Scott County, Tennessee
FNB Chronicles

This page was created 06 Sep 2008

(page 9)

OK, you baby boomers, aging hippies and middle-aged persons from hither and yon, this is our story. How many of these things do you remember?

· Bathing in a galvanized tub by the woodstove.

· Washing clothes by the creek in water heated in a black kettle with a wood fire under it.

· Hanging clothes to dry on the yard fence.

· Carrying out mattresses and pillows to the yard to sun in the springtime.

· Having the "croup" every winter.

· Having so much cover on the beds in winter that you couldn’t turn over.

· Sleeping with all the windows and doors open during the sultry summer months and not being afraid of intruders.

· Hearing the katydids, whippoorwills and crickets.

· Eating canned blackberries and hot, homemade biscuits for breakfast.

· Watching frog legs jump in the frying pan.

· Warming your front side by the fireplace (grate) till it pieded while your backside freezes.

· Drinking sassafras tea.

· Vick’s salve on your chest.

· Coal oil in a spoonful of sugar for the croup.

· Fear of having a tapeworm or pin worms.

· Eating poke salad and other wild greens as long as they lasted.

· Getting sick from eating Easter eggs after we had "hid" them all day.

· Getting the "green apple trots" from eating too many.

· Eating squirrel dumplings... and liking them!

· Making sling-shots out of rubber inner tubes, shoe tongues and ivy limbs.

· Racing click ‘n wheels.

· Rolling a car tire for hours on end.

· Remembering your favorite "taw," "playing for keeps," and mumbly peg?

· Riding the horse drawn drag to weigh it down.

· Fresh sweet milk and churned butter cooled in a spring.

· Making homemade wooden wagons.

· Warming by a "car tire" fire while you waited for your turn to sled down the snow covered obstacle course.

· How good scratching your foot felt as the swelling went down from a honey bee sting.

· Those awful blisters on your heels in September from wearing shoes for the first time in three months.

· Going to the outside toilet — no matter if it snowed, sleeted or hailed.

· No indoor plumbing until we were almost grown.

· Studying by oil lamp.

· Sitting on the porch.

· Being scared from listening to ghost stories and haint tales.

· Jumping off the swing at the favorite swimming hole.

· Playing kick the can, fox and dog, Annie over, jump rope, hopscotch, jacks, rummy, post office, spin the bottle and drop the handkerchief.

· Blackouts, fathers, brothers and uncles coming home from war.

· Visiting relatives who worked at Oak Ridge on a secret project and having to pass through the guard gates to the city.

· All baptizings were in the river.

· Fearing an atomic war.

· Having buildings declared as fallout shelters.

· Duck tails, flat tops, crew cuts, page boys, pony tails, neck scarves, bobby socks, penny loafers, saddle oxfords, poodle skirts, short sleeves rolled up, blue jeans rolled up, cigarettes behind your ear, Butch Wax and Red Lucky Tiger hair oil.

· ‘57 Chevy, drive in movies, hand jive, the Glasshouse Restaurant.

· The rivalry between Oneida, Huntsville, Norma and Robbins High Schools.

· Dating someone from another school being the "cool" thing to do. Dating classmates was almost like dating your brother or sister.

· Our fathers working two jobs, coal mining and in the log woods, to earn enough to get our families by.

· Trading at the company store with scrip.

· Getting paid a dollar a day to plant tobacco, hoe corn and pick beans.

· Stepping in "foam pits" at molasses stir offs.

· Walking home after dark from church with no light.

· Remember how dark the nights were before street lights?

· Potatoes, cabbage and turnips were "holed up" to preserve them.

· Hulling walnuts and the black stain having to wear off our fingers.

· The fear of polio.

· More gravel and dirt roads than brick or paved ones.

· Highway 27 was the main north-south road from Michigan to Florida.

· Sitting in the balcony at the Scott Theatre.

· Respecting our elders, especially our school principal and teachers.

· Meals in school cafeteria were all made "from scratch."

· Pretending to be big by smoking grape vines, field weeds and rabbit tobacco.

· Going to visit family and friends on Sunday after church.

· Church being the main community event. Most all socializing was done around church activities.

· Going to all day church meetings and dinner on the ground.

· Drinking Kool-Aid.

· Chocolate drops and hard candy at Christmastime.

· Popcorn balls at Halloween.

· Swinging bridges and foot logs.

· Dogs with rabies.

· Getting dew in your stumped toe.

· Carrying lunch to school in a four-pound lard bucket.

· Fats Domino, Elvis and the bop.

· Cuban Missile crisis.

· Class trip to Washington, D.C.

· Assassinations and Viet Nam.

· Dancing the twist and pony.

· Multi-lane interstates replacing curvy two-lane roads.

· High school consolidation — no more Huntsville, Norma and Robbins High Schools.

· Everyone drinking from the same gourd dipper.

· •Everyone has chickens in their yard.

· Hearing a hen cackle in the springtime.

· The squeak of a wooden screened door.

· Making crepe paper flowers for "Decoration" Day.

· Tamping leaves from the woods in grass sacks to bed livestock stalls.

· A stone bruise on your heel.

· Mark Twain bus from Jamestown to Oneida.

· Flagging down a Greyhound Bus along the roadside.

· Not being afraid to pick up a hitchhiker.

· Neatly patched kids’ clothes.

· The smell of bed sheets dried in the sun.

· Baseball made from black tape, socks and fence paling for a bat.

· Straight chairs and no couches.

· Lard rendered from hog fat.

· Half gallon canning jars.

· Walking on stilts.

· Gathering late on hot summer days to swim in the river.

· Wood floors scrubbed with lye soap.

· Smell of fresh greens cooking on the stove.

· Fly swat made from screen wire or rubber inner tube.

· Old fashioned church fans.

· Setting up with the dead.

· Playing in the creek, catching tadpoles, crawfish and frogs.

· Corn shocks and pulled fodder. Pumpkins on the ground.

· Horses working farmland instead of tractors.

· Having to cut your own switch and getting a harder switching if it was too spindly.

· Sears and Roebuck catalog for toilet tissue.

· Smell of fresh sawdust.

· Hearing dead chestnut trees fall on the mountain tops.

· Hoeing corn until it was taller than your head.

· ‘Having cornbread and sweet milk for supper.

· Hand shelling corn and using the cobs for kindling.

· Making pop guns from river cane.

· Picking up potatoes from fresh-dug soil.

· Shoe sole flopping as you walked.

· Eating flitters fried on a wood cook stove top.

· The cold wood floor as you ran barefoot to dress behind the wood stove.

· Cedar Christmas trees with paper chains and bubble lights.

· Mid-wives, blacksmiths and gristmills.

FNB Chronicle, Vol. 5, No. 3 –Spring 1994
First National Bank
P.O. Box 4699
Oneida, TN 37841
(p9)

This page was created by Timothy N. West and is copyrighted by him. All rights reserved.