Introduction

I'm not sure how much I'll write here. I've enjoyed following a few blogs lately but will not even attempt to add the various bells and whistles they have on theirs. One word of warning - my son says the fact I can type as fast as I can think is a dangerous thing so if you get tired of the rambling and click off - it will not hurt my feelings in the least. I am one of six girls born to a very special woman. One of my sisters (next to the oldest) died as a baby so there would be 5 left. I was born in Henderson but lived in Kittrell when we lived with my Grandma P while Daddy worked in Durham. We all moved to Durham when I was still a toddler in an apartment in an older home on Wake Forest Hwy. We then moved down the road to Husketh's Place (old white house) on the corner of Wake Forest Hwy and Patterson Road. I actually have quite a few memories of living in that house. My older sister taught me how to write my name, my ABC's and numbers by writing in the dirt yard. She also used to draw rooms in the dirt and we would play house. Mama would make me little bloomer shorts out of chicken feed bags that were actually very pretty material designed for women to use as fabric for clothing after the feed was gone. After my oldest sister got married, Mama went to work when I was in the first grade at Oak Grove Elementary and we moved downtown to Chapel Hill Street where I attended Morehead Elementary School for a year. We moved back to the country when I was in the 2nd grade (right after Hurricane Hazel) where I re-entered Oak Grove Elementary School.
I guess the one thing I can share about Mama that will explain what kind of person she was is that every single one of her daughter's husbands adored her. I can't think of anyone who didn't love her and if they didn't who would want to know them anyway? Being the fifth one in line, I only remember living in four places with the longest period of time being an old farm house that my Dad "remodeled". Mom always said, "once your Daddy put his hammer down, he didn't pick it back up", which meant there were still quite a few things she would have liked seen done. :-) There were only a few houses on that old country road when we moved there but new little brick houses started springing up along both sides of the road and before you knew it - we lived in a neighborhood. They even paved the road! All the kids in those new little houses loved being in our house - in the summertime, the screen doors were opening and shutting all day long. Mama used to tell me how she remembered hearing the back screen door opening as I would fly out on my long legs with my very long ponytail swinging around in a circle running across the field as I was yelling out, "I'm going to Marcia's". The first picture above was taken right after I had gotten that ponytail cut off the summer before I started high school. I was 14 years old and the second picture was taken the summer of 1985 I believe.
Marcia was a friend who was a year behind me in school. She moved into one of the bigger of those houses and I loved her like a sister. We did everything together from climbing trees, swinging on vines in the woods, (where I would catch horrible poison ivy) swimming in the pond (I couldn't swim - yikes), walking to church together, making necklaces out of clover flowers (and stepping on at least one bee) playing games and going to the movies or skating. Her Daddy bought her a Palomino horse not long after they moved there. We loved riding that beautiful horse all over the place. There was a family with a young boy who lived at the end of our road on a big piece of land with a barn, pasture, pigs, etc. My friend paid to keep her horse in their barn with their horse. They would let me ride their horse to make sure she got exercise(the young boy wasn't really that interested in her). She had been a show horse, was very large and the saddle was an English style saddle - her name was Black Beauty. Otherwise, we rode together on Madonna who was very tolerant of two young girls on her back. We lived in that house until the summer after I graduated from high school. Other than the last house my parents lived (and died) in, they lived in that house the longest.
Another interesting tidbit - the road I lived on was probably a little over a mile long and a young boy who lived at the other end eventually became my husband. I first noticed him when he got on the school bus after we moved to Ross Road. I didn't find out until after we had been married for quite awhile that he had been noticing me too. :-)