Up the road from the Tittle house was the old Shear place. It was all that remained of an old homestead that I've heard encompassed about two hundred acres. Time had "whittled" the acreage down to about one hundred and forty acre's divided up between three heirs. The Prima Shear place was one of these places.

I off times wonder where in the hell these names come from. Prima, pronouce Primer, was a terrible name but the lady was a sweet and gracious person. Tall and slim with her black hair in a bun on the back of her head. Seems I never saw her except when she was going to or coming from work. Once we moved in to her old house and she moved her family to Jasper I didn't see her anymore. We would deal with her sister and brother in laws.

Prima was actually the wife of one of the heirs. I think his name was Kirby. He had a state job working with the department of agriculture. Never saw him very much. Prima was in charge of the lunch room at the Prospect school. For some reason Prospect was the first school in our area to get a government subsidized lunch room. Prima Shear got a job in the lunch room at Prospect and ended up being the boss there. When the big high school in Jasper opened its lunch room Prima got moved to Jasper as boss. She decided to move her family to Jasper and not have to drive about fifty miles a day back and forth to work.

Prima had decided to sell their old hose and move but her husbands family didn't want to sell off anymore of the old home place. My folks had been looking to buy but we rented the Shear house instead. It was a nice place and big compared to the Tittle house.

This place had lots of up to date features and a big lawn. The yard was a mini sod farm. Lots of evidence of sod removal from the yard but none recently. Again this place like all the others had no running water or indoor plumbing. Life in California had made me kind of partial to hot water and flushing toilets. Outdoor toilets conjured up visions of big snakes and Black Widow spiders laying in wait to ambush a feller and bite him in some really bad places. Any thought of a late night bout of touchy stomach was out of the question. The old chamber pot was a real and handy item in rural Alabama.

My parents bought all new furniture for the house. Included in the items was a seventeen inch Philco television. We could get three channels out of Birmingham. We had the only set in that part of the country which brought a certain number of problems. Television had long since captured the attention of just about everybody. Our Philco drew watchers like light draws a moth. They'd start showing up a little before dark and the whole house would be full by the time John Cameron Swayze did the evening news. In the days before ratings and political indoctrination the news was a fifteen minute pause in your day. The next time you heard it was the following morning on the Dave Garroway Show. Dave was Leno, Letterman and all the rest rolled into one. In time he would face off with another early riser named Jack Parr.  Parr had no talent but did develop a following. Parr's biggest contribution to television would not be the result of his meager talent but rather the act of taking an usher at NBC and letting the usher work on the Parr show. The ushers name was Johnny Carson. Not much I can add about Carson.

Daytime viewing was pretty much junk anyhow. No one much cared what was watched. Oh but things changed when the afternoon crew arrived. The biggest source of trouble was the Gillett Razor Blade companies "Calvcade Of Sports". This was a program that came on every Thursday night. The program was strictly boxing matches. Louie Tittle loved the boxing program to a point of being down right hostile if you interfered in anyway with him watching the dawn things. Lots of shouting matches between our nightly guest. My mom finally put an end to it when someone set the couch on fire while smoking.

The Prima Shear house was surely home. I grew to really love it there. Everything about it was " homey".  I'm certain that if we could have bought that house we would never have moved again.