Harold Medlin:  

The following is taken from a diary kept by Harold Medlin: October 25, 1929 was a memorial date. Not because James Harold Medlin was born on that date but more importantly because that was the date that the great stock market crash of 1929 began. I believe that history records October 29th as the official date of the great crash that brought about the great depression but it didn't all happen on one day but over several days. History records that the first inclination of trouble occurred about mid-day on Friday October 25 ( James Harold was born at 8:00 AM or.9:00 A.M. Eastern time as the stock market was opening ) but the stock market closed before a run on the market could occur that day. Saturday and Sunday the market was also closed and this gave the investors time to re-evaluate the situation and on Monday October 28 there was actually a little rise in the market during the morning hours but before the day was gone most everyone was convinced that they should sell and that's what caused the crash...at least the main reason...loss of confidence. History records Tuesday October 29, 1929 as "the" day. From what I have heard that wasn't of particular concern in Sardis, Tennessee in 1929. ( Because of poor communications, I doubt if they heard about it for a day or two afterwards.) Few if any had any stock in the market and the New York (City) Stock Exchange seemed another world away. They were far more concerned about the weather and how they were going to get the crops out of the fields because it had been raining for several days and the farmers couldn't get into the fields to pick the cotton or gather the corn. There's a country-western song that says, "They told us that Wall Street fell but we were so poor we couldn't tell." ). That about sums it up for the day and week I was born now for the rest of the story... (I remained in the local public school system until June 12, 1946) Since the Sardis school did not offer chemistry or a foreign language and I needed two years of foreign language and one year of chemistry before I could be accepted at the University, I had to go to summer school. On June 12, 1946 I started at Castle Heights Military Academy and was assigned a room in Bullard Hall with another senior who was there for the same reason.That boy's name was Billy Mitchel Ford. That first two weeks at Castle Heights were the hardest two weeks I ever spent in my life. I was homesick. I was homesick bad! Every once in a while I heard someone say that he was as sick as could be. I often questioned them if he had ever been homesick...now that's sick. I was the boy that never spent more than one night away from home at a time in his life and here I was under the strictest discipline (something else I wasn't used too) but after a while I got into the routine of things and really enjoyed my 12 months at CHMA. Bill Ford, was a big help since he acted as a big brother for me even though we were the same age. He only lived a few miles from Lebanon (Tn.) and his parents would come over and take us to the Cedars of Lebanon State Park for a picnic and an afternoon of swimming in the lake. The next fall we could choose our roommate(s) and Bill and I chose each other plus another boy from Bill's hometown Poo-Poo(James) Chamberlain was the third roomie and both he and Bill were football players...I knew nothing about the game at the time. Our little Sardis basketball team only had 7 players and certainly no football team! For the intramural sport I chose "Caveman football". Caveman football is played by using a sock with a tennis ball in it or sometimes...Expand for more