Several years ago, I convinced the mayor, Joe Lockwood, to get his haircut by Charles. I figured they knew each other at some point but what an opportunity to watch the interaction between the "old" and the "new". Native Family/Resident and New City/Mayor. Abbe Laboda and I went over there and took photos, listened and wrote a story.
As I passed by the little brown shack the other day and saw the sign back up and thought.... Yeah for Charles Day. His friends, the mayor, seems everyone was telling him to put the sign back up that he was told to take down by a new city employee years ago. That sign ordinance or something like that. They all told him it was a mistake, and go ahead and put it back up. Mr. Day wouldn't do it. He keeps quiet about that stuff and didn't find it that important I suppose.
Well, now it is back to looking like it did for who knows how many years in the Old Milton and how charming to see what once was, wasn't lost forever.
Here's our story from back in 2008....
Mr. Charles Day and His Barber Shop
By Patti Silva and Abbe Laboda
March 2008
After passing it for some time, leave it to Patti to stop and say hello. The next thing I know we are sitting in this tiny building on a Tuesday night getting a history lesson, not to mention a lesson on haircutting. We were touched by the heart on his sleeve, inside-out warmth of this 80 years young barber and how he stood on his feet for three hours cutting hair and relating stories. We learned about horses and buggies, old storehouses, crops, how to make butter and how folks stored sweet potatoes. There were tidbits of Milton families and about old Milton County. (He started a story on his Granddaddy McClesky which we will revisit at a later date.) We learned that Mr. Day also has a barbershop in Sandy Springs and his patrons included Eddie LaBaron, Jack Nix, Lester Maddox, Jim Aldridge, Charlie Brown, Sid Bream and Wally Fowler.
On that Tuesday night a few of his customers included Randall Cagle, whose father Edward Cagle pastored Boiling Springs Baptist Church on Birmingham Road for almost 40 years, and Milton’s first mayor, Joe Lockwood, and his second grade son, Charlie. Surprise and laughter filled the room when, upon arrival, Charlie and Mr. Day recited each U.S. President in exact order. Afterwards, the quick-witted Mr. Day recited the Smithfield Address for us in another lesson.
He had lots of stories to tell, but one stood out in particular. It's about growing up in this area during the Depression through the late 1950’s, and what life was like back then. It is best told in his own words:
“My Granddaddy McClesky, old home place is the house on the hill, across from the church on the corner of Hopewell and Birmingham.” (It is said to be one of the oldest houses in Milton and Fulton County which was built in the early 1800’s. Some people refer to it as the Hopewell House, others refer to it as the McClesky house. It still has a painted ceiling in the parlor of a Moravian Star of Bethlehem. The Moravians were a group of missionaries that came through the area about 1820.) “My granddaddy McClesky bought that house sometime between 1910 and 1915. He thought that was the most beautiful he’s ever seen.”
“I lived there 11 years until I got married and moved here. Our family were sharecroppers. My granddaddy didn’t own his own farm, so he borrowed money from his brother, who owned Seven Gables Farm, to start a country store. That was H.D. McClesky’s granddaddy. He was very tight with his money. My granddaddy ran that country store on the barter system. He had eggs, butter, chickens, rabbits and more. We would trap rabbits, which was legal at the time, and sell them. That’s how we made a little extra spending money. You see, I was born during the Depression. We didn’t have money, but we had plenty to eat. (If you, our readers, remember our column on Dorris and Hazel White, you’ll recall Dorris said the same.) I can remember Christmases when we would get a little bit of fruit and maybe a chocolate or two and what a treat it was and how proud we were.”
“We didn’t have loaf bread like we have today, but we had home biscuits, country ham, home canned vegetables and sweet potatoes. To preserve them [sweet potatoes], we made a pile and then laid sticks and straw, and then some boards or whatever we could find and packed it with dirt. We built it up like a tepee. It was a lot of work. Then in the winter when we needed some potatoes you’d scratch out a hole to get them. A lot of people did that when I was a boy.”
“People raised hogs and dairy cows. I can remember when I was in high school everybody in the county had a dairy cow. I remember when I saw a dairy truck pull up. I couldn’t believe it that you could get your milk from a truck. It was about 1953 or 1954, while I was a senior in high school. If somebody would have told me that when I raised my three children that we wouldn’t need a dairy cow or had to go out to a well to raise water or go out to the outhouse on a cold morning I wouldn’t have believed it. We didn’t have electricity and lived in shotgun houses. It was just the way of life, but we got by.”
“I have the perfect solution to our water crisis. Back then we had all the water we wanted. We had to go out to the well and draw it in a bucket and bring it back in. Give everybody all the water they want. Put a spigot out in the street that would be impossible to hook up a water hose. They could have all the water they wanted for free, but they had to go out and get it. Then when you have to go out and get that stuff and bring it in the house (it won’t be wasted). But nowadays we are so spoiled. I’ve seen my own mother and sister let the water run in the sink in the kitchen. I can’t stand to see that water run.”
“I used to have a barber who worked for me. One day he was shaving a man and he let the water run. I timed him and he let that hot water run 57 minutes wide open. There’s no sense in that. I was the one who had to pay the bill. People take it for granted. Staying too long in the showers. All this stuff has been mentioned in the paper. I can still see my brother and sister with a 1/3 glass of water brushing their teeth. Why 1/3 glass and not a full glass? Because we had to go out and get it. You think about what you’re doing. You use it wisely. We got by. Again, give everybody all the water they need, but they have to go out and get it. The ones that are not able to go get it, let the neighbors get the water for them.”
“When I was a boy the men folk help the widows in the community. They would help get the water and keep their woodpile high. The men saw to it that they had what they needed.”
“In 1940, we lived at the Campground, the family whose house was closest to us had all caught the old fashioned flu and were in bed. That winter we had a lot of snow, about a 1 ½ ft. Mother and daddy were tending to their livestock and to the well. Remember nobody had electricity. It was close to zero degrees and it was cold. I remember I was almost five in January. The snow drifts were so high you couldn’t see where the ditches were.”
“Mother didn’t have any boots so Daddy would take a stick through the snow while he walked to the neighbor’s house and packed the snow as he went. Mother took two fertilizer bags and lined her feet with them and tied a string to keep them on, then follow daddy’s footsteps over there. She’d start a fire in the wood stove, milk their cows and tend the chickens. [The neighbors] were so sick they had to use portable potties or buckets and it was so cold they would freeze so she would have to warm them up and pour it outside. The two teenage girls were so sick that they were vomiting and had disentary and messed up their bedclothes. Momma would wash their clothes and bed by hand and have to hang them in the house so they wouldn’t freeze. On the third day their medicine was starting to run out. So daddy walked to the country store up at Joe Percell’s. That store burned and now it’s an antique store. Joe Percell started telling people as they came into the store about them and what was happening. Well, we had only been in that community for one year but the word spread. Oh, the people started to come in the next day and they sat with them around the clock. They set a fire night and day and tended to them until they got well. Mother was like a nurse, bathed them, helped them on the bed pan, whatever needed to be done. They kept that family from dying.”
“In 1943 my daddy nearly died from double pneumonia. My brother and I plowed part of our land with George Turner. He got all the neighbors to help out one morning. The men plowed our garden and the women carried the manure out of the barn by baskets full to put in the garden. They planted nearly 15 – 18 acres of cotton and 20 acres of corn. There were 39 teams of mules and everyone was working on our farm. They had it done by 11:00 that morning.”
“That was when neighbors knew how to be neighbors.”
It was inspiring to listen to the recollections of a past generation. There is no doubt that the older generations of our Milton today deserve all the respect and kindness we can provide. Our generation is one that can learn from the past to curb our hurried and self-centered lives and strive to be better individuals by lending a hand to our neighbors by simply being kind.
If you want an honored experience that you’ll never forget, take a moment one Tuesday or Thursday evening to stop at Mr. Day’s barber shop for an old fashioned, expert haircut. Then later, when you drive by Mr. Day’s, remember to wave and show him that neighbors still know how to be neighbors.
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