The Art of Integration
In late February, the Alabama State Council on the Arts employed award winning Livingston, Alabama songwriter Jacky Jack White to work with students at Robert C. Hatch High School in Uniontown, Alabama. Their mission was to construct an original musical play using the techniques of “arts integration.” The deadline was May 16. Jacky Jack White with student. Diana Green of the State Council explains that White and Hatch teacher Darren...
The Blimp
Just a block east of the square, on Commerce Street in Lewisburg, Tennessee, stands a rather rundown, nondescript building that houses the Good Samaritans and the Masonic Lodge. Looking at the drab old place, a newcomer could not possibly imagine its former splendor. Yet I assure you, most splendid it was. This was the Easy Pay Tire Store, commercial empire of Mr. Robert Wallace Ritter, Sr., assisted ably by my Aunt Kathryn Scott...
The Edmond Jones Family
On the northeast edge of Haynes Cemetery resides a rock-bordered family plot. Contained within are the headstones of Edmond Jones, his wife Louisa Durinda Flanagan, their son John T., his wife Martha, and their children Ludie, Wallace, and Sam. Also, there is the grave of Edmond’s brother Allen. The Jones family came to Maury County in 1828 and settled on 445 acres just around the corner from Haynes on what is now the Smyrna Church...
The Boy Who Loved School
Up on Silver Creek, the blackberry bushes grew taller on the east side of the hill. The dew came off them sooner and the berries enjoyed the sunlight for a longer time. The remains of an old orchard, planted by the first white settlers, shielded the fruit from the bluebirds. “My mother would help my sister Kathryn and I pick a vessel full of berries, then she would start home to start a batch of jelly on the wood stove.”...
Quick Remembrances from Fountain Creek
Yesterday I was driving my 95 year-old daddy Brother Jack White to Sonny Willis’s kennel in Lewisburg. Sonny has a training ground on his place and I was taking my dad for the sole purpose of showing off my German Shorthaired Pointer, Zula the Dog. It was an hour round trip so I had plenty of opportunity to hear my dad’s old stories about Maury County in the 20s and 30s. Most all of them I’d heard before about 127...
Miss Hattie
In 1958, when my grandmother Hattie Mitchell White became a widow, she “broke up housekeeping” and moved to Lewisburg to live with her daughter Kathryn and son-in-law Edwin Scott. In fact, Edwin built accommodations, a bedroom and bathroom, on the back of his house for her. “Granny” cooked all the meals and did all the laundry for the household. She paid her way and was proud of it. She read the Bible every day and worked on crochet,...