Rogersville - The Final Installment

The third house we moved to in Rogersville was a brand new house outside of town that needed the finishing touches. The yard was a quagmire. Dad put down boards to make paths for us to reach the car and to get to the end of the driveway to catch the school bus. Incidentally, the school bus picked us up before daylight. We were always the first kids to get to school. I don’t like getting before dawn now; I hated even more then.


It was winter when we moved there, but the mud never seemed to freeze. It stayed messy all winter. One redeeming value of the house for me was the large basement. There was one big room and three smaller rooms that could have been used as small bedrooms when the basement was completed. That winter I had asked for a red wagon as a Christmas present. I steered that wagon in a circle in the basement for what must have been 100 miles.

It was in this house that I discovered Mickey Spillane novels on a boring snow day. I was in the third grade.

We didn’t stay long in that house long, thank heavens. The bootlegger landlord of the first house we lived in was sentenced to a stretch at Brushy Mountain prison. He asked Dad if we would move into the house he lived in which was next door to our first house while he was serving his time. The only thing he asked in return was that one bedroom be held for the exclusive use of his pretty young wife’s nasty little lapdog. (The landlord was not young. I'm trying to be politically correct without telling you that he was an old geezer with a pretty young wife.) I was crazy about dogs, but I didn’t like this one at all. It was not affectionate. Every time I tried to pet it, it would nip me. I had done nothing to this fuzzy miniature spawn of Satan to incur his enmity. I wonder where the wife went while Hubby was in the Big House. Wherever it was, I wished many times that she had taken that dust mop of a dog with her.

The education I received at Rogersville gave me a good foundation for the rest of my time in school, and I loved it. I also experienced my first crush there. His name was Anderson Bible, and he had a great shirt with a Dumbo appliqué on it. I thought his name was wonderful. Anderson Bible--now that’s a memorable name.

We stayed in that house until I had finished 4th grade when Dad was transferred to the Kingston Plant outside of Lenoir City, Tennessee. We lived in a little community called Eaton’s Crossroads.

House No. 4 - It's undergoing remodeling. When were lived there
a mimosa tree graced the front yard.

This small cemetery is the resting placed of Davy Crockett's
grandparents and Mr. Rogers who founded the town. I passed
it almost every day walking home from school.

(I got a lot of mileage out of that daytrip, didn’t I? Gro-o-o-an! Enough material for four posts.)