My Dad, James L. Nelson, went to Red Hill School in 1929. He was six years old and in first grade. He walked about a mile from where he lived to the school. Lots of the kids had to walk a lot farther than that. Every day on the way to and from school, James and a friend of his, a boy with the last name of Moore, would have to go by the graveyard to get to school. The Moore boy would have to stop and pray at a certain tombstone every day on the way there and on the way home. James would wait for him to finish and then they would continue walking down that dirt road home. James wondered what he was praying about. Red Hill School was a one room school. It was a big room, about 24x32, wood frame, with a potbelly stove in the middle of it. There was only one teacher for all grades. There was six to eight kids for each grade. The teacher would have the other kids in the other grades to study while she was teaching one grade. This was amazing to James that just that one teacher could teach all those grades and keep everybody in line. Red Hill School was on the left side of the road when going toward Whitwell from Red Hill. There were no graves around the school but the graveyard was on the other side of the road. There now is a big graveyard on the same side as the school was on years ago. There was a pump outside with a handle on it that was called a pitcher pump. There was a well in the ground there. You brought your own drinking cup, to get a drink of water out you had to push that handle up and down to get the water to come out. You also had to bring your own lunch. James had a biscuit wrapped in newspaper. The kids who were a little better off had light bread. James would go swimming in a creek just down the road from where the Privetts lived. He would go swimming with his cousin, James Thompson. The water was just about knee deep but it felt good on those hot summer days. They would catch bull frogs in the culvert that wasn't far from the school. James Thompson would dress them and cook them. He'd have to keep the lid on to keep them from jumping out of the pan. They were supposed to be on their way to get milk in a glass jug but they made stops on the way. They also liked to catch crawfish. James's daddy, Dennis Nelson, was helping build the road from Whitwell to Palmer. This was why they were living at Red Hill. They lived one winter on Whitwell mountain in a tent. Cold ain't no name for that mountain in the wintertime! That tent was pretty warm though. One day, James and a Rollins boy were sent to the saw mill to get wood in the wagon that James's daddy had got him. He had bought James a billy goat to pull the wagon. The billy goat was pulling James, the Rollins boy and the wood in the wagon down that steep hill. They didn't have a brake on the wagon. That billy goat had to go in a fast run to keep the wagon from running over him coming down that hill. They were taking the wood to the tent. They had a little turn to make and that wagon turned over on top of them. The goat went one way, James and the Rollins boy went the other way, and the wood went another way! They got skint up a little bit but nothing too serious! James remembers a pretty girl at Red Hill School who was on crutches. She had lost a leg in an accident and couldn't go out and play with the other kids at school because of this. He felt bad for her. The Depression hit during this time and the work on the road was stopped. The road was shut down and James and his family moved to So. Pittsburg during this time because his daddy lost his job when the road work was stopped. They moved to Billy Goat Hill in So. Pittsburg and lived in a tent on the mountainside. All they owned was a green Model T Ford truck, some pots and pans, a stove, a lamp and that tent. James's daddy couldn't get work so his Mama, Pearl Nichols Nelson, worked whenever she could at the Hosiery Mill. James started going to Richard Hardy School but the other kids made fun of him because he was the new kid and because he lived in a tent. The other kids had houses. They were living in houses on company land that belonged to the cement company. They lived there because their Dads were working for the cement company. James's daddy would find ways to make a little money. He would walk up the mountain to the apple orchard on So. Pitts. mountain and pick two bushels of apples, carry them on his back in a sack, walk back down the mountain and walk to town to try and sell them for whatever he could get out of them. James would be right there with his daddy to help in any way he could. Dennis, James's daddy, could climb like a monkey too. One time at the Iron place that was in town, he bet a guy that got paid to work on the furnace pipes that he could climb up those pipes faster than he could. The guy took him up on the bet and when they said "go", Dennis took off up that pipe. When he got about half-way up the pipe, he looked down and saw the other guy walking off. He knew he had been beat so he didn't even try to race him. Those pipes were hundreds of feet in the air but this didn't faze him. He was described as "much man" and was strong as an ox. He worked for every dollar he made. He took care of his family and made them strong-willed like him. James Nelson went to Richard Hardy from the second grade up thru the eighth grade. This was from 1930-1938. He graduated from Richard Hardy in 1938. He has been described as the class clown by some of his classmates. He was his own person, though. He was not a follower of the crowd. This caused quite a few fights after school! In the Springtime, you could hear the drills from the cement plant going "chug, chug, chug". After hearing these all day, James would get so sleepy he would fall asleep and soon became known as "sleepy". These drills were old timey drills. They had a rope and bit on them and the drills churned in the ground. Over sixty years later James can still hear those drills going "chug-chug-chug". Richard Hardy was a school that was kept up inside and out. In those days, you didn't walk on the front lawn. You would be in trouble if you did. They wanted the lawn kept up nicely! They also had tennis courts. And all that marble inside is prettier than I can describe! James's teachers for sixth, seventh, and eighth grades were Juanita Dodson and Reba Kennedy. Mrs. Kennedy was a little woman but she was big on paddling! She didn't have a lot of patience and so she didn't care to paddle you! But, she was a good teacher. Mrs. Dodson had just got out of college when she was a teacher at Richard Hardy. She was a good teacher and she cared for the kids. She cried when she would have to paddle you so the kids tried to be good so they wouldn't get a paddling. They felt sorry for her when they made her have to paddle them. They didn't like to make her cry. On graduation day, James was the only one wearing overalls so he didn't want his picture made but the teacher told him to get in the picture. James says even though it has been over sixty years he still remembers how he felt about this. That is what made him a survivor, though, and a very strong person. It taught him to know how to be able to get through anything. Experiences like these can't be bought and James is a rich man by having these memories and using them to help others learn how to survive in this old world.