Truckin' on the Western Branch

I was born there in 1925 and it was a great place to live—quiet and peaceful. My mother was a great southern lady—had parties and taffy pulls—pulled hot candy, made sweet hard candy. The church was the social life as were sewing circles and home demonstration clubs.

I had four brothers. It was the good life—hard life but good. It was like camping. The furnace burned wood and coal, and we had to bring water from the well. We had an outdoor privy, kerosene lamps, chicken feed sack dresses, but we thought we had the world on a string.

In hurricanes the water came up to the barn and tore down a lot of trees. The coal bin flooded, and the house nearly did. Back then there was no warning of hurricanes, no TV, only radio. Farmers would look at the clouds. The windows got broken out before mother could pull the shutters over them.

A couple of doctors from Churchland would make house calls, including Dr. Riggins who came in a horse and wagon when R. C. was born.

Mom was a homemaker — washing on a board, hanging clothes, cooking three meals a day — but still had time for us. I cleaned house after school and was about seven years old when I started ironing with a six-pound iron. I was thrilled to death to iron a man’s shirt. We didn’t have much time to play in the summer. We canned peaches, apples, grape jelly, figs, lots of corn and tomatoes, green peas, beans, okra.

I was always surrounded by boys. During the summer there was swimming—the boys would jump from the railroad tracks and the top of the freight cars into the water. In the winter we played on the frozen river. I had a bicycle and could go all the way to Churchland and not see a car. The boys cut down the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, and Santa Claus decorated it with family ornaments. We went to Gates County and Gatesville to see grandparents—Christmas with mother’s family on Christmas Eve and with Dad’s family the day after Christmas. We all piled into a 1934 car with gifts from the dime store—coloring books, etc. There were always lots of kids there.

The best part of living in the county was the beautiful quiet—I don’t regret it for a day.

I graduated from Churchland High in 1942. I married William Holland, and we lived in Green Meadow Point. I had to be close to my parents.

Jimmy Lilley Jimmy Lilley, Rufus Lilley’s grandson, works the farm with an appreciation for what those before him have gone through. The farm is smaller now since Lilley Cove, a residential area, was developed in the early 1990s. But in five years it will be eligible for Century Farm status—denoting that it is a working farm that has been continuously owned by a single family for 100 years or more. I graduated from Churchland in 1968 and worked on the farm. There weren’t a lot of farms back then—the Trotmans, the Griffins. The Lewises started farming when Ashton Lewis showed an interest. He rode around with our father to learn farming and started farming in Point Elizabeth in the 1960s. The Lilleys farmed where just about any of the subdivisions are now—Castle Heights, Westmoreland, West Norfolk, the Hardee land, and the Russell land. We rented the biggest percentage of land around here. In the 1980s we farmed close to 2,500 acres from the Godwin Bridge to the Churchland Bridge—soybeans, corn, peanuts. My father took a combine on the ferry to combine soybeans near the Naval Base.

Minnie and Rufus Lilley at home on the farm.

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