Excerpt from An Hour Before Daylight by Jimmy Carter, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Radiating from the barn was a maze of fences and gates that let us move livestock from one place to another with minimal risk of their escape. This was one of my earliest tasks, requiring only a modicum of skill and the ability to open and close the swinging gates. Within the first array of enclosures was a milking shed that would hold four cows at a time, adequate to accommodate our usual herd of eight to a dozen Jerseys and Guernseys that we milked in two shifts, twice a day. Later, we had a dozen A-frame hog-farrowing structures, which I helped my daddy build after bringing the innovative design home from my Future Farmer class in school. One shelter was assigned to each sow when birthing time approached, and the design kept the animals dry, provided a convenient place for feed and water, and minimized the inadvertent crushing of the baby pigs by their heavy mamas. Except during extended dry seasons, the constantly used lots for hogs and milk cows were always ankle deep in mud and manure, which made bare feet much superior to brogans.

A little open shed near the barn enclosed a pump that lifted about two cups of water from our shallow well with each stroke. It was driven by a small two-cycle gasoline engine that we cranked up and let run once or twice a day, just long enough to fill several watering troughs around the barn and sheds. This was the only motor-driven device on the farm, and was always viewed with a mixture of suspicion and trepidation. We were justifiably doubtful that it would crank when we needed it most, dreading the hour or two of hand pumping as the only alternative source of water for all the animals. Between the pump house and barn was a harness shed, an open-ended building where we stored a buggy, two wagons, and all the saddles, bridles, and other harness needed for an operating farm. Also near the barn was a concrete dipping-vat about four feet deep, filled with a pungent mixture containing creosote, through which we would drive our cattle, goats, and newly sheared sheep to protect them, at least temporarily, from flies and screwworms.

The farm operation always seemed to me a fascinating system, like a huge clock, with each of its many parts depending on all the rest. Daddy was the one who designed, owned, and operated the complicated mechanism, and Jack Clark wound it daily and kept it on time. I had dreams that one day I would be master of this machine, with its wonderful intricacies.

The workers on our place, all black, lived in five small clapboard houses, three right on the highway, one set farther back from the road, and another across the railroad tracks directly in front of our house. This was the community in which I grew up, all within a stone's throw of the barn.


Except for Jack Clark, who received monthly wages and worked seven days a week, rain or shine, all the other hands worked and were paid by the day, as the weather permitted and as they were needed. To be more accurate, Daddy and Jack kept accounts in increments of one-fourth of a day, with a full day being from before daybreak until after sundown. For this amount of work, grown men dependable enough to plow a mule received a dollar, women got seventy-five cents, competent teenagers a half-dollar, and younger children a quarter. The exception to this was during harvest time, when each person was paid for the pounds of cotton picked or the quantity of peanuts pulled out of the ground and stacked up to dry. Day workers were paid on Saturday, when they were expected to repay any loans and settle up for purchases made during the week at my father's commissary. For too long, I thought, I was given a child's wage, and I was always eager to be promoted.


Although I respected and admired Bishop Johnson as the most successful and widely traveled man I knew, my own life was affected most profoundly by Jack and Rachel Clark. Without young children of their own to care for, they seemed to enjoy having me with them. Jack Clark knew more than anyone about work around the home site. He was in charge of the barn, the mules and horses, the equipment and harness, and all the other livestock. He rarely worked in the field but usually plowed our family garden and the community sweet-potato patch. It was Jack who rang the big farm bell each morning of a working day, at four o'clock "sun time," and again at "noon." This was not at any precise time as measured by our clocks, but was always about an hour before daylight and then when the sun reached its highest point in the sky. Jack worked directly under Daddy, and seemed to us boys to have ultimate authority over the farm's life, an illusion he was careful not to dispel.

Copyright © 2001 by Jimmy Carter