Gone But Not Forgotten

Great-grandparents “Julius and Cora Fritts Swicegood”


I was probably eight years old and the year would have been around 1965. My first memories of my great-grandfather and grandmother Swicegood were the smell of wood smoke upon entering their house. The house was two stories with white weather-boards. The house itself wasn’t fancy or decorative but was conservatively country-like. As far back as I can remember I never went upstairs but I do remember certain things about the downstairs. There was the wood cook stove in the kitchen and I recall an old kerosene heater in the bathroom. Hard candy filled a glass candy bowl in one of the rooms and I was offered a few pieces at each visit. Of course I was more concerned with the outdoors and playing than spending time with the “old people” inside the house.
A cement walkway leads to the front door with boxwoods on ether side. I remember some of the outside buildings. Nearby were an old barn, a car shed, a ‘tater’ house, and other miscellaneous smaller out-buildings. While playing around in the old barn one day I was stung on my head by a bumble bee. I ran crying to the adults inside the house and was administered first-aid which consisted of snuff that was dampened and put on the sting. It worked. I also remember playing with matches in the car shed and almost catching the shed on fire (don’t try this at home). Near the tater house was a small apple orchard. Not Granny Smith, Red or Yellow Delicious, but what I called ‘horse apples’. The apples were slightly red and not large. They also didn’t boast a very sweet flavor but were ok for pies (if you applied sufficient sugar).
There is also a popular story that my parents often tell. I was very young and burned my hand on the electric stove at home. Nothing would stop my crying until grandpa Swicegood came and “blew out the fire”. I can still remember grandpa Swicegood walking down our dirt road (at the time) that ran in front of our house, headed to Temple’s store which was about a mile away or maybe visiting a relative nearby. Temple’s was a small country store with one gas pump in front. Some of the older men would hang out at the store, drinking their Coke with peanuts mixed in or eating a pack of nabs (cheese crackers). On rainy or cold days it wasn’t unusual to see Grandpa Swicegood walking down the road wearing a burlap bag tied around his shoulders, secured by a nail.
Julius Swicegood came from a large family consisting of at least seven brothers and two sisters. Julius made his living farming and had a regular truck route in town. Packing up his truck, Julius would head to town to sell his vegetables. Sometimes Great-Grandpa would incorporate the help of Cleve Walser (his son-in-law, my grandfather) or Bill Luffman (my dad). To this day I still remember seeing potatoes lying on the ground, covered with lime in Grandpa Swicegood’s tater house. The lime covering helped keep the potatoes from spoiling.
Another great place for exploration was the farm fishpond. Down the hill from the main house was a pond about two acres in size. I wasn’t allowed to visit the pond by myself in my younger years because of the possibility of drowning, which was reasonable. My family and I spent a lot of time here fishing in the warm summer days. We would catch catfish, bream (Bluegill), and if you were lucky, a large-mouth bass. One day I was bored out of my mind because the fish weren’t biting at all. I was playing at the edge of the water, dragging a plastic worm near the banks edge. To my complete surprise a good-sized large-mouth bass hit my bait with a vengeance. Somehow I got the fish out of the water and was in total shock.
Grandpa Walser also used the pond water for farm projects. He would fill one or two fifty gallon barrels that were on a trailer pulled by his tractor. The water was pumped into the barrels and taken back to his tobacco beds for irrigation or sometimes used to provide water for setting out tobacco plants in the fields. One of my jobs was to help steady the barrels during transport and at the same time avoid getting soaked by the sloshing water whenever the trailer hit a bump in the road.
Tobacco planting/harvesting time was always a hard but necessary time of the year. Hand-held tobacco setters were used for planting the tobacco plants. I was too young to use a setter properly so I usually dropped the ‘sets’ into the setter and an adult manned the setter. There was a certain skill required in dropping the sets properly. Here was the order: (1) the operator would heave the setter in the ground (row), (2) the ‘dropper’ would toss a single plant (dart style) down into the side chamber of the setter, (3) the operator would then press a lever that releases the plant along with a small amount of water from another chamber of the setter and at the same time pull the setter out of the ground. This seems easy enough but if the timing was off dropping the plant or if your aim was off, missing the chamber; it had to be done all over again. In other words, you keep the timing and rhythm of the operator or it made for a very bad day for all involved. Sorry for the “rabbit trail”.
As I became older I was allowed to visit the pond alone. I spent many days roaming the nearby woods and streams, ending up sooner or later at the pond. In my mid-teens I remember doing nature walks and bird watching near the pond and also in the nearby woods. Red-winged Blackbirds could be seen perching on low hanging tree limbs near the pond. A grove of tall pines cast shadows overhead and I watched as tadpoles swam at the water’s edge. Time spent there was therapeutic and I sometimes long for those periods of refreshing. As a young boy these were times of adventure, a way of evading summer boredom. Now it would be a welcomed form of escape from the pressures of life in general.
Each year the Swicegood reunion took place at grandpa and grandma’s house. I have seen pictures of the gathering and the crowd was fairly large. If the weather was fair it would always be held outside. Dinner on the ground is what I believe they used to call it. In later years (just before grandpa’s death) the reunion took place in a local Lion’s Club building. Grandpa Swicegood was also known for giving out chewing gum to everyone attending the reunion (for a number of years after grandpa’s death Ronnie Swicegood [my 2nd cousin] and I would give out gum to try and keep the tradition alive).
One winter day in February of 1966 my grandfather Swicegood was having trouble with his well pump near the house. The pump was located down the hill from the house. The cold weather and added stress was too much for his heart. As a result, at the age of eighty-eight Grandfather Swicegood died of a heart attack. I was still quite young and didn’t know exactly what was going on. I just knew that grandpa wasn’t going to be around anymore. This was the first time I saw my father cry. Just after grandpa’s death I saw my dad walking through our kitchen and he hit the kitchen wall with a balled up fist. His eyes were wet and he was angry and sad.
One of my memories of the event was the attendance at the funeral home. The funeral home was filled with well wishers and grieving family. My grandfather was well loved in the community and was a good man.
My great-grandmother Cora Fritts Swicegood moved in with her daughter (my aunt) after she got on up in the years (80+). I recall grandmother received cataract surgery when she was around 90 years old and saw everything she had been missing from years of dealing with cataracts. She outlived her husband by five years and died in January of 1971 at the age of 94, having lived a full life.
Since that time the Swicegood reunion has become a small affair. Many of the “old timers” have died. I still attend from time to time but it’s not like the old days. Everyone has moved on with their lives and most don’t take time to see other relatives (me included). Upon the recent death of my aunt Phyllis (2006) none of her family attends the reunion anymore. The old house (Swicegood) was sold many years ago and was purchased by someone outside of the family. The pond was filled-in by one of the owners for fear that his child would drown in it. The father in that family died years later and the wife remarried, but still ended up selling the house. I still live within walking distance from my great-grandparents’ old home place but in over 30 years I haven’t been near the property. Some things are better left to memories.