Approximately two and a half miles east of Holliday is a territory which has been named Shake Rag. At one time this was a settlement of black people, and there was a school and a church. The settlement is now gone, but the people of Shake Rag played a very important role in the rearing of some of the older residents of Holliday. They would come from Shake Rag to the town two or three times a week to wash, iron, or do other work. Often they brought their children with them, and the black and white children would have a good time playing together. Some of the prominent people of the settlement were Sally, who made her home with the Greg Glasscock family, Crawford, Judy and Taylor Calbert, Judy Hawker, and Sherman and Myrtle Galbraith.

But I think when we’re gathered on Judgment Day ‘Twould be wonderful to see them all. There were fish for the taking back in the creek,

‘Coons and ‘possums in the woodland shade. In the meadows about, bob-whitç you would seek

And fat rabbits basked in the shade.

There were blackberries most as big as my thumb--

Gooseberries, and I think, wild plums, a few,

Hazel nuts, hickory nuts, walnuts and butternuts

Were in the woodlands, too.

While, nestling down at the dew at your feet

Were dew-berries covered with dew.

Down on Rocky Branch, behind Glasscock’s farm Grew lovely wild fern, half as long as your arm.

Phlox, “boy-breeches” and daisies, their languid heads raised, As blue-bells silently rang out a paean in God’s praise. Some of my Indian forebears may once have strode the halls

Of the wonderful Rocky Branch Cave,

For their marvelous drawings are all on the walls-

Forgive me, if I seem to rave.

That a spot so fair bears a name so drab

Certainly seems a shame;

And mem’ry hears Granpa’s voice insisting still-- Pleasant Hill is its real-true name.

Some day all its wonders will be known far and wide,

And Lord knows, that’s as it should be. And if this small poem should help “turn the tide”, ‘Twould be a great pleasure to me. And if God’s new earth * I’m to see, I hope that Jehovah gives me

A spot in SHAKERAG, you guessed,

Where the truest, the best

Friends on this old earth seemed to be.

 * See Psalms 37: 9, 11.