1709 Memory Lane

For the reunion weekend, Betty and I made reservations with the Daisy Hill Bed and Breakfast on Blair. Check-in time was 4 PM and they meant it. We arrived a little before three; so, with an hour to kill, we decided to take a tour of the roundabout.

It was familiar territory. During my school years, I carried two different paper routes in the area between Belmont Boulevard and Hillsboro road, from Blair all the way to Gale Lane. Every morning and afternoon I would throw all my papers onto people's porches, for free, and then, once a week, I'd go around, asking to be paid for them. It was an odd arrangement, but most of the time it worked.

We came to the intersection of Blair and Hillsboro Road. On one corner, Pee Wee Blankenship had his drugstore and, on the other corner, Mr. Kinnard had his restaurant. Charlotte says that, years ago, Mr. Apple worked as night manager there. And at Blankenship's, one afternoon, the Reverend Savoy treated me to a coke, even though I wasn't an Episcopalian.

Why did they call him Pee Wee?

My mother went to school with him and she told me that, in sixth grade, he wet his pants, one day, while standing before the class. Later on, he did it again.

You're not going to put that in your blog, are you?

When we crossed over Hillsboro Road, still on Blair, we entered the zone where I delivered my papers. Back then, I knew who lived in every house in the whole area, and was on speaking terms with them. Today, I live in a subdivision of strangers. We wave, but we don't speak. It's my fault, actually: I like it that way.

The first house we came to on the left was where little Jimmy Tarver lived. Jimmy was twelve years old and reminded me of Tiny Tim. He wasn't handicapped, but he was little, bright-eyed and eager. If you've ever seen Freddie Bartholomew in one of those old movies, you'll know what I mean. Jimmy had never been out on a date, but he wanted to go on one. He got a girl to say she would go, but then the logistics got complicated. His mother appealed to me for help, and together we devised a plan.

What was the plan?

Don't you remember? You and I went out on a double date with this little kid and his girlfriend. We picked him up and then we picked up his date. He was all dressed up in a suit and tie and had his hair slicked back. I don't remember what she had on, but he gave her a corsage to wear. After the movie, we took her home first and then we drove Jimmy home.

I don't remember that at all.

Most of the people on Blair were old, but not everybody: on the right, three doors up from the end, two grown girls (I didn't know what else to call them) rented the house. When I made my rounds to collect, one of these girls always came to the door in a bikini, rain or shine. It may not seem worth noting today, but in 1956 this was news. I tried to arrange my visits to coincide with the times that she was there.

About halfway between Belmont and Hillsboro, on the corner, Professor Dewey Grantham moved in, one day, with his family. He was in his thirties, then, just starting his tenure at Vanderbilt. He recently died, emeritus.

And down a few more doors, on the same side of the street, at 1804 Blair, Joe Claxton's grandmother lived in a big house. Every week, when I came by to collect, she asked me how Joe was doing.

At the corner of Blair and Belmont was Sterling Court, the apartment complex with its 11 sections, each having 6 units, up three flights of stairs, for a total of 66 small apartments. Built in the twenties, it was grand in its day. Behind it was a long, wooden, ten car garage. Inside one of the garages, written in chalk on the wooden wall, was this inscription: "I'm the Sheik of Araby." Those garages don't exist, anymore.

Sterling Court was a gothic place back then, set well off the street by a large courtyard with tall trees that held back the sun and made the building and yard always seem dark. In the centermost section, down a half flight of stairs, Mr. Collie, the taciturn manager of the complex, had his office: on one side of the narrow passageway, a small room with a desk, covered by architectural drawings; on the other side, through an open doorway, the coal furnace room, which, in winter, was always going. I saw Mr. Collie often. But I never heard him speak. Certainly, not to me, a mere lad of sixteen. As far as I knew, he was there to fix leaky pipes and shovel coal in the furnace. Nevertheless, in my teenage mind, it was easy to see him as an Ayn Randian type of architect-engineer-hero who created great edifices with one hand, while stoking the furnaces of industry with the other. A somber man in a somber place.

Every morning promptly at 5:15 AM, I would come tearing through Sterling Court like a bat out of hell. I would run up and down the stairs of each of the 11 sections, throwing rolled-up papers, left and right, and be out of there in five minutes flat. They called me the Alarm Clock of Sterling Court.

Really?

Of course.

We turned right, onto Belmont from Blair, and passed the Albemarle Apartments, on the left. They were smaller and stranger than Sterling Court, starting with the name. Who calls anything Albemarle, anymore? Maybe it was named after somebody's dog. I don't know.

It was out in front of the Albemarle Apartments that I ran into Jimmy Jeter, one afternoon, going on about the speed of light, which, in his opinion, was not what it was cracked up to be. During that same time, I used the Albemarle's address as a mail drop for letters I wrote, anonymously, to the Nashville Banner. I wrote one letter, comparing Christianity to Buddhism. I thought that I might get a response from an outraged Christian. Instead, I got a response from an outraged Buddhist.

I had a few customers in the Albemarle, but I seldom saw any of them. I would leave the papers during the week and then, on Friday, they would slip envelopes under their doors into the hallway, with my money in them. Around on the side of the building, however, in a basement apartment, there was a guy who paid me in person. He always came to the door in his shorts. I mention that to dispel any notion that my paper route was all fun and games.

At least, he wasn't a criminal.

True.

The criminal, on my route, rented a room around the corner, on Ashwood. He was one of my best customers. He was also on the FBI's Most Wanted List. The landlady told me that, as the police were hauling him away, he slipped her a couple of bucks, "for the paperboy."

One summer day, I saw Larry Stumb on top of a tall ladder, leaning up against a house on my route. It was at the corner of Ashwood and Oakland, and he was painting it. I don't think he went to Hillsboro, but he must have gone somewhere close, because he kept turning up in different places where I was. Years later, he worked for Merrill Lynch and recommended Texaco to my mother.

We drove down Oakland, past where Miss Van Valkenburgh lived - who gave me a tin of cookies at Christmas time, when a quarter would have done - down to the end of the block, where my route ended. The next few blocks were a no-man's-land to me. I didn't know anybody there. I remembered that the cross streets were all named after trees - Ashwood and Linden, which were on my route; then Primrose, Sweetbriar and Rosewood, which weren't. But then we came to Wildwood and the memories began to come again. I knew Wildwood. It was the boundary of my first paper route. Archeologically, it was older than my other route: the memories were buried deeper.

Wildwood led to Brightwood and the place where all the Holzapfels lived. There were twelve of them. The one in the middle, near my age, was always straight with me. We had mutual respect. For years, I thought his real name was "Hosey".

Further up Brightwood, we came to a place where I lived when I was little - 2902 Brightwood. We lived in the back, in a basement apartment - my parents and me. It was hard times, but I didn't know it.

I have a memory of standing out in front of this place, by the mailbox, with Robin Beard. It's like we were waiting for a school bus, but the problem is, when I started to school, I was living on Lealand Lane. Those two memories don't go together. They don't hook up. One of these days, I'm going to sit down, assemble the facts and figure this out.

Am I boring you?

Keep going. You're doing fine. Just don't drive the car into a ditch.

Ah...

I drove the car into a ditch, early one morning, around the corner at the bottom of Gale Lane. Betty and I had been to a dance and to Mrs. Brown's afterward and, after taking her home, I just went straight to my route. It was six AM and I was coming down Gale Lane in my father's Chrysler and woke up with the car in a ditch. I guess I went to sleep.

Further on down Gale Lane was the dry cleaners owned by Ewing Nicholson's father. And then the grocery store owned, in part, by Bobby Martin's father. The other half being owned by somebody we never heard of, named Cooper. Next to the Grocery was Moore's Drugstore. Across the street was Kusan Plastics Co. And next to that was a Dairy Queen.

Back up Gale Lane was where Sally Dykes lived. That was a base for us in the old days. The Class Prophecy was written in Sally Dykes' living room.

Do you think there should be a plaque?

I tell the jokes around here.

Sorry.

We drove back down Belmont to Blair and then up to the Daisy Hill B&B to check in. Later that evening, we were hobnobbing with the swells we used to know. I saw Sally Dykes out on the patio and made for her. When she saw me, she started crying. I took it as a compliment. But she was just happy to see me after fifty years. And I was happy to see her. I told her that we had driven by her old house earlier in the afternoon.

Sally said, "I'm still living there!"

The only thing I could think of to say was, "1709 Gale Lane!"