As a resource into life in the emergent rural south, Tom Pelham’s “Kids Don’t Have Backs” (BookBaby, 2021) joins a growing list of well-written memoirs documenting the ordinary, often hard-scrabble, and usually overlooked lives of those who built the backbone of this country.
Many will recall the author’s name as he rose in professional stature to head the State of Florida’s Department of Community Affairs from 1987 through 2010. The agency’s mission sought to control the rampant suburbanization of valuable farmland where inadequate infrastructure existed to support the additional requirements of Florida’s burgeoning and essentially unregulated growth.
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Pelham’s memoir is a loving remembrance of a childhood on the farm. Tallahassee Writers Association’s recent guest speaker, Joe Knetsch, expounded on the need to get local histories correct if you intend to paint a realistic setting in historical novels or nonfiction. Pelham’s memoir achieves this.
The Pelham farm, like its neighbors, was built on ingenuity, sweat, and a dawn-to-dusk, seven-day-week work ethic. Holmes County, the location of the Pelham farm, is still rural and firmly rooted in its Florida Panhandle agricultural heritage.
From the vantage point of Holmes County in the early 21st century, it is hard to grasp the reality of pre-electrification life in the early- to mid-20th century. We take for granted each light switch, each faucet, each flush.
Tom’s story is told in short, focused flashes of reality as he recounts the multiple aspects of boyhood on the Pelham farm. Each episode builds on his experiences from feeding and tending livestock, to working the garden and fields that sustained the family and paid the mortgage.
The title, “Kids Don’t Have Backs,” derives from his father’s admonition to get back to work as he and his brother complained of their sore backs earned by bending over all day to pick cotton.
Tom and brothers Bruce and Stanley hoed garden rows, pulled weeds, cleaned miles of fences of overgrown weeds, stacked firewood, cleaned the barn, milked cows, and tossed hay bales onto an ever-growing pile. It becomes obvious that the work on a family farm involves the entire family and is never finished.
The arrival of spring meant clearing weeds, attending births of livestock, and preparing the fields for the season. The fall harvest of corn, cotton, peanuts, and hay all had their share of strenuous labors. It was a frugal life filled with chores but punctuated with the inevitable fun and mischief that boyhood requires.
There were excursions to the pond for swimming, marbles on the back porch, the excitement of the weekly ice delivery, and the “rolling store.” The barnyard was their playground.
Occasional trips into town meant the movies with their serials and cartoons. Some of their efforts paid off in real cash. The Watermelon Kings episode can be appreciated by anyone who has ever stopped on a country road for farm-fresh watermelons.
In Tom’s day, the features at the Bonifay “picture show” meant Roy Rogers and a cold “co-coler.” Their cool Saturdays in the darkened theater gave Mom and Dad time to do the weekly shopping for groceries and farm supplies. Tom’s view of the outside world was also informed and fueled by his passion for baseball and the heroics of Mickey Mantle and the Yankees.
His early fascination with the faraway team was fed by surreptitious scans of the sports pages in the neighbor’s newspaper. News of the Yankees was finally made more accessible by the arrival of a television in the early 1950s. Tom’s boyhood dream of watching the Yankees in person was eventually fulfilled when a class trip to New York included a home game with his favorite team.
“Kid’s Don’t Have Backs” is rich in description, detail, and honest appreciation of the lessons of hard work. Its unflinching reality, both fascinating and entertaining, is unencumbered with hubris. It is a detailed look at a life that began in a two-room shanty in 1947 and expanded through the early days of rural electrification, indoor plumbing, and finally the arrival of television.
Tom Pelham’s personal memoir is an excellent look back at a simpler time that many could only imagine. It is an easy read and a wonderful resource for anyone seeking an insight into life on the farm in mid-20th-century America.
Bruce Ballister is a former President of Tallahassee Writers Association. His books can be found on Amazon and at our two locally owned bookstores. Signed copies can be ordered on his website, www.ballisterbooks.com.
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