Neighborhood of My Youth

Most of the questions my Grandson asked were related to private family matters. I did think it might be interesting to include one that I wrote directly for inclusion in a book called My Life Stories.

What was the neighborhood you grew up in like?

From the time I was three until the time I left for college at seventeen, I lived in Clinton, Tennessee, a town of around 2,000

people. Clinton was the county seat for Anderson County, which starting during World War II came to include Oak Ridge where scientists gathered to conduct nuclear research related to the creation of the bombs in Los Alamos, New Mexico. I have a vague memory of stopping at a gate where soldiers guarded the town. By 1956, when I started high school, Oak Ridge was no longer a guarded community, but it had grown to a population (just over 30,000) twice the size of the rest of Anderson County.

Starting at age eight, we lived on the two-lane highway that connected Clinton and Oak Ridge. We lived on four acres about one mile from downtown Clinton with its two traffic lights and four miles from Oak Ridge with scores of traffic lights. My

brothers and I walked to downtown Clinton on Saturdays to see the double-header westerns that played in the afternoon. Admission was 10 cents, a bag of popcorn was 5 cents, and a small coke was 5 cents. After I reached the age of twelve, all that was required in the summers was that I have completed mowing half of the property. I was allowed to complete the other half after church on Sundays. Boy did I look forward to mid-Fall through the winter into mid-Spring. During that period the grass became dormant.

That easy-going rustic existence was interrupted for about three years following Dads near fatal car accident. He could not work during a significant portion of that time, so I took over a paper route along the highway on which we lived. The 125 or so customers lived over a 2 1/2-mile route. It did not produce much, but in those days $30 a week went a long way (a loaf of bread cost 15 cents or maybe less). It was only later that I discovered that the local bank who held our mortgage had suspended scheduled repayments during Dad’ convalescence, as had the power company. Mother paid them $1 a month until we were able to repay the arrears.

We had a wonderful group of children living near us — almost all on 2-4 acre lots. During the summer we gathered to play touch football or baseball with a tennis ball and later whiffle balls. The McGinleys had two boys, one my brother Doug’s age and the other one year younger than me. One attended Princeton

and the other went to Harvard despite my reports of my experiences among the elite. The Galls lived about 1/2 mile down the road. Their son, Bobby, was a close friend and he attended Yale. Of course, Doug got his PhD at Harvard. What are the odds that five boys living within 1000 yards of each other in a town of 2,000 people would attend Ivy schools. And the only one who did not — my brother Harry — was acknowledged by all of us as the smartest. The good news? No one in our neighborhood could develop an inflated ego. There were too many others just as smart just down the street.

Strangely, there was only one girl living within our immediate neighborhood. She was two-years younger than I and an avid participant in our sports until the two of us were called in by our parents and told we had become too old to be wrestling in the front yard. She hated it but sidelined herself and found girlfriends who lived closer to downtown Clinton. Later, she attended Emory in Atlanta and taught drama in Los Angeles for her adult life.

I now know that I was lucky. I grew up in a neighborhood surrounded by intelligent, interesting people. All of us played music and loved sports, albeit I was the only one who succeeded at the varsity level and went on to compete at the college level. Bobby Gall could not hit a baseball, but he beat me at chess in 90% of our games. More importantly, we were not jealous of each other. We were like a team, or you could have called us the

“Gang on Oak Ridge Highway.”

Michael

What a great childhood neighborhood group. Hard to find a neighborhood like that any more these days… or it you did, it would only be in an extremely wealthy area.

Lisa

I love this story.

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