‘Laughing all the way’

Spencer S. HarrisFarragut, Our Town Stories

It’s a short drive up Boring Road to Ben Boring’s homeplace to see the one-horse open sleigh adorned with Christmas lights. (I hope Benna Boring Hughes puts this out every year.)

Cousin Ben Boring had this old sleigh stored for decades in the rafters of his barn. Ben told me that one year when it snowed he hitched one of his Tennessee Walkers to the sleigh and took his mother, Hallie Hackney Boring, on a ride. I can picture Aunt Hallie “laughing all the way.”

Ben kept a photo of the old sleigh in a memorabilia frame in the barn. On our last visit with Ben in 2019, my crazy wife, Tammy, climbed up (in her sandals) to take a picture of the sleigh.

Thankfully they saved the sleigh when the barn was torn down, and Benna has made good use of it; capturing a splendid photo behind the old Boring home, and decorating it for a prop in her daughter’s wedding. Fun memories!

– Spencer Harris

Note: Spencer Harris wrote the tale of his ancestors’ early days in Concord including the widow who took 9 of her 11 kids to Kansas in a covered wagon following the Civil War and the crippled mule that survived the war to have a road named for him in Fox Den subdivision. You can read that story here. Spencer lives in California now, but keeps up with his hometown online at Knox TN Today.

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