Dave in 5th grade. Robbie in 6th.
“ There were more kids that lived in town back then,” Gore said.“ There was a bunch of us,‘ Jefferson Street kids,’” Bowden said.“ We rode our bikes everywhere. I remember this one summer, we turned Nashville into a racecourse, a bicycle racecourse in a figure eight shape. We’ d take a certain number of laps around town.”
Gore said his bicycle gave him freedom and access to all the fun in town.
“ Everybody had a bike back then,” he said.“ We lived on Orchard Hill, and I remember the first time being able to ride my bike to town by myself, how cool that was, that incredible feeling of freedom.”
He would ride into town, meet up with a bunch of other kids and they would ride all over and around Nashville, usually not returning home until dinner time. Among their main attractions were the local creeks.“ We would go down to‘ The Mouth,’ we called it— the mouth of Greasy Creek,” Bowden said.“ There was good fishing in that area down there. And then down west of the bridge was an area we called‘ The Bluff.’”
They had a rope swing hanging from a Sycamore tree and the kids would swing out and drop into the creek where there was a deep hole.
Bowden recalls the gang would get the largest stones they were able to carry, climb up in the arches underneath the highway 46 bridge, and drop them into the creek below to admire the splash.
Dave with a Mad Magazine.
They got into the usual small-town tomfoolery, including certain creative pranks and capers.
“ We never did any harmful things,” Gore said.“ We never hurt anybody or caused any kind of real destruction other than maybe a few soaped windows or some toilet paper in trees, stuff like that.
“ That, and occasionally hiding behind a fence and squirting a few tourists with squirt guns,” Gore confessed.
Gore recalled a goofy act the local kids would put on for the tourists. They would each get an old hat from their fathers, soak it in water and stretch it out to make these really dumb-looking hillbilly hats. There were five or six of us, and we each had our own style hat. We’ d sit in front of the courthouse, just for the amusement of the tourists, mainly.
“ Across the street was the Nashville House. We’ d wait for some really nice
Continued on 42 July / August 2019 • Our Brown County 39