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FALL HAYRIDE

 It was September 14, 1957, a beautiful early fall Saturday night.  I was so excited.  This would be my first date with Milan Hart. 


 My Grandma Dame was an active member of the local Rebekah Lodge and at this point in time, the Lodge had organized a  chapter of Theta Rho which was a girls’ club affiliated with the Independent Order of Oddfellows and our first big event was a hayride and I had invited Milan, whom I knew only from church, to go with me.  


He was very handsome, with dark brown hair and beautiful chocolate brown eyes, and we were so young.  I had turned 14 in August and he was still a month away from his 14th birthday in October.  His mother was having a hard time with this.  He was the oldest of her five children, but was always her “little boy” and she was not happy with the thought of sharing him with me.  But she had known my family for years.  The two families of “Hawks” and “Jennings” all grew up in the Flatwoods/Brice area, Brice being another name for Bennett Spring in the early days.  So that helped the situation.


The details of this hayride were printed in the Lebanon newspaper because even then I was writing for the church and social pages.  I kept the clipping because I have kept in a huge pile of scrapbooks everything I have ever written, and Milan, always the romantic one, eventually matted and framed it for me as a reminder of our first date.


According to the clipping we had a wiener roast at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Floyd Butler, then we all piled on to a truck donated by the T.H. Rogers Lumber Company, and driven by Orval Smart, for the hayride.  Mr. and Mrs. Butler and Mrs. Smart came  along as chaperones because we were such a wild bunch of kids as you can tell by the guest list below.


Boys attending included Donald and David Pearcy, Mike Brown, Ivan Eilenstine, “Sonny” Kelly, Bill Bauer, Dale Hite, Jerry O’Quinn, Jimmy Bohannon (yes THE Jim Bohannon, host of the nationally syndicated radio talk show on Westwood One) Jimmy McClure, and of course Milan Hart.


Theta Rho girls who attended were Martha Pickens, Mary Jones, Judy Jones, Wanda Stewart, Carol Fields, Wilma Stewart, Kay Aldridge, Donna Huitt, Diane Cowden, Billy Lopeman, Georgia Justice, Bonnie Eilenstine, Janet Davis, Pat Monnersmith, Betty Brown, and me.


I have purposely not paired them up as I did in the original column.  Even though it has been 61 years I would not want to fan the flames of jealousy just in case one of the attendees might say “I never knew you dated HIM” or “You never told  me you went to a hayride with HER.”


© Joan Rowden Hart 2017
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