I suppose the happiest year my parents and I enjoyed was 1972. An Olympic Games were held that summer. U.S. swimmer Mark Spitz won seven gold medals. Junior high English teacher Judy Fraley was so impressed that she put up a poster of him in her classroom. A visit from a first cousin, named Beverly (whose sister was Rose B. McClain) and her truck-driver husband, Melvin Haskins occurred that summer. They were in their motor home. Their son, Jeff, had his little motorbike on the back and he took me for a short ride, scarring me a lot when he motored south on Moss Street in front of the house, ignoring the fact that Foster Street was about to be crossed. (At that time there was no stop sign there.)
A big vacation was done that year. It began with a just-before-sunrise departure from the house. Our car was a white 1968 Chevrolet Impala that would be gifted to a half-brother in Illinois after a pale yellow Oldsmobile Delta 88 was bought in the fall of 1972 from a young Larry Wadley, who was selling cars from a dealership in McKenzie, Tenn. He would later co-own Moody-Wadley in Dyersburg, where the ol’ man bought a grey Buick Regal in late 1993. That car was worthy enough for me to write up in a narrative, “The Car from Heaven”, and it lasted 20 years. It received a Jasper engine in it at the Kenny Peace garage in Dyersburg in late 2008.
After getting north of the state line, south of Hickman, Kentucky, we noticed an upside-down ’69 Chevy Camaro on the ground where there is a “Y” in the roadway (Hwy. 94). Being twelve years old at the time, I wondered occasionally if any of the rises in the landscape were Indian mounds. A breakfast stop was made at the Land Between The Lakes area. It was the first time I had chocolate syrup on pancakes. The plan was to go to a south suburb of Detroit called Taylor and then cross over the huge Ambassador Bridge into Windsor Canada. Then we went east through Canada to Niagara Falls. My mother had a niece named Beverly (mentioned above) in Taylor. Her daughter, who is slightly older than me, got married for the first time in 1977, and I attended with my cousin and her son, Gene McClain.
Near Kitchener, Ontario, there is a Blue Bird school bus factory. There must have been well over a hundred of them out there parked side by side. We spent some time on the Canadian side at Niagara Falls. One mom-and-pop hotel, which were the majority of lodgings there at that time, had a black bear in a pen with an interesting way to feed it sugar cubes. After putting in a nickel or dime for two cubes, the idea was to put them into a steel bucket that was on a rope path going up to the other end which was on an elevated platform inside the bear’s pen. The bear was so good at this, he was well on his way up the ladder to retrieve his treat by the time the sugar cubes hit the bottom of that bucket. After he got to the top of that platform, he wasted no time helping the process by leaning forward, clamping down on the rope with his teeth, and yanking that rope towards him.
The Skylon Tower was a big attraction there. My mother got an artist to do a pencil sketch of her. One of the things that impressed me was the number of younger people who were riding English-racer type bicycles with their distinctive drop-down handle bars, causing the rider to be leaning forward. Many of them were no doubt draft-dodgers who were against U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. My mother bought me a silver cheap bike from a K-mart or Otasco in Dyersburg and that lasted for a while. In high school, I got a bright metallic green Schwinn from a store in Jackson. That was about the time I got some stereo equipment from a Jackson store. My first album record was (Sir) Elton John’s “Yellow Brick Road” which I liked. In the early ’90s, it came out that this British entertainer was gay.
After going to Buffalo, NY, we went to St. Louis, MO, by way of Cincinnati, OH. It was there, slightly stuck in downtown traffic, that I observed from the back seat that the car next to us had Obion County, Tenn., plates on it. In St. Louis, we ‘rendezvoused’ with a big group of Lake County people: Little League teams and their parents. We took in a Cardinals baseball game at the old Busch Stadium.
When I first got that silver bicycle, I was plenty good to see how fast I could pedal it. On a Church Street sidewalk near where Ms. Minnie Lee Loggins lived (later it would be Skipper Pierce and Shirley), I was going at full steam heading toward downtown, when I noticed – too late – that there was a large pothole with jagged edges directly in front of me. I could not avoid the inevitable: two flat tires. The very next day I repeated my trek and was sure to avoid that spot, only to fall victim to the same result with one flat tire when another large pothole further west was encountered. Since then, I have never thought much of the Tiptonville Street Dept.
That silver bicycle was my ride one afternoon when I was watching the LCHS band (Pete Evans, director) practice their parade marching on Cherry Street near the intersection with Cates Street. A majorette, Jackie Donnell, who’s youngest brother was my age, asked me to put her lightweight jacket on her car parked nearby, which I did. The next year, my father and I went to Abernathy’s Honda on Hwy. 22 in Union City and he bought me a red Honda “Trail” 70. I had probably outgrown it, with my long legs, when it was purchased. But that was what other kids were riding: Hank Curvin had a pea-green one. Charlotte Moore on Foster Street had one. When my father’s dry cleaners burned in Jan. or Feb. 1974, it was being stored out there, adjacent to a small area for Mr. Simmons plumbing shop. The biggest neighbor to the dry cleaners at that time was Dan Whitson’s store, which is where the blaze started.
Later in 1972, my favorite pro. football team, the Kansas City Chiefs, played the Miami Dolphins in the American Football Conference (AFC) title game and, therefore, the right to go to the Super Bowl. It ended up being the longest NFL football game ever played and I think that it still claims that record. Unfortunately, the Dolphins won after the K.C. kicker (Stenerud) missed a seemingly easy 24-yard field goal which could have won that game. Some of that game was viewed at the Luther and Mildred Jowers house on Cates Street. My mother’s mother was a Jowers. My great-grandfather was Adam L. Jowers who left Lexington, Tenn., as an 18-year old @ 1880. He boarded a steamboat somewhere on the Tennessee River (?) and went to Lake County. His first wife was Beulah Tidwell of New Madrid, MO. My mother was named for her grand-mother.
On November 10, 2019, I attended my first NFL game ever and saw, from the top of the nose-bleed section, my K.C. Chiefs lose in the last minute of the game to the Tennessee Titans in Nashville’s Nissan Stadium. The Chiefs won the Super Bowl after that season in February 2020. (Their quarterback, P. Mahomes, was QB’ing the Texas Tech Red Raiders when they beat the Arkansas Razorbacks in Fayetteville, AR, in September 2015. I attended that game as I was waiting for a Tyson load that would not be ready until the next day. On the JumboTron screen at halftime, it was announced that 1964 alumni Jerry and Gene Jones had gifted $10 million to the U. of A. and a new building would be named for them.)