This is the Waller holler. My Great Grandmother’s house was situated in the little valley between the 2 roads in the middle of this photo. We traveled to Carthage, Tennessee every summer when I was growing up, and we usually stayed for two glorious weeks.
People came from around the country, but mostly from Michigan (and Tennessee). They would set up tents and park their RVs near the house and stay for a week or so. My family stayed with Aunt Chloe (keep driving along the bend in the road to the right for about a mile to get there).
Hundreds of Wallers came to the Waller Family Reunion on the first Sunday in August. There were 12 children in my grandfather’s generation. Half of them moved to Detroit during WWII; the other half stayed in Tennessee. We had the reunion at the old house until they built the Cordell Hull Dam in the early 70s and we started having the reunion at the park near the Defeated Creek Marina.
The lawn by the road was a great place to learn how to drive a motorcycle. Or how not to if you’re half Polish and would rather crash into a fence… The shade under the trees was a great place to make ice cream, have watermelon seed spitting contests, and set up rows of tables full of food. What great times we had!
I took this picture from Aunt Maude and Uncle Hiram’s house on the hill above grandma’s house. They opened up their house every year for people from up north to stay. We spent lots of time hanging out at Aunt Maude’s with my cousins Beverly and Danny Joe.
The place has not changed much in the 30 years I was away, except for Reese road. To get to this place you must drive up and down hills and twists and turns through the woods for at least 5 miles. There aren’t any homes on Reese road till you get to Aunt Maude’s house. When my mother was little, it was a dirt road. There weren’t any bridges over any of the creeks, and they would all have to get out of the car to walk up the major hills. The cars back then didn’t have enough power to get up steep hills when loaded with people. When I was a kid the road was paved and there were a few bridges. Now the road is two lanes and all creeks have bridges.
This is a series of 6 photos stitched together in Photoshop to make a panorama. I used Topaz Adjust on two different layers: on one layer to make the trees brighter and to bring out the details of the landscape and buildings, and on another to make the sky darker and to bring out the details in the clouds.
- Aperture: ƒ/16
- Caption: Waller Hollow
- Focal length: 28mm
- ISO: 200
- Keywords: Array
- Shutter speed: 1/100s
- Title: Waller Hollow