“And still more” “Growing up Clinton and Oakton”

I remember that we always had electricity but we had a wooden ice box and I think it was Mr. Wally Turner who drove a team and wagon peddling ice.  He had a thick mat of straw in the bottom of the wagon with heavy canvas tarpaulin over it with the ice on that and then he had that covered with another tarp.  That way the ice held up remarkably well in the summer months.  Each house had a triangle with 25 on one side, 50 on one side and 75 on the third.  The top of the number was to the center of the triangle and people stuck the point under the weatherboarding by the front door with the number, for the pound block they wanted, showing correctly.  He would cut the desired size block from the big blocks in the wagon.  He had ice tongs to carry it with.  He would carry them over his shoulder where he had a waterproof protector.  The cards usually were placed right below the four inch black stenciled number beside the door that indicated to the government that the house had already been sprayed for mosquitoes and any other critters with DDT.   Seems it was safe enough to poison us with but not insects in the fields.      

We also got milk delivered to the home.  I remember it was Mr. Waymon Greer who delivered that and we would leave the number of empty glass bottles set by the door that we wanted delivered that day.  He drove the milk truck down every street before daylight and it would be beside the front door when we got up each morning but Sunday.  The bottles had a thick paper top and the cream would collect on it.  I always wanted to open the bottles first so I could rake off and eat the cream.  My mother would give me the look mothers have to keep me from licking it but licking was more fun if not quite sanitary.  Not saying I did ever lick the cream.

We kids spent lots of hot days at the ice house where it was frozen in giant freezers in the floor.  Mr. Bobby Kaler and a helper would use chains on a pulley to lift the huge blocks of ice and the pulleys were mounted in channels where it could be moved around easily.  They then cut them into what I guessed to be 200# blocks to sell intact or in smaller blocks.  There was a real talent to the way they would take an ice pick and cut it into the desired sizes without wasting any ice.   We were allowed into the ice holding room and it was always a cold relief. 

Often we would fill lard cans with corn cobs at the mill and take them behind Lampkin`s Clinton Bottling works.  This was in the same building as the Shell Oil Company.  There were apartments on the second floor. Behind the bottling plant they stacked empty cases in one area and cases of empty bottles in another.  The empty cases stacked well and we used them to make two forts.  Divided up we would have a battle with corn cobs.  You just hoped someone did not clobber you with a wet cob.  When the workers took their morning or afternoon break usually we would be invited in for a soda.  At one time there were two bottling plants in Clinton but I do not remember the other one.  It was in the building that Harpole`s Western Auto was in.

We also spent a lot of time in and around town creek behind the Clinton Lock factory.  They made a high security padlock similar to rail road locks.  In the future it would be turned into a bank fixtures manufacturing company.  It was between the creek and the basement building that at the time I believe was the VFW hall.  Behind these two buildings overhanging the creek was a monster oak with at least three big limbs hanging over the creek.  We always had a rope on one of the limbs and the other limbs were smooth where we had climbed them so much.  I am surprised now that we did not build a house in it.  

There were many tunnels built into the creek bank and luckily I do not know of one of them to collapse on anyone.

For some reason we were drawn to trees.  Waterfield drive from Jim Phillips street to the city limit was a very narrow gravel lane and steep banks on each side behind Hotel Jewell and there were several huge oak trees lining it.  We had steps up one and spent lots of time there.  We always had a rope to swing from the hotel side to the other side where the Hickman County Schools central office is now.  There was a cattle barn there then and previous to that I understood that there was a brick foundry there that provided most of the early brick construction in Clinton.  I remember hearing that it was built to make the brick for the Harpole building on S. Jefferson Street and others.