Growing Up
In Hard Times

Lyndal Thomas Tatum and Julian Thomas look at Julian's High School yearbook at Julian's home in Glennville

Julian Thomas (r) with Nolen Seckinger at Tyson School, circa late 1940's. Nolen passed away in January 2005

Lyndal Tatum Thomas, a High School senior

Julian's 1951 Basketball Team, Julian is
center of back row, #19

Jackie's 1951 Basketball Team, Jackie is
second up on the far right

Siblings Reminisce About Growing Up During The Great Depression

by Sarah McLeod

The following is reprinted from The Glennville Sentinel, Glennville, GA, Senior Moments Edition, March 10, 2005. The pictures at left along with their captions are taken from the same article. Special Thanks to the Glennville Sentinel for researching and publishing this bit of our family history.

Julian Thomas was an only child for five years, so when sister Lyndal was born, playing pranks on her was an endless source of entertainment for the mischievous older brother.

“Where we lived, there was a place about as large as a city block where several roads came together and formed a diamond,” said Lyndal. “Julian told me that if I ran around that diamond three times, two white calves would follow me home.”

Although she was skeptical, Lyndal ran around the diamond as fast as she could. By the third lap, she was gasping for breath—and still no cattle had appeared.

“I ran up to Julian and demanded to know where the calves were, and he told me to turn around and look at my legs. The ‘white calves’ had been following me the whole time!,” Lyndal laughed.

Another prank, now family legend, began when preteen Julian raided an alligator nest and transported the infant reptiles to Tyson School where he bartered them for marbles, toy guns, and other boyhood valuables.

“I had the baby alligators in a box on the school bus, and someone saw and told the principal on me. He advised me not to bring the alligators back to school,” said Julian.

Julian and Lyndal were born to Rufus and Bertha Thomas in 1934 and 1939 respectively. Younger siblings Kerry, JoAnn, Wanda, Anita and Ronnie completed the family.

“We lived so far out in the country that I used to say a ‘country’ separated us and Glennville,” Julian joked.

Lyndal remembered that her father was one of the only residents in their community who owned a vehicle.

“Our father wasn’t drafted in World War II because he had a truck, seven children and was a farmer, said Lyndal. “I always felt that he had the hardest job of all because his two brothers were drafted and he had to provide for his own family, his brothers’ families and his aging parents.”

But farming was not the only source of income for the Thomas family.

“The turpentine industry was a source of cash for many farming families during the 30’s and 40’s. Turpentine had many uses and was produced from the gum of pine trees, and most farms had turpentine trees around wet and wooded areas. Slash pines were the best turpentine trees,” Julian explained. “Once each week during hot weather, a fresh streak was made on the face of the tree which caused the tar to run. The slow running tar was then collect in a cup at the base of the cut. This procedure produced a full cup every three or four weeks, depending on the soil, the moisture level, and the size of the pine tree. It took about 300 cups to fill a barrel.”

Farmers looked forward to taking their barrels to market to be sold, and on one occasion Lyndal, four or five years old, begged her father to allow her at accompany him and Julian to the market.

“He told me that I could go but that I was forbidden to get out of the truck. It was in the middle of July, and the entire area around the market was covered in black tar from where the farmers had rolled the barrels out of the backs of their trucks,” said Lyndal. "Of course, as soon as Daddy was out of sight, I jumped out of the truck. I was barefoot, and tar oozed up in between all of my toes. When my father came back and saw me, he was furious!”

Julian added, “Not only were her legs and feet covered in tar, she had pine straw sticking to her. She looked like she was wearing show shoes!”

Their father was not amused. To clean off the tar, he wiped Lyndal’s feet using gasoline from his truck and sternly told her that it was her first and list time to go to the turpentine market.

The Thomas children attended Tyson School, where the late J.N. Wall served as principal.

“Principle Wall had a tremendous positive influence on his students. He really encouraged me to play sports, and it was an outlet I enjoyed throughout my High School years even though I had not grown up watching sporting events. I played in the first football game I ever saw,” Julian recalled.

Lyndal shared her brother’s enthusiasm for athletics and played basketball during her middle school and high school years. In fact, Lyndal lived with her basketball coach, Emily DeLoach, and a relative while she completed high school in Glennville so that she could be “in town” for basketball practices and games.

When school was out of session, the Thomas children worked on their family’s farm. Whether they were picking tomatoes, cotton, or tobacco, or helping neighbors on hog killing day, there was always something to do.

“During World War II there was a shortage of farm labor because most of the men were fighting in the war,” Julian remarked. “Every single day, someone stopped by our house and asked if I wanted to work in their tobacco fields. I finally hand painted a board that said, ‘No tobacco help here’ and hung it in the front yard.”

Until Lyndal was in the sixth grade, the Thomas family lived on a farm near the Cowford community, between Oak Grove Baptist Church (where the Thomas family were members) and Stoney Hill Baptist Church. In the mid-1940s, Julian and Lyndal’s father decided that he could make a better living if the family moved to Glennville.

“Because Mother didn’t let us ramble around the neighborhood, all of the neighbor’s children came to our house to play everyday, and it just got to be too much for Mother,” said Lyndal. “After a few months, Mother decided that life would be easier for her back in the country, with just her own children to look after.”

Rufus Thomas purchased a farm outside of Reidsville, and the family settled back into rural life.

“During the time we lived in Glennville, electricity had become available to our rural area of Tattnall County,” said Lyndal. “It was 1949. I was amazed that you could put water in trays in the freezer and get ice cubes.”

Despite growing up in the country, Lyndal and Julian agreed that they never felt deprived as children.

“Our family circumstances were equal to the other kids at school and the community. There was always plenty of food in the house and we had enough cloths to wear. We had a very secure childhood, and I never remember looking at other children and feeling that I didn’t have something they had,” said Lyndal.

During his senior year at Glennville High School, Julian met a classmate who would soon become his wife, the former Jackie Deloach.

“She and I were the only members of the class of 1951 to marry,” said Julian. “We each played basketball, and this allowed us to get better acquainted. On a road trip to Metter, the girls played first, so they had the chance to shower, change clothes, and board the bus before the boys did. Jackie sat on the outside of the seat, not allowing anyone to sit next to her, claiming t be saving the seat for me. I think she was really keeping the entire seat to herself so she could rest on the way home, but when I got on the bus, the other players insisted that she allow me to sit with her. She did and in 2004 we celebrated our fifty-second anniversary.”

Neither Julian nor Lyndal attended college, though they both would have liked to.

“I was the valedictorian of my class and was very involved in athletics, so had I graduated in the 80s or 90s, I’m sure I would have gotten a college scholarship,” Lyndal speculated. “But back then, none of that was available, and it just wasn’t expected that girls would go to college unless they were from wealthy families.”

Lyndal married Kennon Tatum of Reidsville and found employment at the board of Education as a payroll officer, working under six superintendents during her thirty five years of service. Her husband, a farmer, leased her father’s farm and eventually purchased it when Rufus Thomas passed away. Kennon has also been driving a school bus for the Board of Education for forty-one years. They have three children. Kay, Ken and Kevin and nine grandchildren.

“When my daughter was a senior in high school in 1976, I wanted her to take a senior trip, so I organized a cruse to the Bahamas for her senior class,” said Lyndal. “People around the community started telling me how they wished they had gone on the trip, and I told them if they agree to go I would organize another trip.”

Since then Lyndal has hosted annual (and sometimes semi-annual) trips that have taken her and other to all fifty states and many foreign countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Europe. The trips are open to the community and the traveling group has been dubbed the “Tattnall Travlers.”

Julian and Jackie were able to join the Tattnall Travelers on a recent trip to new England.

Through the years, Julian and Lyndal have remained close and were by each other’s side during the family’s worst tragedy—a vehicle accident that claimed the life of Julian and Jackie’s only son, Danny, in 1984.

“Losing Danny was the worst thing that’s ever happened to our family,” said Lyndal.

Even 21 years after the accident, Julian and Jackie are unable to speak of their son without emotions.

“He gave us joy in so many ways,” said Jackie. “He left us two grandsons, Brett and Drew, who continue to bring us happiness, and we also now have a great-grandson, Waylon.”

Although Julian held various careers, he has owned and operated a mulching business, Nature’s Choice, Inc., since 1976. (He is in the process of turning over the business to Drew.)

In the early 1990s, the Thomas family suffered another blow; Julian was crushed when a jack slipped while he was working under a tractor trailer. He was hospitalized for six months.

“He is a survivor,” said Lyndal. “Despite his injuries, he was persistent and didn’t give up.”

Strong faith in God has sustained the siblings throughout their lives.

“Church was very important to our parents, and they instilled in us children the love of God,” said Lyndal. “When we were younger, our family attended Oak Grove Baptist Church. As an adult, Julian moved his membership to First Baptist Church of Glennville, and I and my family are now members of Pineview Baptist Church.