Scott Hines moved to the Center Grove area with his family in 1970, right after his sixth birthday. They settled into the Carefree subdivision, which at the time had more vacant lots than houses. Hines and his friends watched as house after house sprang up.
“We had a blast picking up scrap lumber and building treehouses,” he says.
Evil Knievel was big back then, so Hines and his buddies spent a good deal of their time trying to jump over obstacles.
“We dammed the creek up a few times to make it bigger and jumped over it with a ramp; sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t,” he says with a chuckle.
It was perhaps a simpler time back then, when kids were exploring the world from dawn until dusk, drowning worms with fishing poles, walking on train trestles and picking up railroad spikes, playing basketball games in cul-de-sacs and baseball games in sandlots.
“The tree was first base, the garden was second base, and we played with a tennis ball,” Hines says. “The rule was, if you hit the ball over the power line or onto someone’s roof, it was a home run. You don’t have games like that now because all sports are organized.”
From where Hines lived, it was a short walk through the field to the Meridian Drive-In, where he would frequently sneak in to watch whatever film was playing on the giant screen. The drive-in theater was torn down in the mid-1980s. Today we know it as Meridian Parke Plaza.
Every day Hines, who is now the regional president at HomeBank, walked to North Grove Elementary School. His wife is now a 35-year veteran teacher at the school.
“I’ve got great memories of playing on the monkey bars and merry-go-round, neither of which are allowed anymore,” says Hines. “I remember what we did on them, so I understand why they aren’t allowed!”
Hines’ father worked part time for a drugstore on State Road 135 called Medi-Ply, located south of Chase Bank near Smith Valley Road next to Bargain Bob’s shoe store. On weekends, Hines’ mom would take her two sons to their Little League games, then swing by Medi-Ply to let the boys tell their dad how their games went. When Hines and his brother were a bit older, their mother used to send the two of them to the store with a grocery list and a blank check. Years later, Hines confessed to his mom that each time they went, they snuck in a few extra goodies that weren’t on the list. She smiled and said, “Do you know how many popsicles I was willing to buy to not have to go to the grocery?”
“Here we thought we were pulling one over on her, and it was the other way around,” Hines says.
The area where Greenwood Park Mall sits was once a hog farm. In 1966 an outdoor mall was constructed. It was later reconstructed as an indoor mall. Many Center Grove residents who enjoy posting on the Facebook page called Center Grove Memories have chimed in to share their recollections of the mall. Prior to the indoor mall, Joyce Glynn remembers huddling in Sears with her mom, then dashing through frigid air and warming up in L.S. Ayres.
“Of course, we would need to repeat the trip later to get back to the car,” Glynn says.
Gordon Huxford was thrilled to see the mall covered just prior to the ’78 blizzard.
“Once we could get out, [our family] went there because we had serious cabin fever,” says Huxford.
Several folks remember when Louis Armstrong performed at the mall’s opening.
“I got to see Armstrong pull up in his Rolls Royce with his musician friends,” says Gary Scott. “They played some jazz Dixieland music. Wow!”
Richard E. Miller had a fellow band member who asked Armstrong to sign a music book he had.
Nancy Barton, who worked at the Sears coffee shop and Paul Harris stores, notes that prior to the mall’s construction, there were limited places to shop.
“We had Danners dime store and standard grocery,” she says. “We had a corner grocery at Mt. Pleasant. When Southern Plaza opened, that was amazing.”
Upon David Heidenreich’s homecoming from the service in 1966, he was shocked when he saw a mall had been built.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he says. “Greenwood had arrived.”
Jospeh Vernon and Vicki Anderson Hollanders were both members of the Center Grove High School band, which played a concert at the outdoor mall in the early ‘70s.
“I remember that day,” says Anderson Hollanders. “We nearly froze!”
Lori Locke Akers has fond memories of seeing local television horror host Sammy Terry at the mall when he made an appearance. Vicky Terhune has fun flashbacks of harmless shenanigans from her youth.
“We would get in trouble by mall security for wading in the fountain,” she says.
When temperatures warmed, Lake Pennington was the happening place to be in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, as people congregated to swim, fish and rent cabins. The old Center Grove Resort campground was located where Waters Edge subdivision is now on Morgantown Road.
“I used to take the kids and rent a camper for the weekends,” says Stephanie Weber. “They thought it was a great adventure, and it was only a two-minute drive from our home.”
Popular teenage hangout spots included Pasquale’s, Noble Roman’s, and the Suds. Smith Valley Road had a place called Family Pizza, which sold a supreme-type pie called Trojan Delight. The Beehive was a popular burger joint. The Dairy Queen just north of Smith Valley Road on State Road 135 opened in August 1967.
“When I was 11, 12 and 13 years old, sometimes when I got home from school, my parents would leave me a few dollars on the counter,” says Joe Rattz. “I was supposed to ride my bike up Highway 135 from Olive Branch Road and buy a Brazier Burger Basket for my dinner. I have fond memories of doing that multiple times. Looking back on it now, it seems kind of insane to have a kid riding a bike up and down Highway 135.”
Hines also pedaled over to Dairy Queen, then perused skateboards at Tom & Jerry’s.
Judy Adams says the Dairy Queen was one of the few places in the Center Grove area to score a treat back in the ‘60s. “My, how times have changed!” she says.
Rob Richards recalls there being zero restaurants on State Road 135 in his youth. He thinks that helped contribute to a good showing at the Center Grove High School basketball games. Richards was on the 1972 Center Grove basketball team and vividly remembers playing in the Sweet 16 at the semi-state on March 11, 1972, in which Center Grove defeated Richmond.
“With three seconds to go on the clock, Bill Cragen threw the ball over his shoulder like a football receiver and shoveled it back to Gary Robinson, who passed it to Guy Ogden for the game-winning shot at the buzzer,” says Richards. “That was the game that put Center Grove on the map.”Because Center Grove was the underdog, fans from two other schools were cheering for the Trojans.
“It was wild to have three-fourths of Hinkle [Fieldhouse], which held 20,000 people, cheering for us,” Richards says. “Boy, did that place explode when we hit that shot at the buzzer.”
In fact, Richard’s sister-in-law’s father had a heart attack the moment they made the bucket. Thankfully he survived, but that’s how revved everyone was at the fieldhouse.
“Now we’re so successful in sports that winning a semi-state game is not surprising, but back then, Center Grove was a little farm school, and it was a huge deal to win that game,” Hines says.
Six of the 10 varsity players from that team still live in Center Grove. They get together several times a year with their coach, who is now 80 years old, along with their assistant coach and the scorekeeper, who is 84.
