After the funeral, Mom got more than three hundred cards. A lot of them had a story in them. When I put
this page up last fall, the stories started coming by e-mail too, some from people who left Tullis Mill
thirty and forty years ago. Here are some of them, with permission. The handwritten ones I've typed up
myself, so any mistakes are mine. I've put them in order by when the writer first knew Pop.
— Tim
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Justin Maddux · farmer, Tullis Mill · letter, August 1998
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In the fall of 1953 my tractor quit in the middle of the field with the corn half in and rain coming. I'd heard
the Childress boy had opened up in the old blacksmith shop. I walked to town at nine o'clock at night and knocked
on his door, and he came out to the field with a lantern and his tools in the back of his truck and had me going
again by midnight. He charged me two dollars. I was his customer for forty-five years and I never did find out what
the two dollars was for, because he wouldn't charge for his time after dark.
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Randolph Ashton · retired rural mail carrier · letter, September 1998
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A rural carrier drives his own car on the route, and mine went about ninety miles a day on gravel, six days a week, for thirty-three years. I wore
out seven cars. Daniel kept every one of them going. He'd keep my car in the evening and have it back to me by six the
next morning, so the mail never missed a day on account of a car. I figured it up once. Between us, Daniel and I
carried the mail close to nine hundred thousand miles.
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Ellen Beltz · Tullis Mill · letter, July 1998
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I played the piano at our church for fifty-one years, and for forty-five of them Daniel Childress sat on the third
pew on the left and sang bass. He couldn't read a note. He had the best ear in the church. You could get grease out
of a Sunday shirt, he used to say, but you couldn't get a wrong note out of a hymn once you'd sung it. The third pew
is awful quiet now.
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Frank Hansford · Huntsville, Alabama · e-mail, November 2, 1998
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Tim, I was one of the boys who swept your dad's shop, from 1959 until I graduated in 1963, two afternoons a week and
Saturdays. I swept for five weeks before he let me pick up a wrench. Then he taught me how to gap a spark plug, and
then how to set points, and then how an engine actually worked, and that is the reason I went to engineering school.
I've spent thirty years designing things for a living. Every time I start one, I can hear him: listen before you look.
I never told him. I should have.
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Marcia Kopp · retired teacher · e-mail, December 6, 1998
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I came to Tullis Mill in August of 1963 to teach the third grade. On my third day, my old Plymouth died right in the
middle of Main Street, in front of everybody, and I sat there and cried. Mr. Childress walked out of his shop, pushed
the car into his bay by himself, put me in his truck and drove me to school so I wouldn't be late, and when I came out
at 3:15 my car was in the school parking lot, running, with a note on the seat that said "fuel pump, pay me Friday."
I taught here for thirty-two years. I'm not sure I'd have stayed past that first week if it weren't for him.
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William Cogan · Tullis Mill · letter, January 1999
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I bought my Chevrolet pickup new in the fall of 1963. It was a 1964 model. Daniel did every lick of work it ever needed
from then until last spring: three clutches, two engines, more brakes than I can count, and a door after my wife backed
into the mailbox, which she says to tell you was not her fault. The truck has 312,000 miles on it. My grandson wants it.
I have told him he can have it when I'm gone, if he can find somebody who'll take care of it like Daniel did, and I told
him good luck.
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Teresa Durgin · Knoxville · e-mail, February 14, 1999
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Prom night, May of 1964. My date's daddy's Oldsmobile threw a fan belt on the way to the gym and we coasted into town
with the temperature needle pegged. The shop was closed and dark. My date, who is now my husband of thirty-three years,
went and knocked on the Childress door, and Mr. Childress came down in his house shoes, opened up the shop, put a belt
on, and wouldn't take a dime. He told us to go dance. We did. Happy Valentine's Day, Tim. I thought this was a good day
to send this.
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Donald Betz · Tullis Mill · letter, October 1998
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I sat in that chair by the stove most every morning from about 1970 on. Somebody has to keep an eye on things. Daniel
and I solved every problem this country ever had in that chair, and nobody in Washington ever once called to ask us. I
was there the morning he took sick. I'd like to say I knew what to do, but I just did what anybody would. I miss the
coffee. It was terrible coffee. I miss it anyhow.
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Francisco Ward · Murfreesboro · e-mail, March 21, 1999
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I came home from the Army in 1971 and nobody was hiring. Your dad didn't need anybody. He hired me anyway, for two years,
and taught me the trade, and when I told him I wanted to open my own body shop he lent me four hundred dollars and told
me to pay it back when I could. It took me three years. He never once asked about it. I've had my own shop for
twenty-six years now. I have a picture of your dad on the wall in the office and my men think he's my father. I don't
correct them.
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Elva Harris · Tullis Mill · letter, April 1999
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When my husband died in 1979 I didn't know how to do one thing to a car. Daniel came by the house every October, checked
my oil and my tires and my antifreeze, and drove off. When I tried to pay him he said my husband had paid ahead. I believed
that for nineteen years. After the funeral I asked Rose about it, and she just smiled at me. My husband never paid ahead
for anything in his life. I should have known.
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Lawrence Bennett · Nashville · e-mail, May 30, 1999
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In 1986, when I was sixteen, I paid three hundred dollars for a '72 Maverick that didn't run. Mr. Childress let me work on
it in bay two on Saturdays if I swept up after. He wouldn't touch it himself. He'd stand behind me with his coffee and say
"what's it telling you?" until I figured it out. It took me four months to get it running. I drove it for three years. I
fix diesel trucks for a living now, and I still talk to engines. The other guys laugh. I don't care.
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Dale Claypool · class of 1998 · e-mail, August 22, 1999
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Mr. Childress, I was in your auto shop class my junior and senior years, and you brought three of us over to your dad's
garage one Saturday in the fall of 1997. He showed me how to set the points on an old tractor with a matchbook cover,
which I didn't even know you could do. He asked me what I wanted to be and I said a mechanic, and he said good, the world
needs them more than it needs most things. I start at the diesel program at the tech school next month. I thought you'd
want to know. Tell your mom hello.
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Thank you, every one of you. If you have a story about Pop or the shop, please
send it to me. I'm keeping all of them, printed out, in a binder at
Mom's, next to the bird dog calendars.
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