Remembering Gillespie Run
An Oral History Interview with Oren R. Jackson
19 March 1995
Gillespie Run is a long, narrow valley in the southern part of Ritchie County, West Virginia. The fertile hollow and its environs are now largely deserted, though a few inhabited homes still dot the landscape. Families which had lived in the area for generations have since moved on, looking elsewhere for a means of livelihood as subsistence farming became impractical. There are several abandoned homes along the dirt roads that traverse the hollow, and a trip into the backwoods is liable to turn up a sunken foundation or a dilapidated structure--once a home--in the most unlikely places. Though it may be difficult to imagine today, Gillespie Run was once a busy, if not prosperous, community tucked away in the Appalachian foothills.
Oren R. "Brud" Jackson is a product of those hills, and, though he left them for 30 years and has seen much of the world, he still bears the indelible stamp of the rural ideal: a belief in the rewards of hard work and the wisdom of self-reliance. His adherence to these tenets can be seen in his sunburnt features and his strong, scarred hands.
Mr. Jackson was born on a ridge overlooking Gillespie Run's right-hand fork on November 8, 1925. Today, he and his wife of 47 years, Betty Kimble Jackson, live on a ridge overlooking another valley--on the outskirts of Parkersburg, West Virginia.
Though not usually a talkative man, Mr. Jackson eases readily into describing his boyhood on Gillespie Run. "What I remember mostly is the mud," he says. "Sometimes in the winter, it would be up to a horse's belly." Mr. Jackson had many chances to become acquainted with the mud, for it was a mile-long walk down the hollow to the local one-room schoolhouse, Jackson School. Later, he walked an extra mile to catch a school bus, which carried him to Cairo High School--a 20-mile ride on another muddy road.
There were worse inconveniences than the mud, however, Mr. Jackson recalls. "The worst part of it was the outhouse," he says. "Walkin' out there on a cold morning... You didn't linger long in the old outhouse." His family was not alone in facing this discomfort, though. It would be many years before indoor plumbing would come to Gillespie Run. In fact, the house in which Mr. Jackson was born did not have running water until the mid-1970s. In the meantime, families relied on privies.
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Oren R. Jackson, c.1937 |
As a youngster, Brud Jackson remembers seeing WPA workers build privies for local farmers. Sixty years later, the Jackson farm's outhouse still stands--a forgotten two-seater monument to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.
"Well, our family didn't think much of Roosevelt," says Mr. Jackson. "He was a Democrat, and Grandpap Ira was a staunch Republican." How staunch? "[His wife] was a Democrat, and Grandpap wouldn't give her a ride to the polls election day, knowing she was gonna vote Democrat... He'd be pretty upset for a couple of days before elections and two or three days afterward before he'd settle down again."
Ira Jackson was only a second-generation Republican, however. His grandfather had fought for the Confederacy, but Ira's father, Isaac Jackson, had a more practical view of politics, according to Mr. Jackson: "One day this fella stopped by the house... and he said, 'Mr. Jackson, looks like you could use a new pair of boots.' And Isaac said, 'Yeah, I s'pose I could.' 'Well, you vote for me, and there'll be a new pair of boots for you in the store up at Harrisville.'" Isaac did vote Republican and changed the family's political leanings, but whether or not he received the boots is unknown.
Despite his family's Republican tradition, Mr. Jackson expresses respect for President Roosevelt's resolve. "He'd done things that had to be done," Mr. Jackson. While he believes that Roosevelt helped many people, Mr. Jackson credits World War II with ending the Depression. "Until the war, there wasn't a job to be had nowhere," he says.
The Depression had little direct effect on Gillespie Run, claims Mr. Jackson, "because people raised almost everything they needed." The children of the area had little knowledge of the Depression itself and received only bits of information from adult conversation. For them, the Depression was a distant, abstract threat. Besides, there were many ways for a young man to earn money in the neighborhood.
"We'd do a lot of night-hunting--for possum or skunk," says Mr. Jackson. "I had an old sawed-off single shot .22 rifle." Opossum hides brought 10-15 cents a piece, while a skunk skin could bring as much as 50 cents to a dollar, depending upon how much white was in the coat. A "number one" had the least amount of white ("maybe just a spot on the end of the tail") and brought the most money from a local peddler named Mullenix.
When he was 9 or 10 years old, Mr. Jackson killed a red fox. "I got 2 dollars for that fox and thought I'd made out like a bandit," he recalls. Not everybody was so happy about his good fortune, though. "The neighbors were mad--told Pap he should've kicked my ass," he says with a laugh. It seems some of the neighbors liked to fox hunt, and they were upset about losing their quarry. Brud was a social outcast for some weeks after that.
Another money-making venture for local boys was selling scrap metal. Mr. Jackson and his friends hitched up a neighbor's pair of oxen and picked up the scrap metal surrounding nearby oil rigs.
Of course, there were many odd jobs for a young man in the neighborhood, but the work was hard, and the rewards were small. "I used to mow yards for 10 to 15 cents," says Mr. Jackson. The going rate for a day's work was a quarter. A neighbor, Bill Wright, once paid the young Jackson 35 cents for a day's work of hauling corn. This immediately raised the ire of Mr. Wright's neighbors, who were perhaps frightened by a sudden escalation of the wage scale.
When not out working for a dime or quarter, Mr. Jackson was working at home; there were many chores. "I was really what you'd call a 'go-getter,'" he says. "I'd go get this or go get that--whatever Pap needed... And there was no 'why?' or 'wait a minute'... because punishment was severe and immediate."
In retrospect, Mr. Jackson believes he got a few more "whuppin's" than he deserved, but he also remembers several instances of mischief when he escaped punishment altogether. One such time was when he and his friends accidentally started a rockslide from atop the local stone quarry that closed the road for a day. Conveniently, this also freed the boys from school for a day, though nobody ever connected them with the incident.
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Oren R. Jackson, c.1944 |
There were other forms of entertainment besides starting rockslides. The family had a radio, but its use was confined to Saturday or Sunday night, when they unhooked the truck battery to power the radio. (Electricity would not reach Gillespie Run until 1947.) On other occasions, the children would walk down the hollow to listen with a neighbor or Grandpap Ira, whom Mr. Jackson says had a good Philco radio, with its own battery. This treat was usually reserved for "when something special was on, like a prize fight or the Grand Ol' Opry."
When he was 16 years old, Mr. Jackson decided a life on Gillespie Run was not for him. "I was out hoein' corn one day," he says, "and I looked up, and that row of corn looked like it was a mile long. And I thought, 'there's gotta be somethin' better than this.'"
Mr. Jackson quit school in his junior year and left home to work at a Parkersburg service station, where he made four dollars for a twelve- to fifteen-hour day. "That was more many than I'd ever seen," he remembers. During the next two years, he changed jobs often, working for Universal Glass Company, Atlas Towing, Criss Sand and Gravel, and the Parkersburg Creamery ("that one lasted about a week," he laughs).
As a boy, Mr. Jackson had been given some issues of Our Navy magazine and had often thought about becoming a sailor; this decision was made for him when he was drafted into the U. S. Navy in late 1943. When his two-year enlistment ended, Mr. Jackson returned home and "kicked around for a few months." He soon re-enlisted, though, and served 20 years in the navy before retiring. In the interim, he had married Betty Kimble, earned his high school diploma, and risen to the rank of chief petty officer.
Eventually, Mr. Jackson--with his wife and two youngest children--returned to Gillespie Run, where he resumed hoeing that long row of corn. He hoed it for 20 years before moving in 1991 to Parkersburg, where he enjoys the financial security and comfort his work has brought him. He looks back on his life and says, "I've had a good life...a good wife...good family...and have no regrets." He might miss hoeing that row of corn, though. Just a little bit.