Daddy In A Nutshell, Pt. 1

Daddy was born March 25th, 1921. He was one of nine children. Believe it or not, I would have to pull out Mom's genealogy charts to list all his brothers and sisters and put them in the right order. I didn't know any of them very well. By the time I came along (the youngest of all the cousins on both my Mom's side and my Daddy's, as well as the youngest in my family), most were married and living elsewhere. Well, JB and Uncle Paul stayed close by, and I did spend time with them, especially with Uncle Paul when he worked at the filling station, but over time my memories of them merged. It was kind of hard to keep them straight because they looked alike. All the brothers looked alike. It was
weird.

That's Daddy on the left and, I think, Paul and JB (JB and Paul?) on the right. See what I mean?


Daddy's father died before I was born, so I know basically nothing about him. I've guessed, however, that there was something a little cockeyed about him, even if I can't put a name to it. I do know that when Daddy was still a kid (8 or 9?), the whole family moved to a two bedroom house on Dalton Street in Alcoa. His father went to work for the Aluminum Company of America. (Yes, that's why the town was named Alcoa.) I have no idea how long all eleven of them lived in that tiny house. I do know that at some point Daddy "moved" into the basement. He made a pallet on and slept in the coal bin. He showed me where.

According to Daddy, he was born in Bumpus Cove (in Erwin) on the Nolichucky River (the Toe River on the North Carolina side). His birth certificate says Jonesborough but I like his story better.

Erwin is infamous for being the place where a circus elephant, Mary, was hanged after killing her handler. This happened in 1916, before Daddy was born, but I'm sure he heard stories. Kids probably visited the sight of her hanging and tried to scare each other. I never thought to ask him.

Daddy's family was poor. He used to tell a story about a neighbor buying him shoes because he didn't have any.

The only other story that I remember him ever telling me about growing up was when he and his brother (James, I think) had gone out blackberry picking. (This was an activity Daddy continued throughout his whole life. I have vivid memories of him coming home and telling me he had to take an alcohol bath in order to kill all the chiggers he'd picked up in the blackberry bushes.) On their way home, they had to cross a railroad trestle. Somehow, they got caught on the middle when a train was coming and didn't have time to make it off the trestle. According to Daddy, James climbed down under the trestle and hung underneath, then Daddy climbed down and hung onto him until the train passed overhead. Although I have a hard time understanding exactly how or why this happened, I know for a fact that it is the story Daddy told me.

Alcoa boasts a swimming pool that was built during the CCC/WPA era. It has beautiful stonework typical of that period. It also has a whale head fountain coming out of one side. (It's a very strange object and, when I was little, its big, dark mouth where the water came out of scared me.) Daddy always claimed he helped to make it. It's only been in recent years that I decided to "do the math" and realized that he would've been 10 or 11 when it was built. I think it's far more likely, knowing Daddy, that when the workers were building the pool, he talked his way onto the site and got himself invited to hang around and "help." Maybe they let him paint it. Or hand the actual builder a tool or two. 

Daddy made a lot of claims in his life about "being the first" to do this or that in Blount County. I wish I could remember the specifics of all of his self-proclaimed firsts. It'd be fun to try and verify some of them. As it is, his claims (except about the fish head fountain) will forever stand uncontested.