Lucy of the Mountains

Thanks to Mr. Fixit, my daughter-in-law, and Wally, I decided to start this new blog. My sweet DIL said that she likes my stories of the past, so here’s a memory while I still have it.

When my dad came home from World War II, he and my mother managed a small corner grocery store in Paducah, Kentucky. My dad did the butchering, stocked the shelves, and made deliveries. My mother took care of the customers and filled the orders to be delivered.

This is Granddaddy helping me with my skates. Dad's delivery truck is in the background.
Check out the phone number.

Dad was hired by TVA when I was five, and we had to move to Eastern Tennessee near Chattanooga. They made a trip and found a very nice house with almost all the modern conveniences and beautiful hardwood floors. I remember those floors because my brother would put me on a blanket and pull me through the house. There was one unfortunate incident when he pulled me through a doorway a little too fast, and I leaned sideways a little too far, hit the door facing, cut my head, and bled like a stuck pig. That put a stop to that particular game.

The house was built by a couple next door to their own house for their son and his new wife as a wedding present, but the son was in the military and had been shipped out. They wanted to rent the house until he returned.

After we arrived at the house, the first thing we all wanted to do was to use the bathroom. To my parents’ shock there was no bathroom. Not even an outhouse. My mother hurried next door to ask about the bathroom. The landlord informed her that we would have to use the outhouse behind their house. My mother said she hadn’t thought to check to see if there was a bathroom. The first time I used it, I came back to tell my dad, “Daddy, we have a new style commode. You don’t even have to flush it!”

The next morning I was excited to learn that there was a “cow patch” across the road. I was not too thrilled with the smell though. I had very little experience with animals except for the dogs of my grandparents and a trip to the St. Louis zoo. I was a city kid.

I was due to start to school that fall. The school had three rooms, one of which was a lunchroom. It was only used once when one of the dads killed a deer and the mothers fixed a meal of venison and vegetables.

The school served 6 grades in the two rooms with two teachers teaching three grades each. There was an outhouse and our water came from a pump in front of the school. The name of the community was Sulfur Springs because of that pump and the spring that supplied the water. The water tasted like rotten eggs. We all brought our lunches and tried not to drink the water. The first day of school my mother sent me with a nice little brown bag lunch. When I came home, I told her that I didn’t want her to put my lunch in a bag anymore because all the other kids brought their sandwiches wrapped in newspaper. Everyday after that I took my sandwich wrapped in newspaper although my mother insisted on the sandwich first being wrapped in waxed paper, and I took my little collapsible metal cup for water from the pump. I learned to eat peanut butter without the benefit of a drink; I also learned that I could wait all day to use the bathroom.

Whew, this is longer than I expected. A further installment will come at a later date.