1401 E. Main St.

I think this is the house where Claiborne and Irene Dennis lived with their two children, Roddy and JoFaye.  I well remember Claiborne walking to the little store on our street (Blacknall) to get his Coke and BC powder. I think he sold insurance and was always a happy person. Irene stayed at home as I remember and JoFaye and I became childhood friends. Roddy was older, but I remember he was always into mischief, but a wonderful person. Unfortunately Clairborne died early with a heart attack, then much later Roddy was shot and killed at a club on Hwy. 70 in a dispute with my once neighbor Jimmy.  This was a terrible tragedy for everyone involved but that family was loved and admired by all who knew them.  The house is shown on the corner of Main and N. Blacknall Sts. and next to it lived the Longs, then the Mays, then our house: the Maynards, then the Glenns, the Lovells, and can't remember the next house, but the one on the corner I think were the Capps.  I did not include the last name of Jimmy whos family moved into the Glenn house after we were almost grown up. The Glenns moved away, but most of the folks stayed until they died or had to move because of illness.  After that, the houses were rented or sold, then fell apart with the deterioration of those neighborhoods. When I was living there as the baby of five children, eighteen years of my life, it was not so scary and dangerous as after I moved away with my mother and daddy.  Even my older siblings had a fairly safe life as there was few crime events and people walked most of the time to get to their destinations.  I have to wonder what type of people moved in after that period, that changed the streets to crime?  It seems the whole world changed along with my old neighborhood, into something worse and more vile.