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

Just to the west of our house, and extending to the boundary of our land, was a pecan orchard. I vividly recall helping my daddy plant the grafted seedlings in precisely straight rows when I was nine years old. The trees are still there, but not as well groomed as when my mother tended them; harvesting the nuts was her special moneymaking project. On a hill beyond our land and back from the road was a large house with a windmill in back. The soil on this neighboring farm was comparatively thin and sandy, and a series of white families moved in for a crop or two before abandoning the effort. One of them had children about my age, who joined my permanent black playmates and me for a few months. Toward the end of the 1930s, not long before I left home, my mother's parents moved in and lived there for several years.

Just before getting to our house, the rather crooked westbound dirt road from Plains ran into the straight railroad tracks of the Seaboard Airline Railroad and had to make a very sharp turn to the right so that the two could run almost exactly parallel for about a mile. Since there was no warning sign, the deep ruts in the soft sand on the curve caused a regular procession of wrecks, one every week or so. Luckily, the quality of the road approaching the curve precluded high speeds, so not much damage was done. Usually the vehicles just rolled over naturally toward the outside of the curve, slid along on the soft sand, and came to rest on their sides. We children were alert to these accidents, and would respond to the characteristic sounds by shouting, "A wreck! A wreck!" and running to the scene. There were always interesting people and conversations and, on occasion, some vivid language. Unless something exceptional occurred, such as an injury, our parents didn't bother to go out to see them.

The bad curve was right in front of Jack Clark's house, and he assumed the responsibility of attending to the distressed travelers. Since he was the "lot man" and in charge of all the mules and harness, it was natural for him to perform this service. After examining the situation, making sure everyone was all right, and having a brief discussion with the driver, he was always able to figure out what to do. Using two mules and a plow hitch, and hooking a chain to the vehicle's frame, he could soon have it righted. For larger, loaded trucks, he would have to get some help from others on the farm -- first to unload the cargo, then to set the truck upright before reloading it. He kept under his front porch a large block and tackle (which he called a "tickle") that could be rigged between the truck and one of the trees in his yard to help with the heavier jobs. Jack never charged more than a dollar for this service, and my father didn't demand anything for the use of the mules and harness. Most of the time, for a small car or pickup, Jack let any contribution be voluntary, since he knew that some of the families didn't have much for themselves.

For some reason I have never understood, places along the dirt road would develop a corrugated surface, with shallow indentations running crosswise about every two feet along the way. When this happened, there was an optimum speed for each stretch of roadway. Driving too slow gave a teeth-jarring ride, with the wheels dropping to the bottom of each groove. Faster was usually better, with the wheels just hitting the tops of the bumps, but could be deadly at higher speeds or on a curve, because the tires had no grip on the surface. The county road-scraper would smooth the roads every few weeks, usually after a good rain, but the washboards would soon return.

It was an exciting event for us boys when one of the big motor-driven "road scrapes" arrived on the road in front of our house. We viewed the operators as some of the most exalted and fortunate of men, and each attempted to demonstrate to us and to the community that his handiwork was superior. They had to make at least four passes along the road, first to pull the ditches clean of sand and other sediment, and then to smooth the surface in both directions, leaving a slight crown so water wouldn't stand on the driving surface. Reducing the washboard effect and ensuring that drainage paths were maintained out of yards and fields, down through the ditches, and then into the branches and creeks was a notable engineering feat.

Copyright © 2001 by Jimmy Carter