Show Is Tom Roberts Really EDITOR'S NOTE The following story of a pioneer of the long-gone community of Cedarview was and written by Mary who wrote a story last year for us on the early activities of this by Mary Timothy memory of Thomas who departed this world in the year of his the epitaph was quite a I told my eyes wandering over the shabby The sun beat without compassion on the sage rocks and half-hidden markers where sand and dead weeds tried to compensate for the my my two daughters and I had been traveling north of Roosevelt on Route and decided to make a visit to my old Having made a search for some of the old and not finding a soul among the living we we proceeded to the old burial ground located about one and one-half miles north of where the town had Like many of the first it is situated on a dry rocky Folks never worry about water seeping There isn't Today there arc about one hundred various markers to bear evidence of the silent The inscriptions on some have been obliterated by time and other stones and markers have been broken by cattle that roamed at will before thoughtful hands stretched the barbed wire fence around the The plot is A few stunted lilac bushes and iris have survived of drought and still adorn the spot with a bit of History states that Mother started the with water she earned in buckets and the tears she shed in grief for the beautiful daughter and her tiny baby who were buried in one the first in the I remember once at a Mother fell into an open and it took six men to lift her She came up crying and be the next to It's a sure It has never failed She lived fifty years To get back to was about six feet a bald He wore his mustache and shaved once a on Sunday Tom smoked Bull One day he was driving a load of straw and accidentally flipped his cigarette into the He saved but the wagon and straw went up in flame and an of a he said watching the He took his tobacco sack and threw it as far as he and a filthy He never smoked Tom was the only man in town who had coal to This he used in his blacksmith across the road from the post Wc kids used to stop in after school to smell the smoke and watch the huge bellows Tom I remember how the coals would making the iron Then he would take it to the anvil where he hammered it into plow shears Tom Roberts owned and operated a sorghum Folks from miles around brought their sugar cane to be made into They gave Tom A share for the TOM ROBERTS Cedarview Pioneer I A horse hitched to the end of a long pole went around and around making the flate rollers squeeze the juice from the cane The juice ran in a trough to an open vat where it boiled down to Old Tom stood faithfully by with lu's ladle to keep the sorghum from burning and to skim the flies and grasshoppers that dropped In our town lived a widow who owned a cow and had no This annoyed the old Englishman a great and he used to if that don't take of that I'll kill She's tons and tons of my Then one day the cow choked to death on a and the next morning Tom was out bright and early in his one-horse gathering wider must a In 1911 when our family first moved to wc settled one and one-half miles west of the Tom's cabin was one-half mile east of us under a Here he housed his large family and the post office as He later built a house in town on the hill and moved the post office to a one-room building in his front Here he also sold candy and other household The store part didn't last I think he went broke buying his own His boys gathered them from the henhouse under the hill passing kids to buy candy of which they would be given a small When school was would stop at the post office for our As there was quite a number of our family in some times we would all take turns asking for our This infuriated Tom to the shouting many of you kids are in If I He'd already asked for now get the out of How well I remember the Fourth of July Our early morning slumber would be shattered by the dynamite Tom exploded for our patriotic He kept a jackass that was just about as Tom was janitor for the school and spent hours each day in winter chopping wood to keep the fires On the cold it seemed that wc always met him leav-the or if wc were especially we would sec him give each desk one big slap with the old brown shirt he used for a duster as he walked up and down each It was Tom who always headed the committees for the various town and church and for many years he was superintendent of the Sunday On special occasions he stood in the old built by the side of the and scooped homemade ice cream onto the saucers for the nickels we had We could always depend on Tom being first on hand in case of He arranged for folks to sit with the sick and the he assigned grave diggers and often fashioned Uie caskets which the Relief Society The road led from the church to the cemetery crossed through a The spring floods kept the bottom and it was always a rough Each time the wagons and buggies crossed the Tom road must be fixed before wc another As no one expected to the road went and we were always in the same I reading again the inscription and noting the dead weeds and rusty cans of last year's Decoration was quite a life you Decorate a punch bowl with Christmas seals and stickers in various |