Suddenly I was considered smarter than the teacher because I knew the answers to the problems that were in the textbooks that even the teacher couldn’t solve; the math teacher needed the teacher’s book with the answers to demonstrate how to solve the problems. I felt sorry for her so I returned her books with all the answers in them. The frustrated and embarrassed teacher immediately had me placed back into the regular classroom.
Despite it all, I have fond memories and am proud of my years at Camp Creek and now at the newly constructed East Greene High School. I liked my new school despite the narrow mindedness of the teachers, administrators and the local people who actually ran the school through political pressure.
They disliked change. Before the new school had been built the locals had been embroiled in a major fight between the people who wanted a new high school and those who wanted all the schools to remain elementary school based through high school. A major concern, far more than the quality of education was the future of the football teams.
Winning football teams trumped everything. Many wanted one large county high school which would guarantee a large pool of students to draw from. Instead they wound up with four smaller schools; East, West, North, and South High Schools. They were doomed by the structure of the system to have mediocre football teams. The local town of Greeneville, on the other hand, spent far more money-per student than the county schools. Their football team was in the state playoffs almost every year. Because of this, the citizens of the local town demonstrated a superior attitude toward the county students.
Before the high school was constructed, Camp Creek had many people who still referred to the town as Cold Springs because of a minor civil war battle that had occurred nearby. Located about ten miles out of Greeneville, the county seat of Greene County, Camp Creek consisted of a country grocery store and gas station, several churches, a café, and a school that served grades one through twelve.
Located at the buckle of the Bible belt, and despite the fact that they all prayed to the same God and used the same bible, the citizens of one small community distrusted the citizens of another and felt that trouble would inevitably occur. Maybe, they just wanted to control what was being taught in those schools. They held to beliefs that had been passed down through the generations. Because of that, the schools lagged far behind most urban schools even in East Tennessee.
At least for me, things did change. During my last semester at East Greene, I had made straight A’s, one A- in math class and three other A’s, in Agriculture class, and the other in physical education, being especially proud of the grade earned in chemistry; an A+. It was a fun class, just a matter of learning the rules of the game and solving many little puzzles. I remember that being only a sophomore and the youngest student in the class I made the highest grade. This made me proud. Most of my classmates would refuse to take the time to learn the rules and chemistry was a class most of the girls avoided, which was one of several mysteries to me. I felt I could do anything the boys in the school did; in fact, I knew I could do a lot better job than most of them. Many of the girls in my school took the attitude that some classes, such as math and science, were meant only for boys, but I knew better.
Memories keep flowing into my head about those days, I had been taught that I could achieve anything I wanted in life by two of the most important people in my life: my father, who kindly took great pains to instill me with lofty goals and ideals while he lived with us, and my physical science teacher, Mr. Dale whom I had encountered the previous semester.
Mr. Dale was different from most of the other teachers at East Greene High School; he wanted his students to learn to think for themselves. As soon as the students walked into the class room, while attendance was being taken, he had his students copy a quotation from a famous person off the chalkboard. His first quotation was, “I can deal with stupidity, but not with those that are proud of it.” This quotation pretty much described the red neck boys who would stumble into class and drape themselves over their desk, often going to sleep. I often thought that those boys were a waste of time but had to be dealt with. Mr. Dale then wrote five words on the blackboard and asked the students to explain what they meant. “Then they came for me.” Five simple little words, what could they possibly mean? After we finished copying the quotation, the class discussed what the author was trying to convey. The five words come from an important historical incident during the rise of the Nazis during World War II. Mr. Dale would need to explain and give many examples of what he was talking about. Few of the boys in the room ever realized that he could be talking about them.
We learned from the greatest of philosophers, educators, politicians, and writers in the world. My favorite quotations were from Mark Twain, a classic example of a person who thought for himself. Like Mark Twain, as well as many others, Mr. Dale taught students to make their own choices about life rather than just believe what they were told. Because of this Mr. Dale had made enemies in the community. One deacon of a Baptist church was especially angry with him. What the school officials couldn’t understand was that the deacon was also the head of the local KKK. He particularly disliked Mr. Dale because of his liberal thinking. Mr. Dale was continually making a point that we needed to become problem solvers, thinking for ourselves rather than to have someone think for us, but to be tolerant of people who were different from us. He made me believe in myself, even if others didn’t believe in me.
Ancient Trails
When I was starting my junior year of high school in the tiny town of Camp Creek in East Tennessee, I had begun to skip my lunches at school, saving the money and secreting it a short distance away in a secure hiding place on a very small trail, behind the farmhouse which led up a sharp rise, rising eventually to a mountain ridge. I don’t know why I felt obligated to save that precious money, but something inside of me made me. Perhaps it was a premonition, something that comes into one’s consciousness without a reason or rhyme.
Ancient trails crisscrossed the entire mountain like spider webs. Trails that have been used by people as far back as can be remembered. Trails originally used by the American Indians, then early settlers. They were used as hideaways during the civil war and now as hunting trails and places for kids to play. My hiding place, where my purloined lunch money was hidden, was on one of those trails discovered during long walks with my Grandfather. As a little girl, my grandfather and I had explored all of the trails on the ridge and purely by accident we discovered a hollow tree with an opening turned away unseen from the main trail.
As we walked, my grandfather told me stories about the history surrounding our community on the mountain; stories usually about the Civil War. To me, all of those stories were fascinating. The county was named after Nathaniel Greene, a revolutionary war hero. Settlers first came to Greene County as far back as 1772 when early pioneers first arrived on the Nolichucky River and by 1784 the entire area became what is known as the State of Franklin, which later became Tennessee, and is why many streets and buildings have references to the Lost State of Franklin. During the Civil War, Greene County was largely Unionist becoming the winter quarters for General James Longstreet after the Confederate defeat at the Battle of Knoxville in 1863. Not everyone around Greene County was pro Union. Confederate Calvary Commander John Hunt Morgan was killed in 1864 when Union forces surprised him and his officers in Greeneville. Greeneville became the only town in the United States that paid tribute to both the Union and the Confederacy in its courthouse square. Evidence for the war is found all around the county, everything from the Minnie balls, a large caliber shell used by the Union forces that are still occasionally dug out of the ground to the cannon ball that is still clearly visible in the Presbyterian Church wall in downtown Greeneville.
Soldiers from both sides took pot shots at each other along these trails. Grandfather explained that most people think of the battle of Blue Springs near Mosheim as being the great battle that took place in this county; however some of the most vicious f
ighting occurred on that old ridge overlooking the Campbell farm. It must have been terrifying, discovering that you and your enemy are on the same trail creating an impasse. Fighting in old growth forest is very difficult; solders cannot form a battle line as was the preferred style of fighting during the civil war. Just getting around is usually impossible. The forest is more of a thick jungle here. Neither side could get around the other without a herculean effort. Both sides would eventually need to retreat.
The preferred method of assassination during those days was hiding behind a rock overlooking the ridge, waiting to spot movement on one of the trails. A stealthy army could move to within a few yards of the crest of the ridge without ever being spotted and then a blood bath occurred.
The Cherokee tribes had used those trails and there was evidence that many others had been there well before Columbus. There were people who had lived here eons ago, probably hunting ice age animals, using the ridge as a hunting advantage, and the forest to hide in.
A graceful yet ancient ridge, its flanks and ramparts were covered then, as it is now, in poisonous plants; mostly poison ivy and oak. Ancient travelers would learn to carry ample supplies of jewel weed with them to counter the effects of the ivy. In the past, the entire countryside was forested, not as it is now. In the modern world, the forest appears as islands between farms. The world of the forest creatures is constantly shrinking. A way of life is rapidly disappearing.
As a kid, my friends and I had explored every inch of the ridge. From an early time in my life I could remember taking walks with my grandfather, Papa Nick, following those ancient trails. Starting from the old farmhouse we followed a hardly discernible trail through the woods to a small clearing. From there, we followed the older established trails. Generally, one trail followed the ridge, and another trail followed below, under the rocks that formed the cap rock with smaller trails disappearing down the mountain to other farms and secret places.
One of those secret places was a small cave. Really not a cave at all but an overhang, the cap rock formed a place to get in out of the weather. I remembered playing there many times while Papa Nick would sit, rest, and smoke an old pipe while looking down at our his farm.
Nowadays it was a great place for kids to play, those small assassins. Becoming a teenager, I would enjoy jogging the trails but now as a high school student I rarely ventured into the woods except to hide a bit of money. Soon I discovered that high school required most of my time, but occasionally I still wandered up on the mountain’s flanks where I took time to think.
Remembering a particular day, I realized that I couldn’t answer to myself why I was saving my lunch money, but for some reason I felt compelled to squirrel it away. The hollow tree made a perfect place to hide a coffee can full of money, but I have often wondered why I felt so compelled to save it. Skipping lunch seemed to be a painful way to save money particularly during afternoon athletic sessions; the only happy person was the wrestling coach who marveled at how I had kept my anorexic body weight down.
High school was my great escape, almost a vacation from the tension of home life. I hardly had to participate or do anything for my A in physical education because of my participation in varsity sports. Although I had played volleyball and softball for years, this year I had also made the girls wrestling team. I was good at it, missing going to state my first year by losing only one match. And the girl who won that match, a senior, went on to take first place in the state meet. The kids suddenly respected me, particularly the boys who would die of embarrassment if a girl beat them at anything nonacademic, making my time at school a joy and I got along with everybody. Everybody, that is, except my mother.
Jealousy
My mother, Mona and I, had lived alone since Mom had split from my father and we had moved back in with my maternal grandparents, Nick and Nora Campbell. Coming back to live with her parents was very difficult for mom.
Mom had left Camp Creek when she was seventeen years old to go to Texas to visit her brother Tom, and she planned on never looking back. She had high hopes and big plans for herself. But reality sometimes interferes with high hopes and big plans; Mom’s reality was very different from her hopes and dreams.
She had married my father, Tim Anderson, who worked on an oil rig, after a whirlwind romance. She married him mostly for the security. Getting married and having some guy take care of you was the accepted norm but she was not prepared for the baby or the loneliness that soon followed. My father had to stay at the drilling sites that he worked on for two or three weeks at a time, and sometimes that turned into months at a time. Then he would come home for a few days. The days that he was home were very exciting; he showed mom all of the local sites and kept her entertained. But the other weeks were filled with loneliness. Then, of course, she found out that she was pregnant.
My father was extremely excited about the baby and so was my mom, but she had to go through the long months and the hard times of being pregnant mostly alone. Dad tried to give her all the attention she needed in the few days that he was home each month, but that was impossible. She found herself begging him to stay home every time he left, but she knew that they would be without an income if he stayed. So she learned to keep her mouth shut and began to feel more and more, unhappy as time went by.
She stuck it out for five years. But as I grew older, things between Mom and Dad got worse. Finally, Mom gave up on the marriage to my father and asked her mother if she could come back to live at the farm. Her parents said yes, but Mona felt as if she were a failure, dragging herself and her little girl, me, back home with her tail between her legs.
Dad was not at all happy about Mom’s leaving the small house he had bought for her. He seemed to love me very much, even though he had grown tired of Moms constant complaints about his being gone so much. “If you want to run back home to your parents, you need to find a way to get there on your own, because I am not going to give you the money to get there!” I remember him shouting angrily, along with a lot of insults about her not being able to stand on her own. Mom knew of course that her parents would bring their old pickup truck over and haul her things back to the farmhouse. Feeling intense shame, Mom called her parents.
“Are you sure that this is the right thing to do?” said Nora, my grandmother, “No one in our family has ever been divorced before.” Mom knew that her mother was thinking about the reaction of the ladies in the First Baptist Church when she came home with no husband and with a little girl to take care of.
“Yes, Mother, this is the only thing that I can do,” said Mona, Our grandparents finally agreed, but the whole conversation had made Mom feel like the biggest disappointment to them that she could possibly be. Dejected and disheartened, we returned to the Campbell farm.
When I reached seventeen years of age, with all the hopes and dreams that Mom had when she was that age; my feelings about the whole mess started to change. I remember having a skewed idea of my father, Tim. For all these years, he had been able to swoop in to Camp Creek for a week, spoiling me rotten, and then he disappeared leaving Mom to deal with the repercussions of the spoiling. He bought me toys when I was too little to understand that Mom could not afford them; as I got older he bought me clothes that made the other farm girls in Camp Creek jealous.
When he left, I expected Mom to buy me things just like Dad had. Unfortunately, Mom only had the money that she could earn at the local cafe, one dollar and twenty five cents per hour and tips, and that was not much. Supporting herself and me was a constant worry. We always had plenty of food because of the farm, but extra money for fancy toys and clothes was very scarce.
Mom meant well for me, but was way too busy with her own affairs to take care of a young daughter, or even to show an interest in my accomplishments. By the time she got home from a long day at the cafe she was dead on her feet, and that is when the arguments usually occurred. I wanted to talk about school, boys, and everything a girl could imagine, but Mom just wanted to go to sleep. Even wh
en mother had free time from work there were always complications.
Mom was a very attractive lady, always the center of attention at the cafe. Men frequently asked her out, and I couldn’t help but resent it. With grim determination I vowed that there was more to life than marrying some guy who would take care of me for the rest of my life. I watched my classmates and quickly figured out that the boys at school my friends married were far more interested in having someone to take care of them than they were of taking care of their girlfriends. In fact, some of my friends quickly discovered to their sorrow that many teenage boys were only after sex. Afterwards the boys had no use for the girls; as word got around, which it always did, the only boys that came around were those who wanted to have sex. The responsible boys seldom came around. In this small community once a girl lost her reputation it was impossible for her to get it back.
I was determined not to fall in love and repeat the same old pattern I saw over and over. Early on, I decided that when or if I got married it was going to be a mutually independent, but supportive and nurturing, relationship. We would share responsibilities, both financial and emotional. Life, as well as many people, had taught me to think for myself.
Feeling torn between my father and mother, and the jealousy between the two made everything difficult, leaving me ever so desperately wanting to move to West Texas to live with my father. I idolized my father, but thinking back, I had actually spent very little time with him. Back in Texas, my father was an oil roughneck, so we knew that it would be impossible for me to live with him. I would be alone much of the time because of his work, and Mom justifiably felt that I was too young to be left alone in a strange town full of roughnecks.
The Family at Serpiente Page 2
