Post Office Manager

Tell me more about the Spivey Plantation [Putnam County, Georgia] where you grew up.$$What I can remember about the Spivey Plantation was that it looked like everything you needed there, Mr. Spivey [John Greene Spivey] had it on his plantation. One of the things I remember most was he had a blacksmith shop, and the blacksmith shop was right across the street from his cotton gin, he had a cotton gin, where you gin the cotton, we picked the cotton, and you take it to this gin and they gin it and bale it up and send it to town and sell it. But, right, right across the street from his cotton gin was a blacksmith shop, and the blacksmith was named Anderson, his last name was Anderson, A-N-D-E-R-S-O-N, and his first name was Alex, A-L-E-X, Alex Anderson and I understand from talking to some of the people he was a native of Sweden. How he got to America I don't know, but he was--well mules and horses had to be shoed. He would shoe, shoe them horses and mules, and I remember watching him and how he would take these, he would start, I think he always started on the left side of the horse or the shoe, the mule he was shoeing, and he would cut trim and I would ask him, "Does that hurt?" I can remember asking him, "Does that hurt the horses?" He said, "Nah just like your fingernails. Say you cut your finger it don't hurt you. It's the same way with horse." And he would know how, how far to cut 'cause he would have to nail the shoes, all shoes on the, that foot and he, I said, "At least don't hurt these horses you never been kicked?" He said, "No I never been kicked." He said, "I know where to start and I know why, how far to go and I nail these shoes on this horse and the, the mules. They'll stay there until the, you know they wear off and they come back and I shoe them again." I can remember his wife was named Jenny, Jenny, Ms. Jenny [ph.], and the thing I remember about Ms. Jenny she is--and, I, I, I've thought about this a lot. Ms. Jenny didn't have any white friends. All of Ms. Jenny's people were blacks, and I found out that the white folks in that community since Ms. Jenny's husband did ma- manual labor and horse, shoeing houses it was a little below their social standing. So, all the, the visit that Ms. Jenny had were black, black women and she would talk about. She had a son, a couple of sons that lived somewhere in Florida. I think it was St. Petersburg, Florida. She used to talk about them a lot, but I, I can't remember what she used to stay about them.$And then I decided I wanna go into the flying end of it 'cause you got 50 percent more pay when you--on flight duty. So, after doing all this, all these times I said I wanna try out for flight training. But, to apply for flight training it's a whole new ball game. So, they sent me down to Keesler Field, Mississippi [Keesler Air Force Base, Biloxi, Mississippi], which was a classification center. I must have spent eight or nine weeks down there, and they had some of everything. Had you doing some psychological things, psychomotor things, depth perception, all the color blindness. You could get out of there if you were color blind. You have to be able to recognize all of them lights by glancing at them, different colors what they mean. You can't stay with them all the time, but you have to, if you're color blind you had to wash out of that. But, anyway after they get through doing all these testing with you they, they had three categories of people. The guys who had in the top third of the class were designated as pilot trainees. These were potential pilots. That mean we set these guys aside. They, they in the top third of the class. The second tier of classes were guys who, these are guys they were gonna send to Hondo, Texas, and train them as celestial navigators where you can be out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and nothing but water, but you could shoot the moon or the stars or the sun and tell exactly where you are, celestial navigation; those are the guys. Well, the third bunch well I fell, these guys are not gonna be much of anything. We make, (laughter) we make them bombardiers slash navigators (laughter). That's the way I feel. That's all right I took it. So, yeah--$$So you were a bombardier.$$Yeah, sent me. I let there and went to Midland, Texas [Midland Army Airfield, Texas], and stayed down there in Midland, Texas for I don't know how many months, but anyway I left there with a ranking as a flight officer which is similar, similar to a warrant officer junior grade, same pay. Flight officer is a bombardier slash navigator.