Company Town
By S Martha Montevallo
January 2007
We moved to Lawrenceburg, Kentucky when I was four. Dad had decided he didn’t want to sit on a high stool and make drawings the rest of his life, although he never gave up the green eyeshade he wore every evening as he read the Atlantic Monthly, Colliers or The Saturday Evening Post. He requested a change he thought more suited to a civil engineer, so the Southern Railway System transferred him from the offices in St. Louis to the field as their first college educated track supervisor.
Mother set about becoming part of the community, transferring her church membership, introducing herself to the neighbors and to the merchants with whom she intended to do business. Mrs. Duncan lived up the street in a large house at the edge of town next to an old ice house. In years past the men would cut chunks of ice from ponds nearby, haul it to the ice house, a large circular pit, insulate with hay, and cover it with the shallow conical roof. By the time we moved there the refrigerator had been invented, so the ice house was no longer used. I was always fascinated by it and, naturally, forbidden to go near it.
Mother and Mrs. Duncan became fast friends. Mother would take my sister and me to Mrs. Duncan’s where we could play outside under the trees in summer or sit quietly inside in winter. One of Mrs. Duncan’s children was a missionary in China and Mrs. Duncan’s house had many untouchable treasures. I have a string of very old ivory beads Mrs. Duncan gave me when I was a little older.
After two years in Lawrenceburg we moved to Louisville for a year and then to Shelbyville which was closer to Lawrenceburg. Mother visited Mrs. Duncan from time to time until her death several years later. At the estate auction Mother bid on a few sentimental things. One was a chipped pitcher that Mrs. Duncan had poured buttermilk from for cool summer refreshment. Just before the auctioneer held it up he put something in it. Mother got the two items for a nickel. The other object was a crystal, silver outlay, hair receiver, a bowl with a lid that has a hole in it to receive the combings from the hairbrush with which to stuff pin cushions. I now have that Victorian piece. Another of her purchases was a pair of ice skates, the kind to clamp onto shoes. An unusual choice since she neither ice nor roller skated – just sentiment, I suppose.
When I was fourteen we moved to Oakdale, Tennessee, bisected by the Emory River. Oakdale was a hot location on the Southern Railway System although a tiny town. We lived in one of the three ‘big’ company houses up on the side of the mountain above the road, the double tracks, and the river. Moving out of a four bedroom two story house in a regular town with paved streets and sidewalks was hard enough. Moving to a small company town, into a two bedroom company house on a slope so steep it was a full flight of stairs up to the front porch and another full flight from the back porch up to the back yard was a test of character. Mother was so liked and respected on the Southern that she was given the privilege of choosing the color for the interior shiplap walls of the whole house that the company would paint for her. One color. Mother decided, with sinking heart, that ivory would be nice. When we moved in the house smelled of fresh paint and was an intense, shiny, pale yellow. All over. She said until she moved into that house she hadn’t realized how much yellow she had.
The rent for the house was $5.00 a month including water. A bargain even in depression times. The space heater, a dark red behemoth hunched in the dining room, and the bathroom fixtures, installed by an earlier resident, we bought from the previous tenant.
Preferring privacy, I opted for the cubbyhole room off the kitchen just large enough for bunk beds and a dresser. A defunct chimney took up some of the space. The dog slept on the bottom bunk and I had the top. He was my room mate so it was my responsibility to let him out during the night, clip his leash to the clothesline and then get him back in. Since I was and still am a night owl, and late sleeper I awoke one summer morning to a jolt, the house abruptly sinking right under where I was sleeping, and the voice of one of the local men saying, “Hit won’t drap fer.” They were shoring up the crosstie foundation of the house.
The bathroom was entered only through the two bedrooms. Sometimes my sister would latch the bathroom door on our parents’ side, close the bathroom door on her side, remove the doorknob and go hiking up the mountain behind our house … with the doorknob stuck in the top of her shorts.
In addition to the three ‘big’ company houses for the trainmaster, the station agent, and the track supervisor, there were many four room company houses on the next slope over, just a square cut into four square rooms each opening into the two adjacent rooms. They had electricity but not plumbing.
In Shelbyville I had intended to take Latin and typing my first year of high school. In Oakdale Latin and typing were not offered and I learned that ALL girls took home economics and ALL boys took shop. I had little to no interest in home ec but there I was with the rest of the freshman girls. Our first project was a white princess style smock to wear for cooking class. Those grungy rags were never seen in cooking class. I took a zero grade on killing and dressing a chicken which I have yet to do.
The high school was in a fine old brick building with a large auditorium and stage. The auditorium served as home room, lunch room for those who brought lunch, and study hall, boys on one side and girls on the other with a wide aisle between. Each day started with announcements and singing. My first two years of high school were academically mediocre, socially stimulating and unforgettable.
The territory my father was assigned is still called The Rathole Division for its double track, many tunnels and bridges. Trains passed through Oakdale about every ten minutes. It was there, in the mid thirties, that we saw our first Diesels never imagining they would be the death of Oakdale. The roundhouse and maintenance shops were busy places keeping the steam engines running. The company commissary, known as The Grab, was nearby. The Babahatchie Inn on the bank of the river just across the multiple tracks from the station was a place for crews to lay over. It also was a destination for Sherwood Anderson, author of stories about Winesburg, Ohio, on his honeymoon in 1904.
In summer we swam in the river. Some of us walked along the tracks to the tunnel rocks where the mountain came down into the river and a double track tunnel had been bored. Those who lived on the other side swam across to join the crowd. There on a fairly flat place we congregated at our rustic spa. We dove and jumped into the deep water, swam to the beach on the other side, lay on our towels getting our tans unaware of the peril we would learn of later in life.
The mountains were full of hiking trails. Everybody wore hiking boots that laced up to the knee like those seen in old movies of explorers in riding breeches. It took only one hike for me to learn to lace them up not so tightly. One day I was hiking alone on a well worn trail that I hadn’t hiked before. Suddenly I heard singing ahead. I couldn’t see through the brush and the singing sounded rather near. I stopped and waited … the singing stopped … and started again. I retreated. I was sure there was a still up ahead. I’m still sure.
It must have been the winter of 1937/38 that the river froze. We looked out the window that Saturday morning at the sunlight glinting off the ice. I had been a hotshot roller skater on the sidewalks of Shelbyville and missed skating since there were no sidewalks in Oakdale. I couldn’t wait to put on my wool snowsuit, find those skates Mother had bought at Mrs. Duncan’s auction and get down to the river. I taught myself to ice skate and soon was skimming along back and forth under the bridge. The only ice skating I had ever seen was a movie with Sonja Heine. I just went back and forth, not attempting the fancy moves Sonja made. All day I skated with only a quick trip home for lunch.
The next day was Sunday, another day to skate. Again I got into my snowsuit, took my skates, and headed for the river. Gliding, skimming along was glorious. Apparently I had the only ice skates in town. Back and forth under the bridge rarely out of sight of my house, I skated as I had with roller skates but in silence, frictionless, almost floating. After a while I seemed to sense a different feel. Looking back as I glided along I could see the ice wave and ripple behind me. I kept skating, reveling in the smoothness under my feet. Near the bank of the river directly across from my house I coasted to a stop and sank up to my armpits. Within minutes Mother was there with the car. That was the last time I ice skated. The river didn’t freeze again while we lived there.
Recently I visited Oakdale. The company houses are gone. The Babahatchie Inn where the crews could eat and sleep is gone. The shops and roundhouse are gone. The station is gone. The tracks are still there and trains thunder by with no reason to stop. What I remember as a small but vibrant town seems now as forlorn as a town that the interstate has bypassed.
The skates probably went to the metal drive during WWII.
Copyright © 2007 by S Martha Montevallo
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