PEACH SEASON

(Includes information on Dr. Funderburg)

By John Harvey

Remembering things from the past, remember 30 or 40 years ago when, just as soon as school let out for the summer, the farmers and young folks began to prepare for the peach season.

Peaches and cotton were the main crops of our area. A choice job for the summer was to get to work in one of the many large sheds that dotted the county. Many a young man and woman went to school in the fall and winter on the money made during the summer peach season. In late May and early June, the trucks would begin to come into town loaded down with boxe of peaches fresh from the orchard. If you were a small child and you ran to the edge of the street and begged for a peach, the teenage boys on the truck would usually throw you a couple.

As you grew older, you would ask one of the growers for a job - hopefully in his shed - and if he thought you were big enough, he might start you off in the field carrying boxes to the pickers, as a truck boy, or labeling baskets in the shed. As you grew bigger you moved up to grader, putting tops on the finished baskets, helping load the refrigerated cars and other things.

Long trains of the refrigerated cars passed through town daily and often you could hear the train laboring over the grades north and south of town. In August the season really got heavy, for the best peach, the Elberta, was ready to be harvested. Often the sheds were open all night. The pickers were in the orchards from daybreak ' til dark.

A number of poor crops and late spring freezes in the mid and late 1950's did the orchards in and by the early 1960's Jasper farmers had gotten out of the peach business. The orchards could be coming back, with some new orchards being planted in Jones and Morgan Counties. It could just happen here again.

Another remembrance was one told by Dr. F. D. Funderburg, the black physician whose interracial practice in Jasper and Putnam Counties brought him widespread respect in these counties and beyond. Dr. Funderburg said he had finished medical school and was completing his internship at University Hospital in Nashville, Tenn.

He had recently married and was planning to go into a specialty in the fall but had a long summer ahead of him. One day one of his former professor told him he had a project he thought he might be interested in.

Dr. Turner, who had had a large practice in Jasper, Jones and Putnam Counties, had died leaving the area without a black doctor. The professor thought that Mrs. Turner would be interested in a young doctor taking over the practice for the summer while Dr. Turner's affairs were being settled.

So in the late spring of 1928, the Funderburg's came to Monticello for the summer. Both immediately got into the activities in Jasper and Putnam Counties. As the summer came to an end, Dr. Funderburg began to bring up going back to Nashville and school. Mrs. Funderburg would bring up a reason to stay and say "let's stay a few weeks longer." Finally they decided to stay. The doctor said, "I never did got into a specialty".

Additional Comments:
Transcribed by Suzanne Forte (suzanneforte@bellsouth.net) April 2005, from copies of articles contained in the Monticello News. There articles were prepared by Mr.
John Harvey and published in this newspaper during the 1970's and 1980's time frame. Some were under the title "Jasper Reflections", others "Bicentennial Bits".
Permission has been granted by Mr. Harvey for use of these very valuable and informative articles.

Copies of articles provided by Benny Hawthorne.