Granddaddy gazed across his pasture up to the barn, musing
to himself, and he said, “I’ve got one more story I want to tell you about, and
that’s about a football game that I played in when I was 19 years old in about
1903 or 1904.” I’m not sure if he meant
that the coal miners in the Army played the iron workers, or if this was after
he finished his first tour of duty with the army. Because I understood him to say he was
working in a coal mine; if so, this must have been in Virginia
or Maryland. Anyway, he told it like this:
"The coal miners had a football team, and we had a big
football game between the coal miners and the iron workers from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The football team rode the train from Baltimore, Maryland to Harrisburg and stayed at
the Commonwealth Hotel. Going up on the
train, some of the boys liked their liquor and two of them had a little too
much. The game was about two o’clock in
the afternoon and there was about 5,000 or 6,000 turned out to see the game.
All the boys were hard and had lots of muscles on account of
coming from the coal mines and steel mills, and there wasn’t a flabby one in
the bunch. But they really shouldn’t
have played the game because of the two players who had too much to drink on
the train that night from Baltimore. Two was in no shape to go out on the ball
field, but the game had to be played because, as I said, there was a crowd of
5,000 or 6,000 watching.
Well, we played the first half of that game and we didn’t
score. When the signals were given,
those two were so drunk they didn’t know if they were up or down. But in the last half, we held them to the
line, but they had scored thirty-five points and just run away in the first
half.
One of our guards, named Polander, got hit on the head and
knocked him dizzy, and he played either three or four more plays in that
condition. Then he got another lick on
the head, and he said his head cleared up like a bell.
Anyway, we lost the game that we should have won. After the game was over, people came up to me
and told me that one of my kicks was the longest one they had ever seen. I kicked it almost to the field goal from the
other end of the field."
Then I asked Granddaddy if he would sing “The
Preacher and the Bear” for me, a song he used to sing as he rocked us when
we visited him at Arkansas
Pass. It always made us giggle, the way he sang
it. But first, he said:
"Jerri, tell me how you spell bird? I don’t know if you have ever seen this bird,
but you might of. This is one that we
used to sing when I was a boy in school.
We sang it to our teacher.
Down yonder in that
school house,
Where the darkies used
to go.
There was a ragtime
pickaninny
By the name of
Ragtime Joe.
When teacher called
the class one day
To spell one kind of
bird,
He called on everyone
but Joe,
But they could not
spell a word.
So when he called on
Joe
To spell that word to
him
He didn’t hesitate a
minute,
This is the way he
began:
“C – am the way it
begins.
H – am the next
letter in
I – that am the third
C – am to season the
bird,
K – am to fill in the
end
E – am nearer the end
(N)
C – H – I – C – K – E
- N
n
That am the way to spell chick-en!”
Now, I’ll sing you the song you asked me for:
“The Preacher and the Bear.”
“A
preacher went out hunting, ‘twas on one Sunday morn.
It
was against his religion, but he took his gun along.
He
shot himself some mighty fine quail,
And
one little measly hare,
And
on his way, returning home,
He
met a great big grizzly bear.
The
bear marched out in the middle of the road,
And
walked up towards the preacher, you see.
The
preacher got so excited, he climbed up a ‘simmon tree.
The
preacher climbed out on a limb.
He
turned his eyes to the Lord in the sky,
These
words he said to him.
Good
Lord, didn’t you deliver Daniel from the Lion’s den?
Also,
Jonah, from the belly of the whale, and then,
The
Hebrew children from the firey furnace,
The
Good Book do declare.
Good
Lord, if you can’t help me.
For
Goodness Sakes,
Don’t
you help that bear.”
~.~
In my memory, I can hear him now...just as he sang these
songs, and he chuckled at the funny little songs he had remembered from his
boyhood.
As we sat there musing about the past, a mockingbird
began to sing in the distance and trilled his repertoire of songs. His singing
reminded me that Granddaddy always called his farm, “Mockingbird Hill,” because
mockingbirds were everywhere. One in
particular used to follow him as he walked to and from the barn. It flew over his head as he walked, back and
forth, as if he were playing a game.
When winter approached, he disappeared, but for several years, he would
always return every spring. Until,
finally, there was a time when he came no more.
~.~
When this interview was taken, my grandfather, at age
eighty-five, was slightly bent where once he had carried himself erect, a trait
left over from his military days. He
still had a stout frame that age had altered but not covered up. (In his prime,
he was nearly 5’ 9” tall, and weighed 175 pounds). He had been married to my grandmother for
almost sixty-one years. Many times he
was heard to say, “If I had my life to live over, I would still choose the same
little girl for my wife.”
My grandfather loved his Lord, and spent hours quietly
reading from his worn Bible. He could
answer almost any question we could ask, and more often than not, he could
quote the exact verse or turn right to the page he needed. He also tried to live by its highest
principles. He had a keen sense of
humor, and he was always an optimist.
When we visited and asked after his welfare, he always replied with
enthusiasm, “I’m sitting on top of the world!”
~.~
When I first asked Granddaddy to recount some of his life story, he seemed
a little skeptical that anyone would be interested, but when I explained that
it would be his gift to his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, he seemed to
warm up to the idea of his legacy. As
his stories unfolded, he smiled and laughed in remembrance of other times.
Before ending this narrative, I am compelled to put down
one last thing – the words to a favorite song of all the children and
grandchildren of Jasper Newton
Cox. My dad said his father taught him
the words to this song when he was about ten, and explained to him that the
story was about a young man who had become lost in the swamp in Louisiana, and
finally reached the summit when he came out on the railroad. We were about ten when daddy taught this song
to us. My aunts all remember it. And once, Retha told me that she sang it to
Beverly Kay when she rocked her as a baby.
I do have a tape of my dad singing, “On the Shores of Lake Ponchartrain,’
one Christmas as his grandchildren listened.
Lest it be lost to our memory, I set the words down here:
“On the Shores of
Ponchartrain”
Through swamps and
alligators,
I wound my weary way.
O’er railroad ties and
crossings,
My weary feet did stray.
Twas then to reach the
summit
And all around to gaze.
It was there I met the
blue-eyed girl
On the shores of
Ponchartrain.
She took me to her father’s
house,
And treated me quite well.
Her hair in golden ringlets
Around her shoulders fell.
I tried to gain her beauty,
But I found it was in vain,
So handsome was this
blue-eyed girl
On the shores of
Ponchartrain.”
Adieu, adieu, fair maiden,
If I never see you more,
I’ll ne’r forget your
kindness
In the cottage by the shore.
And when in social circles,
The sparkling bowl to drain,
I’ll drink to the health of
the blue-eyed girl,
On the shores of
Ponchartrain.”
~.~
There is much more to the chronicles of Jasper Newton and
Eva Caroline Cox, but these few pages give the history exactly as it was told
to me by my Grandfather in his own words, more than twenty-one years ago. The porch was filled with fresh air and
sunshine that morning, and Granddaddy and I shared a closeness I will never
forget.
~
by Janice “Jerri” Cox Brown
Oldest grandchild of Jasper Newton Cox
November 1, 1990
JASPER NEWTON COX
EVA CAROLINE SMITH COX
