The Golden Age Club: A Story Told by Fred E. Crain

The Golden Age Club and Memories of Pigeon Forge

This is a story told by Fred E. Crain and written by Larry Steve Crain, Fred's nephew, in October 2015.

Pictured is the Rev. Fred E. Crain and Frances Crain.

My Uncle Fred E. Crain began working in 1982 as an assistant pastor at Faith Temple Church (FTC) in Taylors, S.C.

He had previously worked at Faith Printing Company, located within sight of the church. Faith Printing was founded and owned by the Rev. James H. “Jimmy” Thompson, who also served as founder and senior pastor of FTC. At the printing company, Fred worked in the camera room and masked-up negatives and burned plates for use on offset presses. Before working at the printing trade, Fred worked for many years at Southern Bleachery, a textile manufacturing plant. Before that, he worked as a farm boy.

The Golden Age Club

  

As an assistant pastor for Pastor Jimmy, Fred, along with his wife, Frances, started The Gold Age Club (TGAC), a group for FTC’s senior citizens. Some people attended the group who did not attend FTC. They were welcome, too.

The church had, at one time, about eight or nine used school buses purchased for transporting children to FTC’s children’s church on Sunday mornings. TGAC received a school bus, which was yellow with black lettering that spelled out these words: “Golden Age Club, Faith Temple Church.”

Fred had to take a bus-driving course at Greenville Tech in order to qualify as a bus driver. He always liked cars and was a patient and good driver.     

Fred, who was about 57 years of age at the time he was hired by FTC, drove the GAC bus, and Frances, who was still working as a secretary at the Taylors Fire Department, went on Golden Age Club trips with Fred as often as she could.

“We had no bus on our first trip with the Golden Agers,” Fred says. “We went in three vans to Pigeon Forge. Jim Barbare, Troy Burrell, and I drove the vans. Coming back, Jim got lost, and we drove around to find him. We drove up to the church at about 2:00 a.m. People were wondering where we were. A couple of people were waiting on us in the parking lot.”

Shown is a photo of some of the Smoky Mountains (photo from the Internet). 

Lookout Mountain Trip

Fred took TGAC seniors on many long trips. He remembers one trip they made to Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. His mother, Lillian, and his brother (my father), J.B. Crain, were on board. (My mother, Eva, was probably not on that trip, and neither was Frances.)

“The bus was full,” Fred says. “J.B. said, ‘Don’t get too close to the edge,’ as we drove up the mountains.”

My father was the nervous type, being a World War II combat veteran, and as he sat in a front seat, near Fred, he grew shaky as his younger brother motored slowly on winding roads and sometimes shifted the straight-drive bus into low gear to get that loaded-with-people yellow vehicle up Lookout Mountain.

“They say you can see seven states from Lookout Mountain,” Fred says. “Lover’s Leap is on that mountain. There’s also Fat Man Squeeze on the trail at Lookout Mountain. And there’s a swinging bridge.”

Fred’s Mother Walks Trail

Fred says his mother walked the mountain trail and did everything everyone else did, including going through Fat Man Squeeze. (“Ma” was always thin, so that was no problem.) 

Pictured are the Rev. Fred Crain and his mother, Lillian Parker Crain.

According to “Wikipedia,” “Lookout Mountain is a mountain ridge located at the northwest corner of the U.S. state of Georgia, the northeast corner of Alabama, and along the southern border of Tenn. at Chattanooga. The name ‘Lookout Mountain’ is said to come from General Andrew Jackson's troops, but more likely comes from the Cherokee term for ‘two mountains looking at each other.’”

The Noccalula Falls Park is located at the southern terminus of Lookout Mountain, near Gadsden, Alabama. Local legend claims that the 90-foot falls' namesake, Noccalula, jumped to her death because she could not marry the man she loved, according to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia offers this information:

“On November 24, 1863 the Battle of Lookout Mountain was fought on the slopes of mountain. The majority of hand-to-hand combat took place near Cravens' house about halfway to the summit. Lookout Mountain’s shape and location can in some conditions cause a unique weather phenomenon in the area: after dawn, fog will sometimes descend from the cooler mountaintop and stop about halfway down. Such an event took place the day of the battle and is the reason for its romanticized name, the ‘Battle Above the Clouds.’ The battle was won by Union forces, enabling them to lift the Confederate siege of Chattanooga.”

“They had a big battle there,” Fred says. The Yankees tried to come up the mountain, and the Confederates would shoot ’em down. But the Yankees finally took it.”

Shown is a photo of some of the Smoky Mountains (photo from the Internet).  

Tire Blows on Pigeon Forge Trip

The Golden Agers loved to travel to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, Fred says. As a group, they visited there many times.

On one trip to Pigeon Forge, Fred was driving the group’s “school bus,” which was straight-shift (not automatic), when a back tire blew, near Hendersonville, N.C.

“It was the back, right, inside tire,” Fred says.

The back tires were placed in twosomes, and the one that “blew out” was on the inside of the twosome.

 Pictured at left is the late Troy Burrell, a real mechanic with a servant's heart. Pictured at right is the late James "Jim" Crain, a loyal Faith Temple member who served as church treasurer for many years.    

The late Troy Burrell was a mechanic who worked on cars at his small farm below Mountain View School.

“Troy always brought some of his tools along when we went on a trip,” Fred says.

Fred drove the bus a little farther after the blow-out. He motored into a shopping center parking lot, and Troy and my Great-Uncle Jim Crain perhaps purchased bolts or whatever – “a few little things,” Fred says – from a hardware store in the shopping center.

“It took about an hour to fix the tire,” Fred says. “Troy and Jim were still big and strong at that time. Troy had a lot of tools.”

Fred’s mother (my grandmother) was on that trip, Fred recalls. They continued on to Pigeon Forge.

“We rode around and saw the sights at Pigeon Forge,” Fred says. “We went to see ‘HighPockets’ in a show. HighPockets was a former highway patrolman. He’d play an instrument made out of a commode lid. It was formed into a guitar – had a white lid with a neck on it. Everybody called that show the ‘HighPockets Show’ because of him. He was at least six feet and six inches tall, maybe more. He was a ‘string bean.’ ‘Country Tonite’ was the real name of the show.”

HighPockets performed as a comedian and as a singer and musician.

“He was dressed up like a hillbilly,” Fred says. “He had his pants pulled way up high. He was a good comedian. That fellow could sing. At the end of the program, he walked out on stage with a black suit on and wearing a tie – dressed to the top – and he sang good Christian Gospel songs. He sang two or three. If he got enough applause, he’d sing more. It was the best show in the Smokies at that time.”

Shows Started Changing

Pigeon Forge offered many shows.

“There were a good many shows there, including an Elvis Pressley impersonator. The Mandrells had a show there. The one that played the fiddle, the dark-headed Mandrell sister [Louise], was there.”

The shows are different now, Fred says. He and Frances have continued going to Pigeon Forge, long after Fred quit driving the bus for the Golden Age Club and that group’s bus trips ceased.

“Most of the shows in Pigeon Forge now want you to eat supper and see the show,” he notes. “That don’t suit all the time. At Dolly Parton’s thing (Dixie Stampede) now, they want you to come in early and sit around and drink and eat crackers before you to into the show, and then eat while you watch the show, where they serve greasy chicken you have to eat with your fingers.”

The style of music in Pigeon Forge has changed, Fred says.

“It’s uptown music, now,” he says. “I like the old-time music – fiddles and banjos and guitars.”

Fred and Frances recently have not attended any Pigeon Forge shows.  

“The last two or three times we went up there, we didn’t go to shows,” Fred says. “The last one we saw was the Dixie Stampede. I guess that was two years ago [2013]. They have a few Gospel quartets, like the Blackwood Brothers, left there in Pigeon Forge. I like the Statler Brothers. They were funny. They sang ‘You Can’t Have Your Kate and Edith Too.’ I think they disbanded. I guess they’ve been gone from Pigeon Forge about five years. Now, when we go to Pigeon Forge, we just go to rest.”

Pictured is the old Capri Motel sign (photo from the Internet). 

Motel Torn Down

An old Pigeon Forge motel is gone.

“They tore down the motel the Golden Agers used to stay in,” Fred says. “It was the Capri Motel. They tore it down in the spring of 2014, I think. I don’t know how many trips I’ve made to Pigeon Forge. That was the group’s favorite place to go.

 Fred describes a “mystery trip,” when Golden Age Club members showed up for an excursion, and they didn’t know where they were going.  

“One time we took the group on a ‘mystery trip,’” Fred says. “I started driving and went the wrong way, to fool them. They were supposed to guess where we were going. Some were saying, ‘I guess he’s going … ’ And then when I turned and went another way, they were saying, ‘No, I guess he’s going … .’ They enjoyed going on trips. Sometimes we just went on a short trip up to Table Rock. They just liked to get together and know they were going somewhere.”