Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Aldeer General Forum When I Was Your Age . . .

Hole chit! I grew up in Cahaba Heights. There used to be and Enco, Gulf and either a Standard or a Sinclair all across the street from each other. They used to have gas wars all the time. I remember gas that cheap.

My first job was pumping gas at the Citgo at the corner of Green Valley Drive and Crosshaven Drive. My grandparents lived on Autumn Lane. I lived on Valley Park Drive until I was 7 and then we moved to Dolly Ridge Drive. Acton Road was named after my Grandmother's family. My grandfather had a auto mechanic shop in his back yard.

I remember collecting coke bottles then riding our bikes down to "downtown" Cahaba Heights and cashing them at the Western Supermarket, then going over to the 5 & 10 or Rexall Drugs and buying candy cigarettes or the little wax bottles full of colored sugar water or the little pan flutes that were actually candy you could eat.

My grandfather used to pick me up on Saturdays so we could go and get parts in the junkyard. We would eat breakfast at the cafe down in the shopping center and then we would go get a haircut and a shoe shine at the Cahaba Heights barber shop. There was a shoeshine guy in there that was a little "touched in the head" and I think a shoeshine cost 25 cents. You took a little brass number off the wall to wait your turn to get a hair cut and all the men would talk. They had a chest type coke machine where all the bottle cokes were secured by a rail. You put a dime in and slide the coke around until you could pull it up and out.

An Italian guy, Carboni was his name, had a shoe shine shop across the street. My dad broke his leg as a teenager running from the cops when he ran off the Cahaba Road Bridge over Shades Creek. The leg in the cast didn't grow, so to this day he has to wear a built up shoe. Dad would always take his new shoes to Carboni and have him put the thicker sole on one of them. I went to school at Shades Valley with Carboni's son and I think he still runs the shoe repair shop.

I used to love to ride my Hodaka Wombat Combat down off of Sicard Hollow Road way back into the old Overton #4 coal mines. There was a mine shaft vent by a creek and we called it "air condition cave" Because in the winder it woudl be warm air blowing out and in the summer it would be warm. I would ride it on the street to get there and I was not old enough to get my motorcycle license and the bike wasn't street legal anyway. I can't remember how many times I was chased by the "county mounties." I always took off through somebody's back yard or into the woods and was never caught.

Down Sicard hollow road about where the new l
Liberty Park Ball parks are now there used to be an old quarry that we called "The Blue Hole" and we went swimming there during the summer. You used to could drive around the dirt road around Lake Purdy. We would hang out there and drink beer. There used to be a little concrete causeway that crossed the creek there where everyone would wash their cars.

What a great place to grow up as a kid. I miss those days...