Growing Up in Rock Island, Warren County, Tennessee

Growing up in Rock Island, Warren County, Tennessee, wasn’t really as bad as my sister and I thought it was at the time. It was just that after living in Cleveland, TN for the first four years of my life and then moving to a secluded place like Rock Island, TN was somewhat of a culture shock, especially for my parents. My Father worked for TVA at Ocoee before being transferred to Rock Island where we lived next to the TVA Office Building in a two story stucco house. Daddy was warehouse clerk and the warehouse was down the bluff below the back of our house and he had to take a little rail/cable car type apparatus to get up and down the bluff to work and back. There was a river in front of the house where what they called the “Intake” was, and one behind the house. Daddy became an avid fisherman and would go fishing before work and after work. He had a fish box behind the warehouse that he kept the fish in until he started home. We ate a lot of fish and he gave away what we couldn’t eat or freeze. He even gave so much away that the neighbors started asking if they were cleaned when he offered them the fish. I heard him tell a good friend one day that if they had been cleaned he would have kept them.

Fish wasn’t all we had plenty of, Daddy and his friends had been tippling at a local hangout one day and on his way home, he saw a crate of live chickens on the side of the road that had apparently fallen off a chicken truck. Of course he stopped and picked it up and proudly brought it home to Mother, but the best I remember, she was not as proud of them as he was. I am here to tell you, you don’t know what stink is unless you have scalded a crate of chickens. Mother built a fire outside under a pot of water and we scalded and plucked chickens the rest of the day and then Mother spent half the night cutting them up. We must have had some type of a little freezer in the basement for her to have put them in, or maybe used a neighbor’s freezer. I can’t remember what all was down there except home brew but that is another story in itself. Our yard looked like it had come a large snow storm from all the chicken feathers scattered around. My sister won’t eat chicken to this day because of that incident, as the smell of scalded chicken feathers isn’t an easy odor to forget.

Rock Island consisted of the small TVA Plant, Joe Rodgers Store, Sam Grissom’s Store, a very small post office and two churches, a Presbyterian Church and a Church of Christ. More about that later. There was also another little church toward Campaign, TN where the preacher was a woman and her husband was the local bootlegger. He would sit on the back seat of the church in his overalls while his wife preached, and if anyone wanted a bottle of spirits, they would stick their head in the back door, motion to him and he would get up, go out to his car and sell them what they wanted, go back in and sit back down until someone else came in or the service was over. They are deceased but I will protect their names for obvious reasons.

Things were pretty quiet in the small community and the only recreation was a swimming pool built from wood with two inch cracks between each piece of wood where the fish swam in and out, and it was anchored in the river. It was owned by Allen & Juanita Grissom and they also rented out a few cabins around the river's edge. If I got too bored, Juanita, affectionately known as “Nita”, would let me clean the cabins on Mondays after the people had left on Sunday Nights. They had a nice large building above the swimming pool where they cooked short orders and had a jukebox in the large room used for dancing at times. The jukebox could be heard by the people swimming and just sunbathing and I can remember swimming to the tune “Blue Tango”. Nita was such a sweet person and I used to love going down there and helping her. Besides that, several of the renters came there to party and must have left not feeling as well as they did when they arrived, or either left tips because I would find lots of change lying around and Nita always let me keep it.

Daddy always told me I couldn’t go swimming until I learned to swim and I could never understand that. I kept asking him how I was supposed to learn to swim and he would laugh and say “in the bathtub”. He finally threw me in the swimming pool one day and told me to sink or swim. I could hear Mother screaming at him even while I was under water. Of course I came up swimming and saved him from additional grief.

We moved to Rock Island, TN in 1945, when I was just 5 years old, and I asked my mother if God even knew where that place was. After attending the Baptist Church in Cleveland, TN, I could not imagine God EVER being in a small place such as Rock Island, but she tried to assure me, although I thought I could see question marks in her eyes, that He did indeed know where it was. I had been born at Fort Sanders Hospital in Knoxville, TN when Mother and Daddy lived in Maryville but about a year later we moved to Cleveland, TN, so you can see my young life had been exposed to the larger cities.

The closest city to us was McMinnville, TN, which was about 10-12 miles away but we lived a few miles off of the McMinnville-Sparta Highway (70) and without an automobile, it was difficult to get anywhere.

If we thought the culture shock was just moving to Rock Island, we had no idea what we were in for when we started school! My sister was seven years older than me so she had already been in school for a few years, but this would be my first school and I wasn’t very excited about it. I can remember being so homesick I almost cried, and I would go sit by my sister at her desk, IF I stayed at school. Many mornings I was so miserable I would tell the teacher I was sick and then go out to the road and catch a ride with one of the guys on his way to work at the TVA Plant. Finally after trying that a few times, Mother gave me a big dose of Castor Oil and I never left school again.

It was a one-teacher school, and for those of you who have never heard of that, we had one teacher who taught all eight grades. The school had absolutely no plumbing and there were His and Hers outhouses back behind the school, Hers back behind the left corner, facing the school, and His back behind the right corner of the school. This proved to be VERY inconvenient the cold, snowy, or rainy weather and it was especially inconvenient if you were in a hurry.

Someone had to carry a bucket of water from the well each morning so we would have something to drink, and everyone drank out of the same dipper, throwing what water was left in the dipper after they drank what they wanted, back into the bucket. That was until our mother found out and she asked a neighbor to take her to McMinnville where she purchased little collapsible metal drinking cups for each student which she took to the teacher and told her she better never hear of the kids drinking from the dipper again.

The one-teacher school proved to be an education in itself, and while the teacher, Mrs. Henrietta Hash and later, Mrs. Mae Mason, was teaching one grade, the other students, who were supposed to be studying, were trying to figure out what we could be doing to keep from studying. Sammy Grissom sat in the next aisle over from me and up a couple of seats and we started throwing a softball back and forth, until I dropped it, it hit the floor with a bang and the teacher came back and paddled us both…..yes, that was before it was against the law to paddle a student. At recess, Sammy yelled at me that if I hadn’t dropped the ball, we wouldn’t have gotten the paddling! However, that wasn’t the worst of it, when we got home, my sister jumped off the school bus singing “Glenda got a whipping, Glenda got a whipping”, and of course I immediately got another one from Mother and still another one when daddy got home. So much for big sisters, huh? Actually she turned out to a great sister and I love her dearly, but we did have our share of arguments, especially when she would come in from a date in the middle of the winter and make me scoot over in the bed so she could have my warm spot.

It was this school where we were introduced to Cake Walks and Pie Suppers. Now those of you who have never been to a Cake Walk or Pie Supper have really missed something and it’s going to tax my brain to remember exactly what all went on at each one. I do remember the girls baked pies to take to the Pie Suppers and they were auctioned off. The boy who bought the pie, ate it with the girl who baked it. The Cake Walk, to the best of my recollection, was just that, kind of like Musical Chairs, and the chairs were numbered, a cake was sitting by it, the music played and when it stopped, the men sat down and where ever they sat, they supposedly ate with or possibly dated the girl who brought the cake. Now, that was my sister’s memory, if anyone remembers cake walks differently, please let me know, I would be happy to listen to your version. This was about the only excitement in Rock Island at the time.

Daddy was the third from the youngest of nine children who were scattered from Florida to California and all in between, and they must have considered Rock Island a vacation spot because they visited quite frequently, or it seemed to me like they did. One of his sisters lived in Florida and thought imbibing of any alcoholic beverage was the worst thing anyone could do. Another one, more tolerant, lived in Birmingham and when the sister in Florida visited the one in Birmingham, they would invariably wind up in Rock Island. Daddy liked his home brew and also enjoyed making it. I enjoyed watching and helping him cap the bottles. One day Daddy got a call that his sister in Birmingham was bringing his sister from Florida and her husband and would be there that afternoon.

He had just made a large crock full of the brew and it had been sitting a few days but not near as long as it should. I could tell Daddy wasn’t too happy when he hung up the phone and yelled for my sister and I to come help him bottle his brew. We got busy bottling the green brew. I capped it, put it back in the boxes the bottles came in and Daddy took it down to the basement. The basement consisted of a dirt floor, foundation blocks and open under-flooring. The water pipes that ran under the floor were visible when you walked in the basement. Daddy got the brew all stored in the basement, the crock washed and stored down there, and the kitchen cleaned up and was all ready for the family. Late that afternoon they pulled up in front of the house and we all ran out to greet them. We heard stories of what all they had been doing in Birmingham and where Aunt Ethel had taken them. Finally it was time to go to bed, and if you haven’t already guessed it, not long after everyone fell asleep, we were awakened by these loud bangs followed by pings, over and over. My aunt from Florida got up and wanted to know what was going on and Daddy told her it was an animal in the basement and about that time there was another bang and pings and while she wasn’t savvy on home brew, she knew that wasn’t an animal in the basement. He finally had to explain to her what had happened: the green brew was blowing up causing the metal caps to hit the water pipes under the floor.

Sometimes the gentlemen in Rock Island would gather around the large ole Warm Morning Heater in the back of Sam Grissom’s store and catch up on the local gossip. One night not long after we moved there, Daddy introduced himself as Raymond Blanchard McWhirter and surprisingly enough there was another McWhirter, Newton “Newt” Powell McWhirter, at the store. As they tried to figure out how they were related, they both stated there was an Andrew Jackson McWhirter in their family so they assumed that was their common ancestor but neither of them was clear on who this Andrew Jackson McWhirter was. We came to call the other McWhirter gentleman, Uncle Newt McWhirter, and his wife, Aunt Audrey McWhirter. I used to love visiting Uncle Newt and Aunt Audrey McWhirter because she let me help her feed the chickens and gather eggs. It was always exciting to find eggs in the nests under the chickens. It was also pleasant to eat Sunday lunch with Aunt Audrey and Uncle Newt as she was such a great cook. She loved animals and people were always dropping animals off at their house because they knew she would care for them and feed them. I remember a hole in the bottom of their screen door and when they answered the door, dogs and cats both ran out through the hole. We may have had to shoo a few cats off the kitchen table, but her cooking was fantastic. She was such a lovely, educated person and I liked to hear her talk with her Northern brogue and meticulous way with words. I think her mother died when she was young and she was raised by a relative in Indiana.

Uncle Newt was born June 7, 1874 in Rock Island, TN and married Audrey Connel, a school teacher. It wasn’t until my Father was deceased that I found out exactly how we were related and as it turned out, we only lived about five miles, the way the crow flies, from where my Father’s and Uncle Newt’s ancestor, Alexander Hamilton McCandless McWhirter, had lived in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. Uncle Newt was descended from the Andrew Jackson McWhirter of Civil War Fame, and afterwards the Commissioner of Agriculture for the State of Tennessee. My father’s Andrew Jackson McWhirter was born June 23, 1847 in Marion County, Alabama and died February 28, 1922 in Eagleville, Rutherford County, Tennessee. However, Uncle Newt’s ancestor, Andrew Jackson McWhirter, was the grandson of our ancestor, George Marlin McWhirter and his wife, Martha McCandless Balch McWhirter. My Father and Uncle Newt were both descended from Alexander Hamilton McCandless McWhirter and his wife, Elizabeth Robinson McWhirter, who married November 28, 1816 in Warren County and lived on Sink Creek which is such a beautiful area. Alexander’s son, Andrew Ferrier McWhirter, married Sarah Harper and they were our ancestors while Alexander’s son, George Marlin McWhirter married Lucy Ann Blackburn Roberts and they were Uncle Newt’s parents.

Andrew Ferrier, mentioned above, married Sarah Harper, daughter of Thomas Harper, on June 7, 1841 in Warren County, Tennessee and emigrated to Walker County, which later became Marion County, Alabama.

George Marlin McWhirter’s father was William McWhirter, one of the signatories of the Cumberland Compact signed in Nashville in 1780 when it was still North Carolina. William came to the French Lick in Nashville with James Robertson’s Overland Party in December 1779.

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