I was asked to write more about growing up in Beattyville, so I'm giving it a try...
There’s an ‘I love So Ports’ that posts a lot of interesting (at least to me) stuff, but the South Portsmouth of my memory is Beattyville….when I was a boy, Beattyville was South Portsmouth…even though that wasn’t really its name…(there is a Beattyville in Ky, not sure where). I think the real name was Thompson Tract because the Thompson family had originally owned the land. Far as I know, Matt Hansen, who owned much of Beattyville, had a Thompson for a Mother…
In many ways, Matt Hansen was Beattyville. He had a small farm that bordered the place and he was always around. He was a big guy with a big smile. I worked for him several summers but I pretty much had the run of his farm year-round. I gathered eggs for him, fed his chickens, made cornbread for his hounds (after he taught me how)…He had an old red Ford roadster that didn’t have a top and he’d let me drive it (never off the farm, said it wasn’t safe).
Beattyville was sledding off the RR crossing in front of our house, of the old once upon a time ice cream stand across the street from the brick house where Barbara Craycraft lived (we lived there when we first came)…
I remember sitting out there on summer nights counting the stars and listening to the ghost stories as told by Vinson Euton ’n Sammy Piatt…those ghost stories got me a bedroom all to myself when we moved up the road. Their stories of Old Shiny Eyes scared my brothers so much they let me have a room all to myself because it had a closet where they were sure Old Shiny Eyes laid in wait for them…
I learned to swim in the Ohio River at the boat landing at the end of the street. There was a large willow tree that arched out over the river and someone had hung a swing rope there…it was a pretty good drop and one of the tests of courage that little boys had to endure growing up in that time..
There were steamboats on the river then…brought out of retirement because most of the fuel oil went to the war effort…lots of things went to the war effort in those days…Ration books were a grown-up thing that kids didn’t really have to think about…Everyone had a victory garden and we collected papers and tin cans for ‘The War’….
The War was a big thing in our lives and we fought it through the streets of the village with make-believe rifles…of course, sometimes the river and the hills became Sherwood Forest and we made bows and arrows and fought with those…we can thank Vinson ’n Sam for a lot of that…
Wouldn’t be allowed today, far too dangerous for our coddled young people …Not that the young people of today aren’t at least as tough as we were, or thought we were, they just have a different life to contend with and, truth be told, I don’t envy them...
When you think back over your childhood, you tend idealize, recalling the good ’n forgetting the bad parts…The War, the telegrams that never brought good news, the black wreaths in the windows, the polio and typhoid and scarlet fever…we didn’t rush off to the doctor for every little scratch (’n some died because of it) nor the dentist if it could be handled at home…we swam in a polluted river, drank polluted water, gotta wonder how so many of us managed to survive…just one of the things that old people say to each other, “didn’t know I was going to live so long or I’d’ve taken better care of m’self”..,
Still, I wouldn’t trade my childhood for anything that todays kids have...
Over the next few weeks, I'll try 'n write more about the streets 'n alleyways of Beattyville...Memories are inexact sometimes 'n I would welcome those of anyone who might have shared that time and place...David Smith
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