THE EARLIEST MEMORIES & PLACES WE LIVED
I tell people that I have always (lived in Powell. It really seems this way. Out this is actually untrue since I lived some places before I came to Powell and once moved away in later life to Atlanta for a couple of years. But life, to me, seems to have began in. Powell. I can only recall bits and pieces of my life before. 13ut life became continuous in. Powell.
Before moving to Powell the first incidents that i remember occurred when we lived on Clinton Highway in Anderson county when I was probably two or three years old. The Following incidents are all that I can recall from that age. The house was perched on a steep hilt. i remember the high back porch on the little rental house in which we lived. There were many steps up to the little porch at the back door. One day I reached up on the hand rail above my head and grabbed a wire brush which cut my hands. I did this again a few days later and i can remember crying. I recall a babysitter staying with me one day while living in that house. Sundays were special since daddy would go down the highway and buy us a newspaper From a local store. I can recall on one occasion we walked down the road to a spring beside the road and got water. f don’t know why -perhaps the cistern was dry. We had a neighbor by the name of Zimmerman. He raised a garden between our house and his. One day he cut a large tree that stood beside the garden. And this sticks in my memory even yet. And last of all I can remember a time that traffic was stalled is the snow in Front of our house and daddy loaned his flashlight to a man. And the man kept it.
While these memories are not very interesting, they are very important to me since i Feel life really began at this point. My mother always argued that I could not of remembered these early happenings. She said I must of heard someone tell of them and just remembered the stories. As to my age at this time I had to be no older than three because we moved from there and lived in Inskip when I was four. i can verify this age because my brother entered the first grade in school while we were living there.
In Inskip we lived in a rental house on. Central Avenue Pike which, by the way, still stands. You might have noticed that I say “rental house” each time we relocated. (You see, I never lived in. anything but a rental house until long after I was grown and married.) Across the street from this house was a grocery store. This grocery store was a great temptation to a little four year old boy and I can remember getting spanked for crossing Central Ave. to just be at this store. I’m sure I didn’t have any money. I can remember many things that happened while I lived in Inskip including my brother starting school. This was a big deal, since he had to walk and cross a railroad to get there.
We moved to Wells Street in Powell when. I was five. I can. remember being questioned about me being out of school after the school year had started. But, I had missed the school year by one day because of a January First birthday. I have numerous memories of my time living on Wells Street.
So it was on Wells Street that my continuous Powell life seems to have started. It was here that I would attend Mrs. Hayworth’s kindergarten. It was here that I began the first grade at Powell Elementary School. The school was just two blocks away. it was from here that I remember walking to Groners store. This store was the main store in. Powell and it also contained the Powell post office in one room at back. We had to go to the post office to pick up our mail since we lived so close.
I will just list some of things that I remember that happened while I lived on. Wells Street. When I was Five or six years old or in about 1937 or 1838 they plowed up and rebuilt Harmon Road in Powell. I began my first attendance in church at the Powell Baptist Church at the corner of Wells Street and Commerce Street. The church was next door and only about a hundred feet away.
While i lived on Wells my future wife would also come to live just across the street. I can remember Winston at that time and I thought she was cute but she did not have much to do with me since I was a year younger. It was at this time that Winston’s daddy would die. I can still remember faintly this event. I can remember many other things and events from this time but they are all of a frivolous nature.
When I was about eight or nine years old, we moved from Wells Street to another Powell location on Constantine Road ( now known as Beaver Creek Drive). Our rental house was about a quarter of a mile from Clinton Highway. One thing that would be different at this location would be the necessity of me riding the school bus to school. This was a minor thing since I had an older brother to guide me along. While we did not live here very long, one thing I can remember was that we fed and looked after a horse for our landlord. The landlord lived away somewhere, but part of the rental agreement was that we would look after his horse.
Out back of our rental house was a barn and behind it was large pasture field for the horse to graze. We spent many hours playing in the barn. One day I was up in the loft in the barn. The loft only came about half way to the front of the barn. Suddenly the horse came walking slowly our from under the loft. He was unaware that I was in. the loft. And he was just about two feet below where I was standing. Now, remember about the only movies I had ever seen was about cowboys. These guys would grab a limb while running their horse full speed and swing their bodies up in a tree. They would leap out of a tree onto their horse and gallop away. Many times they would leap astraddle of their horse From the rear and take off at full speed.
So back in the loft when I saw this horse coming out in slow motion realized this was my once in a lifetime chance to drop astraddle of this gentle horse and go for a ride. I knew what I had in mind but the horse had no idea what was about to happen. I had barely hit his back for a perfect landing when the startled animal lounged into a gallop without so much as looking back. I on the other hand toppled off the back of the horse and landed Flat of my back. I had fallen about six feet. I laid there in intense pain gasping for breath. After several agonizing minutes I was able to get to my feet. I was glad n0 one was around to see my stupid act. To the best of my knowledge none of my family ever knew about this episode.
We next made our last move to a rental house on Constantine Road (now Beaver Creek Drive) at the corner of Adams Road. It was here we would live until I was grown.
(See the story entitled “The War” which happened while we lived at this address. Also, see the story entitled “A Typical Summer Day” which happened at this location.
( written by Jim Evans July 2012 another of “My Stories”)