I have lived my entire life in Union County, save for almost four years when I was an undergraduate student at Lincoln Memorial University.

I think the first place I lived was in a house owned by Paul Byerley’s in-laws, known to my mother as “Bridges’ Place”. I do not remember living there at all. I have an old black and white photograph of my mother and father sitting on the front porch, Dad holding me on his knee. I think that house still stands on the left on the road just before you get to Paul Byerley’s former residence. Mother used to tell about Dad standing on the porch one day. The boards broke, and Dad fell straight to the ground. Mother thought that was hilarious, even years later when she would repeat the story. Dad never found the episode in the least amusing.

I barely remember living in the little white house directly across Main Street from Maynardville (First) Baptist Church. Tad McDonald, a surveyor and the adult men’s Sunday school teacher at Maynardville Baptist for many years, owned that house. It had belonged to his mother. That house still stands and was unoccupied from the time we moved out of it (around 1968) until Mike Miller renovated and sold it a few years ago. We moved from there when I was about four years old. The front yard of the house was probably not more than ten feet from Main Street, which in those days was the main and only highway that connected Knoxville to Tazewell. I used to love playing in the dirt at the side of that main road, and it amazes me that my parents, overprotective as they were, would allow me to play that close to a major thoroughfare. Interestingly enough, we moved from that house because Dad became afraid that a car would roll off the hill of the parking lot of the service station on the hill above the house. The service station at that time was owned by Leon Campbell and was most recently operated by the Robbins. Not terribly long after we moved, a car did indeed roll down the hill and crash into the corner of the side porch at the kitchen door. The house itself was not damaged.

We next moved to a house owned by Jessie Buckner (former English teacher at Horace Maynard High School) on Academy Street. I can remember having a real Christmas tree and a stereo while we lived there. I remember my dad (who was intoxicated) and his stepson (my half-brother Jerry, who had a bad temper) getting into a fight on the front porch with coal buckets. I remember falling off the back porch and getting my mouth full of mud, and falling off the front porch into the coal pile, skinning my knees. It was there I got my first lesson in electricity when I stuck a bobby pin into the electrical receptacle in the front bedroom. (If younger readers don’t know what a “bobby pin” is, a good Google search should suffice.) I remember Nola Blair and her daughter Dorothy visiting us. On one occasion Mother fed them, and Ms. Blair drank her buttermilk straight from the jar. Dad was less than pleased. I remember the bedroom window being raised on stifling hot summer nights and hearing the neighbors’ heated argument. I remember seeing my niece Sheila for the very first time at that house.

And then we moved to the house that has always had my heart, Jack Warwick’s house on Old Luttrell Road. This was to be the last time I ever lived in the City of Maynardville proper. We moved there in 1971. I was six, and I had either just started or was just about to start first grade at Maynardville Elementary. I have written much in the past about my experiences while I lived there. That house was real, but at the same time was also my imagination factory. That house served me as church, school, grocery store, jail, mortuary, medical center, bank, office building, the White House and other fascinating imaginary places as I became an imaginary minister, teacher, merchant, policeman, mortician, doctor, banker, attorney, politician, and President. I came of age while I lived there. I had my first home library in that marvelous house. It was like the house was an elderly angel who lovingly enveloped me during my preteen and adolescent years. We lived there when Dad died in February 1982. I didn’t know it then, but in 27 months Mother and I would be moving again.

In May 1984 we moved to a house on the right of Highway 33 on the way to Tazewell that was owned by Ann Thacker, widow of Rev. Porter Thacker. I had just completed my freshman year at LMU. That house was the nicest we had lived in to that point. This house had an inside bathroom, carpeted floors and storm windows. It had a front yard that sloped from the highway to the front porch, and the back yard sloped toward the spring which provided water to both us and our landlord. The effect was that the house sat in a type of earthen bowl. It stayed relatively cool in the summer due to being shaded from almost every direction for most of the day, an effect which also made the house colder in winter. The flooring in front of the house was less than a foot from the earth beneath it and had little ventilation. This resulted in dampness and mold. Black clothes frequently had to have mold removed before they could be worn. To see the sun or moon I had to cross the street and stand in my landlord’s yard. Part of the back yard was so steep that I could barely stand to mow it. On one occasion the landlord’s cattle tromped around the spring, and the water tasted suspiciously like cow manure. Kudzu was everywhere.
I finished my undergraduate degree at LMU while we lived at Thacker’s. Every Friday evening I was rewarded for a week of surviving the week at college with a three hour television marathon. Television reception down under the road was pretty rotten, and I do not believe cable is available at that precise location to this very day. I could, with a little prodding and a lot of swearing, pick up the one most important VHF (here’s another great Google opportunity, kiddies!) station. At 8:00 p.m. I watched the colorized version of The Twilight Zone. This was followed by the king of all television shows, Dallas. Absolutely nothing interfered with my watching of Dallas—even my college sweetheart could not wrest my attention from the set while J. R. Ewing was working his evil. At 10:00 p.m., Falcon Crest occupied my sole attention.

There was one Friday evening when my television viewing was interrupted. It was dark, and a car stopped at the side of the road at the end of the driveway. The lights would flicker on and off. This suspicious behavior went on for some time. Finally a figure could be seen coming down the driveway. Mother ran and called 911. The figure came to the door and knocked. We turned on the porch light and cracked open the door. A very elderly woman was standing there. She and her equally elderly sister were lost and needed help finding their way. Mother said, “Don’t worry—the law will be here in a minute. I just called them.” My sister thought that was the funniest thing she’d heard in some time. The “law” did indeed arrive a short time later and assisted the ladies on their dark night’s journey.

I never felt at home the entire seven years that Mother and I lived in Thacker’s house. I’m sure this is in great part due to feeling so heartbroken at leaving the house that figured so prominently in my childhood. I pass the abandoned house often, and occasionally during the cold months when snakes and other vermin are less active my nephew Joe and I will occasionally stop and go inside. My second home library was in the front room of that house, and I remember days of exhaustion and depression that accompanied my student teaching when I would sit in that room and sleep into oblivion. During that opportune moment a beautiful gray, Persian cat became my constant companion as he shared my recliner. I named him Gray-bo. When he stretched out to his full nose-to-tail length, Gray-bo reached from my chest to my toes. He was a cuddler, obviously on loan from God for just that time period in my life. There came a day when Gray-bo did not make his customary visit. A smell of decay from the large gully just past the house a few days later served notice that my gray friend had most likely met a bad end at the wheels of an automobile.

Life there did seem to improve for me after I graduated and began teaching. It was teaching that gave me the opportunity to finally own a place of my own. I’ll share with you, Faithful Reader, more about that next week.

Until then, I leave you with a thought from my email world:

I have been in many places, but I've never been in Kahoots.
Apparently, you can't go alone.
You have to be in Kahoots with someone.