BARKLEY, WILLIAM GUFFIE RECALLS THE "GOOD OLE DAYS"

Across the Fence

By Arvord Abernethy

I was downtown the other day and dropped by to see Guffey [William Guffie] Barkley for a few minutes. We got to talking about the “good ole days” in Hamilton, and Guffey [Guffie] has had many of them.

His first taste of Hamilton was in 1908, when as an 8-year old boy, his father, Wood W. [William Wood] Barkley, brought the family all the way from Turnersville to attend the Hamilton picnic. They stayed for two days as guest of the Burl McKenzie family. Two years later the Barkley family moved to Hamilton and found that the saloons that almost lined the north side of the square had been voted out.

Mr. Barkley’s first work here was the buying produce for the McKinley-Corrigan store which consisted mostly of chickens and turkeys at that time. The store set between where the Shell station is now and the county jail. The Hamilton National Bank was on the corner where the station is now. The store had some large pens back of the store to hold turkeys and chickens in, but in the fall season they would lease the Farmers Union warehouse and when enough were brought up, they would load them on the train and send to market.

Sometimes on Trade’s Day the store would tie bills of money to the legs of the turkeys and throw them off the top of the store. Talk about a scramble, there would certainly be one. Trade’s Day and First Monday were big days for Hamilton. Trade’s Day usually had drawings of some kind and First Monday was when farmers brought in their horses or mules that they wanted to trade or sell.

We need to remember that in 1910, Hamilton County had about twice as many people in it as it does now so it took some big stores to handle the business. Besides the McKinley-Corrigan store, John L. Spurlin had a large business that lay along north of the Jones Appliance Center [west side of the square], William Connolly had a large store along where Winn’s and Wilson Electric are now [south side of the square]. This store was later owned by Perry Maxwell. G. M. Carlton’s store was at the southwest corner of the square where the law office is now and some of the businesses on west.

These were general mercantile stores and some of them handled farm implements. When automobiles came in, they took on some line of cars. Perry Maxwell had the Ford agency, G. M. Carlton handled Buicks and it seems that John L. Spurlin handled Chevrolets when they came in. T. T. Gordon probably handled the Overland and Willis-Knight cars. The story goes that the first car that Dr. Winn bought was a Haynes-Apperson that had been brought to the 1909 Hamilton picnic for demonstration. As the demonstrators were going back through Hico with the car, the drive chain broke so they had to leave it with the Nance Bicycle Shop for repair. When it was repaired, Dr. Winn bought it. Dr. Bolding also had one of the earliest cars in Hamilton . Hico was a very thriving town at that time, so they probably had some cars before Hamilton did.

Speaking of cars, Guffey [Guffie] showed me a picture of cars that had been backed in side by side up to the curb on the west side of the square. They looked like they were all Model Ts so were probably all new ones. Must have been a good cotton crop that year. Horses hitched to wagons and buggies were all around the courthouse fence.

In asking Guffey [Guffie] about his business activities in Hamilton, I found that his first venture was a soda-pop stand in the southeast part of town. He didn’t have anything for an ice chest, so he dug a hole and put the pop and ice in it. He had a little red wagon and would take it down to the Hamilton Bottling Works, which is now Purity Products Company, and buy two cases of pop at a time from John Baxley. Just a little different from the well over 50 years of connection that he has had with the Hamilton National Bank.

By 1920, Mr. Barkley had a service station over there where the City Hall is now [southeast corner of the square]. He handled Fisk tires. Remember their ad showed a sleepy-eyed boy with a candle and a tire over his shoulder with the wording, “Time to retire.” He also handled the Federal white knobby-tread tire. This is the kind that Guffey had on his car, and the day of his wedding, he was hurrying around and stuck a nail through one of them, so that called for a dirty, sweaty job before the wedding.

The wedding took place as scheduled and in a fine way as it was a double wedding. Not only was Guffey [Guffie] and his bride, Mavis Doggett, married, but Cleo Santy and his bride, Ann Jones were married also by Rev. Pete Curry. Rev. Curry was a son-in-law of Charley Johnson and a brother-in-law of the late Johnnie Johnson. The patched knobby tread tire carried Guffey and Mavis on their honeymoon trip to Waco and probably many more miles around Hamilton.

The untimely death of Cleo Santy ended his and Ann’s life together, but Guffey and Mavis have had 67 years of happy prosperous life together and we all wish them many more.

 Mavis and Guffie were married 69 1/2 years before Mavis died.