The Bygone Boys of Lake City, Tennessee

I was interested in this photograph from the Bygone Boys tumblr blog, originally from the Tennessee State Library Department of Conservation: two boys with nearly identical faces, one shirtless, facing each other.

The caption says that they are Frank and Bill Burton of Lake City, Tennessee, with their pet deer Bucky, July 1952.









Here's another picture of Bill Burton and Bucky.












There's another picture in the archive of Mrs. William Charles Burton outside her cabin near Norris Dam, with her sons Dan Ray (age 6) and Joe Mack (age 3) and their pet deer "Bucky." Photo taken in June 1952.

I'm guessing they're cousins.

That deer really got around.








Lake City, Tennesee, about 25 miles north of Knoxville, was originally named Coal Creek.  It became Lake City in 1936, after the construction of the Norris Dam created Norris Lake.  In 2014 it changed its name to Rocky Top, to take advantage of the popular country-western song which glamorizes moonshine, wild sex, and shooting outsiders (also used as the University of Tennessee fight song).

William Burton is a very common name, so the only other likely piece of information I could find about him was from the Lakeville Town Crier in 1956: he had been transferred from Fairbanks to Nome, Alaska.

He was about 20 years old.  There was no U.S. military base in Nome in 1956, so what job did he have that got him a transfer?




After that, the leads dry up.

But I did find Joe Mack Burton, Bill's "cousin," living in Moose Pass, Alaska, a town of 200 on the Kenai Peninsula, consisting of a few lodges,  restaurants, and a "Trading Post."




In those days you often moved to where you had relatives to stay with.  So apparently when Joe Mack grew up, he followed his cousin Bill to Alaska, where they went camping, hiking, hunting, and fishing, and maybe opened a hunting lodge.

No wives are listed for either of them.  Doubtless they preferred the world of men.