The Good Ole Days

Back when I was a kid growing up in the Town of Stanton Tennessee, I used to get up at 5 AM to catch the school bus, for an hour long ride to Brownsville.  In the summer I helped my Grandparents work in the half acre garden behind the presbyterian church.  I remember having to get up before daylight and try to save the tomato plants from a late frost.  I remember every morning my Grandmother would have breakfast on the table, and the old electric peculator chugging away on the counter.  We were always canning food from the garden.  I remember getting my first bicycle and crashing it into the basketball goal next door, and biting a hole through my tongue.  I would not let the doctor put stitches in my tongue.  So, what is my point...I don't have one, because I lost my train of thought.  Growing up in an extremely small town, I was not exposed to many of the things children in larger towns and cities, found for amusement. I didn't go to a movie theater or skating rink until I was twelve years old.  Once a year, my Mom would take me to the fair in Memphis for my birthday in September.  I remember going to B.F. Beake Grocery for a scoop of ice cream in a cone, or to one of the two drug stores in town for real hand dipped ice cream.  I also remember going to Beakes store for a quart of coal oil (kerosene) for the hurricane lamps my grand mother kept on hand for those all too frequent power outages.  My next door neighbor still had an out house to use the bathroom, and so did our church.  I'm old enough to have actually white washed an out house.  I'll be 48 years old in September, and there is no more Mid South Fair in Memphis, no more scoops of ice cream.  There are no more little family owned stores lining the main street in Stanton.  I was recruited to join the Stanton Historic Zoning Commission.  I have fought to get a portion of the the downtown business district zoned as historic, to make sure that what little of Stanton's history is left is preserved. Even though the buildings are gone now, we can make sure that new buildings are built in a style that compliments the historic image of a railroad town from the late 1700's.