BARKLEY, WILLIAM GUFFIE
RECALLS THE "GOOD OLE DAYS"
Across
the Fence
By
Arvord Abernethy
I was
downtown the other day and dropped by to see Guffey [William
Guffie] Barkley for a few minutes. We got to talking about the
“good ole days” in
Hamilton, and Guffey [Guffie]
has had many of them.
His first
taste of
Hamilton
was in 1908, when as an 8-year old boy, his father, Wood W. [William
Wood] Barkley, brought the family all the way from Turnersville to
attend the
Hamilton
picnic. They stayed for two days as guest of the Burl McKenzie family. Two
years later the Barkley family moved to
Hamilton
and found that the saloons that almost lined the north side of the square
had been voted out.
Mr.
Barkley’s first work here was the buying produce for the
McKinley-Corrigan store which consisted mostly of chickens and turkeys at
that time. The store set between where the Shell station is now and the
county jail. The Hamilton National Bank was on the corner where the
station is now. The store had some large pens back of the store to hold
turkeys and chickens in, but in the fall season they would lease the
Farmers Union warehouse and when enough were brought up, they would load
them on the train and send to market.
Sometimes
on Trade’s Day the store would tie bills of money to the legs of the
turkeys and throw them off the top of the store. Talk about a scramble,
there would certainly be one. Trade’s Day and First Monday were big days
for
Hamilton. Trade’s Day usually had drawings of some kind and First Monday was
when farmers brought in their horses or mules that they wanted to trade or
sell.
We need to
remember that in 1910,
Hamilton
County
had about twice as many people in it as it does now so it took some big
stores to handle the business. Besides the McKinley-Corrigan store, John
L. Spurlin had a large business that lay along north of the Jones
Appliance Center [west side of the square],
William Connolly had a large store along where Winn’s and Wilson
Electric are now [south side of the square].
This store was later owned by Perry Maxwell. G. M. Carlton’s store was
at the southwest corner of the square where the law office is now and some
of the businesses on west.
These were
general mercantile stores and some of them handled farm implements. When
automobiles came in, they took on some line of cars. Perry Maxwell had the
Ford agency, G. M. Carlton handled Buicks and it seems that John L.
Spurlin handled Chevrolets when they came in. T. T. Gordon probably
handled the
Overland
and Willis-Knight cars. The story goes that the first car that Dr. Winn
bought was a Haynes-Apperson that had been brought to the 1909
Hamilton
picnic for demonstration. As the demonstrators were going back through
Hico with the car, the drive chain broke so they had to leave it with the
Nance Bicycle Shop for repair. When it was repaired, Dr. Winn bought it.
Dr. Bolding also had one of the earliest cars in
Hamilton
. Hico was a very thriving town at that time, so they probably had some
cars before
Hamilton
did.
Speaking
of cars, Guffey [Guffie] showed me a picture
of cars that had been backed in side by side up to the curb on the west
side of the square. They looked like they were all Model Ts so were
probably all new ones. Must have been a good cotton crop that year. Horses
hitched to wagons and buggies were all around the courthouse fence.
In asking Guffey [Guffie]
about his business activities in
Hamilton, I found that his first venture was a soda-pop stand in the southeast
part of town. He didn’t have anything for an ice chest, so he dug a hole
and put the pop and ice in it. He had a little red wagon and would take it
down to the Hamilton Bottling Works, which is now Purity Products Company,
and buy two cases of pop at a time from John Baxley. Just a little
different from the well over 50 years of connection that he has had with
the Hamilton National Bank.
By 1920,
Mr. Barkley had a service station over there where the City Hall is now [southeast
corner of the square]. He handled Fisk tires. Remember their ad
showed a sleepy-eyed boy with a candle and a tire over his shoulder with
the wording, “Time to retire.” He also handled the Federal white
knobby-tread tire. This is the kind that Guffey had on his car, and the
day of his wedding, he was hurrying around and stuck a nail through one of
them, so that called for a dirty, sweaty job before the wedding.
The
wedding took place as scheduled and in a fine way as it was a double
wedding. Not only was Guffey [Guffie] and his
bride, Mavis Doggett, married, but Cleo Santy and his bride, Ann
Jones were married also by Rev. Pete Curry. Rev. Curry was a
son-in-law of Charley Johnson and a brother-in-law of the late Johnnie
Johnson. The patched knobby tread tire carried Guffey and Mavis on their
honeymoon trip to
Waco
and probably many more miles around
Hamilton.
The
untimely death of Cleo Santy ended his and Ann’s life together, but
Guffey and Mavis have had 67 years of happy prosperous life together and
we all wish them many more.
Mavis and Guffie were married 69 1/2
years before Mavis died.