Pine Castle Pioneer Days, 2012

The Screen Door Slammed
By Susie Hayes Mosholder

Robert stood on the porch and begged his father to take him with him, but he refused. Though only nine years of age, the slamming of a screen door made him the man of the house. The second in command was his younger brother Buddy.

It was 1929, in Pine Castle.

My grandfather Perry Hayes was a strapping man who stood 6’ 3”. He met Granny Bertha when they worked together at the South Carolina State Hospital in Columbia. They had come to Florida about 1923, with the promise of work for both of them.

Granny Bertha’s aunt Lora Sphaler had come down some time earlier with her husband Ed and they were running a successful turpentine business and lumber yard. Pine Castle was a prime location with plenty of trees, and Uncle Ed’s brother was the administrator for the Orange County Home on Michigan Avenue, where a nurse was needed Grandpa Perry got a job at the Sphaler sawmill.

But, with a wife and two children in tow, he knew he needed a better job. When a third son Charlie was born, he knew it had better come quick.

Thus, Perry became one of the first six motorcycle patrolmen in nearby Orlando. He stood proud in the uniform the city gave him, as may be seen in the official picture of the squad posed astride their new Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

About this time, Granny Bertha’s mother Luvenia, arrived to help take care of the children. “Mammie,” as her grandkids called her, was a gentle soul. She was a quiet woman with strict values on how to tame three boys.

Mammie was the oldest of eight children born to William Aiken and Leah Jane (Schofield) Sightler in Gaston, South Carolina, and did a lot of the raising of her younger brothers and sisters. The Sightler family has a long lineage there, the first arriving from Switzerland in 1760.

Mammie’s own husband Preston had abandoned their family in South Carolina soon after Granny Bertha was born in 1893. She was probably a little relieved, because he and his brother Rufus did little more than drink moonshine, enough to “float all the logs downstream to the lumber yard!” At any rate, she knew how to scrape by without much help.

Soon after Mammie’s arrival, Granny Bertha discovered she was pregnant with her fourth child even though Perry was often away from home, “working” long hours. In fact, he was working hard at impressing women in Orlando with his police uniform and motorcycle. He was what some called a “rounder.”

One day while Perry was swimming, Bertha went through his wallet and found some photographs of him posing with unknown women beside his motorcycle. She confronted him about the pictures, and that’s what led to the slamming of the screen door. Two months later, their daughter Geraldine (“Gerry”) was born.

After Perry left, Granny Bertha and Mammie pooled their resources to keep their family intact and the welfare workers away. Bertha kept her job at the county home, sometimes staying there a month at a time. Mammie took care of the kids in Pine Castle, and took in washing to help make ends meet.

The children slept on floor pallets covered with quilts and Mammie kept them stocked with clean clothes and lots of love. She made sure Robert, Perry, and Charlie attended school. One time, though, Charlie climbed out the window at school, catching a branch on the way down, and went off to explore the vast world that surrounded Lake Conway. Of course, when he returned, he received a switching from Mammie. She was fair, but strict.

Once in a while, the children walked all the way from Pine Castle to visit Granny Bertha at work. And, whenever she got a weekend off, she would come home and spend time visiting and sewing.

This was during the Depression, when nothing was allowed to go to waste. Staples like sugar and flour came in 100 pound sacks at the grocery store. The grocers would fill their barrels and sell the sacks to people who, in turn, would use them to make clothes for their families. Granny Bertha would buy those sacks and take them home and boil them in a large kettle outside to remove the vegetable dye writing off of them. Then it was Charlie’s job to rip out the seams of the sacks so she could make a pattern and sew shirts for the boys. Feed sacks for chickens came in different printed fabric. Granny used those to make dresses for Gerry. Many nights Charlie watched his mother work the push petal on her sewing machine. No scrap of fabric went to waste.

Granny Bertha made quilts, too. Years later, those quilts were used in my own crib. They were made out of tiny scraps of material that Granny had saved. Unfortunately, we literally wore them out to the point they could no longer be mended.

All the boys started work after the 6th grade. Robert was regularly driving for the lumber yard at age 14, though he was a “beefed-up” to look much older. He had to help put food on the table. Buddy was shining shoes at age 10. Charlie and Buddy would also clean out the spittoons at the pool hall for a few cents.

On Sunday mornings, Buddy and Charlie went down by the water’s edge at Lover’s Lane to collect empty bottles. At that time, corks were used instead of caps, and after Saturday night dates at the lake there were plenty of empty bottles to be found. They made money by delivering those bottles to area moonshiners to refill, recork, and resell. They paid the boys a nickel for each bottle and sometimes slipped them some “shine,” too. Buddy and Charlie would take the liquor and hide it in a cool spot near the old Nela Bridge for their own dates.

In school, math came easier to Robert than drinking water. He astounded his teacher Ms. McEntire with his quick answers. She wondered how he got the right answer so quick, and he’d say that it just came to him. In many other ways, though, Robert was an angry young man. This was probably because his father left him “the man of the house” at such a young age. I don’t think he had a true childhood. He had to provide for his family, even if it meant taking on the world—often times with his two fists.

In stark contrast to Robert, Buddy was easy going and hopeless when it came to things like math. He loved to fish and play music. God gave him a gentle spirit, and it was often said his smooth demeanor could melt butter in a freezer.

Charlie learned from both of these brothers. Robert taught him toughness, and Buddy taught him gentleness. Charlie looked to Robert as a father figure, while Buddy was in fact his buddy.

I feel sorry for Gerry, having three older brothers! Enough said about that, but she did become a delightful, caring, and loving woman. After Mammie’s death in 1943, she eagerly doted on her mother’s every wish, often times at personal sacrifice. Everything Gerry has endured in her life is evidence that miracles do happen!

All Granny Bertha’s children held on tight to each other, even though it often felt like they were on a small raft in the middle of a large ocean. By the grace of God, they managed to keep their heads above water long after that screen door slammed back in 1929.