1948-1962

I want to tell you a little bit about Colonial Road where we lived for fourteen years. In retrospect it was quite an interesting street and a tragic one. When we first moved there in 1948, it was just a country road, outside the city limits, and with only a dozen houses. Our home, 393, was the only new house on the street, built in an old apple orchard, the others all being pre- World War II vintage. It is about a mile long running from Poplar, one of the longest and busiest streets in Memphis, and ending two blocks from 393 Colonial in the sheriff's horse pasture. We didn't build the house, but it had been built by someone for his own use, although before he could move in, he had changed jobs and moved away. So we were the lucky people to buy it.

My husband and I both enjoyed gardening and we spent many happy hours growing vegetables, building a rose garden, and developing perennial beds. In the summer when the apples were ripe, we would invite our friends out to pick all they could use. I always said I never wanted to leave this home, but when the opportunity came for us to take a job and live in Egypt, of course, we had to sell it.

By the time we sold the house in 1962, Colonial Road had become what real estate dealers call a "prestige location".

And that it was. Among our neighbors by then was a past president of Optimist Club International; a nationally known amateur golfer who also owned one of the largest Chevrolet dealerships in the state; several doctors, one of whom was certainly a nationally known surgeon and a professor at the University of Tennessee Medical School. Two doors down from us lived the Mayor of Memphis in a $65,000 home. He also owned a chain of laundry and dry cleaning establishments.

At one time or another during our residence on Colonial Road, and for part of the time all three families, by the names of King, Duke, and Prince lived on this short stretch of street. Not least, among these well known figures, but most inconspicuously so far as the neighbors were concerned, was an internationally known cotton fiber specialist by the name of Burt Johnson.

It was a tragic street, too. One woman in the next block whom we didn't know, however, committed suicide by jumping off the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge. Then one spring the sheriff at the end of the street was cleaning out his swimming pool, and was electrocuted. A neighbor standing by, and seeing that something was wrong, tried to help, jumped in and was electrocuted, too.

Just a few doors down and across the street lived a family with four boys, all of whom were friends of our children. One evening after dinner, Glenn, the 18 year old son, was looking over an antique gun which they had just acquired, and accidentally shot and killed, Kenny, his 16 year old brother.

Since we have moved away, two houses have been badly damaged by fire, one of which had to be torn down and a new one built. The home of the boy who was killed was unoccupied one summer when we were in Memphis because it hadn't been repaired after the fire..

Then in 1964 while we were in Memphis again, the 18 year old son of the family across the street from our old home was driving his sports car with two other fellows. They had just finished exams at Memphis State, and were going to Mississippi for an outing, when Mason lost control of the car, crashed into an embankment, and killed one of his passengers and badly injured and blinded the other one. All three boys had been friends of our son, Richard, while we lived there. The boy who was killed was the son of one of Burt's associates at the Cotton Council, and lived right around the corner from Colonial Road.

We seemed to have carried some of the misfortune from Colonial with us, too, because our Richard had a serious accident within 6 months of our leaving, and I had to fly home from Egypt to be with him while he was in the hospital and arrange for his recuperation.

However, while we lived there, during which time all three of our children graduated from high school, it was a happy place for us. But the last time I was in Memphis, our pleasant house and all the remaining old apple trees, and the rose garden and perennial beds we had so lovingly planted had been torn away for a completely new development with several expensive houses being built on our acre and a half lot. Although I hadn't owned the house in almost thirty years, I wept to see it gone.