All-American home drifts to family memory

[rebeljim]

Ole Miss football stars under roof

GLOSTER, Miss. -- A vacant house with a lot of history -- including football history -- is slowly being tackled by thieves and time.

All-American Ole Miss football players and brothers Ray, Buster and Barney Poole and their nephew Paige Cothren all grew up in the house in the Homochitto community northeast of Gloster.

"It's one of the few houses in America where four NFL football players grew up," said Cothren, 74, of Houston, Miss., who's the only one of the four still living.

The long-abandoned structure, built in the 1800s, now sits in a privet thicket not far from Mount Vernon Methodist Church. And it's gradually falling apart.

"Someone is stealing the house board by board," said Ray Poole's widow, Wanda Poole of Oxford.

Flooring has been removed from three rooms, and boards have been taken from the front porch floor and elsewhere.

"Four All-Americans were raised there," Mrs. Poole said. "They're stealing the Poole boys' history."

Mrs. Poole said efforts to catch the thieves have proven unsuccessful.

Thieves aren't the only problem. Time is sacking the house, with portions of the roof caving in and wild animals building nests in the kitchen stove.

On a recent visit, the Poole brothers' nephew, Robbie Robertson, and his wife Karen of the Berwick community in Amite County noted evidence of the house's history. Pencil marks on a front porch post show where the Poole boys measured their height while growing up. The shape of wooden beams reveals that they were hand-hewn. And a hand-dug well still twinkles with water far below the ground.

"That's where we spent Sunday afternoons," Robertson said of the house. "I grew up in Centreville. After church we'd load up and go eat dinner at Mama Poole's house."

"Mama Poole" was his grandmother, Emily Berryhill Poole.

"My grandfather (Will A. Poole) died when Uncle Barney was 2," Robertson said.

Robertson's mother, Willodene Poole Robertson, 90, is the only survivor of seven Poole siblings -- four girls and three boys.

Cothren wrote about the house and the family in his 2005 memoir, "Home Sweet Homochitto," with genealogies by Jimmy Carol Robertson of McComb.

"I grew up there with Barney, Ray and Buster. You can imagine growing up in a house with three Ole Miss and professional football players," said Cothren.

"I remember there being no heat across the hall, and that's where we slept. There was no batten on the boards across the hall. We had kind of sealed up Mama Poole's room so she could sleep a little warmer where the fireplace is."

In the boys' room, "when it rained and the wind blew, the water blew right into the bedroom," Cothren said, noting he slept in a bed "with Ray and Barney on each side and me in the middle."

Family members drew water from the hand-dug well until around 1950.

"I remember a cat falling down in there occasionally and ruining the water for a little while, and we had to go to the neighbors' to get water. But that happened to every country person," Cothren said.

"I can remember bathing in a wash tub with water thrown out of the well all my life."

When the house finally got plumbing, no one knew to wrap the pipes, and they froze and burst.

"It was a wonderful childhood, even though I had three uncles who played tricks on me all the time," Cothren said. "Still it was a wonderful childhood, very loving and secure."

He visits Mount Vernon Church every year at Father's Day.

"I try never to miss that. I go in the cemetery and take flowers and go up and walk through the house and sit down and shed a tear or two and recall how wonderful it was growing up there."

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