DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my family & church. Thank you for the support you have given me in my later years. May you live a long and fulfilling life. I greatly appreciate my daughter, Debra’s, and Jay Kincanon’s assistance with this autobiography. This book is also dedicated to teachers, those in military service, and people everywhere who offer a helping hand to others. Your work is noble.

INTRODUCTION

Memory betrays us all, such as: The face is familiar, but what was the name? Where did we go? What did we say? When did it happen? As cognitive memory begins around the age of three, I assume that some of what I say here started around the age of three or four. I read somewhere that one remembers what he remembered from the last time he thought on the same subject. Having lived 97 years, I find myself belonging to a generation obsessed with retaining and relaying everything. I now understand the better things of the past were not so often articles or possessions accumulated as they were the manners in which people lived, the things they thought and the time in which they lived. This, of course, is still true. The fine things and modern way we live today will be different in a very few years hence. For some reason I have always wanted to write of my past to provide a description of a different time and to leave a record of my life’s challenges and stresses for those who come after me. None of my memories are confabulations. It seems to depress me somewhat as I try to remember the past. I do not know the reason for this feeling but be it as it may, I am compelled to write.

CHAPTER 1

TROUTDALE , VIRGINIA

Troutdale was located on the covered-wagon route in Grayson County between Marion, Virginia and Ash County, North Carolina. It had a population of about twenty-eight hundred or more at the time of my birth. Before that it had been a small settlement since 1870. It was incorporated by the Virginia General Assembly on March 12, 1906 making it the highest incorporated town in Virginia with an elevation of 3,700 feet, and located near Mount Rogers, the tallest mountain in Virginia, at 5,729 feet. Passengers could ride the old Marion & Rye Railway into Troutdale until the 1930s. The town was laid out in a one mile circle the center being the northwest corner of the Methodist Church lot. Grayson County was formed out of Wythe County in 1793 based on a book Pioneer Settlers of Grayson Co., VA. (1) It was a lumber boom town with a Vaudeville theater, a bank, a US post office, a telephone office and a cattle yard that was located in the western part of the township. It also had a furniture factory, three churches, two barber shops, two produce houses, two ice cream parlors, a hat shop, Masonic Hall, several hotels, restaurants, a high school, a blacksmith shop, a grist mill, a feed store, clothing and dry goods stores, a carpenter shop that made caskets, a train station, a taxi, and a newspaper: The Troutdale News. There was a plant to extract tannic acid from the bark of chestnut oak and eastern hemlock for the tanning of leather which was used by the United States Leather Company. The Grayson Lumber Company in nearby Fairwood produced more than 125,000 feet of hardwood per day. The Phoenix Iron Ore Company was also there. Other small stores existed as typical of the day. In the 1920s Troutdale became a summer tourist resort. As I remember it, the theater was not in use. It had been closed long before my time. Steve Long owned it and used it for a storage warehouse and a grist mill. I think the Perkins Department store was the largest and was owned by Breeze and Hattie Perkins. The Perkins family owned most of the property in and around Troutdale, including large dairy barns and farm land in all directions. They controlled the cattle business in this part of Grayson County. They sold out and went to California sometime in the early nineteen thirties.

ELECTRICITY

Troutdale had its own electric power plant. There was a dam on Fox Creek with a raceway that ran around the side of the hill to the place where the water ran down a chute to a turbine wheel that powered the generators to produce the electricity. As the story goes, in later years the owner-operator only ran the power plant when he saw fit.

ENTERTAINMENT IN TROUTDALE

Times were hard and there was little extra money in the Lovelace budget for entertainment. Sometimes on weekends we went to Mr. and Mrs. Leonard’s house in Troutdale to listen to the radio for entertainment. The only moving picture show that could be seen without going to Marion was someone would show old movies on Saturday night using the side of the Primitive Baptist Church as a screen when the weather was good. Sometimes the power would go off . If the weather was bad there was no show. Sometimes they had a good excuse for the power failure when the creek was low on water. The only compensation the operator got was from selling popcorn and candy. There was no admission charge. The circus would come to town occasionally. I would volunteer to help the animal attendant to water and feed the animals. The attendant would go around back and slip me in under the tent as payment for helping. I don’t know if the show manager knew this or not. Maybe I was doing the attendant’s job for him. I really didn’t care how I got in, only that I did.