Stories on Growing Up in the South
Catching lightning bugs in a jar at dusk is a favorite memory
Author: ArtsyChowRoamer
Growing Up in the South
STORIES FROM THE PAST
Perhaps this isn’t the right time to write stories about growing up in the South during segregation but I have two very different stories to tell. This one is the easier; a reminder of the things that were good, true, sweet and funny about childhood and place in Knoxville, Tennessee.
The next one will be harder, take much longer and be an examination of things people have not wanted to face much less talk about. I promise I will bring you that one later as I want to try to get it right even though I know I will probably make mistakes. Read on if you are interested. You may share some of these memories too if you grew up in the South.
NO TECH PLEASE
The first thing I recall about being a kid was just how different it was growing up without personal phones, computers and social media. There was such a simple freedom in that one little thing. All we had to worry about was how to turn the TV off and on-maybe answer the phone once in awhile.
Mainly I remember just wanting to get out barefoot in the summer time and run around all day. Literally, we went out after breakfast and stayed as late as Momma would let us before she started yellin’ out the back door to come in for dinner.
We came in all tired and dirty but full of treasures in our pockets; found during the explorations of the day. A pretty rock, an interesting bug or a cup with a salamander from the creek bed. And more than just a little sunburned from playing kickball or dodgeball with the kids next door.
Summer time-barefoot and happy
If you think about it, that’s a lot of trust there. Your parents didn’t really know where you were all the time. Oh sure they might glance out the window or door here and there to check and see if your bike was still around. But they really just kind of let you do your thing.
NO HELICOPTER PARENTS HERE
Can you really imagine that in this day and time? I can’t think of anyone now who lets their children go out and play all day on their own. Not that the kids want to mind you but if they did….you can bet Mom or Dad would be laying down some rules and checking to make sure they were followed! 😉
The closest my Momma ever got to doing that was her insistence that I stop running down to the creek in the neighbors yard on my own. I never listened and she would sometimes take a switch to me up the hill while I tried not to lose my treasures and cover my butt at the same time.
I was fascinated with what was in that creek and it sure did cool down hot dirty feet quickly. The nights were so still, running around at dusk before dinner catching lightning bugs in a jar that were mesmerizing later under the sheets in bed.
WHERE’S YOUR HELMET?
I didn’t just sneak off to the creek. Some days I managed to get out around my older sisters (I have four) and make my way to the front yard and into the street in just a diaper. A truck driver stopped once, picked me up and knocked on the door.
“Lady, is this your baby” he asked? Momma was sewing clothes for us had asked the girls to keep an eye on me but I’m good! 🤣
Safety first? Nope not during that time! So many things that we could do then that you can’t get away with now.
I wasn’t the only sneak either. Another sister loved to ride horses (and slide down the roof outside her window to meet friends). A neighbor came by and told my Momma she shouldn’t let her sneak under his fence to ride. She was catching a horse with a rope bridle and riding it bareback and he was afraid she was going to get hurt if thrown. Momma told him not to worry-she was a good rider and would be fine. (Say whhhaatt??)
And oh the joy of grabbing a bike and heading out for adventures. We would take off for the biggest downhill run we could find pedaling faster and faster until the wind was pulling at our long hair and we were flying at unbelievable speeds.
Helmet? Where was our helmet? We didn’t need no stinking helmet! Nowadays the kids got to put on a helmet, knee pads, elbow pads, goggles and pack a first aid kit on the back of the bike in order to get out of the house and then only if some parent is with them and they’re slathered up in sunscreen first! 😲
We roller skated, jumped rope, rode in wagons, swung on rope swings and even jumped on trampolines. Never with any safety equipment and amazingly with few injuries that required any more than a cleaning and a bandage. Well….except for my brother whose name was on a room at the ER he went so many times before turning six!
All just another example of how our parents just let us get on with the business of growing up and having fun while doing it without clutching their heads too much or making us scared of getting hurt. A little bit of that was old school “toughen them up” of course but then life was going to be full of some hurts wasn’t it?
HANGIN’ OUT WITH MOMMA’S PEOPLE
The sprinklers were our air conditioning during the dog days of summer. My cousins would come over and Daddy would turn them on in the backyard and we would have hours of pure, energetic, screaming fun while the aunts and uncles sat at the picnic table watching us; usually drinking glasses of iced tea while waiting their turn to crank the vanilla ice cream.
We saw a lot of Momma’s family. Daddy used to say “your Momma’s people like to all hang out in a wad together”. Truth was, we lived in Knoxville and they all lived in Oak Ridge cause most of them had been drafted to work at one of the nuclear plants in Oak Ridge. Daddy was one of the youngest engineers to work on the Manhattan Project (more on that in another blog).
We visited Mamaw and Papaw often and watched as she worked magic in her garden. She had plants, shrubs, flowers, bushes and trees of every kind from everywhere. No matter where she went she looked for cuttings to bring back to that glorious yard.
It made up for the fact that the house wasn’t much. One of the hastily constructed little bits for those brought in quickly to work in the plants for the war effort. They did have a concrete pad to park a car and the beloved camper they would eventually own.
Good memories were made on trips spent camping with them where plastic covers on mattresses made sleeping sweaty and Mamaw grumpy about moving around too much. Nightly trips to the outhouse with flashlights meant dodging creatures but we used our fishing skills well and learned how to cook and roast both fish and marshmallows over a fire.
Smaller but similar to what my grandparents had
DADDY’S PEOPLE IN VIRGINIA
Daddy’s only sibling was ten years older than him and lived in St. Louis so we rarely saw those cousins but we took twice a year trips to his parent’s home in Charlottesville, Virginia. As loud and rowdy as Momma’s gatherings were it was the exact opposite at Daddy’s.
They were serious quiet people of the depression years who collected antiques that we mainly were allowed to look at only if Hallie (a pet name derived from Sally) held them carefully herself. Antiques that included chiming clocks, portraits of relatives with eyes that followed you and other scary art like hunters keeping wolves at bay with fire and guns were scattered throughout their home.
That’s not to say we didn’t have fun. Pap (Daddy’s name for his father) would pull out the stilts and the croquet game for backyard fun. There was swinging and people watching on the front porch of the Southern style colonial home Pap built for his wife and family.
There were visits to the local dairy to pick up chocolate milk and money for downtown shopping to buy paper dolls, trolls and Slinkies. Hallie was a good simple cook so meals were something to look forward to with melt in your mouth pound cake, thick sweet custard and fruitcake. Her own recipe, which to this day, is the only one I can abide.
Thanksgiving turkeys were lovingly basted and the family joke ran something like “Are you Cuckoo? I can’t gobble gobble when I’m hot!” Silly but we all still say it or text it to each other every holiday; these little things make a family and memories for the rest of your life.
Croquet anyone?
The cemetery down the road offered hours of exploring. There were many members of Daddy’s family buried there. Sweet angel stones marked children who died young from various diseases we vaccinate against today. Family mausoleums with pretty architecture are the final resting place of those with money in this college town nestled among so many places of historical significance to the South.
A short walk away from the house led to Aunt Nell and Uncle Billy’s home-Pap’s sister. She was a teacher who could not have children and we spent hours on the floor coloring, working math problems and reading books with her. She was outspoken and had a great sense of humor telling my Momma she hoped she lived long enough to see her get fat and one of my sisters, she opined had turned out pretty for the ugly child she had been!
Pap loved to watch the fake wrestling and used to punch the air in glee while they fought. Hallie thought this was way too stressful on his heart and would turn it off only for him to sneak and turn it back on when she left.
Hallie loved the soap operas and tuned in every day after lunch. Lawrence Welk was a staple and always felt like our good bye show with them before having to leave the next morning.
Always watched together at my grandparents
ADVENTURES IN STATION WAGONS
Besides the twice a year trips to Virginia at Easter and Thanksgiving, we loaded up the station wagon every June to head out for Daytona Beach, Florida for two weeks. Heaven to my Daddy. So much so that we could never talk him into going anywhere else.
There was a big effort involved. You had to get out the car top carrier and attach it to the car because there was no space inside when you had six kids. Thank God we didn’t have to have all the stuff that goes with traveling with kids now!
Then you had to get everyone to pack ahead and bring you the suitcases in the exact order Daddy knew they had to be loaded. Then wait for Daddy to lay down and take a nap at five so he could get up at eleven and load us all in to get a solid 6-8 of the 14 hour drive in before everybody started asking when we were going to get there or when could we stop to eat and pee.
Add in that that car had no air-conditioning OK? Momma finally put her foot down one year when one of my sisters fainted getting out of the hot car and said she would never go to Florida again unless Daddy bought us some air-conditioning and he did!
A white station wagon for summer trips…
Days in Daytona were filled with the smell of sea salt, the feel of hot sand and cool breezes from the ocean. Swims, beach walks and shell gathering were morning affairs before the worst of the sun hit. Afternoons were for ice cream and playing shuffleboard.
My sister and I embarrassed Momma to no end getting into slapping fights over who would keep score. My Daddy would sit close by and turn the color of a butternut in the sun while chewing on ice and studying the dog race stat forms before he and Momma would head out for dinner and the track.
Each kid would get me-time with Daddy by going fishing very early off the Port Orange Bridge. No telling what you might catch but a lot of it was kept and lessons were learned on how to clean it, bone it and filet it for eating later; a Southern skill that I seem to have lost over the years.
Heeerrrre comes Lucky….annnndddd they’re off!
THE DOWNTOWN BUS
Even at the ripe old age of ten or so I can remember making trips to go downtown on the bus alone with sisters or friends. We would go to do some shopping, see a movie and the big girls might get their hair done.
We always stopped at the bakery in Miller’s department store to pick up something they called Chop Suey. Why the reference to something Chinese? I’m not sure except the musical Flower Drum Song was still popular and the cake was a mixture of many unsold baked goods, mixed together and baked again. It was delicious!
If we were lucky, one of the big girls might buy us a sea monkey kit that you put together with the animals and a few plants. They were really just baby sea horses that didn’t last too long but were fun while they did.
I remember going to see a movie with school friends during the summer. We were around eleven I think. The bus ran early so the driver stopped to let some time go by while he went inside a diner to get coffee. Ya know….left us alone-no helicoptering.
One of the girls noticed a man in an overcoat standing inside the glass lobby of the building next to the diner. He looked odd on that hot summer day and she called us over as he waved to her. Picture five eleven-year-olds, their faces plastered against the bus window, hands up to hold off the glare of the sun, as the perv pulled open his coat to show off his junk!
We squealed, laughed and screamed as the driver came back spilling his coffee. When he found out what happened he took off to try to find the guy to “whip his ass”. I think he was more frightened and horrified than we were. Just the thought of having left us alone on the bus in the first place was very upsetting for him. He just kept saying “ that just ain’t right….I never would’ve thought…”.
The infamous downtown bus in Knoxville
CONCLUSION
We only lived in two houses growing up in the years before I left after college. One for the first eleven years and the second for the next nine. The first was in a rapidly changing older neighborhood that Daddy put a lot of love and attention into.
We had big yards full of mature trees like Holly, Weeping Willow, Apple and Cherry. Grape vines grew across one side providing jelly making material. We froze corn and put up peaches and strawberries every year. Momma had a pickling crock and her own recipe that I still copy to this day.
We were good friends with the poor kids next door and others up and down the street. We walked to school alone and to the local drugstore to pick up comic books with our allowance. We cared about our neighbors and said our prayers in a Baptist church up the street.
We moved when Daddy felt we needed to make a change. We went to a new thing called a sub-division with fancy house plans and swimming pools. We met kids with a trampoline and spent the summer playing a game called add-on and working on our tans with baby oil while applying lemon to our hair to lighten it.
These were some of my best loved memories of growing up in the South. Some of you may have similar ones. We were loved, had fun and lived a good middle-class life. For the most part, we never felt afraid and never had to worry about violence of any kind. In short, lives that were very different from what others experienced during the same time.
The one thing we carried over from the old house to the new was a sweet lady named Duffie Hendrix; our African American maid who came to help Momma one day a week with household chores and six kids. But that’s part of another story about growing up in the South for a different day. I hope you’ll come back to read that story down the line.
Lovely Red Maple at sunset in the South captured by Kathryn Kolb
If you liked what you read, you might also like other posts in Just Because. Hey, don’t be a stranger! Let me hear from you about your memories of growing up in the South. Look for my next post and until then…
Cheers,
ArtsyChowRoamer
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