fella’. He told me one time he went to a square dance out here. He was havin’ a lot of fun and he was
dancing with these girls and all. Got ready to leave, and this girl was waitin’ there and he picked up 2
kids. He had Roddy and Norman picked him up and went with him. I guess Mama was there too.
He was a frank fellow. I never heard him swear or curse. Only one time. He was doing something, he hit his hand with a hammer or something… Anyway. He really hit his hand. I think I would’ve said a lot more than he did. You never heard a swear word from him.
He could do most anything. He could butcher a cow, take it and hung it in a freezer locker down town and made hamburger out of a lot of it. We used to ride to town on the wagon without a body on it. Just sit on the tongue. The tongue is the one that goes all the way through and all the way out the front. We’d go to town and I’d be sitting up there to ride down there. He owned a store, 2 houses, you know where the creek is, over by the mill – little store restaurant there. Well he owned one store there and two houses right there.
He sold those to pay for Norman’s tuition to Clemson. So Norman graduated from Clemson. Ivy got a year or two years and he went to OCS. He was an officer. And the 505th airborne infantry division. I’ve got two pictures of him. One where he was a Sargent and when he was 2nd lieutenant. Dad worked all the time, but he liked to read the paper and joke. He was just an ordinary guy. Liked to fox hunt. He would take the dogs. A lot of mornings he’d get up and go and go fox hunting. He’d leave the dogs and come back home and go to work. And the dogs would come in and Mom always fixed some cornbread. And something else she’d put on cornbread to feed the dogs. That was the most things he do was fox hunt with some of the guys. They would go out. Said they were fox hunting one night they got this tree of ‘coons. And somebody was going to go up and try to knock him out. There was an old grey-headed man standing there looking up and that coon jumped right out on top of that guy’s head. He probably thought that was sand. You know white beard shinin’, probably thought that was sand and He was surprised I guess. Just a little hunting things. Dad watched his money and he took care of our family well.
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From an interview of JC Connell by Katie on 2/10/2015
Thanks again to Mary Ann for transcribing this interview!
