Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Home

To give you an indication of where our old home place was I have captured a couple maps.
The map above show the relationship between our old home place and the place where we moved.  It's probably about  one mile between the homes. You have to walk down the holler (green area) from the old home place and cross a creek to get out.  When I was a kid there was a little foot-log across the creek that we had to walk. Once across the creek you got on the railroad and walked down to the new house. My older brother still owns the old home place so I go visit it any time I am in TN.  As you can see it is nestled back in a holler and if I was to drop you off up there you might think you were a hundred miles from civilization yet you would be only 7 or 8 miles from the little town of Middlesboro, KY.


The map above is a little wider angle because I wanted to show where the school was that I know you've heard Rose and I talk about. I measured it with Google earth and it was 2.25 miles from our old home place to school and we (older kids...Rose was too young) walked that every school day...rain or shine. I can remember there were a few times when there would be a lot of rain that the creek we had to cross would be so high that we couldn't get across so we would have to walk through the woods to get to school (didn't have to cross creek if we went that way). Needless to say that we were pretty wet when we got to school because none of us had raincoats. Throughout all my school years  I never had a school bus stop in front of my house to pick me up.  I always had to walk at least a mile to get to school/bus.  You can see a picture of our old 4 room school here. They recently converted the old school to a church which you can see below.



6 comments:

Ginny Hartzler said...

My word, I would never have believed that the schoolhouse and the church are the same building, even with renovation! Yes, I walked some distance to school as well. Funny, I can't even remember there being any school buses back then. But surely I'm not THAT ancient!! Your walk sounds like a wonderful adventure, mine was in the city.

Betsy Banks Adams said...

Hi Neal, I walked to school also --but it wasn't quite as far (maybe a mile)... There were no school buses in town at all--so we either walked or hitched a ride with someone. I had a friend whom I always walked with... These days, kids don't walk anywhere... Kinda sad...

Do you have pictures of the new house you all moved to? I'm not sure I have seen those pictures. Was it much bigger? Better than the old one?

I still think you need to build a cabin at the old home place area --and it could be for all of your family.

Have a great day and stay WARM.
Betsy

George said...

Thanks for the maps showing the places you and Rose have talked about. I really like Google Earth. I got through school without a school bus stop at our house either. Most of the time the walk was less than half a mile, but when I got to high school it was longer.

Rose said...

Well done, Neal!

EG CameraGirl said...

Kids were in better shape back then because they walked a lot. I think this is the first time I've seen a school converted into a church.

Carletta said...

Well, I'm a sucker for old buildings and true renovation would probably have cost a fortune but I wish they would have kept those windows.
No disrepect but what kind of church doesn't want windows with light pouring in?