By Neal Wooten
I learned a little bit of history Sunday regarding my hometown of Blake. I was invited by friends to go to Wesley’s Chapel for Decoration. Bill Dawson held a little ceremony and rang the church bell. I didn’t even know the church had a bell, or where it came from.
The bell was built by a manufacturer in Ohio that had been making bells since the late 1800s. At one time, they were making 20,000 steel bells a year. These bells were even used on American battleships in WWII to coordinate strikes because it was too risky to send this info over the radio waves.
In 1907, the town of Blake purchased one of these bells to hang in the newly constructed elementary school. If you’ve seen pictures of the old school, you’ll notice a tall bell tower. In the 1930s, the newer school was built, the one that burned down in the early 70s, and the old bell was placed in a barn where it rested for 20 years.
In the 1950s, it was dug out, dusted off, and placed inside the loft of Wesley’s Chapel. There’s a rope that runs through the roof of the covered front entrance and hangs beside the front doors. And, as I would learn Sunday, it still sounds magnificent.
There’s a lot of history in these small communities. My dad went to the old Blake school. It only went to 8th grade but had a student smoking section. How crazy is that? That’s worse than the student smoking section at Sylvania High School being located right beside the giant propane tank.
My two older sisters began school at the newer school, which was an amazing building. I still have pictures of them in their classrooms. Mom and Dad had intended for me to go to Blake as well, but just before I started first grade, the school was closed. I think it was a funding issue. Hence, I never got to attend Blake. A few years later, the school burned down. Yes, I have an alibi.
It’s interesting for me to think that all towns in America began as small communities. Some would become small towns, and others would evolve into large cities. Transportation was the key; areas that were easier to get to via water or land continued to grow.
Thank goodness Blake was not easy to get to on the edge of Sand Mountain, and there are no rivers running through it. And there’s no ocean-front property, regardless of what I might try to sell you. Hence, Blake has remained pretty much the same size since the beginning. As for me, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
