One of my Facebook friends has started a new Facebook page entitled do you remember Rainsville? I do! I lived there most of my life until we moved to Rome, Georgia 27 years ago.
Until I was in the 6th grade, we lived in grandmother's rock house. My mother and my grandaddy built it out of rocks that they snaked out of Town Creek with a yoke of oxen. It has walls in it that are nearly a foot thick! My Uncle Barnard helped mother build a house in the back of the pasture on Dupree Circle when I was 12 and in the 6th grade at Williams Avenue Elementary in Fort Payne. It was the first time I had my own room and slept in a bed by myself. I loved our little house.
I went to the first grade at Williams Avenue with Uncle Guice. He was my principle. I went to school with him every morning and we stopped in Pine Ridge to eat breakfast with Mrs. Stout. She had a flat top hair cut and she was the only woman I ever knew with that short a haircut until the last few years. Uncle Guice would run the cash register and she would go back in her kitchen and cook our breakfast. She had a squirrel in a cage that she loved. I wanted to hold it like she did, but it was a one woman squirrel! He would bite me all the time.
At school, I sat in Uncle Guice's office while he worked on paper work, then we would go around and visit teachers and the lunch room ladies. Lee Chambers was the janitor and he didn't open the doors until 7:30. Kids would be standing outside in the cold and I would be warm and toasty. I had convinced many classmates that Uncle Guice had an electric paddle in his closet in the office! Somebody started a rumor that there was an electric paddle in his office. I jumped right on that, since I was the one student with total access all the time! As far as I know, the only things I ever saw in that closes were school supplies and an extra suit Uncle Guice kept there in case it was needed.
Mrs. Frances Smith was Uncle Guice's secretary and she also would go shopping with us and help us pick out his suites and his ties. He was a natty dresser and I would always get something new too. One of the teachers there had taught my Uncle Guice, my Aunt Jean, my two brothers and myself. Martha McPherson could put the fear of God into any student! She carried a yard stick every where with her and she wasn't using it to measure things. After she retired, she became a baliff for the DeKalb County Superior Court. She was tough there too. I learned so much from her, I was afraid not too.
I went to school at Plainview in the second grade and was put in Mrs. Wadell"s class. She was a wonderful teacher. When she would ask a question, I would always put my hand up first and wave my hand! "I know, I know!" She would ask other people first, but finally she would ask me sometimes. It would make me so happy when she called on me.
One day, Loretta Green, brought her little brother, Russel, to school with her. We were out on the playground and the boys started picking on little Russel. The girls got in a circle and put Russel in the middle.
I don't have any idea where he got it, but Boyd Scott got a rope and tried to lasso Russel out of the circle. He lassoed me instead! He pulled me on the ground and I had a little pleated skirt with a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar. He dragged me across the playground and it pulled my little skirt right off! It cut my thighs all up on the gravel on the playground. Mrs. Ootsey was substituting for Mrs. Wadell that day. She picked me up, got my skirt back on and took me inside to patch me up. We went back outside. She grabbed Boyd by the hair of the head, lined our class back up and marched us in. She threw Boyd into the coat closet and told him to sit down and shut-up! She left him there all afternoon. Every now and then, Boyd would knock on the door and say please let me out! He was afraid of the dark. I guess she had all she could take that day, I don't think she ever substituted for our class again! We all loved her, she wore her hair up in a big bee-hive, she wore short (for the times) skirts and little black ankle boots with stiletto heels and black fur around the top. She was from Germany and we thought she was beautiful and had an exotic accent.
In third grade, I was in Mrs. Durham's class. She was the meanest teacher I had ever had. She weilded a yardstick too and she broke it on my back one day for talking. She had a rule that you had to eat two bites of everything on your plate or you couldn't go outside to play. I could NOT eat two bites of stewed prunes on my plate every week and I never got to go outside all of the third grade!
In fourth grade, Mrs. Thompson was our teacher. I always thought she was wonderful. Fourth grade must have been pretty uneventful, because I don't have any outstanding memories of it. I remember that Martha Burk went to church with Mrs. Thompson, and I thought she had the inside track with Mrs. Thompson. I thought Martha was the teacher's pet.
In fifth grade, Miss Edwina Armstrong was my teacher. She was tall, big boned (but not fat), and strong just like her name! Everett and Terry played football and had practice every day. I would stay after school every day and clean the blackboard and the erasers. At Everett's class reunion a couple of years ago, Mrs. Davis (she married late in life) was there! She said I would never go home from school! I just laughed. I had to wait on Everett or Terry to cross Highway 35.
In sixth grade, Mother moved me back to Williams Avenue in Fort Payne. I went there for sixth and seventh grade. Uncle Barnard had opened his store, The House of Color, and Mother managed the store for him. It was just around the corner from Williams Avenue and I walked to and from school. I spent many hours at the Aloha Beauty Salon, Alton Beason's Barber Shop, and the western store. I loved going to the store every day after school. We had to be at the store every morning at seven so Mother could mix the paint for all the painters in town. The store was a happening place when I was a kid. I learned to mix paint, measure for carpet, how to paint properly, and hang wallpaper.
In seventh grade, back to Plainview I went. That was the last time I changed school. Even though I lived within sight of the school, I was first on the bus and last off. Ollie Corbin was my bus driver and if I wasn't ready when he got there he would wait a few minutes for me. He blew the horn as he came off Marshall Road onto Dupree Circle and out the door I would go.
Until the seventh grade, all girls had to wear dresses or skirts. In seventh grade we could wear pants with long tops that had to be within four inches of our knees. Teachers everywhere at school walked around with rulers to measure our tops. After the first year, that kind of went away! By the time I got out of school we were wearing mini skirts that bearly covered anything! There is a picture of me at the Technical School as a VICA officer with a skirt so short I blush to think I wore that. It was red, white, and blue.
Do I remember Rainsville? Yes I do, and I love it. I love to go home and visit with Uncle Barnard and see my friends and family. I love to go to the cemetary and visit my Mother. There are many memories, some good, some not so good, and I will write about them sometime. In the meantime, you find me Living Life...
