A Hundred Year Story, Part 36

By Elton Camp

Snead College was a liberal arts institution in those days

I decided to attend Snead College in Boaz for two main reasons. First, my father
had become unemployed when his job with the veterans’ training had played out through
no fault of his own. He had to get a bachelor’s degree in order to obtain employment in
the public school system. In addition to needing to produce income, his retirement was in
danger. Accordingly, he enrolled at Jacksonville State and lived there due to the distance
involved. Of course when mother had been finishing up her degree, she’d driven back
and forth to Jacksonville but that wasn’t even considered for him.

I realized there wouldn’t be enough money for us both to go to Jacksonville at the

same time. It was essential that he get his degree. I decided that Snead would be okay
and it was. At that time Snead was a respected, private liberal arts college that drew
students from a wide area, including a few from foreign countries. Few colleges operated
in Alabama in those days before George Wallace became governor and established
dozens more.

Second, the President of Jacksonville State (Houston Cole, a friend of my parents)

required all male freshmen and sophomores to take ROTC. I didn’t want anything to do
with the military. By waiting to transfer until I was a junior, the ROTC requirement was
waived. This was a bigger factor in avoiding Jacksonville than finances that might’ve
been managed. I’ve always detested the military in all its forms. I was particularly
outraged by the draft and had no intention to submit to it even if called. The foolish
Vietnam War was in its early stages at that time.

At Jacksonville, my father rented a room in an old mansion a couple of miles

from the college. The house is no longer standing. This gave him a place to stay while he
finished his degree. Mrs.Woods, a leading citizen of the town, was the resident landlady.

Of course I lived at home and commuted to Snead College except for one quarter
when I lived on campus in the dormitory.

Snead College Administration Building

 I rode with Jackie Conquest, Jimmy Mitchell, Henry Reed and C.B. Womack to
conserve on fuel and car use. Jackie had a shiny, clean red Willys four-door sedan; Henry
had a Volkswagen Beetle, but I can’t recall much about Womack’s car, except that it was
a two door Ford hardtop. Womack attended under the G.I, Bill and was much older than
the rest of us.

Henry Reed was in my high school class, so I see him periodically at reunions.
He looks about the same except for being older. Whatever became of Jimmy Mitchell, I
never knew, nor did I know the outcome for Womack. I think that Jackie Conquest is
still living in the area of Guntersville after a career in the chicken plants.

“You should major in engineering,” my father insisted. “That’s where the high
paying jobs are.”

Due to his pressure, I initially enrolled at Snead as a Pre-Engineering student. All

he seemed to care about was that I get a job making big money whether or not I had an
iota of interest in it. I didn’t have the slightest idea what an engineer did except the kind
that drove a train. I was sure that wasn’t what he had in mind. Despite the way he’d
treated me, I had a strong tendency to try to do what he wanted.

Quickly, I learned that I thoroughly detested engineering and the academic

courses that supported it. After a year I changed to something that did interest me,
biology. I only lost one course upon transfer despite the radical change in major. The
reason was that I had earned a few too many hours credit. I entered Jax State as a full
junior.

An interesting teacher at Snead was Sarah Davis Gray, always called “Granny
Gray.” Granny was well into her eighties, but a whiz at math. She was known for
allowing her students to use a “Card of Knowledge” on which we could write anything
that would help us on tests. This wasn’t a sound idea, but she’d done it for years. I was
glad since math was, and is, my weakest subject as well as the one I like the least, by far.
Engineering is applied mathematics, a fact that highlights the folly of me ever giving in to
pressure to select such a major.

Granny regularly asked various students to make the short trip to downtown Boaz
to get her mail. She didn’t drive and it was difficult and dangerous for her to walk that far
at her advanced age.

“Will you go to the post office and get my mail?” she asked any boy whom she
happened to see. “It’s between B and C and on N,” she said.

The letters were the combination of her box. I don’t recall its number with
certainty, but it may have been 231. Nobody dared refuse. Her goodwill, or lack thereof,
could affect the grade she assigned.
 Granny owned a luxury model car, a 1955 four-door Chrysler New Yorker, which
her son and daughter-in-law drove. They lived in Tuscaloosa and often came up to get her
for the weekend. When she retired at Snead, Granny took up tutoring math at the
University of Alabama.
The chemistry instructor was a young man who was reputed to be a homosexual
when such things hadn’t yet become “respectable.” He didn’t try to push anything, but
one time he asked me to go with him to the downstairs storage area for chemistry. He
stood and watched as I got the items he requested and quietly addressed me as “Darling.”
I didn’t reply and he didn’t pursue it. I suppose he was trying to see how I’d react. I later
heard that he’d done other boys a similar way.
Very likely he also suffered from epilepsy. During a lecture in my chemistry
class, he suddenly stopped talking and his face began to twitch in an odd manner. He
stood for several minutes with a blank stare while class members looked at each other
uneasily, but nobody said anything. The professor then sat down, leafed through the text
for a few minutes, and continued the class. One student claimed to have asked him about
it afterward and reported that he claimed not to remember the incident.

His sexual problem was an open secret at the school. Students and faculty alike
privately ridiculed him. My sophomore year, the college administration finally took
action and fired him about two weeks into the term. At that time Snead was associated
with and owned by the Methodist Church so they had a right to discharge him for conduct
inconsistent with its principles. Nobody understood why the college waited so long. The
timing created a huge problem since large numbers of students were enrolled in his
classes.

He was replaced with an old man named Carl Roebuck. He admitted, “I don’t
know anything about chemistry.” By the end of the term, we had to agree with him. We
all made at least “C.” The college wouldn’t have dared do otherwise considering the
circumstances.

The oldest English professor was Miss Maude Spencer. She was an excellent
teacher who helped me to improve writing skills and increased my interest in literature.
Partly because of her, at Jacksonville, I took a minor in English to go with my biology
major. It was, perhaps, a strange combination, but worked for me since I was interested in
both subjects. The English courses have proved helpful in many ways. I still have
considerable interest in literature, especially English and American.

Mr. & Mrs. Cargo, a young couple on the move upward in the academic world,
were both teaching English at Snead. I had English literature with Mrs. Cargo and liked
her well enough. However, I thought that she made unreasonable demands as to the
understanding of archaic English words.

“Be sure you know the meaning of each word in he assigned reading,” she
warned. “If I find that you don’t, I’ll assign a daily “F. You can look them up if you
don’t recognize them.”
 It was unfair. The works contained many unfamiliar words, some of them from
Middle English. Nobody had time to look up all of them. If she discovered anyone who
didn’t know a particular word, she went down the roll to ask its meaning and to assign a
daily “F” to each person who didn’t know. When somebody finally answered correctly,
she stopped so it was hardly an advantage to have a last name near the front of the
alphabet. I got only one daily “F” during the term.

A simple means allowed one to escape the penalty–make up something you

“thought” the word meant and all was okay with her. Despite this serious shortcoming, I
liked her very well and thought that she was beautiful, extremely intelligent and that she
had a very sexy, raspy voice.

She and Mr. Cargo were terminated, but allowed to finish the term, for assigning
a book that included a section about a farm boy having sex with a cow.

“It’s an issue of academic freedom,” they argued. “We won’t back down.
Anybody who doesn’t want to read it should take English with Miss Spencer.”

To require a reading like that was a major scandal in the late 1950s, especially at a
church-owned school. Miss Spencer herself took the lead in driving them out and I really
can’t blame her. They should’ve had better judgment in that time and place. They moved
to the University of Paris where he continued to pursue the Ph.D. What became of them, I
don’t know.

My favorite instructor was Virgil Paul Snow, the biology professor and head of
the science department. When I took the first course with him, I knew right away that
biology would be my major. Biology was easy for me, interesting, and made a lot of
sense. Snow had the reputation of being extremely hard, but I breezed through his
courses.

His laboratory was clean and well organized. It was the only classroom with air
conditioning at the college. The unit was in a window of his office that adjoined the lab.
Snow kept a fan blowing into the lab so that the entire room was pleasantly cool even on
the hottest days.

“It look my entire salary for a month to pay for it,” he stated when somebody
called attention to the privileged environment in which he worked.

No doubt it was true. Church related colleges were, and are, notorious for low
wages. When faculty request more pay, they start talking about “the Lord.” It was clear
that Snow enjoyed his work and tried to do a professional job.

He later married Vivian, a dark-haired, fairly attractive business office clerk at the
college. They had a baby after a respectable period. The report was that his wife later
went insane. The last time I heard of him, he had a job teaching biology at a four-year
college in Georgia. I think it may have been Berea College. A friend of Mr. & Mrs.
Cargo, he received letters from them after they reached Paris. He sometimes shared the
gist of them with us.

Snead had a required weekly assembly in Fielder Auditorium where they assigned
seats and took attendance. It’d been the practice for many years and was consistent with
its nature as a church-related institution.

“If you miss assembly, you’ll be marked absent in all classes all day,” the dean of
students warned. “It could mean lowering your grade.”

The quality programs the small college provided were a surprise. I’d expected to
be subjected to the harangues of some Methodist minister, but they didn’t do that. The
most famous speaker was Frank Slaughter, a noted author of the time. They engaged a
well-known singer of Irish songs for a presentation, but I don’t recall his name.

None of the presentations were designed to convert students to any particular

religion, or for that matter, to religion in general. Snead actually functioned as a public
college and later joined the system of state community colleges. To graduate, one had to
take a religion course, however. Only a minority of students were actually Methodists.
The faculty came from a variety of religions or even none at all.

The student body, assembled in the auditorium, elected the homecoming queen.
The previous year many of them had, as a joke, written, on the blank cards provided, the
name of a boy. Dean Wasson, who was the dean of students, lectured the assembled
student body. “Last year some didn’t know the difference between girls and boys. Don’t
vote for anybody but a girl for homecoming queen,” he sternly charged.

To ensure compliance, he distributed a list of all the girls in the college for us to
circle the one we wanted for queen. To the amusement of those who knew him, a boy
named Connie was on the list. Of course, many of us voted for him. On my ballot, I wrote
a note by Connie’s name to read “A boy. Elementary my dear Wasson.” I doubt that
Wasson actually saw the comment, but I thought it was funny.

Years later when I held a position at Northwest College similar to his, I had a
brush with the same issue. It wasn’t so amusing then. “Some of us boys want to run for
homecoming queen,” a couple of the males informed me. They didn’t want to be queen,
but were attempting to cause a ruckus. If a male name appeared on the list, it was likely
the students would vote for him. I decided to make a stab at joking my way out of an
uncomfortable situation.

“Okay, then. Any boy who’ll certify that he’s a queen can run.”

The term, in that context, meant a sissy male homosexual. The ruse worked.
None of them applied to appear on the ballot. If they’d called my bluff, I don’t know
what my next move would’ve been. It was a relief when they backed down.
 Dr. Virgil McCain, Snead’s president, something of a stand-up comic, had a
practice of awarding a “Doctor of Sorghum Sopping Degree” to assembly speakers. It
was a joke degree related to a local sorghum mill that contributed substantially to the
college. He even awarded one to the famous Dr. Frank Slaughter.

“I’ve been awarded many honorary doctorates, but never one like this,” he said
with good humor when he accepted the award.

Snead awarded the associate degree. It recognized successful completion of a

two-year program of study that included the core curriculum of academic courses. Mere
accumulation of two years of credits didn’t necessarily qualify a student to graduate.

“I’m not going to get a degree,” I informed my academic advisor, Paul Snow. “I
don’t want to take a course in religion and I can’t graduate without it.”

“This is a church related college. It’s reasonable to require a course in religion,”

he urged. You really should go for the degree. You’ve met all the requirements except
that one.”

Despite his sensible arguments, I didn’t take the associate degree since I was
planning to get at least the bachelor’s degree and didn’t see much value in the lower
degree. Also, I suspected that the religion course wouldn’t transfer. Looking back, I see
the decision as a mistake. An extra credential helps a resume.

My sophomore year, 1960, saw a fantastic ice storm that started unexpectedly
while we were sitting in Dean Moody’s American history class. None of us college-age
students had ever seen an ice storm. Its severity and sudden onset took us by surprise. At
first it looked like nothing more than a cold rain, but within a short time the ice began to
build up on everything. Limbs sagged and then began loudly crashing to the ground.
Utility poles began to lean and lines drooped to the ground.

“Look at that. What’s going on?” a student asked the Dean, who had been
concentrating on his lecture and hadn’t noticed the developing situation. After a glance
outside he immediately left to investigate.

When the administration comprehended what was happening, it shut down the
college and sent us home. By the time I reached Mother’s school they’d also dismissed.
We barely made it home. Debris was all over the road. We had to snake the car around
fallen limbs, trees, poles, and live electrical wires.

At that time my father was a senior at Jacksonville State and living there. The ice
storm continued for hours on Sand Mountain. It did an astounding amount of damage to
the infrastructure. Every type of outside object was covered with a thick coat of ice. We,
however, kept power and phone service the entire time, despite widespread outages.
 “It’s because we’re the last house on the road that has city service out of
Guntersville,” my mother speculated. “I’m sure glad. Without electricity, we wouldn’t
have any heat.”

A public water supply didn’t exist where we lived, so we relied on water from a
drilled well. Two blue electric lines led from the house to the pump. They were easy to
reach from the ground.

“I’m going to keep the ice beat off the lines,” I said. “We don’t need to get
without water.”

“I’m afraid you’ll get shocked,” Mother protested.

I managed to convince her, and myself, that it was safe. Each time, I was careful
to use a dry, wooden pole when I touched the lines. The lines were insulated, so unless
contact was made with a bare place with a conductor, a shock couldn’t result. Still,
working with electricity under such damp conditions wasn’t the safest thing to be doing.
Electricity always seeks a path to the ground.

In the rural areas, people remained without electricity for up to six weeks. The
destruction of the power distribution system was unprecedented and overwhelmed
available workers. Had it not been for assistance from electric departments in cities
outside the disaster area, the outage would’ve continued far longer.

“We had to load our freezer on the truck and take it to Guntersville and plug it
in,” a neighbor a couple of miles from us reported. “Otherwise, we’d have lost
everything.”

That ice storm was, in its severity, unlike any that had ever been seen in Alabama.
When the precipitation finally stopped, the sun came out. This resulted in a spectacle of
colored lights sparkling from tree limbs. It was a beautiful sight. The danger wasn’t over.
Large limbs continued to crash for hours. There hasn’t been another such event equal to it
in north Alabama, although the one in 1990 came close.

One quarter I stayed at Pollock-Lipe Hall, the boys’ dormitory at Snead. I wanted
to see what on-campus life was like since I expected to be a residential student at
Jacksonville. The dormitory, a four-story brick structure, was old and run down. It was
torn down years ago.

My room was on the third floor, walk-up. It contained reasonably decent

furniture: bed, desk, and chest-of-drawers. A large closet provided adequate storage.
With discarded curtains from home, an attractive brown bedspread, and a kerosene lamp
converted to electricity, it looked quite nice. Each boy secured his door with a padlock
that he supplied.
 At that time, Snead consistently had a champion basketball team, most likely due
to illegal recruiting of players by Coach Plunkett. One of the stars of the team had a
dorm room that was splendid with incredible furnishings and carpet. The boy drove a
sporty car with elegant power features. I felt sure that it was a part of an illegal payoff to
get him to come to Snead, but such things were winked at in those days. It was only later
that athletic associations punished colleges for such antics.

Covered balconies were at each level on the front of the dorm. This provided a
pleasant place to sit and look out over the campus. The student lounge had a black and
white television with a round picture tube. While outdated, that type screen was once
common. It’s the only round tube I’ve actually seen. The lounge was directly outside the
housemother’s quarters.

“Boys, keep that thing turned down,” she shouted if we played it loud enough to
hear comfortably. “It makes me nervous.” Despite her occasional complaints, the elderly
woman was liked by residents and called “Ma,” a common title for housemothers in
college dorms.

The food service for residents was excellent. The cafeteria ladies took much pride
in producing tasty meals. The cafeteria, a short walk across campus, was neat and clean
although the building was nondescript. One day at the table, a group of us began to
discuss the possibility of “recycling.” “Let’s check,” a boy suggested. He took his knife
and inscribed a large X on the icing of a square piece of chocolate cake. The next day at
lunch, one of the group exclaimed, “There it is.” On the serving bar was the identical
piece of cake with the X intact. We got an uneasy laugh out of it, but none of us viewed
the cafeteria ladies in quite the same way from then on.

An abnormally tall student was called “Highpockets.” It was literally a true

description. His pockets came almost to the level of my shoulders. Although he lived on
the floor beneath mine, we became acquaintances. He was a handy friend to have
because he kept a car on campus. It was quite a luxurious recent-model four-door
Ninety-Eight Oldsmobile. The only problem was that it’d experienced a wiring fire. The
interior continued to reek of burned wires even after the problem was fixed.

“Ride up to Western Auto with me,” he invited one afternoon. “I need to get a
piece for my car.”

We both chatted with the clerk for a few minutes. Highpockets drifted off into the
displays while I continue to talk with the friendly man. Soon he was ready to go. One
the way back to the campus, I got an unwelcome surprise.

“Look what I got,” he whispered slyly.

He displayed a metallic device that he’d stolen from the store. I’d become an
unwitting accomplice to shoplifting. I began to imagine a Boaz police car with flashing
lights coming right behind us. Nothing happened. The theft went undetected. To rat him
out was unthinkable, but because he’d used me to abet a crime, I avoided him afterward.

If money hadn’t been so tight, I’d have liked to continue to live on campus, but
wouldn’t have dreamed of asking. I was glad I got to have the experience.

When I wasn’t a residential student, I ate lunch most days at a café located on a
corner of the main street of Boaz. It provided meat and three vegetables for less than a
dollar. A variety of excellent pies were available for dessert. The usual tip was a dime.
Some left nothing.

“I want you to eat there so you’ll have a balanced meal at least once a day,” my
mother insisted.

The food was well prepared and tasty. The waitresses were cordial. This is the
same café where Delorise’s mother worked for a while, but her employment there ended
before I enrolled at Snead. “When she worked there, she once got into a fight with other
waitresses. It ended up in them throwing pies at each other,” Delorise recalled.

My best female friend at Snead was Delilah Ann Ellis. She was notably short.
When I held out my arm, she could walk under it erect without even her hair touching. I
became better acquainted with her after we both transferred to Jacksonville, so I’ll tell
about her in connection with that institution.

My best male friends were Jackie Conquest, Jimmy Mitchell, and Henry Reed.
We’d occasionally go places together as well as carpooling.

“I know a place y’all will enjoy seeing,” Henry announced. “Be sure to wear old
clothes. It’s hard to get to.”

The next Saturday, we loaded into Jackie’s car and headed in the direction of
Hustleville, sometimes known as “Sock Foot.” We barely managed to get the car off the
road so we could walk toward the sound of rushing water that came from a substantial
creek. We walked cautiously along its banks. In places, the water widened and appeared
deep and almost calm. In other spots, boulders forced it into narrow channels where it
roared and foamed. With the rocks and dense vegetation on the bank, the hike carried
significant risk of running up on snakes. I made sure not to be at the front of the line or at
the back. Nothing happened. Perhaps they heard us coming and fled.

Deep in the woods, we came to our goal, an impressive waterfall. There it was in
all its majesty, thundering down in various divisions as dictated by boulders perched on
the ledge of the cliff. A mist arose in places. It seemed like something out of a dream.
In a more accessible location, it could be a tourist attraction.

In later years that area became a hangout for “hippies,” and associated drug use
and illicit sex. If it were feasible I wish I could see it again. Yet, I recognize that what
impressed a seventeen year old might now be a disappointing reality. Maybe some things
are better left safely in memory with its potential for embellishment.

Another interesting place we went was an enormous man-made limestone cavern

north of Guntersville to the right of highway 431. A level space cut back into the
limestone provided parking. The outside opening to the excavation was large, but only
hinted at what lay inside.

Jimmy had been there before. “It has five parallel tunnels, three on the right and
two on the left. There are cross tunnels joining them. At one place, there’s a natural
cave. That’s all I know about it.”

The tunnels were far from mere passageways, but were more like enormous
underground vaults. Light from the opening didn’t penetrate to the end of the main
tunnel. The ceiling was far above our heads. Dark openings to the right and the left
showed the locations of the side tunnels. We’d brought flashlights, but they didn’t
penetrate far into the thick darkness. The sound of our voices echoed from the rough
walls. We went about halfway back and turned right into a cross tunnel. It opened into
another enormous room running parallel to the one we’d entered. Jimmy took the lead
since he believed he knew the location of the natural cave. We went through yet another
side tunnel and into the third enormous parallel chamber.

“There it is,” Jimmy said. “Anybody want to go inside?”

The opening was small and the ground muddy. It would have been necessary to
crawl inside. If anything happened, nobody knew where we’d gone. We decided against
it. To become trapped or lost would be far too risky.

The last time I saw the place, many years ago a cheap trailer had been hauled in
so that it obscured the opening to the man made caverns. People passing by on the
highway have no idea what lies just out of sight.

We sometimes met at Henry Reed’s farm to hang out, although his father was old
and tended to find fault with most things Henry did. The farm, with a large barn, fields,
pastures, and a pond, was close to the homes of two of my aunts. Henry’s mother did
what she could to make us feel welcome.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)