Lightnin' Hopkins_ His Life and Blues - Alan Govenar [7]
When Sam was three years old, his father was shot and killed by a man named Floyd Johnson, Langford says, “over a buffalo nickel. They were in a card game called Pitty Pat. And they were playing for a nickel, and Floyd won that nickel and Abe picked it up and put it in his pocket. And Floyd killed him. Abe tried to bluff him out of it, and they scuffled and Floyd shot him.” 16 Sam, however, believed that the killing of his father was a conspiracy. “They put someone up to kill him because he was rough,” Hopkins said. “He raised good crops and he gambled, and … he’d win people’s cotton and all such as that. And they didn’t like him for it…. He didn’t love nothing but gambling and [he’d] drink whiskey and fight and shoot … so that’s the way his life was taken, see. So, that left nobody but my mother to raise us children.”17
Not long after the death of Abe Hopkins, Sam’s oldest brother, John Henry, left home because he said that if he stayed, he’d kill the man who had murdered his father.18 In time, Warren’s Bottom flooded out and the Hopkins family moved to Leona, another small farming community about seven and a half miles south of Centerville. Lee Gabriel was one of Sam’s friends in Leona until the age of sixteen. Leona, Gabriel said, “was a little country place. It wasn’t an organized town,” but it had little stores where sharecroppers and landowners could buy groceries and clothes. “The biggest grocery was owned by Mr. Tom Nash…. He was the leading food store. And he carried some clothing. When the store had something to wear, Sam would buy something. They had a good understanding. Nobody went around with a chip on his shoulder. He [Sam] bought his shoes there…. Lurie Thompson had the post office in his store. He was a grocery store too. Each store had a little hardware. There wasn’t much variety in the 1920s.”19
Life in the country was hard, and boys were expected to work in the field alongside their parents. “I worked,” Gabriel said, “Sam did too. Farm work, cotton and corn. I learned to plow with a horse and mule. I even plowed with oxen. That was hard work…. It would take several days to plow a five-acre patch.”20
Growing up, Gabriel and Sam attended a one-room schoolhouse that had two teachers; one was a woman named Miss Davis, and the other was the principal in addition to being a teacher. Gabriel, who was the son of a circuit preacher, was well-behaved, but he said Sam often got into trouble and was strapped, spanked with a thick leather strap, for not behaving.21
When Gabriel and Sam had a little free time, they often went hunting together. “We went rabbit hunting,” Gabriel said, “or for any other small animal. The last time we went we found a mink and killed him, skinned his pelt and sold it, got big money—$1.75.” Occasionally they went horseback riding, though Gabriel recalls, “Sam was not a very good horseman…. Sam liked to ride, but not as well as I did…. The big thing then was for kids to race. But Sam didn’t race. Sam liked to gamble. It was customary back then. There were lots of boys who gambled, mostly dice … craps … and the older boys played cards and bet on them local horse races.” Sam also got into fights. “Once in a while, boys get too idle,” Gabriel said. “Sam and this boy had a scuffle over a girl friend … kind of a push and wrestle. A lot of pretty girls back then.”22
Because Gabriel’s father was a preacher, his activities outside of school were restricted. However, on Saturday nights, he’d sometimes meet up with Sam at square dances. “Somebody would call the dances for each set—two-steps and waltzes,” Gabriel said. “Each dance lasted five or six minutes. They called them dances ‘breakdowns.’ They had fiddles and sometimes guitars. The guy who called the dance was Tom Butler. He was an older man. And at the end of the set, he’d say, ‘Hands in your pocket, go to the candy stand.’ Either get you a sandwich or get a plate for the ones who really wanted to buy dinner. They always had some kind of food, fishes