Whitelaw Bailey — empathy stories

We'd swim in Big Prairie Creek, sure did. When I was a teenager when we would get through work in the summertime bailing hay or combining oats around sundown, we would head to the creek to cool off. We’d lie on that cool water... soapstone bottom. You could spread out down there and cool off for a while. I was born in a house right there. I grew up in another house on this site. After my grandfather died I lived there, here twice, once over there and once in Greensboro. We had a few friends and always had something to do. When we got to go somewhere it was big. Today we probably go to Greensboro two or three times a day. It was just a treat when I was a teenager. We'd get to go about three Saturdays a month. We got to go see the western movies while our parents shopped for groceries and then come back home.

Newbern has just always been a good community. Always friends trying to help each other. There wasn’t a whole big population, but always good people. It’s more or less, you might say, a fine community. We don't have any real problems unless somebody creates something. In Newbern in 1955, my family and other families conceived this community building up here, and it’s been working for a long time. Family after family contribute to it and have gone to it, got some that won’t go into it for some reason or another, and it’s been a nice thing. You get one night a month, Christmas and Thanksgiving. It’s been going 50 years now you might say, and it’s a great thing.

At one time there where Southern Academy is now there was an auditorium, swimming pool, tennis court, and a recreation hall that was probably about 50 by 100 feet, a good sized thing. People could go in the summer and leave their children to swim. There was someone there to look after them. They could play tennis, and you could feel good about leaving your child 3 or 4 hours a day. In 1973 a hurricane came through and demolished the whole thing. There’s no place now. I think a place is needed for the parents where the children could have fun and be safe, and what do elders want to do? I think it could be worked, but the economics of it I can’t say. I don’t know how you would support it. You’d be operating in deficit all the time. If you break even on something like that you feel good. I think it would just take more and more. Money’s hard to come by now in a small town. It would have to be something that had some support other than just the support of the people that were there. I don’t know what the answer is as far as putting something together. I think somebody would have already put it together if they had been able to.

Whitelaw Bailey

Farmer. Newbern, Alabama.

Business Owner, Sledge Hardware. Greensboro, Alabama.

Outsidein. A Community Space for Hale County.