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The People Who Lived on the Land that is Now Redstone Arsenal, page 374
The house where Bill lived faced the Farley-Triana Road (to the north). It had two rooms of equal size in the front. Beds were in both of those rooms, but one of them served primarily as the living room. Behind those two rooms was one long room, which served as the kitchen. They had no barn. Behind the house, maybe 60 feet back, was the outhouse. It was set over a dug pit, and it had one hole. Asked if the family ever dumped any of their trash in it, Bill said, “No, people didn't do that.” The Broiles' house is also shown. Bill said they had a two-story, antebellum style house. They had a two-seater outhouse and a barn. In 1939 a man from Indiana bought Broiles place. He was said to be a Republican: “Everybody wanted to see a Republican. None of the farmers had seen a Republican before 1939.” In addition to sharecropping, Bill's father drove the school bus that Bill rode. White children from Pond Beat went to Farley School on Whitesburg Pike (now called Memorial Parkway). The current Farley elementary school is in that location. When he went to school, there was a two-room wooden schoolhouse for grades 1 and 2, and a brick building for middle school, grades 3 through 9. Bill said he was one of Lilly Latham's first students, and “If you missed a word, you got a slap on the cheek.” Mrs. Gardner was also a teacher there. She was widowed. Her son Charles was Bill's buddy. The principal was P.R. Ivy. Bill said P.R. Ivy bought a farm, so that was P.R. Ivy property. As a slow grin slipped across his face, he said, “You see, Privy Property.” [Note: It can be surmised that back in those days, when people used the “privy” (outhouse), the principal's name lent itself to student creativity.] P.R. Ivy is shown as owning Parcel A-26, which bordered what is now called Jordan Lane. This could be the location of the farm he bought. When asked about family recreation, Bill said they listened to the radio. He said his parents had a big radio that was connected to a battery. On Saturday night they'd turn the radio on and listen to the Grand Old Opry. On Friday night, they listened to boxing matches. He recalled sitting out on the porch and listening to the fight between Joe Lewis and Max Smelling. Smelling whipped Lewis: “By the time Mamma got the coffee made, the fight was over.” In 1939 they listened to the war news on the radio??"the Germans invading Poland. Bill commented that sometimes he went to Triana: “You had to walk across a swinging bridge to get to Triana.” He noted that Wheeler might have been Pin Hook Creek. The Farm, Discussed by Sam Harris Jr. The Harris farm lost a significant number of acres of bottomland in 1935 through forced sale to TVA. Joseph B. Harris died in 1939. At the time of sale to the War Department, 374 - (4407)