By Scarlett Teel

Many of you know me and I know many of you, but I want to introduce myself to you for I plan to write some articles for The Clanton Advertiser that I hope will be of interest to you.

I was born and reared here in Clanton and Chilton County—a place that I consider the best place in the world.

I am Scarlett Ray Teel. I was born about five miles out from Clanton on the foot of Mt. Pisgah Hill at the beginnings of Chestnut Creek on Enterprise Road in 1943 in the same old house in which my mother was born in 1907. I traipsed around that 40 acres, having so much fun while my parents reared me to love God, respect others and love nature.

I was the fourth and the last of four girls, which must have been a disappointment to my parents, but I never felt that they felt that way. Daddy always introduced me as his “baby” to everyone until the day he died. I am a wife; a mother; a grandmother; a cousin; an aunt; an artist; an art teacher and, I hope, a friend to many of you.

I remember when Enterprise Road was dirt, and then I had the pleasure as a kid of watching it be paved. A few cars were seen and heard as they traveled to Clanton for the week’s groceries. Families grew and provided most of their food and necessities for living at home so they did not often go anywhere except to work.

Their vehicle in which to travel was usually a pickup truck that perhaps the father had to use to travel to and from his work or conduct his business. Enterprise Road, at my time, was crowded with walkers. Each vehicle would have perhaps a mother with a small child or two with the father driving in the cab of the family pick-up truck, but the back would be full of straight back oak chairs—chairs made in Clanton’s several chair factories—with each chair taken by a passenger.

Some passengers were standing behind the cab looking over the top, and the tailgate would be let down with it full of passengers sitting with their legs hanging down with their feet close to the dirt road surface—no safety laws then! Many times the loaded truck or car would stop to give a ride to the walkers as they were their neighbors. Back then, all vehicles had running boards, and sometimes the overcrowded vehicle had riders standing on the running boards!

I hope that you readers will help me as we think and talk about “older days” and how they were as well as interesting stories of our community and the people in our more modern times.

–Scarlett Teel is a community correspondent for The Clanton Advertiser.