By James and Ellen Perry
Here it is September again. Again, the nights are cooler with warm afternoons. It’s now dark at 6:30 a.m. as the days get shorter with nights getting longer. Time is marching toward fall and then winter.
The kids are back in school, terrorizing the teachers and waiting for fall break. The school buses are loaded to the brim as there’s a shortage of school bus drivers. Knox County started school in August with a shortage of 31 drivers. Less drivers/more kids means problems for bus contractors. Many contractors have to combine different loads to be able to get the kids home. So parents, allow a little leeway for the bus drivers. We don’t want any more to quit driving.
All of us do-it-yourselfers know that mowing our yards will end soon for winter. Our first frost in upper East Tennessee is normally within five days of October 15th.
That will close the mowing until March of 2024. What a good feeling thinking about not having to mow, weed eat, blowing grass every week.
Well, there’s hunting, fishing and football to fill the void of not having to mow the yard.
Going back in time to the 1950s. Here in upper East Tennessee, the tobacco crop would have been cut, hauled to the barn, hung to dry waiting to be handed off and stacked on tobacco baskets, then taken to tobacco auction houses, scattered over the burley tobacco growing area and sold at auction, with the money received for the crop being paid to the local farmer’s co-op, Sears Roebuck for school clothes, grocers for credit accounts and the few remaining dollars for Christmas gifts and food.
The potatoes, onions, and green tomatoes has been gathered and put in storage for winter. The corn crop has been gathered, divided for hominy making and the rest stored in the corn crib for being milled into cornmeal and the nubbins being fed to the milk cow, mule, chickens and pigs.
Norris Lake has been lowered for winter snow melting and spring rains which provided flood control for areas from Norris Dam to the Tennessee River through Chattanooga and south into Northern Alabama. The paw paws are ripe. So are apples and pears. School boys are hunting chinquapins for school snacks. Every farm boy has both front jean pockets full.
Squirrel season has opened with all boys hitting the woods after their evening chores are done heading to a favorite hickory tree full of squirrels gorging on hickory nuts, building fat for the upcoming winter. Tonight, some of these squirrels will be in the pan being fried or served with gravy. I’ve even taken squirrel biscuits for my lunch at Rose Hill Elementary.
There are no raccoons or bears seen in Union County during this time as they were hunted out during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Very few deer are in Union County because of the same. The entire world suffered depression with seven million dying from starvation in the Republic of Georgia caused by the Russian military taking all their food to support the Russian military. That depression happened only 20 years before the 1950s.
The new cars and pickup trucks will be showing in a couple of weeks, although some national magazines have acquired and published pictures in their early September magazines. This is an annual event to see the big three that is Ford, GM, and Chrysler new car and truck changes.
We had our music during the 1950s as well as our cars. Our music and cars were inseparable. During the early ’50s we had Johnny Ray, Eddy Fisher, Perry Como, Frankie Laine, Nat King Cole, Eddy Howard, Samy Kaye, Bing Crosby, Al Martino and female stars such as Jo Stafford, Kay Starr, Patti Page, Joni James, Georgie Gibbs, Doris Day, Pearl Bailey, Rosemary Clooney, Peggy Lee and Ella Mae Morse.
Starting in 1954, doo-wop came on the scene with groups like The Cadillacs, The Chantels, The Clovers, The Coasters, The Crest, The Del Vikings, The Diamonds, Dion and The Belmonts, The Drifters, Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers, The Heartbeats, Shep and the Limelights, Jay and the Americans, Lee Andrew and the Hearts, Little Antony and the Imperials, The Orioles, The Platters, Jimmy Beaumont and the Skyliners, Fred Paris and the Five Satins, The Shirelles, Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs, The Mystics, The Dubs and The Moonglows. Now for the rock and roll stars and groups of the 1950s: Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, The Everly Brothers, Bill Haley and The Comets, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Sam Cooke, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, Ricky Nelson, Laverne Baker, Chuck Willis, Carl Perkins, Little Willie John, Clyde McPhatter, Jackie Wilson, Lloyd Price, Jack Scott, Duane Eddy, Larry Williams, Bobby Darin, Ritchie Valens, Bill Doggett, Brenda Lee, Johnny Burnette, Roy Orbison, Jerry Butler and Dee Clark.
I personally don’t think today’s hip-hop, rap and what’s passed and shoveled out of Nashville for country music today can even begin to compete with 1950s music. Music can inspire for good or bad and today’s rap, hip-hop, and country does not inspire good.
During our elementary school years in the little room (grades 1-4), we learned the pledge to the flag of the United States and how to display and fold the flag with respect. We also would join the 4-H Club and learn from Mr. Julian the Tennessee Anthem. Here are some of the verses that I remember 70 years later:
Oh Tennessee, fair Tennessee,
The land of all the world to me
I stand upon the mountain high
And hold communion with the sky
And view the glory
And the Landscape
Of Old Tennessee for ever more.
I’m not sure that today’s school kids have ever heard this Tennessee Anthem.
Another great event that happened during the school year at the Union County Elementary schools was a visit by the Bible lady, as she was known to us students. Her name was Isabell Campbell—another memory I have after 70 years.
The Bible lady, as she was called by the students, arrives in her 1955 Chevrolet black car with no frills. Her hair was always in a tight bun behind her head and a long dress usually in black or dark colors.
We kids always looked for and appreciated the Bible lady. Her house was provided by Mr. Cecil Butcher, who I think did not and has not been given credit for what he did to improve Union County Schools.
The Bible lady brought with her a large felt-covered easel with felt figures of men and women, animals, clouds, and terrain patches to make a pictorial semblance to help us kids understand and enjoy her Bible stories.
When she started her story and until the end you could hear a pin drop on the oiled wood floor of the classroom.
The Bible lady also would give either a New Testament or an Old Testament Bible if you could repeat a verse from the Bible selected by the Bible lady. She would give the kids a Bible verse and number for us to find and memorize and repeat at her next visit to the school. We surely need a Bible lady at our elementary schools today. Take away the kids’ cell phones for an hour and teach them stories from the Bible.
The kids today need discipline like my generation of the 1950s had at home, and especially in school grades from K-12.
To get a true picture of what today’s kids are capable of, here’s a YouTube video address by Sheriff Billy Woods of Marion County, Florida, which includes Ocala. If you don’t have a computer, go to a relative or friend’s house who has one and spend 16 minutes to see what a law enforcement officer of 33 years tells you about a triple murder of three mid-teen kids by two other mid-teen kids and one twelve-year-old kid.
Here is the YouTube address: Florida Sheriff Announces Arrest in Shooting Death of Three Teens/Full Video. All parents and school employees from faculty to teachers should watch this video in its entirety.
While completing this month’s article watching Fox, there’s a smash and grab going on live in a Los Angelas mall. Sure, it’s different from the ’50s when dad worked, mom ran the home and was home when we got home from the small community school. At that distant time the smash and grab would have been put down immediately. In my opinion we need to “go back from the future.”
Time for some Elvis. See you next month.