| Personally Speaking By
Tom Kelly I believe in the future of farming, with a faith
born not of words, but of deeds . . . These words emerged from the dusty cobwebs of my long-term memory a few weeks ago, when I learned of the death of Murphy J. Barr, history writer for The Piney Woods Journal. He was 97. During an earlier time in his life--and mine--he taught vocational agriculture/FFA at the Dodson High School, where I managed to graduate with four years of credit in the course. That was not because I intended to pursue farming as a livelihood, but only that in the limited curriculum offerings of that period in North Louisiana, it was necessary in order to gain enough credits to earn the diploma. In the all-male vo-ag/FFA studies, we horsed around with . . . horses, cows, pigs, chickens, row cropping, farm mechanics, carpentry and other manly occupations, occasionally in the actual flesh, as well as academically from textbooks. There was also the introduction to future leadership possibilities in community life and politics in the parliamentary law and debate drills. We thought it appropriate that the girls were going through their own indoctrination in the four-year home economics studies of cooking, sewing, decorating, and whatever else it was they worked on, as we vaguely fantasized about a future we weren't very sure of. The girls knew. We were just daydreaming; they knew that, too. Murphy Barr, born in neighboring Jackson Parish in 1911, grew up in the Dodson community, as a barefoot boy in elementary school, through the days when it was the timber and sawmill boomtown of Winn Parish in the 20th century late teens and twenties, all the way through the Depression years of gradual decline and mellowing into the village of today, more remembering its past than anticipating a lively future. Our trajectories crossed somewhere around 1945, as World War Two was winding down, and those of us just young enough to have missed going off to war were making our way through high school. At this juncture he came to Dodson High School, where he himself had graduated in 1930, to teach us agriculture and whatever civilization he could tease into our mischievous brains. Murphy Barr was a gentleman, and a gentle man. There were times that we took unfair advantage of his temperament by not so subtly challenging his patience with our perverse rowdiness. And there were times when he led us to learn things that were not necessarily in the agriculture textbooks but were nevertheless important. For instance, during the post-Depression days of World War Two, everyone, including young children and half-grown boys with mush for brains, were encouraged to help collect scrap metal, save bacon drippings to be turned over to the government to make explosives, and help grow and preserve food, much of which was rationed at the stores. I and my FFA classmates at Dodson High School, worked under Murphy Barr's supervision to clear land on the school ground and assist in the construction, wiring, and plumbing, of a community canning center where local residents came to prepare and preserve their farm produce and home-slaughtered meats. After a year or so at Dodson, Mr. Barr was succeeded by J.Y. Terry, a native of Lincoln Parish. A fresh-out Army veteran who had done duty in North Africa and Europe, he was not so rattled by our jackassedness. From Dodson in 1945 Mr. Barr went on to Lincoln Parish, to teach at Simsboro, then to principal at Hico, and finally to principal at Hillcrest Elementary in Ruston during the 1970s. Among those who passed through that school during his principalship were my three daughters. Three generations of my family shared school with Murphy Barr, beginning with my mother and aunts, who were fellow students at Dodson; I myself; and my children, who were schooled under his administration. To bring the connection full circle, within a couple of months of the first edition of The Piney Woods Journal in Dodson back in 1997, there came a knock at our door. Murphy Barr walked in, with a folder of papers in hand. He made it known that he had written some articles about things he remembered about the Dodson community, families in North Louisiana, the coming of the railroads, the days of big-time sawmilling. And of course, the rest is, History-- which he continued to write regularly for The Piney Woods Journal until less than six months before his death. The last time I saw him, in the spring of 2008, he was still driving his own car, and his mind was clear, with remembrance of families, names, connections, going back for almost a century. My only regret is that we did not "download" more of his knowledge while he was alive. He is missed, and will be. |