Lebanon Church Road
When I was a boy, our farm was located on Lebanon Church Road. Why it had such a name -is confusing; no one could remember there ever being a church on this road. Like all farming communities, we knew everyone on our road, and all their children rode the same school bus (Bus 54).
The first farm on the road belonged to Reed Finley, Sr. It was the biggest farm and had the biggest farm house. Mr. Finley, Sr. was a retired horse trader, and the grandfather of my best friend, Marlon. He was small and wiry and his wife, Big Mama, was oversized.
Next came the Schmidt farm and their two children: Larry and Teresa. Larry must have had OCD, because even in the middle of the winter, whenever he got on the school bus he would go down the aisles opening and closing all the windows. Mr. Schmidt wore a soiled t-shirt under faded over-alls. He had his own sorghum mill in his barn.
The Duncan's lived next to our house (three children-Jimmy, Linda and Donnie). One of my jobs was to feed the Duncan pigs with fallen rotten apples from our orchard. In return, Mr. Duncan gave my father one pig per season for slaughter. When I was ten years old, as my father and Mr. Duncan were taking a pig to slaughter, the pig figured things out and managed to jump out of the truck and run away. My father never told me what ultimately happened to this specific pig.
Down the road from our house, at the opposite end of Lebanon Church Road, lived Reed Finely, Jr., his wife Anne and their three children-Marlon, Reeda and Eddie. Marlon was my boyhood friend. He practically flunked high school. Later, however, he managed to finish a school of Respiratory Therapy.
For years, all the children on Lebanon Church Road sat together on Bus 54 and rode to the county schools in Lone Oak. Lone Oak was more a drug store surrounded by a few houses than an actual town. From Lone Oak, it was still fifteen miles to Paducah (population 30,000). The most notable thing that ever happened in Lone Oak was the year one of the local boys set fire to the high school. It burned to the ground.