Center Grove High School Class of 1971

I've been too busy to write.

Thanks to Facebook, I'm getting reacquainted with my old Center Grove classmates of 1971. That's right...get out your calculators and do the math.

Last Friday night I made a quick trip to Greenwood to meet up with two 1971 classmates and several 1972 and 1973 CG graduates. I took my yearbook to help me remember. I'd get the name of one of the younger classmates, then look it up. Then I remembered--well, most of the time I remembered. One of the "under" classmates needed no introduction. I'd have known Jan anywhere.

The Riley kids rode Harry Featherston's first busload to the school. Since we arrived at school super-early, we sat in the gym and waited for the rest of the students to arrive. Jan rode Harry's second busload. An hour or so later she arrived with the rest of the bus, and she looked pale as a ghost. I asked her what happened. She said that Harry died. They had pulled into the CG front parking lot, headed towards the old middle school when Harry just "went". He evidently never knew what hit him since he never had a chance to brake. The bus kept heading toward the middle school. A 12-year-old farm kid pushed Harry out of the way and got the bus stopped.

Harry was not only our bus driver, but a neighbor. In the country, a neighbor might live a quarter mile down the gravel road--just like Harry. The day we lost Harry was sure a sad day. Back then bus drivers didn't have to have buses equipped with cameras. We respected Harry and our school bus. We respected our school. I can't always say we respected each other, since my little brother and a goofy kid named "Gopher" nearly got into a fight on Harry's bus once. I stepped between them and stopped the fight before it began. That wasn't going to happen "on my watch".

Back to the three-class reunion...my two classmates looked way younger than me. They still had their figures and the same personalities they had as teenagers. I was so glad to see both of them. I used to be self-conscious about weighing twice what I did in high school. To heck with that--I've finally realized that nobody cares...at least nobody I graduated with.

This weekend I plan on meeting another couple of classmates. We've missed out on many years, and I am not missing out on any more. I haven't seen my best friend in 25 years, and that's a rotten shame. I hope God gives us many more years to enjoy each other's company from here on out. I won't let anything else stand in the way of a friendship again.

I also plan on a road trip to Arkansas to see another old friend and classmate. Life hasn't been too kind to her, but her old classmates are resurfacing to let her know she's always been loved and never forgotten.

We've found out that several of our classmates have passed on, and several others are not well. That makes me feel even more determined to make sure the rest of us get together as often as possible.

Thank you, Facebook.

Goin' Creekin'

Nothing felt better on a hot summer day than to put on your swimsuit and "swim" in the creek. This is probably about the deepest our creek ever got unless we were in the middle of a flood. To introduce you to the gang; Rita, Mike, and Mark are my siblings. Penny was my neighbor and tough friend who could whoop up on boys older than she was. Robin is Penny's little sister. She was pretty tough herself, ending up as a state champion arm wrestler. "Beetle" was also a neighbor. She came from a family that none of us were too sure about. Her real name was Carolyn, but her folks nicknamed her "Beetle" after a dog. That alone makes a person wonder. Beetle ended up getting married at 13, and it wasn't a "have-to" sort of thing. Heck, we didn't even know she was dating at the tender age of 13; then suddenly she got married. One week we were playing with our Barbie dolls, and the next week she was a wife. I doubt that she ever went back to school.

The creek (It was either called "Sugar Creek" or "Honey Creek") bordered our land. The creek was spanned by an old iron trestle bridge. Later on, it wouldn't have been safe to hang out around the bridge. Besides the pollution, drug deals went on there. Once in a while, we'd go creekin' up-creek. At a certain point this crabby old man would come out and tell us he owned the creek and he wanted us out of there. Once when Mom was along, the crab came out and started yelling at us about it being his creek. Mom yelled back and told him "his creek" kept flooding our property. Then he yelled back that he doesn't own the water--only the land under it!

Speaking of flooding, our creek flooded a few times a year. Normally, the water was probably ten feet below the bottom of the bridge. If it flooded enough to start coming over the bridge, snakes would slither up on the bridge pavement from the water. If it got that high, we'd expect within a few hours it'd be on our property. At one time the water got so high that it flooded clear up to Mary Sutton's place, probably a quarter mile up from the creek. For some reason, we never really worried too much about it--not even when one flooded night we heard a knock at our front door. When we answered the door, we found two men in a boat who said they'd gotten a call that we needed to be rescued. "Not us!" We were fine, and flooding up to our front step was something we were used to. So they backed up and left.

Our side of the creek always flooded because the other side of the creek had a levee. One year the levee broke and the "lower" neighbors got all of the water (I say "lower" because the land was quite a bit lower than the bridge, where our side was level with the bridge pavement.) A few of our neighbors ended up having to fill in their basements due to that flood. I don't think the levee was ever fixed. I don't remember any flooding on our side of the creek after the levee break. They may have even dredged the creek to alleviate the flooding.

The old iron bridge was eventually replaced by a non-descript concrete bridge. There was nothing wrong with the old bridge, based on how much effort it took them to tear the old one down. I haven't been near there in fifteen years or so, ever since Mom sold the place a couple of years after Dad's death. I don't think there are too many of our old neighbors left in the area--they've either passed away or moved.

We have a lot of good memories of our place on Paddock Road and the creek. I don't recall ever being bored growing up. You don't need a lot of toys when you have five acres in your back yard and a creek in your side yard. There was always something to do, and many times it would involve the creek. We'd take our dog there to cool off, and a couple of times a day we'd walk our ducks to the creek for a swim.

Kids, dogs, and ducks need a simple pleasure like a creek.

Valley Days

Lately my sister and I have been in blog contact with some fellow "Smith Valley-ians", and the chatter has conjured up a ton of memories from the days we lived in Smith Valley. One of the places they mentioned was "Effie's". Effie was a sweet little old lady that lived in the heart of Smith Valley in one of the older houses on Old Smith Valley Road. Out of her house, she ran "Effie's Variety Store". There were two rooms in the store; the first room had a counter full of candy bars. That's what attracted all of the kids from "The Valley". If you had a nickel in your hand, you had to go to Effie's to buy a candy bar.

I think this house is the one that used to be Effie's. If I'm wrong, hopefully a fellow Smith Valley-ian will let me know.

Very close to Effie's...maybe even next door...lived an older woman that had three thumbs. Her right thumb had a smaller, but perfect, thumb attached to it. She kept it perfectly manicured, just like her other two thumbs. Any time one of us kids had a reason to visit her, whether it was Halloween or selling something from the school, we made sure we hit her house so we could see her third thumb. It seems like she always bought whatever we were selling.

You would think she would've had the thing amputated years ago, but I supposed if I had something as cool as a third thumb, I'd have kept it too. I wonder if she had to pay more for a manicure since it involved 11 digits instead of 10. But back then, people weren't so concerned about themselves that they felt the need to spend $50 for a manicure job.

We had friends that lived in the heart of the valley--the Goodwins, the Branhams. Then there were the Watermans--not friends, but not enemies either. One of the Waterman boys was maybe a year or two older than me and always wore cool Dingo boots. When he got on Harry's school bus, he sauntered on and even had a cool way of sitting on the bus. It takes a cool guy to invent a cool way to sit on a school bus. He was a "Fonzie" kind of guy, for sure. The younger Waterman boy was quite a pistol.

Farther "up" the valley was the EUB church. Our neighbor "Ode" went to church there. I was good friends with Vicki, who's father was the minister there during high school. Nice people.


At the end of Old Smith Valley Road where it intersected with Morgantown Road, was the Beehive Restaurant. When we had enough money for a Chocola, we walked to the Beehive. Chocolas were great drinks on a hot summer day, but the best reason for getting a Chocola was to watch the owner, Ron, shake the drink by bouncing it on his biceps. Those were the days of glass bottles--not cans--and you had to shake the drink to mix the chocolate syrup. Ron's mom owned the restaurant as well. I can see her face, but can't quite remember her name. Maybe it'll come to me before I finish this story. Oh, wait. I'm pretty sure her name was Doris.


Coming back home from the Beehive, we usually stopped in at the Community Center to play on the playground equipment. With any luck, we never ran into the "Valley Gang" during one of our valley trips. I'm not sure what they called themselves--it was just a group of valley boys, and I think one of the Watermans was included. The Valley Gang liked to ride around on their bicycles and when they saw a car coming, they would block the road and not let the car through.

The gang tried this once with my mom. Little did they know Mom's old car was equipped with diesel horns that could rip the eardrums right out of your ear canals. So just north of the old iron bridge on Paddock Road, the gang blocked Mom's car. Heck, Mom had four little hoodlums herself. Did they think THAT was going to instill fear into her? Mom slowly brought the car right up to the boys. She got real close, and then blasted them with the diesel horn! Those boys were falling all over themselves trying to get the heck out of the way!

I don't think they messed with her any more.

There was a very interesting man that lived in the Smith Valley area. I never knew his name, but he was always dressed in a black suit and flat, wide-brimmed black hat. He looked like he just stepped out of the old west. We always called him "Bat Masterson". I never heard of him hurting anyone; I think he was a little strange, but harmless.

Then there was the creepy old coot that lived in the house at the corner of Old Smith Valley Road and our road, Paddock. Somehow we always knew we needed to stay away from him. I'm not sure what the rest of the valley called him, but we called him "Old Man Stayton".

One day, my brothers and I were playing hide and seek on a foggy day. Mike and I were hiding, and Mark was looking for us. I'm not sure where Mark was, but it seems like he was up in a tree. Out of the fog, Mike and I could see Old Man Stayton walking towards the bridge next to our land. We did not want to be in the area when Old Man Stayton got to the bridge, so we hid in a ditch. We had a vantage point where we could see the old man, but he couldn't see us.

Mark couldn't see much of anything from his vantage point. He knew Mike and I were hiding and he couldn't find us. He did not know Old Man Stayton was walking our way. Stayton walked to the middle of the bridge, stopped, and watched the creek for a few minutes. Then he turned towards his house and began walking back home. Like I said, Mark didn't know Old Man Stayton was there, but he decided to try to lure us out of our hiding spot. So very loudly Mark said, "Mon Dieu! Come back!" Old Man Stayton turned around and looked to see who was calling to him!

Not seeing anyone, he again turned and headed for home. Again, Mark yelled, "Mon Dieu! Come back!". Again, the old coot turned around. Mike and I were about to split a gut trying to keep from laughing out loud. Every time Stayton turned and started walking away, Mark would bellow out his semi-French "Mon Dieu! Come back!". The timing was impeccable. The old man finally gave up and eventually disappeared back into the fog.

Then there was the very eccentric Mary Sutton who lived up the road from us. When Mary could still drive, she was a frequent visitor to our place. Mary deserves an entire story, so I'll save her for a later time. And all I've got to say about that is...

"Mon Dieu! Come back!"