Who Was Armer Allen?
R. H. Allen
Published by Murder Creek Publishing at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 R. H. Allen
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A LONELY GRAVEYARD
The morning was cold and bleak as I walked toward the tiny graveyard. Gray, moist clouds scudded overhead, clinging to the hills and weaving, in and out of the trees in the surrounding forest. It was the type of late autumn day when the rain-heavy skies seem to hang over you and press downward like a saturated blanket. I tugged at my jacket as I moved along, wishing I'd brought a heavier coat.
I didn't notice the stranger until I was almost to the grave. He half-turned at my approach, and seemed a little nervous, as if he were anxious to share something with me. I stopped a few steps from the granite headstone, and as if it were his cue, he began to read aloud.
"Armer Jefferson Allen - what an unusual name - February 11, 1921 to August 29,1970. Why he was only forty-nine years old! Now he is lying, in this obscure little graveyard, hidden back in the mountains. He died so young, yet in forty-nine years he must have accomplished some things worth remembering,. I wonder what he was like. Did he have a family? What were his dreams and goals? Who was Armer Allen?”
His questions started a mass of painful memories twisting and tumbling in my head. I started to turn and walk away, hoping somehow to leave those feelings behind and escape into the light, chilling, drizzle that had begun around us. Even as I turned, I realized that in a few more years the questions asked by the stranger could never be answered again. With the passing of another generation, the answers would be lost forever. It was my duty to answer the man's questions if I could.
So, I turned back, memories and emotions pushed first one thought, then another, to the surface of my consciousness. I tried vainly to organize the tangle of ideas into understandable order.
"Who was Armer Allen?" I asked myself, and the answer came flooding back!
THE MOUNTAIN CHILD
The North Georgia mountains are cold and lonely in February, and that particular morning in 1921, the wind whistled through cracks in the walls of the tiny shack - blending with, and diluting the newborn baby's cries.
Armer Jefferson Allen was the fifth child of Walter Allen, a poor mountaineer; and Omia O'Neal, a tall, slim pioneer woman. Walt was a jack-of-all-trades, as a matter of survival, but managed to spend most of his life officially unemployed. Autumn usually found him making his locally famous sorghum molasses, and spring would normally spur him to clear and plow some acreage for corn and a garden. However, the crops were tended and harvested by his wife and a tattered crew of skinny children.
When Armer was eight years old, the Great Depression descended. The miserable lot of the mountain people was made even worse by the loss of the few jobs that had existed and the reduced availability of goods from the outside world. Hunger and want were a way of life for young Armer and his family. A thin sauce made from flour and water - "water gravy" - and cornbread were the common fare. He later recalled the children's eager reaction when he brought home a rabbit or squirrel for the table.
Young Armer
Armer assumed more than his share of the responsibility for his family's welfare. His long hard hours in the field were supplemented by short hunting and fishing excursions into the nearby mountains that added, at least, some meat to the family diet. These trips probably provided a means of temporary escape from the barren existence of a mountain child, and fostered a deep love of nature and the outdoors that he carried thoughout his life.
"It was getting late in the morning," he recalled. "Probably six thirty or seven o'clock. The sun was well up and I knew I should be getting back to the house 'cause they'd be ready to go to the fields pretty soon. I hadn't seen a squirrel all morning. I'd heard a couple a hundred yards or so away, but the leaves were as dry as Corn Flakes and I couldn't get close to them. I still had all three of my shotgun shells, one in the gun, and two in my pocket. You could get one for a nickel or three for a dime in those days, but a nickel was hard to come by. I used to work all day in the neighbors' fields for fifteen cents, when I was little. Got twenty cents after I got bigger."
"All of a sudden I heard this rustling in the top of a little hickory tree up ahead! I slipped on up and about the time I got ten or twelve yards away from it, this squirrel ran out on a limb - right in the top of the hickory. Well, I was in a big hurry to pot that squirrel and get back to the house. I'd usually take my time and make sure of a shot - couldn't afford to waste a shell. But I'd done this same thing a hundred times before, so I just threw that old shotgun up and blasted away. The squirrel, limb and all, came tumbling down. I must have cut the limb off and not even touched the squirrel, 'cause that squirrel bounced about twice, set up kind of addled-like, and then started to run. 'This won't ever do,' I thought. So I put another shell in the gun and just as I raised it that squirrel decided to jump up on a stump about fifteen feet away. 'I've got you now, you rascal,' I thought. I knew I couldn't miss at that range, but I didn't want to mess up the meat too bad. I aimed high so the bottom of my shot pattern would hit the squirrel in the head. I squeezed her off, and me and that squirrel was both surprised! The top two inches of the squirrel's tail went straight up in the air, but it didn't look like I'd touched another hair! GOSH! This was serious! I'd already used two shells. Normally, I'd have two squirrels to show for that. Now, I didn't have nothing! There sat the squirrel, wobbling back and forth like he was still stunned from the fall (or losing his tail), but for all intents and purposes he was as good as new. If I used my last shell, that squirrel would have cost me a dime! Besides, I might get a shot at another one on my way home, and two squirrels for three shells wouldn't be that bad. My pride just wouldn't let me drag that mangy squirrel back home and admit that it took me three shells to get it! About that time I spied a stick lying near by. I grabbed the stick and me and that squirrel went up and down and around the mountain for ten minutes. My arms must have looked like fan blades, they were swinging so fast! Well, I finally got him and just about had to run all the way home to get there before everyone left for the fields. I didn't tell anybody about that trip for a long time!"
Armer was greatly influenced by his mother, a tall, hard-working, religious woman who died in her early fifties. She bore eleven children and managed to keep nine of them alive through some of the hardest years the mountain people had ever seen. Armer sensed her burden of responsibility. He tried to help as much as a child could, and he grew bitter toward those who didn't seem to understand the gravity of the situation. For years, Armer resented his father's irresponsible attitude and blamed him for his mother's untimely death. Shortly before his father died, in 1969, Armer started to grow closer to the old man. He eventually became as much of a devoted son to his father as he had been to his mother twenty-five years before.
Armer's Mother and Father - Omia and Walter Allen
Even as a child, Armer was a good manager. He worked as a field hand for neighbors who could pay, and hunted and trapped in the off-season. He was able to save a little from his earnings and provided himself with a few things he wanted or needed badly, and his family could not afford - an occasional pair of shoes, some new overalls, and those precious shotgun shells for the task and pleasure of providing meat for the family. He was generous with his hard earned money, however. Once, when he was ten years old, he canvassed the countryside selling vegetable and flower seeds. A difficult task in the Depression days. Finally, he made enough money to buy his mother a family bible - the only one she ever had. Later in life Armer would use his management ability to pay for a small farm, starting with wages of seventy-five cents an hour.
Armer and His Niece
Armer (on right) and Calvin Watson His Future Brother-In-Law
A YOUNG MAN MARRIES
As a young, man, Armer was influenced significantly by another remarkable mountain personality. Charles Wesley Watson was a man who knew what he wanted, and that was not the ordinary existence of a country farmer. "Charlie", as his friends called him, was a talented song writer and singer. He decided, early in life, that he wanted to write and compose songs, and channeled all his energies toward that goal. He never had a formal education and was a married man with two children when he was finally able to scrape together enough money to attend a music school in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, to learn the basic skills of his chosen trade. It took tremendous courage and determination to undertake such an adventure. He also loved the outdoors, especially fishing. This was where he and young Armer really started communicating. Not being able to identify with his own father, Armer reached out to Charlie and received a warm response.
Countless mountain trout found themselves in the frying pan due to the techniques that Charlie taught Armer, and that Armer later tried to pass on to his less skillful sons.
Armer's close association with Charlie exposed him to other members of the Watson family, and Charlie's second daughter, Allie Mae, was a young dark-haired beauty who completely stole Armer's heart.
"Armer and I actually fell in love while making syrup one fall," she recalls, "We married shortly after that."
Allie Mae Watson – Armer’s Soon To Be Wife
On October 2,1943 - when he was 21 and she was 15 - they were married. Armer was now a real member of the Watson family, and as a secondary benefit, Charlie was his father-in-law. Not quite as good as a father, but pretty close. Charlie didn't warm to this new relationship as fast as Armer, for few father's can accept the marriage of a fifteen-year old daughter to anyone. It wasn't long, however, until he realized that no one would care for his daughter like Armer, and the young man was gladly welcomed into the family.
Armer and his new bride soon made a big move for a mountain couple. They went to Morgantown, West Virginia, where some of Armer's relatives had settled near the coal fields. Tales of good paying jobs were too tempting to the young man and he decided to take his wife and start a new life in an area that had, at least some, potential.
He did find work, but the community and environment were not what the young couple wanted. The area was covered by a dingy blanket of snow all winter. Black, sloppy mud followed the snow, and the spring evolved into a hot, dusty summer. There were no cool mountain streams or brisk evening breezes to break the parching monotony of life in the dirty tenements.
The couple's first son was born in West Virginia on January 21,1945. Named Ronald Hugh, he weighed less than six pounds at birth. Armor was elated! He began to develop an attitude of responsibility toward his family that would eventually subordinate all other aspects of his life.
Armer worked underground in a small independent coal mine. His basic job was that of a "loader''. After holes were drilled in the working wall of the mine, explosive charges were placed in the holes and tamped. All the miners would withdraw a safe distance toward the central shaft, and the charges were blown. Armer was a member of the crew that went back in and loaded the fractured coal into hopper cars for transport out of the mine. It was hard, dirty work. Many hours were spent underground. Oily, black dust covered everything, and lay in drifts at each irregularity in the tunnel walls. The choking stench of coal dust and burned blasting powder permeated the clothing and followed the miners home. Armer didn't mind the hard work, but his natural tendency toward order and cleanliness made the dirt and filth of the job repulsive to him.
One day, after working a particularly hard section of the mine, Armer was kidding a friend who worked the next shift.
"You guys are going to earn your money for a change"!, he quipped, ''That tunnel is a mess! The slate is slipping, in and it looks like the whole area is going to give way at anytime."
His friend laughingly replied, "You briar hoppers can't do anything right! My boys know how to work that soft stuff. We'll straighten everything out for you so you guys can have a nice easy cut tomorrow."
The next morning, as Armer approached the crew shack, he saw a small crowd and overheard several people talking excitedly. "Covered six of 'em", an old man was saying, "They didn't have a chance!" Armer hurried up to the group of miners. One or two of them had obviously just come up out of the mine, and their grimy faces told the story. The section where Armer's friend had been working had caved-in on the crew. His friend was dead.
The rescue and cleanup crews had removed the bodies and cleared the debris, by the time Armer's crew reached the place where his friend had been killed. As they started to pass the dust filled side tunnel, the shift boss called out to them, "Hey, you guys! We're going to take one more cut out of this stump. I've looked at it and I think you can get one if you're careful." The entire crew stared in disbelief, but the boss was adamant, so they slowly began to drag their equipment down the tunnel. While pushing a hopper car full of equipment toward the cut site, Armer slipped on a rail. Bending over and shining his light on the slippery spot, he was appalled to discover that this was the place one of the miners had been killed the night before. A great chill engulfed Armer, and he hurriedly pushed the car farther into the shaft to get away from this grisly reminder that death always lurks in the shadows, in a coal mine.
The crew soon got busy with their duties and found that the harder they worked, the farther fear seemed to move away. Before long they were so busy they weren't constantly aware of the tremendous danger that surrounded them. Occasionally, a section of shale or slate would groan and every man would hold his breath and stare upward at the sagging ceiling.
Suddenly, one of the small shifting groans turned into a heaving rumble that everyone instantly knew would not stop! Armer recalled the sound vividly, and wondered that he got by the hopper car so easily, when he had had to squeeze by inch-by-inch going in. He said the thing he remembers most, was the sound of feet clicking on the track - as the crew literally ran for their lives. Miraculously, no one was killed.
Armer walked slowly across the little parking lot. It was raining and small inky puddles were collecting in the low spots. Gravel sized coal crunched under his boots as he walked. He was trying to sort the confusion of thoughts that were streaming through his mind.
What could he do? He was making pretty good money, but if he went back down into the mine he might not be so lucky next time. He couldn't find an aboveground job in Morgantown. He'd tried. There were few jobs back in Georgia, but he had always been able to survive in the mountains. Besides, now that the war was going strong, maybe a few jobs had opened up in Blue Ridge or Copperhill.
A dull flash caught his eye. He stopped and bent down to investigate. It was an old, worn nickel, ground dull by constant abrasion with its bed of pulverized coal, and discolored by the pungent sulfur compounds that had penetrated the soil. He stared at the coin, picked it up, and looked at the gray, southern horizon. "O. K.", he said to himself decidedly, "Heads I go to Georgia; tails - back down in the mine!"
TURNING POINT
The train whistled shrilly as it pulled into the little station at Copperhill, Tennessee. It had been a long trip for Armer and Allie. Traveling with a six-week old baby is never easy, and the train was crowded with servicemen, traveling to and fro in the constant shuffle that always accompanies a war.
Uncertainty and indecision clouded the couple's future, but beyond the acid denuded hills of Copperhill, the mountains could be seen rising in the distance. Armer knew if he ever got his feet on mountain sod again, he could make it.