The Boy Driver
(Editor’s note — The names have been changed to protect the guilty.) My mother told this story about my dad, Jack White, when he was the 14 year-old bus driver at Culleoka School. He had been driving the bus since he was twelve, having been recommended for the job by his mentor, Bill Orr, the principal at Bryant Station. Jack White as a teenager It seems that the previous driver, a Mr. Harris, had been scaring the daylights out...
The Boy Who Loved School
Up on Silver Creek, the blackberry bushes grew taller on the east side of the hill. The dew came off them sooner and the berries enjoyed the sunlight for a longer time. The remains of an old orchard, planted by the first white settlers, shielded the fruit from the bluebirds. “My mother would help my sister Kathryn and I pick a vessel full of berries, then she would start home to start a batch of jelly on the wood stove.”...
The Drunkard
note: The names in this story — except for my own family — have been changed to protect descendants of the others who I grew up with. One night my dad Jack White and his father Bob were walking home from a tobacco sale. It was dark and cold and as they rambled over the tall, rocky hills toward their home in Scribner’s Mill, Bob was most aware of the wad of bills he carried in his coat pocket. Jack was about ten and...
Bob White
My grandfather Bob White was the son of a Confederate cavalryman. His way of life in the country had been pretty much the same as it had been when his great-grandfather Lewis first came to Maury County in the early 1800s and didn’t change considerably through the time my own dad grew up in the 1920s and ‘30s. For instance, my dad was about fourteen before the federal Public Works Administration brought electricity down the road....
Stark Love at the Tennessee Theater
Congratulations to Bradley Reeves of the Tennessee Archive for Moving Image and Sound and Knoxville, Tennessee’s historic Tennessee Theater for hosting a special screening of the recently restored print of Stark Love. This was the flagship event of the East Tennessee History Fair and was a huge success! A large crowd assembled August 15th in the beautiful 1,600 movie palace to see the film and the accompanying documentary, Lost...
High Drama on the Big Muddy
“If you have time, I’ll tell you a good Lane Davies story.” “Well, if it’s good, I’ll take time,” I said. I was visiting with Mr. James “Buddy” Pigg in an 1880s schoolhouse on Mingo Branch. Every year, Mr. Buddy graciously invites me to his family’s reunion in Sante Fe, Tennessee, held on the homeplace of his second cousin Charles. The guy he mentioned, the actor Lane Davies, is a friend of mine and the best friend of Mr. Buddy’s...