never attended a service, James explained that they believe that the Second Coming of Christ, will be soon, any day now, maybe tomorrow -- EBL] One night during a church service James Edward Lammon and another boy had dipped a couple of cattails in some kerosene and were flying their kites with those cattails attached, now lighted, burning. Someone sitting close to a window in the church saw them and thought the world was coming to an end, since all he or she could see was the fire floating about in the sky. If I remember correctly, the meeting broke up.
Mother told me that Granddad owned the first Ford agency in Hartford, but he gave it away, she said. [He gave it to his brother, Lee, I think. Anyway, Lee ended up with it. – EBL] He did a lot of other things, too. I must have been about three when he ran a small saw mill, which he owned, I think. He took me out with him several times. On one occasion after work hours, Edward was driving home and night began to fall so that he needed the car lights to see and Granddad turned them on. We met a car and Granddad dimmed the lights. This happened several times, then we met a car for which Granddad did not dim the lights. I laughed and said that he forgot to "fool that one," and they laughed at me. That, of course, was while they still lived at Hartford.
If Dad was made chairman of the southeast district of the Assemblies of God in 1920, and I believe that is accurate, it explains why I remember Mother's staying with Granddad and Grandmother but not Dad. He did travel a lot, but I didn't know where or why. One morning Mother came into the bedroom where we slept and got me out of bed, carried me outside, and explained that Ben (my collie) had been killed by a car. Your father [James Edward Lammon] explained to me how he had placed Ben in my red wagon, pulled it back to a place at the corner of the garden fence and given him a decent burial - wrapped in burlap bag yet. Some time in that same period of my life, Edward got a single-shot .22 caliber rifle: I went out back of the house where he was target practicing, and he taught me to shoot it. Another time the Johnson family came; and while they were on that visit, Ben took off after a rabbit, Clyde and Edward took off after Ben, and I followed them while Edward tried to send me back to the house. They lost the rabbit. Uncle Joe [Fields] and Aunt Carol [nee Lammon] lived across the street from Granddad and Grandmother, and Great-grandmother Lammon lived with them. Uncle Joe was always kind to me. Aunt Carol was, too, but to me in those days it seemed that she sat at that big sewing machine and did hemstitching all day long. It fascinated me because it had two big spools of thread on it instead of one little one. Great-grandmother enjoyed her practical jokes, one of which was to stick her teeth out at me. At first it scared me. Once she asked me if I could push my teeth out like she. I was out in the back yard one day when she, Aunt Carol and someone else came out of the house and stood on the back porch; Great-grandmother pushed her bottom teeth out at me and lost them. They fell to the ground and a chicken grabbed them and ran under the house with them. The others standing on the porch laughed at her while I had to go under the house and retrieve her teeth. I think that was the last time that she teased me that way. Mother must have been among the women referred to in the above paragraph. She was a large part of most of the happenings I've told thus far. But the scenery changes some time or another. I think I must have about three years old when Granddad and Grandmother moved to Enterprise. The first house they lived in there was a big one across the street from the cemetery. You may have seen it for it was there a long time. It had a porch across the front and a pomegranate bush on the side towards town. I wanted to spend the night with Billy once while they lived there. We were playing some kind of game along about dusk, I began to miss mother very much, late in the game Clyde accidentally stepped on my toe, and I cried for mother. Aunt Sadie made Billy go with me back to Grands' house; when he started back home, mother said he was crying and shamed me. One day Billy and I were playing across the street from his home and down the street a short distance. Clyde came out the door and yelled, "Billy, come quick. Mary Keith is dying." We hurried back to the house and I saw Uncle Herbert holding Mary's eyelid open, looking into her eye. She and I had played together about as much as Billy and I had before her death. I think that Granddad and Grandmother didn't live in that house very long before they moved to the house across the railroad tracks from the gin - where Granddad worked. One day I was out on the back porch, Edward burst out the kitchen door and ran around the house with Granddad right behind him with a china tree branch in his hand. In a few minutes I heard Edward yelling to the tune of a rather rhythmic thwack, thwack. I never knew why: was afraid to ask. Granddad had a stroke. He was abed in a front room. There was a time when he wanted to sit up, and his bed needed changing. Mother, Grandmother and someone else helped him up into a rocking chair. Someone said he needed to prop his feet up, so my little rocking chair was brought in and his feet lifted up on it. Granddad said he hoped I didn't mind his propping his feet up on my chair. I felt very good about that: He had made it for my second birthday present. One of the rockers of the rocking chair Granddad was sitting in broke, and he fell. Others at the house managed to get him back on the bed, but I think that did him in. It seems to me that it was not long after that that we were in a funeral procession back to Hartford for his burial. There was a missionary from China who came to raise money for his mission and work. His name was George M. Kelley. I don't remember his wife's name, but mother carried on correspondence with her until she died some years later in China. Mother, Dad and I traveled with them on an itinerary for the purpose of underwriting his ministry. I am enclosing a picture of us all. We rode the trains a lot. When we went somewhere we went by train; when we came from some place we came by train. We even moved on a train: Our furniture (such as we had) was in the baggage car. Most of the time I didn't know where we were going or why. School days arrived after the tours with the Kelley family - by car. I started to school in Enterprise; and as nearly every change for the family before, I didn't know I was about to get educated until it happened - or a few days before that. And it wasn't long after that that I found myself going to school in Dothan. That was in 1925. Very early in my life, I'm told, Dad had a severe attack of appendicitis for which surgery was done at Dothan. I have very hazy memories of a time when he was seriously ill; but it was after we moved to Dothan later that I remember Mother's opening his scar before that, but Mother picked it open or used his straight razor to do so several times, using rags to catch the puss. I was later told that the doctor who did that operation, when he saw all that puss during the procedure, decided that Dad had an abscess instead of appendicitis. He cleaned out the "pocket" and gave Dad some medicine for the "abscess". Dad got all right; he got sick; he got well . . . . Then Pensacola. I don't remember whether he got sick again before or after the hurricane in 1927, but I think it was before. I was in the second grade there and Harold celebrated his first birthday. One day Dad was sick in bed, Mother had a fruit jar and some rags. I held something - rags or fruit jar- and stood there while Mother once again opened that thin-skinned scar. She caught almost a quart of puss. They called a doctor who came to the house to see Dad and advised him to go to the hospital for surgery. He still had appendicitis the doctor thought. This time he took Dad's appendix out, and reported that it had been lodged between two of his abdominal muscles to form the pocket into which the puss collected. This, the good doctor thought, was what saved Dad's life - otherwise the puss and the infection caused by the problem would have entered the abdominal cavity, caused peritonitis and death. But his appendix was not ruptured. Also before the hurricane, Dad went to Holt [, Florida,] to set a church in order, as Eva said in her paper. He was on his way home at the time the hurricane struck. He was to change trains, as I recall, a short distance from the bay and Pensacola. A kind gentleman was waiting in the depot where Dad was also waiting. When he heard news from the telegrapher (no radios) he would relay that news to the others. He had heard that Dad was trying to get to Pensacola, and relayed the message that Pensacola had been "blown off the map." Aunt Avis was staying with us during his absence. We went next door, which was a bigger house and didn't rock as much as our little 3-room "shotgun" house did. Our neighbors decided to drive around town for a look. The clouds looked to me as if one could reach up and touch them. From the house we watched some of the people who were trying to get to a school building for safety. One black lady, heavy set, would move along as fast as she could between gusts; stop and hold on to a fence when the gusts were too strong to move forward. At one point she seemed to be bothered or hampered by something, stopped and kicked off an undergarment, and moved on. We spent the night at home, one-year-old Harold slept, I'm sure - I know I did. There was a large china tree in front of our house, right close to the street. There was a fig tree in our neighbor's back yard. During the night that fig tree blew over, and the china tree was much damaged, and when I awoke in the morning I fussed at Mother for not waking me so I could have seen the fig tree blow over. Mother and Avis stayed awake all night, both afraid, but Avis sang her song, "We Have An Anchor," as Eva told it. I was not awake, but I have heard the story more than once, and although Avis may not have been in the room with us at that particular time, I'm sure she was awake. She was in the room with the rest of us when I awoke. Dad started out walking from the railroad depot. A man who was driving a truck, I believe, asked him where he was going and offered him a ride as far as he could take Dad. The bridge for cars and trucks was impassable but there was enough of the train bridge for Dad to walk across, which he did - on the train bridge - a distance of about four miles. After his appendectomy at Pensacola Dad was never bothered with the drainage in his side again, but it took him a long time to regain his strength. We moved to Laurel, Miss., in 1927. The church there had no piano, but an organ, a portable one as I recall. It was one of those foot-pumped organs, not a pipe organ. But I believe that we did not have even a church building to meet in at Dothan. At Laurel, Mother played the organ and, again, assisted Dad in various ways. Dad played saxophone in the city band. Our next-door neighbor on one side shot and killed his wife at a café; the neighbor on the other side had a two-year old son fall down an elevator shaft; the child's grandparents, rushing to the hospital that night, ran into an empty flatcar and were seriously injured; and a lawyer threatened to kill Dad because he had borrowed fifty cents from his wife, a member of the church. (One of his sons, Jimmy Mayo, became a prominent minister in the AG church.) Also while living at Laurel, we took our first bus trip (instead of by train), and there was an attendant on the bus somewhat like airlines have today, who took up the tickets and walked down the aisle to see that everyone was comfortable. When another moving time arrived, we moved by truck instead of by train. We must have moved about every year, thus we probably moved to Laurel in the summer of 1927? When school began there, I was required to take the second grade again. But I was in the third grade there, also. And we moved from Laurel to Hattiesburg. At Hattiesburg, 1929-33, grades 4-7. Mother didn't always play the church music; most of the time she sat with Harold and me - probably to keep us quiet. One Sunday, after singing "Bringing in the Sheaves," Harold expressed his dislike of the song on our way home. Why? Mother wanted to know. Because he hated cheese and he didn't like the idea of bringing in the cheese. I think about the most significant happening while we were there was the bank busts. The federal government declared a "bank holiday" for the purpose of curtailing the "runs" on the banks plus some remedy. One night, a little before bedtime for us boys, the husband of one of the faithful (and financially successful) members of the church came to the door knocking. Dad and I went to the door to find the gentleman there drunk and twirling his pistol on his finger, declaring his intention of killing the bank president. Dad asked him to give the gun to him (Dad) and go home and to bed, turned and sent me back into the house. For your purposes, Mother was a good friend of the member, and others did much to comfort and protect her during that crisis. That was probably the first place that I began to notice how much Mother was involved with Dad in all the church work. She visited with him, entertained in our homes, visited with him, served as a kind of listening post for him, even preached for him when he was unable to fill the pulpit for various reasons (not often, but willingly). Some even said she was a better preacher than Dad, but her retort was that she was not called to preach. In 1933 Dad obtained a two-wheel trailer. On that little trailer, we piled all our possessions, and stacked them high. Then we started out for Arkansas. Eva has already written that in Hattiesburg Dad bought a 1928 Chevrolet - in 1929, used. When we got to Louisiana and turned north we came to a very narrow asphalt road that was about three or four inches above the road shoulder. It was also pretty rough in some places. Treachery. Meeting oncoming traffic was tricky. Because of the high load, if we ran off the asphalt the trailer would tip over. Somewhere along the way we hit a fairly deep hole, the load lunged forward and bent the tongue of the trailer. At the first place we could find a garage, Dad went in and the man there straightened the tongue. But the tongue had been weakened, however, we had learned how to straighten it; but we needed the tools for it. After many stops for repair, Dad had an idea he thought would work, asked a station attendant at Conway, Arkansas, where there might be a welding shop. The welder attached a half-inch-thick bar to the tongue, and we had no more trouble of that kind the rest of the way to Siloam Springs. Mother was again pianist and associate pastor. The old Chevrolet had been a workhorse: taking us on trips to see relatives for vacations, getting stuck in the mud and pulled out again driving around town and country for various pleasures and duties, and pulling that load up hills - some of which were pretty steep. But it was old. Dad traded it in on a brand new Ford V-8 in 1935. Dad was off on some pastoral duties one windy day when a hobo type person came to the house (close to the RR track) asking for the privilege of storing his freshly-oiled, blown-down, canvas tent in our garage. Mother gave him permission provided he stack it where it wouldn't be in Dad's way when he came home. That was done. Some time after midnight we were awakened by the sheriff's gun-shot to find the garage and all its contents were afire. Nothing was saved from the garage. It was blamed on "spontaneous combustion," a new term for me. Another new car; another new garage - and the poor man had lost all his possessions. And another move - to Savannah, Georgia, 1936. School problems plagued me. I never learned their system, was required to take public speaking (which I detested because I had no intention of speaking publicly and the way I should speak publicly was so fakey) - "F". However, I was privileged to see "Jehovah's" parade down the main street by the church house, which was one block from "Niggatown," as it was called in those days. Crowds of black folk lined the street and contributed to Jehovah through the angelic assistance in receiving the money. I went fishing with a couple of other young men one day; caught several torpedo-nosed sharks, a few shovelnosed sharks (all about 12-18 inches), and crabs; changed bait and caught a bushel of crabs. Many of the A.G. preachers told about how God had called them whence to thence or thence to whence, but the only time I ever heard Dad say anything like that was at Savannah. Close to time for the church to vote for our staying or for a new man, some members began to try to get support to send Dad, primarily, but all of us, of course. The chief power behind this effort was the treasurer, He made a lot of decisions about what to do to the church building and it was done without normal due process. After the vote that ousted us, Dad emphatically told the congregation that God was not through with him in that place. It seems to have frightened the gentleman - he was somewhat shaken. 1937 back to Arkansas we went; this time to Paris. After several years there, some of that congregation tried the same thing. One Sunday after service Mother and another woman were talking and I walked up just in time to hear that one of the female opponents criticized Dad for wearing those white linen trousers because one "could see his underwear beneath them.' Mother responded, "You tell her to quit looking at my husband's underwear." It was at Paris that I met Irma Rhea Howard, later Hardwick. From Paris to Eureka Springs. Harold quit school there and joined the Navy with Mother and Dad's permission. I was more or less in and out of home while at Eureka, preaching some and looking for permanent assignment. One night, again after midnight, we were awakened by some yelling and the siren. It was our church building. It was a nice old churchy frame building. As it was winter and there had been a fire in the furnace, it was thought that the church building somehow caught fire from it. It burned to the ground. Mother was still pianist and associate minister. The Methodist church offered us the use of its facilities, but there was another building with a large vacant room available, and so the A.G. congregation accepted that offer. Dad did not build a church house there. It was while we lived there that Irma and I were married at Paris with Dad performing the ceremony. Monticello, Ark., followed Eureka Springs. Mother and Dad lived there two or three years, I think. The power there was a woman who was confined to a wheelchair. Her son decided to prepare himself for pastoral ministry during Dad's time there. I heard from him for the first time the word "irregardless." After service I looked it up in the dictionary, but couldn't find it. I could find no church to pastor, nor did I hear of a church that needed such leadership, and it was not only embarrassing but I was unable to carry my share of expenses while staying with Mother and Dad. I had learned a trade during our time in Siloam Springs, and there was a business in Monticello that needed help. Now, at least I could "carry my own weight" Shortly after that I learned of a little church a few miles from Monticello that was looking for pastoral leadership. Dad's mother had become ill and was confined mostly to bed, occasionally wheelchair. He became concerned about her care and began the think about returning to Alabama to be nearer to her. He and Mother moved back to New Brockton; Harold and Eva moved from Arkansas to Huntsville, Ala. I believe Eva can help you from this point on much better than I. She and Harold also lived in, first, Huntsville and then Dothan, thus were in closer contact with them than I. I apologize for taking so long in getting this done. I hope you find some pictures that you can use among those that I am sending. This rambling chain of memories is well disorganized. They may well be useless to you for this project. Mainly, Mother was very much in the picture for and with Dad, but she also remained in the background for the main part. Of all the help that Dad had throughout the years Mother helped by far the most. Finally, if you follow Dad's trail, you also follow Mother. Sincerely, James Hardwick p.s. This is not meant to be published, but you are welcome to use any part you need. [Thank you, James. I need it all. - Elmer Burns Lammon]
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1919 - 