Sharing Boyhood Memories...My Hometown

My Hometown

 Many fond memories are stored in my mind from my growing up years during the late  40's, 50's and early 60's in the small town of Harriman, Tennessee.  With hindsight, I attribute a lot of those memories to my hometown's geographic location, its unique origins, its well designed grid of city blocks and it homogeneous social structure.  When I read the City of Ember a while back, the compactness and tight knit city of Ember reminded me much of the secure and somewhat limited boundaries I experienced in my hometown in those formative years.

Harriman was built on the banks of the Emory River, a free flowing river coming out of the Cumberland Mountains.  The River formed a natural boundary to the west and south and was passable by an old two lane bridge to the south and a railroad trestle to the west.  Walden’s Ridge bordered the city to the northwest and ran in an east to west direction toward the river.  It was said that Henry Ford considered Harriman as the sight for building his Model-T Fords, but for some reason he didn’t.  Henry Ford didn’t come, but Meade Paper Company and a couple of hosiery mills were mainstays for our labor force. The temperance activists who founded Harriman established it on the social doctrine of temperance.  No alcoholic beverages were legally sold there during my growing up years and the city didn’t actually permit legal liquor sales until around 1992, almost one hundred years after its founding.  Although no legal whiskey was sold, I do remember a few bootleggers who operated in town and I even delivered the newspaper to one of them for a number of years.

My family lived two and a half city blocks from Roane Street, the main route through town.  It was then and still is U.S. Highway 27, the major North-South Highway in the days before I-75 was built.  You could always stand on Roane Street and see lots of cars from Ohio, Michigan and Canada as they headed south on vacation.  Roane Street had virtually all the businesses located on or near it.  A bakery, grocery stores, hardware stores, dress shops, the Five & Dime Variety stores, the post office, car dealers, city hall, police & fire departments, water, gas and electric utility company, the Southern Bell phone company, the public library, banks, a pool hall, drug stores, furniture stores, jewelry stores, two hotels, two or three restaurants, a lumber company, a shoe shop, our hospital and the most popular places on Saturdays, three movie theaters, the Webo, Princess and Roxie.  Roane Street was even the location of Norris Creamery that produced bottled milk and dairy products for the general area.  It is hard to believe, but all of these centers of business and social activities were within easy walking distance, located along a five block area of downtown.

All of the city schools were located at the east end of town, about a mile from my house.  I walked to elementary, junior high and high school.  A city park was about one block from our house.  The park had swings, a slide, clay tennis courts, horseshoe pits and eventually a swimming pool.  We also had a little league baseball field and a larger ball field for older boys.  Both fields were located at the west side of town down in the flats, near the river.  There were also a couple of junk yards in the same vicinity.  Our church was only one block from our house.  I often walked to church from home or to youth choir after school.

In the 1950’s a kid just about had free run in town.  Most parents felt free to let kids walk or ride bikes to school and just about any location.  I can’t remember a time when I was not able to go anywhere in town.  My grandmother’s rules were simple.  She'd always ask, "Where are you going?  When will you be home?"  Although I didn’t have a watch you could always know the general time by listening for the twelve o’clock noon "whistles."  Every day at exactly high noon the fire department in the middle of town would crank the big siren and the paper mill down by the river also sounded a big steam whistle.  You could hear either from anyplace in town.  I’m told that I was born at high noon.  The doctor told my mom that I exited the womb exactly as the twelve o’clock whistle sounded.

There were few locations that were technically “off limits.”  One was crossing the railroad trestle over the river.  Some years before I began roaming on my own, six boys had hiked to Pepper Box Canyon to spend the day.  Pepper Box canyon was across the river and about a three mile hike north where Clifty Creek entered the river.  As the boys returned home, they decided to take a short-cut to cross the river back to Harriman.  They used the railroad trestle rather than the regular bridge.  One of the boys was killed on the trestle when he got caught by a freight train mid-way across and was knocked into the river as the train  passed over the trestle.  The other five boys made it to safety and survived.  After that, every parent in town had the trestle identified as a definite “off limits” place.  My friends and I never got on top of the trestle.  Another “off limits” area was an old warehouse located down by the river in an old industrial site close to the Mead Paper Mill.  I will have to admit that as a teenager we did violate that particular limit.  The old warehouse was used to store huge bundles of cardboard that was recycled at the paper mill.  It was a great place to hide, climb and chase each other.  There is no doubt we were trespassing and that it was probably dangerous, but it was a neat place to play.

One of my favorite places to explore was the ridge to the north of town called Walden’s Ridge.  You could easily walk to the area where houses stopped and the mountain began.  There were trails and old dirt roads that climbed the mountain.  There were places that had names like “Balance Rock” where several big rocks seemed to balance on each other.  It made a great place to climb or just sit and look off down toward the river.  Another interesting place was some old ruins of a long abandoned structure atop the ridge.  If you wanted to hike about three miles along the ridge top you could reach the fire tower and climb it for a good view of the valley.  On the way to the tower was a good spring and if you knew where to look you could find some caved-in abandoned coal mines from past efforts to extract coal.  My friends and I have spent many hours climbing, shooting rifles, exploring, playing fox and hound, and testing our strength against the mountain.

The Emory River begins on the slopes of Frozen Head and Bird Mountains north of Harriman, then is joined by the Obed River as it makes its way to join the Tennessee  River.  Although the Emory's flow is somewhat diminished by the back waters of TVA's Watts Bar Dam, the Emory is still a sizable free flowing, deep, green river as it forms the bow around Harriman.  The river was always an attractive feature for us kids.  On hot summer days some of the boys would go swimming “jay bird” just below the bridge.  The thing I remember being the most fun was to go to the railroad trestle and climb out on the wooden supporting structure that spanned out into the water.  At certain times of the year you could see shad swarming in the water.  We’d try to spear them, catch them with hooks or just watch in amazement at the hundreds of fish swimming around the pilings.   Simply climbing on the wooden crossbeams was a challenging and fun adventure.  I can remember one winter the river froze over with ice several inches thick.  Walking on the frozen river was a special event and happened only once that I can remember.

During those growing up years I didn’t realize what a wonderful place our small town really was.  It provided so many growth opportunities to challenge growing minds and bodies within a fairly small geographic space.  The trust of parents and the security of the community social structure afforded kids unusual freedom to test their limits and attempt new things.  I believe it was a unique time and will most likely not be captured again.  I regret that my own children did not have such a "small town" opportunity and for sure my grandchildren will never get to experience it.  

 But instead of regrets, I just have to keep reminding myself that life is a journey, not a destination.  We never fully arrive at a point where we can stay for a long time.  We just keep traveling on and the scenery changes.  It is impossible to recapture a place or an event to share with those who come after us.  The best we can do is to remember the journey and share our memories.