Growing Up in Orange Mound in the 1950s, Tennessee

What do you do for fun in your town?

"I grew up in Orange Mound in 1950's, and I lived right across the street from a park, which had a great swimming pool, a great recreation program and that's where we went to have fun because every day all I had to do was walk across the street. I could either swim, I could play softball, I could play volleyball, I could do any of those things every day of the week except Saturday and Sunday.

Also we had a great movie theater that we could go on the weekends. We had one right around the corner from us and then one up on another street. After the movie theater kind of closed up a little bit they had talent shows there. In the summer we had dances in the yard, okay, that was great.

Then we had the fairground even though we could only go one night, one day because it was segregated but we went that one day and we had a ball. So growing up on Orange Mound was never without something to do.

Then we had the recreation center in the winter time. We could go there and we had dances there. A platter party was a big thing in growing up in Orange Mound because a sock hop or people had dances in their homes, they had a heaven and hell party where you could either eat hot spaghetti or you could eat ice cream and cake. The hell of course was the hot spaghetti."

Asset #7452
Tags: #Fun #Community #Dance