Earnest Sims Sr.

Growing Up on the Creek Bridge: the Memories Earnest Sims Sr.

The book, Growing Up On The Creek Bridge, is a true account based on life's hardship and tragedy during the 1940s, '50s and '60s. The story revolves around the life of my father, a black man's struggle with poverty to provide for his family, a wife and eighteen kids, in Southern Arkansas. The story is heartwarming, exciting, at times heartbreaking, telling of happy times and sad times, of a man and his faithful hunting dog, the atmosphere of cotton fields, the reflection of a family's love for one another, and the will to survive in what we now call the "Good Ol' Days". Even when my sisters, brothers, and I were old enough to help by picking and chopping cotton, times still were hard. Our electricity often stayed disconnected for lack of money to pay the bill and we had to fall back on the old coil-oil wick lamp to provide light. We often stayed home from school for lack of lunch money or decent clothes to wear. And we always, always ran low on provisions or plum out, even with the commodities Uncle Sam supplied every month, and the wild game meat Daddy and his faithful hunting dog, Brownie, brought in from the woods. But, somehow, Daddy had always pulled us through . . .