Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

This chapter describes the causes of the logging and destruction of much of Georgia’s longleaf pine forests. In the period after the Civil War, the U.S. begins a number of new construction projects as the country expands westward. Among these is the construction of new railroads, which rely on great amounts of lumber to operate. As “wood-burning locomotives” (99) spring up across the United States, lumber mills begin chopping down any available forests—including Georgia’s longleaf forests—to supply the trains with fuel. Ray’s paternal great-grandfather, nicknamed Pun, first arrives in Georgia in the early 1900s to work in one of the new lumber mills. Afterwards, Pun works as a land surveyor, dividing the land up so that more of it can be logged. Ray describes her sense of shame and guilt over how her great-grandfather played a part in the destruction of the Georgia longleaf pine forests. 

Ray describes her father as a Christian fundamentalist who believes that one’s entire purpose in life is to “use the Bible as a field guide” (105) and follow God’s divine will. Growing up, Ray’s entire life is focused around religion, and she and her siblings are forced to live a devout lifestyle—forbidden from having friends, competing in sports, or reading the news. Daddy belongs to the Apostolic Church, which follows the teachings of a preacher based in Philadelphia called Bishop Johnson. Apostolics such as Daddy believe that Bishop Johnson is God’s 13th apostle. Daddy forces the family to travel each week to the closest Apostolic Church, located two hours away in the “dirty port town” (108) of Brunswick. Ray and her family are some of the only white worshippers in Brunswick’s largely black congregation, which she feels makes them stick “out like sore thumbs” (108).

During church services, Ray entertains herself with daydreams of caring for a baby. At 12, Ray is baptized in the church, an act she willingly chooses as she hopes that being baptized will allow her to “start over and never sin again” (113). Ray and her family are so devout that they fast two days out of a week, abstaining from food and drink during the day to show their commitment to God. During summers, Ray’s family fasts for a period of 40 days to “honor those [fasts] of Jesus” (117). Ray’s family often gathers at night and chants Jesus’s name together, hoping to be “filled with the Holy Ghost” and begin “speaking in tongues” (118). However, Ray is fearful of the Holy Ghost, as the sight of people speaking in tongues reminds her of how her father behaved when in the throes of his mental illness. Despite this, Ray believes religion teaches her to value the spiritual world over the material and natural world that surrounded her: “For me, the chance to be simply a young mammal roaming the woods did not exist” (121). 

Ray discusses clearcuts, whereby people chop down every tree in a section of a forest. To Ray, such clearcuts go against God’s will and cause Him to wonder what went “wrong with his creation” (123). Ray then discusses the attempts to replant trees and forests in areas that have been clearcut. Such replanting attempts fail to recreate the previous diversity of the forest, as all the trees are planted in a systematic fashion, and are of the same age and type. Further, the trees on these “pine plantations” are planted too closely together, creating a forest that is too dark for woodland creatures to inhabit.

Ray relates several anecdotes about herself and her father that relate to “how the heart opens” (127)—or how an individual learns to feel care and empathy for the world around him or her. Ray describes how she first becomes interested in plants and ecology through a 4-H competition in which she has to research carnivorous plants. She grows several carnivorous pitcher plants in a patch of the junkyard for the competition, and in the process becomes deeply enamored and fascinated by all plant life.

Ray contrasts her own interest in plants with her father’s ambivalence towards nature, which he regards as gratuitous. In spite of this, Daddy often evinces a secret desire to care for animal life. Ray relates several instances where her father attempts to heal injured animals. After accidentally stomping on a toad, Daddy uses a thread and needle to stitch the toad’s stomach, but the toad nonetheless dies. In another instance, Daddy takes in a heron with a broken leg and wing, naming the heron Clyde Scoggins. Daddy cares for Clyde over several months as its injuries heal, and then builds a small home for Clyde by the pond. Ray sees Daddy’s drive to heal animals as originating from his same “desire to fix things” (139) that motivates his junkyard business. On one occasion, Ray and her siblings watch as a neighborhood kid cruelly stomps a toad to death. Afterwards, Daddy beats Ray and her brothers, telling them of the importance of caring for all forms of life. Though Ray recognizes that the punishment comes from good intentions, she “vow[s] never to hit a child, not even my own” (136). 

Ray details the wide array of animal species that live in longleaf pine forests, which includes pocket gophers, blue-tailed mole sink, and eastern diamond back rattlesnakes, “the largest venomous snake native to North America” (141). As these animals have slowly evolved to live together in the longleaf pine forest environment, the rampant logging occurring in the forests threatens their survival. 

Though Ray’s paternal grandmother, Clyo, is initially deeply in love with Charlie, she only harbors feelings of anger towards him after he leaves the family. Clyo then sets about raising their eight children by herself. The lingering effects of the Great Depression leave many families in the South, including Clyo’s, “mired in poverty” (143), and Clyo’s father grows up with “nothing.” Clyo seeks to earn money to support her family through a myriad of ways. She applies for welfare, but Charlie refuses to sign the papers, saying that he can raise the children in Florida. As a result, the welfare office chooses not to give Clyo money. Clyo then works at several jobs, including working in a cotton farm and cooking in Baxley’s Greasy Spoon Café. Clyo also continues to operate a moonshine business that she and Charlie had begun during the Prohibition era. Clyo manages to stay out of trouble with the law as the Baxley sheriff warns Clyo when federal officers are coming to inspect her. However, on one instance, the federal officers do not alert the sheriff of their visit. They capture Clyo, who is arraigned in court, and Clyo ceases selling moonshine.

Though Clyo holds lingering feelings for Charlie, she never speaks to him after he leaves her. However, she will cook food for Charlie whenever he comes to town, though she has the children deliver the food to him. As Clyo grows older, she suffers from health problems—in particular, from being overweight. Though the doctors prescribe a variety of pills to help Clyo lose weight, she is unable to as she lost her willpower from years of raising a family by herself. In her old age, Clyo begins to zealously watch television evangelists, in hopes that their preaching might help her “be whole again” (148). Daddy brings Clyo to live with him and attempts to force her to exercise and lose weight, but his attempts prove futile. Granny passes away soon after. Daddy does not attend the funeral, as funerals are forbidden by his Apostolic church.

Ray visits a virgin longleaf pine forest, which is kept intact because the wealthy use it as quail-hunting grounds. As such, the forest is a valuable resource to ecological researchers who hope to study the ecology of the longleaf pine forest and preserve similar forests in other areas. Ray describes the forest as both a blessing and a miracle. On her visit to the virgin forest, Ray sees for the first time a red-cockaded woodpecker, an endangered species that is uniquely adapted to the longleaf pine forests. The continual logging of these forests has threatened the livelihood of the red-cockaded woodpecker, and its numbers have fallen from several 100,000 to “some four thousand five hundred” (152), despite its status as an endangered animal. The red-cockaded woodpecker creates holes in longleaf pine trees known as cavities, living for their entire life in a single cavity. Groups of two to seven woodpeckers form intimate social structures, working together to forage for food from the surrounding landscape and raise young. The red-cockaded woodpecker requires a large landscape to live within, so that “an individual from a nearby group [of woodpeckers] can fill the gap” (154) when one woodpecker dies. Researchers believe it is crucial to protect the red-cockaded woodpeckers and their habitats over a large expanse of land.