Schoolhouse Hollow.....

We moved to Beattyville right before I started Third Grade.......It was wartime ‘n a lot of people who had lived there were gone...the men either in the military, or away working in war industry. A lot of the women, also...
Anyway, from the Third Grade thru the Ninth, South Portsmouth School played a big part in my life.....as it did in most peoples’ lives back in those gritty days.
There wuz no television tho’ radio wuz popular...movies were a once in a while treat ‘n then not for ev’ryone....
I remember Mom crossing the street (would’a been an alley almost anywhere else) to play Bingo at Granny Williams’ little house....I c’n still hear Granny Williams calling out, “I thirty-dirty” followed by a laugh....ev’ry time.....’n there were quilting bees ‘n such, but mostly there wuz Church ‘n The School......
Now, Church wuz big back in the ‘forties.....durn near ever’one went ‘n not just once a week....there were meetings, ‘n socials, ‘n war drives of ever kit ‘n caboodle.(now there’s a phrase you don’t hear these days) but, the really big social events, the ones that almost everyone attended, the ones that got hashed ‘n rehashed wuz the events that happened ‘round the schoolhouse hollow at the South Portsmouth School.....
There wuz the Halloween party ‘n the Christmas Pageant ‘n other doin’s around almost every holiday there wuz but, there wuz ballgames......Basketball games.....’n they were packed....full houses every game.....See, basketball wuz a year-round sport in eastern Kentucky, heck, all over Kentucky ‘n Indiana....it wuzn’t just folks in Beattyville....there were basketball hoops dangling from barns ‘n garages ‘n poles ‘n almost any place you c’d hang one......no netting, of course, just hoops
‘n kids played year round....there wuz great basketball played in rinky-dink gyms in little ol schools around ever’ second or third corner.....way back then.....a much more innocent time......
‘Most ever’one walked to school...’course, ‘most ever’one lived close enuff to walk plus there wuz the added incentive of gas rationing....During the war years, a lot of people put their cars on blocks ‘n hung the tires on the walls of their garage.....if they had a car ‘n if they had a garage....’n even the few people that had both car ‘n enuff ration tickets to buy gas wudn’t about to waste either on on taking a kid to school...nope....kids walked.
Wudn’t a long walk for me ‘n my brothers, across the tracks, along the two lane blacktop that was Route 23, around the curve ‘n up the hollow......when I wuz a boy, that hollow wuz about a mile long but when I wuz grown, it shrank to maybe an eighth of a mile...funny how things shrink when you grow.....
At the mouth of the hollow was a triangular-shaped field where the bigger boys played baseball in the Spring...
there wuz a creek (crick, back then) that ran the length of the hollow...it wuz off to the side ‘n wuz a playground of sorts.....we’d play Tarzan (Johnny Weismuller, the ‘real’ Tarzan) ‘n swing from the wild grapevines that grew along the side.....sumtimes they’d hold but more often than not, they’d turn loose ‘n we’d take a tumble....
we took a lot of tumbles back then....every game we played seemed to involve tumbling of one sort or another....what with King of the Hill, crabapple fights, ‘n a running game of football that resembled nothing more than a gang fight.....
‘Course, when y’ don’t have teevee or video games to occupy your mind ‘n your time, you’re apt to come up with some doozy games....
I remember one afternoon that we spent half-naked, knocking down a huge hornets nest......I don’t remember anyone going home in tears but I c’d be mistaken in that memory......memory plays tricks like that, y’know....it did to me ‘n my friends ‘n it’ll do the same to you.