ALEXIS COMMUNITY — Johnny Walker is 80 years old, but he sure doesn't act like it. The Cherokee County native lives in a camper, owns 14 pairs of cowboy boots, and drives an ancient hot rod that's older than he is. He's also commander of Rome's American Legion Post No. 5.

Johnny grew up in the Alexis community and remembers his childhood like it was yesterday.

“Daddy used his two mules and 30 acres of cotton to pay off the bank every year,” Johnny recalls from the years during the Great Depression in the 1930s. “He would buy us overalls, but Momma made our underwear out of flour sacks. We didn't know we were poor. Everybody around us was like that.”

Johnny earned quarters and a few dollars digging holes. He found a few other clever ways to earn some extra cash, too.

“I made a lot of money selling possums,” he says. “We'd catch them alive and sell them in Rome for $1.25 apiece. We'd sell 25-30 possums a day.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, Johnny admits to having a mischievous streak.

“The roads back then around Alexis were gravel, and the weeds around them got really high,” he says. “Cars at the time wouldn't go but about 30 miles an hour. Four or five of us used to pull our clothes off in the weeds. For fun we'd run out in front of the cars then dart into the weeds on the other side.”

Johnny also recalls haggling for merchandise at a store near his home.

“You could trade eggs for about anything,” he says. “Two eggs could get you a Coke, a candy bar, or a sack of tobacco.”

One day, Johnny says, he opted for the tobacco – and almost immediately thought better of his decision.

“About halfway across the field back to my house, I wanted to roll a cigarette,” he says. “Then I got to thinking how much Daddy would've whooped me if he caught me. Ended up, I walked back to the store and swapped it for a candy bar.”

Johnny went to the Alexis schoolhouse through the ninth grade. While there, he learned something about girls.

“Nobody ever talked about stuff back then,” he says. “If you went with a girl, you didn't kiss her. You didn't touch her.”

He continues: “This older boy at school came up with an idea. He heated up the fireplace poker, and he punched holes in the floor with it. When we got up under the building, we could look up the girls' dresses. We got caught, but that's when I found out the difference between boys and girls.”

Johnny recalls another incident in grade school that involved a chance discovery behind the campus.

“Some of us boys found some white lightning hid out in the woods,” he says. “When we got back in class, the teacher put a problem on the board. None of us could figure it out. She finally discovered we couldn't get it because we were all drunk.”

Despite having worked with the American Legion since the 1970s, Johnny's legacy is as a mechanic. It all started with his intense desire to get away from the farm.

“When I was plowing in the field as a kid, I told my Daddy that I wasn't going to be doing this for the rest of my life,” he says. “My brother was already a mechanic. When I got old enough, I went to work with him.”

From the 1950s through the '90s, Johnny either worked on cars or taught other people how. He worked at Ford for 13 years and owned his own auto shop for a time. Later he taught mechanics at Walker Technical College and then at Coosa Valley Tech. Johnny has even instructed technicians in Saudi Arabia, China, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.

His passion for cars continues today. Johnny is mighty proud of his red 1931 Model A Coupe.

“I drive it all around Rome,” he says.

Living in his RV for the last few years, Johnny has taken to travel, visiting all the continental 48 states. He keeps busy at the American Legion and he's still feeling great.

“I feel as good as I did when I was 40,” he says with a smile.