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As the Hester house was being built, Walter, his wife Jessie (Hooper) and their family lived in a Stage Coach Inn that was located on the south side of the Hester house where the garden is now. Part of the timber used to build the Hester house was taken from this Stage Coach Inn. This Stage Coach Inn was a two story log structure with a 'dog trot' (an open long hall down the middle of the house) downstairs and upstairs with rooms on either side. The location where the Hester house now stands was previously a stall to keep horses for the Stage Coaches while they stopped.

To the north-east of this Inn down the road on the right was a place called 'Old Stand' where horses were kept to be changed for the Stage Coaches. A church was built there later and it was called 'Old Stand Church'. My Mother recalls attending church there as a young girl. She would wear black black patent leather shoes and would polish them with a biscuit. The preacher who held the service there was the Grand Father of Dr. Gary Lee Hester who is a surgeon at Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital in Florence, Alabama. My mother said that Rev. James Oscar Hester would always start his sermon with this statement, 'The time has arisen and probably past, that we should have services at this place.' Although this church is no longer there, a small cemetery remains but is somewhat in disrepair.

While the Hester family was living in the Stage Coach Inn, it caught on fire when a salesman came to the front door, said my Mother. Jessie, her Mother, leaving the kitchen at the back of the house to go answer the knock at the front door had a skillet of grease heating on the wood stove which caught fire. Ringing the big outside bell, people came and used buckets and water from the spring to put out the fire. My Mother also remembers the couch that was in this Stage Coach Inn. She said it was made of leather and stuffed with, what she believed, to be horsehair.

Walter Alexander, and his wife Jessie (Hooper), moved their family into the new house in 1930. At one time the house had a windmill on top to charge batteries for a radio. I can remember as a child visiting when my Uncle Morris would play a big old radio, that was as tall as I was, on Saturday night tuning it in to the 'Grand Ole Opry'. This house also had carbide lights installed inside with a tank that could be refilled underground on the west side of the front porch.

The finished work on the inside of the house is of tongue and grove lumber and has mellowed over the years to a rich warm brown patina in the long hall that goes from the front of the house to the back. Some of the rooms on the side of this hall were covered with wallpaper. The front two rooms on each side of the hall had a fireplace back to back. One of my fondest memories is the popping of corn in a wire basket with a long handle over the fire in the fireplace. My Grandfather would bank the fire at night so he would have hot coals in the morning to start a fire. He always kept flint rock by the fireplace and used that at times to start a new fire when it would go out. A nice warm fire and the comfort of his home, Walter Hester had provided well for his family.

With a smoke house directly behind the house, the Hester family had pork hanging to be used for the family meals. A chicken house was located next to the smoke house. Here Jessie Florence (Hooper) Hester raised chickens to feed her family and also to trade eggs with the Peddler, who came by the house with his store, for other items she needed. Sometimes she would let me get a candy bar with part of her egg trade. Whenever she had a new batch of chickens, at the end of the day after she had turned them out into the yard, we would all have to 'herd' them back to the chicken house before dark. After that, they always knew were to go before dark. Gathering eggs was a chore to be done every day. With the pigs killed during the cold weather to cure in the smokehouse, chickens and the garden raised each year, the Hester family survived.

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