VISITING THE WILLIAMS GENE POOL

Like most families, my mother’s family has only seen group gatherings over the past years at funerals. It’s always a treat, even under those circumstances, to see the whole family together. So why did we wait so long to have a reunion?

Except for my mom and Aunt Nell, the anchors of the family have all gone. Their children, the “first cousins” have always played well with each other and savored the little time they’ve spent with each other. We’ve all grown up and had families and missed out on each other’s lives and children. It’s now up to us to keep the family unity going and try and pass on family heritage and stories we lived and have heard. Hopefully, our kids will build enough of a relationship that they will want to continue meeting and telling the stories.

For years it was important for my mom and dad to “go home” and visit everyone they could in the two day trip. That was impossible since mom had 7 siblings, and dad had 8. All those aunts and uncles and cousins were best visited at the grandparents’ home. Those gatherings were filled with the laughter of numerous children chasing through the house and yard, and with the best “country” grub ever served!

For the Williams extended family, Grandmother Williams’ house was always the focal point.

Those weekend gatherings are etched in my memory, although most have merged into one or two events. There are a few black and white photos of us kids, here and there, that were immortalized by Brownie Hawkeye cameras.

When grandmother was gone the focal point, for my family at least, sort of went to my Aunt Melinea’s house, where my cousins Ann and Brenda often gathered, making it seem like “home” to me. Other family members would drop by some visits, but for the most part the rest of the aunts and uncles and cousins were seen less frequently. I lost touch with them, having gone off to war, getting married, and college, and even though they were marrying and having babies, they remained little 10-year old kids in my mind.

Later, and I’m not sure why, the focal point shifted to Uncle Tom’s. He loved to have fun and his lakeside home made a perfect place for family to gather. The most fun for me were the November University of Tennessee vs. Alabama football gatherings, complete with his hot chili and warm welcoming manner. Tom would slap his elephant with each touchdown (Roll Tide) and I would slap Smokey (Rocky Top)! Back and forth the dueling mascots would sing out until someone lost, and, in those days, it was usually him! Unfortunately, that has changed and...and I miss him so much.

Now, with Uncle Tom gone, there is no longer a focal point for Williams gathering. The gatherings from now on will probably be church social rooms, community centers, or, in the case of the most recent gathering, a senior center. The only problem with that is that these events will, at most, be annual events. An era has passed that could only be brought back by someone, like Uncle Tom, stepping up and making it a point to allow family to mess up their house more than once a year. Alas, it seems, me included, that we’re all just too busy these days.

One shining light for us though, seems to be email and Facebook. These modern, impersonal tools, are beginning to help us stay in touch. I suppose if there is anything redeeming in the modern technological age, these tools are it.

I’ve posted some family shots on Facebook, and sent numerous others via email, so the event was well documented. Other photos will dwindle in as pocket camera and cellphone shots are distributed.

My son Corey accompanied me on the 300+ mile trip to the 2010 Williams Reunion. As a small boy, he made a few friends with “second cousins”, but from about the age of 10 on he has had no contact. So, it was rewarding to him to go back to our “home” and see family. Maybe one day his girls will also come and make some new family ties.

I took Corey on the “Tri-cities” tour of Florence, Sheffield, and Tuscumbia, Alabama, which has to include TVA’s Wilson and Wheeler Dams, and the all important feast at Walton’s! Walton's Restaurant, in the big city of Elgin’s Crossroads (Hwy 101), has the best fried catfish and hush puppies I’ve ever tasted. Corey wasn’t quite sure that was true until he actually sat down and tasted it. After that, I think he was finished before I downed my first piece!

They also have, what is described as the best BBQ in the Shoals area, but I have yet to try it. The fish being so good, and I only get down there once or twice a year, always wins out!

On Friday afternoon, after checking into the Hampton in Florence, we drove the loop from Florence to Wilson and Wheeler Dams and on to Walton's. From atop the Renaissance Tower, at the Shoals Hotel, we looked out over the “Tri-cities” area and down at Wilson Dam. We had to pay for the photos from the Tower by buying an $8 drink, but the view from the revolving restaurant was spectacular! The skies were so blue last weekend and the company couldn’t be beat!

Corey reminisced about our camping and motel trips back in the days we deer hunted. Those memories must be as special to him as they are me.

We left Florence on Sunday morning and traveled the “old road” up through Lexington, where I was born. I showed him Great Grandfather Johnston’s old home place, and reminded him that I was born upstairs in Grandpa’s bed. The old place looked pretty good with the addition of modern siding. However, it will always be the old shot-gun southern home sitting on rock supports, surrounded by Alabama red dirt, with its lightning rods gleaming in the sun. My mind didn’t even register the satellite dish hanging off the side...I only noticed it after examining my photos when I got home!

We made the short trek down Williams Road, crossed into Tennessee, and stopped at the Second Creek Church where there are both Williams and Mashburn kinfolk buried. Corey was so moved that he had to find a big tree behind the meeting shed! He felt much better after that relieving moment! ‘Nuff said!

On up the road we stopped at the old Mashburn farm, where I spent boyhood summers working the farm with Pa Mashburn. I rang the doorbell, but Aunt Louise, who still lives there, was gone to church. So, we walked around the home place and took some photos of the old barn, where I spent rainy days as a boy, and the house. It was so strange how small the front porch seemed to me. In my memory, that porch was a large as an airport runway! Strange how everything was so much bigger back then...’course I was so much smaller then!

In the big city of Five Points, just two miles up the road, I photographed the old Mashburn store my uncle owned. It sits across the five-point intersection from the new Mashburn General Store where Aunt Louise still works. However, she was at church, like I said, and we missed her.

I told Corey stories of my summers working in the store and about the old men that sat around on drink crates whittling and swapping knives. Across the street, in front of the new store, were old men sitting around doing the same thing. Nothing seems to have changed in Five Points, Tennessee.

The old cotton gin is all gone and only two of the old warehouses remain. It’s sad that Corey missed those days. He would have loved to have ridden a wagon with Pa Mashburn up the dirt road to the gin to sell his cotton, or to play on the bales stacked in warehouses. He would have loved crawling through the tunnels in the bales of straw in the barn, or listening to the Grand Ole Opry on a battery powered radio, while sitting next to a flickering “coal oil” lamp.

He would have loved sinking into a “feather mattress”, up over his ears, under 3 quilts listening to the rain hitting the tin roof at Grandmother Williams’ house. He wouldn’t have enjoyed the trip to the outhouse in the dark, ‘cause I know I didn’t!

On the way home we passed through Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. It was Lawrenceburg where the old Mashburn family did their “trading”, and in the old days it was an all day, if not 2 day, wagon trip. I remember Ma Mashburn excitedly exclaiming once when we brought her back home in dad’s car, “Lordy be, we got back the same day we left!”

Corey enjoyed that story, and the look around town. I showed him the statue of Davey Crockett in the town square. I remember a News Sentinel reporter once stated that there was no statue to David Crockett, so dad sent him a photo of this one in Lawrenceburg. The reporter corrected his story!

Yes, they are all gone...turned to vague memories. However, these memories, as trivial as they may be to others, need to be told and retold. They are a record of what we were and are, what we thought and think. They make up a history of the family...our roots. We must not let them slip away like we have allowed the memories of those that came before us to do.

What I wouldn’t give for a file full of jpeg photos of Williams, Johnston, Morrison, Hammonds, and Mashburn folk running around at family gatherings back through the 18, 19, and 20th centuries. They didn’t have what we have, so it can’t be - the memories lost brings a tear to my eye.

Families don’t just exist in their genes, they exist in memories. The stories must be told or we, or they, have not lived at all.

May God bless and keep the Williams family until we meet again.

To see photos of my "down home" visit, CLICK HERE!

IT WAS THE SUMMER OF ‘62

Just before my sophomore year at Coffee High ended in Florence, Alabama, dad gave us the news that we would be moving to Harriman, Tennessee as soon as school was out. He had gotten transferred by TVA to the Kingston Steam Plant on the Tennessee River near Kingston, Tennessee.

This was the only time I remember moving that I did not have a girlfriend. In a way that might seem sad, but at least it was not near as sad as spending the remaining days pining over each other and looking deeply into each other’s eyes while explaining that you had "...no control over things, and besides we will stay in contact and meet up again someday soon." I suppose our young and tender hearts actually believed that or we have just run away somewhere and starved to death on the fruits of love!

The real pain of such partings came while looking back through a rear car window and slowly waving goodbye while mouthing, “I love you – I’ll write you” to the fading image of a little heart broken girl. All the time, I was trying to keep my emotions in check and hidden from my parents in the front seat. Besides, I was not speaking to them for ruining my entire life – again!

We had lived in Harriman before from the second part of the first grade in 1953 until the middle of my fourth year in 1956. Therefore, I had high expectations of knowing at least a few people when school started in the fall. However, I had to spend the entire spring and summer of ’62 without friends or at least that is what I expected.

Turns out I met “Jaybee Whale,” or that is what the neighborhood kids called him. His real name was Bennie, but we rarely called him that. He was and has always been “Jaybee” to me, and if you ask anyone in these parts about ol’ Jaybee, they know about whom you speak, since they will probably not remember his first name either!

The “Whale” part was added by someone because of his size, which was befitting an Our Gang character and official “He-man Women-haters Club" member! Truth be told, “Jaybee” did not have a lot of friends and played by himself in his basement most days.

“Jaybee” had an exclusive club himself and that was my first introduction to his world. Having been invited to visit the club in the basement, I found him to be a funny guy, not funny – funny, but very humorous, quick witted, and very talented. He was at least four years younger than I was, but he made me laugh frequently and we soon had comedy and model cars in common.

His passion was the model car demolition setup he had fashioned from plywood. If you had model cars, and I had plenty, then you would quickly be inducted into the “crash club” at “Jaybee Whale’s” demolition track! Guys all over the neighborhood showed up at the “demolition derby” once a week, having worked the rest of the week at reinforcing their plastic models to win the next “smash off!”

Anything went and nothing was illegal as long as the car was still the original model on the outside and had its original working wheels.

I soon learned to pour molten lead inside the front fenders and around the grille area, using aluminum foil as an insulating shield. Extra strips of plastic, like those long round pieces the pretty chromed parts came attached to worked well…just like 2'' reinforcing pipe used in real race cars. A whole tube of glue might be used in one “welding” session!

During the event, opponents ran their cars down two opposing eight-foot sheets of plywood and into each other at full speed…by the end of the tournament, owners would be using full-arm shoves to increase the speed to that necessary to crack the opponents car into splinters! What fun - juvenile yes, but loads of fun!
“Jaybee” and I were fast friends that summer and he kept me from being bored and lonely for those few weeks before school.

Soon, summer ended, school started, and as I got reacquainted with former classmates, I soon put the childish things aside. “Jaybee” must have been hurt when I began to ignore him for my older friends.

I never went to his basement again after the summer of ’62; however, as I passed by “Jaybee’s” house with a new friend or date, I would see him standing alone in his yard. I thought about the basement and even longed, at times, to be laughing again with him as our cars exploded into a hundred pieces – probably much like his heart did as he watched me pass.

1 Corinthians - 13:11. When I was a child, I spoke as a child; I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I became a man, I put away the things of a child.

CUDDLES AND PUDDLES

What self respecting dudes would ever name their dogs Cuddles and Puddles? Well, I hate to admit it, but Richard and I did.

On a trip to the Florence, AL dog pound, our hearts were captured by two black and white spotted, mostly beagle, pups. They were so cute and so full of life, and almost mirror images of each other. I do not remember why we went to the pound, or why we were rewarded with puppies, but we ended up with the sisters.

Richard and I lived across the street from each other in the Mockingbird Trailer Park. From the first time we met we became fast friends and during the two years in the Mockingbird and the three years in Waverly, Tennessee we shared the growing pains of puberty.

During the summer months, we would take the opportunity of taking the dogs out at night and turn it into an adventure. We would roam the trailer park in the early morning hours, and finally return home and tiptoe back to our beds unnoticed by our families.

The dogs were also close siblings and friends and Cuddles, my dog, really missed her sister when we finally parted ways.

Cuddles lived a fairly long life, but as did the majority of my early dogs, she was killed by a passing automobile. I remember that I was home on leave, about to ship out for Vietnam, when I heard the squeal of the brakes and the terrible yelps. I ran to the highway, picked her up in my arms, took her to a neighbor’s yard, and laid her down. She was obviously having trouble breathing and I instinctively began blowing breaths into her wet nose. I must have puffed a dozen breaths into her before it was obvious she was beyond help.

I sat there for a long time, holding Cuddles, and talking to her about my memories of her and Puddles.

She was a good dog, most are, but sadly all I can remember about her is the sneaking out and the futile attempt at saving her life. Strange what we remember, but that is life.

I do not know what happened to Puddles, but chances are it was a passing car.

THE MOCKINGBIRD

Does anyone out there remember the Mockingbird Trailer Park (Court), in Florence, Alabama, that was a thriving community in the late 50s and early 60s? I think Fred Bevis owned the court and all the surrounding land.

I doubt anyone comes forward; it has been too long ago, and I was by the area not too long ago and it is not there – just some condos.

My family moved there when I was in the sixth grade, probably 1958 or so, and back again in 1961, when I was a sophomore. My dad and most of the families that lived there worked at either Wilson or Wheeler Dams, or the Colbert Fossil Plant for TVA.

The first time, the trailer park was brand-new and a very exciting place to live. The park had its own grocery store and gas station, barber and beauty shops, a laundry mat, a park with picnic tables, swings and slides, and a swimming pool.

The trailer spaces we evenly spaced and had concrete runways with high-wind tie down anchors for each house trailer. There was a little grassy yard in front, convenient water, sewer, and power hookups.

This was the best trailer park that we ever lived in and it holds fond memories for my entire family.

I learned to swim in the pool, play Marco Polo, do fancy dives, and bond with several kids my age.

I remember that once a pipeline installing crew moved temporarily into the park, only staying a few weeks, and my dad caught one of the dirty crewmembers bathing in the pool. My dad chewed on the guy pretty good, telling him that “my kid swims in that water” and that it was not for bathing! It never happened again.

I remember that a Mockingbird lived in a cedar tree near the pump and filter that would swoop down and pull your hair if you got too close to its nest in the spring. I hated that bird and tried unsuccessfully several times to kill it.

The owner’s son was the unofficial lifeguard and in charge of the pool. He organized a spring clean-up crew every year to bleach and paint the pool and get it ready for summer. I enjoyed this work and learned a lot about organization and delegation of duties from this Florence State student.

I also remember they used to put a railroad tie in the water to keep it from freezing during the winter. I once found something else floating in that water…a baseball glove my maternal grandfather gave me for my twelfth birthday. I still have the glove, but it was never quite the same after the thief tossed it.

It snowed that first winter, yes, even in Alabama, and I loved it! I did not want anyone walking through my yard and making it melt. I attributed footprints to aiding the snow to melt, and protected it from the other kids. They saw that I had a sore spot and picked at me, threatened to run through the yard, and when I made a snowball, they ganged up on me and began pelting me some of their own.

Not to be out done, I loaded my next round with a core of rocks. As soon as they started across the yard I threw as hard as I could – and missed!

“Crack!” The snowball hit our living room window and the rock continued inside.

My dad was immediately out the door and into the yard. “Who threw that,” he demanded. “Tell me!”

I looked around, but everyone else had long since disappeared. “I did sir,” I said, my lips already beginning to quiver.

There was the familiar sound of leather slithering from grey khaki work pant loops, and me already whimpering “No daddy! I didn’t mean to! They were in the yard, daddy, messing up the snow! Please daddy! Momma!”

That night I learned that I did not own the yard or the snow in it – daddy did! However, I became the proud new owner of a large living room window.

TRAILER TRASH

If you have been reading this biographical blog, you know that I first lived in a trailer in 1954, but that was only a temporary situation when my mom and I stayed the summer with my dad in Paducah, or rather Kevil, Kentucky while he worked at the government’s gaseous diffusion site there.

My family abandoned the traditional frame house in 1956 when we moved to Lawrenceburg, Indiana. Dad had resigned himself to following the Tennessee Valley Authority construction work as an electrician and bought our first “house trailer,” I think it was an Elkhart model made in Indiana. It was blue, white, and just 8-feet wide and about 35-feet long. There were two bedrooms and my brother’s baby bed sat in the alcove space in front of the back door.

Besides the scary moment when the lady scared me during the Wolfman movie, the only other thing I remember about the trailer was that mom almost caught it on fire one day went the pilot light on the oven went out and the propane flowed out and ran invisibly underneath my bed, which was nearest the kitchen. When she struck a match to light the oven, it flashed over and almost cost us the trailer. However, it apparently did not cause much more than some singed hair and life resumed.

We lived in that trailer until we moved to Florence, Alabama. During that time dad purchased a 10 by 48 footer that was oddly painted brown, golden-yellow, and white. I remember this because mom insisted we wash and wax it once a year! To us this was a mansion of great proportions! There were still only 2 bedrooms, but everything was much larger and the kitchen and dinning area were located in the front section, with the living room located mid-trailer, and now the washer and dryer were inside.

Two other trailers come to mind, between this one and the next one my family owned, but they were only rented for the summers: one was in Birmingham, Alabama, the other in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.

I do not remember too much about either trailer, but I do remember the trailer in Birmingham had a foot peddle to flush the toilet and we often got called down for kick starting the toilet just for the fun of it.

However, we lived in the brown, golden-yellow, and white one until I left home for the Air Force in 1964, at which time my brother got full custody of our bedroom. I remember that bedroom, because my feet extended into the hallway and every time someone passed by, my feet got brushed and I woke up.

I also remember sleeping with my brother and giggling and poking at each other almost every night. Once dad told us to quite down and go to sleep and said he did not want to hear another peep out of us.

Well, that recalled a story from my mom who slept in a room with at least 4 siblings and they were told to do the same one night and that if another “peep” was heard they would all get a spanking. Well, someone said “PEEP” and they all got it! So, my brother said “Peep” and we got it!

However, in the dark my dad could only see general shapes. I raised my leg up slightly, deflecting the burnt of the belt licks and my brother and I screamed as though he was killing us. He soon tired and felt satisfied we had learned our lesson and left the room reminding us to “go to sleep.” It was all we could do to keep him from hearing us snicker under the covers with our faces muffled against our pillows!

While I was in the Air Force, maybe in Vietnam, mom and dad bought their last trailer. It was a grand 12 by 65-footer from Norris. They were made not too far from where we lived in Norris, Tennessee. They even got to visit the factory and watch some of the construction. Dad was so proud of the real 2X4 and 4X4 wall construction that he could talk for several minutes about how much it was like a “real house.”

This trailer seemed like home to me mostly because I had my own bedroom in the front of the trailer, but also because it was my last home with the family. I only lived there only a short time before I married and moved out.

Just a few years before my dad died, they bought a lot in a residential area, took the wheels off, put it up on a block foundation, put aluminum awnings on both sides, and made it appear as a much like a real house as they could. It was a nice place and because they tore an old eye sore down, even the neighbors welcomed them to the neighborhood. The place was full of flowers, a garden, children playing, and mom continued to wash a wax the trailer until it was sold some five years later and a permanent house was built on the lot.

As I look back, I have to say that I am proud of my “trailer trash” past. The people that traveled the country in the late 40s, the 50s, 60s, and 70s helping build power plants, dams, and secret government research sites were a different breed of folks. In a way they lived the end times of the American pioneers and just followed the work. They pulled up stakes, jerked the kids out of school, and just moved expecting only better conditions and better pay. They were welders, electricians, boiler makes, pipe fitters, carpenters, masons, and all the other craftsmen and labors that built a better world for us all.

They did not live in trailers because they could not afford better, but because it was easier to move their families and follow their work. They did not sit around and let things grow up around them, rust, and fall down around them. They were proud of their little home on wheels and their pride was evident to those that passed. Evident in the mowed grass, the brilliant flowers that grew from seed they saved and moved with them, in the waxed trailer and car, and in the laughter of the happy children that lived there.

They also took their values with them and passed it own to their children - the boomers of today. These people, our parents, still valued God and family, friends, and this country. The worked hard for what they had and took care of it, and instilled the same pride in their offspring.

In my mind they are a dying breed that is not being replaced, and dying with them is our sense of values. And deep in my heart I know that you are only “trash” if you sit by and let things that should be valued slip away, and you do not have to live in a trailer to let that happen.