All that's left of this once bustling community is the abandoned schoolhouse, covered over now with dense vegetation and a rebellious elm boldly asserting itself close to the concrete steps where young boys and girls answered the call of the bell that beckoned them inside. There are no youngsters playing in the schoolyard anymore, nor in the rest of the village that was. There are no women hanging out white diapers on wire clothes lines, and there are no weary men toting empty, black lunch buckets into the gray, stucco houses nestled next to a hill that rose sharply behind each home. Now, it has all been bulldozed over, with only an occasional jonquil or rusted pipe, or a slab of concrete to indicate that there once was community life there.
But in its time, in the young years of the twentieth century, and even until the mid-fifties, until the post office closed in 1957, Oolite buzzed with the activities of daily life in this company town squatting near the ever imposing Ohio River that bent slightly and straightened out just in front of the little village. It was home to me as a young boy, searing into my memories the spirit of the place and its people, as delicious to me now as the sweet pears from a tree in the front of the general store.
Moved from a previous location up the river, Oolite had all the same earmarks of the many company towns that dotted the coalfields of eastern and western Kentucky. Built by the company, Kosmos Portland Cement Company, the houses in Oolite were constructed exclusively for the workers, the company provided the school and its teacher, and the general store held accounts until payday when workers not only had the satisfaction of paying off their weekly bill, but as an added bonus, the store keeper threw in six candy bars, the reward for prompt payment.
Some ten miles down river from Brandenburg, Oolite was named for the type of limestone blasted out of the hills above it in two quarries, hauled to a crusher where it was reduced to softball sized stone, and shipped upriver below Louisville to Kosmosdale in long and wide steel barges pushed by tug boats that whistled mournfully at the approach of another barge with its load of coal, cars, or oil.
In many ways, when I lived in Oolite in the fifties we were defined by the river. We learned to identify the company boats, like the Kingslanding, named for another largely forgotten community just upriver that died years earlier. We knew the captain, if prompted by a broad signal from us, would let loose the distinctive sound of this bellowing boat. We knew other boats, too, by their distinctive wave pattern, whether they were full or empty by how deep or how shallow the barge rested on the surface of the river. The night watchman in the quarries above Oolite, Bill Dick Greer, kept a running record of the different boats on the river by penciling the names of the boats on the wall of the watchman's shack. But we got most excited about the Delta Queen, that red and white sternwheeler that churned up the most mountainous, rolling milky waves on the river. People much to their peril, often tried to water ski behind this excursion boat. But we could just imagine ourselves as passengers drifting down the river in the elegant luxury of a boat that passed too quickly and not often enough.
Although the fish had a distinctly oily taste, the river also provided food for the table. Oolite residents strung out trout lines with multiple hooks baited with dough balls, and anchored by empty Clorox jugs that bobbed on the surface with the many motions of the river. Sometimes the catch was carp or buffalos, too bony to eat, or slimy eels that wrapped themselves in a tangle too taut to unwind in the relatively thin cotton cord we called "staggon". But the lucky fisherman often found perch, channel catfish, and bass still fighting the hook. Almost always, he shared his bounty with his neighbors. In the summer, I could distinctly smell the fish frying in somebody's kitchen, its aroma enticing me in, and I knew that the mother would also warn the children to "watch out for the bones."
And the river, of course, was where we learned to swim, being careful to know just where the drop off was, where the river suddenly and unexpectedly was over our heads. It was a badge of accomplishment when we were old enough and good enough to swim to the Indiana shore that challenged us in the distance. Typically, a father, urging his son on, rowed a boat beside his young son to insure his safety. I recall how jealous I was that Dough Embrey, a youngster my own age, reached the Indiana side by stabbing at the water with his hands, rotating his arms, his top half buoyed out of the water by his strong kick. He declared to all that would hear that he had "swum the river." To us youngsters, it was, indeed, a mark of approaching manhood.
Even in the early spring, the river provided us with adventure as we watched the river rise in response to the winter rains and melting snow upriver in far off places we had only really heard about; spots like Pittsburgh, Ashland, and Cincinnati. We recognized that if the river were rising the driftwood would be in the deep channels in the middle of the stream, but if the driftwood floated near the shore, the river was falling. That meant that after the river had assumed its normal banks, that there would be enormous piles of drift accumulating on the shore, piles filled with odd-shaped logs, old boats torn from their moorings somewhere upstream, a rubber ball just right for a game of catch, and a host of buckets and jugs that we lugged home that we knew were good for something, although we knew not what. It was sheer treasure hunting for us, like going to a toy store where everything is free.
In the spring, we roamed the hills behind us looking for spring flowers that popped out of the rich, but thin soil: purple violets, jack-in-the-pulpit, blue phlox or what we called Sweet Williams, buttercups, May apple, and wild strawberries, flowering trees like dogwoods and redbuds that often grew in the shade of poplars, sprouting their own tulips. Later in the spring, the cornflowers, goldenrod, wild roses, milkweed, trumpet vines, and Black-Eyed Susan's made their appearance. It was an array of soft pastels and bold, vibrant colors from nature's palette, announcing to us that it wouldn't be long before school would be out and the magic days of summer would be upon us. We used the violets for "rooster fighting" when we would hook the heads of two violets together and gently pull to see which violet was stronger, to determine which one would decapitate the other. We prided ourselves on the ability of picking the flower with the strongest head and being the champion.
But we lived for the summer. After all, on the hills behind us, grapevines hung like long snakes from oaks and hickories on the side of the hill. Cut at ground level, grapevines made nature's rope that we used to swing out high above the ground. We knew the grapevine could tear suddenly from the tree that held it, but we didn't care: the ride was everything, a kind of natural amusement park ride that didn't cost anything. Grapevines were good for smoking too. A dead vine, cut just the right length, and filled with porous holes, was our first experiment with smoking, as the smoke wound its way up the shaft and into our mouths. They weren't cigarettes, we knew, but we could pretend, and it was cheap and cost us only the price of sneaking long wooden matches out of our mother's kitchens, the kind they used to light the kerosene stove.
The fall of the year brought the sounds of squirrels gnawing on hickory nuts, scurrying nimbly from limb to limb, preparing themselves for the approaching denseness of winter. The woods for a time smelled sweet and nutty, until we were often forced inside by the cold winds that drifted down the valley. When we gathered in the general store around the drum stove that glowed and popped and sizzled, stuffing the store with the sweet smell of oak and ash burning, it reminded us that if we came too close to the stove we could burn holes in our new winter coats with the sign of the telltale acrid smell of cotton burning. The men from the community sometimes gathered around a crude card table and played Rook. The women visited and caught up on all the news of our tiny community, covering their mouths when they laughed; while in spite of the cold, the children made some excuse to romp outside in the thin snow that often covered the gravel parking lot. On Friday nights, hosted by Carl Embrey's mother, Mrs. Mary June Sutherland, the store and post office manager, the store was the place to be, for that was the night when a grocery truck whined its way down steep hills to the general store, and backed up carefully to the tall concrete porch. All of us helped unload, waiting eagerly for the chance to spy some new toy or a plaid flannel shirt or an exciting new brand of cereal or ripe banana that came in long boxes with holes in them the size of fifty-cent pieces.
At one end of the porch of the store stood the gas pump that required the customer to hand pump the large glass bulb on top up to the appropriate gallon mark. The orange liquid foamed and sloshed in the tank before the payer, using the force of gravity, filled the car with gas.
To many members of the community, the general store was also the only place they could watch television, its glowing grayness yielding begrudgingly the dim images of two wrestlers locked in some hopeless knot of entangled arms and legs. Carl Embrey, Doug's father, despite having four fingers on his left hand seared off in a wood planer, was the community's television repair man of the often mysterious box that brought the outside world into this tiny village.
On very special occasions we all gathered at the schoolhouse for box suppers, cakewalks, and the Virginia Reel. Often the dim lights spilled out into the yard when the youngsters too young to appreciate the doings inside chased each other around the building. Box suppers were kinds of auctions where a pretty, unattached lady would prepare a meal, usually of fried chicken or country ham, along with vegetables and dessert, put it in some kind of container, a shoe box, for instance, and have it auctioned off to some young lad eager for the affection of the preparer. The two would then eat their meal together. Often, two rivals for the young lady's affection engaged in spirited bidding to gain the right to eat the dinner with the object of their attention.
Usually the same evening as the box supper, the program featured a cakewalk. The participants formed a circle in the center of the room as the cake was passed to the person behind them, often in time to the music. All the while, Beatrice Hockman, Carl Embrey's daughter, played some lively tune on the old dusty piano. When the music suddenly stopped, the person with the cake was the winner and got to keep the cake. In the course of the evening, three or four cakes got passed around. Sometimes, the cakes were really pies. I remember I won a pecan pie one evening, proud that I had been the beneficiary of a dessert I could take home.
The evening climaxed with a lively square dance, usually the Virginia Reel, as we twisted and turned our way through a tangle of other dancers. We went one way, and then we suddenly reversed ourselves and went the other way. The fun was not just doing the dance, although that was an accomplishment by itself, but also to see those a bit rusty who would find themselves in an intricacy they couldn't quite handle. It was my first real taste of dancing, and although I was quite young at the time, I was fascinated by the movements of the dance, by the fun the dancers had in being whirled one way or another, by the bonds of affection that the participants felt for each other.
All the while, Jake Hamilton, a general store proprietor in Battletown about a mile above Oolite, sat leaned back in a chair fast asleep, oblivious to the noise and other activity around him. I remember thinking that Mr. Hamilton, a confirmed bachelor, came to events in the community not only for the company, but also to sleep in the fellowship of neighbors.
Jake wasn't his real first name, and in fact, I didn't know that his given name was James Herbert, or how and when he acquired his nickname; but he was like most residents of Oolite who often had monikers that described them or some part of their personality. There was Ralph "Windy" Cummings, whose gift of storytelling often featured a slight whistling through his teeth. There was Francis Kendall, who had two nicknames, one for his height, "Highpockets" and another one of obscure origin, "Toots." There was also John "Slow" Board, who got his name for his portly belly and casual ways. Carl Embrey went by "Cap" named for a cap he wore. My father, Clarice Myers, slight in stature, soon acquired the moniker of "Short" Myers. Bill "Buster" Bennett also acquired a nickname, as did Henry "Doc" Crawford. The Bill Bennetts lived out of Oolite on the hill near the main office of the quarry after George "Piggly Wiggly" Hockman and his family moved out. Forrest "Sparkplug" Bennett got his name for his ability to talk on any given subject. Other men from outside of Oolite, but who worked at the quarry then and at other times had names like Alex "Stubby" Pipes, Melvin "Farmer" Hockman, Shelby "Toughhide" Crawford, Earl "Shang" Greer, and Maurice "Thumb" Greer, who got his label from a sore thumb acquired from shooting too many marbles. A worker from an earlier period acquired the nickname "Up and Down" called that because it described the action of a drill he tended. But the men acquired these names not out of derision, but as a sign of acceptance into the community.
The stucco houses we lived in were all pretty much the same drab gray color. Although some of the houses had wooden siding, they were still painted the same dull color. Francis and Mary Kendall lived in a house out of Oolite on the road to the old, abandoned quarry upriver form the present quarry. But in Oolite itself, one of the bigger houses on a slight grade was the home of Elmer and Elizabeth Peabody. Mr. Peabody was the quarry superintendent when we moved to Oolite in June of 1951, and an incessant jokester who patiently cut just enough of the heads off matches so that the next user would go through ten or so before getting one that would finally light. Or he took great delight in dowsing a young man with the cheapest cologne Kresge's offered and imagined how his innocent victim would explain himself to his suspicious wife. Above the Peabody's, at one time, was the Henry and Nora Crawford family, their yard quite level and in stark contrast to the hill that jutted up sharply nearby. Forrest and Annabell Bennett moved into that same house later. Below those two houses was the residence of Ralph and Susie Cummings and family. In their back yard was a large sand pile where we used to build roads, tunnels, and bridges to accommodate our toy Chevies, Plymouths, and Fords, arguing incessantly over which was the best car. Next, down the narrow strip of land was the general store and post office, bordered by the family of Carl and Minnie Embrey, who neighbored to the Tony and Elizabeth Bennetts. A way down from here was the home at one time of George L. and Edna Bennett. Then there was a break of about a quarter of a mile before reaching the home of John and Tressie Board and their family, our next-door neighbors. We were the last home in Oolite with a narrow yard my father mowed with a push mower. Power mowers were not common yet, and the steady whirling of a well-oiled push mower did just as well.
The last structure in Oolite was the schoolhouse, the center of most of my attention. We were especially proud of our one room school when we walked as a group of about twenty or twenty-five in the Meade County fair parade in September, for not only did it have a coal furnace in the basement that one of the seventh or eighth graders tended, but we also had flush toilets, though supplied with river water. For drinking water, two of us boys lugged a water bucket up to a spigot between John Board's and my house. Many times, we accidentally tripped on a rock in the road, spilling the precious cargo. So we went patiently back and filled the bucket again and were more careful this time, eventually pouring the sloshing water into a louvered water jug in the back inside wall of the school building. To get a drink, we used our own cups that we kept in a rack with cubbyholes just below the water jug. Or sometimes we took notebook paper, folded a sheet first one way and then the other way to form the cup itself, and creased it finally to fashion the lip. The water somehow always tasted better if we had been the ones who had fetched it and had made our own cups.
The room inside the school building was divided into two large areas. Most of the space was devoted to the desks that had flat tops, a hole for the inkwell on the right side, and a large space underneath the top to store books, pencils, and erasers. We were sectioned off into grades with all the people in the same grade sitting together. Yet we had some grades with only one representative. My teachers were Mrs. Howard and Mr. O.L. Grisso; Mrs. Velma Board Bennett and Mrs. Verda Hamilton taught at Oolite before I came. Our teacher would give each grade an assignment, and when we were expected to be finished, he or she would call out something like, "It's fourth grades time to recite," and we would gather our books and papers and mount another platform where the instructor would sit at his or her desk and hear us go over the assignment we had just completed. It would work that way with each subject until we broke for recess or lunch.
Although I lived close enough to go home for lunch, most of the other students brought their own in small shiny metal buckets rather than the common lunch box. Many times lunch was what was left over from breakfast; fried eggs, biscuits, and bacon, but some ate baloney, Dixie loaf, or liver cheese sandwiches smeared with yellow mustard on white bread. We would sit and eat on the porch if the weather permitted, or in the winter when it was too cold to sit outside, we sat at our desks and ate. After stuffing ourselves quickly, we hurried out to play in whatever weather there was to greet us. There were no snow days, because we all lived so close to the school that transportation was no problem. There were a few students who didn't live in Oolite, but who walked everyday through the woods to reach the school, like the Kendalls or the kids from Paradise Bottom; Margaret Popham, Judy Cole, and Velma and Gary Holloway. When spring came, we often went on field trips when the teacher would point out various trees and plants that we should know, often warning us to watch out for poison ivy or poison oak. Besides what I had learned from my father, I got to know the names of most trees by sight and learned what they were good for, whether they were right to burn in a wood stove, to build with, or whether they flowered in the spring, or had peeling bark like a sycamore or shagbark hickory.
We learned that dogwoods often bore v-shaped limbs to carve into what many people called "slingshots" but what we termed "gumbows". Cutting up an old inner tube into strips about an inch wide, and sewing on a piece of leather for the pocket, we soon fashioned a weapon we used for launching marble-sized rocks at innocent birds perched on tree limbs. Rarely did we ever strike at what we were shooting, but we were convinced that we were big game hunters sure to bring down a deer in time.
On our field trips, we were especially alert to spy blackberry bushes because we knew that in mid-summer there would be enough dark berries bowing from the thick, thorny bushes to make a cobbler, or we would eat the juicy berries out of hand and find ourselves at the end of day with the dark purple stain on our hands, and covered at our belt lines with itchy red spots that adults identified as chiggers. Our cure was to paint them with clear fingernail polish, content that we could feel the last throes of death of those pesky little insects that menaced our bodies.
Sometimes in late winter, the flooding river would threaten to invade our little schoolhouse. At these times, it was not possible to play outside with the river almost lapping at our doorsteps. So rather than playing outside, one of our teachers, Mr. Grisso, would take down a book from our cabinet that we called a library. He would slowly open the pages of Tom Sawyer, Hoosier Schoolmaster, Oliver Twist, Tom Brown School Days, or Huckleberry Finn and begin to read to us, all of us, from first to eighth grades, with the words brought to life in the lilt of his voice, in the expression on his face, in the rhythm of the passage itself. Sometimes he would read long segments, even whole chapters, and we would let our imaginations roam with the words and cart ourselves off to London, England, St. Petersburg, Missouri or rural Indiana. Somehow they all seemed to come alive in Mr. Grisso's voice.
With the stories we read in school, along with television and radio, we slowly began to realize that there were other places. Few homes at the time had working televisions, but many had big box radios tuned to the "Grand Ole Opry" on Saturday night listening to Kitty Wells, Hank Snow, and Roy Acuff, and playing the kinds of music that seemed to interpret our world. I have a vivid memory of one Saturday night and hearing Hank Williams sing "Your Cheating Heart" as it spilled out of the open window into the cool night air. I wondered to myself just what the singer was talking about, for in this innocent time the world of adulthood had not really touched me yet.
Most of the people who lived in Oolite are dead now, even some around my own age; many of those still alive live in far-off places, miles and miles from that place where many of us grew up. Oolite, Kentucky is no more, but the memories of people and place still beckon me to an earlier time - a time when life seemed simple, where what was wrong, and what was right was as clear as a Kentucky spring day, where playing with our classmates and eating a hardy supper of pinto beans cooked with fatback, cornbread, fried potatoes, a green onion, and maybe even blackberry cobbler seemed to be the center of our existence. Sometimes, amid the twisted complexities of modern life, I want to go back and roam the hills, play with my playmates, answer the school bell, rummage through old drift piles, and meet once again the place where I first learned that the really basic things in life, God, family, and friends, are what ultimately matter.
My sincere thanks to Mary Greer, Carl Embrey, Jr., Verna Biddle, and Verda Hamilton for jogging and correcting my memory at times. Marshall Myers.