Three-tenths of a mile from where the pavement ends and the dirt begins on Turkey Mountain Road in the Clifford area, Moses Sandidge rises and works much like he has for his entire life.
His routine is unusual for a man his age.
Twice a day, he milks a cow, and his wife of 68 years, Evelyn, 85, delights in making butter from it at the home Sandidge helped build and where they raised six children.
Sandidge, 94, is as healthy as many only two-thirds his age.
That he milks cows is only a piece of his story, which he briefly related in some bits and pieces.
Born in 1914, Sandidge farmed, worked for road contractors, became a carpenter and grew tobacco, describing a mosaic of memories as rich and fragrant as a prime leaf.
He remembers a rock at a rut on Turkey Mountain Road that broke the horse-drawn wagon his grandfather was driving — in 1917, when his family moved to that part of Amherst County.
“It’s still there,” he said darkly of the rock.
He and Evelyn walked to school in those days, she to Puppy Creek School on U.S. 60 and he to Clifford. “That was the only way we had to go,” Evelyn recalled.
He went to school after working his tobacco fields. At one point, he grew 775 pounds, which sold for $13.50. In the 1940s, he bought the approximately 121 acres where he lives to this day, for $950, after the two were married.
He also sold rocks used for buildings, which were abundant on his land, which paid it off within two to three years.
They remember when bread was $.05 per loaf. He remembers wages of $.30 a day during the Great Depression.
“That was a big price then,” Evelyn adds.
Sandidge didn’t buy his first car until 1930 — a 1928 Model T Ford. “Thirty-five dollars,” he said. Depending on the price of gas now, that would pay to fill the Pontiac that Evelyn still drives to the grocery store.
He used the Ford to take tobacco to market in Lynchburg. He remembers making the trip on a horse-drawn wagon, too.
They have 13 grandchildren and 10 “great-grands,” Evelyn says, and they love gardening.
Their bounty includes just about everything but includes tomatoes, apples, onions, beans and beets.
His cow-milking (morning and late afternoon) and her butter churning — she churns it from the two gallons of milk he gets from the cows, to produce a pound of butter — keeps them going.
All of their children milked cows growing up, too.
No longer necessary, it’s as much a staple of their lives as it is a food staple.
“I’ve got to put butter on his toast,” Evelyn says.
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