First Diesel Truck 'Round Here: Part 3 of The Green Bean Phenomenon

                Big diesel engines have an allure to little boys.  It’s a fact science cannot explain.  Lifelong drivers have told me ‘diesel gets in your blood’.

                As the bean crop poured into the bean sheds, they had to be transported to the canneries in East Tennessee, West Tennessee and Southern Kentucky.  While some of the early beans were delivered to the bean shed in wagons, everything left on trucks for that final leg of the journey.  Trucks had been coming and going from the bean shed for several years when one sultry summer evening there was produce left unsold.

                Not wanting anyone to lose-out on all of their hard work, someone suggested Guy Beaty might buy them if they could only reach him.  Thankfully, the telephone was in place and Mr. Beaty promised to send his trucks to pick up the beans.

Young Rube & Fritz Beaty

                Rube and Fritz Beaty were driving for their cousin and were leaving Jamestown with only partially loaded trucks.  They headed south as the workers anxiously awaited them at the bean shed.  In the quiet of the muggy evening, the rumble of those big trucks could be heard a mile away.  About a half-mile out, the pitch changed as Rube and Fritz started backing off the engine. 

                Hearts raced as the trucks covered the last few yards – men because their work was about to be rewarded and boys because they were about to see the source of that exciting noise.  The Beatys made their left-hand turn into the graveled parking lot, maneuvered a quick 180 degree turn and skillfully bumped the dock.  To the wide-eyed boys, it seemed magical.

                Today, our roads are crowded by shiny diesel rigs pulling long trailers, heavy equipment or pairs of smaller ‘pup’ trailers.  We still stare out our windows and marvel at their power.  But Rube and Fritz Beaty had rolled into the bean shed with the first diesel-powered trucks in the area.  It was the late 1950’s and it was still common to see mules working the fields of the Cumberland Plateau.  No one could imagine the transformation that transportation would see in the coming years.  That night, no one cared.  They were just thrilled to welcome the Beatys and their diesel-powered chariots saving the day – or at least the crop.

The Bean Shed: Part 2 of The Green Bean Phenomenon

                With just a little ambition (or hunger) it’s not too hard to come up with a profitable product or service – something you can do or make that other people might need, want or enjoy.  The challenge is marketing.  This is true today and it was surely true when snap beans began to sprout across the Cumberland Plateau. 

                There were people who wanted the beans, they just had to be matched up with the farmers who were growing them.  Thus, The Bean Shed was born.

                On the east side of Highway 127, just south of the Clarkrange Baptist Church, Harry Martin donated land for the bean shed.  Some folks were skeptical of the success but many more were thrilled by the opportunity to market their produce.  (I don’t have the year that the bean shed was built, but would welcome that information from any of our readers.  Please just click on “comments” below.)  Two other sheds would soon be built in Clarkrange and several others across the plateau.  Jamestown had sheds operated by the Crooks and Beaty families.  Mr. Maddox had a shed in Crossville. 

                From the end of June, everyday saw local growers filing into the bean shed with trucks loaded with bags of green beans.  There were even instances of people carrying a bag of beans in on their backs.  Months of hard work were about to be cashed in.  Buyers gathered, carefully inspecting the half-bushel sample of beans that each farmer displayed. Then, an auction was held and the highest bidder loaded his own truck with the sweet vegetable and headed out toward the canneries. 

                This place was all business.  While there were a small handful of folks who gathered just to see the excitement, mostly everyone was there with a mission.  For the children though, it was always a great adventure to make a trip to the bean shed.  Teaming with people, both neighbors and strangers, this beehive of activity felt like the fair and their day’s hard work was quickly forgotten as they watched it all.

                This economic center of the community was in operation until about 1961.  By then, the scale of production had outgrown the auction scheme of the bean shed and buyers were making their purchases directly from the farmers and loading them in the fields.  With the addition of tractors for planting and tilling, then the miracle of the mechanical picker, farmers that had been planting 5 – 20 acres were now counting acreage by the hundreds.  At this time, brokers began buying crops directly from the farmers and transporting them directly from field to cannery.

                I wonder if any of our readers ever remember visiting one of the bean sheds.  We’d all love to hear your account.  Just click on ‘comments’ below.

The Green Bean Phenomenon

                The shadows lengthened as the summer sun lazily began his trek over the horizon.  Coal oil lights burned in the homes as supper was finished, prayers were said and children tucked into their beds.  Sleep was welcomed, for the people of the plateau had worked hard this day.

                Today was not unusual; it was summertime and the green bean harvest was upon us.  Early in the morning, men, women and children alike streamed into the bean fields to pull from the vines little emerald sticks of wealth… or at least livelihood.

                The green bean phenomenon began its sweep across the plateau in 1933 and lasted until the 1980’s.  In the wake of this sensation we find a community transformed, and lots and lots of stories! 

                As the story goes, in 1933 work was scarce and money short.  Well that’s just history – U.S. history.  We all know that with the stock market crash of ’29 the nation was plunged into The Great Depression.  I’ve heard stories of farm families who had no stake in the stock market, little money in the 20’s and therefore felt the depression years only mildly.  Perhaps that would be the case on the plateau as well – for there was no industry here before the depression years, no great companies closed their doors in that time, no breadwinners dismissed from good jobs. 

                Needing work and unafraid of hard work, Dempse Cooper spotted a truck loaded with green beans headed south through Fentress County and wanted to know what that was all about.  He fell in behind him and followed him till he could stop and question the driver.

                It seems the load had originated in Kentucky where farmers were growing green beans for public sale. Mr. Cooper saw an opportunity. He planted a single acre of beans.  By 1954, 6,000 acres of plateau farmland was planted in green beans and income from the crop had topped 1 million dollars.

                Green beans are somehow legendary in our community.  So, the telling will take several chapters – or weeks in the blog world.  Next week, we’ll visit The Bean Shed!  Now you know you won’t want to miss that do you?

Out for a Stroll

Today we have walking tracks and treadmills in our homes or we drive to a gym to walk for our health.  Some of our larger (and generally northern) cities still have some foot traffic, but here in the south, we tend to drive to shop, drive to work, drive to church – wherever we are going, we’re going in a car, truck or SUV.  But it wasn’t too long ago that walking wasn’t a pastime or a form of exercise; walking was the means of getting where you needed to go.

                Last week we talked about the scarcity of cars on the plateau even well into the 1940’s and 1950’s.  But if you think about not owning a car, and not having any kind of public transit system, can you then imagine the walking part?

                Young folks always enjoy each other’s company.  They would walk miles and miles to go to revival services, picking up more kids as they went along.  The people in Martha Washington remember going to church in Hanging Limb and Muddy Pond – now that’s just about 9 miles, but you’ve gotta climb through an awfully steep hollow, crossing Hurricane Creek.  They also regularly trekked to Rinnie, requiring them to cross the hollow across Clear Creek to make that 7 mile trip.

                Today, the trip to Jamestown, Crossville, or Cookeville – those places where most people have to do business is a 30 minute drive with paved roads and 55 – 70 mph speeds.  But without a car, it was common to make the trip on foot.  The constables would in fact sometimes walk a prisoner to the jail in Jamestown. 

                Lelon Stepp found work in the Homestead (probably when the homestead was being built) and while he could stay there while he was working, he made his way home periodically.  On one trip, he bought his mother a stand of lard and headed home.  That 27 mile walk might be daunting enough, but with the addition of approximately 50 pounds of lard I can scarcely imagine it.  You may be thinking that 50 pounds isn’t so much; we commonly load a pack for hiking that heavy.  But a lard stand is bulky and awkward to carry.  He could only have hoisted it onto his shoulder.  That day, Lelon only had to walk as far as Isoline (15 miles from the Homestead), where he met a neighbor who gave him a ride the rest of the way home to Martha Washington.

                We read in The Bible of Jesus and His disciples walking great distances to preach and teach.  We know that Paul, Silas, Barnabas and Timothy set out on foot on great missionary journeys.  We can look at the maps, and even pictures of the Israeli Mountains.  But it becomes reality when we know the hills and hollows that surround the Cumberland Plateau and we think of our family and neighbors who started out without a concern or complaint for making the trip.  How many of us would sit down and pout if we couldn’t get to the grocery store without a long walk?  Can you imagine our teenagers’ response if we told them the mall was just a jolly 20 mile walk away?  There is certainly a lesson to be learned from these folks, and we should remember them the next time we are stuck in slow moving traffic while sitting in the comfort of our automobiles.

Have You Driven ... Lately?

                Americans have long had a love affair with the automobile.  In 1908 Henry Ford debuted his Model T with a vision of delivering a car the average American could own.  The average American did not live on the Cumberland Plateau. 

                There are many stories surrounding the first time people around here saw a car, or the first folks to own one.  WWI hero Alvin C. York owned a car in the early 1920’s and people would line up around the courthouse square to watch him drive by.  Whether it was the car or the hero isn’t entirely clear, but they were certainly more accustomed to Sergeant York than to cars.

                Folks were making-do just fine with their horses (or mules) and wagons.  But Millard Stepp had a wagon with iron wheels.  And those wheels would squeak and groan with every turn.  His brother-in-law, Rufus Baldwin, had a car which he drove on Sundays so Millard would occasionally borrow Rufus’ wagon for church.  See, Rufus didn’t have iron wheels; he had wooden wheels with iron tires.  No, all tires are not created the same – in fact, all tires are not made of rubber.  An iron tire is a thin iron strip that encircles a wooden wheel making it more durable.

                Carpooling may have originated in these rural communities.  Millard’s son-in-law, Eugene Welch, had a car and would often stop to give the family a ride.  By the time Eugene’s wife and three kids, Millard’s wife Em, and Berris’ Stepp’s wife and two kids all piled into the car, there was no room left.  So Millard and Berris just hopped on the running boards and Eugene took off.  The one-mile trip to the Martha Washington Church was never more fun – at least not for the five children on-board; they are the ones who tell the story!

                By 1957, Millard was 71 years old.  In that year, his youngest son, Cletus, brought home from Ohio a 1937 Chevrolet and Millard learned to drive.  He had just one more car in his life, about ten years later he stepped up to a 1947 model.

                I don’t suppose any of our readers will remember the first cars around, but do you have an early-car story you’d like to share?  Please just click on “comments” below – I’d love to hear them.