This recent dry spell did some serious damage to pastures and the spring hay crop. On the day temperatures reached 90 degrees accompanied by a brutally dry wind, I was pained to witness the results. Local reports say the spring hay crop has been cut to 1/3. Fortunately, the rain finally arrived in Middle Tennessee saving pastures in the short run. Hopefully the fall hay crop will fare better.
The spring drought reminded me of a few summers of the past, especially in the Brim Hollow. One summer was a dry one to remember.
By the time the Brim Hollow was passed down to our family crop land had been reduced to a minimum. A few fields which once grew hillside corn had become rough pastureland, hard to keep cut back. Garden plots of the past and parcels which once grew tobacco provided limited grazing for a few cows. One plot, high in the hollow, lay below a rocky ridge where we grew tobacco for several summers. We called that tobacco patch, “the mountain.” The soil there was rich, but rocky. We called the rocks “mountain gravel.” The rocks featured sharp edges which were murder on bare feet. A tobacco setter would never have made it up on “the mountain.” Besides, the rocks would have cut off fingers on a drag setter. We always “pegged” tobacco on the mountain. It was so high up, and so steep coming down, we hauled the tobacco down on a mule “slid” the first year. In later years, my father locked a wheel on the wagon with a chain to keep the load of tobacco from pushing the tractor off the hill. “The mountain” grew “frog-eyed” tobacco, brilliant in golden color, but light in weight.
Back to that dry summer. It was July in my 13th year when our family took our second or third family vacation. The vacation was made possible when my father purchased our first car in the fall of 1962. It was a 1961 Chevrolet Parkwood station wagon. Prior to that purchase our family of 7 traveled in the cab of a pickup truck. (You may read about that in one of my books.) On this vacation, my brother, Tom, fully 16 years old, was left behind to check on our livestock.
Of all the wonderful features of the Brim Hollow, water was not one of them. In the driest summers even the well houses ran dry. If it were not for a deep well near the home place, household water would not have been available.
On the second day of our vacation, Tom checked the water in the Brim Hollow. The well house which fed the watering troughs had run completely dry. There was nothing to do but haul water. Fortunately, there was an ever-running spring near the hollow located on the “Big Jim” Yancey farm. Tom called Big Jim to get permission to get access to the spring, called “The Big Spring.” The Big Spring ran cold and deep. Where it reached the surface, you could have run a pickup truck into it. Legend has it that many years ago, before its opening was reduced in size, an ox cart, two oxen, and a driver fell into it and were never seen again. My father warned Tom to “be careful.”
For the next week, Tom filled two 55-gallon barrels with water, one 5-gallon bucket-at-a-time and hauled water into the Brim Hollow. Before the drought finally broke, my father cut down trees so our cows could eat the leaves. It was a strange sight to see cows stampeding off the hills, bellowing as they came, when they heard the chainsaw fire up.
Some dry spells you never forget.
Copyright 2026 by Jack McCall
