We moved back from Atlanta the summer before I entered second grade. We lived within easy walking distance of Forest Hills Elementary. I was there from the 2nd to the 6th grade and I think I got a great education there. In fact I know I did. Forest Hills was attended by all white kids from the time I attended second grade through the first semester of my 6th grade year. The second semester the school was integrated. The white teacher I had was gone and was replaced by a black teacher. I don’t recall if any kids were transferred out of my class but I feel certain there were and in their place were some black kids. I guess we were about 50\50. It didn’t really bother me that much. In fact one of the black kids and I got to be pretty good buddies. The thing that was so horrible about it was that many of the parents kept their kids home in protest. I’m sure that I wasn’t the only white kid that was there while they protested but it sure felt like it. It was my last year there. After that I attended a private school in Vestavia called Alliance Christian. I don’t know this for sure (but I’m going to ask!) but I don’t think I was sent to ACHS because my parents wanted me to get away from black people but because that felt like I could get a better education than I could at Fairfield. Plus my folks were (my Mom still is, my Dad passed away) devout Christians.

The second horrible event happened when I was maybe 16 or 17 years old. My Dad had bought some land in Altedena Valley and was planning on building a house. Naturally that meant selling ours. We never thought anything about it really. We put it on the market and began to show it. One day a white lady came and looked at the house and brought along a black friend of hers. The white lady didn’t want it but the black lady did. I’m not at all sure how they found out, but the neighbors caught wind of it and they obviously didn’t like the idea. I came home one night and out in front of my house was a big crowd of people chanting and yelling at us because we were going to sell to a black. Our yard was salted, eggs thrown at our house and threats made. Some of these people I knew! The people across the street were more or less the ring leaders and it caused all of us a great deal of anguish. In the end we didn’t sell. Again, I’m not sure why but we didn’t. Turns out that one of the neighbors who sort of spearheaded the whole thing moved out themselves in the middle of the night not long after that after selling their house to, you guessed it, blacks.

Now I’m not racist in the least and never have been. I think that those events, along with great parenting, prevented that.

Next…. The beginning of the Great Fall….

In 1965 there was still segregation going on and the next four years I went to school with all white kids but I’ll get into that later. Outside of going out back to play with Karen I don’t remember much about that time.  It’s funny how certain memories, weird memories, do come back though. I don’t know how it was or why they did it but I recall being hit in the side of the head with a rock while living there. I don’t know why and I don’t recall the pain so much but I do remember this kind of spinning my head did when it was hit. Not a dizziness really but like a bell ringing almost with the sound slowly fading out. Nothing after that. It didn’t knock me out thankfully and there was no real permanent damage done.

We didn’t live there long and soon we moved into the house where I truly grew up. 7101 Pine Tree Lane there in Fair Oaks. I still know our old phone number even. 786-3363. I didn’t know it then, but it was a wonderful and thrilling place to grow up. So many memories flood back as I think of that time.

We were the first house to be completed in the neighborhood and we were the first to move in. One block up one way ended and one block down the other way the road ended. The rest was woods and the woods were my playground. Often times I would leave in the morning and not be back for hours. As the subdivision grew the woods receded and I had to resort to my backyard. That in itself was not a bad thing give the fact that we had a huge backyard that was mostly a thinned out wooded area. In the very back I built a fine tree house. At least to me it was. It had one wall that would fold down and I could look out over the surrounding area for miles. It wasn’t particularly high but it was great. The city eventually carved off the back corner presumably to provide a better view for the traffic and with it took my tree house. I built a couple more but none compared to that one.

The very best thing about growing up there was the pool. Fair Oaks Swim and Tennis Club. Never was much of a tennis club but the pool was the greatest thing ever. During the summer I would spend hours and hours there, It was an L shaped pool with a fantastic high dive. I learned to do a lot of tricks off that board. A gainer (where one would spring forward off the board and flip backwards), the swan dive, the flying squirrel ( grab both ankles and pull back while diving head first), flips, can openers and all sorts of things. It was great fun. The down side to it is the fact that I paid for all that time in the water with ear infections that lead to my hearing problems. But if I had it to do over again I would in a heartbeat. I lived there until I got married the first time. It was a marvelous and magical place. Not without it’s problems however….

Our house was one of the first being built in the subdivision. It sat on top of a little hill and had a big backyard behind which there were woods. Initially there were just 4 or 5 houses on our street eventually turning into many homes. I got my first bike there and used to ride it down the long sloping hill towards the entrance of the neighborhood. There was a curve at the end of the street that always had dirt covering it. I slid around that curve several times getting road rash several times. Heading in the opposite direction the road ended for a while until they finished building the road that wound back around to the exit of the subdivision. I can remember seeing a chain gang working on that road. The best part, however, were the woods.

You could walk out the back of the house and go deep into the woods where you could find all sorts of things. First there was what I assume was an abandoned pig pen based on the old corn cobs lying around. Next to it was a huge persimmon tree. We used to have persimmon battles hurling the big orange fruit at each other. Going back even further, the woods consisted of a huge stand of pine trees with a blanket of pine straw on the ground. The ground was level and there were virtually no weeds or underbrush beneath the tress. What was so cool were the old abandoned cars scattered among the pines. Old cars. 1930’s and 1940’s automobiles with the doors and the hoods off and their engines removed. I would spend hours back in those woods playing.

I went to the first grade in Atlanta. I don’t remember the name nor do I remember any of the kids there but I do remember what the school building looked like. I can also recall my teacher although I haven’t clue of her name.

My fondest memories of living in Atlanta were Sunday mornings when we would often go out to the airport and eat breakfast. All of that has changed now but back then you could sit in the restaurant while looking through the big glass walls  as the planes took off and landed. It was big fun.

We were there a year give or take. My mother hated Atlanta and would always get lost every time she tried to go anywhere. I don’t know why we left but I can only assume it was because as great as Atlanta is it wasn’t home. So we moved back to Fairfield.