| Summary: | (6:31) Houston Cobb talks about going to school and the role of church in his life. This interview is part of an oral history project funded by a grant from the Alabama Historical Records Board, managed by the Alabama Department of Archives and History staff, using funds provided by the National Historical Preservation and Records Commision.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Huston Cobb
May 27, 2009
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Clint Alley and Patti Hannah
Clip 2 of 9
Clint Alley: Okay. Well, when you were, ah, when you were growing up when you were little, ah, what role did going to church play in your life? Were y’all real active in your church?
Huston Cobb: Yes. We lived right by the church, and the school that was right down, half a mile down the road here, and we lived back over in the fields, so we were closer to the school and church, you know, than most folks. Because you had to walk, those who—no buses came up here. When you reached the sixth grade, and finished that one-room school that we attended, that was it, unless you had some folks, you know, living somewhere where you could go. And we didn’t have that. My aunt, my mama’s baby sister, since there was no bus coming up here, and she got ready to go to the seventh grade, she had to go down there and catch the bus, and she had to ride down there with Daddy on his way to Nitrate Plant 2. He had gone to work down there after Wheeler got finished. And so she’d have to stand around down there in the winter time and it’d be night, you know, when he got back, and early in the morning when he’d leave. So my mother started me to going down there to be with her in the middle of the year, when I was in the sixth grade, and that’s how I wound up in Leighton and met my wife, I was talking about, when I was in the sixth grade. And primarily the same thing had happened to her, because they had moved from Ricks out here, moved from out there, down here below Mt. Pleasant, and her sister was having to stand out to meet the bus from way back over in the field, mile and a half, back over there, so her mother didn’t want her doing that by herself, so my wife started standing, being down there with her, and that’s when she came back to Leighton; that’s how we met. Sixth grade, both of us bashful!
[laughter]
HC: But we claimed each other!
CA: Yeah!
[laughter]
CA: Well that’s good, that’s good. So, did you, ah, did y’all have a—
HC: You asked me about church, though?
CA: Yes, sir, yes, sir.
HC: Ah, we were right at the church. There was no road, this is Shoal Road right here. The graveyard was way back over in the field there. The plantation owner had given a acre of ground for a colored graveyard. And so, you’d come down to the church, and then, if it was raining you couldn’t go through that field, so I would have to hook up the wagon and haul the bodies over there. I buried a-many people like that.
[laughter]
HC: But, in other words, we had to, ah, we had to go to church every Sunday. They didn’t have preaching but twice a month cause the preacher was pastoring this church, the second and fourth he would be here, and the third and—
CA: So he was a circuit rider?
HC: —yes—third and, ah, [laughter] first he would be at whatever other church he had, which was over at Red Bank, where, where he was—you know where Red Bank is?—okay, but anyway, ah, that was my grandfather, see he was a preacher, and my grandmother taught the little children what they call, I forgot what they called that little old book she taught us out of. If it was too bad to go to church, then she would come over to our house, and we still had to have class. I thought she was as old as the hills. She wore those long dresses. She died in ’35 I think it was.
CA: So you knew your grandparents pretty well then?
HC: Oh, yeah. And she wasn’t but 49 when she died, and I was thinking she was old cause she wore those long dresses, but back there then and the folks have gray hair, you know, and you was small, and everybody look a lot bigger than you, when you—, but we had to go to church, and after I came out of service, they made me a deacon down there. So I stayed with that for ten years. Then I was the Worshipful Master of the Masonic lodge. I was one of the two youngest Worshipful Masters in the state of Alabama, one, another guy from up there in Russellville. And I stayed with that until I became a member of the Church of Christ. Then we started going out here in Lei—started at Sheffield first and then, had what you called a circuit rider came through here and he negotiated with the white folks up there, they were building a new church in Leighton and they sold us, let’s see if I can tell you, let us take up the payments, $3,000 on this building. And that’s right down from the red light there in Leighton, but we moved it across the branch there and remodeled it, so you wouldn’t know it as that, now. And then later we built another building out there where that one used to be, here year before last, and I’m an elder in that. So I’ve, I’ve been wound up with the church all my days.
CA: That’s good, you’ve been active in the church for your entire life, then.
HC: Um-hm.
CA: Uh, well did y’all have ah, did y’all have a lot of singing at church? Did music play a big part in your life growing up?
HC: Yeah, we had, uh, we didn’t, when, when I was down there, we didn’t have, the instruments like they have now, be we used to do a lot of singing, had a lot of quartet singing and that kind of thing, and, ah, revival meetings.
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