Searcy, Jay

              ORAL HISTORY OF JARRELL (JAY) SEARCY
Interviewed by Don Hunnicutt
Filmed by BBB Communications, LLC.
October 25, 2012
 
MR. HUNNICUTT: This interview has been scheduled through the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History. The date is November [October] 25th, 2012.  I am Don Hunnicutt, in the studio of BBB Communications, LLC., 170 Robertsville Road, Oak Ridge Tennessee. To take an oral history from Jay Searcy about living in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Jay, would you please state your full name, place of birth and date?
MR. SEARCY: Full name: Jarrell, J-A-R-R-E-L-L, Jarrell Dunton Searcy. And my nickname is Jay. I’ve been, I’ve been called “Jay” since I was in high school. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:  What was your father’s name; place of birth and… 
MR. SEARCY:  Harley, Harley Davidson, Harley Searcy, Junior. And his birth date was December the 9th, 1912.
MR. HUNNICUTT:  And where was he born?
MR. SEARCY: In Shelbyville, Tennessee.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about your mother’s maiden name and place of birth, and date if you recall. 
MR. SEARCY: Dovie, D-O-V-I-E, Ryan, R-Y-A-N, and she was born in Dutton, Alabama, February 2010. I mean 1000…. 1910! Excuse me.
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Do you recall what your father’s-father’s name was?
MR. SEARCY: Harley, H-A-R-L-E-Y
MR. HUNNICUTT:  How ‘bout your mother’s-father’s name?
MR. SEARCY: Isaac. I-S-A-A-C.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Jay, what kind of schooling did your father have?
MR. SEARCY:  My father lived on a farm in a place called Long Island, Alabama. It’s about 60 acres at the foot of a mountain. Somewhere about 50 to 60 miles below Chattanooga, there were an elementary school there and he finished 6th grade there and then went to Chattanooga to live with a relative and to go to high school. He went to Central High School and when he finished his 10th year, his father needed him on the farm and that was the end of his education. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:  How about your mom?
MR. SEARCY: Mother lived in Dutton, Alabama. She was the oldest of 8 children and was kind of a mother to the rest of the family. She finished high school, in Dutton, in Scottsboro, Alabama, and then went to college at Jacksonville State. She was married when she through to college and she had a child with her. My oldest sister and she finished two years there and got a teaching degree and then taught a one room school on a mountain, back in the woods in Alabama.
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Do you recall when they met or where they met and where they first lived?
MR. SEARCY: Yea, they met in Long Island at an elementary school where they had an auction. There was a fundraiser and they were, the girls made, the women made pies and cakes and cookies and the men bid on them. And whatever you, whoever you bid on and won then you got to eat whatever the lunch was or the pie or whatever it was together, and he bid on it, paid $2.00 for a lemon pie. And that’s how they met. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:  How about brothers and sisters?
MR. SEARCY: I have an older sister, Mary Glenn. She was a, went to Oak Ridge High and I have a younger brother, four years younger, Charles, who also went to Oak Ridge High. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Where were their birth places?
MR. SEARCY:  Charles was born in Dutton, Alabama. And Mary Glenn was born in a place called “Jesses Creek”, J-E-S-S-E-S Creek, Alabama. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:  What type of work did your father do?
MR. SEARCY:  He was a farmer until he married and then it was during the Depression and he had a lot of jobs. He worked on construction; he sold Fuller brushes, and did a lot of trapping, and things like that. Until he moved to Stevenson, Alabama, which is where I was born, and worked in a cotton mill there. He was the foreman in the shipping room, and my mother was a “spinner” at the cotton mill, and that’s where they were working when they came to Oak Ridge. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: So what made them want to leave that, to come to Oak Ridge?
MR. SEARCY:  Well they were making $.50 an hour at that time and mother’s brothers were all carpenters and they had heard about Oak Ridge and of course they were hiring in all kinds of skills and they told my father about it. So he found out about it and went up for an interview, got a job immediately. Of course they didn’t have to do the security check, and then we moved to Oak Ridge in August of 1944, and shortly after that, by November, mother was also working. So they both worked throughout the war years and even and well beyond. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:  How old were you when you came?
MR. SEARCY:  I was 10.
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Did the whole family come at that time?
MR. SEARCY: Yes. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:  How did you get here?
MR. SEARCY:  We took a bus. We were on the side of the road in Stevenson, Alabama. They didn’t have a bus station. So, if you’re going to take a bus you got on the side of the road and you waved the bus down. So we were there with suitcases and three kids, mom and dad, waving a bus down. And we all got on the bus to Chattanooga, and then from Chattanooga we took a train to Knoxville. And in Knoxville, we took a cattle car into Oak Ridge. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let’s back up a minute about waiting on the bus and you got on the bus. How did you pay the bus fare?
MR. SEARCY:  You paid as you got on. The bus driver took the money as you got on, gave you a ticket. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:  So, now we are in Knoxville and you rode to Oak Ridge in a “cattle bus”, what is a “cattle bus”?
MR. SEARCY: Well, it was like a trailer, and it had seats on both sides and windows and the cab was separate from the coach. It was almost like a trailer, a semi-truck that you see today. And it was packed, it was just packed. People standing in the aisles, and it was about 90 degrees, August, and if you roll down the windows the dust came roaring in and if you rolled them up you sweat, you know it was so hot. And there was a drunk on the bus, and he started throwing up. He was throwing up all in the back and everyone was trying to get out of his way and it was running down the aisle of the bus, and the people tried to get out of the way of it and by the time we got there that bus was so smelly, it was stinking. We couldn’t wait to get off that bus.
MR. HUNNICUTT:  So where did you offload the cattle bus?
MR. SEARCY:  At Elza Gate. They normally, the guard would just come on and check your ID and your government pass, but the guard got on and he smelled that and he got off right away and said, “Everybody get off the bus”, so we all got off the bus and lined up and he went up and down one by one, checking our ID. We were then picked up by someone, a guy named Mr. Johnson, who picked us up and took us to the cafeteria, Central Cafeteria for our first meal. It was, by that time, it was about 9 ‘o-clock at night. And the cafeteria was staying open all night of course because they had swing shift workers. That’s a 24 hour day. And then from that point he took us to our prefab, was a brand new prefab on Ortney Road, and it was the best house we had ever lived in. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let’s back up a little bit, at the gate when you arrived and everyone was checked for ID, did your father have any, what kind of papers did your father have that authorized him to come inside the city? Do you recall?
MR. SEARCY: At that time, my father had been working up there by himself, for a while before we came. And he arranged for housing. So he had a badge, by that time. And the rest of us just had the resident passes that you get; you know, he set that up before we came. So we were all, and people were waiting for us you know. Someone was waiting to take us to our car, to our house, and give us our keys and show us a little bit around town. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Jay, do you recall what type of transportation they took you from the gate to the Central Cafeteria?
MR. SEARCY: It was an Army staff car.
MR. HUNNICUTT:  And did they wait and take you from the cafeteria to your living quarters?
MR. SEARCY:  I don’t know if they waited or not, but we stood out front and he came back and picked us up. Now maybe they had an arrangement to have a meeting at certain time, I don’t know about that. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Let me back up a little bit and get a little information about your schooling before you came to Oak Ridge. Give me a little bit of information about that. 
MR. SEARCY: I went to Jackson County Elementary School in Stevenson, Alabama. And I was in the 4th grade, and the 4th grade was divided; had 4th and 5th grade taught by one teacher. Fourth grade on one side, and 5th grade on the other. It was a very poor school and they had a, didn’t have anything extra. You know, you went to class and you had a recess, and that was just about all. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you like school, when you went to school?
MR. SEARCY: Loved it! I loved school. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, now let’s move forward to where you’re in Oak Ridge, you’ve eaten at the Central Cafeteria, you’ve been taken to your prefab, now what do you call a “prefab”?
MR. SEARCY: Well, that was a cardboard box that sat on stilts (Laughter). It looked like a, looked like much better to me because it was brand new, and it had a lot of built-in’s, and a big plate glass, some windows that looked out over the city. We lived on a ridge, right at the crystal bridge, below Orkney, not Orkney, but Orchard Circle. And so it was a beautiful view of Oak Ridge. You could see the lights at night, and in the distance you could see the glow from Y-12, the plant out there. Behind the ridge there. There were a couple of ridges between where we were and where the plant was, but you could see this yellow glow of all the lights and it was there all night long. And you could even hear a kind of a humming that came from that plant. You never knew what it was, but you know I just figured it had to come from there. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Describe what the inside of the flattop looked like.
MR. SEARCY: Well ours was a three bedroom because we had a girl and two boys and so we got, we were, we qualified for a three bedroom. You walked in and the first thing you saw from when you walk up the steps, about 8 or 10 steps to a little porch, and then you walked in the front into the living room and there was a Warm Morning heater. One of the potbellied stoves that burned coal, and that’s the first thing you saw. It was burning when we walked in in August. But, and then to the right of that was the living room and the dining room, which was like one room. And then the kitchen off to the left, a very small kitchen.  But it was a brand new stove, brand new refrigerator; everything was brand new in the place. They had the one bathroom, which is about the size of a small closet and just a shower, and then we had the three bedrooms. Which faced, two of the bedrooms faced the street and the other one faced the side of the house.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So explain the sleeping arrangements in that flattop.
MR. SEARCY:  Well the rooms were very small, of course. And I share a bed with my brother, and my sister had a room to herself, and mom and dad had a room to themselves. But there were some built-in’s, built in drawers, things like that. And so you didn’t have to have a lot of furniture really, just you know, your beds and a dresser drawer and something and a couch and a couple of chairs and that’s pretty much, you know, that’s all you needed then.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So the flattop was furnished when you moved in?
MR. SEARCY: Pretty much, yeah. We had to have our tables, the coffee table chairs, but a lot of built-in’s; the cabinets and things and the cabinet space for storage and things because there was no attic of course and no basement, and so you didn’t have a lot of place to put things.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Well, where did they keep the coal?
MR. SEARCY: The coal was in a bin at the end of the sidewalk down to the street, and they came by periodically and dumped the coal in there and when we first saw it, we thought it was a dog house. But, they were out in front of every house. And they filled them up probably about 2-3 times a month there in the course of a winter. And we would go down and shovel the coal and put it in a bucket and a shovel and bring it back up and dump it in, and it kept the whole house warm. But it was such a fire trap because if there’d ever been a fire you’d of had to go past that stove to get out, and there’s only one entrance and that was that front door. And the windows were so small you couldn’t get through them, except for maybe that plate glass window in the front. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what you did with the ashes you took out of the stove?
MR. SEARCY: No, I don’t. Except I know I took them out a lot. (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT:  What type of work did your father do when he came to Oak Ridge? Did you mention that earlier?
MR. SEARCY: Yeah, he was a mechanic. I’m not sure what he did, I never did find out what he did, but he started out as a mechanic.
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Do you recall where he worked?
MR. SEARCY: He worked at Y-12.
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Do you think he knew what was going on at Y-12? Did he ever say anything about what was going on out there?
MR. SEARCY: No, and if he did I didn’t ever know about it. He may have known something because of Mother, where she worked. Because Mother kind of had an idea of what was happening. She didn’t know what they were doing with what they were doing, but she knew they were dealing with uranium because she worked in the hottest building at Y-12, and so she handled it and she knew something was being done with U-235. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:  How about, what was the first school you attended when you came to Oak Ridge?
MR. SEARCY: Cedar Hill. It was the first year of Cedar Hill Elementary. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: And what grade was that?
MR. SEARCY: Fifth grade, I started in the 5th grade.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember who your teacher was?
MR. SEARCY: No, I don’t.
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Do you remember any of your teachers at Cedar Hill?
MR. SEARCY:  Yeah, I do. Ms. McCrowski, a 6th grade teacher. Ms. Young, Ms. Young was my 5th grade teacher, I do remember that. So, I went through 6th grade there and then to Jefferson Junior High. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about the school system itself, how did that differ from what you came from before Oak Ridge? 
MR. SEARCY:  Oh, it was two worlds. I was intimidated by what was offered there. They had music teachers, music classes, and music rooms. They had art teachers and art rooms. They had a big gym, and Physical Ed classes, and dancing and they had ropes to climb and mats for tumbling. They had a recreation program after school where you could stay after school like on the playground. They had organized games and arts and crafts and drama, all of those things. And the people that I sat next to and the people that I got to know; you go to school there and you didn’t know one face, I mean, you knew nobody. And everybody else was in the same boat, they didn’t know anybody either. So, there was a certain bonding that took place then. And friends that I had then are still friends of mine. And although we were from all over the country, I remember there was a guy from Brooklyn who spoke with a Brooklyn accent, and then right next to him was a guy whose father lived in this area and was farming before it was Oak Ridge, and the difference-this guy was with overalls on, you know, he was very-you know, just didn’t fit into the environment at that place it just looked like, and I know he was intimated because I was, and so the guys who came from the big cities seemed like they handled everything a little bit better than the rest of us because I had to get kind of acclimated to things before I really knew what was happening. There was just so much, it was like going to a foreign country.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, what was your dress code when you attended school?
MR. SEARCY:  We always wore slacks. We rarely wore overalls or anything like that, which was very, very common during those days. But, Mom and Dad dressed us in slacks, and you know, my mother, my sister wore skirts and dresses and things like that. And I think the pretty much was what everybody-there were a few-jeans weren’t nearly as popular then as they are now. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Lace up shoes? None of this tennis shoe stuff we wear today.
MR. SEARCY: Lace up shoes, if you wore tennis shoes you were going to the gym most of the time.
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Did you have any favorite teachers at Cedar Hill that you recall?
MR. SEARCY: I liked both those teachers very well. No, I can’t say one was a favorite. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: You like school at Cedar Hill?
MR. SEARCY: I did, I did. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: What were the people like in your neighborhood, around your home, do you recall?
MR. SEARCY:  To the left of me was a family named, Edmonds, and they were from Oliver Springs. They had 8 children, in a 3 bedroom home. I don’t, still don’t know how they did that. But our prefabs were so close together that you could almost reach out through your window and touch somebody next door, and you could hear conversations because it was just plywood. Those prefabs were just plywood, so you could hear conversations. They’d get in some arguments, boy, and it was entertainment the family arguments that you could hear. The other side was a guy from, it was a family from Boulder, Colorado. No, Golden, Colorado and they had a car which was really uncommon, so they were kind of envy of the neighborhood because that street, only about 15-20 houses on the street and there were only 3 people who had cars, and he was one of them. So he knew he was learning how to drive by the time he was 12 years old. He was the envy of the block. Turns out, he turned out to be…not a very good citizen. And I understand when he left here, he spent some time in prison. But he was the one who taught me how to skip school. You know, “Let’s don’t go to school today, let’s go down on G-Road”, so I got into some bad company there for a while. But I had a good time. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Well, let’s talk about “G-Road”, what is “G-Road”? 
MR. SEARCY: G-Road was like a service road that went from Oak Ridge in down to Marlow, a little country store, a little community down-I’d forgotten…it’s the road between Oak Ridge and Oliver Springs, I mean Clinton and Oliver Springs. And, I’m not real sure what the number, what that highway is but just across there was this grocery store, and we would go down there and buy a pack of cigarettes and get sick on those cigarettes and buy a Ne-Hi Orange and a Moon Pie, and that was lunch then when we explore coming back, play games, pretending that we were in a German encampment and we had to sneak out of there, and we’d climb under the fences. It was patrolled by the Army and Jeeps and they’d come by periodically, and we’d see the dust blowing up if we seen one coming. We’d all hit the bushes and keep our heads down and we pretended we were escaping from Germany then we had to escape back in when we had to come back in. And one day, we came back in and they were having a PTA that night, and we didn’t know that. So my father went to school to a PTA meeting and the teacher said, “Mr. Searcy, is Jay sick? He wasn’t here today?” And he said, “Well, he’ll be sick when I get home.” (Laughter) So, that was my first time being caught playing hooky, and one of the last times I played hooky.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall your mother cleaning clothes and hanging them on the clothes line? 
MR. SEARCY: Absolutely, yeah. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was that a gathering place for neighbors to talk?
MR. SEARCY: Yeah, it was because like I said, the houses were so close together and people were doing laundry virtually every day; somebody was doing laundry all the time. And, yeah, that was a good place to go out there to find out what’s going on. You worked, my family, my parents worked swing shift. So, they’d work one shift six weeks then work another swing shift six weeks, and Mom and Dad didn’t always work the same shift so they could be coming and going. And my father would play the part of a woman there, I mean he did the washing dishes and would go out and hang clothes and they kind of shared the responsibility since they both were working. So, I think Dad did as much cooking and as much washing as Mother did. They shared those responsibilities. And they also taught us how. I was cooking, making cornbread when I was 11 years old. And we were cooking dinner for our parents. They’d be at work in the summertime, and we’d have dinner ready for them when they came in at 4 o’clock.
MR. HUNNICUTT: After school was out during the summertime, what kind of activities did you get into?
MR. SEARCY: Playgrounds. Playgrounds were wonderful. Had them all day long, playgrounds Monday through Friday, with two directors. They had organized city wide leagues; softball, basketball, well basketball was in the winter of course, but they had it year round. So, all day long was like camp and it was free. You go and play all day long. They had all kinds, they had swings, and paddle ball, and slides, softball field, you know just about anything you would want. Wonderful, it was like camp.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your parents feel that you and your sisters were responsible kids and they could let you kind of go where you wanted to go?
MR. SEARCY: They did. Sometimes that was a mistake, but most of the time that’s true. They had to. They were working and we were home a lot by ourselves. My sister was three years older so she was kind of in charge, but she was still a kid, too. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: How was life, at that particular time in your life, as far as feeling safe? Did you feel safe in the city?
MR. SEARCY: Absolutely. I don’t think we ever locked the door. And, you just trusted everybody. And, we never had a problem; nobody ever broke into our house and I never heard of anybody’s house being broke into. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about a telephone? Did you have a telephone?
MR. SEARCY: No. We only had one telephone in the neighborhood and we would use that in emergency only. The family that had it was very gracious and generous about letting people use it. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember when they had “party lines” on the telephones?
MR. SEARCY: I do, when we first got a phone finally, we had a party line. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Explain what a “party line” is.
MR. SEARCY: Well, I don’t know how many different people were on the same line but there different families that had the same line, you’d pick up the phone and if they’re on it then you heard what their conversation was. And it was always a temptation for me to listen.  I didn’t do it very often.
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Well, how did you know, if you picked up the phone and no one was on the phone, how did you know how to dial out, or if someone called you, how did they know what number to call so that you picked the phone up and not your party line?
MR. SEARCY:  Well you had different numbers. I mean, you didn’t all have the same number. If your phone rang, that was yours; the other people’s party line didn’t ring. I mean, their phones didn’t ring.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Quite different in today’s world.  
MR. SEARCY: Yeah, I’ll say.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about boardwalks? Do you remember the boardwalk?
MR. SEARCY: Boardwalks, absolutely. Boardwalks were everywhere. We walked the boardwalk from…we moved into a cemetso house right after the war, and we took a boardwalk from Meadow Road down to behind the Chapel on the Hill. Go down to the movies in Jackson Square, and we would buy these little furniture…like, those things they stick on the bottom of furniture so that they will slide; we put those on our shoes and slide on the wet. If it rained the boardwalk was really slick, and we would like skate on those things.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever have any “taps” on your shoes?
MR. SEARCY:  Oh yeah, I took tap dancing for a time. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Explain what “taps” are, on your shoes.
MR. SEARCY: Well taps are just little pieces of metal that gave you a little noise and a little rhythm when you were dancing. You danced and kicked your toes on the floor.
MR. HUNNICUTT:  How about mud, was there a lot of mud when you were growing up?
MR. SEARCY:  Yeah. I’ll say there was a lot of mud. I don’t remember anything of it bothering me, but I remember seeing women especially walking and carrying their shoes and walking in the mud to where ever they were going; and then a lot of places had little hoses out there because the mud was so apparent that they could wash their feet off. I saw one time in Jackson Square, a taxi driver got out and picked up a woman and put her on the sidewalk, and he walked through the mud and stood her up on the sidewalk so she wouldn’t get her feet muddy. With all that construction, it was everywhere. Mud was everywhere. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were there a lot of houses being built that you recall, during your time here?
MR. SEARCY:  Yeah, they never stopped during the whole time during the war. When we moved into our prefab, there was a vacant spot on the right that hadn’t had a prefab but they were-you would see prefabs, these trucks with prefabs on them. It’s like folded down boxes and they bring them and fold them up and they could put one up in like an hour. So, one night we went to bed and they worked all night long, constructing those. One night we went to bed and they were putting in those big poles. I think they’re like 6x6 poles, and the next morning they were putting up the sides and then by the end of that day there was a prefab that stood there and the next day a family moved in. So, that all happened in 48 hours. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about the weather? Do you remember growing up; was the weather bad, did it seem worse than it is today?
MR. SEARCY:  I remember they set a record one time, I think it was snowing in either late June or July, it snowed. That was an aberration of course, but other than that I don’t notice any-I didn’t notice much about the weather being much colder than it was in Alabama, or hotter.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have much snow in Alabama, when you were growing up?
MR. SEARCY: Very little, about what we have here now, not very much. When it snowed, it was like a holiday. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Where did you mother and father do their shopping for groceries?
MR. SEARCY:  They took a bus and went to the grocery store in the Community Store down in Jackson Square or the grocery store up at East Ridge, or East Drive, East Drive-that’s what it was. And there were busses at that time that ran like every 30 minutes through every neighborhood. And they were free. The problem was, getting them back, getting their groceries back and carrying all those big bags. So Mother would take us with her so that we could each carry a bag. Shopping like that was like once a week. And then for other things, we would walk to the New York store, which was probably a couple miles. But that wasn’t uncommon, that was very common for us to do. For the kids especially, we would go down there and pick up, you know, if they need some milk and bread or something like that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was that the New York Avenue Store?
MR. SEARCY: Yeah, there was a grocery store there then and a drug store. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have a badge, a security badge when you were in Oak Ridge?
MR. SEARCY:  You had to be 12 to get a badge. I got one before they dismissed all that, but that was a real badge of pride, like I’m being counted. I’ve grown, look at me, I’ve got a badge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Back to the grocery shopping, do you recall standing in lines a lot?
MR. SEARCY: Every time you went to the grocery store you stood in line. I don’t remember a time when you didn’t stand in a line. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you mentioned Jackson Square, where was that located?
MR. SEARCY: Jackson Square was located right in like the middle part of the city. It was the key business area, just below the High School which on a big hill overlooking Jackson Square. But they had department stores, couple theaters, and a shoe repair shop, the ice cream parlor, and various other little shops like that. But it was the key place to do business.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you mentioned you moved to a cemesto house on Meadow Road. That’s off of Michigan Avenue, is that correct? 
MR. SEARCY: Yes. Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of cemesto was that?
MR. SEARCY: That was a three bedroom; they called it a “C”. A three bedroom cemesto and it was on the corner of Meadow and Michigan Avenue. Mayor Bissell lived right down the street from us. About three or four houses down. And it was, it was probably the best house, I’m sure it was, the best house we’ve ever lived in “again”. Of course, that was a move up from the prefab. Cemestos during the war, they were kind of a status symbol, because cemesto houses went to the people that were considered more essential to the project. Doctors, military brass, engineers, physicists, people like that, and some teachers, but if you lived in a cemesto during the war, it carried with it some significance.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Now, it was three bedrooms, describe the rest of the house, interior-wise. 
MR. SEARCY: Well, it had a kitchen and a utility room where there was a coal furnace that was right next to the kitchen. And it had a big coal bin that they would come by and dump coal in periodically. And we had to light the fire at night, I remember that. Dad always lit the fire so we wouldn’t have to build another one the next day. And, the kitchen led into the living room, which is combined with enough space for a dining room. And then follow right on through the house there was a porch that fronted on Michigan Avenue and then there’s a hallway that you walk down and the main entrance was walked into a hallway. And then the bedrooms, three bedrooms were on the corner. And one bathroom, again. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Why did they call them cemestos, do you know that?
MR. SEARCY: Well, it was the construction, it was the combined cement and asbestos and I never really know how they did that, but there are still a lot of them here, 60 years later.  And it was easy to handle and easy to ship and it worked, everybody, all the houses looked the same. There’s no paint on any of them, they were all cemesto, they were all that light grey, and many of them looked pretty much the same. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, when you lived in the flattop, you mentioned there was only one door coming in and out, what about the cemesto house? How many doors did you have there?
MR. SEARCY: We had three there. We had a main entrance, then we had an entrance into the utility room, which fed into the kitchen, and then there was an entrance from the porch. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, you were still in the Cedar Hill School District at that time, was this a new house you moved in or had someone lived there before you?
MR. SEARCY: No, someone had, there’s been one other family living there throughout the war. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were the streets finished at that time?
MR. SEARCY: No, they were still gravel. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about milk delivery? What do you remember about milk delivery?
MR. SEARCY: I loved the milk delivery guy because he always had ice cream! And, we were all busy, you know, we were all in school, the kids were all in school and Mom and Dad were working and there’d be many times when the milk guy would come by and just walk into our house and look in our refrigerator to see what we needed and billed us. And if we didn’t have any ice-cream he would put ice-cream in the freezer and if we were there, we’d give our order. But, normally we didn’t ever had to put-I know a lot of people would put money in milk bottles and put them out, we never did that because this guy just came in and gave us what we wanted and we got a bill monthly. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Do you remember what the name of the milk company was?
MR. SEARCY: Silltes. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about when you went to, after you left Cedar Hill School and you attended which junior high?
MR. SEARCY: Jefferson Junior.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And where was it located?
MR. SEARCY: It was located on Robertsville Road, on the west end of town. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about that school.
MR. SEARCY: Well, there was a school, I think it was call “Wheat”, I’m not real sure of this but there was an old school there already. Big brick, two story-three story building and they used that as the, as the center of the junior high. Then they had built wings off of that so there were, I don’t know how many students there were there, but there was 7th, 8th, and 9th grades. It was the same thing there as it was with the junior high. They offered everything, they had art teachers and sing teachers and music teachers and gym, and then they had varsity football and varsity basketball and it was everything you could imagine, that anybody would ever want. And equipment, if you wanted equipment, you know it was never a problem. Even during the war time, when leather goods and things like that were hard to find, Oak Ridge High School was getting boxing gloves. Anything they wanted, they could get. They had to do that, I think, in order to get the kind of personnel and the skills that they needed for the jobs to be done here, they had to promise they would have good schools, and so they didn’t back off anything. Anything that they wanted, they pretty much got. And that was the envy of the county. The county found out about things like that and they were really upset about the fact that we got things that they couldn’t get.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you participate in any school activities like football when you went to junior high?
MR. SEARCY:  I was about 5’2” and 102 pounds, in junior high school. So I did play varsity basketball at junior high, at Jefferson and I boxed, and I was a football manager. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall who the coach was, the football coach, at that time?
MR. SEARCY: Nick Orlando was the football coach. And yes, I did get hit with his paddle. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Most of us did that went to his classes. What about the dress code when you went to junior high. Did it change much from elementary school?
MR. SEARCY: No, not really. I think we dressed pretty much the same. We were always neat and clean. I mean that was… and everybody had that code. You didn’t see a lot of people coming in with, you know, t-shirts and dirty sneakers and things like that. It just didn’t happen. I don’t remember anybody like that. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the teachers being strict on the students in those days?
MR. SEARCY: No I really don’t. I thought they were pretty liberal as a matter of fact. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: You feel like you learned from the educators they had in the school system?
MR. SEARCY: Yes, I did, I did. You could get an education there, whatever you wanted. And if you wanted to really buckle down you could get a great education and if you wanted to just slick by, you could do that too. But, they were really good about (the teachers) I think they were really good about letting you go at your own pace. If they found, they saw a student that was really very bright and to prevent them being bored by with the rest of us were doing something, they would give them some extra work or give them some other project to do that would interest them and I thought they were really good about that. And I noticed that happened several times, several classes.  
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were you a good student, did you attend school regularly?
MR. SEARCY: I was on and off. You know when I really wanted to be. For instance, in the 7th grade I was very mediocre. I always played a lot. In the 9th grade I made all A’s. So it was, you know, depending on my mood.  
MR. HUNNICUTT: You rode the bus to school, the junior high school?
MR. SEARCY: We’d either ride the bus or we would walk. And it was a long way but we would enjoy the walk. And when I was playing basketball of course I had to stay after school for practice so I always walked then. And that was from Robertsville to Meadow Road. That was a long way.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall some of the schools that you played against, in the basketball?
MR. SEARCY: Well yeah, there’s only one junior high in Oak Ridge at that time and so we played most of the Knoxville teams. Clinton, Oliver Springs, Oak Dale, Tyson Junior, and Castleberry and Knoxville. I remember Coach Stumiller was the basketball coach. And if we lost and if we took a road trip and we lost, we weren’t allowed to talk or anything back.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, what year approximately was this that you attended junior high?
MR. SEARCY: Well, I was in 9th grade in 1949. That fall I went to-started high school as a sophomore. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well let’s back up just a little bit. Do you remember when the news was out about dropping the bomb on Japan?
MR. SEARCY: Yeah, I do. We were having a mid-morning breakfast, we were all at the table, the three kids and this was August and the radio was on. We always had the radio on listening to the news and while we were talking (Mother was talking) and my father said “Shut Up!” I’d never heard him ever say that. He said, “Shut Up!” because he had heard something, “We interrupt this program to bring you a message from President Truman”. So we listened to that and it said a bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima and that they, then Oak Ridge was mentioned as part of it, just turmoil, bedlam from that point on, people jumped out of their houses and were on the streets and they were banging pans and all it was just like a parade, a instant parade. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you were at your home when you heard that?
MR. SEARCY: We were at the house having a meal. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: What’d you think about that?
MR. SEARCY: I had no idea what an “atom” was. It meant nothing to me. Except a big bomb, a big explosion and my father said when he heard that, “It’s an atom bomb, we’ve been making an atom bomb” and I had no idea what an atom was. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: When did you realize that you were in an important city?
MR. SEARCY: Sometime before that. Before the bomb was dropped, I knew that there was something different about this town. Because you know, you had to have a pass to get in, you had to have permission to get out, and so I knew that there was something different about it but I had no idea why. And I knew that whatever it was it was for the war because there were signs and big billboards all over the place saying things like: “Keep you mouth shut, even a fish wouldn’t get caught if he’d of kept his mouth shut” and you didn’t want to talk to anybody, don’t talk to strangers, and so I knew that there was something going on but I had no idea what.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember people coming through town peddling goods?
MR. SEARCY: I don’t think they were allowed. I don’t remember ever seeing that, maybe they did but I don’t think so. Not during the war years. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about the gate opening?
MR. SEARCY: I was there. Elza gate, it was about 8 ‘o-clock in the morning and a buddy of mine took our bikes and rode our bikes down there to watch that and we saw the puff of smoke and heard Mr. Ford, I think, was the city manager at that time, make a speech. They set off this thing from ORNL; I think it was a telephone hookup or something that caused this thing to blow up. Very ceremonious and then I remember the parade. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Well how did you get to Elza Gate?
MR. SEARCY: Bicycle. Took a bicycle. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you left Elza Gate then, where did you go to see the parade?
MR. SEARCY: It was down at the Turnpike and I think it ended up in Grove Center but it was all around the Turnpike. I don’t remember where it ended up but it was all down the Turnpike and I think it went through Jackson Square as well and Tennessee Avenue, yeah, that’s where it was. And a classmate of mine was right at the front, a majorette, a girl name Dotty Hawkins, she was among the majorettes that were there, I think at the time she was probably in junior high. But she was a little girl and they had her out along with a lot of the other majorettes from high school, leading the parade.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember any of the celebrities that were in the parade?
MR. SEARCY: I know that cowboy, what was his name…I can’t remember the name. Rod Cameron. And somebody “the body McDonald” and the guy who is on Queen for a Day, Jack Bailey, I remember those people, yeah. And I’m sure you’ve heard the story about Rod Cameron who had a few cocktails and fell off his horse when he got to Grove Center. I didn’t actually see that but I have heard that story many times. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Describe the crowd that was along the parade road.
MR. SEARCY: They were just very patriotic, it was just a big, big day and everybody was just so proud of Oak Ridge at that time and you know a lot of people didn’t want to open the gates. And they liked the privacy that they were provided. But they were-everybody was very celebrant, celebrating, celebratory and were just real, real proud and festive. Along with you know, cheering everything that walked by, the bands and all.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you attend any other festivities related to the parade?
MR. SEARCY:  I remember yeah, there was a big ceremony at the football field, Blankenship field. I think one of the senators or the governor or somebody was there, I don’t remember who it was, didn’t mean anything to me at the time. But there was just a big crowd so where the crowds were I liked to go.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall that the Museum of Atomic Energy opened the same weekend?
MR. SEARCY: I didn’t know that. I remember going there but I don’t remember when it opened. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Well, tell me about your trip to the Museum, when you went.
MR. SEARCY: Well the first time I remember going is when they had the dimes, they radiated dimes that you could gift and there’s something you touched that your hair would go straight out and things like that. I had no idea how they did that or what it meant but it was entertaining. I always got a good laugh out of it. And, I got a sense of-a greater sense of what Oak Ridge was about, having gone through that one time. I saw pictures of things that I didn’t know existed and the plants: big pictures of the plants that I hadn’t never really paid attention to before that and how high it was, so I got kind of a feeling of where I was. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your kind of territory that you kind of roamed in from your house?
MR. SEARCY: Cedar Hill, the playground, the picnic grounds between Meadow Road or Michigan Avenue and the Chapel on the Hill. Big picnic grounds down there. A lot of fun to play. There’s a big creek that runs through there and we would go down and get barefoot and wade in the creeks. We went through the playground, I mean through the picnic grounds to get to the movies down in Jackson Square. That’s where we hung out. There was a bowling alley in Jackson Square and for a time I set pins there, and for twelve cents a game.  That’s where I got my first social security card. I spent a lot of time there in the summer time. I worked day and night and then in the winter time I would work part time and weekends and make spending money.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How old were you at that time?
MR. SEARCY: 12, 13, 14.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you talked about working the bowling alley setting pins, explain how that happened. How that goes.
MR. SEARCY: Well, they didn’t have the automatic pin setters at that time. The bowler would knock down pins and there would be this pit, the pins would fall into it. I sat up on a little ledge and as soon as the ball struck the pins, I jumped down into the pit, picked up the ball, rolled it back up to the bowler and then I picked up the pins and set them in this little device and then when it was full, you slammed it down & it set the pins up. Some of those guys would throw those balls so they really come in and the pins would go flying and we’d be ducking. I’m surprised somebody didn’t get really hurt. We got hit a few times but nobody seriously hurt that I know about, but that was a dangerous spot.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned the movie theaters in Jackson Square, which ones did you visit? There was two I recall, which ones did you visit more than others?
MR. SEARCY: Probably the Center Theater because they had a lot of westerns, we went to the Ritz, depended on what was playing, of course. We went to both but the Center Theater was always a Saturday afternoon treat. Every Saturday, I think it was twelve cents to get in and popcorn was a nickel and candy bars were a nickel so for a quarter you could have a great afternoon. And, sometimes it was free. We would get six or seven of us and we’d go down and one of us would pay to get in and the rest of us would go down to the exit and he would come down and open the exit door and we would crawl in into the theater. Of course the theater was dark and our heads would be bopping up all over the theater. We didn’t do that a lot, but we did it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned picnic tables by Chapel on the Hill. Where was the precisely located?
MR. SEARCY: All I can tell you is it was between Michigan Avenue and Kentucky Avenue, I guess it would be. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is it close to the church?
MR. SEARCY: Yes, it fed right up to the back of the church and there was a boardwalk that went though there and a little bridge that went over the creek. And during the war time when there were a lot of soldiers here, if you walked through there you’d see a lot of soldiers with their girls. They’d be kissing on the bridge, or walking through the bushes someplace. You’d have to be careful at night when you’re coming off the movie, you might step on somebody.
MR. HUNNICUTT:  What about the Guesthouse, where you ever in the Guesthouse?
MR. SEARCY: I never stayed there but yeah, I was in the Guesthouse several times.  I can’t remember why I was there but I remember when they were building the addition to it in the back. This was after the war, of course. On the way home from movies and stuff we use to play in the structure and the framing and climb up on it and play like that but I never stayed in the Guesthouse.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what the interior looked like when you went in?
MR. SEARCY: It was pretty stark, pretty stark. Nothing fancy about it. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you live in another house, beside the one on Meadow Road?
MR. SEARCY: Just the one on Orkney Road, the prefab and the one on Meadow Road. Mother lived there, she was a widow for 30 years and she lived there until her death in 1990.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you attended high school, which was in Jackson Square above the football field, what type classes did you take in high school?
MR. SEARCY: All the basic classes. History, math, algebra, Spanish, English. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you see a difference between junior high and high school as far as the education-wise or what opportunities you had?
MR. SEARCY: There was quite a step up. You were kind of treated more like an adult when you were in high school. Moving from class to class, in junior high we had a homeroom and that was home base always. You had a homeroom in high school but you didn’t, that was just like 30 minutes a day just to check the roll. But you had a lot more freedom and you got a chance to take the courses you wanted to take to. After the basic courses that were required.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you participate in sports in high school?
MR. SEARCY: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Did you belong to any clubs or other activities related to the school?
MR. SEARCY: Oh yeah, I was a thespian. I was in Drama Club and I was in Chorus and all the things that had to do with theater. I was really big into that and I was intramurals, intramural sports and that was pretty much it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Explain what intramural sports is all about.
MR. SEARCY: They were from classes and just below varsity. If you wanted to play they, each class had a team and they competed with each other after school or during gym classes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall some of the teachers you had, in high school?
MR. SEARCY: Yeah, I remember the drama teacher, Miss Massey and the Spanish teacher Miss Swearington; no, that was the music teacher…Swayze I think it was…I can’t remember. But, anyhow I thought I’d always remember her name because she made me sit on the front row because I talked so much. But I didn’t speak Spanish so she made me stay on the front row.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you think you were a good student in high school?
MR. SEARCY: I was just a mediocre student in high school. I played, I played a lot and I did enough to get by. Didn’t make bad grades but I could have done a lot better.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about dating while you were in high school?
MR. SEARCY: I finally picked that up when I was a junior. I think I started dating then.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, where did you do on dates?
MR. SEARCY: Well, we went to movies, of course and there was the Wildcat Den. That was the place to go to take a date or find a date or play ping pong or shoot pool, dance. That was probably the major issue, the major spot for high school.
MR. HUNNICUTT:  You were talking about dating before we got interrupted and you went to movies, I guess you walked? Is that how you got there? Or how did you get to your dates?
MR. SEARCY:  Well, we went to, early in high school before we had cars, hardly anyone had cars. You borrowed the dad’s car to go on a date and if someone else’s dad had a car that could go with you, you’d double date. But for a lot of them we would walk or go on the bus. I was short in high school. I was like 5’8” when I graduated from high school. And, I was dating a girl that was about an inch taller than I was and it really made me upset and I hated to be, I wouldn’t stand real close to her so you could compare. I remember one night we were coming home from a movie on a bus and sitting together it was very obvious that I was shorter so there was a little hump for where the tire is, you know, the wheel, so I pushed myself against that so I could stand up and stay like this and could be taller than she was. Well, I did that all the way up Kentucky Avenue and down Outer Drive and we finally got to where we were going and I tried to stand up, I had cramps in my legs I couldn’t walk, she had to help me off the bus. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your parents have any strict rules about dating?
MR. SEARCY: No, not really. I mean they didn’t want you to stay out all night. They expect you to be in at a decent hour. And when I got old enough to take the car out then they were more concerned about what time I was in. But, no they weren’t very strict about that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Other than working at the bowling alley, did you have any other jobs?
MR. SEARCY: Yea, I worked at the community store in the produce department when I was in high school in the summer time. I cut grass. I had a mowing business, I cut grass. Bought my first bicycle with the grass money. I worked, I was available to the neighborhood. I remember up on Orchard Lane a woman wanted me to go up and help her clean house and do stuff like that. Well, I cleaned her porch and I washed the banisters and things like that. I waxed her floor and I worked about 6-7 hours that day. When I left she paid me, she gave me a quarter and a glass of Kool-Aid. I cried all the way home. I didn’t know, I didn’t give her a price. I just always do what they wanted and they paid what they wanted to pay. The exception to that were yards. I would always tell them I’d cut their yards for a dollar or dollar and a half, something like that. So I did have a price on that. But I was at this woman’s mercy you know, she took advantage of me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, what type of lawnmower did you use to cut grass?
MR. SEARCY: Push mower. Not a power mower, a push mower. Sometimes you would get these yards that there’d be clumps of grass and you would just push and push and you’d go about a foot at a time. It was not easy. Particularly when you’re going up a bank or something like that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about newspapers, did you deliver newspapers?
MR. SEARCY:  I did. I delivered The Knoxville Journal for 2 or 3 years. Use to go and sit under the street light. They would drop my papers off at Cedar Hill School at the street light, they would drop my papers off there and I’d get out and pull one out and read the paper there, I’d read the sports section at least. I dreamed about how wonderful it would be to be at the World Series, to write about the World Series and go to Japan ad go to Europe and cover you know, Olympics and things like that, I thought what a wonderful- and that’s the first time I ever thought about becoming a sports writer, which I eventually did. But I couldn’t hardly wait every morning to get up and turn to the sports page to see what happened. I was a big, big sports fan at that time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you graduated from high school, how did you pursue your education after that?
MR. SEARCY: I worked at K-25 for that summer. I got a summer job there and saved the money and went to the University of Tennessee [UT]. At UT, I played and did very poorly. I barely passed a subject. I got into a fraternity and I didn’t miss a party but I missed a lot of classes. There’s an interesting story about that. My spring semester, spring quarter I was going to be activated into the fraternity and I’m supposed to get a fraternity pen. Of course I had no money so I asked Mom and Dad, could I get a fraternity pen, and they said yes. Well, Mom and Dad didn’t make a lot of money, they worked-just blue collar workers and they didn’t make that much money. So they say, we’ll do that, they told me where to meet them in Knoxville. I would meet them and they were going to give me the money so I did, I met them, they were parked and I got in the car and we talked a bit. They said, here’s the money for your fraternity pen and I took it and as I was leaving I looked on the dash board and there was a pawn ticket. My father had pawned his shotgun for me to have my fraternity pen. I cried all the way back to the campus. That turned me around. From that point on, I got busy. I dropped out of school, worked with the Recreation Department in Oak Ridge as a playground director and saved some money then went back to school. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember who the playground director was, over the playground people at that time?
MR. SEARCY: Rabbit Yearwood, Carl Rabbit Yearwood.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did Shep Lauder work at that time?
MR. SEARCY: He worked in the same Recreation Department except he was in charge of the Wildcat Den, at the high school party place.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let’s go back to the Wildcat Den. Describe that, where was it and what was it?
MR. SEARCY: Well, there were two places; actually there was a third place but that was before I was in high school. The old Central Cafeteria had been converted into the end of the building had been converted into the Wildcat Den. That was there when we were in high school and the old high school above Jackson Square and then when we moved into the new high school, we, I was the first graduating class, 1952 from the new high school. Then it moved down to where it, I’m not sure what’s in that building right now but Grove Center, corner of Robertsville and the Turnpike. It was a Senior Center part time, but I’m not sure what’s in there now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Midtown Community Center.
MR. SEARCY:  Is that what it is? Well, that was our Wildcat Den throughout my high school career.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you kind of turned yourself around and worked with the Recreation Department. When did you meet your wife and how did you meet your wife?
MR. SEARCY: Well, Jackie and I went to the same elementary school, went to the same junior high school, lived in the same neighborhood and we never dated. But, when in the summer between my college years, my sophomore and junior year, I had a friend who was dating Jackie and he was going off to, he was joining the army and he asked me to take her dancing. Jackie loved to dance and I did to. So, he asked me to take her dancing while he was gone to keep her entertained so I’ve been dancing with her ever since.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you get married?
MR. SEARCY: We got married at The First Presbyterian Church in Oak Ridge. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was your first home?
MR. SEARCY: Johnson City, when I was still in school at East Tennessee State at that time, I was a senior there and we lived in a little apartment just off of campus. And then I got a job while I was still in school at the Kingsport Time News, newspaper. In the sports department, so we moved to Kingsport. So I was commuting, taking a full load at school, working full time and playing on the tennis team, the varsity tennis team. I don’t know how I did that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your wife Jackie work while you were first starting out?
MR. SEARCY:  No, we got married and she got pregnant so she stayed home.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many children do you have?
MR. SEARCY: I have two boys.
MR. HUNNICUTT:  And their names are?
MR. SEARCY: Mike and Mark.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many grandchildren do you have?
MR. SEARCY: Three.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Boys or Girls?
MR. SEARCY: One boy and two girls.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you got married, did you move back to Oak Ridge?
MR. SEARCY: No, we never lived in Oak Ridge after we were married. I went from The Kingsport Time News to The Chattanooga Times, from the Chattanooga Times to The New York Times and then to the Philadelphian Enquirer.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The Oak Ridge School System, how much influence on you did it have as far as your education?
MR. SEARCY: Tremendous, tremendous. I think the teachers at Oak Ridge High School challenge you to see what was inside you. They didn’t push you so much as they just wanted to make you understand that you could do pretty much what you wanted to do if you set your mind to it. And that really didn’t hit home to me until after I was out of high school and I saw how others were in high school and the things that they had done and I realized just how good our schools and our teachers were, how impressive they were. So it was a tremendous difference for me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the Snow White drive-in in Oak Ridge?
MR. SEARCY: Yes, very well. I spent a lot of money on tamales and hamburgers down there!
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was it located?
MR. SEARCY: It was located off Kingston Pike, I mean not Kingston Pike, Oak Ridge Turnpike. Not too far from the Central Bus Terminal.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about the Skyway drive-in, did you ever date and go to the Skyway drive-in?
MR. SEARCY: I loved the Skyway drive-in! I don’t remember seeing too many movies there but I went there a lot. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about the outdoor swimming pool?
MR. SEARCY: I loved that too, I loved the swimming pool too. That was the summer for us. In the summer time I was working, I always had a job and I would drive by the swimming pool while I was at work and I’d see those pretty girls laying there I was thinking, “This is so unfair, I’m out here working, they’re laying in the sun and tonight I’ll have to pay for her to go someplace, that’s not fair!”
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about the Oak Ridge Hospital? What do you remember about it, was it a good facility, do you recall?
MR. SEARCY:  I had my tonsils taken out there, that was the only time I was in it that I remember. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about dental offices and dentists?
MR. SEARCY: Same thing, I don’t remember much about them. I wouldn’t know how to compare them anyhow, to another hospital.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Thinking back, what did you like best about Oak Ridge?
MR. SEARCY: I liked the fact that it had so much to offer for children and for teenagers. You could do just about whatever you wanted to do. There was a club for everything, there was drama, there was athletics, and everything was like top rate. I just loved the freedom; I loved the fact that it was kind of upscale as far as living standards were concerned. And, again I didn’t realize that until I was out of school. I didn’t know what a normal city was like, having lived in Oak Ridge for so long, because it’s definitely not normal.
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Is there anything else we haven’t talked about that you’d like to talk about Oak Ridge?
MR. SEARCY: A lot of things I’d like to talk about but I don’t think I want to tell you. (Laughter)
MR. HUNNICUTT:  Well Jay, it’s been a pleasure to interview you and I believe your oral history will be a tribute to the history of Oak Ridge and I thank you very much. 
[End of Interview]