I’m guessing “walk tall and carry a big stick” came from the days of Teddy Roosevelt. “Leading a dog’s life” is particularly Southern. Can you imagine an old farmer back in the days when farmers really worked at manual labor working through the hottest of the dog days of summer while seeing his old hound dog asleep in the shade barely moving a muscle? It’s easy to see where “paying peanuts” came from, remembering the days when the “greatest generation” talked of working 12 to 16 hours a day for a few cents and buying necessary flour and other essentials at the store for only pennies per item. I remember hearing “Give it a shot” lots of times up at Little Ott’s store in Coal Fire when men would gather around, while drinking a refreshing Coca Cola, and shoot (or pitch) pennies at the cracks on Ott’s wood floor. I wonder how many 5-cent cokes were earned in that way. Not me! I seldom had a penny to pitch; and, when I did, I’d rather save it until I got four more; so I could just buy a refreshing coke. It was more certain that way, and it seemed a little more honest.

Although I was never around Emmett that much, I can imagine that Willard got the saying, “as the old saying goes” from his father, one of his uncles, or his grandfather, Mr. Hodge (I can’t remember his first name, though it may have been Mr. Willard Hodge.) Young Willard may have been named after his grandfather. I used to walk down after school to visit and talk with Mr. Hodge while he worked around his farm below Coal Fire. I remember hearing him say that saying much more often than I ever heard young Willard say it because I enjoyed being around the older people of the “Greatest Generation” much more than I did my snotty nosed peers of my own “sorriest generation”. That’s okay. The greatest is often followed by the sorriest because the sorriest often see the difficulty of attaining the height of the greatest; therefore, they follow their own mind and do their own thing, as our and subsequent generations have done.

His grandfather, Mr. Willard Hodge, is the old man that I used to enjoy walking down after school to talk and to discuss world and domestic affairs among other things. He was old then, but he was presumably in good health. He really seemed old to me at the time. I enjoyed talking with him as he worked at various jobs around his farm. I barely knew Emmett as I was never around him much. I don’t even remember what he looked like. I do remember the young Willard’s Uncle Murry a little better. Murry is the one who worked at the Reform Westinghouse plant, I think, from the time that it opened almost until it closed (or he retired). I don’t remember which came first. I only knew of Wayne and Winston by name as they were considerably older than I was. I do remember talk about them though.

I remember well that my father always addressed Mr. Willard Hodge as “Mr. Willard”. At the time, I thought it was so odd to apply the title “Mr.” to a first name, but I suppose that Dad did it as a sign of respect since Mr. Willard was a much older man. Thanks for the update on Winston and Wayne. I never really knew them personally, but I knew of them. I knew them mostly from their graduation class pictures that were posted in the high school library in Reform all the time that I was in school there. These pictures are really about all I knew about them. I suppose that “Hodgeville” on the Carrollton road south of Coal Fire has really changed as it is probably populated mostly by the third (and sorriest generation) of Hodges where there is no more farming and there is grown up thicket and waste land as far as the eye can see, only that the eye can’t see very far because it is so grown up. This is what I mean by the “sorriest generation” that was taken away from the land and raised on the teats of a very generous government thereby losing their independence. I mean no disrespect for any of the individuals who make up that generation.

The sorriest generation has nothing to do with place, territory, or country; but it has everything to do with a period of time, and the people living in that period. Besides, if one generation can be called the greatest, then there must be a sorriest somewhere and in some time because they all are definitely not equal; however, personally, I believe that there is neither a greatest nor a sorriest in terms of generation because every generation is a product of its time and must react to the conditions of that time in order to survive. Every generation that survived the condtions of its time is in the running to be the greatest; otherwise, it is in the running to be among the sorriest.

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