I remember the streetcar line that ran from
The streetcar ran next to the train tracks for most of the route, and on the highway for parts of the route. When a coal burning locomotive came up the train track, all the women would go to running across the highway, because the soot from the engine smoke would get all over their clothes.
It seemed that every streetcar stop had one of those green sheds to keep patrons out of the rain. Those green sheds slowly passed away over time. The last one I remember seeing was at Ponce De Leon and
The streetcars would sometimes hook together and
run with one driver during rush hour, and my father told many tales of things that took place in that almost empty car in the rear. The streetcars were electric, and I believe they ran on Direct current, as opposed to Alternating current. I believe there was a building in
downtown
I think the streetcars had a spur line just north of
Charles Gustafson wrote “who can forget the Fair Oaks Drive In ?” I can’t, because it was literally in my back yard.
It is now a maintenance facility for The City of Smyrna, but I remember when it was a sweet potato farm. When I was not much bigger than the potato plants, my mother warned me sternly to stay out of that field because there was an old well out there that was never covered properly. I
don’t know how I missed it because the fringe of that field was prime blackberry picking ground. My Grandpa, B. G. “Buck” Goggins sold his sweet potato field to The Martin Theatre Company from
The bulldozers moved in, and a few months later we had a fine drive-in theatre. At first, it was not paved. They brought in truckloads of crushed,
light colored, sand and stone to cover the red clay, and it never got muddy after a rain. Not many of the county roads were paved either, and they were always muddy after a rain. The old folks would say that it would always rain right after the county road scrapers came down
I well remember the night that the drive-in showed the first movie. It was a Roy Rogers feature, in Technicolor. My entire family, and a couple of neighbors, sat on the
trunk of a large oak tree that had been pushed aside during construction. I sat on that tree many times before I realized how easy it was to sneak in without paying. I could even lie in my bed at night and hear every word through open windows. That is, until
the Korean War. It was about that time that the B-47 was being built at the bomber plant. Many people have forgotten the tremendous noise that continued nightly while the Air Force kept those jets running constantly. They could be heard at least ten miles, and no one that
I knew complained. It meant jobs and to complain would have been unpatriotic.
There was no fence around the drive-in and many grade school boys
simply walked through the back and sat down. I remember once when the manager decided to chase me out of the theatre. I was so young and small that I ran under a speaker wire that was attached to a speaker on a car window. The manager hit that wire and broke the car
window. I could hear it, but I never looked back. That man decided that if he couldn’t stop us, he would use us. He came up with a scheme that was brilliant. He gave us all a “job”. Once a week a circular was
printed that showed the movies that were to be featured the next week. He let it be known that we could all get in the theatre free if we would deliver those circulars house-to-house in all the new subdivisions that were springing up around the area. We didn’t receive any pay and he, or someone else
who worked for the theatre, would drive us to the different subdivisions each week. He sometimes purchased soft drinks, and gave us day old popcorn.
I can’t remember if my first income producing job was at The Fair Oaks Drive-In or as a curb hop for The Pork Chop Restaurant on
As I became older, I was given a paying job at the
When I made the football team at
Some of my friends knew where I worked and they really took advantage. I could see them run down an embankment and jump in a car with only one teenage driver (after the vehicle
had gone past the box office). Bobby Sinyard probably was the most blatant. He would pull up to the box office and have his date crouch down in the floorboard, with another couple in the back floorboard looking up at me like smiling frogs. He
would request one ticket and I would only smile. Carolyn Byers Hurt was the cashier, and she had to see some of that, but we never said anything.
Some of the guys would climb up the back of that tall theatre screen during the movie and wave over the top. I must admit that I climbed the screen during the daytime, but I never gathered enough courage to do it at night. Other than pretending to be sick, I
only played hooky from school one day in my life. Several of us boys simply hung around the drive-in and surrounding woods all day and talked and smoked. I never smoked real cigarettes that day, but I did find some “rabbit tobacco.” I was bored to death, and I realized that school was much more fun.
One day the Martin Brothers announced that they were going to arrive on a goodwill tour and visit all their local theatres. Our manager, Floyd Perkins, had us
clean up the place as if we were expecting the commanding general from
My mother told me that she would pay my insurance if I could pay for my own car, and I went to
Sometime after I left, the name of the theatre was changed to the Smyrna Drive-In, and the Fouts Brothers purchased the properties where my
Grandpa and two Uncles had lived. My old home place burned. Things would never be the same again, except in my mind.