RRN Final Issue

This issue of Ridge Rider News marks the completion of our twelfth year of publication. It took a year or two of sporadic publications for RRN to settle into the weekly issue most readers have come to expect, regularly and consistently. As a newsletter, RRN has grown from a readership of less than a handful of individuals to now more than one hundred households.

In RRN’s infancy, we sought a means to vent some of the frustrations we were experiencing in several arenas of life. We admit the ability to "get things off ones chest," helped reduce our blood pressure, but RRN has always been more than a means to an end.

Almost from the onset, Ridge Rider News has been about leaving something behind for our descendants. We have never aspired to accumulate great wealth, and, from a young age, established personal financial goals, which we would describe simply as "making a comfortable living."

We recognize that at the time of our passing there will likely be very little money and perhaps not a great many possessions for our children to "squabble over" and for the grandchildren to eventually inherit.

However, short of some sort of natural disaster or cataclysmic event, there will be six hundred twenty-six issues of Ridge Rider News available for our grandchildren to peruse, use, or abuse. If they grow up to be materially minded, they’ll be sorely disappointed that all that we left them were the copies of this newsletter, and they may possibly cart off their inheritance to a dumpster or landfill.

We can’t control their responses, but we shall pass from this life believing they’ll find within the pages of Ridge Rider News the answers to a lot of the questions they will surely have about what things were like "back then," what sort of persons their grandparents were, and how it is they came to be so smart (smile).

Unless we are dead wrong about our grandchildren, Ridge Rider News will be seen by them as a window into the lives of their forbears, a window that’s always there for them to look through, if only they take the time to do so. Will this not be more precious to them than gold? Continue reading...

Dynamite Hill - Death of a Salesman

Jimmy and Linda Crausby

Oddly, my aunt called him her brother, but her sister, my mother, called him Jimmy. Two persons with a common mother and different fathers are half-siblings, but Mom only admitted such was the case when the point was pressed. Perhaps Mom’s reason for withholding full family recognition of her half-brother was rooted in the times, where persons born outside of wedlock were often ostracized. Perhaps Mom’s reasoning ran much deeper. After all, she had idolized her father (William Fredrick "Fred" Crausby), and when he died following injuries from a bus/car wreck, she was devastated.

What followed was rarely discussed in the open atmosphere of conversations in the dining room or living room, but my late Aunt Jo phrased it a few months prior to her death in dated terms, "Mama acted ugly."

My grandmother’s "ugliness" netted me an uncle, James “Jimmy” Crausby, five years older than me, but I was not allowed to call him uncle, as mother insisted “Jimmy” was sufficient. Mom’s admonition was not a command, rather she phrased it in such a way that I understood she would prefer I not call Jimmy Crausby, Uncle Jimmy.

“No, you don’t need to say uncle. Jimmy is just fine,” Mom would tout on the few occasions I quizzed her on the subject.

A rift in the relationship between my mother and her mother would survive in varying degrees until my grandmother’s death in 1973. I was never told the name of Jimmy’s father. Mama had a way of changing the subject or deflecting the question whenever she was asked about Jimmy’s dad. Most likely, Mom found it galling that her half-brother was given her dad’s surname.

My mother was eleven years old at the time of her father’s death. How soon after her husband’s death grandmother starting "acting ugly," is no longer germane, but at age sixteen, my mother married William Henry Carter who offered to "get her away from all this," an apparent reference to the disreputable circumstances at home.

In my early years, I didn’t know Jimmy Crausby very well. My family moved from Pontotoc when I was two years old and returned nine years later. I have a few memories of visiting my grandmother, Mama Nona, and her second husband, "Little Man" Enlow, but I don’t recall anything of Jimmy Crausby during the years we lived away from Pontotoc.

Mama Nona and Jimmy lived on Inzer Street for a few years before selling their place to my Aunt Jo and Uncle Julius Lee "Pearlie" Collins. 

My parents’ home, the old Owen place, on Woodland Street, was also home to my grandparents, Hayden and Becky Carter, formerly of Thaxton, at the time of their respective deaths in 1960. Later, around 1962, Mama Nona and Jimmy moved into the "other side" of our home on Woodland Street, the part my grandparents had previously utilized.

My memories of Jimmy Crausby largely began during my later years of high school and then college. I remember Aunt Jo buying a new 1958 Chevrolet, which Jimmy drove on occasion. During this time, Jimmy’s best friend was Billy Joe Kidd. The two of them spent a lot of time together. Both of them enjoyed singing and were members of West Heights Baptist Church in Pontotoc.

I was probably a college student at the time Jimmy invited me to go deer hunting with him. Mama figured I would get shot in the woods, and she wouldn’t hear of me going off with Jimmy. However, when Jimmy and Billy Joe became interested in archery, I did get to go with them occasionally to an archery range a few miles southeast of Pontotoc, just off Hwy. 41. I remember it was hard for me to pull a bow with a draw weight of forty pounds, but Jimmy and Billy Joe could do pretty well with draw weights of sixty pounds or more.

Jimmy became a salesman for a small wholesale company and visited area stores assigned to his route. Later, he married Linda Todd, whose family lived a block away from my parents. Though, I didn’t attend the marriage ceremony, my sister relates that Billy Joe Kidd sang at the wedding.

"He sang How Great Thou Art, about as well as I’ve ever heard it sung," Sarah shared. "And I’ve heard it sung by persons who were trained for the opera."

One would think that two young men of such a close friendship, would never have become sworn enemies, but it happened. Barbara and I were living in Ripley, Mississippi, at the time the friendship between Jimmy Crausby and Billy Joe Kidd dissolved.

Billy Joe and his wife filed for a divorce and a custody battle ensued over their daughter. In those years, there was nothing like a no-fault divorce, where a husband and wife could break up housekeeping over something trivial or in legal parlance, "irreconcilable differences." Linda, Jimmy’s wife, was a friend of Billy Joe’s wife. She may have influenced Jimmy to testify against his friend.

Jimmy’s testimony, that he walked into Billy Joe’s store (convenience store on Hwy. 9 South) and found Billy Joe on the floor behind the counter in the throes of adultery, may have been the deciding factor in child custody being awarded to Billy Joe’s wife. Whether or not Jimmy supplied the testimony most damaging to his friend’s divorce case, there can be no doubt that Jimmy Crausby nailed his own coffin shut on that day.

When Jimmy Crausby lived on Inzer Street, one of his neighbors was Lamar Roberts. Mr. Roberts’ son Jimmy was a youngster at the time, but he has fond memories of Jimmy Crausby.  Jimmy Roberts, who is now a former State Supreme Court Justice, remembers how Jimmy Crausby was always friendly toward him and his family and how he was impressed that Jimmy Crausby took time to stop and chat with a young kid. Most of us go through life without realizing how the small things we do for others are often the things that others recall about us.

My friend, Judge Jimmy Roberts, also shared he was a law student at Ole Miss when Billy Joe Kidd was on trial for the death of Jimmy Crausby. The trial and its outcome were important to Jimmy, from both a legal perspective and his own personal knowledge of the deceased. Most of the persons who know what actually happened on that fatal December night in 1968 are no longer living, but the testimonies of several witnesses who arrived on the scene that evening provide some insight into what took place.

Shortly after the divorce case was settled, Jimmy Crausby began to receive threatening phone calls. Caller ID didn’t exist in that era, so there was little to support Jimmy’s belief the calls were from either family or friends of Billy Joe Kidd. Also, the caller or callers muffled their voice in order to avoid recognition. As I recall, there were multiple occasions when Jimmy offered to meet with the caller and would drive to a designated place only to have no one show up. After several no-shows, Jimmy was quite angry.

Circumstances often drive persons to desperate measures, and Jimmy took to carrying a .38 revolver in his car. On the night of his death, he received another threatening phone call, but this time, according to family remembrances, he recognized the caller’s voice as that of his former friend, Billy Joe Kidd. The two agreed to meet alone at a site on Clark Street known as Dynamite Hill, so named because of a structure the City of Pontotoc used for the storage of dynamite. At that time, Clark Street connected Hwy. 6 and Brooks Street.

Joe Kidd did not keep his pledge to meet Jimmy Crausby alone. Joe’s dad, Walter "Honey" Kidd, his sister, Dot Kidd, and Joe’s daughter, all arrived at the scene in time to witness and/or participate in the fighting that followed. Apparently, heated words were exchanged before the shooting and knifing occurred. The order of events, as related during the murder trial that followed, is weighted favorably on the part of the defendant as only Joe Kidd and members of his family survived to testify.

Jimmy’s revolver was fired several times with one bullet striking the elder Kidd in the chest fatally wounding him, and one bullet severing the right index finger of Joe Kidd. Joe was also shot in the chest. The abdomen of Jimmy Crausby was opened by a knife wound, partially disemboweling him.

As participants in the melee left the scene, Jimmy Crausby drove his car to the foot of the hill stopping at the intersection of Hwy. 6 and Clark Street.  A passerby, seeing Jimmy bleeding and bent over in front of his car, stopped to assist him. Soon a crowd had gathered. Those who heard Jimmy speak recall him stating that "Joe and Walt" had cut him. Jimmy was eventually taken to the Pontotoc Hospital and died on the operating table.

Among the passersby who stopped on the side of the highway to help, were George and Ruth Simon. Mrs. Simon was wearing a mink coat, and when she heard Jimmy tell bystanders that he was cold, she took her mink coat and placed it on him for warmth. Her selfless act of kindness was one my family has never forgotten.

Though murder charges were filed, a Pontotoc County jury found Joe Kidd guilty of manslaughter. The conviction was later voided and remanded to the lower court by the Mississippi Supreme Court, which ruled in part that the dying declaration was not a dying declaration in that the victim was "in no fear of impending death" but hopeful of recovery at the time the statement was made.

This contradicts the testimony of James H. Brandon, a special investigator for the Memphis Police Department, who was visiting his parents’ home, which is near the intersection where Crausby was found bleeding.

Brandon stated Jimmy said, "I know I’m dying, don’t leave me here, get me to the hospital."

In light of Crausby’s death some five hours after being knifed, it would seem the High Court made a "bad call."

Most members of my family believe Billy Joe held Jimmy while Walter Kidd cut him. Apart from the testimony by members of the Kidd family, we have no way of knowing if Jimmy fired his gun in self-defense or not. Every story has two sides, but unfortunately no one on my family’s side was a witness to the criminal act and Jimmy Crausby didn’t survive to give his account of the events that night on Dynamite Hill.

The tragic outcome of this event is not bereft of speculation: Jimmy Crausby may have been the aggressor in the fight. Billy Joe Kidd may have told the truth. Jimmy may have been the victim of a planned attack on his person. Justice may have been served by the courts.

Yet, two people died in the violence; family and friends on both sides carry emotional scars from that night, but what really happened on Dynamite Hill is something most of us will never know.

Here is a link regarding the appeal of the judgement rendered by the local court and the ultimate overturn of the judgement against the appellant.

https://law.justia.com/cases/mississippi/supreme-court/1972/46661-0.html

The Graduate Son

Jason Lamar Carter came into this world on July 16, 1973, during an economic downturn much worse (my opinion) than what the U.S. is currently experiencing. I’ve often told him the reason we have so many videos and pictures of his sister and comparatively fewer of him is a reflection of his family’s dire financial straits and not that his parents found him less cute, less photogenic, or less lovable than his sibling. Yet, until he starts raising his own family, I doubt he’ll ever accept my explanation.

At eight pounds eleven ounces, he was a hunk compared to his sister who weighed-in at barely more than six pounds. By the time he was two he was wearing clothes sized for a four-year old. During the next couple of years there was much speculation he would become a fullback for the football team of some lucky university. Sadly, before he began his ‘schooling’ his appetite for all foods diminished greatly, to the point he became such a finicky eater that he slimmed down more rapidly than his dad’s dreams of son’s gridiron greatness.

Jason never played a down of high school or college football. It wasn’t that he didn’t have athletic ability, but he had become disinterested in playing football by the time he was old enough to play at the varsity level. His mother and I refused to allow him to participate in pee-wee football, believing organized sports would be best suited for teen participation rather than small children.

Having been a teacher and having seen the stress experienced by many of my students whose parents demanded high marks of their children, I vowed that I would never "stand over" my own children and make them do their homework. My approach was to encourage them to do their best work and assure it was their work, not mine or the work of someone else. I won’t say I failed this aspect of parenting, I’ll simply remark the results were mixed.

Most parents with more than one child understand the expression, "They’re as different as daylight and dark."

I’ve found this to be true with my two children, but I’m sure the differences are not as drastic now as they were in their formative years. My daughter was largely self-motivated when it came to her education and was far more driven to please her parents than was her brother. Rayanne worked hard for good grades; Jason did not. In this respect, Jason is a lot like
his daddy. For good grades, I depended more on what I garnered in the classroom as opposed to homework assignments. I settled for B’s when a little extra effort would have produced A’s. Continue reading>>>

Another Cemetery

Neal Huskison and I were not content to end our travels over county roads in search of cemeteries of our ancestors without making the effort to find the back-roads’ route from my grandparents place near Thaxton to Liberty Hill cemetery near Lafayette Springs, in nearby Lafayette County, Mississippi. But, there simply wasn’t enough daylightremaining to sustain our day’s adventures, and we resolved to try our navigation skills at a later date.

The following Saturday afternoon seemed the perfect afternoon to pick up where we’d left off the prior week. I phoned Neal to check his availability,and he was at my backdoor in a matter of minutes. The warm peach cobbler on the stovetop was too much a temptation for him to resist, and he downed a helping before we left.

Neal and I are actually second cousins due to our respective fathers being first cousins. However, we grew up calling ourselves third cousins to each other. My folks either didn’t understand the "once removed" moniker for kinship or else didn’t use it. Thus, if my dad and Neal’s dad were first cousins, my dad and Neal were second cousins, which made Neal and me third cousins.

Neal and I were better prepared to traverse the meandering paved and sometimes graveled roads of rural Pontotoc and Lafayette counties, as we had both made extensive use of aerial maps of both MSN Live and Google on the Internet in the days prior to our second outing together.

We made our way to Thaxton and points north, traveling along what is not named Carter Road, crossing lands once owned by my relatives. Neal could remember where my great grandparents’ house once stood and recalled visiting there when he was perhaps three or four years old. The house he described, I grew up knowing as the place where a sharecropper and his family lived and must have missed the historical significance of the property then owned by Jessie Carter, my granddad’s brother.

Arriving at the intersection of Hurricane Road and Carter Road, we turned left and soon found CR 214 which led us directly to Liberty Hill Rd. We had traveled perhaps for two miles along Liberty Hill Rd. when we came up behind two women on a four-wheeler. Neal rolled down his window and asked if either of them knew about a cemetery across the road from Liberty Hill cemetery. The driver, the younger of the two, appeared to be a teenager and willing shared her knowledge of the area. Continue reading>>

Beardens Visit

For a number of years, I had the privilege of working with Lamar Bearden. Lamar and I were counterparts in our respective divisions of SUPERVALU, when I began as manager of the Retail Systems department in Indianola in 1990. Lamar worked at the Anniston, Alabama division and later moved to Atlanta.

When the process of regionalization began in earnest in 1995, neither of us was interested in the Director position at the regional office. Lamar didn’t want the responsibility, and I didn’t want to relocate to Atlanta. We ‘sweated’ though the whole downsizing process, kept our jobs, and received different job titles. We became specialists, but since the pay went up, we didn’t mind. Through our association, we became friends, and if it can be said we looked forward to regional meetings, it should be noted we saw them as opportunities to spend time together.
Later, when further consolidations occurred within SUPERVALU, Lamar was given the opportunity to retire. Though now retired from SUPERVALU, Lamar continues to work. He found a twenty-seven store retailer in Atlanta who needed his technical skills. Lamar schedules himself to work Monday through Wednesday, but his wife, Charlene, tells us his typical week exceeds that, and a three-day workweek is the exception not the rule.

If Lamar misses working for SUPERVALU, he never lets on that he does. In fact, he told me a few years ago that he makes more money and has more time to enjoy life than before his retirement.
I can’t remember the year I told Lamar about my newsletter, but after reading a few issues, he and Charlene (Pop and Gaga to their grandchildren) became fans of RRN. Lamar has contributed at least one article to this newsletter. Longtime subscribers may recall Lamar’s story on the annual egg hunt at his house, held primarily for the grandchildren.

I remember that Lamar and Charlene really wanted to attend one of the RRN backyard parties of recent years, but something always came up at the last minute to spoil their plans.

Earlier this year, Lamar phoned me regarding a project involving his group of stores and SUPERVALU Atlanta. At some point in the conversation he stated he and Charlene would be driving through Tupelo on their way to Branson, Missouri in the spring.

"We’d like to stop over and see the Carters on our way," he stated. "We’ll stay the night in Memphis, but we’d like to visit you and Barbara since we’re going to be so close."

"Hey, just let us know when to expect you," I stated. "Y’all can spend the night at our house if you like."

A few weeks ago, Lamar emailed me on a Thursday afternoon to let me know they would be passing through that Saturday afternoon. When Lamar called with an update Saturday morning, Barbara busied herself making a pitcher of tea and a peach cobbler. All was ready when the Beardens arrived around one o’clock.

Our granddaughter, Anna Butler, came over to visit, also, bringing Zoey, the dog. While I had met Lamar’s wife in the nineties on a business trip and had visited in their home in Villa Rica, Georgia, just a few years ago, it would be Anna and Barbara’s first time to meet Lamar and Charlene.

We were able to visit for almost two hours before the two were ready to drive into Memphis for the evening. Lamar and Charlene seemed to enjoy getting to visit our home and see the neighborhood both of which they’ve read about for several years. Barbara and I thoroughly enjoyed having them stop by our house, and we look forward to a time of reciprocal sharing if we happen to be traveling near the Bearden’s present home just south of Atlanta.