Yesterday and Today

Dad was transferred from Southeast Tennessee to Northeast Tennessee when I was in the second grade. It was shortly after the school year had begun. I think I was fairly happy there. There were some places we lived where I wasn’t so happy.

I went from a two-room school without indoor plumbing to a city school with all the mod cons. We had one teacher per class, indoor plumbing, music classes, a library, and playground equipment. I thought it was heavenly. When my new teacher heard from my mother the kind of school I had attended, she put me in the lowest reading group that first day. Back in those days, some mentally challenged children were mainstreamed. She put me in the reading group with the one kid who needed extra help. When she heard me read that day, she immediately moved me into the highest reading group. I wonder what she thought when she found out how deficient I was in math and coloring.

Front View of Rogersville Elementary School
When I attended, the front lawn had huge trees and big shrubs
lining a wide sidewalk leading to the front door. The only time
we were allowed on the lawn was in the spring during the May Day
Celebration and dance around the Maypole. The school is still in use, and
several new wings have been added. It's quite large now.

We lived in Rogersville until I completed 4th grade, but we moved several times around the town. When we were trying to find some of the houses last weekend, I couldn’t remember the name of the street where the first house was located. Suddenly, there it was--Charles Street. Before we turned around to turn on the street I even remembered the house number.

The first house we lived in was owned by a notorious bootlegger. He lived in the house next door. It was four small rooms, but my one criteria (should that be “criterium”?) was met. It had a tree in the backyard with a limb suitable for a swing.

The best thing that happened while we lived there was the lady across the street bought a television. I was instantly enthralled. I would come home from school and go to her house and watch the Indian head test pattern until Mother called in home for supper. I don’t think I saw more than a few minutes of a real program there.

Apparently Dad was also enthralled with this new medium. Even though we had neither the proverbial pot or the window, somehow he purchased, on-time, of course, a 17 inch Dumont television set. After a short time, we were able to get three stations--Channel 6 from Knoxville, Channel 11 from Johnson City, and Channel 13 from Asheville, North Carolina. (It’s funny the things I remember.) Every time the channel was changed, someone had to go outside to turn the antenna. That was before there were rotors for turning antennas. Or maybe we just couldn’t afford one.

My dad had little education but he was extremely smart and clever--something he and Mr. Fixit have in common. He rigged a system with clothesline rope to turn the antenna from inside the house. The ropes came into the house through a window.

House No. 1
The front of the house has been reconfigured and some of the
trees and shrubs are gone.



This is the TV lady's house across the street from House
No. 1. Aside from having a television, she also had a cow
that grazed in the large front yard that she treated as a pet.

 We lived in that first little house until a larger house became available. It was owned by another bootlegger. I think it became available when the owner was sent to Brushy Mountain Prison for practicing his chosen profession.

The house was very nice. There was my tree. It wasn’t big enough for a swing, but it was perfect for climbing. I spent many hours that summer reading in that tree. There was a swing on the front porch. There was a formal flower garden, a stream running through the backyard that fed a small concrete pool, a barn filled with straw, and an orchard with cherry trees on the hill behind the house.

There were definite signs that nefarious deeds had taken place there. My brother found a secret compartment in the floor of his bedroom and a handgun hidden in the barn’s hayloft. Did I mention the bullet holes in the Venetian blinds?

While living there, Granddad gave Gary and I some chicks and baby ducks for Easter. The ducklings almost drowned in the little pool, but the chicks swam quite well. I don’t remember what happened to the chicks, but we kept the ducks. They became pets who followed us around like puppies. They would wait for Dad every afternoon to come home from work. One day as he started in the gate, the ducks became very agitated and were quacking like crazy. They had never done this before. Dad proceeded through the gate and was confronted by a copperhead snake (which he dispatched with the garden hoe). He said that The Boys, as the ducks were known, had saved his life.

The one dark spot in my life while living there was potato picking. My parents always had vegetable gardens if it were possible. This house had a B-I-G garden area. We had corn, potatoes, beans, peas, squash, carrots, lettuce, etc. When the time came to harvest the potatoes, Dad dug them up, and I suppose because I was the closest to the ground it was my job to pick up the potatoes and put them in a bucket. My back ached, my hands and feet got dirty, and the weather was still warm enough that I worked up a sweat. I hate sweat! I will never forget how icky I felt after picking up potatoes. I swore to myself that I would never pick up another potato in my life.

We searched for House No. 2, but we couldn't find it. I remember exactly the area it was in, and I remember how the house looked. The topography seems to have changed greatly from what I remember.
I remember the house being on a straight stretch, but the only road we found that it could have been was curvy. I was a bit disappointed.