DAYS LONG GONE

From Warren: These are some memories from my childhood days. I feel somewhat embarrassed putting them down for all to see. My first thought is that no one will find them interesting - and may think of them as laughable, which they are. But then I thought that this is the very thing that I am asking you to send to me for publication in Branches. And, if I am not able to write my own thoughts and memories for others to read, how could I expect others to share their memories. So - I hope that you will see what I am asking for in the way of thoughts and experiences to be added to the family files. I especially appreciated the story sent to me by MaryJane Plemons-Dorr about taking her father to a family reunion in North Carolina (Spring 2002 Branches). It prompted me to get busy and write, so here goes:

Being born in 1937, I was only four when Pearl Harbor was bombed. I don't really remember it, but I do remember the excitement that it caused. I remember my older brothers talking about going to war, and I remember my mother crying in secret when she thought of the possibility that both of my brothers would be in the thick of it. My brother, Hal, was a little young at fourteen, but Brother Jack was nineteen, and ripe for the picking.

All of my younger years were war years, and the war dominated everything. All conversations were either about the war or about the effect that the war was having on happenings around us. There was an immediate food shortage, and anything that had to be imported was cut off. We learned that you didn't simply hop in the car and drive somewhere. Gas was rationed and your tires had to be preserved. There was no oil for cooking and home rendered lard was a prized possession. Coffee was replaced by chicory. Sugar was hard to find, even if you had the ration stamps to be allowed to buy it. There was little candy, even at Christmas time. There was Horehound sticks, which weren’t too bad if you shoved them inside the core of an orange. Meat disappeared from stores and it was necessary to have stamps and tokens to buy almost everything. Anything metal was collected and turned in for scrap.

My dad owned a flour mill in Sweetwater, Tennessee so that he received a special allotment of gas stamps to operate the mill. He sold "Polly's Best Flour" and "Family Friend Meal" along with a variety of feeds and seeds. My older brother, Jack, would sometimes take me to the mill and I would sit in a large wooden barrel, eating hard corn kernels. I couldn’t get out of the barrel, so that kept me out of the machinery while Jack worked. Problems started later when the draft took so many of the men from the town there was a "man-power-shortage" and no help in the mill. Dad eventually had to shut it down. Long before I was born, Jack was crossing the railroad tracks walking to the mill. A train had stopped for water and Jack was afraid to go under the wheels so he attempted to climb over the coupling between cars. His foot dropped into the space between the couplings just as the train started and he lost two toes from his left foot.

We would sometimes trade the extra gas stamps for sugar or coffee stamps. If we were really lucky, Dad would treat us to a Sunday ride up to Loudon. We would sit on the Court-House square and eat a "Brown Cow", ice cream on a stick. Occasionally, we would ride across the ferry to the other side of the Tennessee River. But usually, you had to wait until the ferry had a full load (six cars) and that was too long to wait. There would have been little danger in playing a full length baseball game in the middle of the highway. The only airplanes to be seen were the formations of military planes, too high to be really recognizable. I remember once when a single engine light plane came flying across town, while my cousin yelled, "It's going to fall!! It's going to fall!!" The only reliable method of transportation was by train. Sweetwater was a water stop for the steam engines. Water was pumped from the Sweetwater Creek up into a big wooden tank beside the tracks in the middle of town. The smoke would waft across the Main Street while the engine drank its fill of muddy water. And I'll swear that I have never smelled coal smoke with the same aroma since. I don't know why, but it was different. Sometime in the forties, practically the whole town turned out to see the new train, the “Streamliner” come through. It was gleaming chrome, polished aluminum and steel, and it passed through town in about thirty seconds. But, no one was dissatisfied. Man, it was beautiful! And it was pulled by a diesel locomotive. Did this mean that the steam engines were on their way out?

Sweetwater’s Main Street was lined on both sides with large Maple trees. On every block was a free-flowing water fountain which gave forth the best tasting spring water you have ever drank. It was just the thing on a hot summer day. Some of the store fronts were built with a large marble or granite block which projected out onto the sidewalk. Here, men would sit in the shade and swap knives, watches, and lies until suppertime drove them home. You had to be careful walking by, especially if you were barefoot. Sometimes they couldn’t get up enough power to spit the tobacco juice all the way over the sidewalk into the gutter.

Once, I could have named every store that was on Main Street, in order, starting at the Post Office and ending with the Cherokee Hotel at the far end of town. There was one restaurant in town that sold beer on the Main Street, the “U-Like-It Restaurant”. I liked to smell the food odors that came through the front door, but I was strictly forbidden to go in. Inside, usually, was an elderly man with one wooden leg who would sit at the bar and drink until he would wet his pants. Then they would make him leave and he would start the long walk up Mayes Avenue to his home in “Happy Holler”. Sometimes he didn’t make it. Even though he was walking, he had trouble making it around the corner of Mayes and McCaslin and would wind up in Engleman’s front yard, across the street from our house. I remember once seeing some boys trying to help the old man up out of a ditch where he had fallen. He was on his back like a turtle and could roll neither left nor right. It was quite a struggle getting him up, and the odor . . . .wow!

There was one cop in town, and he was all that was needed. He drove a black Ford coupe and nobody messed with him. But his softer side would come out when he would sometimes come to the school yard at recess time with a big bag of marbles. He would toss out a handful of marbles and the fight would start. If you were tough, you would come out of the pile with a few marbles and only a few skinned places.

We lived inside the city limits, but livestock was not banned, and several neighbors had calves that they raised for meat. Everyone had a Victory Garden. I remember that I made pets of a pair of calves belonging to a neighbor two houses away from us. Then, one day, the calves disappeared. I could guess what had happened. From our upstairs bedroom window, I could see down into the neighbor’s garage, and into the night I could see my neighbor butchering those calves. I hated him with a passion after that. I would sometime hide behind trees and throw rocks at him when he was out in his yard.

I was under ten years old, so I got into the movie for nine cents. My sister, who was three years older, would have to pay fourteen cents. Being older had its penalties, even then. For a long time, I got to go in free, as long as I sat in the same seat as my sister. But they eventually put a stop to this. Before the movie opened on Saturday afternoon, we would kill time by going into the dime store and look at the toys; just look - not buy. A friend of mine, Eddie, told me that he once bought a box of Ex-Lax, thinking that it was chocolate candy and ate the whole thing before going into the movie. During the movie, Eddie screamed and ran out - up the street to the Board of Public Utilities office, where his Dad worked. His Dad took him home in the city's car and had to hose out the interior later. Eddie missed a few days of school because of that.

I don't know how old I was when Mom first allowed me to go to the movies alone, but that was a milestone. I once smuggled my toy pistol (inherited from my brother) inside and blazed away at the screen during a Saturday western. This brought a prompt confiscation of the weapon, so I didn't do that anymore. I didn't even know what "caps" were, so I had no "bullets" for my gun anyway. I could only fake it by making "choo - choo" sounds. This had little effect on the cowboys, but brought the attention of the theater owner.

The street that we lived on was long and straight. I could walk all the way from my house into town, crossing only two alleyways. When I was born, our home was right on Main Street, near the center of the business district. My Dad sold that house and we moved to our new house the year after I was born. A new post office was built on the site of our old home place. So, in walking to town, I would pass by the homes of former neighbors. In Sweetwater, everyone knew everyone. A very kind old lady who had lived behind us would sit on her front porch with her husband and would call, "Come here, little boy!”, when I would walk by. I always had to sit on her lap as she would ask about the family and she would always end by giving me a big sloppy kiss. The only problem was that she used snuff and the drool would be all over her chin. I soon learned that when I heard, "Come here, little boy!” I had better run like a turkey.

I soon noticed that some of the homes along the street had little flags hanging in their window with a single, or sometime double, white star. I asked Mom why we didn’t get a flag like that and very soon, we did. Jack had volunteered for the draft. I learned what the little flag meant; a son was in the military. My next lesson came when some of the stars started to turn to gold color. By that time, I knew what that meant; the son had been killed. A neighbor's son was on Bataan and many months passed before they learned that he had died in a prison camp. Theirs was not the first gold star on the street, but probably would have been, had they known.

There were war time speech expressions that we used only back then. I could never keep it straight whether "pre-war" manufactured meant that it was better or worse than what you could buy at that time. "Will he have to go across?" meant "Will he go overseas and serve in battle?" Sometimes the sentence ended with ". . .and come back alive." meaning that he had served his time and lived through it. That was quite an accomplishment, and something to bring joy to the whole neighborhood. The local American Legion Post sometimes hung bed sheets sewn together on the side of the local grade school and showed newsreel footage of past battles. Half the town would gather on those hot summer nights to see what was happening. The Knoxville and Chattanooga newspapers would have a daily map of the battle lines and you cringed at the "Bulge" and the line stopping at "Casino". You heard words like "the hump", and the "repo-depot". And Jack wrote home that, even though he had made it through his physical by keeping his socks on, they had discovered that he had lost some toes in the train accident and now he would not be serving as a B-17 gunner as he had trained. Instead he was going to be a "grease monkey". Mom was very pleased. And I didn't know why Jack seemed disappointed. I was very proud of my big brother.

Hal left in early 1945 for Europe and Mom cried some more. Our single white star changed to two. Much later, he sent pictures to Mom of our cousin's, "Buster" Dupes’ grave in Holland. Mom and I took them to my Aunt Pearl and I boasted "Hal says that he is only a few graves from General Patton's." Aunt Pearl didn't seem to see the honor in this. She quietly left the room.

My Dad and I were in the front room listening to the radio when we heard someone outside running up the street yelling, "The War is over! The War is over!" Of course, this was only VE Day, but this meant that Jack and Hal would probably be coming home alive. And Mom cried again. Dad went outside by himself.

Slowly, the town started to come alive again with soldiers and men other than the ones showing war wounds. Dad ran me out of the room when some men who had worked at the mill, and others, came by one afternoon. I listened from the next room. They explained that they were going to Athens to "help out", and wanted Dad to lend them his pistols and hunting rifles. Dad complied and they went on their way. About dusk, Dad asked Mom if she would like to ride to Athens to see what was going on. I knew that it had something to do with the election, but I didn't know more than this. We drove to an overcrowded Athens where Dad parked just across the street from the jail. It was about the only place in town to park. Some men approached and said, “Maybe, Walt, you ought to move your car. You are in the line of fire." We quickly moved down to the Court House square. Later, it was quite a show to watch as people would peer around the corner of the buildings, up the street toward the jail. No one wanted to get out into the street and would take cover behind the man in front of him. Soon the line would be stair-stepped out into the street. Gunfire would start and the line of men would turn and run down the street, taking whatever cover they could find. The shooting would stop and eventually the whole process would be repeated. I remember seeing one fellow boldly walking out into the middle of the street and emptying his pistol up the street toward the jail. Then he calmly pocketed the weapon and rejoined the crowd. We left for home about mid-night and learned of the outcome the next day when the jubilant veterans returned Dad's guns. Hal was still in Europe while all of this was going on and wrote home that Athens had made the headlines in the "Starts & Stripes" newspaper. The “Battle of Athens” was history now.

I will quit here for a while. Some of these recollections have brought back memories that I have not thought of for many years. Everything has changed now. In some ways, that is a good thing. And I think that, as long as you can remember, you don't really lose the good times. I am startled now when I catch a glimpse of the old man looking back at me from the mirror in the morning when I shave. I would like to think that the ten year old boy in still inside, but. . . .