Powell Tennessee

When he was building houses, Hack Harbin kept a weather eye on the seasons. It was part of doing business.

Hell be 97 come September, and between now and then, the season he'll be concerning himself with will be the one that's played out on a baseball diamond (he'll be rooting for the Cubs and the Braves), and the business hell be thinking about is helping folks out.

"I made a fortune, and I enjoyed that. Now, I'm giving it away, and I'm enjoying that, too," says Harbin, as he sits in his memorabilia-filled office in the house he built on the street he named for his wife, Della, who passed away six years ago at the age of 88. There's a photograph of Hack and Della in their courting days among the family pictures on the kitchen wall.

"She was such a pretty little thing," Harbin says. Together, they had seven children, 17 grandchildren and eight or nine great-grandchildren.

A little ways up the hill, Della Drive runs into Hack Road. Harbin built all the houses in the neighborhood. He built the swimming pool in the side yard, too, and the lake down below the pool was his solution to a bunch of wet-weather springs. It teems with bass, bluegill and catfish.

"We don't allow no carp in it," Harbin says, grinning broadly.

He's given the whole shebang to his church, Grace Baptist.

"I came to this section 60 years ago, when there wasn't much here. I started building houses and digging wells."

Harbin was born in 1907 to a family in Dixie Lee Junction. There wasn't much there, either.

"All we got was a newspaper once a week," Harbin says.

One of the high points of his youth was going to the market house in Knoxville, where he'd watch the buying and the selling of the produce that farmers would bring into town. He particularly remembers one young grocer who used to come to the markethouse with a pushcart that he'd load up with beans and tomatoes to wheel down Vine Street to his store on the east side. After awhile, he got a goat to pull the cart. He was a hard working fellow whod show up in the wee hours of the morning.

It was the young Cas Walker, a man Harbin would get to know well over the decades that followed.

Talking about Cas Walker's goat triggers a memory that still makes him laugh:

"People would come all the way down from Newport and places to trade with Cas Walker, because they saw him on TV. There were a bunch of goats grazing out on some land Cas owned over by Chilhowee Park. There got to be so many of them that Cas got the idea to have them slaughtered and dressed. He called it lamb, and sold the meat in his stores. He ended up slaughtering them all."

When Harbin got a little older, he went to town for good, and got himself a job. And on that job, he got a nickname:

"My real name is Fred H., but theyve called me Hack since I went to work for the tire company at $6 a week. My boss asked me my name, then said, "We'll just call you Hack."

"I made me some pretty good money, and then got into real estate ... and in 1930, I borrowed $200 from Old Man Evans, a professor from the school out here, and bought some land. I built a four room house on 28 acres and sold it for $2,800."

A few years back, Hallsdale-Powell Utility District bought 12 acres back for a water treatment plant. The price was $50,000. Harbin, who was a founder and one of the original commissioners of Hallsdale-Powell, marvels at how the area has grown.

"When I came out here, there wasn't much of anything in Powell except a dozen old buildings and the depot, where the train would dump off the mail. That was about it."

After Harbin had been in business for awhile, he started thinking about something that could make life easier for the people who lived in the houses he was building. And when the Knoxville Utilites Board wanted $50,000 to run a water line out to the Anderson County line, it pretty much sealed the deal.

"Some of us said, "Well, we'll just create a water district of our own."

Harbin got busy with collecting signatures and $5 deposits, and pretty soon there were 1,700 names on the list. They borrowed a million dollars, put the water lines in for $700,000, and kept the rest to pay off interest until they were up and running. Harbin was one of the original commissioners and served for 45 years.

He was also a founding member of the Powell Lions Club in 1951 and was the driving force for the horse show fund-raisers the club has put on for years.

"We took care of a lot of blind folks over the years," he says.

The horse shows were a true labor of love for Harbin, who raised champion Tennessee Walking Horses and harness horses for most of his adult life.

"We went to horse shows all over the country," he says. "Out of 158 times in the ring, I won 152. We showed horses all down in Florida and Texas. Cas would be there, too. He had some of the best horses around. He had as many as 200. We had a great time going to those shows."

Harbin is a staunch Republican, although he doesnt participate as much in politics as he used to. He seems to prefer spending his money on causes like St. Judes Hospital and other charities that benefit children. He has turned his business over to his grandson, Mike Harbin, and his five surviving children live near him. He is proud of the work of Hallsdale-Powell Utility District, which has kept him on as a consultant, and he loves feeding his friends by taking them out to dinner as often as he can.

One of his favorite memories is of a little girl whose teeth were long and crooked - "like a wild hog," Harbin says. He sent her to a dentist and paid for her braces. Years later, she came to see him.

"She was just so pretty," he says. "I said, "Who's that good-looking lady?"

"That's what makes me happy."