LIVING HISTORY
raised cattle, yet they never considered eating beef. “Beef was
a cash crop,” she says with a chuckle. “We weren’t going to
kill a cow that we could sell.”
MAKING DO
The hardy Crackers of South Florida managed to live without
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electricity, phone service and other modern-day inventions.
In Indiantown, most babies were delivered at home
with Aunt Sis Savage as a midwife. Practically everyone
went around barefoot, since they didn’t own a pair of shoes.
Wall picked up her first telephone when she was in the sixth
grade. It might as well have been a foreign object from a distant
planet, because she didn’t know which end of the phone
to talk into.
Those were the days when doctors made house calls. Dr.
Julian Parker, who everybody loved, drove out from Stuart in
his Model A Ford. He treated his patients whether they had
the money or not.
Washing clothes for Wall’s family was a weekly and social
affair. The women came together and washed in boiling tubs
over a fire, while chatting and watching the children play.
Catching the morning train that came through Indiantown
was a daring adventure. Wall recalls the bold and primitive
way a passenger got on board. “We’d take a newspaper, wad
it up, and stand out in the middle of the tracks and wave it
back and forth,” she says. “We had to wait until we heard the
train coming. And the train would stop — screech!”
MARRIAGE TO HOMER
Iris treasured the marriage and life that she built with her
husband, Homer. Their 47-year love affair began for her >>
IRIS WALL COLLECTION
Iris and Homer were high school sweethearts who shared a special marriage
that lasted for 47 years.
IRIS WALL COLLECTION
Wall, who calls herself an old cowgirl, enjoys riding in the pasture and tending to her cattle on her ranch in Martin County.