“More Growing up Clinton and Oakton”

One of the oddest things about growing up Clinton and Oakton was the nicknames.  In Clinton we had a few and mostly older folks like Foots Jackson, Frosty Barclay, Pop`s Johnson, Powerhouse Craig, Tip Johnson, Judge Brummal, Squatlo and more.  Those my age usually went by their given names.

At Oakton we had Bogie Crow, Doc Williams, Hoss Clark, Pep Clark, Toodlum Clark, Share Cropper Williams, Snake Hogan-Darrel Kelly, my uncle Lightning Trevathan and as I was always right behind him I was Thunder or Thunderhead.  Lightning and Thunderhead carried on to some extent in Clinton as well.  I think maybe it was started in Clinton by the Tarver boys, Carl and Kent.  There were more and some I did not even know their given names.

Carl and Kent Tarver`s mother Ruth was the Bell operator for Clinton and before that Olie Johnson and Miss Ruby Autry was the Pvine operator before that.  The telephone switchboard was up stairs over Hopkins grocery where the motel would later be built.  This is now the parking for the new courthouse annex.  Before 653 our prefix was OR for Orchard 3 and then the number.

The one place we could be found every day we were not in school was “Uncle Ned” Benedict’s blacksmith shop.  He was not my uncle but we ran with his nephews and to all the kids in town he was uncle Ned.  I can still picture him wearing that dark full length bull hide leather apron to protect him from hot metal.  I loved to watch him back into a horse’s leg and pull the hoof up to size a horse shoe.  He would be pretty close on the size by looking and it did not take him long to heat it and shape it to the horse hoof he was shoeing.  I can almost hear his hammer tapping on the anvil before he struck metal. One tap slow followed by four in rapid session.

He had a monster bellows he pumped by hand to heat the coals and he had a wood half barrel of water to cool the metal in to temper just right.  It really fascinated me to see him take two separate pieces and join them by heating, beating and molding together. 

Once while on vacation to my uncles I contracted poison sumac on the inside of my forearms.  He had me dip them in the cooling barrel of water and I did that three times in three days and it was gone.   He cleared up many cases of diaper rash by dipping the baby’s bottoms in the cooling barrel.

He gave us plenty of rings off of wagon hubs some were about ten inches in diameter and we would roll them down the street.  We would use a tobacco stick with a piece of wood attached to the lower end.  This we would stick in the ring to start it rolling and then we placed it low and behind to push the ring.  Being boys it had to be a challenge so we would go to a big oak and try and roll it up a root and see who could get theirs to roll the highest up the tree.  Being short I usually lost.

There were at least seven service stations inside the city limits and that made a big supply of bad small truck and large passenger tires that we rolled all over town.  Seems everything we did was good exercise.

I am not sure of the provenience but the old timers told us a tale about the boarding house that used to be west of where John Cromika lives today on West Clay St.  Seems the James brothers, Jesse and Frank, would head to visit family in Bowling green or somewhere near there to hide out until things cooled off a bit.

Supposedly they crossed by ferry at South Columbus and would stay a day or two in Clinton to rest up.

Another version told often by the Burkes, who ran Hotel Jewell, was that they stabled their horses on West Clay and walked to the hotel Jewell.  I have to doubt this version as the James brothers being wanted would not stable their mounts where they could not be reached fast.  Not to mention that before the Hotel Jewell it was Marvin College where the “Veep swept here.”  Referring to Vice President Alben Barklay Many believe he was a Paducah native but he was a poor Graves county farm boy and worked his way through the college by working as custodian.  He was born in 1877 and enrolled at Marvin in 1897 so I doubt it being a hotel or boarding house before that.