Clarence Poe Fondly Recalls Social Life in Rural South, Sept. 15, 1925

How Country Folks Once Did

By Clarence Poe

For quite a while I have been somewhat disturbed abut the social life in the rural South.

When I was growing up, farm folks would come together by neighborhoods for corn shuckings, wheat threshings, quilting, house raising, log rolling, singing school, farmers alliance rallies, etc.; and people went long distances to their associations, quarterly meetings, presbyteries, and other religious assemblies held at country churches, while fox hunting and horse racing were still fashionable sports, and old-time musters, tournaments, and camp meetings were still talked of. The roads wee worked (what little working they got) by the younger farmers being “warned in” to come together for that purpose, and road working days were really in a sense social occasions, while horse swapping during “court week” since everybody owned horses and everybody liked the excitement of a trade—was one of the outstanding “rural recreations” of the period.

In recent years, however, these old time country customs have been changing. To entirely too great an extent farm folks seem to have been going to towns for their recreation, and rural life has been endangered by that tendency.

From the editorial page of The Concord Daily Tribune, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 1925

newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1925-09-15/ed-1/seq-4/