From what is said to be the highest point in Carroll
County, one can gaze out over head-tall native
Tennessee grasses and see the lights of New
Johnsonville. Toward the west, misty in the distance,
the water tower at McKenzie's city park can be seen
and, northward in the winter, Tosh Farms in Henry is
visible.
It's easy, among the pristine, wild tangle of
vegetation atop "the big hill", to envision settlers
looking out from whence they came and forward to where
they might go, and the Indians before them marveling
at the wondrous beauty spread before them like a
banquet; life to be lived.
"When the settlers first came, they had to sit on
horseback to see across it," says Pam Castleman,
viewing the scene from her SUV. The once tamed terrain
was reclaimed for wildlife in a program designed to
provide cover and forage for deer, rabbits, birds and
other animals including turkeys recently released into
the wild.
The past is not lost to Pam, who lives on the 500 acre
Fox Meadow Farm in Macedonia where the hill is
located. Lumbering off the hill and back onto the
graveled road that weaves throughout the property, she
traverses the level plain known as "the stump field"
and enters a suddenly darker and cooler area, shaded
by towering trees, that Pam's family knows as "the
Gordon place", names given to different areas of the
farm according to the history of each locale.
"All my life I've had this," she says reverently.
"I grew up roaming these woods, hunting deer and
squirrels."
Her grandfather, Harry Toombs, a sharecropper in his
younger years, added acres to the farm sporadically as
adjacent lands became available. A carpenter as well,
he built the dwelling that is the foundation of the
home Pam and her husband, Tim, also fashioned, in
large measure, with their own hands.
A wrought iron sign at the Webb Road residence proudly
proclaims the farm was established in 1952 by Toombs
and his son - Pam's father - Paul, and their
helpmates, Pam's grandmother Otera and her mother,
Betty.
Pam and her older sister, Paula (Doster), now a
teacher at McKenzie High School and coach of the
trapshooters team as well as a taxidermist, learned
responsibility at an early age. Pam was five when her
father established the first rural garbage route in
the county around 1970. During the summers when school
was out, the girls pulled their share of the load,
doing whatever it took to get the bags of garbage over
the truck's high sideboards.
"Daddy didn't have any sons and we tried to be his
boys," says Pam, who with short, curled hair and a
lively step projects an image of strong femininity.
Being the youngest, Pam's primary job was acting as
the "trash compacter", tearing open the bags and
stomping down the contents after retrieving the
aluminum cans, which were tossed into a big wooden box
over the cab. The girls were allowed to keep the
proceeds from the recycled aluminum, funds that went
into a savings account.
Afternoons were for hauling hay.
Paul, whose primary trade was mechanics, operated a
commercial hay hauling endeavor; farmers contracted
with him to cut, bail and haul their hay. Pam recalls
the hauling was accomplished with a 1941 model Chevy
pickup nicknamed "Old Red".
"The windshield cranked out," she grins, recalling
that when the garbage route ended in the early 1980s
when gas prices went up, hay hauling continued.
"Our job was to haul the hay," she says, explaining
the girls' role, "We had to get the hay crew up, get
them scheduled, and pick them up. It was a daily
thing, and sometimes we had more than one crew going
out to different farms. And when Daddy got through
with his part, we were left out there to handle the
rest of it."
Her dad's philosophy, she says pensively, was never to
assume the girls couldn't get the job done.
As Paula moved on to college, Pam says, "Daddy handed
me the hauling side of it at the age of 16.
"I'd always stand in line for my paycheck and Daddy
would slap my hand and say, 'You're putting your feet
under my table tonight aren't you?'" Pam laughs. She
continued hauling hay with her father until she was
about 30 years old, when she had her first son,
Jonathan, in 1997.
Most people were going to round bales, anyway, she
reasons, and it had grown harder to find a crew. "It
used to be high school football boys," she says, "Kids
changed in what they would accept; it was hard work
and little money."
Pam was in for a rude awakening when she left the
family nest, however.
"I had never washed a load of clothes. I had never
cooked, or changed the sheets on a bed," she admits,
stumbling over the memory. Her countenance brightens
as she continues, "But I could build the best barbed
wire fence you ever saw!"
She has no regrets about her raising - or the hard
work that was a way of life in her family. "I'm not
afraid to go out and try anything," she declares. To
illustrate her point she recalls living in the old
farmhouse as a young adult when a water pipe burst.
She summoned her father who surveyed the damage and
announced, "You just need to re-plumb the house."
"It took me two days," she says, "But that's how we
were raised: Here's a task, get it done. He just
believed we could do it and that built confidence."
Pam was 14 when she took her first job off the farm,
pulling potato slips for "Mr. Hartz" in Gleason in the
morning before afternoon hay hauling. She later worked
for James Johnson, digging sewer lines for septic
tanks.
"I've been in the ditches and I loved it," she says,
"We were brought up that we were not too good for any
job.
"I won't ask an employee to do anything I wouldn't do
myself," she continues, speaking from behind the
polished desk in her spacious office at the Head Start
facility in McKenzie, where she works as director over
23 offices in 13 West Tennessee counties.
"Tomorrow we've got to clean out a storage room and
I'll be out there with them," she grins, "Every once
in awhile I have to get out from behind here."
Pam graduated from the University of Tennessee at
Martin in 1988 with a degree in elementary education,
following in the footsteps of her mother, a teacher in
the McKenzie school system, and her sister.
Pam taught at McLemoresville Primary School for three
years before beginning her first tenure with Head
Start in 1991. At that time, she worked in the
education department, observing and evaluating
teachers, while at the same time pursuing her master's
degree. After attaining the advanced degree in
administration and supervision at UTM, she taught at
Huntingdon Primary School for seven years in a
position that allowed creativity in a technologically
challenging laboratory environment that Pam describes
as a wonderful position.
Yet, when she became aware of the availability of the
director's position for Head Start, she recalled that
in previous years she had wished she could take on
that responsibility. Despite reservations of whether a
teacher might be considered for the position and
loyalty to her old job, she faxed in her resume the
day before deadline.
"I didn't think anything would come of it," she says.
But upon discovering, while waiting her turn in the
lobby, that the 115 applicants had already been
narrowed to the top 15 contestants, she exclaims,
"What I thought was going to be a casual interview
turned into high stress all of a sudden! And I've been
in the position for 5 1/2 years now. It was like
walking into a dream; I'd wanted to do it for so long.
It's the hardest job I've ever had and I've had hard
jobs."
She explains, "Your knowledge has to be holistic to be
good manager of it; it's a very complex program."
Head Start is a national program created in 1965 to
help prepare children from low-income families for
school. Comprehensive in scope, the program deals with
health, nutrition, and parent involvement as well as
education. Pam's responsibilities reach even further,
from the $10 million grant and 350 employees to the 19
bus routes that run through 13 counties in her
program. While the main curriculum operates during the
school year from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m., she says,
several classes remain in session year-round,
beginning at 6:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. in order to
provide continuity of care.
"This job was a big life change," shares Pam, who
travels by plane at least once a month to meetings and
training sessions that often take place at the
regional office in Atlanta or the national office in
D.C.
"I've gone to California five times this year," she
says, relating Los Angeles is home to the company that
provides the computer data program for Head Start.
"I had never flown before, I had never traveled like
that before," she says, "It has been a big change. I
love the travel; you're tired after you come back, but
I enjoy it. This is where God wants me; it just fell
into place and I love what I do."
In the meantime, the couple added another son,
four-year-old Jacob, to the family.
Pam met Tim, a Gleason native who works at Proctor and
Gamble in Jackson, during her "running around years"
while attending UTM.
"It was one of those love at first sight kind of
things," she smiles.
The couple has been married now for 13 years; not that
Pam would know. "It was the 27th or 28th of October,"
she says, laughing nervously, "right around there. I
can't tell you the year."
She has a clue, however, because last year, she
relates, she walked into her office to a beautiful
bouquet of flowers.
"It must be my anniversary," she'd said, and called
Tim. "You'd think after 11 years, I'd figure this
out," she joked with her husband.
"Pam, it's been 12 years," he'd replied.
"So I know it'll be 13 years this year," she says
happily. "About October 15th I'll start worrying about
it."
Tim later clarifies, good naturedly, that the date was
October 27, 1991.
The circumstances of the day are less easy to forget.
They had an idyllic outdoor wedding planned, with
flowers arranged in carved out pumpkins and guests
seated on bales of hay covered with quilts as the
couple rode in on horseback and a fiddler played. When
the forecast called for rain Saturday, they simply
moved the date to Sunday.
But, "Saturday was beautiful and it rained Sunday; it
was horrible!" Pam cries.
To make matters worse, when everyone pitched in to
move the wedding to the church, they left the bride
behind with no transportation to the wedding. Luckily,
her maid of honor looked out to discover her husband's
"greasy old work truck" was still in the yard.
"I don't know how I got to the church without getting
greasy," Pam laughs, shaking her head in disbelief.
Both Pam and Tim were volunteer firefighters in
McKenzie and Macedonia for five years, with Pam being
the first woman in the Macedonia unit.
Living in the old farmhouse, the two fairly froze in
the winter, despite the wood stove that heated the
living room. Home from teaching one day, Pam ran a
sink full of hot water only to have the glasses
shatter when she put them into the water.
"It was that cold," she said.
Soon afterward, while Tim was still at work, Pam came
home and decided she'd had it.
She eyed the narrow doorways between living room and
bedroom that didn't meet evenly in the hallway. After
crawling into the attic to be sure she wasn't making a
mistake, she went out and got the chainsaw.
"I cut out a five-foot door," she laughs, "but we were
warm that night."
For years the couple anguished over whether to tear
down the old house or rebuild it. "There were so many
memories in that house," she says, "so we went back
and forth for years."
Finally they decided to renovate and drew up their
plans. "We hired someone to do the framing up and we
did the rest," she says. "We learned as we went."
Enduring the criticism of many who believed they were
making a mistake, in 1995, the two plunged ahead with
amazing results, strengthening the existing structure
and converting the use of old rooms while adding a
new, roomy kitchen with a pantry, utility room, a new
master bedroom, bathroom, and several other new rooms
as well as an upstairs to the formerly one-level home.
A wrap-around porch adds homey appeal while the newest
project, an ornately designed-by-Pam patio that is
still in the building stages, accents the back yard.
When complete it will feature stamped and stained
concrete with an 18 inch high wooden railing.
They even dug the foundation by hand. "A big mistake,"
says Pam. "But anywhere we thought we could save
money, we did."
They bought two books on wiring houses, basic and
advanced, and read them from front to back. Pam
planned the circuits and pulled the wires and Tim
hooked them up, a job that was approved on first
inspection.
"You can still see the original house if you know
where it is," says Pam, later pointing out the hallway
where her chainsaw renovations took place.
Blended with the new, throughout the home are enduring
memories of the original, much-loved homeplace. While
the aged, lean-to addition that was once her daddy's
bedroom couldn't be saved, its dark, time-weathered
floorboards now add character to the floor of Pam's
pantry.
In the old home, as the back wall of the kitchen
settled over the years, new floors had been added that
were seven layers deep. Of the ten layers of wallpaper
that covered the kitchen walls, a rectangle of the
earliest layer is now displayed as a wall hanging,
beautifully framed, in Pam's new kitchen.
Found items also enhance the home's timeless appeal.
An old wooden ladder, painted green, serves as a
decorative pot rack in the kitchen above an island
that was once a heavy, carved counter in an old
general store in Huntingdon. Huge, antique, solid
walnut matching doors were gleaned from a friend's
collection, and the front door, complete with a
working manual door chime, was discovered in a house
said to be 200 years old. A big, uniquely appealing
Purina Chows sign from the original Brush Feed Mill
(located behind Super Drugs in McKenzie) hangs in the
outer den. Extinct pine floors in the master bath are
complemented by two sinks, situated along adjacent
walls, their oak cabinets fashioned from antique,
mirrored dressers.
Tim modified the drawers to wrap around the sinks, Pam
beams proudly, showing the expert job. He also
fashioned the fluted molding and rosettes that face
each tall doorway, resulting in untold savings while
adding a designer's touch to an already elegant
scheme.
Another of Tim's projects was the meticulously
constructed stone fireplace. "It was like a puzzle,"
Pam says in an exasperated tone. "It wasn't for me! He
had the patience for it, where I don't." And, the pine
mantle piece he hewed by hand from a tree that was in
the front yard before it was struck by lightning.
Best of all, the couple were able to harvest lasting
treasures from the old homeplace of Tim's great
grandparents, John Edward and Carrie Castleman.
"We put as much of his history in this house as mine,"
Pam says. Bathroom flooring downstairs and French
doors upstairs came from the old Castleman home as did
the piece de resistance: a five-columned shelving unit
that fit perfectly along the anterior wall of the
kitchen.
Walking through the old house in search of items they
could use in their renovations, Pam says they made the
find upstairs.
"They had five children, and they had a door and a
drawer for each child," Pam says, describing the
original use of the cabinet as separate closets for
the children. Tim disassembled and numbered the tongue
and groove constructed unit for reassembly at home,
later adding shelving and leaving three of the
sections open, where Pam's grandmother's and great
grandmother's dishes are now displayed.
Pam's kitchen shelves
were once five closets for the Castleman's five
children.
And, says Pam, "I did manage to learn to cook."
From the couple's big garden each year, Pam cans green
beans and squash, fills their freezer, and makes
pickles and jams made from wild raspberries and
strawberries that grow on the farm, that she enters in
the county fair.
She picks up a wooden dough bowl and caresses it
lovingly. "It's one of Daddy's hand-carved dough
bowls," she shares.
Outside, she shows off the hand hewn log cabin he made
for the kids as well as the trolley stretched between
a second, elevated play house and a frame, so the boys
can “dive bomb” into the swimming pool.
And along the front of the property runs a hand-hewn,
split rail fence constructed by Toombs.
Reflecting upon years of memories, she sums it all up:
"He's my hero."
