Gone are the days of sharecropping. Sharecropping. Farming. It was a hard life that makes young men - old and old men - crippled. My grandfather, Jim, spent a great deal of his life as a sharecropper. Times were hard after the flu epidemic desiminated the mountain community. The family moved to the rolling foothills - leaving one small grave in the Hopewell cemetery. Jim worked the farm of others to feed his family. Family stories often mark the time by the specific farm: “You remember! When we lived . . .” Home was the farm they purchased in 1947. My grandfather died at the end of December that year. . .
