Stories & Recollections of Etowah . . .
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as told by ~ Glenda Maxwell Simpson
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Growing Up in 1940s Etowah ~ in the Cabin that was Etowah's "Colored School"
 In 1947, the Maxwell Family bought the cabin that was once Etowah's "Colored School." Alice Helen Crook Maxwell, Glenn Cecil Maxwell, Geraldine, Glenda (younger daughter)
We moved to Etowah, NC in 1947 when I was about 15 months old! My father Glenn C. Maxwell & Alice Helen Crook Maxwell moved our family of 4 there from West Asheville. My father was an Army Veteran and after getting out of the service wanted a place out in the country away from the city life! I am sure when they found this place my mom thought my father had moved her to the ends of the earth! We have many good memories of living in this “little colored school house”. This little house/school had 3 rooms consisting of a long kitchen, a living room & one bedroom. No running water, no bathroom, as all homes have today! No outside toilet so my Dad had to dig one and build a building around it! We carried water from a well down in the holler that had a hand pump that you had to prime the pump to get the water started coming out to fill your buckets. Then you had to climb up the long path to the house and try not to spill the water! I can remember my Mom would carry 2 five gallon buckets while my sister and I carried the little gallon lard buckets equal to a gallon up the hill and sloshing water out as we went. I guess by the time we got to the top of the trail we probably had a bucket with very little water in it! I remember, . . . the snows and riding down the long hill toward the well in a dish pan for a sled! . . . the yard, flowers & bushes as my Mom played “There ain’t no bears out tonight” with my older sister Geraldine & me. . . . the cold winters in that little house. It was so cold. People did not have insulation in homes back in the day! My Mom would hang blankets over the windows to help keep out the cold air! We heated with coal and had to carry it in with coal buckets! . . . the apple trees and sitting on a blanket in the summer time! . . . our 2 horses Queen & Nick and my Dad plowing the garden. . . . chickens, gathering eggs, slopping the pigs, climbing trees & playhouses! . . . running down through the woods on a trail that we walked to Aunt Clota & Uncle Jim Phillips home to catch the school bus. My Dad walked this same trail to ride to work with his Uncle Jim as they both worked at Biltmore Dairy Farms over in Biltmore, NC. I remember , . . . walking to Holly Springs Union Chapel for Sunday School & Preaching on Sundays. . . . walking to this same church for my Mom to quilt and walking to Bible School there. . . . Mom checking the yard for snakes before she would let us go out to play! . . . picking blackberries in those same one gallon buckets that we carried water up the hill in! . . . bees & huge hornet nest built in ivy bushes, throwing rocks at them, hitting the nest and being stung multiple times! . . . my First Grade Teacher, Faye Wright, coming to this little house to teach me! . . . my Dad reading the Bible, after he got home from working the evening shift, late into the night. We lived in this little house until my brother David was born in 1953. Wonderful years in that little house, the old "Colored School” ! |