When I was a child Uncle John and Aunt Mary lived at about 895 North Military Avenue, Lawrenceburg, TN. Their house was two story brick. Behind the house was a large barn and several acres of land.

Around 1940, as a three year old, I can remember riding with Uncle John Schneider in his one horse buggy delivering milk around the area. I also remember visiting Aunt Mary Schneider with my parents and her serving home-made grape wine in very small glasses with stems. Sometimes I even was allowed to drink the wine. I would go with Aunt Mary to the barn to run ears of corn through the hand cranked sheller before we fed the chickens.

Uncle John passed away sometime in April of 1940s and Aunt Mary sold the place and moved to an apartment in a house at about 575 North Military Avenue across the stree from Depot Street. She lived there until she died suddenly on Saturday 3 January 1948. 

Aunt Mary had included me in her will to receive some First National Bank stock she owned. However, before she died, she removed me from the will and gave the stock to my younger brother Steve. She had the job of watching me while I was playing and thought I was too rowdy to deserve the stock. I was always jumping off the porch and pretending to be hurt. She didn't appreciate my humor.

Steve said there was a bit of a scandal over the stock. He only got one share. Mother always told him that there had been a will leaving him all the stock, but that it had disappeared after her death. If that is the case, he doesn't know how he wound up with one share. As an aside, he purchased more shares over the years with portions of his newspaper earnings, and then when he needed to sell it to help finance college, Dad bought it from him. Dad finally sold it when the bank merged with another bank.