My Dad used to live there. It was across the pasture from Sunnybrook and over the hill. I used to walk there when I was five-or six with my single-shot bolt action Stevens .22 rifle and go hunting with him. My Mother would make me take the bolt action out and keep it in my pocket until I got to his house before I put it back in the gun. I was so small that I couldn't pull the bolt back to take the safety off so she tied a shoestring around the back of the bolt and made a loop to go around my hand. Sometimes when I would try to fire the gun, the string got caught in the bolt and it wouldn't have enough spring-power to fire the cartridge.
A true, true story...

Yep, Horace, I just mixed up Sunnybrook and Sunnyside, which was right next to Camp Helen.

ES, Skeeter flats, or Mosquito Flats as some called was a buch of tar paper shacks they threw up in a hurry at the start of the war for new mill workers. It was over behind Walco by the box mill if my recollection is as good as I like to believe. Now Lathan I need a better description of that place, Cooper's Field? I never heard of it and your description sounds like Tennessee Ave or East Street, unless you are talking about the cemetery. I remember some houses on Mt. Vernon going up the hill from Sunnybrook, you know where ES's old girl friend Moochie live.

Horace

Horace,
If you took the road behind Taft Rudd's service station and walked up that hill about half-way, then took a left on one of those roads until you came to the woods (that would eventually take you to the pasture that would take you to Sunnybrook). There were some houses just before you got to the woods and my Dad rented from a guy named Cooper and everyone called it Cooper's Field...

Actually, as I remember it, that bunch of shacks was more often called "Shantytown" than "Skeeter Flats." And they were actually a LITTLE better than tarpaper shacks. They did, for instance have board siding on them, although they were cheaply and quickly made...definitely NOT for the long haul.

Also, there were some pretty "undesirable" folks who lived there at one time or another.

As to the exact location, those of you who can remember where Pine Street actually passed between the Box Mill and the "Settling Basin" of the water works and the area where lumber was always stacked can just keep on going toward the big pasture, which is where Shantytown was built.

My recollection is so clear I can ever SEE the clothesline that Jimmy Persons nearly decapitated himself on one day while I was chasing him. We were both on our bikes and he was looking back at me laughing because he was faster....WUPS! LOL

Jimmy remembers, too. I asked him.

I think I know where you are talking about now. There was a little road right there beside the Old Freewill church across from Mom and Dad Pressley's place that went way off up into the woods. I remember now there was a pasture on the other side of the church with an electric fence it came down to the road, Mt. Vernon Ave. I believe that cows could cross the road by walking in the creek under the bridge on Mt. Vernon and pasture on the church side of the road. I never explored that area but I now know where it eventually led. Never too old to learn new things just too old to remember them.

Horace

Not my girlfriend Horace, took too many 100 watt light bulbs to keep her happy and I was always broke. You were the money man with your paper route. MVB ES

Horace, You're right on. If I remember the Church was made into a house...