My Story: Patsy Walker
Part Two
TITLE: My Story: Patsy Walker – Part Two
AUTHOR: Patsy Walker
PERMISSION to publish granted by the author
Patsy Walker was born on May 16, 1934 in Knoxville, Tennessee. In December of 2024, about eight months after her husband Moe passed away, she wrote to the Wilma Dykeman Legacy and requested a copy of a Knoxville News-Sentinel column which Wilma wrote in 1977, just after Wilma’s own husband had died. “I loved her writings so much,” Patsy wrote, “but the one about [her husband’s] death just spoke to me! I think it has been my favorite love story of all times! I kept the clipping all these years and was devastated to misplace it after my husband’s death.”
As Patsy and the Legacy corresponded, it became evident that she had written down her memories from growing up in northwest Knoxville. The Wilma Dykeman Legacy is proud to publish these memories for the first time in order to enrich the flesh-and-blood history of Knoxville during the mid and late 20th century.
“It’s not been an easy life,” says Patsy, “but it’s been a good life."
Michigan
After World War Two ended, a lot of Southern people went to Detroit to work in the auto industry. This was a chance for higher wages and more benefits available in that industry.
My adopted parents, Uncle Jesse and Aunt Carmen, decided to leave Knoxville and try their luck in Detroit. Uncle Jesse left his job at Appalachian Mills. With no car or transportation, and apparently no money, they were driven to Detroit by a friend. They took only their clothes with them. They left their small house fully furnished and rented out. Uncle Jesse got a job at the Ford Motor Company, and he and Aunt Carmen rented a small trailer to live in near his job.
In the meantime, they left my sisters and me with our adopted grandmother Aunt Willis. She ran a boarding house on Locust Street in Knoxville. She already had family and friends living with her. I don't remember where we all slept. We stayed with her part of the summer.
Uncle Jesse and Aunt Carmen finally sent a friend to move all of us to Detroit. I remember nothing about that trip except we were all crowded together in the car. We ended up staying at a house on 3rd Street in Wyandotte, Michigan. The house was an ugly old two-story brick house.
My sister and I walked to Ecorse High School every morning and afternoon, and came home for lunch. If we saw classmates near us, we'd stop in the yard of our friend's house and pretend it was ours so the classmates wouldn't see us go into the ugly house. One thing different at that school - they were integrated, and ours in Knoxville were not. I remember being the only white girl in my algebra class. We were there for only six weeks.
All I remember in Detroit was going to school and church. Someone took us through the tunnel to Canada and brought us back on the bridge.
Aunt Carmen and Mama decided to go to the Employment Office to look for work. They waited by the elevator for an attendant to come. Mama decided to get on the elevator, hoping the attendant would see them. The door closed and Mama went up and down until another passenger showed up. We didn't know about self-operated elevators. Mama and Aunt Carmen finally left in a huff and embarrassment and went home. No more job searches!
Aunt Carmen and Uncle Jesse decided to go back to Tennessee. Uncle Jess bought a two-seat car for a hundred dollars. He removed the partition by the back window and slid two wooden straight leg chairs in there. June and I rode them all the way to Knoxville. We always wore dresses, so we had to climb over the front seat to get our seat. A little embarrassing for us teenagers!
Back in Tennessee, Uncle Jesse sold his three-room house, and bought Mama's four-room house on Clinbrook which my grandfather had built. Before too much longer, my sisters came to live with us. Bobby [Roberts, Patsy's older brother] had joined the Army and was in Korea.