John Shearer: Becoming A Valleybrook Suburban Kid 50 Years Ago

In the summer of 1965, I was a five-year-old boy who had two important personal events take place in my life.
 
The first was that sometime in the late spring or early summer of that year, my parents, Dr. and Mrs. C. Wayne Shearer, older sister Cathy and I moved into our newly-built house at 122 Valleybrook Road in the Valleybrook subdivision.
 
As I learned later, the ranch-style home had come from house plans advertised in the newspaper with a few changes by local architect MaryLou Droston. She was interested in modernism architecture popular at the time and had designed my father’s Ashland Terrace optometric office.
 
The home had such 1960s-era features as large sliding glass doors and windows, and a connecting kitchen and den with ceiling beams, sky lights, and hanging light globes. The brick, though, had come from an older structure – the former Bijou Theatre in downtown Chattanooga.
 
I have never forgotten moving into the home and seeing the concrete slab floors in the bedrooms due to the fact that the carpet was evidently late in being installed.
 
I can also visually recall being there that first day and Cathy either meeting some girls in the neighborhood, or maybe speaking to some she already knew.
 
The next day, I also recall meeting in my driveway a youngster more than a year younger than I. He lived three doors down in a two-story white house closer to Hixson Pike, and his name was Kurt Schmissrauter. He would go on to be my best buddy throughout high school, even though we always went to separate schools.
 
I spent many a night or day in his house, and he in mine, and today, we still keep in regular contact.
 
The other big event I remember from 1965 was that sometime in the summer, we headed off for a trip to the New York World’s Fair – via train. It was a memorable and impressionable time for this 5-year-old, and I wrote about some of my remembrances last year when the 50th anniversary of the opening of the two-year fair was being observed nationally.
 
At the time that we moved to Valleybrook in Hixson, I had spent the first five years of my life in a still-standing, pre-World War II house built on Mountain Creek Road near the intersection with North Runyan Drive. Mountain Creek then had no apartments and featured some farmland, so it was still rural and a diverse neighborhood as far as incomes were concerned.
 
While there, my parents bought the first of two tracts of a pretty and scenic Mountain Creek farm a few hundred yards up North Runyan Drive. They would hold on to it until 2004, when it became part of Phase II of the Horse Creek Farms subdivision, so I would stay connected with Mountain Creek as I grew older.
 
But Valleybrook obviously became the main focus of my life after 1965, particularly until I went off to college after graduating from Baylor School in 1978.
 
The memories are almost endless, with learning to play golf at the connecting Valleybrook Golf and Country Club dominating many of the memories, particularly in the summertime. As I slowly grew older and went through the Valleybrook junior golf clinics led by next-door neighbor J.J. “Jack” McKenna, I became more interested in the sport.
 
So, when I was not attending Baylor Camp or the University of Tennessee All-Sports Camp in Knoxville, I began focusing much of my summertime on playing golf. This was especially true during the summers of 1974-78, when I was no longer going to a summer camp.
 
During those later years, I would awaken in the morning, eat a quick breakfast, and head out for a round of golf while dew was still on the ground. Sometimes the round would be with a friend, but often it would be by myself. With few other people on the course at that time, I could usually walk and play18 holes in about three hours.
 
Often after a round that would end at about noon, I would eat lunch at the club. I know it is probably my imagination as the years have passed, but those hamburgers and French fries I enjoyed at the Valleybrook clubhouse were some of the best I ever tasted. And the meal would be topped with a fountain Coca-Cola.
 
I must admit that regularly on Saturdays throughout the year, I would also walk over to the Creeks Bend clubhouse across Hixson Pike and enjoy a burger there – plus a heated fried pie.
 
Sometimes after a round or lunch at Valleybrook, I would also enjoy a swim in the Valleybrook pool. As I grew older, the pool became a place where I would try to flirt with girls, too, although I was more bashful than most young men.
 
Spending the summers at a suburban country club might have seemed like a life of luxury, but I never thought of it that way, and the Valleybrook club never seemed overly exclusive to me.
 
And I played other sports at Baylor – like football and track – so I was never singularly focused on golf or the golf environment, as are many junior golfers these days.
 
The Valleybrook club was run by the colorful -- and sometimes outspoken -- owner Carl Drake, who originally had several partners, including Pete Austin. Early employees included manager Clyde Abernathy, easy-going pro Ed Myers and clubhouse employee Zack Coley. Arlen Grant was the greens keeper initially, although Carl’s son, David Drake, later took care of the course for a period, as did Jim Bridges and another man.
 
And the course began to be leased out by the Drakes for operation later in my high school years.
 
There had also been different people along with builder Carl Drake selling lots, and I believe ours was bought from Burton Pierce.
 
As mentioned, one of the other memories includes spending many a night at Kurt Schmissrauter’s white two-story house. His family moved from Valleybrook in the fall of 1977 when I was a senior in high school, and I have not been in it since then. But I can still vividly see all the rooms in my mind.
 
Don McGonagil became a good friend, too, after his family moved on our street from Connecticut when I was in high school.
 
Rick Glenn, a Baylor schoolmate, was another good friend, as were Tommy Childers, Eddie Davidson, David Taylor and Bob Martin, who worked at the club. And through golf and other activities, I became acquainted with a number of other residents, including Ricky Eberle, Oscar Scruggs, Danny Drinnon, David and Jodie Martin, Debbie Walker, Greg Boucek, Phil Griffin, Tommy Taylor, the McKennas, the Creswells, the Brymers, the Johnsons, the Cowarts, and the Campbells.
 
Debbie Walker’s parents, Judge and Mrs. David Tom Walker, had their own golf cart, I believe, as did a number of early residents.
 
There were countless other acquaintances, and seeing them in person over the years as an adult has always brought a smile to me. Some of them will occasionally call me by my two nicknames. This first is Dunn Dunn or Din Din, which I received because Kurt could not say John John when he was quite young. The second name, Cookie, or Milk and Cookie Boy, was a reference to the fact that I brought milk and cookies to enjoy at a backyard campout one time when older youngsters might have been more inclined to bring beer.
 
All of us Valleybrook youngsters had a diversity of schools we attended, including Notre Dame and Hixson as well as Baylor, McCallie and GPS.
 
Out of curiosity, I went and found a Chattanooga city directory from the late 1960s to help me remember some of the names of the early residents. That was about when Valleybrook was fully built – at least the original part. 
 
I found such other familiar names as Collins, Nicholson, Ullenberg, Tiano, Spreen, Grant, Card, Sompayrac, Zerwer, Cook and Fritts. Plenty of other families moved in years later.
 
There were also two or three families who moved away after a few years. They included the Mileys, Knussmans and Gillettes.
 
Of the homes, one or two of them, perhaps those built a little later, had unusual features. One on Masters Road was shaped like an octagon or something similar, while another – the home lived in by the Jabaleys – had a roof that touched the ground.
 
Although Valleybrook seemed like an idyllic community, especially in the 1960s and ‘70s, there were one or two tragic deaths that took place there over the years, showing we were not totally immune to the world’s problems and hazards. And at least one of my old Valleybrook friends was unable to escape the wrath of drug addiction.
 
But the vast majority of the memories are of happy times. In addition to playing golf and swimming, the good times included playing touch football on Saturdays on Kurt Schmissrauter’s expansive double lot, and even earlier on the old former No. 16 tee (now No. 7 tee).
 
Our front yard was also used for touch/tackle football games early on before the trees got too big. I would also throw football with my father and others there, and would even run track wind sprints there as a Baylor student, using a special set of starting blocks with two large spikes that could be placed into the ground.
 
Although I did not play but only watched, I remember that for a brief period around the late 1960s or very early 1970s, the Valleybrook community also had two children’s ball teams creatively called the Birdies and the Bogeys. They would play each other in a lot by Shelby Circle.
 
I also spent many a day riding my bicycle and later my Suzuki 50 (which I still have) around the neighborhood and side trails.
 
Although my father still lives in the home, making him one of the last original adult Valleybrook residents, I have not lived there since moving out on my own in the early-to-mid 1980s after college.
 
I have lived since then primarily in 1950s-era ranch houses, not totally unlike Valleybrook. But I have in many ways become more interested in other types of neighborhoods that were much different from Valleybook. That includes those that contain Victorian houses or 1920s-era bungalows, or places like Riverview, with large early 20th century mansions.
 
I have actually written many an article or story over the years about those kinds of homes, probably because they seem more intriguing to me due to the fact that they are more foreign to my upbringing.
 
And today, I would probably have no interest living in a nice suburban subdivision of the more contemporary style.
 
But for 1960s suburban charm, give me Valleybrook in a heartbeat! Happy 50th anniversary to our old brick ranch home and the others in the neighborhood that have recently reached or will soon reach that milestone.
 
Jcshearer2@comcast.net