In 1958 my Dad got laid-off from the Hughes Tool Co. (he had worked for Howard Hughes). About the same time his Dad, my grandpa, died. My dad had to go to Tennessee for the funeral, it sure was a long way from Houston. While in Tennessee, he asked for a job at Y-12 in Oak Ridge, and low and behold he got it. Don’t exactly know what led my dad to want to stay there, or apply for a job but heck, it happened before we knew it.
Dad worked as a machinist and made about $4 an hour which was good money.
We were struggling back then more than a little, and I remember we almost lost our 1957, 9-seater Ford station wagon. Somehow we had managed to hang on to it, mostly cause my dad told our mom to hide it in the garage and keep the doors closed and locked so the reposesser’s couldn’t find it- but it worked though. But now it was just my Mom who was taking care of us four kids (Doyle, Me, and by now I had a sister Karen, and another brother Scott). My dad was working in TN and sending his money home to my mom to take care of us.
Guess I should tell ya that my sister Karen was born and because she was a girl, I didn’t much play with her, and well Scott was six years younger and he wasn’t any fun yet.
Ok, well, I’d been mowing yards in the neighborhood and had saved up a whole $21.00 that summer. One night my dad called up and he asked me to let him borrow the $21.00. Now, I don’t know if he knew that’s exactly how much I had saved, or if it was a coincidence but either way I didn’t care, probably didn’t even occur to me to ask anyway. Being the hero that I was (or at least wanted to be), I said sure! It felt good, like I was a man, helping out my family.
You know twenty one dollars sure was a lot of money back then. My Mom could buy that whole station wagon full of groceries, clean up through the front seat with that much money.
A few months later my dad finally moved all of us to Tennessee. We settled into a little community called Little Emory, right between Oliver Springs and Harriman.
WOW! This was a rough place, and I don’t mean crime and stuff, I mean we didn’t even have running water, or any inside plumping (what a huge change from the house in the suburbs with the Tundra in our backyard). Worst part to get used to was when we had to go to the bathroom, we had to go in an out-house, which happened to be four & a half miles up a steep 45 degree hill (that’s how I remember it anyway). Every time it seemed I had to go, it was either snowing, raining, or so dark you couldn’t see the stars. Guess what, most of the time I’d just go in the corner of the bedroom (I was just 9 years old). Anyway, after getting caught one too many times by my mom who didn’t have any sympathy for that hike to get to the outhouse or the elements we had to endure like blizzards and blackouts, well, I figured it hurt a lot less to take that 12 hour journey to that little house way up at the top of Mt. Everest, than to succumb to the her wrath.
Living at Little Emory, wasn’t all bad, we had acres and acres of woods and fields, that was something Doyle and I didn’t have in Texas. I mean, we did have a big yard but now looking at this, it was tiny compared to the wilderness here. AND, we had squirrels, rabbits, and the occasional mountain lion, wilda-beast, a few bears, some rabid wolves, a stray hyena or two and on the rare occasion I think I caught sight of a rhino trying to sneak a swim in the creek, and I don’t wanna brag but I did try and try to lasso a buffalo but he was faster than that rascally varmint looked.
We had one tame animal that hung around, not something exciting like a zebra or a chimpanzee but we did have something that resembled a dog. At least he looked like one if ya held your head at the right angle and squinted just so. He was a miniature wiener-dog that we named Wee-Low. Don’t know what ever happened to Skippy, maybe he just liked Texas better, don’t blame him, besides having the great wilderness to explore I didn’t much think highly of TN either at the time.
This dad-burn dog must have liked fishing or something though, cause one day when we got off the school bus, that runt of a dog had a bass plug stuck in his mouth. OUCH! My Dad, being the hero he was, took that short legged thing out to the car, rolled up the windows (so we wouldn’t hear) and performed surgery on that dog. The next day Wee-Low and I were still friends, never did really warm back up to my dad though and funny thing is, he never did wanna go fishing again.
The school we went to was Little Emory. It was a two room school house. The first through eighth grade were in one room, with one teacher and eighteen of us kids in that room. The other teacher had the other twelve students from ninth thru twelfth grade in the other half of the building.
Anyway, after about 3 weeks of going there, me and two other fellers thought we’d go to the country store and spend our two or three cents on penny candy. That county store was almost on school property and we’d go during our ‘rithmatic class. We figured we would tell our teacher we needed to go to the bathroom, sneak to the store, eat that candy and then be back in our seats before anybody figured it out.
I don’t think lookin’ back that it was a very good idea but at the time seeings how all we were thinking about was the candy, mmmmmmmm. Yes, you guessed it, we got caught! We were sent strait to the Principal’s office, didn’t even get to pass Go, didn’t collect no money, didn’t even get to eat any candy.
And I told you that this was a pretty poor town, and most of the people there were worse off than us if you can imagine life being worse than no plumbing, no electricity and such.
Well, since my Dad worked at Y-12 making the big bucks (most of the people in town probably made about $40 bucks a week) and we lived out in the middle of nowhere, they thought my family must be rich or something. I guess after all if we could move all the way from TX and we drove a big ole, almost brand new nine-seater station wagon, we must be rich, Right?
Them other two guys got the wupping of their lives that day, but not me, seeings how I’d come from good stock, and should have been living in one of those big mansions with those big column’s on all four sides of the house- well it was obvious to that principal that I was influenced by them boys.
God was good to me, even back then. We were so poor we couldn’t even pay attention, but not to them, to them we were rich. I have a hard time even now imagining how poor some of them kids must have been.
Later in the same year of the 4th grade we’d moved to Oak Ridge in one of those apartments the government built for the Manhattan Project. It was nice, the roof didn’t leak, and you couldn’t see the dog playing in the yard by looking through the cracks in the walls. There were lots of kids to play with, seeing how there must have been about a million and one apartments within two blocks of us.
Well, one day in 1959, it started snowing. I mean it really, really snowed. We had 18 inches of the white fluffy stuff. I didn’t know what that stuff was ‘til my parents told me. Being a Texacan, we didn’t have any of that stuff in Houston.
It was beautiful, and it was calling my name, I wanted to go play in it, and build a fort, and throw it at Doyle and… man, it was great till my mom said we still had to go to school anyway???? Did I mention it was 18 inches deep?
Heck, we’d done pretty good just getting the front door opened. We didn’t have any boots, didn’t even know what they were, so my Mom wrapped plastic bags around our feet, and off we went. It must have been 10, maybe 12 miles to that school, and probably took about an hour or more, but we made it. Our feet were soaking wet and frozen, and we had on so many layers that we couldn’t put our hands down to our sides. Did I mention we made it the whole 15 miles or was it only 12?
I didn’t even know what cold was ‘til that day. Best I can remember my toes turned black, and I’d have sworn when I finally got my shoes off that one or two of them toes woulda broke off and were would be still stuck in the bottom of my shoe.
But, despite the cold, I’ve liked snow ever since, love it actually, at 60 years old I still get a little bit excited when the ground gets covered in that purty white stuff. Till this day, I still can’t figure out while my feet is always cold. Even in the summer time.