"The way to change the world is through individual responsibility and taking local action in your own community.” --- American actor Jeff Bridges.
This directive caught my eye, on an Instagram post of Barnstable, Massachusetts - a town down the Cape where our daughter drove her dad and me over the summer. With the words of well-known American actor Jeff Bridges describing John and Dixie Yates Gallaspy to a "T," it struck me as apropos that Mr. John was watching an old Western, several of which Bridges starred in - with "True Grit" and "Hell or High Water" among them - when I arrived at Smoky Creek Plantation last summer.
Settling in Bogalusa in 1961, John and wife Dixie Yates Gallaspy built their dream home on Gaylord Drive where they raised their three sons - Whit, Gardner, and Leland. A physician and retired Colonel in the Louisiana National Guard, Whit and wife Stacy live in Alexandria where he is an obstetrician/gynecologist. Generously loaning me books and material, Whit kindly worked with me during the pandemic on a couple of pertinent columns.
Gardner, who lives in Madison, Mississippi, with his wife Lori, has his own claim to fame - he is a National Champion water skier, winning the U. S. National Water Ski Championship in his age bracket some years ago.
And the youngest son Leland, married to Tonya, is an attorney, working as a law clerk for the Louisiana Supreme Court in Baton Rouge. All three have success in spades.
While raising their family, the Gallaspys were ardent community activists. Both were recognized as Citizens of the Year - Mr. John in 1965 and Ms. Dixie in 1982. An interior designer and owner of Dixie's Designs, Ms. Dixie designed and decorated a legion of area homes and businesses, also consulting on motion picture houses being constructed by Gulf States Theatres, owned by Teddy Solomon, Sr., in the South. A founder of the Louisiana Chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers, Ms. Dixie also had her own clothing line "d nelle" which was marketed through Canal Street merchandisers. No wonder Ms. Dixie was honored early in her career as Bogalusa Woman of the Year by the Bogalusa Professional Women's Association.
Mr. John is active not only with the American Legion, Magic City, Post 24 but also with the Rotary Club in Bogalusa. When I spoke with him last summer, he was preparing a presentation on what varieties of watermelons were doing best for the latter. I doubt much prep was necessary. Mr. John has been in the watermelon business since 1943. With 80-plus years of experience under his belt, he is considered an authority.
He elaborated, "My paternal grandfather liked to grow them so I decided to plant a row of them. I went to the general store and got some Stone Mountain melon seed." Just like the mountain in Georgia. It was a very popular watermelon in the 1930s and 1940s. Another species Mr. John appreciated was Kleckley Sweet - "the sweetest melon I've ever eaten," he proclaimed. And last but not least, there is the Dixie Queen, a striped melon, that "had the same name as the Yates girl had."
Back in the day, watermelons sold for one and ½ cent per pound. So, a twenty-pound melon brought thirty cents. Thirty cents got a kid six RC colas, according to Mr. John. Heretofore, I didn't know the cost of RC Cola - my father's family bottled soda pop, selling and distributing it. Mr. John enlightened me, joking that with six RC Colas you were "above The Four Hundred," referring to the official list of the 400 people in New York's ballroom society during the Gilded Age. So, he continued to grow watermelons, raising them somewhere most of the years since 1943. He and his partner Mickey Murphy continue to grow them today, in fields outside of Bogalusa. Location best left unsaid.
Speaking of Bogalusa, I would be remiss if I didn't address the historic setting of Smoky Creek Plantation, which is Gallaspy property and genuine Bogalusa history. The stately home was built by Mr. and Mr. Vertrees Young who came here in 1938 with the Bogalusa Paper Company, formerly Great Southern Lumber Company which the Goodyears had founded. As Mr. John detailed it, Vertrees Young (1893-1981), a M.I.T. and Harvard graduate and 1st Lt., had been employed by then Lt. Col. Clifford Gaylord - they had served together during the Great War - to work for Robert Gaylord, Inc., a container company in St. Louis, Missouri. In a deal made with the Goodyears, Bogalusa Paper Co. became Gaylord Container Corporation in 1937, and Young arrived here as manager and executive vice-president. After living in a company house for several years, Young decided in 1941 to build what is now the Gallaspy house. He was still building it when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor but was miraculously able to complete it, making it his and wife Sylvia's home for forty years. Mr. Young, an industrialist, forester, philanthropist, and civic leader, succumbed in 1981 with Mrs. Young following in 1985. They were without children.
In 1981 Dixie Gallaspy was the first Queen of MCCA and Vertrees Young, while seriously ill, served as the first King. With it Mr. Young's wish that Dixie Gallaspy have the lovely home, she purchased it, adding a wing and transforming it into a successful bed and breakfast and wedding venue. Sitting on sixteen acres - prime property off Founders Drive - it is also where in 1986 Dixie began her renowned finishing school for girls. Every summer Ms. Dixie, together with other local movers and shakers, hosted the Smoky Creek School for Girls which she founded as a mentorship and tutelage for pre-teens in the areas of health, skin care, dating, table manners, entertaining, and other social niceties - of great value to young and old alike. She steadfastly conducted the school through 2015.
After fifty-eight years and fourteen days of marriage to John, Ms. Dixie passed away in 2016 but not before decorating a home on Military Road for Martha Moak, who had enjoyed a long career with Delta Airlines. She is the daughter of the late Earl Rene Moak (1913-2012) and wife Ruby Hayden Moak. Notably her dad, a superintendent at Crown Zellerbach, played on the 1931 Bogalusa High School Lumberjacks football team and at age ninety-eight was the oldest living Lumberjack. Sometime after Dixie's death, Mr. John became acquainted with Martha "over a watermelon," as he told me. He delivered the melon in what he referred to as his Rolls Royce - translated, his classic pickup. Sparks flew, and the rest is history. John and Martha Moak Gallaspy were residing at Smoky Creek when I last visited. Suffice to say, they are a couple on the move.
