Tag: Louisville

THE KIDS on GLEN MEADE ROAD (1954) & THE MARCH of ‘PROGRESS’ —Jim Stiles (ZX#94)

Our little piece of The American Dream was one of the first subdivisions to take root in east Louisville, Kentucky, more than 60 years ago. Glen Meade Road was a solitary finger of small two-bedroom brick homes in an area that had been farm land for almost two centuries. We were surrounded by dense woods and wheat fields, bottomless swamps and a pumpkin patch.

During the summer of 1954, we made weekly trips to Glen Meade to see how our home was progressing. The road itself was a mud hole that was last on the list of “things to do.”

If I recall, we paid about $12,000 for our little two bedroom home.

SPELUNKING the CAVE that was BURIED ALIVE: 1964…and now— Jim Stiles (ZX# 46)

We emerged from the cornfield into a huge pasture dead ahead and a magnificent forest to our right. Just a few hundred yards in front of us, I could see several small clusters of trees, like little forested islands. In fact, I can still remember there were four of them, in a row, each one perhaps a hundred yards from the next. “You see that fourth cluster? That’s it.” Hotard said.

From a distance, it looked like nothing. I was crestfallen. I was hoping for more. “That’s it?” I asked skeptically. “Just wait,” Hotard grinned. We came to the edge of the copse of trees and sure enough, Steve was spot on. We’d come across a sink hole; it was about 100 feet wide and maybe 40 feet deep. At the very bottom of this steep but easily descended slope (we were 12), we saw a horizontal limestone ledge. It was perhaps 15 or 20 feet wide and at the opening, no more than four feet high. At the time I was barely four feet high, so I didn’t even have to bend over. Dutton was the gangly member of our spelunking team, but all he needed to do was duck a bit.

It was very much a living cave. Water was flowing through it, coming from a source north (or to the left of us). But the opening in that direction was too narrow for any of us, even me, to enter. None of us had expected the water, but we didn’t care. We turned on our flashlights, sloshed through the water in our tennis shoes, and ventured into the darkness

“I Remember Christmas”–An Ancient Stiles Family Album (ZX#41)

This is really just a personal reminiscence, and probably of little interest to most Zephyr readers. But it occurred to me recently that this is the first Christmas, where I am the only surviving member of my immediate family. My father died in 2009. My brother passed away two years ago, in December 2020, and my mother died in February at the age of 94. I’m the last Stiles standing. And of course my grandparents all left us decades ago.

While families have always managed to find something to argue about when pushed into confined places, it was certainly different for me a kid. .

When I think back on my childhood and those first ten years, it occurred to me that it was our grandparents — they were the real glue that kept the family connected. I grew up with all four of my grandparents, alive and relatively healthy, and all of them within five miles of our home. So we saw Grandma and Grandpa Montfort and Grandma and Grandpa Stiles on a regular basis. We had Sunday dinner with one or the other almost every week.

Holidays were always like family food festivals. In fact, for a decade, I would guess that Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and the 4th of July were all holidays in which attendance was mandatory. And none of us minded. We loved it.