I grew up in this town. Countless good memories are tied to those days. Ballfields, schools, homes, backyards, bicycle routes, stores and friends. This is probably the fourth time I have returned here since moving away in 1971. I was even here one day of my honeymoon since I was thinking that my wife would be hearing many stories from the childhood days.

While here, I was texting with my three siblings and my only Jackson high school classmate whom I am in touch with. So the below list plus many of the photographs and their captions are for their benefit since they will remember certain things from the 1960's and 1970's, or, would want to see whow things have changed since then.

Some observations and memories about Jackson:

  • The town has grown incredibly since I was here. So much of it I do not recognize and am lost in the new parts of town
  • The population was just at 40,000 when we moved in 1971. Now it is approaching 70,000 which puts it at the same size as Lawrence KS and St. Joseph MO
  • Seems like the only traffic signals in Jackson in the 1960's were in the downtown area. Now, they dominate the north end
  • The Jackson Madison County hospital has grown HUGE in the past 40 years. It took over land where originally sat our house on Wilshire Dr, the location of the Piggly Wiggly store (where I bought all my new comic books) and the field where I played Babe Ruth league baseball
  • I could not find the building downtown where Jay Williams and I went many Saturdays looking for old comic books at a used book store.
  • Highland Park, which was adjacent to my Babe Ruth field, is still there but is now named "Conger Park" after the man who was mayor for nearly 20 years. His daughter was in my grade but I barely knew her, from one history class my last year in Jackson
  • The four colleges are still in town: Lane College, Union University, Lambuth College and Jackson State Community. However, Lambuth is now a part of Memphis University (which was called Memphis State in my days in the area)
  • I could not find a shirt/jersey that said "Jackson" on it, at least without a bunch of something else advertising the business
  • The old church where we went downtown (they built a new one just a few years before we moved away) still stands and is now another denomination. My grade school is now vacant land and that rough hard surfaced parking lot where we played kickball is now just basically dirt and small gravel with weeds.
  • The neighborhood/subdivision we lived at on Ayers Drive looks much the same although a number of minor changes over the past four decades. Memories of who lived in which houses quickly came back to me as I drove around (although on some I could not recall the exact house, but I was within two houses of the right one)
  • The area where we lived on Roland Ave. looks very much the same too. I recalled all the street names around there.
  • The Cliffords house diagonally across from our house on Roland Ave. still had the large vacant side and back yard. That is where I learned to play baseball because the older Clifford brothers that lived there let me play starting around age six
  • My junior high school, Tigrett, was still there and looked like time had passed it by. However, the several baseball fields behind it (down the hill) were totally gone, replaced by trees and a couple of soccer fields.
  • Tigrett did have a new street leading past the right side of it that connected to the street where my Little League ballfield (still run by the Lions club) was/is. The field and stadium looked the same except the scoreboard moved from left field to right field and gone were all the sections of the outfield fence that each advertised some business.
  • About seven years after we moved away, the Casey Jones museum and the Old Country store moved from the original location to a new location on the southwest corner of I-40 and highway 45 bypass.
  • Probably the BIGGEST change of all is the highway 45 bypass. When we moved away, it was basically a nice four lane highway and only our new church grounds on it. The Soap Box Derby races were held on it since nothing else was there. Now, that highway is 100% unrecognizable. It has a trafic light every half mile with multiple lanes coming and going. TONS of businesses and long waits everywhere to get anywhere. Probably great for city coffers with all the tax dollars but it sure changed a formerly peaceful area.
  • North Parkway, an east-west road, had just been built when we moved away. Like highway 45 bypass, nothing was there but road and fields. Now, solid buildings wih no vacant properties.
  • I was pleasantly surprised to see that a church (not even sure of the denomination) on Forest Ave. still had the vacant land adjacent to it where I played tackle football with the guys in the grade above me and was always amazed they let a little squirt like me play in their games.
  • The coliseum is still near the high school building I attended. However, the high school building is no longer the high school. I spoke with a couple of people there and even got to meet the principal. I told the principal that I never met the principal, Tom Fann, when I was in high school for two years there. She smiled and said "you must have been a good boy then!".
  • Campbell's Pond was still there, ducks and all. A new water-shooting fountain was in the middle of it. A mom and two young kids werre there at the same time. She said they moved to Jackson in the 1990's and often walk to the pond. I told her the reason I never learned to ice skate is because that pond never froze over.
  • I visited the campuses of Lane College and Union University. Don't believe I ever did when I lived here. What triggered it is that last month at a Toastmasters event in Kansas City a gentleman walked in wearing a shirt saying "Lane College" on it. I surprised him by saying I know where that college is. His nephew atteds (or attended) it.