8 Chattanooga and Surroundings

Chattanooga and Surroundings

On the other side of the ridge was Central High School, with its large library on the second floor; here my mother, who held a master’s degree from Lenoir (NC) College, was head librarian, and had her own windowed office (but was her own secretary), where she meticulously typed my school term papers. Central High was the flagship of the County school system, since Chattanooga is the seat of Hamilton County. Downtown my grandfather worked, at Chattanooga High School, as superintendent of city schools; the two schools were rivals of sorts.

My mother took us to most of the football games of Central High, and was a fan of the “Purple Pounders”, the head coach and of his son, their kicker; Baylor was Central’s toughest local opponent. Under my mother’s tutelage I learned principles of bookbinding and repair in her library’s workroom, where was housed the light green two-volume set “Dictionary of Classical Antiquities” (much later I bought my own copy of this valuable, unique work). It was in their collection that I met and avidly read the “Mudhen” series. My mother worked summers at the county-wide library; she was well-known at the Chattanooga Public Library, where I was introduced to Terhune’s dog books and Kjelgaard’s wildlife books. I remember riding home lying on the back seat of her car, reading a Terhune book; I enjoyed imagining our whereabouts from the car’s motion.

Some summers we took vacation trips to the Smoky mountains: we went to Gatlinburg TN, where Mom was a guest and helper in a friend’s lodge, and my sister caught poison ivy scrambling over a stone wall; and Fontana Village, a resort in NC where I lost my fishing rod and reel in the lake at the dock (but wondrously retrieved it by a brass keychain I had attached to a line guide); the resort had tennis and nightly square dancing. We also went to the beach: there was Daytona, where I was perfunctorily taught about smoking, and where I left fishing bait (crabs I think) under our beach cabin – we had to return for these, as they stank; later we went to Myrtle Beach SC, where with my .22 rifle I killed a seagull on the sand by the seaside. I was told these were protected, so for the rest of that trip I laid low; but I wasn’t subdued completely, as on our return I shot highway signs from our moving car, sometimes making Mom back up so I could admire my work.

One of Chattanooga’s recreational jewels is Warner Park, on McCallie Avenue, half-way downtown from Brainerd. Open to the public, this park is home to the city’s zoo; it also had a large swimming pool and concrete tennis courts. The pool was quite large, and had a 14’ deep end with three diving boards: besides 1-meter and 3-meter boards, there was a 10-meter platform, which I went off once (feet-first – who in his right mind would go head-first off that?). One night, after watching a baseball game at Engel Stadium, I struck out on foot, intending to go to Warner Park; I got disoriented, and wound up at Lincoln Park, reserved for the other color; confused and frightened, though the folks I met were very kind, I was finally found by my grandfather in his Chevrolet, and taken home, covered with rue.

Downtown, next to Centenary church, was Memorial Auditorium, which hosted an annual “Community Concert” series, inviting world-acclaimed musicians, and to which my mother was regular subscriber (my exposure to culture); I remember José Iturbi (piano) and Risë Stevens (vocal, operatic mezzo-soprano); there I also met Stu Hamblen and his likeness of cartoonist Al Capp’s “Shmoo” (at that time I called myself “Myrtle The Turtle”.

Near Chattanooga is Chickamauga Lake, part of the TVA system, formed by a dam with a highway crossing the Tennessee River north of the city; the dam’s large turbines generated electric power for the region. The large lake afforded great recreational resources for area residents. My sister had a friend who greatly admired her and called at our house often; he and his brother drove me in their Jeep to the limestone rocky banks below the dam, on the road out to the Alcoa plant; on another occasion this man coached me to shoot his 12 gauge shotgun on the wooded hill behind our house; the gun’s recoil made my shoulder quite sore. My cousin Ted and I had a friend whose parents had a speedboat with a 30 hp outboard engine; and often took us to the lake; it was there that I learned to water ski, and I felt quite accomplished when after dropping a ski for practice on the single slalom ski, I finally “got up on one” behind the boat. Another friend of Ted’s (who became my friend too) had a “Snipe” sailboat and trailer; this teen and I drove to the lake a couple of times to launch and sail his boat; so I learned a little about boats (which may account partly for my distaste for the sport), but more how to drive the trailer backing up.

I remember two movie theaters, both downtown. My cousin Ted and I (we were little) went to a showing of “Frankenstein”; I was frightened and left the building, ashamed to have been afraid, though almost a year older than he. Later in 1955 my mom accompanied me for the opening of “Julius Caesar” at the Tivoli; we were handed a promotional “newspaper” describing Caesar’s assassination and the climactic battle of Philippi; I was fascinated by it. My mom took singing lessons from a voice teacher downtown. Her long-time friend lived around the corner from Centenary in the Flatiron building; after my mother’s death, my uncle Bill looked in on her. I sometimes frequented the downtown sporting goods and stationery stores, where I charged stuff to my mom.

There were two bridges downtown across the Tennessee River. Generally we used the Market Street bridge, which was the way out to Baylor and Signal Mountain; the other was the Walnut Street bridge, and it led out to Girls’ Preparatory School, locally known as GPS, and the cemetery (where my grandparents and mother are buried) in North Chattanooga.

The large insurance company downtown where my uncle worked maintained a property on the lake for the recreational use of its employees, and often on Sunday afternoons we would all pile in my uncle’s dark blue Plymouth for an outing there. On Shallowford Road, leading out to the lake property, was a “weightless bump”, always thrilling to drive over at highway speed. A hilly road led to the property, barred for privacy by two successive chains, each with a padlock to which each employee was issued a key; it was Ted’s and my exciting task to unlock these, and we would wait while the car was driven through before re-entering it. Past these chains, the road went around in two loops – one more remote for boating, fishing or walking; on the other, at the top of a hill, was parking with a house for the property’s caretaker and playground equipment – swings, slides, monkey bars, rotating rider and shuffleboard. Down the hill was more parking; the waterfront was across a small arm of the lake from the Chattanooga Rod and Gun Club. Once Ted and I turned on all eight showers in the men’s bathhouse (hot, as we thought we were chilly), and thus incurred discovery and a rebuke from the caretaker, who knew somehow. After an afternoon’s fun, my uncle frequently regaled us with stories he made up for our entertainment, between episodes of childishly impish shoving in the back seat; I remember his story about “little lonesome Mercedes and the panther sweat”.

My mother loved the Smoky Mountains’ scenery, especially the Nantahala River Gorge, near Ellijay Ga; she enjoyed day trips, and sometimes went to Rising Fawn GA in Dade County near Trenton, just south of Lookout Mountain, for the annual “Plum Nelly” festival in late summer; the community was in the TN-GA-AL corner, so-named because it was “plumb out of Tennessee and nearly out of Georgia”. There she bought country crafts; her aim was their sourwood honey from local tree blossoms. I liked picking (and eating) the blackberries that grew there.

I often went to a woodsy development in Brainerd, where I hunted grey squirrels with my .22 rifle, listening to the car radio while driving (I remember “Mr Blue”). Occasionally I took my cousin Ted on these forays, and we would gun down the furry bushytails barking high in oak trees.

One cold Thanksgiving morning I enlisted Ted to go squirrel hunting before the family dinner; we bagged a squirrel, and Grandmother roasted it for us — we didn’t get much meat!

There was a country place called “Rabbit Valley” north of Ringgold GA, where mistletoe grew – it could be seen as green clumps among the bare branches of oak trees in late autumn, after the leaves fell. I used to take my cousin Ted there, and we would shoot down the mistletoe with our .22 rifles, where the clump attached to the tree branch by a stem. Usually our haul filled the car’s back seat; there was far more mistletoe than anyone we knew could use.