ORAL HISTORY OF CARL STARNES

Interviewed by Don Hunnicutt

Filmed by BBB Communications, LLC.

July 7, 2017

MR. HUNNICUTT: This interview is for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral history. The

date is July the 7th, 2017. I am Don Hunnicutt with ...

MR. STARNES: Carl Starnes.

MR. HUNNICUTT: ... in the studio of BBB Communications, LLC., 170 Randolph

Road, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to take his oral history about living in Oak Ridge. Carl,

please state your full name, place of birth and date.

MR. STARNES: Carl Michael Starnes. I was born January '51, in Elizabethton,

Tennessee.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What day in January?

MR. STARNES: 15th.

MR. HUNNICUTT: 15th? In 1951?

MR. STARNES: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

MR. HUNNICUTT: In Elizabethton. Okay. Give me your father's full name, place of

birth and date if you recall.

MR. STARNES: Sam Albert Starnes is my dad. He was born in Hickory, North

Carolina.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the date?

MR. STARNES: Not right off hand, no sir.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Your mother's maiden name, place and date of birth if you recall.

MR. STARNES: Charlotte May Stewart, and I believe she was born in Elizabethton,

Tennessee.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: On your father's side, your grandfather's name and if you recall

where he might be born and date.

MR. STARNES: Don't know the birthdate, let's see. Skyler Clinton Starnes is the

grandfather and he was from Hickory, North Carolina.

MR. HUNNICUTT: And your grandmother's maiden name?

MR. STARNES: Uh, no, don't know the maiden name, it was Nanny. Nanny Belle

Starnes.

MR. HUNNICUTT: On your mother's side, do you recall your grandfather and

grandmother on her side of the family?

MR. STARNES: It was Stewart. I'm trying to remember. No, I don't recall.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That's okay. I'd be the same way unless I wrote it down. That's

getting back there.

MR. STARNES: Right.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me what you know about your father's school history. How far

he went through school.

MR. STARNES: He went through high school and from what I understand, he was a

machinist and learned machining trade at two businesses there in Hickory, North

Carolina.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your mother?

MR. STARNES: As far as I know, she was just a homemaker.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did she finish high school?

MR. STARNES: Yes. She actually graduated from [inaudible]. My grandmother on

my mom's side passed away and my grandpa worked for the railroad company and

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was transferred to Iowa. So he wasn't able to stay with the children there in

Elizabethton, so he placed them in what was called the Mountain Mission School in

Granite Falls, Virginia. Two aunts and two uncles, her mom and her sister and two

uncles went to that school. Both my aunt and mom graduated and when they

graduated, the family that was left back decided to pull the two smaller boys out and

bring them back to Elizabethton to raise with theirs, so they went to school and finished

there.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You have brothers and sisters?

MR. STARNES: I have one sister. Sharon Starnes.

MR. HUNNICUTT: She's in this area?

MR. STARNES: No, she graduated high school in '64, went to [inaudible] Business

College in Knoxville, got a business degree. She was accepted with the United States

Post Office in Washington D.C., so she went to work there. She worked there for about

four years and then, while working there, was offered a job with the Marine Corps at

the headquarters of the Marine Corps. She transferred over to the Marine Corps and

retired from there.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Your father's work history, you mentioned he was a machinist, do

you recall some of the places he worked?

MR. STARNES: [Inaudible] find two places in Hickory. From there he went to

Arlington, Virginia, and was working for the Navy department, not as a soldier but as a

civilian. He worked at the torpedo plant.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother work any, at all?

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MR. STARNES: I only recall her working when I was in junior high school. See, my

dad passed away. We moved here in '51, in June of '51. Dad was able to get a job at

the Y-12 plant as a machinist. He was here in January of '51 and he moved the family

here in June of '51. He worked at Y-12 plant until 1960. His group had to go in for a

physical that morning, so he was kind of upset because he couldn't eat breakfast. All

he could have was like a half a cup of coffee and his group went in for their physical.

From what I understand from talking to other people that were with him, when they

finished out the physical, they went to what was called the nurse's station. They were

signed back in to return to work. As he was at that desk, he keeled over. He was

transferred to Oak Ridge Hospital and they determined that he had a heart attack and

he passed away.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Wow. Let's talk a little bit about, excuse me, what school did you

first attend in Oak Ridge?

MR. STARNES: Willow Brook, Willow Brook Elementary on Robertsville.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Was that kindergarten or first grade? What grade was that?

MR. STARNES: I'm not exactly sure. I want to think that I was probably there for the

entire kindergarten session.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, okay. Do you remember some of your teachers that you

had?

MR. STARNES: Not right offhand, no.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about Willow Brook School?

MR. STARNES: Just walking to school.

MR. HUNNICUTT: How far away did you, where was the home and the address?

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MR. STARNES: At that time, when the family first moved here, Dad was of course at

one of the barracks buildings close to Jackson Square. I was unable to find out which

building he was in, what the name of it was. [Inaudible].

MR. HUNNICUTT: The dormitories up there?

MR. STARNES: The dormitories, right. From there, he was able to qualify for a home.

That's when we got moved here. The first residence was on Vermont Avenue. The

second residence was on Hollywood Circle and the third was on Ithaca Lane and then

the fourth was at 359 Robertsville Road.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You remember any of the addresses on the others?

MR. STARNES: Not the other addresses. The only one I remember is just the

Robertsville Road. We were directly across the street from what was called the

Paragon building. It had a bowling alley below, a restaurant on the end and upstairs

was a dance hall. We lived directly across the street from there so it was not a problem

for me to walk to school. [Inaudible].

MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of house would that have been?

MR. STARNES: A duplex.

MR. HUNNICUTT: The school was, what, a quarter mile away or so?

MR. STARNES: Yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the address of the last place where the family lived?

MR. STARNES: 359 Robertsville Road.

MR. HUNNICUTT: After you attended Willow Brook, what was the next school you

went to?

MR. STARNES: Robertsville Junior High School on Robertsville Road.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: Now when you were in Robertsville, do you remember any of the

teachers when you were in Robertsville?

MR. STARNES: Charlie Kearns. He was the, well it was called metal shop teacher

and Mr. Foster was our homeroom teacher.

MR. HUNNICUTT: When you went to Robertsville, do you recall where the gym was

located?

MR. STARNES: It was out some side doors and down below the main building.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did it have a covered walkway down the back?

MR. STARNES: No. It was open.

MR. HUNNICUTT: It was open?

MR. STARNES: Yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: They relocated that thing a time or two.

MR. STARNES: Oh really?

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah. The old, where the cafeteria was, where you went, was part

of the old school.

MR. STARNES: Okay.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That was the cafeteria for that. I was curious about where that

gym was because you can, today it's been relocated [inaudible] ...

MR. STARNES: Oh really?

MR. HUNNICUTT: ... from where it was.

MR. STARNES: Yeah, the auditorium, we had to walk up the sidewalk to the

secondary building above the main building, which was the auditorium and the

cafeteria.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: You went through what grades there?

MR. STARNES: Junior high, 7th through 8th. 6th through 8th I guess.

MR. HUNNICUTT: And then you went to the high school?

MR. STARNES: Correct.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was the high school located? Same place where it is

today?

MR. STARNES: Yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Where you active in sports when you were in Robertsville?

MR. STARNES: I was a football manager for two years.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Who was the coach?

MR. STARNES: We had three. We had Mad Jack Armstrong, Ben, Ben, oh shoot.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Martin.

MR. STARNES: Ben Martin and there was a tall fellow that was a basketball coach

also. I can't remember his name right off hand.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Now we're talking about the high school?

MR. STARNES: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

MR. HUNNICUTT: That could have been, what was that guy's name? [Inaudible] I

know who you're talking about now. He was there for a long time.

MR. STARNES: He had a fitness program for the athletes. If you were an athlete, you

had to be in his gym class.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Was Don Borger [Brodinger] there when you were?

MR. STARNES: Borger [Brodinger], yeah. That's it.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: That's who I thought you might be thinking about. He was a fitness

freak-

MR. STARNES: Oh yes.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I guess you might say he really worked you in the gym [inaudible].

Let's talk a little bit about the gym class. What do you remember? Did you have a

certain dress you had to wear [inaudible].

MR. STARNES: Oh yes.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me what you remember about all that.

MR. STARNES: Well, you got points off if you didn't dress out, if you didn't have

white shirt, white shorts, tennis shoes, you got points deducted from your final grade.

That was the dress code so to speak. Depending on the weather, we would either be

outside running track, or working out sometimes. If there was bad weather, we'd be

inside playing dodge ball, basketball, running up and down the steps of the

gymnasium.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I can remember when Armstrong and Borger's [Brodinger] classes

was combined.

MR. STARNES: Right.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I was in Borger's [Brodinger] class. We exercised but when it

rained, I prayed for rain because we played battle ball in the gym most of the time.

MR. STARNES: Right.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Where you in Borger's [Brodinger] class as well?

MR. STARNES: I wasn't in Borger's [Brodinger] class. Most of mine was with either

Coach Martin or with Mad Jack Armstrong.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah. Were you the manager on the football team at what time?

MR. STARNES: Inside manager, correct.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What does that mean?

MR. STARNES: We adjusted, repaired, changed cleats and all for the uniforms for the

players.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Now during that time, if you were going to play a game on the field

and you knew it had rained and it was going to be muddy, did you have different cleats

than you would if it was dry?

MR. STARNES: Correct.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the difference in them?

MR. STARNES: I think the depth of it because the bad weather cleats were a little bit

longer to give you more grip in the ground.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, when an athlete had a pair of cleats, was it your

responsibility to make sure there was none missing and the shoes were clean?

MR. STARNES: Well, the cleaning is part of their problem. We just did the repairs of

the laces and that kind of stuff.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they bring them to you or did you have to go check them out?

MR. STARNES: No, they'd bring them to us.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you do as far as the rest of the uniform is concerned?

MR. STARNES: There was a couple of guys that were also inside managers that did

the cleaning and stuff for the uniforms. They handled the washing and stuff.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Would they actually wash there at the high school? Or were they

sent out?

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MR. STARNES: I'm not exactly sure.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Take a pretty good washer, having to clean those things.

MR. STARNES: Yeah. Especially after a rainy game night.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you go, were you required to go to any of the games or were

you ...

MR. STARNES: Sure.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you travel to the away games as well?

MR. STARNES: Right.

MR. HUNNICUTT: How did the team travel in those days to [inaudible]?

MR. STARNES: School buses.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Same old bus you rode back and forth-

MR. STARNES: Right.

MR. HUNNICUTT: -to school?

MR. STARNES: Same old bus you rode back and forth to school.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Now was the team dressed or were they partially dressed or did

they have places for them to dress when they got there?

MR. STARNES: No, you brought your uniform to the bus. They would place them on

an equipment bus and then once we got to the stadium where we were going to play,

they would carry the uniform inside and then get dressed out in, whatever, facility

there.

MR. HUNNICUTT: They wear their normal street clothes-

MR. STARNES: Correct.

MR. HUNNICUTT: -to and from the game?

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MR. STARNES: Correct.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember any special games that stands out to you that

Oak Ridge played in those days?

MR. STARNES: No, not offhand.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Knox Central used to be a real, and Farragut as well, used to be a

real rival [inaudible].

MR. STARNES: Clinton, Clinton was one of the big rivals that we had.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah. Tell me what you remember about Jack Armstrong?

MR. STARNES: Mad Jack Armstrong. Whew. He was tough. He was tough. If you

stood up, well, I remember one time our receiver missed a real important play and

dropped the ball. The next day, when we were back at school doing the workout, he

took duct tape and duct taped the ball to the guy's hand the whole time he was working

out. He's like, "Now you know what it feels like to have a ball in your hand and keep it

there."

MR. HUNNICUTT: I had a friend who was a lineman and he was left-handed. He

couldn't remember to go left, left and right. They sent him to the creek to get a rock

and he had to carry that rock in his right hand that whole time so he would remember

which hand was left.

MR. STARNES: I've heard that there were some that would take a white magic

marker and put L on one [inaudible] and R on the other [inaudible] to know which is

which.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That might not a bad idea.

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MR. STARNES: Mad Jack, on the way to the game, he would pace back and forth

and back and forth and just yell out plays and ask individuals, "Red Dog at 34, what do

you do?" If you couldn't tell him your position and what you were supposed to be

doing, you might find yourself on the bench for a while because he was a stickler for

that playbook. Before a game, he'd have us sit down in the gym or the gymnasium with

the playbook, going over, sit there and going over the plays.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember him doing for disciplining a player during

practice, that weren't practicing right?

MR. STARNES: Well, the track out there by the school was quarter mile. Depending

on how you screwed up is how many laps you did.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What kind of language did they use during practice and various

things?

MR. STARNES: He would yell, I mean he had a voice that would carry a quarter of a

mile but he was never used any foul language and Ben Martin didn't either. He would

definitely yell at you.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Get up in your face?

MR. STARNES: Oh yes. Nose to nose.

MR. HUNNICUTT: He wasn't a very big man to start with, I don't believe. Was he?

MR. STARNES: I was?

MR. HUNNICUTT: No, no.

MR. STARNES: He was?

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.

MR. STARNES: Compared to us, yeah, he was a pretty good-sized fellow.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: Borger [Brodinger] was a more muscular, bigger man?

MR. STARNES: Correct.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Then Ben Martin was more like a [inaudible] compared to those

two, wasn't he?

MR. STARNES: Yep, he sure was.

MR. HUNNICUTT: When it was raining, did the team go out and practice?

MR. STARNES: Not unless the weather forecast was calling for rain during the game-

time because Mad Jack would just say, "Well, we're not a fair weather team. We've got

to play in inclement weather, cold weather, hot weather, whatever, so this is what

you've got to get used to." They'd be out on the practice field, pouring down rain, if they

knew by Friday night that it was going to rain again, so that the guys could get a feel of

what it's like to be out there.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, what positions did he coach? Other than the head coach?

MR. STARNES: As far as I know, he just did ... I don't think we had, I don't recall

individual coaches [inaudible] ...

MR. HUNNICUTT: Borger [Brodinger] used to be the line coach, at one time.

MR. STARNES: Yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I don't recall, Ben Martin wasn't coaching football when I went to

high school. He was into track.

MR. STARNES: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

MR. HUNNICUTT: I guess he left the other two, they probably had such [inaudible] ...

MR. STARNES: There was a third coach, he was only there for a short period of time

but I don't remember his name.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: Could have been a student coach from some place that came in.

MR. STARNES: Could have been, yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: They had those at times.

MR. STARNES: Right.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you think made Oak Ridge football so good during those

years?

MR. STARNES: We had great turnout for the team. I mean, we had more than ample

supply of people who volunteered to come out for the team and tried out for the team.

You could more or less pick and choose who you wanted. The others got cut. I think

the first, the start of the first year, the start of the first season, there were like, 25, 30

extra players that came out for the team, that didn't make it and got cut to get us down

to the exact amount that the team needed.

MR. HUNNICUTT: How was it decided on which color uniform you'd wear each

weekend?

MR. STARNES: Depends if you were playing a home or an away game. It was

already predetermined as to the color that you wore depending on the opponent.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Have you seen the colors of the uniforms that they wear today?

MR. STARNES: Not recently, no.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I don't think the, the thing was cardinal red and gray.

MR. STARNES: Correct.

MR. HUNNICUTT: It seems to be more sort of the color on your shirt there and some

other white looking, it's not so much gray.

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MR. STARNES: A lot of people, back when I was there, thought that “cardinal gray”

meant that the bird, cardinal, bird color of red, which it wasn't.

MR. HUNNICUTT: It's actually out of Johnson City, [inaudible] and Bennet, it was

their colors. Kingsport [inaudible], not Johnson City. That's where Ben Martin got the

color scheme from.

MR. STARNES: Yeah I heard [inaudible].

MR. HUNNICUTT: The Wildcats are from Kentucky.

MR. STARNES: Oh definitely because Ben Martin was from Kentucky. When he was

athletic director, I guess when they first started the school, he was up at Jackson

Square, they asked him, "What's going to be our mascot?" "What do you think it's

going to be? It's going to be a wildcat." There was never any controversy about that.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Who do you remember the quarterback was at that time?

MR. STARNES: There were two brothers. Oh shoot.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Polks? That would be probably before you.

MR. STARNES: No. Bryant. Dean and Dale Bryant. They were [inaudible] ...

MR. HUNNICUTT: Was Dean the quarterback?

MR. STARNES: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

MR. HUNNICUTT: Were they running the single lane or where they running

[inaudible]?

MR. STARNES: I have no idea. I wasn't into the plays. I was just into the repair work.

MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you become manager?

MR. STARNES: I went in and basically applied for it and interviewed for it and showed

that I could do the job.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: I always wondered how some of these guys got picked for

managers, which is next best thing, I guess, to being on the team.

MR. STARNES: Yep.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Right in there with it.

MR. STARNES: We didn't have a water boy.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they have water on the sidelines for the players?

MR. STARNES: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It was one of the manager's responsibility to keep

that big jug filled.

MR. HUNNICUTT: During practice out here on the practice field, was there water

available out there as well?

MR. STARNES: Oh yeah. Yep. The team would dress out and as you exited out of

the building, there was a salt tab machine right as you start out. It was recommended

that you take a salt tab.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah. Well, what else in high school did ... Were you involved in

any other shop classes or what kind of classes did you have?

MR. STARNES: Yes. I took three years under Charlie Kearns, older fellow. He had

the wood shop and the metal shop, machine shop. Both. Super nice guy.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, C.W. Kearns was quite a fellow. He was. He knew what he

was doing.

MR. STARNES: Absolutely. He was a stickler for precision stuff.

MR. HUNNICUTT: He sure was. What year did you graduate, by the way?

MR. STARNES: '69.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you do after you graduated?

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MR. STARNES: I was lucky enough to qualify for the TAT [Training and Technology]

program out at Y-12, training and technology. It was like a journeyman program that if

you completed the program, you could get a journeyman, entry level journeyman

certificate as a machinist. I did that from, let's see, June, July until September and was

able to complete the course there and got my certificate for machinist before I went in

the service. The draft was still going on in '69 but toward the end of '69, people were

raising cane about the draft so they went to the lottery system. They took all the dates

in the year, put them on a marble, put them in a bowl and started drawing them out.

Mine was number three when it come out so I knew I was going to get drafted. I said, I

had watched the Army for about three years on TV getting their behind kicked over in

Vietnam and I'm like, "No. If I've got to go to Vietnam, I'm not going to go in the Army.

I'm going to go with somebody who's got my back." That's why I went into the Marine

Corps.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Let's talk a little bit about the TAT program. Where in Y-12 was it

held, do you know?

MR. STARNES: I don't recall the building number. We had to go through the main

gate and show our badge but it was in a separate building from the complex itself.

MR. HUNNICUTT: It's on the east end of the plant?

MR. STARNES: I believe it was, yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: There was a lot of people that was brought in here from out of

state, wasn't they?

MR. STARNES: Correct, yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Those people were kind of on the bad side, let's say it like that.

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MR. STARNES: Yeah. Oak Ridge, you know crime-wise, I don't remember of any

major crime that happened the whole time I was here. The TAT program brought in a

lot of those people from like, Chicago, New York, wherever. Things kind of changed

whenever they brought in ... The Paragon building that we lived across the street from,

like I said underneath was a bowling alley and then a restaurant. Mom worked at that

restaurant and more than likely the local police and the detectives would come in and

have breakfast. They were all super nice guys, really super nice guys. They realized

that my dad passed away when I was 8-years-old so they kind of took me under their

wing and helped me out, guided me in different directions and so on. Super nice

people but you respected them, you know? You respected your parents, you respected

your teachers, and you respected the law enforcement because they're not your

enemy. They're there to help you if you ever need help.

MR. HUNNICUTT: It's not the way it is today.

MR. STARNES: No sir, not at all.

MR. HUNNICUTT: It just slays me at how disorderly people are today.

MR. STARNES: The thing I remember as a kid growing up, the officers had a little

side pocket on their work pants. Inside was about a seven ounce slapjack. If you

needed to have your head thumped, you got your head thumped. They don't have

those anymore.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Those things, it was a leather coating-

MR. STARNES: Right.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What was inside that? Do you remember?

MR. STARNES: A lead ball. A lead shot.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: If that didn't get your attention you were out cold, wasn't you?

MR. STARNES: Definitely.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, that TAT program was a great program for people that

wanted to take advantage of it and use it.

MR. STARNES: It sure was.

MR. HUNNICUTT: When you graduated, where did you go from there?

MR. STARNES: I went directly in the service. By having the three years machine work

at the high school, I was kind of ahead of most of the people that were in the course.

The instructor saw that I could complete one of the assignments in no time, so he was

having me do like, every third assignment so I could get through it to have that

certificate when I went into service, because I wanted to have something to say, "This

is what I can do besides just being a soldier."

MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember, some of the training they gave you in the

TAT program?

MR. STARNES: Building different projects, a lot of machine work, lathe, milling

machine, all this type stuff. I recall one time we had a project to do, it was like an

aluminum ball on a stand. It was all one piece. You had to precision drill so many holes

in so many places and then tap them and make threads in it. Well, as I was on my last

hole and as I'm tapping, you had a bottoming tap that would go all the way to the

bottom to put threads all the way down, otherwise your up a quarter of an inch, half

inch to the bottom with just a normal tap. As I was tapping this last hole, the tap broke.

I'm like, "Oh man. I've got to finish this project." Well, the instructor came over, we took

the piece out of the machine and I don't know where we went or the building we went

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to, but I recall going out of our training building to a separate place. There was guards

there. We got on an elevator. I don't know how many floors we went down. Where we

come out, there was another guard checking our ID badges. We went over to another

fellow in a separate room that had this weird looking machine. I took my part, set it

inside, he closed the doors and did a lot of adjustments and whatever. Pushed a

button, the thing kind of filled up with some kind of liquid and this arm came around

and went boop. Pulled it back out. I guess it was oil, drained down. He took the part,

dumped the oil out of it and said, "Here you go." I found out later that that was a laser.

This is 1969. Lasers weren't really knowledgeable back then but that laser had gone

through that hole, ate out the metal part of the tap that was broke down in the bottom

of it and left all the threads and everything else perfect. So it was like it never

happened. I'm like, "Whoa. That's beyond me.”

MR. HUNNICUTT: Watchwell's got some amazing equipment out there-

MR. STARNES: Absolutely.

MR. HUNNICUTT: -for machining purposes.

MR. STARNES: Yes, sir.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That's sad when you get around to the last hole and the tap

breaks.

MR. STARNES: Yes sir. It was very upsetting.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Those taps are hardened.

MR. STARNES: Correct.

MR. HUNNICUTT: And it's hard to get out. What was the hours that you attended

TAT? What time were you there and when you left?

21

MR. STARNES: I want to think that the class started at 9:00 and went until about

3:00.

MR. HUNNICUTT: How much hands on work did you have [inaudible] in the

classroom?

MR. STARNES: Well, it was like fifty-fifty. We had a lot of classroom, especially in

math because some of the fellows were at the very lowest grade of math. Because I

had three years of machining, I had a little bit higher advanced math than what they did

but the instructor was absolutely great. He started out, he gave you a test, it was about

this thick. The first page was 2 plus 2. Second page, 3 minus 2. Just to see how far

you could progress in the packet. Then once he got everybody to a certain level that

was equal, then that's where he would start the class. Guys like myself and others, that

were a little further advanced, would kind of, not let's say home school but kind of help

the other guys if they didn't really understand. Maybe you could put it in a different way

that the instructor did so that they could understand how to do that particular problem

and we got through it. Everybody got through it.

MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you get acceptance out there?

MR. STARNES: We had to qualify, an application to qualify and then you had to be

recommended, from what I understand, you had to be recommended by a teacher.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Was your high school machining part of that getting in?

MR. STARNES: Probably so.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah. Did they pay you to go to school?

MR. STARNES: I don't recall, yes. We drew a small salary, a small check from TAT. It

wasn't from Union Carbide or the plant, it was from TAT. How I remember that was,

22

when I got out of service, I came back hoping to go to work at the plant and that's

when I found out you weren't an employee of Union Carbide, you weren't an employee

of DOD [Department of Defense], you were just a student and you didn't draw a

paycheck so we didn't have to keep a position for you.

MR. HUNNICUTT: If I'm not mistaken, was the people that came here from out of

state, didn't they provide places for them to live while they were here?

MR. STARNES: As far as I know, they were in one of the barracks buildings. Of

course, back then they had the shuttle bus that ran around so they could get to and

from.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I remember that now that we've talked about it because the word

came back that there was a lot of disruption from those people that came in here.

MR. STARNES: That's really possible.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I don't know whether that was the reason that school stopped or

the funding stopped or what it was, but there was a lot of guys I know that got jobs in

Y-12 or other places because they went through that program.

MR. STARNES: Right.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You probably would if you hadn't went into the military.

MR. STARNES: Right. Of course, Uncle Sam wanted me more so I had to go.

MR. HUNNICUTT: They have priority.

MR. STARNES: Yeah, exactly.

MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were in the Marines, what were some of the jobs you

did in the Marines?

23

MR. STARNES: Well, being able to enter as a journeyman machinist, that was the

interest that I wanted to go into. That's what I signed up for, was a machinist. Once I

got in and went through boot camp, went through infantry training and went to naval air

station in Memphis for my first formal schooling, it was supposed to be machining.

Well, the machinist class didn't have a start date until several months after I was there.

They asked me, they would give me a meritorious promotion if I would transfer over to

take hydraulics repair for the F4 fighter aircraft, they would give me a promotion. I'm

like, "Sounds good to me." I went into hydraulics for my formal schooling, but I still had

my machinist information in my book. The first duty station I went to, which was Cherry

Point, North Carolina, after my formal schooling, I was at the base there at Cherry

Point. We were bending some tubing for one of the aircraft and accidentally, one of the

guys had too much pressure on the machine. Instead of just bending the tubing like it

ought to, it went together too hard and cracked the two dies, you had two dies that

went together to form that particular bend. Well, having machining work and drafting

work, I took the dies and drew them out, made a three dimensional drawing, sent it

over to the machine shop for the machinists to make a pair of new dies. When they got

to the machine shop, there was only one guy there, he was a gunnery sergeant. He

got those drawings and a requisition to build the dies and it just blew his mind. He

called my lieutenant and wanted the lieutenant and me to come to his office, because

he'd never had a request like this sent to him before. We go over to his office and, of

course, the lieutenant's thinking, "Oh what did you screw up? You made a mess." "No,

I did not make a mistake on any of those drawings. It's a three dimensional drawing

showing it in three different ways." I said, "I know it was right." We get over to the

24

gunny's office and he's like, "Who made these drawings?" "I did sir." He says, "Where

did you learn how to do this?" "Well, I've got the journeyman machinist certificate plus I

had two years of drafting and three years of machine work in high school." He goes,

"What are you doing over in hydraulics?" I'm like, "That's the school they sent me to."

He says, "I need you over here. I don't have anybody." He said, "Can you operate

these?" I said, "I can operate anything in here." He said, "Okay, let's go over to the

milling machine." We went over to the milling machine, he said, "Set it up to do such

and such." I'm like, "Okay." Turn it on. He's like, "Okay, let's go over here. Set up

another machine." Did that. Third machine, set it up, did that. He's like, "Lieutenant, I

don't care what we've got to do, I want this guy over here with me. I could use some

help and I don't have anybody that's qualified to operate this stuff and I don't have time

to show them how to do it." The lieutenant and gunny carried me up to the CO's

[Commanding Officer’s] office and the CO looked at my record book. He goes, "Well,

he's qualified to do all that." Gunny said, "Yeah, and he knows what he's doing." He

said, "Well, what do you think about transferring over to machine shop?" I said, "That's

where I want to be anyway." So I transferred over to machine shop. I was there about

six months and the avionics section has a huge machine and they have a plate that

goes on the test machine. It's got different holes in different places to test different

equipment off the aircraft. Avionics equipment. They had cracked it so they were afraid

to use it. They brought it over to me, their shop chief brought it over to me one evening

and said, "We've got to have this. Can you make it?" I'm like, "Well, I'd have to find a

piece of metal that big." He said, "I've got to go down to rework and supply and see if

they have anything." Luckily they had a piece of metal, it was an aluminum piece about

25

an inch think that had pattern holes just everywhere on it for different equipment. I

worked that evening, worked all night, and made it. I took it over the next morning, put

it on the test bench to make sure that everything would line up and everything would

just adhere to it, the different equipment. Everything worked. The shop chief there got

ahold of my lieutenant and put me in for a meritorious promotion because I made that

piece overnight for him. Otherwise it would have taken about six months for it to go

through the system, requisition, supply, order, come back and go all the way through

the system. They needed this thing right then because we were aircraft repair and

maintenance squadron, so everything that came in needed to be fixed right quick, right

then to make them fly. Luckily, that's why I was able to get a promotion out of that.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What would that have promoted you to?

MR. STARNES: At the time, well see you go in as PFC, Private First Class. My first

promotion was to Lance Corporeal, when I decided to go to hydraulics. My third

promotion, which was my meritorious promotion was to Corporeal. I was an E3 under

three years. That was unusual during that time. You didn't, during the Vietnam War,

you didn't get ranked that easy.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember what kind of money you would have made at

that time?

MR. STARNES: Not right offhand. I want to think maybe $250, $300 a month but of

course, all your expenses, meals and everything was paid for. That was pretty good

money.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Who do you remember the drafting teacher was at the high school

when you took draft?

26

MR. STARNES: Mr. Moody. Jim Moody. He was kind of hilarious. I had Mr. Moody for

two years and later on in life, I had come back to Oak Ridge to take care of my mom

and I opened up a small security company in Oak Ridge. One of the coaches that I

knew was also the driver's ed. teacher. He asked me, would I come and help teach

driver's ed? Well, of course, I was a bonded [inaudible] deputy sheriff so I was like,

"Sure. Yeah." I was a teacher's aide at the high school for like, four years teaching

driver's ed. About the third year, I go into the school to have lunch. Mr. Moody came in

and I'm like, "Holy mackerel. You're still here?" He goes, "What do you mean?" Of

course, all the teachers are sitting around the table, I said, "Well good grief [inaudible]."

I says, "You was here back when I was in high school in the late '60s." Everybody

goes, "What?" I think it kind of embarrassed him that I let them people know that he

was that old. I said, "Well they ought to name this cafeteria after you, you've been here

so long."

MR. HUNNICUTT: Wasn't his drafting shop down there in the A building? Or D

building?

MR. STARNES: D building. [Inaudible].

MR. HUNNICUTT: Where all the shops were.

MR. STARNES: Yep. You had all the mechanics, the machine shop, the wood shop,

drafting and came up the hallway before the steps to A building.

MR. HUNNICUTT: There was a printing and electric, do you remember Mr. Brown?

Was here there when you were?

MR. STARNES: Black fellow?

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.

27

MR. STARNES: Yep, yep.

MR. HUNNICUTT: He taught printing and electricity.

MR. STARNES: Right.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You know what was unique about that guy? He could take his foot

and touch the top of the door casing above...

MR. STARNES: Really? [Inaudible].

MR. HUNNICUTT: ... the door. Yeah, I saw him do it.

MR. STARNES: Really?

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, he was quite a nice guy.

MR. STARNES: Yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Was easy going.

MR. STARNES: Oh, yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: If you wanted to learn printing or electricity, you could learn it from

him. If you didn't, you know, you were just there.

MR. STARNES: Right.

MR. HUNNICUTT: But, yeah. That was a unique thing that he could do. Sure could.

MR. STARNES: I know that Charlie Kearns had a temper about that short. If you

made him mad, he would open up that rule book and he would just start putting dots

on [inaudible] dots were points off your final grade.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did he ever call you all cowboy? He used to call us cowboy all the

time.

MR. STARNES: He had some weird names but I don't recall what they were right

offhand.

28

MR. HUNNICUTT: If he couldn't remember your name he would just call you cowboy.

MR. STARNES: Yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I went to him one day, I said, "Mr. Kearns, I need to go home. I'm

sick." "Where do you hurt the worst boy?" I'll never forget that.

MR. STARNES: He was tough.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah. But he was good at what he did.

MR. STARNES: Absolutely. He knew exactly what he was doing.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, he certainly was.

MR. STARNES: If you were there to learn, he would definitely teach you.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, let's back up a little bit more. During the summer years, what

did you do when you were in Oak Ridge for entertainment and fun?

MR. STARNES: Well, I lived at the skating rink down on Jefferson.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Who ran that rink at that time?

MR. STARNES: That was Doug and Edith Morrow. They had a big [inaudible] dog

named Jonesy. I remember Jonesy. He would eat you up.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they live outside in a trailer next to that?

MR. STARNES: There was a trailer at the very back. If you turned off the Turnpike

and turned and then went the first Jefferson Circle road, the skating rink's sitting right

on the corner and there was a trailer right behind it. Mr. Heart ran the Jefferson

Avenue Shell. There was a small, small, it was a motorcycle shop. Green's Motorcycle

Shop. Then there was a small, two pump filling station.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Direct.

MR. STARNES: Direct, yes that was it.

29

MR. HUNNICUTT: Another thing unique about Direct if you remember, they used to

have dishes on display on the wall there at the office and on each side. If you bought

so many gallons of gas, you get these stamps.

MR. STARNES: Right.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You get a book.

MR. STARNES: Right.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Then you fill that book up and you could get dishes.

MR. STARNES: When I was working part-time at the gas station under Mr. Heart, the

thing that we would do is we'd give S&H and Top Value Green stamps for ever how

many dollars that you spent. Lord help you if you forgot to give those little old ladies

their stamps because they would come in the office after you. "I want my stamps."

MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, that Direct, they sold cut rate gas and…

MR. STARNES: Oh they were.

MR. HUNNICUTT: ... refined oil.

MR. STARNES: There was competition. If one dropped down a nickel, they would

drop down six cents. There was gas war all the time going back and forth. I remember,

at Mr. Heart's station, pumping regular gas for 19.9. It took about $3 to fill one tank

completely up.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I can remember back in the early '60s when gas was like, 25 cents

a gallon and then, high test I think was maybe 35 or 32 cents a gallon.

MR. STARNES: Do you remember white gas?

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, that was that Amaco.

MR. STARNES: Camping [inaudible] were real high.

30

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, then Esso had that Golden Esso. Gulf had Gulf Crest.

[inaudible].

MR. STARNES: I don't remember what brand it was, you go out to the station, you

take off the pump and you had about six different choices in grades of gas but I don't

remember what station that was.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I don't either. I don't remember that one either. But you remember

Luke's Esso that was there right past where the Taco Bell is on the Turnpike? You had

Vermont Shell on the corner.

MR. STARNES: Right.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Across they had, right past the Taco Bell, was Luke's Esso.

MR. STARNES: I remember the Vermont Shell.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, Vermont used to sell more gas than anybody in Oak Ridge.

MR. STARNES: Oh I didn't know.

MR. HUNNICUTT: [inaudible] many years. It was kind of strange, they changed from

Vermont Shell to what they are today. It's kind of a shocker. It's always been a Shell

station.

MR. STARNES: Two things stick out in my mind, working at the gas station. They had

a car come in and, of course, as the guy that works the pump, you cleaned the

windshield, you checked the battery, you checked the oil, air in the tires. I mean, it was

full service. One car that came in, the guy said, "Fill it up." He went inside the station. I

walked around with this pump, pulled down the license plate, looking for the gas cap. I

guess the guy realizes I was lost and he stepped back outside the office and says,

"Look in the taillight." I'm like, "What?" The big taillight on the fin and it had a little

31

round reflector button on the bottom. He said, "Push that button." I'm like, "What

button?" I'm just a snot-nosed kid, I didn't know nothing about mechanics. He comes

out and he goes, "Watch this." He pushes the button and the light went up and there

was the gas cap. I'm like, "Okay."

MR. HUNNICUTT: I was trying to remember what model car had those things.

MR. STARNES: I don't remember the model but then I remember another one pulled

my leg because he knew me and he knew Buster Heart. He comes in in a Volkswagen

and tells me, "Check the water." I'm trying to figure out, "Okay, where does the water

go?" He comes laughing back out and said, "It don't have any water man." I'm like,

"What?" "No, it don't have any water. The engine's in the back not the front."

MR. HUNNICUTT: [inaudible] motor.

MR. STARNES: Yeah. I remember one time, a tanker pulled in and it was to drop the

fuel for that day. Buster had me go out and climb up on the tanker and open the doors

so the gas would go out. Well, unfortunately, I was up on top of this truck and I had a

cigarette in my mouth.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Uh oh.

MR. STARNES: I thought Buster was going to have a heart attack. He come out, he

was white. "Come down here." I said, "You want me to stay here and close this up?"

"No, come down." I got down. He comes around the back of the truck, he grabs me, he

says, "Don't you realize what you just did?" I'm like, "What? I opened those hatches."

"What's in your mouth?" "A cigarette." "Don't you realize you could have blow this

whole place up?" Oh man, it scared the hell out of me. I'm just thinking, "Uh oh." Didn't

pull that trick anymore. One Saturday I go to work down there. The guys at the station

32

down there realized that my dad had passed away so they kind of took me under their

wing and helped me out, showing me different things about a car and how to do this

and how to do that, which was great because that's where I got my knowledge about a

car, otherwise I'd have been stupid when it comes to vehicles. Buster comes in one

Saturday morning and they had the old chest type cooler on the outside. You lift it up,

pick out the drink you want, ran it through this little maze and come up to the front of it,

put a dime in and this little claw would open up and you'd pull the drink out. Well,

Buster came out to find out how many drinks it needed and he starts raising cane.

"That blank bunch of little thieves. Stole all my drinks." I'm like, "How did they do that?"

He went back inside to get the drinks that he needed to refill it with and I walked over

and lifted it up, some kid had taken a can opener and opened the bottles and then put

two straws together and drank whatever he could fill with and then left the straws

hanging down there in the bottle. Buster was so mad.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That's pretty slick.

MR. STARNES: It was. I'd think, "Well, how did they get away with that? How do you

steal the Coke out of there?"

MR. HUNNICUTT: The other thing was, they must have drank them pretty quick

with that lid open, standing there getting fluid out of it.

MR. STARNES: [Inaudible] bottles with old straws in it. There must have been more

than one because there was several bottles empty.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned you spent a lot of time at the skating rink.

MR. STARNES: Oh yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you know how to skate when you first went to the skating rink?

33

MR. STARNES: I learned real quick.

MR. HUNNICUTT: To keep that bottom from hitting the floor you learned real quick,

don't you?

MR. STARNES: Well, Mom made it a point to make me wear an older pair, "Don't you

wear them new jeans down there because if you fall" it had that wooden floor on it,

you'd slide a little bit. But then they repaired the floor and put this, like a, well I guess it

was kind of a, it wasn't slick it was like a gritty surface. You wouldn't slide but if you fell,

it's going to rip your britches. Mom never would let me wear new pants down to the

skating rink but yeah, I lived at that skating rink. The thing I wished I could recall or

find, Doug was a music genius. He had an organ up there, you name a tune, he could

play it. Name anything, he could play it. I wish that there would have been somebody,

somewhere that recorded some of the music that he played up there because he could

play anything.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I remember going there and remember him playing. It was quite

pleasant to skate to music than just skate around through there.

MR. STARNES: It was family oriented, you know. Anybody could come down there

and skate.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Even the [inaudible] have had any trouble at the skating rink from

kids in those days.

MR. STARNES: Yeah. There were some instances, very small instances, where

groups of blacks would want to come in and skate during our normal hours and they

wouldn't let them. Now, they had open dates on Monday and Tuesday, that was if they

wanted to bring a group over, fine, they come in and skate. But it was closed to them

34

during our normal skate hours. I was a floor guard, which helped people up, teach

them how to skate, had a whistle, tell them to slow down, chill out, go sit down or hit

the doors, one of the two.

MR. HUNNICUTT: He's the man in charge, wasn't he?

MR. STARNES: One of about four or five, you know.

MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you teach yourself to skate backwards?

MR. STARNES: I don't remember. Doug had a fellow that was helping him out, big tall

fellow, had two of the meanest rugrats you'd ever want to have. He taught a, I guess

you could call it a professional skating course, or precision skating, doing turns and-

MR. HUNNICUTT: Like dance skating?

MR. STARNES: Correct, yeah. With a partner. I would probably think that that's where

I learned how to skate backwards, more than likely.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I never could do that. I could skate around in a circle.

MR. STARNES: Yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: But to skate backwards, I remember being down there and this

little short kid came in with this black hair and duck tails, you know. Flew in there

towards me, I thought he was going to hit me and then all of a sudden he just turned

around backwards and puts his feet down and puts the brakes on those, what were

they, rubber on the end of the skate that you [inaudible].

MR. STARNES: Oh yeah, the stoppers.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Stoppers, yeah.

MR. STARNES: Do you remember the grand march?

MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about it. I don't know whether I do or not.

35

MR. STARNES: They'd clear the floor, you'd get a partner and you'd come out and

you'd start going around. Doug would come out, grab the front of the line and they'd

bring you to the middle. You'd go down and separate, come back to the front, he'd

meet you there, get back to your partner, come down and then partners would go this

way, this way, this way. Then you'd come back, you'd have four together. Then you go

back around, separate again, come back around, you'd have eight. Eight was as far as

we could go. Then he'd come down, he'd separate the four, then he'd come down,

separate the two. Then one again. Once you got the single line back again, that's

when he'd make those big ass curves and if you were on the end of the line, it was like

a whip. I've seen a [inaudible] ...

MR. HUNNICUTT: He's the person holding on to the person in front of him?

MR. STARNES: Yeah, he was guiding the very first person.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I wasn't involved in any of that. When it came to dance with a girl,

no way, or skate with a girl, no way would I get out there either and do that.

MR. STARNES: Well, you had the ball lights, different colored ball lights and stuff

going on. Couple skate.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Couple skate, all skate.

MR. STARNES: Then you had female's choice, if you got picked you'd better go or

they'll talk about you.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember what it cost to skate?

MR. STARNES: I want to think it was like, $1.50.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I don't remember the price of it. You had to rent skates if you didn't

have your own.

36

MR. STARNES: Right.

MR. HUNNICUTT: A lot of people carried their own.

MR. STARNES: Oh yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: In the little skate box or skate suitcase.

MR. STARNES: Of course the girls had the big fluffy tassel on the end of it and red,

white and blue laces. They were fancy.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Didn't girls have some kind of skating outfit that sometimes they'd

wear?

MR. STARNES: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. They were better looking than cheerleaders.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I remember something like that. What was some of the other

things that you did in the summertime? Places?

MR. STARNES: Well, I didn't have a whole lot of time because I was going to school,

TAT. Most of my, just the evening time, when we moved to Robertsville, I don't

remember the move, just growing up there, the Paragon building had already caught

fire and burnt. Billy Earl had a shop there and Billy Earl was the main guy in Oak Ridge

that he went around and updated all the jukeboxes with all the latest records. Beacher

Powell had a repair shop next to his and Beacher did small engine repair and this kind

of thing. Then there was the restaurant. I would go over sometimes and watch Beacher

work on small engines and stuff. Of course, made friends with Billy Earl because he

was the record guy. You know, he'd keep you up to date on jukebox tunes. Other than

that, just going directly across the street from the house to the Paragon and as you

went down the block, there was the Wayne Theater. It was kind of funny because the

guy that ran it, it had this weird kind of siding to it, it was like big block pieces that were

37

about an inch thick. They were made, kind of like straw. Pigeons would peck out a hole

and they knew exactly where the boards were going across and they'd peck out a hole

and make a hole and go in and make a nest. Well, you could hear them during the

daytime. While the theater was going on you'd hear coo, coo. The guy got mad that all

these pigeons were making these holes in the building. He told us, he says, "I'll pay

you guys a quarter a piece if you'll catch them and we'll do away with them." Well, we

took a big box, a refrigerator box, cut some holes in it. We'd sit in the parking lot, me,

Terry Marlar and Ricky Tipton would sit there in the parking lot and we had a piece of

paper. We drew out the building and every pigeon we saw go in a hole, we'd make a

mark on it. We took a fishing net, put it on a big, long pole and at nighttime when they'd

go inside, we'd ease over to the building, take that fishing pole, wham up against the

hole. Of course, one or two pigeons would come out and we'd slide it down the wall

and then grab it, put it in the box. I don't know how many we had but we had a whole

refrigerator box full of pigeons. I don't guess the guy thought that we could catch that

many of them but he offered us a quarter apiece. Well, when he come in the next

morning, we carried that big box over there and said, "We got your pigeons." [Inaudible

01:02:31] he's thinking maybe five or six. No, we had several dozen pigeons in that

box. He's like, "Holy mackerel. I didn't expect you to catch this many. I can't pay you

for all of this." We're like, "Well that was the deal. You ain't going to pay us?" "No, no I

can't pay that." We just opened the box, let them all out. There was two pigeons, there

was a white one and almost, one that was solid black. They were like, the ringleaders

of the group. If they took off, all the others would follow them. Well, their nest was on

the backside of the building. You had the front entrance here, they were on the back

38

side of the building. Far up in a corner, there ain't no way in the world you could ever

catch them. We tried everything in the world, we didn't have anything to reach up that

high. We wasn't about to climb up there. The theater closed and a guy that lived on

Latimer Road put in a furniture store. I'm trying to remember his name. He had a

young daughter that was several years younger than we were. But he had a furniture

store there and people would bring in older furniture and drop it off. He would either

take it and get it reupholstered or fix it up, you know, to sell it. There was an old, old

couch on the outside out there. Of course, we were playing in the neighborhood and

running around like a bunch of kids, the couch fell over, we was playing around it and

the couch fell over. It had this, like a storage place underneath the cushions. There

was a box that fell over and at the corner of this box, what looked like a money bill, but

it had a three on it. I've never seen that. I've seen 1s, 5s, 10s, 20s, you know? Opened

this thing up and slowly unwrapped it, it was all wet and it was a Republic of Texas $3

bill. It took me going to the library and everywhere else to finally figure out. This was

when Texas, was before they became a state and it was one of their bills. To this day I

don't remember whatever happened to it. I wished I could.

But then going down to the drugstore, of course at the drugstore you had the,

come down the block, the theater and then you had the ...

MR. HUNNICUTT: EAT store?

MR. STARNES: No. You had the Paragon building, the Wayne Theater, and then

there was, I want to say AFLCIO [American Federation of Labor and Congress of

Industrial Organizations] meeting place. Underneath that building, coming around to

Jefferson Circle, underneath that building was a supply house, like an electrical supply

39

house. Then you walk down a little further to the drug store building. You had Merita

Bread on the end, and then you had the sportsman store, then you had a barbershop,

a beauty shop, the drugstore and then the fire hall. Doc Clark was the head honcho

down there. Of course, it had the wooden porch on the front where the cars pull up to.

Of course, the kids always hung out there but if you put your behind up on that railing

to sit down, Doc Clark's going to come out there and run you off. He was afraid you

was going to fall off the railing. He wouldn't let nobody sit on the railing. But it was

funny, when I was in service, transferring to a different location and I was home on

leave. Me and Mom were sitting there drinking a cup of coffee, I just so happened to

look out and you could see between the Paragon building and the Wayne Theater a

clear area to the back of the drugstore. It looked like flames. We got in Mom's car and

went and drove down and sure enough, the place was on fire. The fire hall that was on

the end of the building had moved to the Turnpike location just about two weeks

earlier. Here this thing was, it was flaming. It just so happened, my first wife's sister's

husband, my first brother-in-law, was a fireman with the City of Oak Ridge at that

location. Ben Loposser. The fire department came there, they were afraid that if this

thing flamed up too much, you had that sportsman store and they had rifles and guns

and ammunition and all that stuff there. They were afraid that thing might blow up. My

brother-in-law chopped a hole, we're sitting there watching. He chops a hole in the

bottom of the big green door going into the sportsman store. When he ducked down

and started through the door, it back flashed and knocked him all the way out in the

parking lot. Luckily it didn't hurt him, it just kind of shook him up. Of course, the other

firemen went in, they found out that it had started between the drugstore and the

40

beauty shop in the back, back there. But they never could figure out, I never did hear

what caused the fire.

MR. HUNNICUTT: The only parts of that building is left is where the fire department

was, on the end out there.

MR. STARNES: The original building.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.

MR. STARNES: Yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: They rebuilt it, that firewall is still standing there. Yeah that's kind

of sad that the fire department left two weeks before that, isn't it?

MR. STARNES: Kind of odd.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That sportsman store, it was like a typical store of selling sporting

goods-

MR. STARNES: Right.

MR. HUNNICUTT: -and repairing outboard motors and things like that, wasn't it?

MR. STARNES: They were-

MR. HUNNICUTT: You could buy bait.

MR. STARNES: Oh yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Fishing license.

MR. STARNES: Yep.

MR. HUNNICUTT: And all that. The drugstore, I remember Doc Clark, he was kind of

a tall-type pharmacist, wasn't he? Did they have a soda fountain in there?

MR. STARNES: Oh, yes. If you worked at that soda fountain, if you were a guy, you

had to wear a hat. If you were a female, you had to wear a hairnet. Don't let Doc Clark

41

see you go behind that counter without one, because he will come off of that little stand

up there at the pharmacy and chew you out. They were real picky, well even at the

drugstore, to work behind the counter, you had to go to the health department and get

a health card.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Anything you did with handling food you had to have a health card.

MR. STARNES: Yep. Not that way today.

MR. HUNNICUTT: No. You don't want to go back in the back today.

MR. STARNES: No, probably not.

MR. HUNNICUTT: When you went in the front door, describe what the inside of that

drugstore looked like. Do you remember?

MR. STARNES: The main entrance to the right, against the wall and the windows to

the outside, was the large candy counter. Large candy counter. You could get six of

these for a penny and three of these for a penny. As you looked at the main part of the

store, the shelving ran in rows this direction, back and forth. On the side was the, they

didn't do photo printing, but they had photo stuff like cameras and film and this kind of

stuff. You turned your film in, they sent it somewhere to be developed. Then come the

other direction, you had the pharmacy part and then Doc Clark's part was sitting a

couple of steps above it. Then you had a separator, it was like a half-wall between the

drugstore rows and the soda fountain. The soda fountain went the length of the

drugstore, just like a row. They had the booths in it plus you had the counter seats.

Over in the far end was the nickel Coke machine that you'd drop a nickel in, pull the

handle and it would come out a chute at the bottom. I can remember when it went to

six cents. You had to put the penny in first, otherwise you weren’t going to get

42

anything. People would get so mad because they didn't read the little label on it, you

know, "Insert penny first." They'd put a nickel in, put a penny behind it, it wouldn't do

anything. They'd fuss and raise cane and Doc Clark would have to come over and

open it up. "Dummy, read that sign. It says penny first. That's the penny." He'd give

them a hard time.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember who ran the barbershop or the beauty shop?

MR. STARNES: Naomi, I don't remember her last name but that was the name of it.

Naomi's Beauty Shop. The two barbers were, not the owner but the second guy was a

tall, kind of husky built fellow. He used to be, or at one time was the head of the Oak

Ridge Boxing Club but I can't remember his name right off hand.

MR. HUNNICUTT: They used to have two barbers in there.

MR. STARNES: Mm-hmm (affirmative). They just had two chairs.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they have anybody that did shoe shining?

MR. STARNES: Not that I recall. No. Now Doc Clark had a black fellow working for

him doing cleanup and sweeping and trash and all that. The entire time as a kid

growing up, it wasn't supposed to be obscene or whatever but everybody knew him as

Nigger Ben. That's what you called him was Nigger Ben. That was his name as far as

we ever knew as a kid growing up, that's what you called him. But he was a super nice

guy. Super nice guy. He was still there when I left Oak Ridge and went in the service.

MR. HUNNICUTT: There was a guy named Zila Gates [sp?], it was the shine guy up

at John Poston's barbershop when it was in the Arizona Plaza there across from the

county clerk's office.

MR. STARNES: Yeah.

43

MR. HUNNICUTT: He only had one leg and he'd come up there with his box in one

hand and his crutches. He'd shine your shoes sitting in the chair or you go back there

and sit in his booth, or chair and he'd shine your shoes.

MR. STARNES: [Inaudible].

MR. HUNNICUTT: He's the only guy I remember of anybody having a shine, except

down at the Central Bus Station, they used to have, and over there at the Jefferson I

think they used to have shine guys. Yeah. I never will forget that man. He fascinated

me because he could move around with just one leg and a crutch.

MR. STARNES: Yeah. It was funny, Mom, of course, this was mid-'60s, would give

me a quarter to go buy her a pack of cigarettes down at the drugstore. Nobody ever

thought anything about it. I was buying them for Mom. But they were 19 cents a pack

and they gave me six cents to spend at the candy counter and I'd come back with a

whole bag of stuff.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they have, between the back side of the Jefferson stores and

everything that was there, between that there was a bank. Did they have that putt putt

golf course there when you were a kid? They did in the early days. It was a putt putt

golf course.

MR. STARNES: That might have been what was up on the top level up there.

MR. HUNNICUTT: It was. Yeah.

MR. STARNES: But not, [inaudible] as I remember. We used to get cardboard from

the drugstore and slide down that big hill behind the drugstore.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That was like sliding on [inaudible], run with that thing, hold the

front and just dive on it.

44

MR. STARNES: Oh yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.

MR. STARNES: I remember on a Friday or a Saturday night, the theater, the Wayne

Theater would show some kind of horror movie or spooky movie or whatever. We

would cut between the drugstore and the other building, we had a path up the hill and

then alongside of the theater to go home. It was a shortcut, you didn't have to go all

the way around the block. Like I said, some of the exterior of that thing was this funky

looking, almost like a press.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, it was a composition type material they used on all these

old buildings.

MR. STARNES: Well, there was no insulation in there. They had that on the outside

and then something real thin on the inside. We'd laugh, we'd be going up, going home.

We'd stop and listen at the movies and we'd go up to one of those holes, if it was low

enough, with the holes the pigeons make, and we’d just scream and then take off

running. I remember, they had some Western movies and they had some kind of

Western folklore guy come in and show quick draws and this kind of stuff.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, they did. They also had, it was probably before your time,

they had a club for kids on Saturday and I can't remember the name of it off the top of

my head. Kids would go and they'd show Westerns and all kinds, most of the theaters

all had those.

MR. STARNES: Oh, yeah. You could go to a show-

MR. HUNNICUTT: Maybe it was the Little Atoms Club. Maybe that's what it was. That

might been before your time maybe. Back in the early days. Or when you was little.

45

MR. STARNES: You could take a quarter and go to a matinee movie and have a drink

and popcorn all for a quarter.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever go through the museum that was there in Jefferson?

MR. STARNES: Oh, yeah. I've got one of the actual original dimes that they would

radiate and seal.

MR. HUNNICUTT: ... down?

MR. STARNES: Right.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That didn't last very long. Most people didn't realize that. The half-

life was very short.

MR. STARNES: When the dance hall closed down as the Paragon Building, which

was right across the street, they put in some type of, they were radiated, and

experimental radiated plants. Well, Mom would sit on the porch out front and watch

them when they bring stuff out and put it in the dumpster. She loved plants. She loved

flowers. She'd have me run across, when they closed, she had me run across the

street, "See if there's any rosebushes over there." I'd bring back five or six. She

planted them things all over the yard. She had roses growing everywhere and even

going by it today, there's still some roses still there that she planted.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That came out of the museum.

MR. STARNES: Well, no it came out of that place that used to be the dance hall of the

Paragon building. Some kind of radiated ... Then it was the, right when I was about to

leave, they switched it over to a slot car track.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I remember that. That was [inaudible], a big slot car track.

MR. STARNES: Oh, yeah, they had big tracks in there.

46

MR. HUNNICUTT: They had a laundromat down in the bottom.

MR. STARNES: Yeah. [Inaudible].

MR. HUNNICUTT: That's where the [inaudible] first started in Oak Ridge.

MR. STARNES: Oh, yeah. Boy, did we get in trouble over that one. When Joe Young

closed down, I don't know why he closed down the restaurant because it was very

successful. I mean, it had a good turnout, you know, especially for breakfast because

all the cops would come in there for breakfast. Of course, you had all the neighborhood

kids coming in buying ice cream sodas and whatever. But then it got switched over to

the laundromat and Mom worked at the laundromat. Well, this group of blacks came in

and just walked over to the machines and dumped the stuff. Then they put soap in and

just dumped their stuff in. Started the machine and went over and sat down. Mom

called Joe, Joe got ahold of Beacher Powell and Billy Earl and told them, "Get over

there." They were expecting trouble. Joe, Beacher and Billy came in and they walked

over to the people and told them, "You've got to leave." They refused. Well, their

clothes and stuff are still in the washing machine. Beacher, Billy Earl and Joe just

grabbed them up, took them outside, set them down. They didn't fight with them, just

picked them up, and took them out, set them on the curb. Well, all their clothes that

was in the washing machines, they just drug a basket over there, put them in the

basket and went outside and dump them on the group. Well, that kind of started a little

bit of protesting going on. Well, police get there and they tell the protesters, "Look, you

can't be on the property. You have to be off the property. You can go up and down the

sidewalk there on Robertsville Road as long as you don't block the entrance and the

exit. You've got to keep that open." Well, they called other people and other people

47

and other people and other people. They had that big march going back and forth.

Well, they would go up to the corner and then turn to go down Jefferson Court, which

is right at the Paragon building. Well, where the Paragon sits and Jefferson Court goes

down the side of it, our house sit right here. I had a Mynah bird and he was loud. His

name was Charlie so every time we'd go in and out, he always was in a cage, right

there beside the door in the kitchen. If you go in the door, first thing you do, "Hi,

Charlie." Well, he picked that up. He could wolf whistle loud enough that you could

hear him all the way down at the drugstore. He'd holler, "Hey. What are you going? Hi

Charlie." Well, normal day, I mean the protesters are out there doing their thing, we

take the cage, set it on the porch, take the paper out of it, put in a bowl of water in

there and let him take a bath. While they were protesting, we put Charlie out on the

porch to take a bath. Next thing you know, here comes two cops. Well, they knew who

we were but they didn't know anything about this bird. They had gone to the

laundromat and told my mom, "These kids across the street are going to have to quit

yelling because they're harassing these people and they're liable to piss them off."

Mom calls us on the phone, "Hey, leave them people alone out there. Stay in the

house." We're like, "We're in the house. We ain't doing nothing." Didn't dawn that this

bird was out there. Well, the bird stayed out there and we're still in the house. Next

thing you know, here comes two cops knocking on the door. "We've talked to your

mom and she's called and told you to stay in the house." "We're in the house, we ain't

going anywhere. We're not out there." "Oh, Charlie." "Charlie, what the heck's a

Charlie?" "That's that bird." "What?" "Yeah. Hi, Charlie." He wouldn't say a word. I tried

to get him to wolf whistle, he wouldn't wolf whistle. He wouldn't do anything except sit

48

there and go, "Rah, rah, rah." "That bird don't talk. I'm telling you people, you'd better

stay in the house and leave these people alone. That's your warning." We're like, "It's

the bird." As they went down off the porch, they got halfway across the yard and to the

parking lot, Charlie let's out, "Hey. Hi, Charlie" and wolf whistled and the cop goes ...

The protesters were right there at the bottom of the parking lot and they're like, "Rah

rah rah." [Inaudible]. You can't do a dag-blamed thing about that, that isn’t nobody, it's

a bird. They're like, "Oh. Okay." They went back to their marching. I don't remember

exactly when it was, the KKK [Ku Klux Klan] showed up and Mom dry-cleaned all their

uniforms for their get together. Mom made us stay home, she didn't let us go over

there to see what they did, so I don't know. All I know is Mom dry cleaned their robes.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That was the first protest that they had in Oak Ridge.

MR. STARNES: Probably in Oak Ridge. Yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Sure was.

MR. STARNES: Yeah. I don't recall any others after that. Of course, I left it was, '69

so I don't know.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That story about the bird is something else.

MR. STARNES: There was a problem at the high school when Dr. King got shot. As

you come up from the auditorium, come up the covered staircase, you had the rounder

building. That was the only air conditioned building in the whole complex at the time.

Somebody had spray painted in black spray paint, "Hooray the King is dead." Well, the

next night somebody had taken white spray paint, painted over it and put, "Long live

Black Brown" who was another high person in the NAACP [National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People]. The third day, go to school, here's "Hooray the King

49

is dead." It's marked over. "Long live Black Brown." It's marked over and underneath it,

spray painted, "But not for long." The school allowed some blacks to come in, I don't

know from what school they were from, to raise money for Dr. King. Well, they set up

this monster bowl right at the entrance to the auditorium. They had like, six doors going

into the auditorium. They sit right there in the middle. Well, it wasn't a donation type

thing. They would stop anybody going to the cafeteria and demand the money. Well,

some of the good old boys from one of the circles down there on the West End

[inaudible], got their girlfriends to walk together and go toward the cafeteria. They were

around the corner so they were watching as they approached these guys. Of course,

they jumped in front of them, "I want $3, I want $4" whatever they demanded. They

wouldn't give it to them. As they started to go around these people, they started

grabbing their purses and stuff. Here comes the good old boys. Ended up being a

knock down drag-out. And don't know who it was, don't remember who it was but

somebody grabbed that big bowl of change and money, went in the cafeteria door. At

the cafeteria you had a small stage at the end of it before you walked down the steps

to go eat. He stood on that stage going, "Free ice cream" and just went, “whew” and

threw the money all over the cafeteria. Of course, all the kids that were there trying to

get ... It got kind of hairy shortly after that because they were marching up and down

the halls. If they looked in the window and seen blacks sitting in the classroom, they

would stand at the door and try to get it open. Of course, the teacher probably had it

locked. But they would get the black kids to come out of the classroom and march with

them. You know. Some of the kids, some of the girls got pretty scared and went to the

50

office and called their parents to come and get them. They didn't know what was going

to take place.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember what year that might have been?

MR. STARNES: It was the year King got killed, I'm not exactly sure, I don't recall. But

it was before I graduated. Probably my junior year, probably. '67, maybe '68. I don't

know.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned to me, when I was talking to you the other day,

about training dogs for certain services.

MR. STARNES: Right. [Inaudible].

MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about that.

MR. STARNES: When I got out of service, I got a medical discharge from service.

They found out that I had a hole in my heart. I got a medical discharge but the Marine

Corps screwed me because I had gone, they had air evacuated me to Bethesda Naval

Hospital in Virginia. They hooked me up like a stereo. Doctors came in about a week

later and said, "You've got to have open heart surgery." I'm 25 years old. That scared

the hell out of me. While I was in boot camp, they screwed up my mouth. They did

some oral surgery that I didn't need and come to find out, the doctor was looking at

someone else's x-rays, not mine. He thought there was a bunch of impacted teeth on

my top. When he cut me open, found out, "This ain't the right ... Where's these teeth at

on this x-ray?" They stitched me back up and sent me on through boot camp. Well, by

him cutting so deep, it killed all the teeth in my mouth, in the top. Every one of them

turned black and just fell out. Of course, they didn't take any responsibility for that. I'm

thinking, "Well one of your doctors done screwed up my mouth, now you want me to

51

lay here and let some doctor open me up like a can? No. Uh uh. I am not going get this

surgery." Well, I didn't have any other choice but to take a medical discharge. Plus

they told me I was only going to live three years anyway. Well, I got discharged, came

home for a short period of time and really couldn't find any work. There was a little

small security company that was only paying like, $100 a week. Luckily, my buddy that

lived in South Carolina, that was a sergeant with me in service, got out about 30 days

prior to what I did. He lived there in Columbia. He calls me up and says he's working

for Wells Fargo and they're looking for a lead courier to work on the truck. It pays

$10.50 an hour. Well, back there $10.50 an hour was pretty good money. I packed up,

went back to South Carolina, went to work for Wells Fargo. While working at Wells

Fargo, I assisted a company in training attack dogs to place out in businesses at night

time. The business would close, of course, we had keys to every location that we went

to and once we got there, we would open the door, put in the large warning sign saying

that “There's an attack dog on the property, come in at your own risk.” Then we'd go

and release the dog to run inside the business until the following morning. The

following morning we'd take the truck, go back around, pick them up, take the sign

down, clean up any mess that they made and then take them back to the kennel, feed

them, wash them, train them. [inaudible], and let them rest a little bit. But there was

one dog that the owner got from Florida that was, it was a silver female shepherd bred

with a full blooded wolf. This dog was a monster. He had paws as big as your hand

and would eat through anything. Well, the boss man bought him and brought him up to

breed him. We get to the airport to pick him up, he wouldn't come out of the air freight

cage. Boss man's got a loop stick, trying to get it around his head, he'd bite the stick in

52

two and boss man goes, "I guess we just bought an air freight cage." Well, when we

bought this dog from this fella, this breeder down in Florida, the one thing he forgot to

tell us was he does not like to be fenced in. Well, of course all of our runs are fenced

in. Could not keep that dog in the fence. He would actually climb a 12 foot fence and

jump out.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, how'd you get him out of that shipping crate?

MR. STARNES: We didn't. He came out on his own.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Just took the crate and set it down?

MR. STARNES: We bought it and brought it up to the kennel, put him in a run,

opened the door and hoped that he'd come out and smell the food. He finally came out

and we yanked it out of there. But we nicknamed him Thunder because when we put

him in the transport truck, we had like six cages on one side and six on the other side,

we'd put the dogs in it, shut the door and go get the next one. Every time Thunder

would bark, he would rock that whole trailer back and forth. We thought, "Okay, the

best place to put him would be down at the penitentiary" because they got those big 14

foot concertina wires and they had three dog runs.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Let me back you up a bit. I want to know how you got to handle

that dog.

MR. STARNES: Very carefully.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you do with him I mean?

MR. STARNES: It took about three weeks of being in the cage with him and just

sitting down, let him come up, let him get used to you.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Were you afraid he was going to bite you?

53

MR. STARNES: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. We wore cuffs. Of course you

can't protect everything but [inaudible].

MR. HUNNICUTT: What would you have done if he attacked you?

MR. STARNES: Hollered and hoped like heck somebody heard me.

MR. HUNNICUTT: After about three weeks he kind of warmed up to you?

MR. STARNES: Yeah. It took about three weeks for him to finally come around. Of

course, the state law in South Carolina was, if you're transporting an attack dog, it had

to be muzzled. He didn't like that muzzle. You could muzzle him and get him in the

crate but by the time you got to the business, he get it off, somehow or another. We

had a fellow show one up Saturday morning, had a big pickup truck and he comes in

and told me, "I've got a dog to donate to you guys. I can't do nothing with him. He's

wanting to snap at the kids." He said, "I've got to get rid of him." He said, "He's a good

dog. He's mean but I'm afraid to have him around the kids." Well, we're thinking

shepherd, Doberman pinscher, whatever. We start out to his truck and we hear these

chains rattle. I'm like, "What does he have in the back of that truck?" It was a Great

Dane. This thing was huge. He couldn't do nothing with him and he had him chained

together with chains that you'd tie an elephant down with. He was something else.

We're like, "Dude, we don't have a place big enough for him. You've got to take him

somewhere else because we can't take him. We don't have a place big enough."

Delivering the dogs to different businesses, we put Thunder and two others out at the

state penitentiary in the dog run. Well, about 2:30 one night, I get a call from the

officers at the penitentiary going, "You got to come down here. You got to come down

here. One of them is loose. One of them is loose." I'm thinking, "How did he get loose?

54

He's in a dog run with 14 foot concertina wire?" He must have dug under it. I go over

there with the truck, I'm looking around, looking around. This dog had climbed this 14

foot fence, through the concertina wire, come down the other side and was chasing the

guards and had them all in the guard shack and wouldn't let them out.

MR. HUNNICUTT: This Thunder dog?

MR. STARNES: Yep, [inaudible]. We're like, "Well, we got to find him an enclosed

place to put him because he's an escape artist. He's Houdini." We finally found a place

to put him and it was a large truck repair place. You got the big counter, got all these

monster tools hanging on the wall behind the counter. We put Thunder in there. About

3:30 one morning the phone rings and it's the local city police going, "Get out here, get

out here, get out here. We got to contain this dog. He's got somebody pinned up in the

front entrance and he's chewing his to pieces." I'm like, "Uh oh." I get down there and

this black guy had kicked the bottom of the door and went through the bottom of the

door, the glass in the bottom of the door. Had jumped up on the counter and was

reaching to get one of those big expensive tools off the wall. Thunder got him right

here and wasn't about to let go. That guy was hanging over the counter screaming

bloody murder, blood everywhere and Thunder still had a hold of him.

MR. HUNNICUTT: How'd you get him loose?

MR. STARNES: I had to actually pry him loose so the ambulance could take the guy

out of there. I stayed with him behind the counter until the ambulance loaded him up.

Never did hear what happened to him but if he lived through it, he isn’t going to break

into some place again, I guarantee you that.

MR. HUNNICUTT: How do you all train a dog to be an attack dog?

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MR. STARNES: You get somebody from the outside to be the aggressor. He wears

cuffs and basically you pick at him, make him want to snap at you. If he bites, you

praise him, give him a treat. If he holds on, that's even better. You actually get up there

and release him, put him at the stay position, put him down and then give him a bigger

treat. This guy walks around, acts like he's running from him, send him after him.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, do you teach them the basic stay and sit-

MR. STARNES: Oh yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: -commands that-

MR. STARNES: Oh yeah. You've got to have basics to start.

MR. HUNNICUTT: -before you ever start that?

MR. STARNES: Yeah. Actually, if you go into training dogs for attack, you need to

start one at about four to six months old basic training.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What breed of dogs are good for that?

MR. STARNES: Any of them really. It just depends on how aggressive they are.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Chihuahuas?

MR. STARNES: Well, if you want an ankle biter, sure. Why not.

MR. HUNNICUTT: No, I've noticed that police enforcement generally has German

shepherd dogs.

MR. STARNES: A lot are going to the malamute and some of the, what's the other

breed.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I think German shepherds have a problem with their hips.

[Inaudible].

MR. STARNES: Yeah, Germans have a real bad case of hip dysplasia.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you all have any Doberman pinscher dogs?

MR. STARNES: We had one and I didn't trust that dog to turn away from him. He

would nip at you no matter what. Especially if it was a full moon.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Really?

MR. STARNES: He would definitely be aggressive.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I have the same feeling, every one of those dogs I ever saw I

didn't trust. I worked with a guy that had one. He said that's the gentlest dog, all that

dog wanted to do was chase groundhogs. The groundhog would get in the hole and

that groundhog would eat his face up. He'd stick down and he'd come back.

Sometimes he'd get it out of there.

MR. STARNES: Yep.

MR. HUNNICUTT: If it did, it was dead. But other than that, he come back with a

bloody face. He said he never bothered a human whatsoever.

MR. STARNES: Yep.

MR. HUNNICUTT: But I've seen others that, I'm like you, I wouldn't trust them as far

as I could throw them.

MR. STARNES: Yep. We had a lot, it's a foreign dog, I want to think he was from

Brazil or England. I can't remember the breed right off hand. You had the malamute,

which looks almost like a shepherd but a different color.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Those dogs easy to train?

MR. STARNES: Usually by the time we get them, they're already through basic

training. You know, your basic obedience and stuff. You can start a dog out to being

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aggressive but usually the ones we got were ones that had gone bad to a family or

snapped at a kid or something like this.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever train any of these drug sniffing dogs that they have

now?

MR. STARNES: Did not but I had the course and was fixing to train one to do that.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you know how they go about doing that?

MR. STARNES: Oh yeah. Yeah. It's by smell and reward.

MR. HUNNICUTT: It doesn't matter what the breed of the dog is, either? I know out at

[inaudible], I watched them use those dogs at one time. They were just what I called

dump dogs. They weren't any special breed.

MR. STARNES: You would think that, okay, a normal dog's nose is 100 times more

sensitive than ours is. That's where they pick up the odor and alert to it. But you would

think that if you were looking for a breed of dog that goes mostly by smell that you'd

use a beagle.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Or a bloodhound.

MR. STARNES: Or a bloodhound. There's some organizations that are breeding the

beagles and bloodhounds into the law enforcement.

MR. HUNNICUTT: These dogs I saw were just regular old dogs of no particular

breed.

MR. STARNES: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

MR. HUNNICUTT: I talked to that guy and he said he can teach just about any kind of

dog to do this.

MR. STARNES: Yep.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: It was amazing, you know, lead the dog around the truck or

something, looking for something and every now and then they picked up an odor or

whatever they called it. They'd hide in and he'd find it.

MR. STARNES: That's rewarding, right.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Keep his interest going.

MR. STARNES: Right. They can, depending on what you're training him for. If you're

training one for explosives, it's a different process because you don't, if he detects the

odor you want him to sit down and not move and just point with his nose. Where's it

at? Where's it at? Now, a drug dog, you want him to basically smell it and attack it and

try to get it so you know where to look for it but you can't mix those two. They're whole

separate learning process.

MR. HUNNICUTT: The dogs that the police officers have that travels with them, they

stay with them 24/7, don't they?

MR. STARNES: Most of them do. Now, in Knoxville, we have a kennel that the

officers go and pick them up, bring them into work, they work the shift and then they

take them back to the kennel. At times, they are allowed to take them home but they

have to have a caged in area at the home. It's got to be so big by so big, you know,

with shelter, food, water, stuff like this. They don't mind the officer taking one home but

they're a little leery about it because of the liability and insurance in case he wants to

get out or some kid across the street comes over and pokes at him or something like

this.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Does those dogs, if you had a dog, and I was about to do

something to you, does those dogs react to me?

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MR. STARNES: Absolutely. I mean, they are protective of their master. That's what

you teach them. You know, they're taught, the canines are taught to search for a

particular thing plus they're also taught to protect the master at any rate. What's rough

is if a canine office gets hurt, wounded or something in the process then he’s

protecting his master…

MR. HUNNICUTT: They're trying to get to the officer ...

MR. STARNES: …somebody's got to get to him and get the dog first. That dog don't

want to go anywhere. He wants to be right there with his master.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Does other handlers, for example, you're down, you're hurt, your

dog is over here and another dog handler comes in, does he have an advantage over

a regular person trying to get to that?

MR. STARNES: Oh yeah, but nine times out of ten, a normal officer, the dogs

familiarize themselves with the shift that they're on and the people that are on it.

They're usually friendly toward other people, toward other officers during the shift, but

as for protecting the master, no. He wouldn't let anybody get near him.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Do they ever have multiple dogs that get together, are they

sociable with one another or do they isolate them?

MR. STARNES: Probably not. No. They usually isolate them. They're not usually

other dog friendly too much. Now they're trained not, if another dog, if an officer's got

one on the leash doing something, if they are, okay. You've got different modes that

you run the dogs through. Just a friendly mode, where he's running, working out or

something like this. Then you take him through the crowd and you have other officers

come in, stand around and you work your way through them, making sure he's not

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aggressive, snapping at anybody or something. Then you got the protection mode that

said, no. Nothing's going to get close to him or the officer.

MR. HUNNICUTT: How do you take your dog to the vet?

MR. STARNES: Very carefully. Most places will require, it depends on the state. If

you're taking a canine to a vet, he's more than likely going to have to be muzzled.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That's going to be a difficult task. Well, if he's got problems with

his mouth, obviously you muzzle him, I guess they put him to sleep and then look at

him?

MR. STARNES: It is, you know, usually a canine officer works the dog probably

maybe 8, maybe at the most 10 years. He's with that one handler, I mean, that's the

only person he knows. If the officer passes away or moves on or does something

different, nine times out of ten they're going to have a hard time with that dog because

he's not going to be too friendly toward anybody else [inaudible]-

MR. HUNNICUTT: Do they have to put the dog down?

MR. STARNES: -come in and take over, you know. They usually, 5 to 8, maybe 6 to 8

years is the max that they'll run a dog because they get in their own temperament.

Yeah, it's sad now. If an officer retires or something like this, he might be allowed to

take the dog home with it, you know retire with him.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That's quite a liability though, isn't it?

MR. STARNES: Yes. Yeah. You've got to make sure that your insurance

company's got you covered because if he bites somebody, you know you're going to

get sued. Big time.

MR. HUNNICUTT: When did you come back here and live in Oak Ridge?

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MR. STARNES: I stayed in South Carolina from, '75, '76 until '86. I found out that my

mom was losing her hearing and she was going deaf. I decided to come back home.

She had, when I went in the service, Mom had moved us out to Ben's Mobile Home

Park, just passed the steam plant on Edgemoor. We were the first trailer in that park

and my aunt and uncle were the second trailer in the park. We were the first two on the

right and left as you entered the park. The trailer has some problems with it and Mom

moved from there, exactly when I'm not sure because I was in service. She moved up

to Lexington, Kentucky, where some other relatives lived. She was there for quite

some time. When I moved back to Oak Ridge, she moved from Lexington down to

Elizabethton, Tennessee, we found a small house, Linda Brown found her a small

house on Jonathan Lane. Mom was living there and I had my company up on Outer

Drive, security and detective company.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you think about Oak Ridge? How much had it changed

since you had been gone?

MR. STARNES: Not hardly any. The bad thing I saw change-wise was two things.

Number one, the population was mostly retired and in regards to the school, when I

graduated in '69, we graduated with I believe 624 kids in our senior class. Now they're

doing real good to get 300 to graduate. It's gone downhill about 50%.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, a lot of that was the population from the Manhattan project

years with all the kids that came in.

MR. STARNES: Yes and you know, from what I understood as a kid growing up in

Oak Ridge and this, that and the other, when Oak Ridge became a city, the city people

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that ran the city were all employees of the plant. I mean, you had to live in Oak Ridge

in order to work out there.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Used to be a fireman or a policeman as well.

MR. STARNES: Right. The people that started the city, I don't know, I guess my

definition of it would be that they had blinders on, because they couldn't see any other

work in this town besides the plant. I guess they figured, "My great, great

grandchildren will have jobs out here." Well, once they opened the city up and you

didn't have to live here, there's a lot of the population that moved outside the city.

Number one for lower taxes. Granted, we still have a great school, school education

system, but you don't have the people coming in here.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Right.

MR. STARNES: If you graduated like when I did, you either went to college or you

entered the service or you went to college. Well, not everybody from Oak Ridge had

enough money to go to college. Even if you graduated college and weren't able to get

on at one of the plants, 90% of the time you had to leave from here to go find work.

Well, once a person leaves here, they establish a family somewhere else. They got no

reason to come back here until their mom and daddy die. When the mom and daddy

die, well, they either become a slumlord or they sell it. The price that they're asking for

some of the houses now, you know, like a duplex, is $120, $130,000. You can't buy a

house on $7.50 an hour cooking pizzas and that's the only jobs that there are around

here unless you're lucky enough to get on at the plant. This whole town mentality is

under the impression that everybody lives in Oak Ridge works at the plant making $20

an hour. It isn’t that way. We don't have any industry here to support kids that don't get

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to go to college. We don't have industry here and that's the one thing this stupid town

needs is to get those idiots off of their behind at the city and quit giving the Chamber of

Commerce $175,000 a year to do what? Sit on their duff and spend the money? If I

were on city council, first thing I'd do is I'd put a stop to the amount of money that the

Chamber of Commerce gets. I'd tell them, "Come next year, if you don't, in this town, if

you don't bring 150, 200 jobs in this town, we're going to cut your budget again. We're

going to cut it every year until you can produce some businesses and people have

jobs." I mean, just like the seniors. The seniors make up, what is it, 63 to 65% of this

town? They closed the Senior Center. Now that don't make a whole lot of sense. They

moved it to the library but they cut their facility almost in half.

MR. HUNNICUTT: They're supposed to be building them a new facility over there.

MR. STARNES: Yeah, right.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I'm not sure exactly when that's going to start.

MR. STARNES: Exactly.

MR. HUNNICUTT: But that building they were in belonged to the county.

MR. STARNES: Yeah, it still does.

MR. HUNNICUTT: The county wanted to use it, they're going to move the sessions

court over there.

MR. STARNES: That makes sense, you know.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I noticed on your bio, I want to touch on one other thing before we

stop, you were employed with Wells Fargo.

MR. STARNES: Right.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about picking up money. How does that work?

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MR. STARNES: Well, you train as a lead courier. Number one, that you're responsible

for every penny on that truck, coming from the bank, coming from the business, going

back and forth, wherever. You have to account for every penny on that truck. They're

management way of running it, okay, every morning you go, the lead courier gets the

keys out of the safe. You go out to the truck, you have one key to open the back of the

truck. One guard goes in the back of the truck, shuts the door and double locks it from

the inside. You can't get in the back of that truck no matter what you try to do. The

walls are about four inches thick, all the windows are bullet proof glass. Once he's

inside, the lead courier goes around to the passenger door, opens it, and lets the

passenger guard in. Then the driver goes around, gets in the driver door. There's three

officers in the truck. Lead courier, driver, the secondary driver and then the guy in the

back. The guy in the back has got to have some mentality to him because you pick up,

say 15 business locations. They may go to 5 different banks. You've got to know which

bag you picked up and where to put it in that truck so when you get to that bank that

it's going to, those 5 bags go to that bank. You got to keep abreast of everything. You

can't just let, throw it there in back because you'll get it all screwed up. When you start

off, you're empty. You go to the bank for your, you have a schedule. You go to the

bank for a pickup to go to businesses. You pick up what's there for those businesses,

you go to the secondary bank, pick up those, go to the third bank, and pick up those.

Maybe four or five banks at one time that you got all this money in the back going to

the businesses. You have a time schedule. You can only be within 5 minutes of that

time schedule. That business knows that you're going to pull up there so they can

prepare for you to be there. When the truck pulls up, the lead courier gets out. He goes

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around, lets the secondary driver out. On the side of the truck, you have what's called

a drop door that's got like a tray in it that falls open. It doesn't fall out, just rotates. You

go up to the door, you take the keys, you put them there. He closes it and puts the

keys inside so if anybody were to hijack you and try to take you hostage, they ain't

going anywhere in the truck because the keys are inside. He knows the first stop you

go to make, what business it is. He'll have that bag. It may be empty bank bags. It may

contain $12,000. We don't know. All we put down is the bank manager, vault manager

will put down from him whatever bank it is, a number. Each bank has got a specific

number going to that business, their location. I find that I got that bag that's said to

contain, there's no exact amount. He could say it's $1000 and it could be $100,000.

We don't know. All our responsibility is that number bag going to that place. I signed

saying I got it. When we get there, put the keys in the truck, he gets the bag, whatever

shipment it is going to that business, puts it in there and before he drops it down, he's

looking both directions to make sure nobody's sneaking up on us. The lead courier

faces the truck, secondary courier is behind him looking both directions. When he

drops the deposit in there, whatever it is going to that store and opens the door, we

both pull weapons. Grab the bag and head for the front door of the business. When we

get inside the business, we still arm ourselves but we holster the weapon. We do the

transaction inside, whoever gets it at the store signs they got that particular bag. They

look at the number, make sure everything's good. If he has a deposit going back to the

bank, we pick it up, we come to the front entrance or exit door, look out at the truck.

The guy in the back of the truck gives us a signal, he's checked both directions,

nobody's coming either direction. We come out, by the time we walk up to the door

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he's got the drop door open. Put it in, shut the door. Then he puts it in a location in the

truck, then he drops the keys, hands it out and we get back in the truck. Now, what's

different with Wells Fargo from Brinks was Wells Fargo, if somebody were to happen,

somehow, to get in the back of that truck or to get in the front of that truck. Say he

knocks the driver upside the head and shoots the other courier. He comes out and

going to try to get in the truck. Well, with Wells Fargo, he ain't going to get in the truck

because the keys are locked up in the back. With Brinks and Loomis, the guy in the

back gets out and goes in stores. The driver stays there. Well, behind the driver and

the passenger seats, there's a three inch slide hole that goes directly to the back of the

driver’s seat. If someone were to somehow get control of the truck, not a problem. The

guy in the back slides the door, boom. Put a shell in his back. He isn’t going anywhere.

But now with Loomis and the other company, the driver stays in the truck and the

courier in the back and the secondary courier go in the store. To us, that's dangerous

because sitting in the driver's seat, you've got these big mirrors. You can see around

the truck but you can't see in the back. You can't see beyond the back door. Now

they've put cameras, which is finally good. Give you an example, the other companies,

if they come out, they've got to go to the back of the truck and open the door. Well, if

you got some bigshot hijacker, all he's got to do is take a car, park it behind the truck.

When you walk up there to unlock the door, rear end the back of the truck, there's both

couriers laying on the ground with their legs broke and everything, the doors open to

the back of the truck. You've got access to everything in there.

MR. HUNNICUTT: The guy up front can't see any of that?

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MR. STARNES: No. You've got mirrors that you can see the backside but you can't

see what's beyond the rear door.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned earlier you have to account for every penny of

that. How would you know, if you don't know what's in that bag, how can you account

for it other than the fact of deliver what you picked up to where it's going?

MR. STARNES: They don't want us to know so in the event the truck got hijacked or

whatever and they lost the money, they can say they had that amount in it. He could

put down $12,000 going to company and there will only be $2000 in the bag. But the

insurance is going to pay out $12,000 because they said [inaudible].

MR. HUNNICUTT: You, as an employee, never look in the bag?

MR. STARNES: Well, sometimes you get a little curious because some of the bank

bags are tall, real thick canvas bags and they push together the top. They've got a lead

seal that they slide over the top of it and then crimp it. Well, sometimes they get in a

hurry and they don't crimp very well. You can just slide it right off the top, "Oh, we got

$100 bills today." It seldom happens but every once in a while it goes. The worst part

about working with Wells Fargo was we had two trucks that had to go over, I don't

know if you remember, South Central Bell, big telephone company back then. We had

to go to their main office and pick up change. Now, we had bags of pennies, dimes,

nickels, quarters, half dollars, whatever denomination. They would bring these things

out. Each truck would get about 150 bags. They bring them out on this little train. Of

course, during that particular pickup, you're empty. You don't have anything else in the

truck. You just grab them and throw them up in the truck, you know. You got so many

bags of nickels, so many bags of dimes. You sign how many you counted. But when

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you get to the bank vault, well, some of these places are easy to get into, some of

them you got to go up and down steps. If you got 150 bags back here-

MR. HUNNICUTT: With change.

MR. STARNES: -with change.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That's pretty heavy.

MR. STARNES: That's heavy and you got to put them on a hand truck. You place one

one direction, one the other direction and then the third one this direction so they kind

of lace into each other and don't move. You hope. But you start going down 15 steps

at a time, they're liable to fall off. Well, you got to stop, watch what's going on around

you because you may have some nut wanting to come up there, grab a bag and take

off on a bicycle. Re-stack them, get them down to the vault, separate them in the vault.

Let the vault manager count them, okay, verify. That's the hardest part to working

Wells Fargo.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What kind of money does an officer, or doing that job?

MR. STARNES: Working Wells Fargo, you started out at minimum wage but then you

got a raise, the first raise after about 60 days. They'd evaluate you to see if you can

handle it. You have to be law enforcement minded plus you have to be [inaudible]-

MR. HUNNICUTT: Trained in the use of a sidearm?

MR. STARNES: Right. And a shotgun. It's no fun to take a shot out of the back of that

truck, you have to qualify in the back of the truck. You can't see what you're shooting

at. You're aiming and then hold your position to see where that first shot went and you

can adjust a little bit. The worst part is firing that shotgun in the back of that truck.

MR. HUNNICUTT: [Inaudible].

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MR. STARNES: It rings your head for about 20 minutes.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Carl, it's been very interesting to talk to you, [inaudible] you've had

several different types of jobs that most people wouldn't deal with in their lifetime.

MR. STARNES: Law enforcement and security's been my grit I guess. The last job

that I had was 10 years with the Knoxville Police. That's when I retired. I said, "That's

enough. I've had enough."

MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, I want to thank you again for your interview and your time.

MR. STARNES: Sure. More than welcome.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Is there anything we hadn't talked about you want to say?

MR. STARNES: No, that should be covered, just about a whole lot.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, thanks again for your time.

MR. STARNES: Yes sir, any time. Thank you much.

[End of Interview]

[Editor’s Note: Portions of this transcript have been edited at Mr. Starnes’ request. The

corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged.]

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