I love old stuff. Old books. Old dishes. Old trees. Old watches. Old cars and trucks. Old peony bushes. Old quilts. Old farm implements. Old cookware. Old furniture. Old buildings.
Let’s stop there. Because a 90-year-old building just happens to be what this column is about. On May 5, Election Day, I served as a registrar at the Bangham precinct, located in the community center at 5795 Hilham Road, also known as Tennessee SR 136 and—once you get closer to town— North Washington Avenue.
Forty years ago, when my young family moved to Cookeville and bought a house in a neighborhood off Hutcheson Road, we took our garbage to the waste collection center behind the Bangham Community Center. Though I still go up Hilham Highway to get to Standing Stone State Park, I don’t travel the road often.
Working at the precinct gave me a chance to explore the community center, which–for more than three decades–housed Bangham School. According to a sign outside the building, Bangham School began in 1874 and closed in 1969. The present building was erected in 1936 by the Works Project Administration. It’s a one-story red brick structure with tall, narrow windows across the front and a covered entryway. I don’t know how old the screened door is, but I do know that it’s made of wood and has a long, tight spring that allows it to creak open and slam shut in a most satisfying way.
All screened doors should be like that.
Inside the building, the ceilings are tall. Really, really tall. Most are solid wood. So are the walls. The floors are hardwood. Narrow, time-scarred, wonderful hardwood.
The room where the voting equipment was set up has a small stage at one end. That room almost certainly served as lunchroom, assembly hall and rainy-day playground. It still has what I assume are the original “schoolhouse” pendant lights. The classrooms that run across the front of the building now house the Hollis Moore Loftis Library, named for a popular Bangham teacher. Sad for me, the library doors were locked, so I hope to return sometime soon–on the first or third Saturday of the month–to explore it in depth.
My friend John Allen worked as an inspector on Election Day and, as luck would have it, had Bangham on his list of assigned precincts. During his visit, I was thrilled to learn he went to school there and had, in his billfold, a black-and-white picture of himself as a first grader in 1951. If you know John, you won’t be surprised to learn that he shared fascinating stories about life in that part of the county many years ago.
Which leads me to the reason I decided to write this column. Putnam County is growing at what some of us consider an alarming rate. As I helped close the poll and load election equipment into our officer’s car at dusk on May 5, I looked out over the rolling hills of the Bangham community, at pastures so green and lush they almost hurt my eyes to look at them.
Cattle grazes on those pastures now. The highway running past them is hilly, narrow, and curvy. Barns and sheds dot the landscape.
I can’t help but wonder how many years, or perhaps just months, will pass before that’s no longer true. How long before this lovely landscape is consumed by cookie-cutter subdivisions and soul-less apartment complexes and one Dollar General Store after another? How long before Bangham Community Center is no longer big enough or modern enough to serve as a voting precinct? How long before that dear little WPA building is deemed so unimportant that it’s abandoned and forgotten, or perhaps even knocked down, like so many others have been?
Those questions are worth asking. Now more than ever.
(May 16, 2026)