On January 18, 1968, my brother, Theodore (Ted) Light was born. I was in the third grade. Early that same year, Dad bought his own service station (Beaulah Park Sunoco) located in a community known as "Midway" because it was approximately midway between Kingsport and Johnson City.
Dad decided to move the family closer to his business so in August 1970 we moved to Gray Station Tennessee, later known simply as "Gray" Tennessee. The home we moved into was located in the country. We had two acres of land and later Dad purchased a joining lot giving us approximately three acres.
It was a different life all the way around. A big change for me was attending a different school. I went from a school where I knew and got along with everyone to a school where I was suddenly a stranger to everyone. I went from a school where fights were very rare to a school where fighting was common. Being the new kid in school, I had to fight a few times especially early on in order to win the respect and acceptance among my fellow male students. In the sixth grade at Gray Station Elementary I got into a fight once in the lunch room. The boy sitting beside me, kept hitting me in the back. He was trying to bully me. I warned him to stop a couple of times but he didn't stop. After hitting me again, I just completely went into a rage. I suddenly jumped to my feet and just started wailing on him with a furry. We of course were both taken to the principles office and were pattled About fifteen minutes later when I walked into the boy's restroom he was waiting on me and tried to jump me from behind. We fought again. I cut my knuckles on his teeth. Again we were taken to the principles office. I thought for sure we both had it now. Surprisingly, we did not get a prattling this time. It seems this other guy had been bulling people before and they were just waiting for someone to do what they as adults could not do. They simply asked us if we ware through yet! We said yes and that was the end of it.
I sat right behind this guy in class and after this we got along very well. That's the way guys are. We don't carry grudges for years like most girls do. When we have problems between us, we kick up a little dust, shed a little blood and then when its over, its over. I'm not advising fighting, that's just the reality of how it is, or at least was for boys in that age range in some communities. In time I made some good friends at school and in my community.
In the Summer of 1972, Dad went into the demolition business. He was still in the service station business however and had a manager there to oversee things while he was on the demolition sites. The very first job he took was a huge one. Five large warehouses in Kingsport owned by the mead Corporation had to be removed. Dad did not use heavy equipment for this big job. Instead, he employed a large crew and disassembled the buildings by hand and sold the building materials. I was thirteen and he put me to work on the site cleaning salvage lumber (removing nails). I was paid $0.50/hr. After the lumber was cleaned it was hauled off to that third lot he bought that joined our property in Gray. We worked sixteen hours a day, six days a week. I was actually glad to see school start back.
Dad used some of the building materials from the demolition work to build
a warehouse on our property in Gray to be used for storing more building materials as he continued in that business. Although he used it as a warehouse, it looked like a barn and we called it a barn. Funny thing is, he painted it green. It's the only green barn, I've ever seen.
In the fall of 1973 I became a Freshman at Daniel Boone High School in Sulphur Springs, Tennessee. All around, it was a good school. I majored in "Business". The single most useful course I took in school was typing. Who knew back then that computers was coming very soon and what a tremendous advantage knowing how to type would be?
Returning to school was not the break I thought it would be. Dad decided I should work at the service station. I wet get off the school bus and a driver would be waiting on me. I would immediately get in the car and the driver would take me to work at the service station. I would do my homework in the office between customers. I learned to make change the old fashion way (count it back from the purchase price to the amount rendered). It amazes me today that so many people don't know how to do that. If the cash register is broken and they have to count it back, they struggle to figure out the amount of change to give back. I also worked on Saturdays and sometimes on Sunday. About once a week I did not have 
to work at the service station. I got to stay home and mow our acre yard that day (push mower). My childhood was over. Most of the money I earned went to pay for my school clothes.
Almost immediately after finishing building the warehouse Dad decided to build himself an auto parts store on the lot he had purchased beside of Beaulah Park Sunoco. "Carl's Auto Parts" opened around May of 1974. Dad put mom to work in the store. She caught on very fast and before long she was managing every aspect of the parts store. Dad kept busy running the service station and also continuing to work in the demolition business. We were a very busy family.
Later that year Dad bought a recreation center (pool and pinball). It did fairly well. Also there was two apartments overhead that brought in rental income. About this time Dad made one of the very few bad business decisions he ever made. He decided to put pool tables in the backroom of the auto parts store. It proved to be disastrous. People did not want to shop for auto parts in a "bar-like" atmosphere. The business began to go into the red. Also around this same time, auto manufactures were making lots of innovative technical changes in their automotive designs. The period of the shade tree mechanic was descending rapidly. At over 40 years of age, Dad had no desire to go to school to learn new skills in a field he had already mastered. It was time to get out of the service station business. He sold the service station in late 1974. We sold our property in Gray to Dad's brother except for the acre lot where Dad had his green barn and we moved back to Kingsport in the same house we lived in before moving to Gray five years earlier (Dad owned the house). A short time later in early 1975, he also sold "Carl's Auto Parts. The store left us in terrible debt. Now Dad had the pool hall and the demolition business and some rental property for income. However the payments on the debt to the auto parts suppliers was extremely high. Dad had been extremely successful in years past and then almost overnight it seemed the bottom was falling out from everything.
The income from the pool hall was coming in a quarter at a time. Dad decided to use the facility for something else, so the he got rid of the pool tables and turned the place into "Carl's Trading Post". Dad would go to auctions and buy a bunch of junk items and bring them back to the trading post. One section of the building, he had a shop where he would fix things up that he bought at the auctions and the other section of the building was where he displayed his merchandise. This Trading Post thing did not bring in a lot of income, but it did provide just enough to survive on. Dad kept me busy painting on his rental property and the Trading Post as well. Dad's health had begun to deteriorate during this time which certainly did not help matters.
1976 was a year of new beginnings for us. It seems Interstate 181 (since renamed several times and I don't know what they call it now) was going to be coming right through our neighborhood. This meat we had to move. It also meant that a lot of homes would be needing to be demolished, including the one we lived in. Dad won the contracts for demolition on several houses and buildings. I got my first job that year outside of working for my Dad. I went to work at Ridgefields Country Club as a dishwasher. I worked for minimum wage at that time which was $2.30/hr.
It would still be three years before the pressure was put on everyone to move from the neighborhood for the Interstate high-way that would be coming through. Around this time, we got new next door neighbors. The Barnette family. Mrs. Barnette had nine children, six boys and three girls. Only two were younger than me. I quickly made friends with several of them and in fact I was probably at their house as much as my own. We used to sit up late and play cards (rummy) a lot. One particular girl in the family caught my eye in a special way; Joan (nickname: Poochie). I tried to date her but she was not the least bit interested. She did like me very much as a friend however and I felt the same way about her, except I wanted to be more than friends.
Around this time, I bought my first vehicle for $200. It was a 1962 army green pick up with a three speed on the floor. the floor. I always tried to park it on a hill so that I could roll it off because sometimes it did not start very easily.
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ight House