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William Lewis Cook's avatar

I had forgotten about Jesse Howell. I lived in the Broadmoor subdivision that was adjacent to Chastain. The land where the school was built was undeveloped (there were some mules and a black family living there) when we first moved there, and the interstate 55 was not yet built. My friends and I played on the big dirt moving tractors when they cleared the land for the school, and played *inside* the new bridges that crossed Northside Drive when I-55 was built. A few years after Chastain had been built, someone spray painted in large letters "To hell with Mr. Howell and his evangelism" onto the street-facing side of the gym." I didn't know what evangelism was until then and it was my first experience of graffiti. I don't think I ever learned who had written it or what they were mad about, but it sure was a shock to the neighborhood.

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