http://www.biddingforgood.com/auction/AuctionHome.action?auctionId=141232451
The rest is history.
Ok, so what kind of town was I about to conquer? What sorts of rhythms regulated our human traffic? Well, if city dwelling is a goal it will not be realized in Madisonville, even yet. Monroe Country, like the counties surrounding it, is largely rural. I lived right on the edge of the city limits. I walked about a half mile to and from school every morning and afternoon. In those days, and for about 15 more years, there were still a few small farms inside the city. I passed several to and from school. I lived on the Old Athens Road, just past a split point where a gravel road veered off between the Church of God on the northern side, and Westside Baptist to the south. In the middle of the dividing line was the neighborhood store. I lived about 50 yards west of that. Since, like any small grocery, the store had dopes (soft drinks) and candy, kids hung around there all the time. The store owner liked kids and tolerated them.
I didn’t think of myself as a townie, but I was not a country boy either. Other than vegetable gardening, I’ve done no other farm labor. I’ve never milked a cow, never fed chickens, never driven a tractor. The few times I hauled hay were miserable, and, after 1971, never repeated. I’m not saying I’m too good for any of that. The fact is that I’m not good enough for it. I’ve seen guys carry two bales of hay, like suitcases, at a time, when it was all I could do to hoist a single bale onto the wagon. Even the girls, lust inducing as they were, out-toughed me. I wasn’t a 98 pound weakling (more like a 110 pound version of it) either. I’m just not cut out for that sort of labor.
The old neighborhood, where my mom still lives, was Greenwood Circle, which had been subdivided from the Greenwood Farm. Bits of the farm still existed until the early 70’s when what became New Highway 68 bowled through the giant red barn that appeared to be the last working remnant of the place. At the end of the circle, behind the church furniture manufacturing plant, and stretching a mile or so north and south between the railroad tracks and a creek emanating from a spring fed pond, was a thin strand of woods filled with tall pines in some patches, and myriad hard and soft woods along the way. My family had done a lot of blackberry picking out there, and right in the middle of the woods was a nice path where at one time (and I have no idea when that time was) the railroad had routed through. An old abandoned cinder block building with thick concrete supports inside was situated near the tracks. What it had been is still a mystery to me. Some friends and I found a newspaper dating from 1954 inside the place nearly 20 years after that date. It was destroyed sometime in the 1980s.
Pretty near the old building was an old road that dead ended before reaching the railroad tracks. The north side of the road emptied onto Warren Street, very close to Greenwood Circle. In the late 60’s a wooden bridge spanned the creek (the same creek that ran around behind the primary school and football field) near a small, seemingly isolated house, quite segregated from the other houses on the north end, though not so far away. There was an older fellow (how old I can’t say since I was terrible at age guessing then, but he was probably as old, or a little older, than my grandmother, who was in her early 50’s at that time) living there. He was well known all over town by his nickname, and I had often seen him in my neighborhood as well as in the woods. I’d overheard people speak of him, and in some code I wasn’t privy to (and still am not sure about) nearly always said, “Well, he doesn’t bother anybody.”
Not very far from the old fellow’s house, in a sort of enclave near the dead end, was what I had been told was an Indian (Native American) graveyard. True or not I can’t say, but the ground there was flat and not covered in trees, though surrounded by them, and there were what appeared to be headstones of an old timey type like I had seen in older sections of some cemeteries (there are a few in the Hiwassee College cemetery), and so old that all information had been worn away from the stone faces. I last walked down that street in 1985. By then the wooden bridge had fallen, and the old fellow’s house (he was dead) was nearly gone. I looked for the cemetery, but the location I’d remembered was covered by what appeared to be a sewer project.
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