The Prized Pear Trees

Papa was always planting fruit trees of some sort because of the food source.  He had several varieties of citrus trees, such as grapefruit, oranges and tangerine.  He also planted fig, and peach trees.  And then he planted his pride and joy, two pear trees.  He paid twelve dollars each for them.

That was a very expensive price in the 1930’s. He gave those two pear trees excellent care.  They were about five feet tall when he bought and planted them. They were just getting over the transplant shock and starting to put on new growth.

Papa was sitting in his rocking chair on the front porch one day resting.  Chuck came around the corner of the house and said, “Papa you told me a damned lie”.  Papa replied, “Well boy, what is it you think I lied to you about”? 

“You told me a snake could crawl cause he had little feet inside, and I couldn't see them unless I built a fire under him, and then he’d stick’em out and I could see’em”.

Papa said “Well yes, I did tell you that, let’s just go and see”.  On the way around the house Chuck told him “I've burnt him till there ain’t nothing left but a skeleton, and he ain’t got no damn feet”.

Snake Skeleton

As they rounded the back corner of the house, alas there was one of the prized pear trees, limbs drooping, trunk scorched black, leaves seared and curled, and some already fallen or burned away.   And there hanging by the tail was the blackened skeleton of a snake.

Papa was shocked and heartbroken to say the least!  But, he decided not to punish Chuck because he had told him that tall tale about snakes.  He did have a serious talk with him about what he had done, and told him that he should have come and talked to him about where he could burn a snake. 

Had he asked, Papa would have told him the truth about how snakes crawl rather than a tall tale.  And there would have been no need in Chuck’s mind to burn the snake, to satisfy his curiosity.

Dead Pear Tree

The pear tree was dead of course!  Papa might have learned a greater lesson about this matter that day than Chuck did.  Don’t lie to your children or tell them a tall tale when they ask questions. 

They need to hear truth from their parents.  If you don’t know the answer to what they’re asking, be honest and tell them, but find the answer and tell them only the truth.

Times were really hard for everyone in those days, but were somewhat easier for their family because his dad worked for the Railroad and had a steady paycheck coming in. 

Papa Haven decided to add on to the house and build the garage apartments, one down and one up.  He had already added an upstairs to the main house and they had started a room and board for the railroad men.

Two black ladies who lived on the Haven property were hired to help Mama with the cooking, cleaning and laundry.  They lived on the property in a little house out in the back yard.  James was married to one of the ladies.

From the late 1920’s till early 1940’s it was a Family run business. Chuck’s cousin, Martha told me a story not long ago that I had not heard before about him. The railroad men would sit at the dining table and play poker, and they taught Chuck how to play.

Being the skeester that he was he discovered that he could see the reflection of the cards they were holding on the lenses of their glasses if he sat in a certain place. He would always win and they never did figure out how he did. They just assumed they had taught him too well!

She said, “He always thought it was so funny and he would laugh so much when he told this story.”

The Real Rattlesnake

One day the boys did kill a big rattlesnake.  And prankster Chuck thought of playing a trick on James.  He was an older black man who lived with his wife in a small house on the backside of the Haven property that faces Short Street and the railroad tracks.  And he worked in the rail yard. 

An Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake

One of his jobs was to dump the coal out of the bin through the shute into the trains.   The boys thought it would be a grand idea to scare James with the snake.

They climbed up the ladder on the side of the coal bin, and coiled the dead snake in the top of the bin.  When the next train came through, James jerked the rope to open the shute to dump it, and some of it got hung up, and James had to reach up inside with a rake, and tug on it to get it moving again.

Needless to say the snake fell out barely missing James, landing at his feet.  Scared him so bad he danced a jig trying to get out of striking distance, but when he overheard the boys laughing in the bushes he realized the snake was dead he knew the boys had done it.  He said “I’m gonna git them boys, one of these days I’m gonna git em.”  He also knew Chuck had been the ring leader.

I remember another one of the stories Chuck told me about his Dad and James and a bunch of boys moving a house from across the other side of the railroad tracks in back of the house, over to this side near their house. 

Papa knew all the time schedules for when the trains ran.  He worked it out how they would move the house across the tracks at just the right time.

They used a mule, a dead man post and rollers.  They drove the post in the ground and attached the lines from the house to the mule.  The mule would take a turn around the post and then pull forward with the post taking the brunt of the force, the house moved slowly forward.
 

As the mule pulled it forward the boys were responsible to move the rollers from the back to the front and keep it moving till all of the slack in the line was taken up and tight against the dead man post.  They would move the post and start the process all over again.

I don’t remember how long he said it took them to move it. This was back in the late thirties.

Papa Haven, had only a third grade formal education, but he was a brilliant man.  He was also color blind, and when the Railroad eventually switched over to the various colored light system on a big board alongside the tracks up and down the line, he had to learn the new system.  

He could see the lights lit up, but couldn’t tell what color they were. Chuck worked with him and taught him the colors by the position of each light that signaled the engineer.  So that he knew what he needed to do by whichever light was lit up on the system board.

Papa had to memorize all of this.  Chuck’s older brother Hoyt and Chuck used to help Papa do all of his record keeping and make out the reports he had to turn in.

West Lake Wales was also a switching yard, and there was a Depot Terminal for passengers to leave and arrive.  The beautiful old building was torn down long ago, but it is still a switching yard.  The Depot Terminal was moved to Winter Haven.

To be continued .  .  .  .