JUST LIKE OLD TIMES!

Ron and I were out again today for lunch and adventure.

The adventure part began at the new Frontier Arms store on Gallaher Road, between Kingston and Oak Ridge. It’s a huge place, and not yet jumping because the firing range isn’t quite ready. However, I expect the place to a hang out for many local residents once the firing begins!

Oh yeah, we also visited my 8-pointer that I donated to Brant Williams to help decorate the store. He looks pretty good hanging up there!

We then stopped off near K-25 and I again took photos of the beautiful green swamp that has emerged there between the Clinch River and the back roads of the old diffusion plant. All it really needs is a couple of gators and we’d be in the tourist business with swamp boats!We decided to go to Oak Ridge instead of Knoxville for lunch and check out the newly opened Lincoln’s Sports Grille. The Lincoln's Sports Grille is owned by three local businessmen and a professional baseball player -- Mike Lincoln -- for whom the establishment is named. The group also includes Marcus Caldwell, Scott Green (whom we met today), V.J. Murray, and Len Hart.

It was Hart's relationship with Lincoln in Minor League baseball that brought the current Cincinnati Reds' hurler into the group.

Lincoln also pitched for the University of Tennessee before going pro.

As I stepped from my truck, my eyes were drawn to an AC Cobra parked in front of Lincoln’s. It’s always been my desire to own one of those, even if it was a “kit car” like this one. However, it looked pretty hot to me.

Just then someone hollered at me, “Paul, is that you!?”

It was about eight folks from K-25 on their lunch break. My last boss, Don Scheve, along with Brad White, Leslie Palmer, Debra Freeney, and Jim Edwards, to mention a few. It was terrific to see them again, and even Ron (my brother-in-law) seemed to enjoy the group. He had met several of them at concerts we’ve attended at the Tennessee Theatre in years past.

Lincoln’s Sports Grille turned out to be a great place. It’s much larger inside that it appears, complete with private party rooms, a large pool room, a stage that is occupied with live music Thursday – Saturday evenings, a huge bar with multiple pulls (they had Fat Tire – that’s all I needed), a two levels of tables and booths to chose from! If you smoke, Lincoln’s is smoke free, so take it outside to their large patio area with tables and umbrellas! It’s huge folks!

Now, lets talk food! I tried the K-25 (medium heat) chicken wings...and they were tender and juicy! Jim elected to try the “Cesar chicken wrap”, and I think I’ll try that next time.

Don and a couple of other tried the “tuna melt”, but Leslie liked her food presentation best (use your imagination)!

Then there was my old buddy (he’s really like a son) Brad and his “home wrecker” hot dog! Man, that thing is huge and, yes, he ate it all!

CLICK TO ENLARGE

I even got to see old David Rose...it has been almost 5 years since he and I shared an office. He hasn’t changed, though he’s had some health issues like me.

Ron and left the bar and headed over to the old Alexander Inn. The Alexander Inn, called the “Guest House” in the early “secret city” war days, is closed and starting to deteriorate. It was built in 1943 to serve the top-secret Manhattan Project (WWII), and serve as a place for visitor’s like J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Secretary of War Henry Stimson to stay while visiting “the project”!

Way back in the 50’s my Grandfather Williams, who worked at the ORNL (X-10) site as a carpenter. He had a little room and I remember visiting one time and he showed me a secret he kept hidden from the Inn’s management – a hotplate he had attached to a table, and somehow the device folded down out of sight – hidden inside the table. The guest were not supposed to cook in their rooms, but he was not one to follow rules! So, the place has special importance to me because he lived there.

The good news is some money is coming in and the Alexander Inn may once again shine and welcome visitors. Many of us used to go to the bar there after work, so maybe that will happen again.

Anyway, the organizers are also making some income by recently allowing investigators with the Office of Paranormal Studies put all the ghost stories to the test.

"We're ghost hunters. We go around to places where paranormal activity is claimed. We'll check it out for ourselves and see what we can find," said Office of Paranormal Studies Co-Founder Clint Ferguson.

"There's a lot of rumors that it's haunted. We'd like to find out if it's haunted or it's not. If there's activity here, we'll find it," Investigator Pete Fransen said.

Requests to track paranormal activity at the old hotel aren't rare.

"I get a call probably every week to either take a tour to see the ghosts or somebody wants to come look for ghosts," Oak Ridge Revitalization Effort Executive Director Kate Groover said.

Heck, maybe they’ll start some ghost tours and make even more money for restoration. They may even find my granddad’s old hidden hotplate – if nothing else!

It was a great day, I even stopped on the way home and visited my buddy Gary Baker for a few minutes. He’s getting excited about restoration work on the Princess Complex that will begin soon, and the television station in downtown Harriman is coming right a long. I can hardly wait!

I stuffed a lot into one day and it felt good...just like old times!

NUMBER 68 COMES HOME!

Some time around 1949 or 1950 my family moved to a "flat top" house on West Outer Drive in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. I can remember the area and much of what happened in those days, even at 4 or 5, but seeing an original "flat top" at the AMSE Museum Saturday did not bring back any memories of the interior of the house.

I wanted to remember details of the house, but the exterior is all that I can remember. However, the tour of the original 68 West Outer Drive unit did nothing else for me, except make me proud that I lived during this era.

This unit is on permanent display at the museum now and you should make it a point to visit it...just for the sake of history.

My family moved from Oak Ridge around '51 or '52, but I will always feel a little part of Oak Ridge and of all that history.

Number 68 was auctioned off in 1950 and taken to Tazewell an used as a weekend home by the Fitzpatrick family. They recently donated it to the museum and I think it's a great addition and wonderful way of preserving history.

At a cost of around $3400 each, 1622 of these Type B-1 Houses, with 576 square feet of living space, were built in Oak Ridge between 1943 and 1945 to house some of the 75,000 people working at the plants.

The Type B-1 House had 2 bedrooms, one bath, a kitchen with extended pantry, and a living room.

Obviously, the houses got their name from the flat roofs. Some of these still stand today. This "flat top" house was originally located at #68 West Outer Drive.

It was sold in 1950 and used as a summer home in a nearby town. The family recently donated it to the AMSE Museum in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Take a tour: www.amse.org/content_wide.aspx?Article=1173&menu=66

More photos HERE!

DID YOU EVER EAT A MOUTHFUL OF DIRT?

I alluded to the fact that I ate dirt between the ages of 3 and 4, in a post titled "Learning To Face Life's Little Problems", but I'm not sure I ever detailed the compulsion I had for it. Quite frankly, I liked the taste of dirt!

It is sometimes said that you have to “eat a peck of dirt before you die”, and, because of my childhood vitamin and mineral deficiencies I’m probably well on my way out!

I think it all began with one innocent pinch of cigarette ashes…BAM…I was hooked on that ashy taste. However, it grew out of a lust for some mineral or vitamin, probably iron, that I was not getting in my normal diet. So, I experimented around the yard and everywhere I visited for a year or two around the turn of the 50’s decade.

Once while visiting us in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, my uncle once saw me pick up a chunk of common yard dirt and put it in my mouth. He quickly brushed it from of my hand, picked me up, and stood me in the midst of the freshly hoed dark soil of my dad’s garden, saying, “Here, get you some clean dirt son!”

He, like a lot of parents and people who study bacteria today, was not overly concerned about me eating dirt. A case in point is this video clip of Dr. Bonnie Bassler, a professor at Princeton University, who is a molecular biologist.

My Uncle Earl stood proudly by and watched me taste the rich black dirt. My mom, of course, was not quite as open minded and would always make me put it down and immediately wash my hands and try to wash my mouth out.

The basic truth is bacteria teach the body the specifics of creating the right kind of antibodies that protect our bodies throughout our lives. Think about it, with bacteria, not just crawling all over everything, but covering everything, we stay amazingly well.

Oh sure, we get the occasional cold, but without an immune system that has been educated by bacteria we probably wouldn’t have survived the first year of life. Just look at me…I survived all this time after eating cigarette ashes and dirt!

I can still remember the lime taste of the earth around Five Points, Tennessee where my grandfather raised cotton and corn. The soil was almost white, with tiny little bits of rust colored rocks in it. The soil is lime rich and I bet those rust bits were from iron, which is exactly what I needed. It made the best clumps from which I would scrap off a mouth full with my upper front teeth.

My mom took my little skinny body to the doctor and asked him how she could get me to eat more “real” food and stop eating dirt. His solution, which worked, was to give me a big brown bottle of some vitamin elixir containing a lot of iron.

I was soon eating more and growing toward the mass I am today, and never picked up another clod of dirt to eat again. Although, like I said, I remember its taste, with all its variety of tastes today.

I think about this every time I see my granddaughter Lily crawl under the table at a restaurant. We try to keep her hands clean and out of her mouth, but it’s inevitable that she will get some dirt into her mouth. I remind myself that her body is learning to produce the antibodies that will keep her alive and well for a long time.

I wish someone had told Howard Hughes this, and I hope Howie Mandel reads my blog! Dirt is actually good for us guys! However, you must remember that garden dirt is cleaner than yard dirt!

AN INVITATION TO SEE CADES COVE

I just posted some photos of Cades Cove in the Smoky's on my Flickr page. Also, there are a few shots of the Atomic Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. I think you'll enjoy them. CLICK HERE!

NORTH BOUNDARY – DÉJÀ VU

Judy was up and out the door to make the rounds at Curves by 8:30. Me, well, I was up by 9, or so, and heating up the oven and starting the coffee to drip. I popped 3 biscuits in the oven, and hit the bathroom, and by the time I was out, the biscuits and coffee were done.

When Judy got home she made her wonderful southern “white” thick gravy, while I scrambled 3 eggs and fried 2 pieces of “light” beef baloney!

After my second cup, I took a shower and shaved, and we were out the door to the community center where we both voted an early ballot, marking our selections by shading in a rectangular box with a number 2 pencil.

We then zipped about 12 miles up the road toward Oak Ridge, passed K-25, where I used to work, and on to the west entrance to the North Boundary Greenway. Yes, I’ve written about it before, but we love to walk there.

It’s a beautiful, usually isolated, easy walk of about a mile and a half out to the 4^th bridge, the largest one on the walk that crosses Popular Creek. We love the slight rolling hills that make you begin to sweat, but there are also long flat stretches that wind their way through the DOE property. The three mile round trip is just about all we really care to do.

It was another beautiful, dry, fall day, with the temperature just below 70, a light breeze, and lots of colorful leaves rustling all around us. It has been so dry here this summer and fall that you are really pressed to find brilliant colors this year. However, there are subtle red, yellow, orange, and still lots of green leaves around, but there is a lot of brown mixed in too.

Ron bicycled the route just a few days earlier and had told me about a new beaver dam just off on the right side of the second bridge you cross after leaving the highway.

There it was – such a masterpiece of construction too! It amazes me how they instinctively know just how to perfectly build a dam, seeming to know how much of an area the backwater will cover. Their lodge must have been further up stream, because we could not see it from the bridge, but you can bet it was up there somewhere, with a safe little family unit proudly surveying their domain.

Judy posed proudly with her new “hiking stick” that Steve, her sister Terri’s husband, made for her. It’s a strong hickory stick, tapered to an epoxy tip at the bottom. Steve cut groves into the top for grip, and inset an emerald stone, her birthstone, into the very top. Down the top forward side he carved “Lucy Dragon”. Lucy is the moniker she was awarded after leaving her purse in a public restroom in Key West! Luckily, some honest person turned it in to the police and she got everything back before the cruise ship sailed. We were truly blessed…again!

Steve has been on a mission of making hiking sticks for all the Dragons, and I think he only has one more to deliver. He has 19 acres of fine Tennessee forest, so he doesn’t have to look too far from his workbench for the raw materials.

I encourage you to get out and vote, and to take a nice long walk down some country gravel road before winter comes. They’ll both do you good!

There are other shots on my Flickr page!

AS IT WAS MEANT TO BE

I continued working at The Roane County NEWS for a little over four years, becoming the Advertising Manager and hiring two wonderfully talented sales women. One was a beautiful young and energetic California lady who I quickly assigned the “hard sell” accounts. The other was a sixty plus year old woman with more energy than a three month old pup, sharp as a whip, and who had known every established business man and woman in Roane County for over fifty years!

I took on the new Wal-Mart, Goodyear, Sears, and shops owned by women. Most of these accounts required extra time on the golf course or in back rooms playing poker, and, in general, needed more attention than any of the others.

Together, we were quite a team and effectively increased the advertising inches required to publish the bi-weekly newspaper. The paper at that time was a very large driving force, helping to promote businesses and sports in Harriman, Kingston, and Rockwood, Tennessee. Even though the towns were rivals on the playing field, they came to realize the NEWS was the place to reach their customers.

Corey’s mom and I started our home during the period between the newspaper job and the time that I was hired at Oak Ridge.

I did pretty well during this time and even ran a wedding photography business on the weekends. I used a Koni-Omega Rapid 200 camera and shot in 120mm film in the 6X7 format that required no cropping when printed in 8X10 size. I developed a package of 40 – 8X10’s for $200. It was a sweet package for a young couple just getting started, but the pressure of making each exposure, with two of them combined into a double exposure that depicted the bride looking down upon the wedding scene, was nerve racking!

I only took 4 rolls of film, 10 exposures each, to a wedding – no room for error! There was a system to the madness and every shot came in order and to a prearranged sequence in the tufted album. If “Uncle George” came up and requested I take his picture, I simply hit the test button on the Graphflex flash and, for all he knew, I had taken his photo!

Since the shots did not have to be cropped, I ordered everything developed and printed in 8X10! It was a chinch, but caused me to soak many a “leisure suit” with hard earned sweat!

I was once asked, “Are you the groom sonny?”

“No mama, why do you ask?”

“You’re the only one here sweatin’, so I figured you were gettin’ married!”

The new home, and the problems we had with builder(s), and the nine month long horror may have set in motion the end of our marriage, but that is a story you will not read here.

Suffice it to say, by the time Corey had reached four years of age, I had accepted an hourly job at the K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Oak Ridge Tennessee. K-25 was built during WWII to enrich some of the uranium for the first two atomic bombs.

The head of personnel did not really want to hire me, thinking that since I had a degree I would not stay long in the hourly union ranks. However, to me it was a foot in the door.

After a year and a half working as a second class mechanic on seven day rotation, I was recommended for a “weekly” job. I have always worked hard and even though the union boys kept after me to “slow down” and saying “you’re working yourself out of a job” I remained true to my upbringing and advanced up through the ranks with recommendations from my supervisors.

I worked the weekly job, directing the movement of large equipment, some over 40 tons, out of the UF6 diffusion stream, to refurbishment, and back into service, for over two years. Then one day a job appeared on “the board” looking for someone with television experience.

I had taken a quarter of television production, in preparation for making commercials, at UT. That, plus my good looks, got me the new position!

That led me into encrypted slow-scan video of classified meetings between Oak Ridge, Torrance, CA, and Portsmouth, OH concerning the new enrichment technique of centrifuge separation.

A new day, around 1985, dawned and my facility was transferred into the Telecommunications Division. Somewhere along the way, I moved to the “voice communications” department, and was promoted to a monthly position. To clarify, hourly simply means you are paid by the hour, weekly, by the week, and monthly means you get a check once a month! However, the grades in this level are much higher and normally require a sheep skin! Got one!

I first took a position as “Telecommunications Coordinator” at the Y-12 weapons plant, about ten miles away, but still under the Department of Energy umbrella, and working for the same division head.

Then I was asked to help out my friend Robert Ridenour, the supervisor of the Telecommunications Section, that administered a contract with AT&T and South Central Bell for telephone services, and supervised the incoming calls for adds, moves, and changes at the three plant sites, which included the National Laboratory at ORNL, and the DOE offices within the city of Oak Ridge. This all amounted to over 20,000 telephone lines and data circuits.

Robert ran into a foul pole playing softball injuring himself and was off several months. When he came back, I was in charge! We shared duties for a time before he moved on to something new.

These were probably the happiest times I enjoyed while employed. I had fifteen or twenty great employees, only 4 were men, and the women could all cook. We were blessed with a huge break room and full kitchen and some of the most wonderful meals were cooked there - partly the reason I look the way I do today. I loved them all, even the two guys I was forced to fire over timecard abuse.

I then worked for Patti Pitts, a very intelligent and demanding supervisor that insisted sexual harassment was mandatory! Not really, but it was a running joke.

Patti’s group listened to communications problems and complaints and found solutions for the issues. Mostly we replaced the antiqued 1A2 6-button sets with the then new, now old, Merlin phone systems. Basically, we made secretaries very happy!

Later I did another couple of years as the Communications Coordinator for the K-25 Plant, which continued until about 1999 when DOE awarded a contract to the Bechtel Jacobs Company (BJC) to clean up and shut down the plant, turning it into an open industrial park that DOE could then lease.

The original Communications Division outsourced itself to a private company, but Bechtel Jacobs needed a Communications and Computing Division to continue service for the five year duration of their contract. Truth is, these poor folks are continuing that work today, almost nine years later.

I was given the choice of going commercial or staying with DOE and BJC. I was the only person who dared to stay.

Long story short, I became a Department Head, working under Miller Taylor, overseeing all telecommunications (phones, data circuits, network, cellular, and radio services) after only one interview with my new boss. I never worked harder for any man, than I did while under Miller's supervision, but I never learned more either!

I was under great stress through the first few weeks, but one day Miller told me the secret to managing – “You don’t have to do it yourself, you have to make sure the people with the right knowledge gets the job done!” After that, I never pretended I knew every thing. I just let people with the expertise do what they were trained to do, took their advice, and made the decisions based on all the educated input. The other thing I did was to praise them everyday for doing their job. If I got praise, they got praised! I even praised them if they just tried. We were all working for the applause!

Before I left in 2005, I had also become responsible for the computing for BJC. Our computer room had over 300 servers in the beginning, but we slowly cut that back, and I assume they are still trying to consolidate and reduce the number of applications used today.

I also had the maintenance section that installed, replaced, and repaired thousands of personal computers and servers. Quite an accomplishment, if I say so myself, for a big handsome fat guy who started out in one of the lowest ranks.

God blessed me by letting me retire still under the umbrella of DOE, which means I receive a company pension and a 401K. My wife also retired from the DOE arena, so we want for little, and we thank God everyday for His blessings.

Young people being hired today only get offered a 401K. There are no more company pensions – that era is over.

I started working for DOE under a Union Carbide contract, that later became Martin Marietta, then Lockheed-Martin, and finally BJC. Hopefully, I’ll out last them all!

BIG ED’S PIZZA – A LEGEND IN OAK RIDGE

Ms. Mushy and I saw “Spidyman” Friday, and we were the only 2 people in the theater! This is another perk of being retired…the 12:05 during the week is usually sparsely attended. We then topped off a lovely day together by visiting Bid Ed’s Pizza.

Since 1970 Big Ed Neusel’s Pizza, at Number 1 Broadway in Jackson Square, has been an institution, a one of a kind place to go and have old Italian style pizza and a beer. That’s all they have, so it has been perfected over the years to a succinct taste. Thin chewy crust with a fat fluffy rim that comes from dough made on site daily and a hot juicy middle available with 10 all natural ingredients!

Besides the sauce, you begin with cheese and then add up to 5 additional items, or get the “Special” and get 6! That’s my favorite…the works!

There are four draft beers, no bottles, to choose from by the glass or pitcher.

Big Ed’s has been mentioned on many national sports shows and many sports stars, and other celebrities have visited there and left banners and photos that adorn the 18-foot walls. There is an eclectic mix of autographed footballs, baseballs, and military memorabilia hanging there or in locked showcases. You could spend an hour just reading the graffiti on the stairs down to the restrooms, or looking at the signatures and dedications local schools and universities have made to Big Ed.

Some of the most important items hanging around are the paraphernalia from military units -- Blue Angels, Marines, Navy -- decorate the walls. Big Ed served in Vietnam as a Marine himself!

Big Ed’s is actually internationally famous (Google and see) and is one the “must visits” when coming to the Knoxville/Oak Ridge, Tennessee area.

High school kids have always worked “behind the glass” making the fresh pizzas for Big Ed. Many have earned their way on to college with a job tossing pizzas in the air at Big Ed’s.

Big Ed died in 1998, but the traditions continue with son David.

Big Ed crafted the cost of operating his business by providing only the barest of amenities – pizza comes hot on an aluminum tray, but you have to pulled the molten pieces off onto 6” paper (thin) plates and saw off bites (until it cools) with a plastic fork! Nothing fancy here except the taste of the pizza!

Going into Big Ed’s is like going back in time for me. I used to go to this same place (called something else then) with my parents when they went out dancing around 1949-51. I was 3 or 4 years old and I remember them holding me up between them as they danced. Gees, I wish I could remember the music – one was probably "Good Night Irene" – and get more of a visual recollection, but I only see the three-headed dancers!

HE MADE THE SIGN OF THE CROSS

My mom’s mother and father divorced back in the late forties, which was all but unheard of then. My grandfather left my grandmother in northern Alabama, with my mom and her 7 siblings who all lived on my great-grandfathers cotton farm and went to Oak Ridge, Tennessee to seek work. Oak Ridge during the war years was a change of live for many farm families in the southeast. They went from working the farm and doing familiar tasks to doing jobs that were completely new to them and completely new to the world as well.

Oak Ridge was a sort of boomtown then, and it, like the areas around Los Alamos, NM and Hanford, WA, provided a “gold rush” of new jobs to poor people trying to eek out a meager living during a war and not that long after the depression.

Granddad applied for work at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and at the time they were only hiring craft people and he was asked if he could do carpenter work. He said “Sure, I can do that,” all the time knowing he was not a qualified carpenter. Granddad was told to come back the next day to qualify for the craft position.

He borrowed a book from a guy he met in the barracks where he was living and stayed up all night learning how to square a building. Luckily for him, he was given that exact exam the next day. He retired 25 years later as a respected “carpenter” having learned his skill as he went.

I respected his drive, resourcefulness, and determination. Years later, while also working at the K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant. I applied for a “planner and estimator” position that worked with the rigger and pipe fitter crafts. I did not have to do either type of work, but I did have to issue move instructions for hoisting and lifting using the rigger codes, and order materials for pipe fitters. I knew most of the rigging work already, but knew nothing about running pipe. I got wind from a friend who interviewed the day prior to me that there was a “qualification” test during the interviews.

I stayed up all night and memorized “travel and run” formulas and things like that. I aced the exam the next day and my future boss complimented me in front of a group of co-workers. A lady who was very jealous commented that I should have done well because “my friend” had given me all the answers!

I was shocked and the perspective boss took it that I cheated on the exam. In reality, I only knew there was a test and studied. However, I did not get the position, BUT I had successfully emulated my granddad – he would have been proud.

We often visited granddad in his little apartment in the WWII barracks where his carpenter skills provided him with extra storage space, seating, and a hidden “hotplate” in the side of a cabinet he had made. The men were not allowed to cook in their rooms, but he hid this secret for the full time he lived there.

Granddad visited us on many occasions, since we only lived 20 miles away. It was then I began to notice that he made strange noises when he ate. He loved food, smacked proudly, and breathed deeply through his mouth as he ate everything on his plate. He held his knife and fork strangely too, at least to me. He would hold his fork in his left hand, tines down, and his knife in his right the entire time he was eating. Mom had started trying to get me to eat while holding the fork, tines up, in my right hand, switch with the knife when I cut food, put the knife down, and change hands with the fork to complete the bite, but I often ate like him when he visited.

When granddad was finished eating, he laid the knife perpendicular across the plate and then laid the fork across the knife. “Why do you do that granddad?” I asked one day.

“It’s the Cross son. I do that to let others know about Jesus. I don’t have to say a word, be lost for words, or anything just put the knife and fork that way and they know what you mean.” He seemed very please that I had noticed and that he got to tell me the details. He was a proud Primitive Baptist and always attended church by himself.

I would watch him all evening, looking at his snow-white hair and the little red blood vessels at the top of the skin on his cheeks, and to him telling stories of hunting on the Catoosa Wildlife Preserve. The one I always will remember is about a deer, or a bear (he never was sure) that scratched itself against the side of his truck camper in the middle of the night. It was actually a scary story to me at the time.

Often he spent the night with us and I always watched the clock carefully. Something else he did strangely to me was snore! I would always go to bed earlier than normal so I could be asleep before granddad dosed off.

For years I watched his ritual of eating and “crossing” the plate and secretly wished I had come up with that idea myself. What a simple little thing that can say so much, I thought. I often “cross” my own plate now when I am eating out, but no one has yet ask me why I do it. Maybe it is not strange enough to move most waiters and waitresses to ask, but maybe someday, or one of my grandchildren will ask me why. Then I will get to tell them the story of the other man that made the sign of the cross. That will be like witnessing about two good men in one!

LEARNING TO FACE LIFE’S LITTLE PROBLEMS

My earliest memories come in bits and pieces, some actually remembered and others told to me as “cute things you used to do when you were a kid”. But I begin to remember things at around the age of 4, a time when my family lived and worked in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. I would think this was during 1949 and early in 1950.

At this time in the history of Oak Ridge, the city was still “the secret city” and was closed to the public. There were Federal guards manning gates with machine guns behind bullet-proof glass at all the roads and highways entering the city of Oak Ridge and Federal Reservations that operated in the valleys between the hills of the area.

People who were not “badged” had to stop at the gates and ask permission to enter and visit their friends on “the other side”. A guard would take the name and phone number of the person they wanted to see and call to verify they were expecting friends. If not, the visitors were turned away. More than once my dad turned away “friends” when he didn’t want company!

Even at age 4, I had a badge with my picture on it, and so did my mom, who was a housewife and didn’t work at either of the plant sites.

The pieces of memory begin with mom and dad going out dancing on the weekends, and one misunderstanding they had that resulted in mom walking home and refusing to ride with my dad. It probably involved either alcohol or a flirtatious moment, but I’ll never know. I was told that I hung out the window and cried for her to get in the car, but, being the strong minded woman she is, she walked all the way home.

Other memories involve a little dog I had that I used to throw off the couch and the dog just jumped right back up for another go at flying lessons, and dirt. I also ate dirt at this time in my life! Yep, and I can remember the taste, or at least that dirt from different places tasted differently. For example, the limestone soil around my grandfather’s farm did have a limey taste to it – duh!

One memory involves getting lost in the woods between West Outer Drive and the Oliver Springs Highway. A little boy that lived next door, who has been described to me as being a “little off center” was always bugging me and taking my toys. Even now I remember that I didn’t like him very much, but one day I let him talk me into going through the woods to a barn where he said were some puppies.

Off through the woods we went, and we did see the puppies, but we spent most of the time we were “lost” throwing rocks at passing cars on the highway.

We must have gotten hungry or something and started back through the woods. At one juncture the trail we were following split and an argument broke out between us about which path lead home. My friend wanted to go down a less traveled path that was loaded with briars, and I wanted to travel the path most worn.

Naturally, I allowed myself once again to be swayed and before long we were stuck firmly in the midst of the briar patch! I don’t remember how long we waited, or cried, but time had passed long enough for my mom who called my uncle, my dad, and the Oak Ridge Police Department and all were soon looking through the woods for the “lost” boys.

To this day I insist I was never “lost”…I wanted to go down the path that would have taken us home, the exact path I first saw my dad coming down while stripping his belt from its loops, and with my uncle and the police close behind.

Before dad could strike a lick, my uncle had me on his shoulders and was racing back down the path – to mother!

A few days later, the attached photo was taken of me. I am climbing a hill from visiting someone in one of the “flat tops” seen in the background, on my way to get in the car. I strongly remember that the reason I did not take the steps that run up the hill in front of the garbage bens, is that there was a blue-tailed lizard hanging and twitching on the side of the bens next to the steps. I did not want to get that close to the lizard, so I took to the grass. I was avoiding facing my problems by walking around them!

Now, back to “life’s problems” – it wasn’t long before the boy next door got “all up in my business” again and tried taking a toy away from me while we played in the dirt (I was probably chewing a bite too). I took a long cast-metal bus I was holding and quickly thumped him on the head with it. He cried and went home and I sat and played with much satisfaction for the rest of the day.

Finally, I was facing life’s little problems head on!