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For a
while, John and his brother, Clyde, owned a truck together and were in the
business of hauling apples and peaches from North Carolina back to
Livingston to sell. They also hauled feed to Horace Myers’ grocery store
on Church Street in Livingston. Later John and his brother-in-law, Elmer
Sells, went into business together on West Main Street where they operated
a gas station and garage. Part of the service that customers of this
service station received when stopping in for gas included the oil in the
car being checked, the windshield cleaned, the tires checked, and the
water level in the radiator checked. (We have to look hard nowadays to
find a place that will even pump gas for customers!)
John later
bought Elmer’s share of this business. In 1952, John built a Shell service
station that also had a small grocery store in one part of the building.
This business was located near the Cedar View Inn on West Main Street, and
it was while John ran this business that one of his good customers,
Millard Brown, who was then postmaster of Livingston Post Office, offered
him a job there. He called him on the phone one day when John was out
working in the garden. When John got to the phone Mr. Brown asked, “You
wanna go to work?” When John met with him the next day, Mr. Brown hired
him on the spot, and for the next 21-1/2 years, John carried the mail in
Livingston. While in the service station business, John and Jean bought a
home from Ernest and Grace Bilbrey that had been partially completed. John
and Jean finished building the home, and they lived there for a number of
years. They paid a total of $4,200 for the house and two acres of ground.
Many good
folks lived in the neighborhood, including John and Mary Sadler and their
children. Right next door, Mr. Elliott Copeland, his wife, Alice, and
their daughter, Alta, lived. Elliott Copeland was known far and wide as
being a sort of jack of all trades and a master of many of those trades,
too. He was an excellent gunsmith as well as a carpenter. His hands
fashioned many beautiful pieces of furniture. While he didn’t believe in
using any kind of varnish on his finished pieces, he was a firm believer
in the use of tongue oil, and polished each item until it had a beautiful
glow.
Alta was
the only child of Elliott and Alice Copeland. They had other daughters,
but all but Alta died at birth. After her parents both died, Alta
lived on alone in the house next door to the Hunters until the road on
West Main Street was widened and improved. At that time, she moved from
the house to a small mobile home she bought that was placed a little
further up on the hill from the Hunter home. The Copeland home was sold
and later moved to another location. John and Jean had purchased property
where the house they live in now was built, and were in the process of
having this home constructed when a tornado came through Livingston and
Overton County in 1973, at which time Alta’s mobile home was totally
destroyed. She was at home when the tornado struck and did not get out of
the mobile home before it was blown away. John and Jean’s home was spared
from the damaging winds of the tornado, and when they realized Alta’s home
had been blown away, John began searching for Alta, not knowing whether
she would be found, and if so, if she could possibly be alive. After
looking for her for some time, John was finally able to locate her under
some paneling in a nearby field. Alta sustained some very serious injuries
that required a 5-month stay in a hospital in Nashville, followed by 9
months in Overton County Nursing Home. When she was well enough to come
home, it was to John and Jean’s home on West Main Street that she was
taken. When they moved into their new home on Longview Lane, she moved
with them. She lived with them there for the remainder of her life.
John and
Jean have always been a couple who did things together. Jean is one of the
few wives I know of who shares the husband’s interest in sports programs
on television. She is as familiar with the current sports teams on
television as most men are, and she and John watch a lot of ESPN
together. They once owned a houseboat that was docked at Keisling Bottom
back in the days when the Corps of Engineers were not anywhere near as
strict as they are now. Charles Cooper helped John build the houseboat
which was kept afloat by barrels that had been welded together. The
Hunters were always very generous about sharing it with others, and at
least two young couples from Livingston spent their honeymoons on this
very houseboat. It was also taken out by some young folks one day, but
these kids didn’t get very far when they ran out of gas. One of the boys
had to pull the boat back to Keisling Bottom by walking along the
shoreline pulling a rope that was attached to the houseboat while the
other one did the steering. Thank goodness they didn’t get too far up the
lake before running out of gas! Jean has a lot of happy memories of the
good times she and John had on the houseboat. They slept through a storm
one night that blew down the tree the houseboat was tied up to, and when
they awoke the next morning, they had drifted quite a distance down the
lake into a little hollow.
Nearly all
of John and Mary Sadler’s children spent a lot of time at the Hunter house
while they were growing up, especially David, who John and Jean think of
as their own. David and Johnny were hardly ever together very long at a
time until they were in a fight. And no matter where they were, it
wouldn’t be very long at all until they would end up dueling it out. On
the way home from a picnic at the lake one day, with the car crowded with
other children, too, David and Johnny got into it, and after a few minutes
of this, John got tired of it, pulled the car over to the side of the
road, put the two boys out, and told them they had to walk the rest of the
way home. He drove off and left them standing by the side of the road, but
he didn’t go too far until he stopped and waited for them to come walking
down the road, which they did. The boys climbed back in the car and
behaved themselves the rest of the way home. There isn’t enough space here
to go into all the tales that could be told about Johnny and David’s
escapades. That would take an entire book altogether.
Deer
hunting and turkey hunting were among the things John enjoyed doing, and
because he was interested in this, Jean developed an interest also. They,
along with friends of theirs, have gone on lots of camping/hunting trips
and have shared some very happy times. Oather and Irene Savage were very
good friends of the Hunters, as were Marvin and Stella Pennington. One of
their favorite places to set up camp and hunt was Salt Lick in Jackson
County. Although Jean has been on many hunting trips, two trips to hunt
turkey didn’t go too well for her. John had built her a very fine tree
stand, one that he described as “having everything but running water”. But
even with such fine accommodations, Jean said the only thing she saw after
sitting in the tree stand for eight long hours on the first trip was a
woodpecker, and on the second one, she saw a fly. No turkey trophies for
her, and that was the last of that. After her second turkey hunting trip,
she was happy just to stay at the campsite and keep a warm fire going
while the men folk did the hunting.
She also
has lots of wonderful memories of the fun she and Irene Savage had setting
up camp and cooking while the men went off to hunt. There was always lots
of laughter and good times, but on one of these hunting trips, Jean
suffered a broken back and broken right arm when she fell getting down
from her tree stand. She eventually recovered from these injuries, and
then in 1993, after undergoing knee replacement surgery in Nashville, John
suffered a massive stroke that left him partially paralyzed on his right
side and unable to speak. With long months of therapy and a loving and
faithful mate who was always by his side who took nothing but the best
care of her husband, John partially regained his speech, and some use of
his right side.
He and Jean
still attend church at Walnut Grove each Sunday unless one or the other
isn’t up to going. They are very devoted to each other, and the love
they’ve shared over the years still goes on today. When they built their
house on Longview Lane, they also constructed a small lake, and for the
past six or eight years, they share their lake each winter with Canadian
geese. One of the male geese became a special pet of theirs, and even went
with them for walks in the woods near their home. They named him J.J. and
he responded to his name when he was called. He had a band on one leg, and
in order to get the information that is contained on the band, John had
Jean to lay down in the grass of their yard one day when they were feeding
J.J. She put some corn in one hand and extended it out to J.J. and as he
was feeding out of her hand, John, who had laid down in the grass next to
Jean, could read the printed information on the band. He wrote to the
wildlife agency that was listed there and found out where J.J. was born
and raised, how old he was, and other information this agency had about
J.J. J.J. stayed with them for a couple of years, but one year when March
came, he left with a flock that had stayed on the lake during the winter.
Jean bought corn to feed the geese for several years, but she said she
decided she wasn’t going to continue with that anymore. She said last year
there were at least 60 she was buying corn for. One year there was a
female in the bunch that came to her bedroom window and “honked” for her
to come out with food. I have always thought that Canadian geese are not
only beautiful and graceful creatures, but the one trait that I most
admire about them is that they have only one mate. If something happens to
that mate, they never take another. They are completely and totally
devoted to that one, and only to that one.
And that’s
the same kind of devotion that John and Jean share. They are always there
for each other, and I think it’s only fitting that geese with this special
trait choose to make their home on John and Jean’s lake. It’s almost as if
they too know they are among people who share that type of devotion. Jean
and John have many who feel as close to them as their very own parents,
and this includes my brother, Phil, and my sister, Sue, as well as myself.
Phil and
Johnny have been lifelong friends, and that close friendship continues on
today extending to their wives as well. We had a lot of laughs and did a
lot of reminiscing when my sister, Sue, and I visited in Jean and John’s
home gathering information for this story. They are both very
special and really good people, and I’m happy to be in the number that
think of them as family.
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