THE WINTERS STORE AND THE SHOOTING OF WOODROW DEMUMBREUN.

Dudley True, who as far as Jim is concerned, came from out of nowhere, and began operating the Claude Winters grocery store. Claude had died and Dudley True bought it. The True family had a daughter, by now, you should have read about the death of Claude Winters, and Jim’s dad, John Setters, with him in the ambulance. Claude had suffered a heart attack. The reason for the ambulance ride.

Jim worked in the True’s family garden, for 50 cents a day, with the garden hoe chopping out the weeds, for a week or so, and was allowed to eat lunch with the True family. (At that time, we called it dinner.)

Although there were screens on the windows and there were screen doors, houseflies were everywhere. You just used your hand to shoo them away.

Either Dudley or his wife had their mother or grandmother living at their residence which was in back of the storefront.

Many of the country folks served buttermilk with their dinner/lunch and she would have a glass sitting beside her plate. She was blind. Jim would watch her when she would reach to get the glass of buttermilk (she always knew where it was) but between her sips from the glass, the flies would be sitting shoulder to shoulder or wing to wing on the rim of her glass. Jim would watch her as she took sips of the buttermilk, because each time she did, she hopefully, would chase the flies away from the rim. He found it interesting. As an adult, his memory, was with pity.

Tommy and Allen Shaw, and their older brother, can’t remember his name, if I ever knew it, entered the neighborhood just down the creek (remember, it was up or down the creek, not north or south, people in the hills new nothing or little about nautical directions, it was up or down, from the Alanzo Winters place.

Call it the Winters farm, (you will be, or already have read about the Winters and the truck accident).

There is a relationship developing here in our story, so read carefully. The Shaw brothers lived in a newly built little two room house about a mile down the road from the store.

Allen was left-handed and played well on our softball team we had developed on Little Marrowbone. Tommy and the older brother showed no interest in playing softball. Allen, unlike Tommy and the older brother, also chose to attend the Little Marrowbone Church of Christ. (This is going someplace now, so you just keep reading.)

The reason I have not mentioned their parents is that their real mother had died, and the father had re-married a woman who objected to having a grown man (the older brother) and the two teen-aged boys living in the house. As boys will, dominating the household. At least that is the story we all were told. So, the father bought a few acres out in our area, built a little two room house, really a shack, for the boys and moved them out into our neighborhood. It was no secret, and most of us knew, that the older brother kept himself occupied by working at one of the many whiskey-stills up in one of the numerous small hollows.

It was Sunday and Jim, was about twelve years old, so make it in about 1939, Jim and his two brothers, Harold and Raymond, were at Sunday school at the Little Marrowbone Church of Christ as was Allen Shaw. We don’t know where Tommy and the older brother were. I know they were not in the little two room house.

We had told my mother that Allen Shaw (she liked Allen) was going to go back to his little house, change into his ballplaying clothes and then come on up to our house for dinner. (lunch) I went with Allen back to his house. While Allen was changing clothes there was a commotion out on their little front porch. Allen opened the door and there stood Woodrow Demumbreun. Woodrow was very drunk, barely able to stand up. He wanted to come into the house. Allen tried to get him to leave and told Woodrow that we were leaving and for him to go away.

But Woodrow was insistent and belligerent, as drunks can be.

Woodrow tried to get past Allen and come into the house. Allen grabbed Woodrow’s clothes with his right hand. Woodrow continued to struggle, and Allen used his left hand and fist to hit Woodrow in the face. (Allen was a southpaw, (left-handed,) This resulted in Woodrow being knocked off the steps and onto the ground. Woodrow staggered out near the road and began yelling profanities back at us. When you are a young man, and living on Little Marrowbone, during THE depression, and you are, drunk, your mouth can become an ugly part of your anatomy. Woodrow met all of those criteria.

Allen reached into a corner and grabbed their little 410-gauge shotgun. There was only one shell for the weapon sitting on the partially built wall, on a two by four. Allen put that one shell into the chamber of the gun, walked to the porch and yelled for Woodrow to leave. Woodrow yelled back that he was coming into the house. Allen yelled back, “If you take one more step, I will shoot you.” Woodrow took that one step. Allen Shaw shot him.

I watched Woodrow as he fell down and began making sounds. Allen yelled at him, “I told you I would shoot you Woodrow, and I meant it.”

Neither Allen nor I knew what we should do. That shotgun blast had hit Woodrow in the stomach, Woodrow said, “Just roll me over to the side of the road and I’ll be alright.”

It was obvious that such a solution was wrong. He was bleeding, badly.

Allen Shaw and I had no car, I was too young to drive anyway, and we had walked to his place, about a mile from Church and True’s store. I ran to the True’s store. A car was found to complete the chore of going to the Aida place to use their telephone. Dudley True, in the meantime, as I was killing time, found cause to find critical things to say about Jim and Allen and everyone not Dudley’s age, and the things he said were far from complimentary and comforting to Jim who needed some emotional help at that particular time in his life.

Remember, there was no telephone service, nor water, nor electricity for the Little Marrowbone creek residents. So, it was up to Jim to run to True’s store where there was an automobile to drive that three miles where there was a telephone to call an ambulance that would have been, at least, twelve miles away.

The store was about a mile on down the road, from our house so I just ran on to our house to let my mother know what was going on. She was not ready for what I had to tell her. After a while the ambulance came by as did a State Highway Patrol car.

To this day, I have never been officially asked to testify about that shooting.

The state police interviewed Allen but did not detain him. The next day, Monday, Allen got up early and walked up to our house to wait with us for the school bus. It came and when we three Setters’ boys boarded the bus, as did Allen Shaw,

Frank Leslie in the back of the bus yelled, “There is that murderer and his assistant”. Both were big words for Frank, but he managed to do them very well.

But Woodrow did not die, the folks at the hospital did a great medical miracle on his belly where the shotgun blast entered. Frank was one of the brothers of Melvin, who was mentally challenged and invented the name of P’Dana, when addressing Dana Setters, at Church.

It was the last day that Allen Shaw attended school. Tommy, his brother, soon joined the Marines. The store building is no longer there, there are those who know when and why it was torn down or burned, but they, too are gone. The little country store literally sat right beside the road.

You could have stepped off the porch right onto Little Marrowbone Road, so by necessity it may have been destroyed. (When Little Marrowbone Road was paved) But to the author, it’s destiny is a mystery.

It was a store way back in the days when his mother needed it.

The little one big room Church of Christ Building is still there, just up the road, or as you wish, East, of the place where the store once was. The address is 4429 Little Marrowbone Rd, Joelton, TN 37080, but from all indications, the Church, as I understand, is no longer functioning. The building is still there, of course, and that little building has many memories for your author. I remember we little ones being given a couple of rows near the back of the room for Sunday School class. And do you know who was the teacher of that class when I was old enough to just barely remember being in it? The teacher was my mother!

My father seldom if ever attended Church services, in fact, I cannot remember his ever attending any Church service at all.

There was one time though when I had hoped that he might become involved. He did. at one time, help construct a big table for an outdoor Church picnic. Mr. Allen did not believe in holding such events in the building. Mr. Allen’s Church peculiarities are probably why our dad stayed away.

Instead of seeing the Little Marrowbone Church as it appears above, my father more than likely saw the entire scene in a far less than a colorful light, as below.

What is so strange about his attitude concerning the Church is, that his grandfather, Leander, was given such high praises for Leander’s, not only building the first Church and school, on Little Marrowbone, but paying all of the salaries of the people involved. Leander also saw to it that the roads were vastly improved.

The Hubert Allen family had moved to Little Marrowbone from north Nashville in about 1937, exact dates are difficult to remember when one is about ten years old. Mr. Allen was a streetcar operator in Nashville and, was very active in the Church of Christ. He had chosen, however, the route of a less positive pursuer of the Gospel.

About this time, the Sellick family had moved into Spicewood hollow and had begun to build their nearly famous log cabin. We’ll talk about that later. The Allen family lived right where Spicewood hollow met or emptied into the Little Marrowbone Creek. I might have said “dumped” into Little Marrowbone Creek, but the Spicewood hollow was dry the majority of the time.

Spicewood hollow had very little water in it, except for what we called a few small puddles. But right after a heavy rainfall, it too, could become angry. There is one thing about a hillside; hillsides don’t retain water very long, unless you have an electric pump. The Allen family, in total, was at the little Church building every time, the doors opened.

In fact, the Allen’s had the keys to those doors. I mentioned that Mr. Allen was a bit negative when it comes to things like Church and morality. He objected to us, younger than teen-age boys, passing by in front of the Allen house out in the Little Marrowbone Creek without wearing shirts. Shirts, not shorts.

In fact, Jay Sellick, one year older than I, seldom wore a shirt. Mr. Allen sometimes, would come to the creek and chase us off their foot-log. (Usually, a cutdown very tall sycamore tree anchored at both ends so you could cross Little Marrowbone without getting your feet wet.)

There was a big crevasse, or as the dictionary describes it, a big slice in the solid rock big enough to put in four refrigerators on down the creek from the Allen foot log, but we had to go back inside the cavity, all under water, and that bothered even the most brazen type, which we were not.

That is a Big Sycamore Tree the Allen foot log is attached to.

John Setters, our dad, was not opposed to all of the Allen family morals, here he is getting chummy with one of the Allen girls, Geneva, (who at the time was pretty much grown) at the roadside end of the Allen foot log that crossed the Little Marrowbone Creek.

Spicewood hollow is seen entering the Creek.

The water is high in Spicewood, so that may be the cause for their friendly gesture.

This was a rare pose for both.

At least, I think it was.