Louise Freels
THE BIG TWO-STORY HOUSE
I live in a huge big two story house with no electricity, no water, four rooms upstairs and four rooms downstairs with a porch that went all the way around it where we could ride our tricycles and pull the wagon if it was raining when we were little. It was located almost in the center of Scarboro, right across from the Gristmill and down the hill from Holbrimers grocery store. About a half a mile from the Scarboro School on down Bethel Valley where the school is now. We walked to school and walked back. It was 8th, and I went eight years there and then two years to Robertsville high school. Bus, a home made bus had no windows in it and had a curtain if it rained. I don’t know the name of the bus, but Jim Piet operated it. He’d take us to our ball games. I played basketball, and he’d take us to the ball games in that old bus. We played at Wheat High School and went to Oliver Springs and went to Clinton and Andersonville and Lake City and— . That’s about all the high schools that were in Anderson County at that time. We won some and lost some.
MEMORIES OF HOME
Well it was; we had a telephone because we had a central office there in Scarboro, and you could ring the phone. We didn’t dial; we just rung it and dialed the central office, and if you wanted to call Knoxville they’d call Knoxville for you and hook you up to where you could talk. And then as I told you we had a well on the back porch, and several of the families came to get drinking water from the well otherwise we got it from the creek which came from springs up—. And our wash days was a black kettle at the back of the house. We carried water to wash, and most of the time hung our clothes on the fence, and our job at that time was to wash the overalls. Mama would lay the overalls on the porch and give us the broom and put some of Grandmas Freels homemade soap on them, and we’d scrub them. Then she would wrench them, but we did the washing of the overalls with the broom. In the kitchen we had to carry stove wood in for the fire. That was our job at night time to get the stove wood in.
POSTAL OPERATIONS
Well daddy had a little post office in the corner of the house, and he had his desk and his, I don’t know what you call it where he routed his mail by box numbers, and he carried the mail there through New Hope down Bear Creek Valley and came on through by Robertsville and went on by Robertsville and across Pine Ridge onto Bethel Valley Road and back up to the house. And the other mail route Mr. Johnson, he would bring the mail to daddy from Edgemoor post office. The train would leave the mail off there, and he would bring daddy’s mail to him, and then when he got ready to go back, Mr. Johnson would come pick his mail up and taking back to the Edgemoor post office. And then Aunt Helen, my Aunt then, was the mail lady then, and she would take it out and put it on an arm at the little depot there, and the train would pass by it and wouldn’t have to stop just reach out that arm and get the mail sack and take it in, and that was our mail. But if the creeks were up or anything like that daddy—we didn’t have a car, he went by horse back or he had a cart that he would pull. He didn’t have to cross the creek to deliver the mail in the boxes, and sometimes the creek there at New Hope would be up and he couldn’t get across it, and he’d have to come back home.
SUNDAY NIGHTS AT NEW HOPE CHURCH
I belonged to Cumberland Presbyterian Church, and we’d all go to Sunday school and church once a month at it, and then at night time on Sunday night the young people would gather from Scarboro around, and we would walk and go to New Hope, and other young people from around New Hope at other communities would gather there too. It was sort of a gathering place. Preacher Hightower would preach. He was the one that didn’t have any hands, and it was just to get together, I mean, a lot of it was. Then we’d all walk back home, be back. Sometimes we’d have a lantern with us. Somebody would take a lantern if it was one of the dark nights because we didn’t have any—nobody had a car, and if you did you wouldn’t dare take it, drive it. So I remember going to church over there on Sunday night.
YOUNG PEOPLE GATHERED AT NEW HOPE CHURCH
Over at the New Hop Church every Sunday night we would attend church services just to get to be with the young people or have somewhere to go, but then it was an active church, and I don’t know how often, we had dinner over there, but practically all the people around in Scarboro even though they didn’t attend New Hope Church would go to dinner. They would take food and enjoy the companionship of the neighbors because in the New Hope Valley they were scattered pretty far apart, and daddy knew them all because he carried the mail down that valley there, Bear Creek and through there, and he knew all the people. So we’d always go to the lunch and dinners that they had. Pretty well kept up with all the neighbors and everything at New Hope, but it was an active church. As far as any young peoples meetings and things like that, we didn’t have. We didn’t have that at the Cumberland Presbyterian Church even because there just wasn’t any way to get there at night time. People didn’t have cars and didn’t have transportation and no lights. Walk, we would walk. Wouldn’t be any cars pass so we’d stay right in the middle of the road. But nearly all the young people, there were several young people around in the Scarboro community, we’d all walk together and go to New Hope, and we’d all walk back
FREELS BEND CABIN
The Freels Bend Cabin in the Freels Bend where it got it’ name from Isaac Freels. He had inherited a lot of, probably a land grant that inherited about 1,000 acres down in through there from Uncle John Jones place to Gallaher’s Ferry down there. I don’t know that any of the Freels ever lived in this cabin, but at one time it was owned by the Freels, and my grandpa Freels, William A. Freels, inherited from his father about 100 acres, and then one of his sisters or cousins one inherited a farm, and grandpa bought it from her. So he had when Oak Ridge took over he had two big farms and Freels Bend. And one of them joined the cabin, the land that went with the cabin. And we’d go down there in the summer time and mother would take a picnic, and we’d go down to the river. It was a river then. We’d go out in the skiff and hunt mussels for pearls. That was our recreation I guess on a Sunday afternoon. But the cabin at one time; I forget who it was that lived in it. I believe the Johnsons lived in it. I’m not sure. It was big house. A house had been built over the cabin, and they tore all that down, and then UT helped to revise the cabin and restore it or whatever needed to be done, and it’s in the record book now I think of historic homes. But I don’t think any of the Freels every lived there, but we certainly had a party in it. To get to the Freels cabin down there we had to go through the gap in the ridge, and it was all creek from the springs, and it thrilled us when we’d tell my daddy to go fast in that old car he had. He says, “I can’t go any faster because it will drown out.” That’s the way the children and people out in the bend had to come through that gap in the ridge, and it was all water. It was all creek, but most of the time it was with horse and buggy or with a wagon come up to the mill, and down in the Freels bend that’s where they raised a lot of their wheat and a lot of Grandpas—well they finally moved out. He bought Grandma Freels his wife’s daddies from the Holloways. He bought a place and rebuilt that house there so the children could have a better way to go to school, but then they had this wheat every year. They’d thrash it, and we’d always go down. The thrasher would come by the house, and we’d always go down—the thrasher would thrash the wheat and get the straw. Grandma would have her—washed ready to fill with new straw to put on the beds. Then the seed. Grandpa would take them to mill, one mill I believe in Lenoir City and maybe one over in I forget where it was, to have ground for our flour. That’s the way we got our flour for the winter was through the wheat.
WHAT BECAME OF THE FREELS BEND CABIN
It was I guess a quarter of a mile and it was all water, and there was a path above it on the hillside where the people could walk out and walk to school. The cars, we had an old I think it was a T model or an A model one, and would tickle us because we’d go down in the middle, well you couldn’t pass, and we’d tell our daddy to go fast so it would splash, and he’d say he couldn’t go fast because it would drown the car out. But the UT took over the Freels cabin and they rented all that area down through there. And then they moved; they didn’t move my home out cause it was too big, but the others they moved out in a row up there, and my grandmother Freels house sat up there on the corner of where the arboretum is and the cemetery is. And they put all those other houses there, and that’s where the families that worked at the UT down in Freels Bend lived in those homes.
CROSSING THE CREEK
But the creek that they went through most of the time was wagons and horses, not many people with cars, and then when school was going on and it rained and the creeks got up, the children that lived down in that way usually came to my home and stayed, and mama would make them a pallet that night, put quilts down, and they’d stay at our home. They couldn’t get home. No way to get home.
MOTHER TOOK CARE OF THE DEAD
Mother. Usually they always came to get mom. She has pronounced a lot of them dead. I remember this one baby that died belong to Edgar Ford. He owned one of the grocery stores at the hill. And it died, and she took me with her, and she put nickels on it’s eyes, and he had gone, Mr. Ford, had gone to Oliver Springs to get a casket for it, and mama dressed it in a little dress and cleaned it up. And like I said when anybody got sick and died she and Mr. Moore would make the linings for the coffins if the person didn’t have the money to buy the coffin at the undertakers. Booth at Oliver Springs was about the only undertaker I remember. No transportation. People didn’t have transportation, and you had to bury them pretty much the day after they died if it was summer time. And we had a little house there at Scarboro cemetery that had the shovels and the picks and everything, and every now and then they had to use a little bit of dynamite on account of the rocks and the graves, and the people dug the graves. The neighbors would go in and build a grave, and I guess the ambulance would come and take them to the cemetery, but mama played a big part in sickness if anybody died.
MOTHER WAS A NURSE
She was a nurse. She never did practice, but she and her sister both were nurses, and it was before Knoxville had any nurses schools, and so grandpa—sent them to Chattanooga down to Erlanger’s Hospital. They took their nurses training down there in Chattanooga, ride the train back and forth to Knoxville.
THE GEORGE ANDERSON FAMILY
Yes, all the Piets are married there and the Anderson. Now George Anderson died not long ago, but he was buried I think in the Clinton cemetery there in Clinton. Ola Anderson, she started teaching school right out of, I don’t know if she had a high school education or not, but she taught over at Scarboro, and she was my teacher, my second grade teacher. We had moved, and I had married and come back, and I was teaching at Claxton, and my son was with me. I’m going to tell this on him. He happened to get in her room. She was still teaching. So he had Ms. Anderson, Ms. Ola has his second grade teacher when I had her for my second grade teacher. So she never did marry, Ola never did. George was in my husband’s high school class at Robertsville. They graduated together, played basketball together.
UNCLE JIM REFUSED TO LEAVE
Uncle Jim Freels. He just wouldn’t give up. He had a little grocery store there and a farm that joined his mama’s and daddy’s, grandma and grandpa Freels’ place. So he wouldn’t move out. He took it to court for more money, but I don’t think he got enough to pay a lawyer for it. So then he just was contrary, and he wouldn’t move out. So then Uncle John Jones, that’s my daddy’s sister’s husband, he wouldn’t move out either. Finally the police in Oak Ridge mailed Uncle Jim an order that he had to leave, and told him on that order what he could take out with him, and I’ve got that. He finally moved out, and when he moved out he moved in with his wife. She had moved with the Gammels, and he got a job down in Oak Ridge as a watchman at the bus place, and he wouldn’t cash his checks. He was still mad at Oak Ridge. He wouldn’t cash them checks at all. So one day they called him up and told him that he was messing their books up. And he told them that he didn’t care that they were his and he could do them what he wanted to with them. But my cousin, Doc Jones, talked him into taking them to the bank and cashing them and putting them in the bank, and that was the end of Uncle Jim’s story. Then I asked Ed one day. I said, “Ed, you didn’t move out either. Uncle John didn’t move out,” I said, “How did you all move out?” He said, “We moved out after dark after the patrols moved across the Edgemoor Bridge. We moved out after dark when the police was asleep.
