The Path Was Steep
Page 21
This was September 15, 1990. Most of me died that day. Soon a crowd was here. Our children, grandchildren and greats, also friends and neighbors, did all that they could. David lacked a few weeks of being eighty-two years old, and we would have been married sixty-four years in a few days.
Daily I thank God for the wonderful years we had together—the last years were even better than the first. I am surrounded by beauty that he provided: the home, grounds, blooming shrubs. He is everywhere; I can still hear his beautiful voice, see his face, his laughing eyes. I am only half-alive without him. As I told him daily and he told me, “I love you,” and, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, “. . . if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.”
Editor’s Postscript: Sue Pickett lived on in the superintendent’s house in West Blocton almost another decade after her beloved David died. She passed in 1999 at age 92.
Terms and Expressions
Here are definitions or explanations for a few terms used by the author which many contemporary readers might not understand:
capboards — small slabs of softer wood driven between the top of an upright timber and the roof of the mine “room” being excavated; the downward pressure of the roof presses the timber into the capboard, distributing the pressure.
cotton house — on farmsteads, a small barn or outbuilding where the picked cotton is stored until time to take it to the gin.
dog-run — also called a “dog-trot”; a hallway or breezeway, open on both ends, running down the middle of a type of house commonly found on farms in the rural South in the slavery/sharecropping eras.
dolomite — a magnesia-rich limestone that has been used in iron and steel production since the nineteenth century.
“drawings” — see windlass.
“hide you” — whip or beat.
longwall — mining of a long, straight face of coal inside a mine, as opposed to exavating “rooms” of coal.
“maggaline” — dialect for magdalene, a “fallen woman,” after Mary Magdalene of the Bible.
“over the mountain” — throughout south Jefferson and the adjacent counties of Alabama, including the author’s Bibb County, this term is still used to refer to the wealthy areas on the other side of Red Mountain; i.e., where the bosses and owners lived.
“the Rooster” — the ballot symbol of the Democratic Party.
sorghum — a syrup made from juice pressed from sorghum cane stalks, then cooked until thickened.
“sunned his clothes” — a rural practice of spreading clothing and linens outdoors, often over bushes, hedges, or fences, to be freshened by the heat of the sun.
tow sacks — a type of sack made from coarse cloth such as burlap; most farms had an abundance of these sacks because livestock feed, seeds, and other commodities were packaged in them.
wallboss — the supervisor of a crew of miners.
windlass — a thick axle, often made of a section of log, suspended above a well, with a crank attached to one end. A length of rope would be secured to and wound around the windlass then through a pulley above; a bucket attached to the rope would be lowered into the well; the bucket’s weight would submerge it into the water. The filled bucket would be retrieved by turning the crank on the windlass, thus rewinding the rope until the bucket reached the top. This action was “drawing” water. Most Southern homes got their water this way until electrification made mechanical pumps practical (and led to indoor plumbing).
About the Author
Suzanne Pickett was first published on the children’s page of the Birmingham News when she was 11. As a young wife and mother she wrote for the Welch (West Virginia) Daily News, and still later she published short stories and articles in Weird Tales magazine and worked for many years as a reporter and columnist for the Centreville Press. A song she wrote was recorded and released on a Nashville label whose artists included Mother Maybelle Carter, Floyd Cramer, Hoyt Axton, Jimmy Riddle, and others. Until her death at age 91 in 1999, she continued to live in West Blocton, Alabama, near her beloved Cahaba River and the green hills of the surrounding mining towns.
To learn more about Suzanne Pickett and The Path Was Steep, visit www.newsouthbooks.com/pathwassteep.