 Elmer Rufus Baxter retirement photo from Union Carbide, Oak Ridge, TN and in his story telling age. He was born in 1903, Cosby, Cocke County, TN son of Mary Ann Killian and James Knox Polk Baxter. He died in 1985, Oak Ridge, TN. Married to Lucille Wood. Christmas Memories Remain Fresh in Minds of Nursing Home Residents The News Plus, December 11, 1984, page 4 A fire cracker can be many things when one is seven, and Rufus Baxter, a resident of the Franklin County (TN) Health Care Center on 41 A By-Pass, still remembers his favorite Christmas in Newport, Tenn., when he was six or seven and got firecrackers for Christmas. 
I was always crazy about firecrackers, he said, and when I was small we would always hang our stockings on the fireplace for Santa to fill. He'd leave firecrackers, they were little bitties, no longer than the end of my finger and apples, two or three pieces of candy, Santa brought them until I was 10 or 11, he said. One Christmas I especially remember because they were building a bank with a road out in back of our house. They were blasting out a road from a steep bluff with dynamite. A friend and I, David was his name, we'd pretend that we were building the road. We'd put firecrackers down in the little trenches in the road, and then run as if they were dynamite. My folks were Mary and James K. Polk, my father was named after a President. They would always see that we got an orange or a banana, and a little extra cake for Christmas. But, that year we played building roads until the road was in. Because he and David had accomplished great deeds, the world had meaning, he supposes. Elmer R. Baxter About age 10, 1913 (Story provided by Elmer R. Baxter's daughter, Mary R. Baxter Sirene)
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