Crabology
For the past several weeks I’ve been deep-diving through the archives at newspapers.com reading the columns that my Great-great-uncle Crab Breland wrote for the Biloxi-Gulfport Daily Herald newspaper for almost forty years. Though his real name was Bostick Hanson Breland, he was known in boyhood as “Crabapple,” a nickname hung on him by his teasing friends and relatives after a girl accused him of being the sourest person she knew—as sour as a crabapple. Once hearing that, I can imagine his older brother and a few of his most playful uncles delighted in perpetuating the name. “Crabapple” was soon shortened to just “Crab,” an appellation he proudly wore for a lifetime—he even adopted it as a penname and called his newspaper column “Crabology.” I suspect that most people, particularly his readers, didn’t know his given name.
Crab started his newspaper career in the mid-1880s writing for the Handsboro Advertiser and other local Mississippi Gulf Coast papers. When George Wilkes, founder of the Biloxi Herald promised Crab a column as a weekly regular feature, an exclusive relationship was formed that was maintained for over four and a half decades. By the time of his death in 1949, generations of Herald subscribers had read Crab’s reportings and homespun philosophies.
The different headers used over the years for the “Crabology” column in the Daily Herald newspaper.
The columns began the first week of February of 1914 and “Crab-olgy” quickly drew a loyal audience. From the beginning, the editor at the Herald gave his column a header billing him as “Crab of Big Level.” This did much to put Big Level on a larger map. But before I go further, let me tell you a bit about this man.
Uncle Crab was born in July of 1861 in the early days of the Civil War, just three days after the Confederate victory at the first battle of Manassas (a.k.a. the Battle of Bull Run). Though he was born in the southern section of Perry County, Crab settled in the Big Level community of Harrison County (before the upper section of Harrison became Stone County) making his home there for his remaining years. By making this move to Big Level, he was in effect coming home, as his grandfather, Jesse Breland (1799-1874), was one of the area’s earliest pioneer settlers. (This Jesse Breland is my 3rd-great-grandfather.) Plus, many of Crab’s relatives were already there. Crab once said that he decided to come back to Big Level because he’d “caught all the fish there was to be caught” up in Perry County. His Breland ancestors and descendants can be found in the lineage of just about every person born into a Big Level family. In fact, his older sister, Christiana, affectionately known as “Dump,” was my Great-Grandmother Lott. Crab died at home in 1949 at the ripe old age of 87, four years before I was born.
In addition to being the widely-followed writer for which he was best known, Crab tried his hand at several other jobs over the years. Though he was a lifelong farmer—an occupation he was admittedly poor at—he was for a few years the postmaster of Big Level. In the early 1900s, he took over the old Flint Creek post office which was established before the Civil War, moved it to the City Road near White’s Crossing and called it the Wisdom Post Office. He maintained it there until rural free delivery came to the community around 1916. Additionally, he served as a constable, a deputy sheriff, and was once elected to the county board of supervisors. Crab also related a few humorous reminiscences about his time as a guard overseeing one of the prisoner work-details that helped to build the roadway through Harrison County that later became part of U.S. Highway 49.
Uncle Crab even once tried his hand at trapping. As he told it, skunk fur was quite the fad around the turn of the century, particularly in Europe, and skunk pelts brought top dollar for a few years. Learning this tidbit about skunk trapping especially delighted me, as several years ago while working on my family tree I discovered that my Grandfather Bond, age 23 at the time, gave “Trapper” as his occupation for the 1920 U.S. Census. Like Crab, Papa Bond also had an entrepreneurial spirit and took up several money-making endeavors over his lifetime. When I saw first “Trapper” I could only think of beavers, foxes, and the occasional bobcat, all common wildlife here in the deep south, but skunks never entered my mind. It wasn’t until I began to read Crab’s stories, did I have the proper context to fully appreciate the nature of the trapping business in south Mississippi.
And, speaking of the census, in the spring of 1910, Crab was the U.S. Census enumerator for Beat 5 of Harrison County, the district that covered Big Level at that time. Traveling around the community in his horse and buggy, visiting every farm and household, was a job he must have particularly enjoyed, as he mentioned it fondly in several of his columns over the years. I’m sure the things he saw and learned while making his rounds, the various families and their relationships, backgrounds, and business interests, coupled with the knowledge of the community gained from his years as postmaster, greatly enhanced his reporting and storytelling for his newspaper column.
Part local current events, part political commentary, part reminiscences of an old man, the “Crabology” columns are filled with the happenings of Big Level, Wiggins, and the whole of Stone and Harrison Counties and surrounding areas. He reported on who visited whom, who was sick, who was getting married, who died, or who just had a new baby—allowing me to fill in several gaps in my genealogy records. He had much to say about the courts and local, state, and national politics. He recounted the ravages of two world wars and multiple hurricanes. He described the new technologies of telephones and automobiles, radios and rural electrification. He told about the local farming and cattle operations, the schools, the timber industry, and other Big Level enterprises. At times humorous, at others poetic and eloquent, Crab’s columns were always written in a manner that clearly showed his affection for the area and for the people who were his friends, neighbors, and kinfolk.
Here are two of my favorite passages from columns published in the summer of 1926. Note his playful use of the language (“deturned” instead of detoured) and his nosistic use of the “editorial we”:
June 1, 1926 - “In driving into Wiggins a few days ago we deturned from the main road by way of Poverty Fork, and on by the Big Four farm for a change. A book could be written about the natural beauty of this route, and say nothing about the improvements and the developments along the way. Aside from its beauty the Big Four pecan farm, which is a four-cornered partnership affair, is perhaps as valuable a piece of country property as any in this county. It consists of 200 acres of pecans of the best grades, some twelve or fifteen years old, set 17 trees to the acre, making a total of 3400 trees. The dwelling and other buildings are adequate and of good construction, and the place is occupied and looked after by George Madsen and his family. A public road runs through the property from east to west. This is being greatly improved by reinforced concrete fence posts on both sides. At all fence corners, gates, and driveways these posts are of an extra-large pattern and the roadway, or lane, when finished will be as straight as a die.
“Beyond the Big Four, and a half mile nearer town, is the G. E. Pratt place, which for loveliness and value is equal to the Big Four. The old dwelling on the Pratt place was either destroyed by fire or demolished some time ago, but Mr. Pratt has a modern barn on the place, and contemplates erecting a good modern dwelling at an early day. This Pratt place has growing upon it 1000 pecan trees similar to those on the Big Four already described. In a class with these two pecan orchards is that of U. B. Parker, who has several thousand trees in his orchard in south Wiggins. And still in the same class is the J. A. Simpson farm and orchard just east of town on the highway which compares with any of the others. Then comes the Friendship farm and orchard of F. M. Stapp, which is even prettier, and perhaps as promising as any of the rest. There are still others that should not be slighted, but we never thought what we were leading into when we set out to tell about the nut growing industry of Stone county.”
July 2, 1926 - “A TRIP TO THE COUNTRY: If you should happen to be in Wiggins and should have an hour to spare, and it should be late in the afternoon just before sundown, and the month should be June; and you should desire to commerce with nature, rest your tired eyes upon her beauty, lean your soul against her great heaving bosom, and forget the toil and strife of the day, just crank up your flivver, or better still, a good horse and buggy — but if neither of these are available, you may walk. Go out Pine Street, past the Kew Mercantile Company Store, on by the great lumber yards, detour around the driveway that surrounds the Finkbine office where man has tried his puny hand in competition with nature in the creation of beauty spots. Go on out by the club house, along the quaint but well-kept country road, pass through the narrow lane that divides the Pratt farm, with its fringe of cedar and camphor trees on either side, and rows of pecan trees further back, pass on by the great pump that automatically carries the crystal waters of Flint Creek over to the log ponds at the mill, stand on the bridge that spans the creek and fill your lungs with the pure cool country air of the evening. Let the odor of wild flowers as it steals from the swamp by the wayside tickle your nostrils, and the unsurpassed richness of the perfume of the white bay or small-leafed magnolia filter through the sluggish atmosphere to intoxicate your olfactory nerves. Stagger on under the spell of scents and colors and scenic beauty that surrounds you on every side, pass through the long country lane that divides the Big Four farm, where three thousand pecan trees wave a greeting at you through the gloaming. Turn back, face about, take the upper road, pass by the Old Harvison place with its adjacent cemetery, both of which have been occupied by the living and the dead for nearly a century past. Cross the creek again on another rustic bridge, stop and repeat the program carried out on the other bridge earlier in the evening. Follow the winding road in its zigzag course through the suburbs of town and finally back to the place of beginning. If you do this, and make this journey according to the rules here set forth, and have not been fully paid for your time and effort, you undoubtedly belong to a class with ‘soul so dead’ that no compensation can satisfy.”
I especially like these items, not only for Crab’s poetic description of the natural beauty of the farmland around Big Level, but for the detail he uses to describe two specific farms that hold a prominent place in my memory and in my heart. The first is Big Four Farm for which Big Four Road is named. My family home is in the Poverty Fork area of upper Big Level, just off this road. The second is the Pratt Farm, later to be called Cedar Grove Farms. Gena and I spent the first five months of our marriage living in a small 4-room cottage on the old Pratt place—a most idyllic setting for the start of our life together. The cottage was located just behind the barn and across the road from the main house that Crab mentioned. The barn is still there but, the small house where Gena and I lived 50 years ago, is not. Sadly, both the Pratt and Big Four farms have now been subdivided into residential lots.
Russell & Gena Lott at Cedar Grove Farms, This grainy photo was taken in May, 1973, just before we moved to Cleveland, Mississippi, to attend Delta State University.
Crab occasionally let his chauvinistic and racist attitudes show through in his writing. Southern white man that he was, his views on a number of issues—women’s suffrage and racial segregation, for example—reflect the historical and contemporaneous thinking that was typical of the time and place in which he lived. I’m not at all surprised by this, as I grew up on the tail end of his era and I know firsthand what those attitudes look and sound like. Even so I must say, to encounter these crude racist remarks today feels very much like a slap in the face. Did he have to use those terms, right there in black and white for all to read? Didn’t he have any concept of social injustice? Sadly, he did not. But I can’t castigate him too harshly. After all, he is my people. Plus, I’m looking back from the perspective of history—the right side of history, I hope. Which makes me wonder: Which of my ‘ologies,’ my beliefs and attitudes, that I hold today will my descendants will look back on three or four generations from now with embarrassment, disdain, or worse, and ask “What was he thinking? Why couldn’t he see the light?” Perspective is everything.
Notes:
“Crab Carries a Big Stick” https://newspaperarchive.com/gulfport-daily-herald-feb-02-1911-p-1/
“Skunk Fur, Why Have We Forsaken You?” https://www.truthaboutfur.com/blog/skunk-fur-forsaken/
A WORD TO PONDER
nos·ism (noun): the practice of using ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ in giving one's opinions. Often used in editorial writing. See also ‘royal we.’
Source: wikipedia.en.org
SONG OF THE DAY
“Out In The Country” by Three Dog Night (It Ain’t Easy, 1970)