Remembering: 54 years ago this month we moved to Chesney's little acre on Maloneyville Road which was a part of the Jess Chesney Farm. Jess's son Ross had built a block flattop house on the property and then moved off to Chicago to make it big in the Auto Industry. It was his 4 room block house, concrete floors, no bathroom that we moved into. To us it was Paradise. James had been taken off production work and put on hourly wages at $1.10 an hour and we were paying $50 a month rent. Uncle Jess said we could rent Ross's house for $5.00 a month and any work that we did to it would be applied to the rent. Just putting the water in for $120.00 paid for 2 years rent. So as I said it was Paradise to us. At that time there was probably a total of 12 houses from the George Maloney Home to Tazewell Pike where the Shell is now. Many of those have now passed on. The Roberts, Bakers, Sharps, Onks, Bridges, Halls, Graves, and the Jess Chesneys and Lorn Chesneys to name a few. James mom and dad bought the Jess Chesney place after Jess's wife Cora died of injuries from a car wreck and he remarried and built a home just above the old Farmhouse. James and I had only lived here about 2 years when that happened. About the only traffic passing our house were the people going to work at Hillcrest North and the Workhouse now known as the Knox County Penal Farm. The Jess Chesneys living on one side of us left early for work at the Standard Knitting Mill and Dewey Graves on the other side of us left early for his job. So it was like this was our little town. They all went to bed real early and James would get home about 11:30 at night from his job at the Standard Knitting Mills. We would eat supper at that time and didn't think anything at all about going out in the yard at 12:00 at night and taking a shower. We did not have a bathroom and only running cold water. We lived there for 10 years and it was only when we built this house that we had a bathroom (actually 2) and hot water. Many changes have taken place in the 54 years we have been here. The Roberts built a new home just past their old one and their sons built houses around them. Some of the Onks children now live in the old Onks place and grandchildren have built close. A lot of property has been sold over the years and now a lot of the Babelay property is for sale. It is sad to see the old Crouger Graves house being torn down. He spent many days and many hours sitting on his front porch. My children were free to roam the fields around us with no fear of harm coming to them. Whether it was going to the creek or picking blackberries, walking on the road, playing in the yard or the neighbors yard I never worried about them. We never locked our doors because we never worried about anyone coming in that wasn't invited. But today we have security alarms on all the doors and windows monitored by the police department. The Workhouse where 9 months and 29 days were the maximum is now the Prison. We talk about time changing but it is not always for the better.
