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As a small boy I can well remember the so-called "Lamp Lighter". The streets were lighted by kerosene lamps at most of the street corners and intersections. Late afternoon the street lighter would make his rounds with a short ladder and a can of kerosene, to service and light each light. Early morning he would return to extinguish the lights. My home, being on a corner-each day I eagerly waited the return of the lamp lighter. For light inside the home, it was either kerosene or candles.
During my research on family histories, I think that the saddest part was the high infant death rate.' I find one family of ten children, not one lived to the age of twelve. Another family of fifteen children not one lived to be twenty. By far the worse was a large family of children, all mentally and physically retarded to the extent that not one was able to walk, and none were able to wait upon itself.
Getting away from the sad side of life, a few lines on the lighter side of life would be proper. Virginia is more or less divided into two different topographical areas. The northwest partis more or less mountainous, and the balance hilly or flat. The people from the mountain area called the southern part "The flat woods". As the settlers came into Virginia and settled in the flat part first, it is but natural that the fertility of the soil here was exhausted first. It seems that a man from the more fertile mountain country came to visit a friend in the less fertile flat woods. Awakened in the middle of the night by the continuous barking of a hound dog, the friend and his guest decided to go set; what the hound dog was barking about. After walking some distance through fields of broom sage, they came upon a lone tree. The hound dog under it was barking as loud as he could. The tree was a persimmon tree and in the top was one lone persimmon. Indeed it is very poor land that will only grow broom sage and one persimmon.
With so much work to do one would ask what did these people do for amusement? Every home had at least one fcann^i=y musician in the family, for the ladies a harp, a harpsichord or a dulcimer For the men, a banjo or fiddle, both more than likely home made. There was no written music amongest these people they played by ear only, tunes handed down from one generation to another, with new ones added from some friend or stranger passing by. The tune "Arkansaw Traveler" is a good example of the stranger passing through and wishing a nights lodging. Needless to say the stranger could not leave until he had taught his host the new tune. To gc with this music there was the barn dance, held from time to time, with the different plantations rotating as hosts. Although their time for pleasure was very limited, they were very happy with wha4-they had.