The Houses of Cleburne County

WILLIAM CARROLL MOORE little Helen Marie over the snow and ice to visit neighbors for tafy pulls and apple-bobbing parties. During their stay at the Taylor Place, one of Dad’s main jobs was head carpenter for the construction of a new house for Mother’s dad, J. A. Gresham, Jr., on the Gresham Road property, where our family later lived, and where it still stands. Dad also learned the side job of barbering. Men came to their house every Saturday for haircuts in ever-increasing numbers. Mother complained that if Dad didn’t leave home before noon on Saturdays, their house became a public place. Dad solved the problem by renting a chair in Lawson Roberts’ barber shop in Pearson. This solved the domestic problem, and we’re told Roberts enjoyed the extra trafc. During this time, we don’t know if Dad kept farming the Badders land or the land that came with the Taylor Place. From here the family moved to the Coe farm, owned by Dad’s family. THE COE FARM The Coe farm, which belonged to Dad’s grandfather Robert Franklin Coe, and where Dad grew up from boyhood, covered a large, farmed acreage and had several houses on the property. Our family lived in what they called the “Simmons House,” built by Dad and his granddad to house Dad’s aunt Nancy and her husband, Walter Simmons. Mother described the house as having two 16-foot-square rooms under a gable, with a lean-to kitchen room on the back. While there, my sister, Helen Marie, attended the McAnear School where Mother, – 9 –

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