And One More Makes Five 1p676o

AND ONE MORE MAKES FIVE

Barbara Long

Copyright © 2013 by Barbara Long.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013905953 ISBN: Hardcover Softcover Ebook

978-1-4836-1901-9 978-1-4836-1900-2 978-1-4836-1902-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 05/28/2013

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Cash Chronology

All the Cash children, Left to Right: Betty, Barbara, Ruby, R.T. and Joyce standing in front of the log cabin.

Dedicated to my daughters, Janis Grey Roberts Stutts and Kathryn Roberts Mincey, and in honor of my father, Roy Thomas Cash, Sr.

CHAPTER 1

Jacob Thomas Cash, Jr. lived in Granville County, N. C., just a dirt path where running liquor on the back roads was a lucrative business. He was married to Elmedia Davis, and between them, they raised three children, Ira, Sarah, and Alford. Jacob farmed and did outside labor, and of course, Elmedia (Meda) labored in the house with the cooking, cleaning, washing, and taking care of the children. When Elmedia died, Jacob was lost without a partner with whom to share his life and to take care of him, as most women did in those days. After all, Jacob was 50 years old, his wife had been dead seven years, and his children were 27, 28, and 30 years old. When spouses became sick, men immediately started looking for a housekeeper even before their spouse died. Plus, Jacob, like so many Cash boys, was as horny as they come. So Jacob left Granville County for good and went to the big city of Durham to find a woman who could take Elmedia’s place. His family had no idea that he had gone away to start a new life. It was there that he met Ella Walker, a young woman the same age as his daughter. Ella was looking for a husband as well. The thing was, in those days, if you were 25 and not married, you were doomed to be an old maid; and neither was Ella a pretty woman, so her picking was few. Not only did Jacob need a young woman, but also Ella definitely wanted a husband. So, they met and married in January of 1904, and in December of 1904, Roy Thomas Cash was born to the couple. Later on, Ella and Jacob had two other children, Ethel and Alvis. They were married only 12 years when Jacob died—Roy was only twelve years old. Jacob was taken back to Granville County and buried next to his first wife. There was still no record of where Jacob had been, but there must have been some dissention among his first family of three, because his grave in the family plot is not exactly next to Almedia’s, just slightly apart. Ella Walker Cash, was left to raise three children on her own. It wasn’t long, however, before she married again. Jean Ferrell was her second husband; but he died six years later, before Ella’s first grandchild was born. When Roy was 20, he had a job in the hosiery mill where he met Ila Dickerson. She was a pretty thing—very petite with red wavy hair, fair complexion, and sea-blue eyes. Roy was in awe of Ila. It wasn’t long before she accepted his

proposal and they married. They moved in with Roy’s mother, Ella, and his brother Alvis. All of them worked in the hosiery mill. Ila, Roy, and Alvis had different jobs. Alvis was a “cruler”, Roy—a “doffer,” and Ila—a “looper.” Ila was great at the looping machine. She was fast and very accurate. Everything seemed to work very smoothly until Roy and Ila had a little baby girl named Ruby Lee. Ella stayed home to take care of her. Little did all of them know that two years later, Alvis would be murdered.

Ila Dickerson Cash wife of Roy Thomas Cash

Roy and Ila

Ella Cash holding Ruby Lee, first child of Roy Cash

CHAPTER 2

Roy, twenty-six, and his younger brother Alvis, who was 20, were in old man Davis’s house in Granville County drinking and playing around with a no fellow from the neighborhood. They started an argument, and tempers got hot. The guy from the neighborhood got in a drunken rage, reached in his pocket and pulled out a knife. Before anybody could do anything, he had Alvis by the neck and had pulled the knife across his throat. Alvis bled to death within minutes right before his brother Roy’s eyes. Roy watched in amazement as the red life-giving blood of his young brother flowed over the faded wooden planks. This was a traumatic event in Roy’s life, and was a time when he learned a hard lesson—to “keep moving on” no matter what happens. Life is hard, accept what’s dealt you, and don’t look back. This became Roy’s philosophy for living.

CHAPTER 3

The same year that Alvis was murdered, Roy had a son. Two years before, Ila and Roy had given birth to a stillborn child, so Roy Thomas, Jr. was a blessing to them. They were living at 604 Liberty Street in Durham. It was then that Ella decided to move in with her grandmother, Merlie Dixon. And even though she was a fairly young woman, her health was declining, and in 1938, when she was only 59, Ella Walker Cash Ferrell died.

CHAPTER 4

I was born the year my grandmother died in the same house where my two sisters and brother were born, at 604 Liberty Street. The small four room house was crowded with four children, but many people used all the rooms in their houses as bedrooms except for the kitchen, and we ate at a table in the center of the kitchen.

Roy and his half-brother, Ira, son of Almedia and Jacob Cash, Jr.

My father was a good-looking man. In fact we all thought he was from Native American decent. His dark eyes, black hair and his smooth olive complexion with a large nose that gave prominence to his square chin reminded us of the Indians we saw in the movies. One evening as the family sat around the table waiting for supper to be served by Mama, I was crawling and half walking around in the kitchen. I was 10 months old and just learning to walk. Daddy was sitting at the head of the table, where he always sat, and the rest of the family, Ruby and R.T., were sitting around the table with Betty Jean in a high chair. Daddy was waiting for his second cup of coffee in his overlarge cup. He liked his coffee strong and hot. I don’t much of my siblings in my early years because I was in a world of play, and I had no idea what world they were in, except for R.T. He was in a world of his own. As Mamma said, he was different. Mama had cooked the regular meal of poor folks,—pinto beans and biscuits, and daddy had meticulously crumbled biscuits on his plate and had carefully poured beans over the top so that bean juice flowed around the sides of the plate. He would then cut up onions and hot peppers on top making a perfect meal to his way of thinking. No one was paying attention to me as I was stumbling around the room—falling, getting up, and falling again. I had on a baby dress that was thin and cool, as the weather was hot. Mama walked by the wood stove, towel in hand, gingerly lifted the boiling coffee off the stove and started pouring Daddy his cup of coffee. As she walked back to the stove, I clumsily staggered to the table. Seeing my destination in sight, I reached up to gain balance, my small hand catching the edge of the saucer and bringing the full cup of steaming coffee down over my head and arm. My thin baby dress held in the heat as I was rushed to the hospital. Doctors hovered over my body and, after examination, said that I had third degree burns on my neck, shoulder and arm. Efforts were made to have as little scarring as possible. Skin was grafted from my back, but the burn left me with a badly scarred arm. I got used to it, however, and would sometimes try to scare people by trying to get them to touch it. This was the beginning of many incidences that were to happen due to alcohol addiction, more children than could be managed, neglect, and who knows what else was going on in a house full of kids and adults.

CHAPTER 5

Daddy was very consistent in everything he did in that he ate the same thing every meal, dressed the same way every morning, went to work (walking most of the time no matter how far away we lived), and got drunk every weekend. Each morning, I would watch him intently as he would put on his long handle underwear, pull up his pants and put on his socks that he carefully folded over around his legs, and then pull on his boots that he always wore to work summer and winter. My oldest sister, Ruby, had left home when I got old enough to . She was very pretty and had many of daddy’s features. Her skin was fair; however. She had long dark thick hair and dark brown eyes. Betty was two and a half years older than me. She looked like mama. She had fair skin, freckles, and thick red hair. R.T. had dark features and dark hair. I had brown hair and brown eyes that were full of mischief.

We moved from one house to another. R. T. was a teaser, and he could have “fits” that would have you running as hard as you could screaming at the top of your lungs. He didn’t bother Betty because she would attack him like a bantam rooster. When they got in a fight, her nails would come out and she would pull his hair and scratch his face till he was screaming bloody murder. I wished I could have done that. When we moved to Barnes Avenue, we didn’t have play equipment, a playground, or even much of a yard. The sidewalk in front of the house was a grand place to run, play marbles, and push toys. I was about three when we moved there. I was playing on the sidewalk when I spied a great big beautiful German Shepherd. I loved dogs and desperately wanted to pet this beautiful animal. “Come here, Poochy. Poochy. You pretty dog. Pretty boy, pretty boy.” As I approached with outstretched hands, quicker than a snake, the dog lunged

for my throat. He held tight as I screamed to the top of my lungs. Some man hit the dog with a pipe, and he put his fingers in my throat, pinching my jugular vein that had been severed, holding it until we reached the hospital. I probably would have bled to death had this not happened. Of course, as a small child, I feared the hospital more than anything, especially after the many accidents that had already occurred where I ended up in the hospital. When I got home, I looked in a mirror at the stitches in my throat. That scar was in between the scars I had from the scalding coffee.

CHAPTER 6

Elm Street was a pleasure. I loved the park just across the street, because in a world of play, this was the ultimate place. We called it “The Lawn.” It was a large span of grass with swings, seesaws, and a merry-go-round. Kids from all over Edgemont played on “The Lawn.” In the evening in summertime, folks would bring blankets and sit on the lawn to look at movies shown on a large screen. I loved movies, and that was so much fun! The only thing not fun was stepping on bumblebees that were lurking down in the clover. We got many bites, but this didn’t stop us from running around and swinging, trying to loop the pole.

We also played in creek beds and ditches. I was always harboring a boil or risen on my body. One such time, I formed boils in two places on the same leg, at my ankle and right at my crotch. It was so sore. But I had had them on my arms and various places before, and they eventually went away. Not so with these boils. They were huge and red, filled with puss. The area around the boils was hot as a poker. “Mama, mama, my leg hurts bad!” “Com’ere, I’ll put a piece of fatback meat on those boils.” Most of the time, salt in the meat would pull out an infection. But not this time. Those boils just got bigger and harder. They got so big that I finally stopped walking. I would crawl, dragging my leg behind me. When a red streak started up my leg, daddy decided that I needed medical attention, so off to the hospital we went—again. When the doctors saw the size of these huge boils and the infection spreading, they immediately operated. The boils were cut out, and the infection was drained. I stayed in the hospital over night. When those nurses brought around some awful red medicine to swallow, I started screaming. “No, no, no! I don’t want it!”

“We’re going to have to tie her down to get this medicine in her,” said the nurse. They started pinning my legs and arms down on the mattress as I screamed and struggled. The nurses forced my mouth open, and swallow the medicine I did!

CHAPTER 7

I was four or five years old when we lived at 914 Angier Avenue. I can the house number painted on the curb of the walkway. The house was a white frame two-story narrow house with a front door that opened into a hall. On the left, as you came into the house, there were two rooms. The first room was probably designed to be a living room, but we used it as a bedroom. At the end of the downstairs hall was a small dining room with a kitchen in the back. A porch to the side of the kitchen housed an unheated bathroom. At the front door, stairs went straight up to the right where there was a hall and two bedrooms. This would turn out to be the nicest house we would ever live in as a family. We had a huge radio about the size of a small chest of drawers in one of the rooms downstairs, where we would sit around on the floor and listen to great stories just as people today watch television. We would listen to “The Inner Sanctum,” a door squeaking in the background—scaring us half to death. Of course, Superman was wonderful—“It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!” Then there was Fibber McGee and Mollie, whose closet was so filled with junk, that every time he opened the closet door, the loudest clanging imaginable was heard. We would laugh so hard you would think we were watching a stage show. It’s amazing how your imagination works when you don’t have the pictures before you. One of my favorite places to play on Angier Avenue was the coal bin underneath the house where we stored coal for heating and for cooking. It was cool in the summer. Every house on the street had a card on which were two numbers, one number at the top and one at the bottom with a line between. The one at the bottom was upside down. The other side of the card was the same. We would hang the card outside the house with the amount of ice we wanted so when the iceman came, he would know at a glance how much ice to deliver for our icebox. In the hot summer, we would run behind the ice truck and get pieces of ice that flaked off as the iceman chopped off a square of ice. It would cool our throats. The iceman never seemed to mind.

I started first grade at Edgemont Elementary, which was only three blocks away. We walked to school as everybody in the city did. I loved art and music most of all. I also loved marbles and could play as well as a boy. It’s funny the things we such as watching my teacher eating peaches. She would put the peaches in a bowl, pour milk over them, sprinkle on a little sugar and eat them one by one. She made them look like the best thing in the world, and I wanted some so badly. A popular thing that kids did was put toothpicks in a small jar of cinnamon. After the toothpicks had soaked up the cinnamon, they would suck on them off and on all day. It smelled wonderful. I would find discarded cinnamon sticks on the stairs at school, which delighted me. I would pick them up, put them in my book, and suck on them later. They still had a trace of cinnamon flavor. Yuck! No wonder diseases spread so. Children in that day played in their underwear, and I was no different. One day I was trying to ride a tricycle that had no seat, but had a rod where the seat was supposed to be. As I put one foot on the pedal, holding my body up, I pushed on the ground with the other foot until I gained speed. Then, I picked up my foot that was on the ground. I could hold my body up pretty good, but eventually, gravity won out as I fell solid on the rod. With a thin pair of underwear, the metal rod penetrated my vagina feeling like a knife cutting me in two. I screamed bloody murder as I lay there on the ground holding my middle. “Mama, Daddy, Help!” Of course, everybody in the house came running out and took me inside, laying me on the bed as my mother examined me. I wasn’t taken to the hospital this time, but I bled for days.

“Barbara and Betty, go to the drug store and get your mama a coke. Be sure to tell him to put ammonia in it.” Mama was always sending one of us to the drug store, two blocks away, to get her a coke with ammonia. Daddy said, “Bring me some Railroad Mill strong snuff.” On the way to the store, we heard music coming from a big three-story church across the street. The church was huge. The front of the church was round

because it was on a corner lot, and it had pretty, tall windows all around. The church doors and windows were wide open, so my sister and I stepped inside the door and stood in the back. There we stood, barefooted with loose-hanging dresses and bushy hair. Nobody said anything to us. The music was beautiful. I helped myself to the little envelopes on the back of the pew, which I thought would be cool to draw on later. “Come on,” said Betty. “Let’s go.” Little did I know that one day, as an adult, I would visit Branson Memorial Methodist Church.

This was not the only church I had visited. My grandmother, on Mama’s side, took us one time to Bunn’s Tabernacle. My grandmother was a small, thin lady with hair the color of tar. Preacher Bunn had services in a huge brown tent where he handled all kinds of long, slimy, supposedly poisonous snakes (I doubt that they were, however). But poisonous or nonpoisonous, I stayed crouched under my grandmother, because I was scared to death. I didn’t see grandma many times during my lifetime, but this was one time I well .

CHAPTER 8

My brother was emotionally disturbed and school was very difficult for him. There were no special considerations for children who were different. He would cry when it was time to go to school, so after several years in second grade, mama stopped making him go. He was very mischievous and many times, I was the culprit. One day, he was chasing me through the house. “I’ll get you,” he said. “Oh, no you won’t!” I replied I ran through the hall, through the kitchen, on the back porch, and sailed off the porch. The grass was very high and the yard very littered. One of the pieces of trash was a broken-off milk bottle. I landed right on the bottle, severing my big toe on my right foot. The only thing holding it on was a thin piece of meat at the top. “Mama, Daddy, Help!” I screamed. I can someone putting my foot in a pan of water and my toe floating to the top—another rush to the hospital. By this time, I am truly scared to death of the hospital, and I had to be pulled from the taxi, screaming and yelling at the top of my lungs. “I don’t want to go to the hospital,” I cried. My toe was reattached but was slightly crooked. Every pair of shoes I wore for my whole life hurt terribly until broken in.

CHAPTER 9

I came home from school the first day of October and started in the house. Someone pushed me back. “You can’t come in!” I didn’t know why, but I could hear lots of commotion. Then I heard a baby crying. Oh me, Mama had had another baby! This was number five. I soon learned that Joyce was everybody’s baby, because everybody took turns taking care of her. We called her Flossie. Flossie would suffer some of the same effects that R.T. did. She was smart, but emotionally disturbed to a point that sticking to a conviction was difficult for her. However, in later life, Joyce proved to be a survivor.

While living at 914 Angier Avenue, something happened that would change our lives drastically. Daddy brought a friend named Bob home after a night of drinking, and honky-tonkying (as Daddy would say). Bob was a tall goodlooking man, and he was also smart. From that day on, Bob would never leave our home. Bob was an independent roofer, daddy was a crane operator at Swartz Yard, and mama worked at the hosiery mill. With three salaries, there was no reason for the poverty in which we lived. Alcohol changes everything.

CHAPTER 10

We moved to the country on Oxford Highway, about four miles from downtown. It was a small four-room log cabin sitting high on a hill on concrete blocks with no enclosure around it. It had no water, no electricity, and an outside toilet about fifty feet from the house. The walls separating the rooms did not go all the way up to the A-frame ceiling. An oil stove in one of the rooms heated the entire house, and a wood stove in the back room designated that room as the kitchen. We had a Ho cabinet that housed dishes, flour, pots, pans, and silverware. The front room was mama’s and daddy’s room. It had a bed, an oil circulator, a baby bed, and later a looping machine. The room next to this room was Bob’s room, and the room next to the kitchen was where all the kids slept. We had to haul water from a neighbor’s house four houses down the road. The way to the neighbor’s house was through the woods, through old man Beck’s back yard where he had a rooster with big long sharp spurs who ran at us every time we crossed the yard, then across a dirt road, and past two other houses. There was a well in the neighbor’s front yard with a tube-like contraption that you dropped down the well. When you pulled it up, it was filled with water, which we then poured into our bucket. I guess it was an understanding between our families, since I never saw a person at the house where we got water. Two of us would carry a bucket that hung between us on a stick. I can imagine the amount of water that splashed out of the bucket when running through old man Beck’s back yard dodging that rooster who never allowed a treser to go through his yard.

One summer night, we were out of water. “R.T., you and Barbara Ann, go get a bucket of water,” daddy said. “Awe, daddy, do we have to?” “God-damn it, go on out there, now!”

It wasn’t totally dark, because the moon was big and yellow and shown on the trees like a light, but scary just the same. As we slowly crossed through Mr. Beck’s yard, we felt home free because the rooster was indeed roosting. My cousins, who rented a house across the street from our house, happened to be at our house at the time, and they decided to play a trick on us. One of them got a sheet, put it over his head and climbed a tree half way between our house and old man Beck’s house. As we were walking down the path, talking in a whisper, out they jumped. Well, there are no words to describe the noise we made as we dropped the bucket and flew down the path screaming. “Help, help!” Of course, their laughter brought us to our senses, and we stopped short realizing we had been tricked. We had to make the trip back to the well again. Sometimes, they made us so mad, even thought they were our only playmates.

CHAPTER 11

With one bucket to provide cooking and drinking water for eight people, bathing was out of the question. My ankles, my elbows, and other creases were cruddy and black from playing outside in the dirt and just living. One day, the teacher at school asked me if I ever bathed. Being somewhat embarrassed, I replied, “I bath all the time, but I have scars on my neck and legs and feet from injuries,” which was half way the truth. She just let it ride and said no more.

In the summer, we went barefoot. In the winter, most of the time I did not have proper clothes to wear, especially shoes. But I had a routine. I would get my shoes that had holes in the bottoms, find pieces of cardboard and put them inside each shoe to cover the holes, then gingerly put them on so as to keep the cardboard from slipping out. Also, I had another problem. Being a bed-wetter, I did not have underwear many mornings, and I would have to make sure my dress was pulled down all day so no one would see my private place. I would pretend to pull underwear down when I went to the bathroom at school, if I had to use the one without a door, so that no one would know that I wasn’t wearing any underwear. I one day the teacher asked me to stay behind the other kids as they were leaving to go home. She handed me a package to take home. I didn’t know what it was, but when I got home, I found it was clothes that folks had sent to school for my family. I guess I didn’t fool anyone. I am glad I did not understand the significance of this at that time, because I truly never felt that we were poor.

CHAPTER 12

We went to Glenn Elementary School where my sister, Betty, excelled. She was an avid reader. I guess that’s how she coped with our environment. And that’s why I don’t have a memory of playing with Betty who was closer my age. She was always reading. She read so many books at school that she won a prize, which was a beautiful scarf, for reading the most books. I was very proud of her and bragged about her accomplishments. I thought she was the smartest person in the world. I, on the other hand, was an avid “player.” If there were a prize for the person who played most, I would have won. If I didn’t have toys, which was rare, I made or found toys. We had a goat that roamed around the log cabin and kept weeds down. That goat pooped the best marbles. When the poop dried, they were hard. I would find a clump that had dried in the sun, break it up into individual pellets, and play marbles in the dirt under the house. Yuck!

Many times I played in the woods. There was a tree close to the house that had limbs I could scoot up. I would sit in the tree and pretend to be a king overlooking my land. A stick would be my sword, with which I would hack away at branches and rocks. One night, some boy scouts camped back in the woods behind our house. I rummaged through that camp the next day and found ashes from a bon fire they had made. I found, by accident, their latrine. Running through the camp, I stepped in that latrine, barefooted, and got my foot coated with shit. I went running back to the house on my heel, screaming, “Help, help!” as I always did when I was in stress. But I came across a creek, which worked out very well for washing my foot. I have always wondered who took care of us. I felt we were always taking care of ourselves the best way we could. Weekends were devoted to alcohol, and by the time another week went by, it was time to start drinking again. And when the adults got drunk, all hell broke loose.

CHAPTER 13

I didn’t have a good experience at Glenn. In the third grade, I sat wishing for play time or time to go home. It was so difficult sitting in a hard seat all day long listening to a boring teacher. Besides not wanting to be in the classroom, I didn’t like it that the teacher seemed to love to put kids on the spot. She would point to a student and yell, “FIVE TIMES FIVE!” and the student would have to respond quickly. This was her way of having the students memorize the multiplication table. And I thought to myself, “How can you memorize anything with someone screaming at you.” I soon learned that there was a way I could respond quickly, since this was her goal. I decided, if I wrote the multiplication table on my hands and glanced down when she called my name, then I could answer as quickly as she wanted. I wasn’t smart enough to realize that this was called cheating. When she saw me looking at my hands for the answer, she quickly came over, took my hand in hers and struck it four or five times with a ruler. Boy, did that hurt! I thought I was being pretty smart. But she thought it was being pretty stupid.

I loved books with big pictures, so when we went to the library, I chose those kinds of books. I had always been fascinated with art. I guess I felt about art the way Betty felt about reading. One day, the teacher saw the big book in my hand and jerked it out. “That book is too easy for a third grader,” she yelled. I didn’t know what she meant because I loved the pictures in the book. I didn’t care what grade level it was. “You need to pick books your age,” she continued and handed me a book with no pictures.

Needless to say, I skipped school often. I would wait until all the children exited the bus and would pretend to be getting my things. The bus driver would leave me on the bus, and I would run down Oxford Highway, through the woods, and spend the day there. Ahhhhhh! . . . to be free of school. I ate honey suckles and made play things out of pinecones, leaves, and sticks. This was a wonderful time for me. It was cool, and the woods were familiar as a place to play. The day would go quickly. In the afternoon, I would walk toward home, hide in a deep ditch and wait for the bus to . Then I would run up the hill. Needless to say, I did not third grade. Did anyone ever know that I spent many days in the woods? Did anyone ever care where I was? I didn’t know, nor did I question what anyone thought.

CHAPTER 14

Flossie was just a baby, and the older kids had to take care of her. We would pour milk in a coke bottle, pull a nipple down on it and hold it for her to drink. Then we would bounce on the bed until she fell asleep. That was how we took care of her. She was around one. My older sister, Ruby, was not living at home. In fact, I don’t ever my older sister at home. I don’t know where she was. Being a teenager, this life would have been excruciating for her. She would have been fourteen or fifteen.

We used lamps at night, and Betty read all the time by lamplight. I think this was the reason she wore glasses at an early age. The shades would have to be cleaned to get a clear light, and the wicks had to be trimmed quite often. That was never my job. Some time after we moved to the country, electricity was brought to the house. It was a light hanging down the middle of each room. Were we excited! We turned them on and off, on and off. Mama and Aunt Mollie, her younger sister who lived across the street, were such good loopers, that the hosiery mill installed a looping machine in both houses so they could continue making socks at home. For all I knew, the hosiery mill may have arranged for the electricity to come to the house in order for them to continue the work. We had enough looping strings to make potholders, and any other thing that could be looped. That big old machine took up a lot of space in mama’s bedroom, and it was loud. I use to watch mama’s delicate fingers as the circular of needles came around and she meticulously slipped the small needles in the holes of the socks. You had to be very fast to keep putting the socks on the needles as they came around. Lights were like heaven pouring in.

One night we were out of water again. Why is it that water would always run out at night? “R.T., you and Barbara Ann go get some water,” said daddy.

We didn’t argue with daddy although we were a little scared. We weren’t as scared as we were going through old man Beck’s rooster-rooming yard because we now could get the water from Aunt Mollie’s house across the street. My brother and I went to get a bucket and started to Aunt Mollie’s. There was a fear of the “catty mount” among folks in the country. We had never seen one, but we knew one lurked behind every tree in the woods. We visualized a huge bobcat with sharp claws and long sharp teeth. And we also knew that it could swallow kids alive. We started down the hill, crossed the road, and continued down Aunt Mollie’s long driveway. Then suddenly, R.T. yelled, “Catty Mount, Catty Mount!” He saw a black shadow on her steps. He dropped the stick that held the empty bucket and ran like lightning back down her driveway across the road, and up our long driveway with me close behind. Breathing heavily as we ran in the house, we both were yelling, “There’s a Catty Mount on Aunt Mollie’s porch!” ‘Daddy was furious. “Goddamn it, you high tail it right back there and get that bucket of water. Go up and touch what you think is a Catty Mount, and don’t come back without that damn water! Ya hear me!” We started back down the hill, crossed the road, and slowly walked down Aunt Mollie’s driveway. We picked up the bucket we had dropped, and walked slowly toward the black thing, which was still there. But Aunt Mollie had turned on the lights, and we saw a pair of boots on the steps. R.T. could get me in more trouble.

CHAPTER 15

Aunt Mollie had two sons, Kafer, Jr. and McCray. We played with them all the time. We would all walk into town to go to the movies, which we loved to do, and would sit through a movie two times. It only cost nine cents for kids. Sometimes, it would be dark after the second viewing. When we were walking home one night after dark, we ed a service station where two black boys were sitting in front. This was in the late 40’s, and relations between blacks and whites were terrible. Neither trusted the other. Fear lurked in the hearts of most white folks toward the black folks. Most of the time, the two races were separated. Even in the movies, blacks sat in a separate balcony. Kafer Junior and McCray decided to have a little fun. They were both fast as lightning and knew they could outrun anybody. They yelled out obscenities at the two black boys and then took off down the road. “Hey nigga! What ya doin” sittin’ ova there?” The black boys’ eyes shown like hot coals in a red hot fireplace. My harp-strung nerves thrummed with fear. They started after us, and Kafer Junior and McCray were gone like the wind. My sister and I kept walking slowly. I told myself that, because of my overripe imagination, I was exaggerating the threat, but the beating of my heart said differently. I couldn’t think straight. I just knew my life was over. Betty was afraid as well, but I don’t think she was as afraid as I was. We were coming up on a bridge going over a train track. It looked 100 feet tall, and I could just imagine a steam engine coming under that bridge blowing smoke and tooting a loud horn. As we approached the bridge, we heard one of the boys say to the other, “You take that ’n, and I’ll take this ’n. We’ll dump ’em over.” Now, we were really scared. I looked at Betty and said, “What are we going to do?” I knew if we started running, we would be overtaken. My brave sister became my hero that night. She turned around and said,

“We’re ashamed of our cousins, and we will tell their mama as soon as we get home what they said to you. I’m sure they ‘ll get a spankin’. We would never say those things to you, and we’re sorry.” This seemed to pacify the black boys because, without another word, they just turned around and walked back to the station. Four miles is a long ways to walk home, but that walk was a welcome after that scare.

CHAPTER 16

The house on Oxford Highway was truly just a frame of a house. It was built with bare necessities. I don’t know where everybody was, but I was at home playing outside by myself. Mama and Bob were the only ones at home. I came in the house and didn’t see anyone but heard noises coming from the bedroom that Bob slept in. Being curious, I went into the bedroom next to this room and climbed up the wall. As the walls did not go to the ceiling, I could look over the wall, which I did. I gasped when I saw Mama and Bob naked in bed. They were moving back and forward. I quickly scurried down, making as little noise as possible. I began to think and realized at that point why there was so much fighting in the family. Two men loved the same woman. One night, they all started arguing and began cursing each other, while we kids sat in the bedroom stopping up our ears. Then they began throwing things at each other: pots, pans, and dishes. Finally, we got scared and went outside. There was snow on the ground, and we stood under a tree. “You son of a bitch. You don’t belong here.” “You don’t make enough money to afford a house by yourself,” replied Bob. “Well, you keep your hands off my wife!” Then daddy would finally come outside, tell us all to follow him, and we would hold hands and walk to my daddy’s sister’s house, about two or three miles away on Wake Forest Highway. She was always so gracious as she took us all in and made pallets on the floor. Aunt Ethel and Uncle Ralph did not have children, but I doubt that she looked forward to four scrubby kids waking her in the night and putting us up for a couple of days. I loved Aunt Ethel and Uncle Ralph. Uncle Ralph used to let me watch him work on his boat. I got to blow the sawdust away as he sawed. Aunt Ethel kept a neat house, and times there were good. When we finally went home, the log house had been cleaned up and things were calm for a while. It seemed that we stayed for a long time at Aunt Ethel’s and Uncle Ralph’s, but it was probably only several days.

CHAPTER 17

Daddy finally bought a car. Of course, this called for a celebration. It was an old T-model Ford, but proud he was. He came home drunk, driving that Ford up the rutted driveway and around the house at a fast rate of speed, laughing and laughing. “Get under the house,” said Betty. We stared in amazement as he went round and round the house. Of course, he was not to keep his license very long because he would get caught driving drunk and would lose his license regularly.

Daddy was a hard-working man, organized and very neat. He was always thinking of ways to make something useful out of junk. At Swartz Yards, he invented a machine that takes something useful out of old batteries. I his showing it to me one time. His boss, Mr. Swartz, said that if daddy did not have a drinking problem, he could not afford to hire him because he was such a smart mechanic. But Daddy would borrow money all week on his salary, so he seldom received a full check on Friday. That’s why Bob lived with us so long. When daddy was without a car, he walked to work every day, which was about five miles. On snowy days, we felt big when we would walk in his tracks that he had made in the snow. When he was sober, he was very quiet. But when he was drunk, he became talkative, obnoxious, but very loving. Sometimes when he was drunk, he would sit me on his lap and get me to sing to him. I would sing and sing all the country songs I could . Then he would say, “Who do you love most, me or Bob?” There was always that competition. I would always say, “I love you most, daddy.” I think this attention I received kept me from becoming bitter. Even though he was drunk, he did say, “I love you” in so many words.

CHAPTER 18

Depending on whether they were drinking determined whether we would get anything for Christmas. Sometimes we got something, sometimes a little something, and sometimes a lot of things. I , one Christmas, daddy came home from work late. He came running in the house saying, “Come outside, kids! I just saw Santa Claus!” Of course, we flew out the door, looking everywhere. “Where, where,” we yelled, as we frantically searched the sky, which was clear and bright. You could see every single star and a great big yellow moon. Surely, if there is a Santa, and he is in the sky, we should be able to see him. He said, “Yeah! I see him. Look, see his sled in the sky!” All of us were looking so hard, and he was so convincing, that we really thought we saw a sled. He said, “Let’s look around. Maybe he left something.” We looked around the cabin and under it. Then we saw it—a big burlap bag. R.T. said, “Here’s something!” We all pulled the big burlap bag out and found it full of toys. Daddy said, “I told you I saw Santa Claus.” I truly believed in Santa Claus for a long time after that happened. It was very imaginative of daddy to concoct that story.

CHAPTER 19

An uncle, who had a car with a rumble seat in the back, came by the house one day. The rumble seat was like a trunk in the back of a car that pulled out and made a seat where two adults or three children could sit. It was run sitting in a rumble seat. He said he was taking us to see a relative who was in prison. Daddy and my uncle got in the front seat of the car, and we kids hopped in the rumple seat. Daddy, as usual, had taken a dip of his Railroad Mill strong snuff. On the way, he stuck his head out of the window and gave a royal spit. My sister and I were enjoying the breeze blowing our hair; when suddenly we got that spit full force in our faces. We screamed, trying to wipe the spit with the wind blowing hard in our faces while daddy and my uncle laughed and laughed. I didn’t think it was funny, but I ed in the laughter anyway.

CHAPTER 20

Mama had a sister named Lucy. Sometimes we would visit Aunt Lucy and Uncle Early, and we would all sleep on pallets. They all worked in tobacco, but I was too little. Mama came from a big family. There was Uncle Jimmy (who spent a lot of time in prison), Aunt Alma, Uncle Willy (the oldest), Uncle Lonnie, Aunt Mollie, and Aunt Ruth ( the youngest). She whined, when she talked, like a small child. Uncle Jimmy was a handsome man. I staying at his house one time. He had two girls. That is where I learned to ride a bicycle. I can feel the wind blowing my hair now. I the thrill of going down the road with the balance of the wheels under me. It was heaven! I think Uncle Jimmy got so use to prison, that he would do things to get caught so he would have to go back to jail. I heard he stole a church bell one time, for no apparent reason. Aunt Alma married Alvin Holloman and had three or four children. Alvin use to drive a city bus, later working at a drug store. I loved Uncle Alvin. Uncle Lonnie was an alcoholic and died fairly young. Aunt Ruth had a son. I never knew his name other than “Tadpole.” He was in trouble a lot for fighting. And, of course, there was Uncle Willy. I heard he moved to California. I don’t him at all except when he came to various funerals that we attended.

CHAPTER 21

Mama contracted tuberculosis, and the next thing I knew, we were being sent to a children’s home called The Wright Refuge when I was nine or ten years old. This was a temporary home in Durham for kids who needed a place to stay during an emergency or until a permanent place could be arranged. It was a big white two-story house with a circle drive in front and a small child’s cement pool on the side, which was never filled with water. The Refuge was well manicured, as the superintendent was interested in gardening and weeding, and she worked the yard often. She had a firm belief that children should not be idle and should take pride in the place where they lived. So we worked in the yard along side her. The young boys slept on the porch that was surrounded with windows in the right wing; the two-year-olds were housed in the middle of the building; babies were at the end of a long hall on the main floor; older children stayed in individual rooms in the front of the house; and intermediate girls were upstairs. The superintendent had an apartment at the very front. Across from her was a large living room with an old upright piano against the entry wall. This was not off limits to the children, as I went in there often. At times, I would go in there and play made-up songs on the piano. I loved doing that. Joyce, who was two, went to the two-year-old department with a matron called Miss Hall. There were approximately twelve children under her care. Betty went with the older girls in the individual rooms, and I went upstairs to the intermediate department. R.T. was older and stayed at home. I don’t many kids there, but I do the Calfee kids because they were all smart. There were four: Robert, James Lee, Sarah, and Ray. I knew they were special because the Superintendent took a great interest in them.

CHAPTER 22

Miss Lizzie Grey Chandler, who had a keen awareness of children’s needs, managed the Wright Refuge. She drove a station wagon, which was donated by Nello Teer, a well-known road contractor in Durham. The station wagon could hold many children. This was the first time Joyce had been separated from us, so she had a very difficult time. I wish I could have known the effect this would have on her, because I would have gone to see her more often. As a child, I had no clue as to the needs of children and only thought of myself. We all had to work at the Refuge—not labor but we had responsibilities. We snapped and shelled beans, had kitchen duty where we set the table and swept the floors, and we also pulled weeds around the yard. Time spent there was pleasant. A woman named Janie was the matron in my department. She was a short blonde-headed woman with a sweet disposition, unlike Miss Hall who was tall and wore her hair in a bun, and one who seemed always to be very serious. Janie could be feisty when she needed to be, however. The baby department at the very end of the long hall housed eight to ten babies where matrons fed, held, dried, and rocked them. For security reasons, a routine was in place where a matron on duty in the baby department would go around at midnight to each department monitoring and winding clocks located at different points around the “T” shaped building. Each morning, Janie would hang dresses and underwear on our locker doors. I always thought the blonde girl in my department got the prettiest dresses. I knew Janie had her favorites, and I wasn’t one of them. As several of us were bedwetters, our beds had thick rubber sheets to protect the mattresses. My sister and I sat together at mealtimes. She hated oatmeal, which we had most mornings for breakfast, and I hated milk, so she would me her oatmeal, and I would her my milk. The milk was in a tin cup, so it was always cold. I

could halfway stand it when it was very cold. I guess Joyce was also in the dining room, but I never focused on her, and I guess she did not focus on us. How she must have felt deserted.

Lizzie Grey Chandler Superintendent of Wright’s Refuge

CHAPTER 23

The church next to the Refuge was Braggtown Baptist. We attended that church Sunday morning and night. One night, the preacher was preaching hell fire and brimstone. “If you don’t repent now, you can’t go to heaven. You need to show your love for Christ by coming forward.” The choir sang, “Just as I am without one plea.” over and over and over. My sister got so filled with the holy spirit and got to feeling so guilty, she grabbed my hand and pulled me against my will down that isle. “Come on,” she said. “I don’t want to go.” I replied. “We must go. Come on!” said Betty. After she drug me down the isle, the preacher put his hand on our heads and the next thing I know, it was Sunday morning, and I was in a white dress going down in the water. Being baptized was quite an experience. Filled with fear and trepidation, I stuck my foot in the water, expecting it to be cold but it was warm. The preacher put a cloth over my face and ducked me under. I can’t say the spirit moved me, but I can say my sister moved me. Oh well, at least I have all bases covered. Another church experience happened at BTU (Baptist Training Union). The teacher was asking some of us to take a part of the program and present it the following Sunday. He gave me the book and designated a page. I really did not know exactly what was expected and that all I had to do was read it. I spent the whole week memorizing that page. I didn’t know I had it in me to memorize that much. The next Sunday, when it came my turn to present, I stood up and started reciting. When I finished, everybody just stared at me. The teacher was also shocked that I had memorized the entire page and gave me a quarter for my efforts. I guess you could call me a person who takes everything literally. Oh

well, good practice.

I was in the fourth grade while at the Refuge. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Kelly, realized that I had artistic talent; so she had me and L.R. (Loris) Colclough, a talented boy in my room, draw scenes on the blackboard during holidays. I guess this was a way to keep us busy. But this also contributed to my artistic ability, which some folks think I have.

CHAPTER 24

As suddenly as we went to the Refuge, we returned home to a duplex with two rooms on each side and two bedrooms upstairs. It was a block from Swartz Yard where daddy worked. It was great that he did not have to walk so far to his work. Although being at the Refuge was a good experience, it was also good to be home. Mama had gotten Tuberculosis and was bedridden, but she refused to go to a sanitarium. The men had solved their problem of who would be with mama. Daddy had met Gladys Greenhill, and both lived on one side of the duplex, and mama and Bob lived on the other side. R.T., Joyce, Betty and I slept upstairs in the two bedrooms. The front rooms downstairs on both sides of the duplex had beds, circulators, and dressers in them, and the other two rooms had tables in the middle of the floor, sinks, stoves, and cabinets. An unheated bathroom was on the porch at the back of the house between the duplex. Stairs went up between the two units that led to two bedrooms where the four of us slept. Gladys was very good to us and took care of us in that she washed our clothes and cooked our meals. We ate on daddy’s side of the duplex, and visited mama on her side. Bob bootlegged in the kitchen, and mama kept the moneybox by her bed in the front room. Mama had lost a lot of weight, and was very weak, so she stayed in the bed. Gladys would give her shots, and, actually, Gladys took care of her. Mama loved for me to write on her legs, arms, and back with a ballpoint pen because it tickled her. I drew elaborate pictures. Later on, someone would wash her off with alcohol. I was in the third or fourth grade, and we were assigned to East Durham Middle School as the Edgemont Elementary School was being renovated. I can a play given by the middle school that the elementary children were allowed to attend. We were quietly sitting in the auditorium when a noise came from somewhere off stage, and a voice sounded in the room. “Who dat?” After a few seconds, another voice came from the other side of the auditorium. “Who dat?” Another few seconds and the first voice said, “Who dat say who dat when I say who dat ?”

I thought that was the funniest thing I had ever heard. As playing was my pastime, I ed very little about the school, but I ed everything I played. I skated, rode my bike, and jumped board. Betty and I would skate down the sidewalk to the Esso station and back. I would ride my bike up and down the sidewalk till dark. We would jump board so high, that I could look into the second story window. This was a good time for us, although one would think it was a very strange arrangement. My brother had a rooster he kept in a cage. At night, he would put a scarf over the cage and the rooster would go to sleep. One night, my brother, still the prankster turned on the light and jerked off the scarf. The rooster very dutifully crowed. “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” Of course, we all broke down in laughter. Daddy yelled up the stairs. “You kids cut that out. Leave that rooster alone and go to sleep!” In a few minutes, R.T. repeated his shenanigans. Jerking the scarf off, the rooster crowed. Then R.T. would jump in the bed laughing as hard as he could, and of course, we ed him. “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” And the laughter from everyone was even louder. Daddy was furious. He started up the stairs with his belt dangling in his hand. “I told you, Goddamn it, to cut that out!” We all hid under the cover and under the bed. He grabbed Betty by the wrist and whacked her with the belt. Then he grabbed me and gave me a whack. “Where’s Betty?” he asked. “You’ve already whipped me one time!” was Betty’s reply. (He thought he had whipped R.T., who was hiding under the bed.) While daddy was holding back laughter, he grabbed R.T. under the bed and gave

him a whack. We then went to sleep giggling under the covers as Daddy went down the steps, also giggling. It’s amazing how funny things seem when you are young.

CHAPTER 25

I learned that my older sister, Ruby, had gotten pregnant out of wedlock, and had given the baby boy to my Aunt Ethel to keep. Aunt Ethel would not agree to just keep him because she knew she would get too emotionally attached. She said she would take the child if Ruby would agree for her to adopt him. Ruby agreed to this arrangement, as she had no way of taking care of him. Aunt Ethel and Uncle Ralph moved to Canada with little Ronnie. My guess is that this allowed them to raise the boy as their own with no one to tell the child he was adopted. They did not want him to know. Ruby met and married Arthur Lucas, a taxi cab driver. Folks called him Cocky. He was a thin, older man with thick glasses. Ruby became pregnant right away. I spent a summer with her while she was pregnant. She lived across the street from the log cabin where we once lived. Ruby was very sick during her pregnancy. She would go outside, and I would hold her head while she vomited. We would wash her long hair over the kitchen sink, and I would pour vinegar water over her hair to make it shine. Sometimes, Cocky would come home late and would bring guys to play poker in a garage room he had built for that purpose. They had an outdoor toilet, and I was using it when my billfold I had in my pocket fell into the hole. I was devastated as I had some favorite pictures in it. I found a stick and fished around in that hole for an hour until I finally managed to hook it in the side and pull it up. I poured water over it for a long time, but it still smelled like poop, so I had to throw it away. Ruby was very talented. She drew pictures and wrote poetry. She wrote a song called; “I Am a Pilgrim and a Stranger” which she actually sent off to be published but never heard anything from it. Later on, I heard a song on the radio with those same words, “I am a pilgrim and a stranger traveling in this weary land.” I wondered if it was somehow connected to my sister’s song. One day, Ruby vomited up blood, which I later realized was because she, too, had tuberculosis. Finally the baby came. It was a little girl she named Ruby Gail. Shortly after the baby was born, Ruby with active tuberculosis had to go to McCann Sanitarium. She never raised her child because she died there.

Ruby Cash Lucas, first daughter of Roy and Ila Cash in the Tuberculosis Sanatorium in McCann, N. C. where she dies. She weighed 89 pounds in this picture.

CHAPTER 26

Mama got sicker and sicker, so we were taken back to the Wrights Refuge. Not long after going to the Refuge, we were attending mama’s funeral. I don’t crying. It was like I was in another world. My sister and I sat at the funeral while someone sang, “Just a Closer Walk With Thee,” I was in the sixth grade at that time. Mrs. Hampton was my teacher. I will never forget her kindness to me “I’m very sorry to hear about your mother,” she said to me when I returned to school. She was the only person who had mentioned my mother’s death, and I it to this day.

CHAPTER 27

I never thought about time, and I never thought about why I was at the Refuge or why no one came to visit me. But one day, I heard a commotion out front. As I was running to see what it was, I saw Bob, the man who had lived with us in our early years, driving around the circle driveway in front of the Refuge with Miss Chandler yelling at him. “You cannot come here like that!” I figured he must have been drunk. When he saw me, he threw coins out of his window to me as he was driving off. Miss Chandler did protect her children. My sister, Ruby, before she went to the sanitarium came to the Refuge to talk to Miss Chandler. “Please don’t let the girls go back home,” she said to her. Miss Chandler said to Ruby, “I can’t get involved in the children’s lives. This is only a temporary home, and it is either the orphanage or home to where they will go. But kids do OK, even when the environment seems pretty bad.” “Oh, but Miss Chandler, you just don’t know how it is. When everybody around you is doing things, you will too. Their lives will be ruined if you allow them to go back home.” She was speaking from experience. This prayed on Miss Chandler’s mind. Since we were in the middle of the school year, she asked her sister Miss Minnie Chandler, if she could keep us until school was out, and Minnie agreed. I being asked, “Would you like to go live with Miss Minnie?” Having no allegiance to anyone, I said, “Sure!” So Betty and I packed our meager belongings and moved to Guess Road. Flossie did not come with us.

CHAPTER 28

Minnie, and Minnie’s mother, Ella Chandler, were living in a small white fiveroom house. Lizzie Grey Chandler and Minnie did everything together. They owned the house next door, which was too big for two people, so they rented it to Dr. Bell who ran a veterinarian hospital, and they built the smaller house beside the big house. They even bought cars together. Lizzie Grey seldom came to the house, as an apartment was provided for her to live at Wright Refuge. There was an attic built in the house, which was floored with stairs coming down on the back porch. The room on the right of the attic had walls and a ceiling. The room on the left was open attic. Although Minnie agreed to keep Betty and I, she felt she could not take Flossie. Minnie’s mother was in her 80’s and could not tolerate a small child, so Flossie, only six at this time, was sent to a foster home in the country where she was made to work tobacco and wash dishes. This experience and the separation from family together with the abuse she claimed to have received from boys in the foster family had a devastating impact on Flossie. Betty and I moved in the bedroom upstairs at Minnie’s house. It was love at first sight. Minnie was probably the wisest, most loving woman on earth, and she was a saint. She was a good-sized woman with a very large bosom and a prominent nose. She wore her salt and pepper colored hair short and wavy. Her arms and legs were muscular as she worked like a farmer. In fact, that was her first love. Minnie worked as a ticket agent for the railroad but took on a second job as a teacher when we came to live with her. She also raised a large garden and chickens. She could plow and pick up a sack of feed as good as any man. Her hours at the railroad station were 4:00 pm until 1:00 am. She got up at 7:00 am and taught school until 2:30. After leaving school, she took a short nap and went straight to the train station. Since farming took place mostly in the summer when school was out, she was able to work in the garden, which we would harvest then freeze and can for winter. Mama Chandler, as we called Minnie’s mother, had become bitter as she got

older and did not particularly want us to live there. But Minnie persisted at Grey’s request. Little did we all know how very attached we would become. I wrote to Ruby at the sanitarium, and she always wrote back. Her letters were sad. “I guess daddy doesn’t love me any more as he never visits,” she would write. She always ended her letters with advice to me. “You be sure to mind Miss Minnie.” Ruby died at the sanitarium in her twenties. After being told of her death, I wondered around the house and felt so sad. Again, I did not cry. I think I had become hardened to death and attachments to anyone. It took me years to realize that daddy thought he was putting us in a sort of boarding house, because money was taken out of his paycheck and sent to Minnie. It was very little, and probably would not even feed us. He had no idea how much money it took to cloth, feed, and pay doctor and dentist bills, provide school supplies, etc. In his view, he was doing a good thing. After trying to raise five children in a dysfunctional home, paying a little to have someone take care of us was a relief. Minnie, in her wisdom, respected daddy and always wanted us to be in touch with our biological family. She would take us to see him on special occasions. She even looked up my grandmother, who was a seamstress, and got her to make us dresses. My grandmother was strange and was very much not in the picture during my lifetime, even with Minnie’s efforts. Betty and I fell into a routine of freezing and canning food, mowing the yard, feeding the chickens, which were killed and frozen, and pulling weeds in the garden. Betty would pull one strawberry, eat a strawberry, pull a strawberry, and eat a strawberry.

CHAPTER 29

Betty had energy to burn. She had a job at Woolworth’s behind the lunch counter on the weekends, was a cheerleader, and at night would read until 1:00 am. She probably would have read longer if Minnie had not been coming home from her job at the train depot. Nobody was on the road at that time of night, so driving an old ’38 Chevrolet could be heard long before she was in sight. Betty would quickly turn out the light, which was attached to the top of our bed. I hated her reading at night when I was trying to go to sleep. However, I could say nothing about it because, still being a bed-wetter, she would have to get up in the night after I had wet the bed, throw a sheet over the wet spot, and go back to sleep. Betty said that she thought this was a way of life, and she never complained. Minnie tried everything to help me stop wetting the bed. When she came home at 1:30, she would bring a pot upstairs, get me out of bed and have me sit on it. I would sit and sit and sit. Nothing. Not an hour after I got in bed, there would come the pee.

CHAPTER 30

Grey, as we came to call Miss Chandler, took me with her on a trip to Mount Airy to visit some friends. That night, the lady showed me the bed I was to sleep in. It was so pretty, with beautiful sheets and bedspread. I prayed all night, “Please don’t wet the bed, please don’t wet the bed. Please don’t wet the bed.” The next morning, I awoke with a soaked bed. I jumped up, changed my clothes, pulled the sheets and spread up so that the bed looked made up. We left that morning, and I wondered when the lady would find her smelly bed. The bedwetting abruptly stopped when Minnie started me with piano lessons.

CHAPTER 31

I loved the fair. Durham County had a yearly fair, and Minnie let me go. I took my own babysitting money, and got hooked on throwing a ball at dolls. “Get this nice teddy bear! Just knock down three dolls!” the man yelled. “Only a quarter for five balls. Come on! You can do it!” I spent my entire five dollars trying to win that teddy bear. The man finally felt sorry for me and gave me a smaller teddy bear. When I got home, Minnie was furious that I had gambled all my money on such trivia. “I hope you enjoy that teddy bear, because that was money to buy the jacket you wanted.” This was another one of her wise discipline techniques. Betty was a daredevil. She would get on the scariest rides. She would drag me to a ride, and tease me until I got on. Then I would almost die of fright. Then she pulled me on the worst ride of all, the dive-bomber. I screamed bloody murder, “Help, somebody get me off this thing.” People all around stood down below, pointing at us high in the sky, laughing at me. I think the man gave us a longer ride because of the attention we were getting.

CHAPTER 32

We had a large piece of plywood that we would put on sawhorses and would play ping-pong day and night. I got very good at it. There were times when we would have ten or twelve kids in our back yard playing ping-pong. Minnie hooked up lights so we could see. She liked for us to have things that drew youngsters to our house. She didn’t even complain when we played softball in the front yard, using new walnut trees she had just planted as bases. We jerked them up so many times that it’s a wonder they ever grew to maturity, but those trees are now huge.

Minnie could always find ways to make money. She sold eggs and got us babysitting jobs. I babysat for my neighbor, Polly Locklear, across the street. She had two girls, Claudia and Linda. Linda could sing like a bird. One night, while babysitting, Betty came over to me after returning home from a function. Polly came home about the time Minnie got off work. Betty and I had started home, had crossed the yard and had jumped the ditch when we heard a strange rustling noise in our driveway. We looked up and saw a big wide monster coming down the driveway. We both screamed at the top of our lungs “Help, help!” We turned around, running back to Polly’s house. I jumped the ditch, ran up on the porch, and was banging on the door when I looked back and saw Betty. She had not cleared the ditch, but had fallen in it and was crawling under the bushes. We then heard laughter coming from the “monster.” When we walked up to investigate, Minnie had her hand between her legs holding herself because she was laughing so hard, she was wetting her pants. On her back was the dry cleaning she had picked up, which stuck out on both sides of her. She had seen us coming and had decided to come meet us. When our hearts slowed down, we all got a laugh out of that scare.

CHAPTER 33

Minnie’s mother died of hardening of the arteries, so it was just Minnie, Betty and I. Then tragedy struck! Betty was a junior in high school when she received a positive report from her chest x-ray that she had tuberculosis. Minnie was devastated. Betty was the one to tell me. “Barbara, I have to go to the sanitarium. I have TB,” she said. I was awestruck. We had never been separated. And, I had lost a mother and a sister to TB, so I figured Betty would die, also. I still don’t crying, however. Betty’s school clothes were packed in a trunk and put in the attic. After she left, I would sneak in the attic, raise the truck lid and slip out a sweater or a skirt to wear to school. Minnie and I traveled to McCann, N.C., the same place where Ruby died, to see Betty every other weekend. Minnie met the doctors and stayed in touch with Betty’s progress. Minnie was still working two jobs, teaching and a ticket agent for the railroad. When it was time to go to McCann, she packed the washed and starched pajamas for Betty, and we would start out. I was 14 years old. It was a long drive, and sometimes Minnie would tell me to get behind the wheel just so she could rest a while. I never could understand how she could appear to be sleeping and yet would know when I went two miles over the limit. “Slow down!” she would say with eyes half opened.

Betty and Barbara at the same sanatorium that Ruby was when she died. Betty is sitting on the bed.

CHAPTER 34

After Betty went to the sanitarium, Minnie often took me with her to the train station. I loved going there. Sometimes, the whole Duke University basketball team would be sitting on the benches waiting for their train to take them to the town where they were to play. I would go down to see the porter who was taking off the luggage. One time, I saw a coffin. Now that was scary. I could read all the comic books I wanted from the newsstand. They were the only books I did read. One night, after Minnie got off work, she did something that truly made me feel spoiled. “Would you like something to eat?” she would ask. I said that I liked chicken potpie, so she would go to the Piggly-Wiggly store that stayed open all night and buy two potpies. We would take them home, cook them and eat them. This made me feel special, but I didn’t realize at that time how very special we would become to one another.

CHAPTER 35

Minnie had the open attic made into a small kitchen and living room, where she and I moved. To make extra money, she started renting out the downstairs to the Hoffman’s. Minnie could always find a way to make extra money. She kept one bedroom down stairs and had the window changed to a door that led out to the porch so we didn’t have to go into the main part of the house. Mr. Hoffman was a medical student. He and his wife had a little boy named Eric. Minnie found a very small piano, not a full keyboard, so I had my own instrument to practice. Up until this time, I had to go around to different homes in the neighborhood to practice. Mrs. Agnes Skillen was my piano teacher, and I loved her dearly. I made fast progress on the piano because I loved it so much. We had changed churches and had started attending the church Minnie went to, Bethany Methodist. Minnie would tell me to play for morning devotions, and I would struggle, but folks would sing along. Then the church bought a little electronic organ for the sanctuary, and a girl attending our church knew how to play it, so she said she would. However, when Sunday morning came, she just wouldn’t show up. That left me being the only one to play. I decided that if I had to play the organ, I would go up on Saturdays and practice in order to be more prepared. I would walk up to the church, about a quarter of a mile away, at 10:00 and play until 5:00. That would prepare me for Sunday. I soon became the organist. Every Saturday, I practiced seven to eight hours just to get through Sunday. My piano teacher, who was also an organist, was a tremendous help. We gradually bought bigger and better organs. I guess you would call me a selftaught organist.

CHAPTER 36

One summer day when Minnie was at work, I was washing some things out in the little kitchen sink in the apartment upstairs. The phone rang, so I went to answer it and got in a long conversation. After talking, I tried to what I was doing. “Oh, I . I was going to mow the yard.” So off I went to mow with that hand-pushing manual lawn mower. I was just singing and mowing away. It took a couple of hours to mow our big yard. When I started back in the house, I thought I heard it raining. “How can it be raining? I don’t see cloud one.” With no clouds in the sky, I thought this couldn’t be. So I followed the noise downstairs where we were renting. I went into the downstairs bedroom and cracked the door into the main part of the house. My heart skipped a beat, because it was raining in the Hoffman’s living room, which was right under our little kitchen. I flew upstairs and saw water running over the sink onto the floor into the attic and through the insulation. I ran back downstairs into the living room and saw the papered ceiling hanging down so that I could touch it. A camera sitting on a table by the window had water in it, and all the furniture was wet, including a soaked carpet. “Oh my God, Oh my God! What to do?” I panicked as I ran to the vacuum cleaner and started vacuuming up the water. I laid the vacuum hose down to pick up something, and when I picked it back up, the electricity going through the wet vacuum cleaner almost knocked me across the room. Now, I had a ruined room and a ruined vacuum cleaner, ruined camera, ruined furniture. I tried to jerk the rug out of the house. It was so heavy. I got it half way through the door. Then I just had to have help. I called Minnie on the phone, crying so hard; I couldn’t get out the words. “Mi… mi… mi… nie. I did something ter . . . ri… ble!”

“What did you do?” she yelled. “Oh, you’ll never for… give me,” I said. “Tell me, what did you do?” asked Minnie. When I got it out, she didn’t yell or scream. She hurried home, and took care of the situation. In fact, she was so relieved that I hadn’t burned the house down, which was her first thought, that she didn’t even reprimand me. I am sure it was a terrible expense to fix that mess. I avoided the Hoffman’s for days.

CHAPTER 37

In the meantime, Joyce had been transferred to another foster home, the Scoggins, right around the corner from where I lived. The Scoggins had many children. They lived in a large country house, with two bedrooms upstairs and a barn in the back. One day, I tied a box to the handlebars on my bike and took off for the Scoggin’s house. I told Joyce to sit very still in the box, as I pedaled down the dirt road on the way home. She always did what I said, and everything was fine until I got to my driveway. I took the turn pretty sharp. The box became dislodged slinging across the driveway and sliding with Joyce holding on for dear life. Joyce landed right on her rump sliding about three feet. It was so funny; she couldn’t feel the pain of the fall. We laughed and laughed. She looked forward to those excursions, and I feel guilty that I did not get her more often. Although, when she was in second grade, Minnie took her to live with us.

Betty, Minnie, Barbara, and Joyce taken at Easter in the front yard.

CHAPTER 38

Betty’s TB was following the same path as mama’s and Ruby’s. The hole in her lungs got bigger and bigger. Nothing seemed to work. The main cure at that time was to stick a needle into the stomach and pump air into it so that the patient’s lungs could relax, and efforts at breathing were minimal. Most of the patients looked pregnant. Betty said that when the patients heard that cart with the paraphernalia for this procedure coming down the hospital hall, they shook in their boots from fear of it. Minnie was determined that Betty would not die. She talked and talked to the doctors asking them what could be done more. One of her doctors said that the only thing he could suggest was experimental and did she want to gamble on that. Minnie didn’t hesitate. “Of course, use anything you have” she said. Minnie, herself, was an experiment with penicillin, which she took for an infection in her knee that saved her leg. So they started the drug, and immediately, Betty began to respond. It wasn’t long before she was on the cure. We all could breathe a sigh of relief. Betty had a second chance at life

CHAPTER 39

Betty ed, when we were at the Refuge as little girls, being taken to the Duke University campus by students at Christmas time. They would give us a party and would show us around the campus. We would go to their rooms and sit around and talk. She ed being so impressed with college life, that she vowed at that moment she would go to college one day, one way or another. When she came home from the sanitarium, she finished her senior year in high school and enrolled at Catawba College in Salisbury, N. C. I fully believe that Betty would have died, had we not been living with Minnie, who pushed the doctors to try a new drug.

CHAPTER 40

Minnie used many strategies of disciplining. When I did something at home that was unacceptable, she would tell me that I would have to go to the Wright Refuge after school where Miss Chandler, whom we came to call Grey, would put me to work, either typing for her or caring for kids. I didn’t like going there, because I wanted to be at home. One such time that I had to go to the Refuge was the time I loaned Minnie’s car to a friend.

Minnie and Grey purchased a 1950 Chevrolet. I had gotten my license, and Minnie would let me take Sue Woods, my best friend, home after spending the night with me. The thrill of driving a car equaled everything I had ever done— ride a bicycle, gamble at the fair, skate, all packaged into one. Sue only lived about two or three blocks away on a 2000-foot dirt road. I would drive down her street to the end, drive back to the other end, drive back to the other end, then to her house. I felt soo cool. I had the car one night when Sue had a date with a guy in service who did not have a car. His name was Bailes Hawthorne, and as we had just begun dating, it was a thrill for her to be asked out, and Bailes was quite a catch. She begged me to let her and her date use the car. I really didn’t feel right doing it, but she was my best friend, and I was thrilled for her, so I reluctantly told her it would be OK if she was sure she could get back before Minnie got off work at 1:00. She promised me that she would have the car back. I paced the house at home from 8:00 until 11:00. Surely she would be back by 11:30. What if something happened to the car and they couldn’t get back. What if they had a wreck! At 12:30, Sue and Bailes Hawthorne had not returned the car. I begin to panic. Sweat poured down my back, and my heart rate was as high as it could be. At 12:45, no Sue. At 1:00, no Sue. Then I heard Minnie’s ’38 Chevrolet coming down the road. Minnie turned in the driveway and came through the front door. I thought to myself, “Oh, God, what will I say? What will she do?” “WHERE’S MY CAR?” she bellowed.

I stood there, speechless. Right away, before I had a chance to explain, Sue and Bailes pulled in the driveway. They walked up the steps meeting Minnie on the porch. “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN WITH MY CAR?” she yelled. Bailes gulped and said very innocently, “Necking.” “Sue, your mama is going to hear about this!” Barbara, take Sue home and come right back.” When I got back, I knew where I was going—to the Refuge.

It seemed that Minnie would punish me for small things, but she didn’t for big things like when I ruined the downstairs apartment. Many times, she would let me pick Sue up on Sunday morning on the way to church. One Sunday morning, I picked Sue up and was headed for church down Duke Homestead Road. I had Joyce with me. At the end of Duke Homestead, it was difficult to see both ways, so I asked Sue if she could see any cars on her side. “No,’ was the answer. I pulled out into Guess Road, and WHAM! I ran right smack into a woman. Her car tilted on two wheels then settled back down. I pulled the car off the road in front of Roberts’ Grocery Store there on the corner across the street from the church. The woman was shaking, but OK. “This has never happened to me before!” I said “Nor I,” replied the woman. Sue and Joyce had disappeared as we were directly in front of the church. I didn’t know what to do, so I left the scene of the accident and hightailed it home. I ran in the bathroom crying and shut the door. “What’s wrong!” yelled Minnie. “I had a wreck!” I stammered through my tears. “Sue told me a car was not coming, and a car was coming!”

“WHERE!” she yelled. “In front of the church,” I cried. She took off, getting there before the policeman arrived. I don’t know what she told him, nor how she managed to get me out of it, but she never said another word to me about it. She just took care of it.

CHAPTER 41

Minnie’s love was unconditional. She trusted us explicitly and showed her trust over and over. She let me have the car any time I needed it. She allowed me to take a group of girls on a day trip to White Lake about 75 miles away. On the way back, we were riding behind a truck with children sitting on the tailgate, dangling their legs. I was very uncomfortable driving behind them, and at the first opportunity, I stepped on the gas and ed the truck. Sirens sounded, and I knew I had gone over the speed limit, so I immediately pulled over. I started trying to explain, but the cop was hearing none of it. He just said, “Yeh, yeh, yeh as he wrote me a ticket. I just couldn’t let Minnie know. So I thought to myself, “What can I do, what can I do.” I knew I could get the mail from the mailbox before Minnie, and so I decided when the ticket arrived, I would write a letter to the court in that county. I worked on that letter for a week. It was a tearjerker. I told of how we were poor, and that I was taken in by this poor schoolteacher who could barely feed us. I asked if I could pay the ticket in installments, because I would have to get a job after school and save up the money. I mailed the letter with the ticket and waited for a response. It finally came. I can’t believe to this day that the ticket was lowered, and I was able to send the money I owed. I never told Minnie about the ticket, but I have a suspicion that somehow, she knew. Minnie found out everything.

CHAPTER 42

I got a job, in my senior year, as a bus driver. I am sure Minnie had something to do with my getting the job. I was called out of class to drive an elementary school class to the symphony downtown. I had only driven my route in the country, and had never driven downtown. This was my first experience. The kids piled onto the bus with their teacher, and off we went. I did fine with the narrow streets and the lights. But when I came to the light on a very busy corner where I had to turn to get to the school, I realized that I could not turn because of the traffic in the opposing lane. Looking in my mirror, I could see heavy traffic behind me, beside me, and in front of me. I could also see that I was very close to a telephone pole. In fact, I knew that I was going to hit that pole. “Barbara, we’re going to hit that pole,” the teacher said. I told her that I couldn’t back all that traffic in order to make the turn, or the kids would miss the symphony, and that we had no choice. “Here we go!” I said. The pole practically lifted the bus, and set it straight as I turned sharp into the lane. The kids all screamed. I continued on to the school. Of course, there was a long scratch and a missing tail light on the bus. But we got to the symphony on time. On the return trip to our school, everyone was quiet, and we had a peaceful trip. I parked the bus and never heard from anyone about it.

CHAPTER 43

Minnie had a burning desire to help Ruby Gail. Ruby Gail was the daughter of my older sister, who died. Being raised by her father’s sister, Ruby Gail’s life was very simple as they were on Welfare and Cocky’s sister and her husband were very old. Ruby Gail took care of them with cooking and cleaning and generally doing what needed to be done with old folks. They moved very often, and would never leave a forwarding address. They were so afraid of loosing their “adopted” child and caretaker. Minnie finally found them, and, after much persuasion, they agreed to allow us to visit. Ruby Gail was pretty, like her mother, Ruby Lee, and from what her foster parents said, very talented in art, also like her mother. We did tell her that she had a half brother, Ronnie, and asked if she would like to meet him. She said she would, so we made arrangements. Ronnie, in the meantime had discovered that he had been adopted, and, after going through a nervous reaction to the news, had recovered and wanted to meet his half sister. We made those arrangements. Ronnie came to Durham, and we took him to Ruby Gail’s home. At first, they simply stared at each other; then they started giggling. What an awakening for the two of them. Ronnie had all money could buy, and Ruby Gail got by on as little money as possible. They partied as friends, and Ronnie vowed he would come again. However, after thinking things over, Ruby Gail’s pride stepped in or she was brainwashed by her foster parents, and she told us that she did not feel a need to see Ronnie any more. She felt he was well off and she was poor, so she did not want us nor Ronnie to her anymore. The last I heard, she had married an older man with no teeth. I couldn’t help but think what an opportunity she could have had if she had agreed to receive Minnie’s help and had agreed to accept the love her brother would have given her. “I will see her again,” Ronnie later said. “Her foster parents can’t live forever, and I will look her up when they die.” I don’t know if he ever did.

CHAPTER 44

When I was 15 years old, I met my future husband. His name was Dan Roberts, who was from a strong upstanding family in the neighborhood. Living close by, he would walk to my house on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. Of course, we went to church on Sunday evenings. His father was an alcoholic and his mother was a saint. She held the family together, and was inspirational to everyone in the community. Minnie was very free with her car. We used her car on dates during our entire courtship. When the Naval Reserve sent him to school in Atlanta for two weeks, I thought I would die. Minnie got me a train ticket and let me go down for the weekend. Now, that was trust. After I graduated from high school, I attended Croft’s Secretarial School. I had planned to go to Elon College, but that would have meant separation from my fiancé, so that idea was out of the question. We planned a wedding, having the reception at the Wright Refuge. I got a job at American Assurance Company, and we moved into a three-room apartment on the side of a neighbor’s house, Mr. & Mrs Whitaker, which was almost across the street from the church. It was typical of most apartments that newly weds lived in, as the day of high-rise apartments were unheard of in Durham. Dan was not an emotional person, very quiet and very private. We did the typical things. We eventually bought a small house, and then a slightly bigger house, had two children, visited family, and went to church. We talked about moving to the country and drove around every Sunday. “We can’t buy land, because we don’t have the money.” Dan said, almost angrily. I wouldn’t be defeated. So one day, I went down town to the bank to see what I could do about getting money to buy land. “My husband and I want to buy land and we have no money,” I said to the banker. He laughed at me but saw some humor in my determination (and guts).

“You know, there’s an old man named Mr. Pope who has an office down the street. He has some land in the country and is always helping young folks and may help you,” he said. I thanked him and went to Mr. Pope’s office. He was upstairs in a dark room with an old roll top desk. He had white hair and was very old. He welcomed me in his office. “We don’t have money, but we work and are very dependable. I understand you might have some land to sell,” I said to him. “I am always wanting to help young folks, he said. “Come on with me, and we will ride out to the country where I indeed do have land,” I called Dan, and we followed him out Guess Road. He could not stay on the narrow road. He kept driving on the road, then off. We were afraid he would have a wreck before we could ever get to see the land if he didn’t drive more carefully. He, at first, showed us land that was way off the road. When we did not seem interested, he showed us another piece of land. “What about this?” This land had a driveway already there because it had been harvested of pine trees, and this was a logging road. We rode down the logging road and saw a creek. “This is perfect!” we said. “Well, let’s just go back to the office and fill out the papers.” Come to find out, Mr. Pope’s son, who managed the office, was out of town and “hit the ceiling” when he found that his father had sold 17 acres right through the middle of a large strip of land which he had planned on developing. Oh well, his loss, our gain. Mr. Pope did a good deed.

CHAPTER 45

We surely could not afford to build a house, so we had a concrete builder pour a large concrete slab and put up three concrete block walls, which we one day planned on this being a garage. We then built a wood front with sliding glass doors and built a roof. Then the four of us moved in. We only had an electric pole with receptacles for three appliances: the refrigerator, the well, and one light. During the day, we would lean the mattresses against the outside walls and start building inside walls. We ate on the picnic table. It was very much like camping. It started raining one day when Dan decided he would take a shower in the rain. He got all soaped up, and immediately, the rain stopped. He had to slap a little water here and there to get most of the soap off. That was a laugh. When we finished, we had a cute apartment-like house with a shower in the back, two very small bedrooms, and a combination kitchen and living room. Several years later, we added a two-story addition, which made a split-level house. We ended up using the original part designed for the garage as the main house.

CHAPTER 46

Dan’s grandmother had small chickens, so we got some of those with a rooster or two, a cow, two pigs, and a goat. The cow was called “Buttercup.” He got out of his pen one day, and I frantically ran out to try and corral him back inside the pen. I didn’t know much about cows, so I grabbed a piece of chocolate cake I had just baked, and held it out to him saying, “Come on, Buttercup!” Of course, he paid no attention to me. The dogs were barking, I was screaming, and every now and then, Buttercup would moo. I have since learned that cows don’t eat chocolate cake, but somehow I got him back in the pen. Later when we killed the cow for beef, it was very difficult to eat him. I had become really attached to Buttercup. The goat was a different story. I don’t know where that goat had lived, but he was unlike any goat I had every seen. He didn’t drink water. He would put his penis in his mouth and urinate. He smelled awful. Every time I went outside, where he was tied up to a pole, he would hump the pole and rare back making a terrible noise. I was terrified of that goat, because I just knew he had eyes for me. Dan built a fence down by the creek so the goat could clean out the area. Jan and Kathy, our two daughters, had a lot of fun teasing that goat every time they went down to the creek. They would yell at him, and he would rare up and make a goat sound. “Baaaaa!” One day, Kathy and her friend, Mary Elizabeth Fleming, and Jan were playing in the woods. They were teasing the goat, and he had had enough. He reared up, jumped the fence and started after them. “Help! Mama!” they yelled. Kathy and Mary Elizabeth ran into the woods, while Jan ran up the hill to get me.

I grabbed a pipe and ran down the hill to the creek. They had run into the woods and had started climbing a tree. The goat was dipping his head to buck them, rearing up as he ran. “Baaaaaa!” the goat kept coming. I ran up behind him and hit him on the rump with the pipe. He then turned on me. I hit him, again, as hard as I could. It landed right on his horns and didn’t seem to phase him. He shook his head and reared up at me. “Baaaaaa” he bellowed. My shoes had come off, my glasses had flown off, and I was totally out of breath. Mary Elizabeth was up a tree, and Kathy had gone up a sappling so small that the tree was hanging down head high, in line with the goat. “Help!” we all three were yelling, while I kept hitting him with the pipe. Dan had just come home and leisurely walked down the hill. Seeing the situation, he walked up to the goat, grabbed him by the ear, and slowly walked him back in the fence while we watched with mouths hanging opened, breathing furiously. He was giggling but knew better than to laugh out loud. Dan decided the goat might calm down if he was castrated. So, one day, he tied one front leg to a pine tree, the other to another tree, and the hind legs to trees. He had a rubber band kind of contraption that he was going to try and put around his testicles. Of course, then they would fall off. Every time he grabbed the goat’s testicles, the goat would rare up and “Baaaaaa.” Those trees would shake and shake. Dan struggled for an hour. He was laughing so hard, it didn’t help the situation. He finally gave up and d in the paper: “Goat Free.” A man came out and commented as he was putting the goat in his truck, “That goat sure does stink!”

CHAPTER 47

Money in the school system had been allotted for Media Specialists to hire someone to help out with the cataloguing and general office work. The railroad had shut down, and Minnie became the Media Specialist at Braggtown. She wanted to hire me as her assistant. Needing to work, I decided to take the job. Then I ended up one of three specialists who worked all over the county in various media positions. I was working at Jordan Middle School, opening a new library. I had processed books and had learned a lot about the library, so was able to run it until the regular librarian was hired. The new librarian was stern and was very annoyed with me because the kids seemed to like me. Being young and fresh out of college, she felt threatened. One day, she announced to the kids, “I am the Media Specialist here. Mrs. Roberts is only an assistant. She does not have the skills or the education to run a library. She doesn’t have a degree and does only the secretarial work.” She said this in a very huffy tone to the students. “If you need anything, you come to me and not to Mrs. Roberts.” This really bothered me, because I felt I had value and had done nothing to deserve her “put-down” explanation. I wanted to say to her that I did not go to college because I chose not to, not because I was stupid. Then I went to Carrington Middle School to help out there. The Media Specialist at Carrington was a dear. She was a black lady, Mrs. Smith, and seemed very curious why I did not go to college. She could see that I knew a great deal about the library and handling responsibility. I told her I just did not think a college education was necessary for success and that I had two children. However, I had begun to think about it after my experience with the Media Specialist at Jordan, who had stepped on my pride. Mrs. Smith said that many people in her culture went on to higher education because of opportunities and willingness of extended families to help take care of their kids. “Having children should be no obstacle,” she said.

Call it an omen or a miracle, but I received in the mail an ment to attend evening college a week after our conversation. All that had transpired encouraged me to try. Nobody in the family encouraged me, because I don’t think they thought I could do it, and they knew it would be difficult. However, I never thought there was anything I couldn’t do. As we certainly did not have the money, I went to the University in Chapel Hill, and talked to the only person I knew that I had met in the school system when he worked in the Durham County Central Office. Dr. Yager was one of the s who ran the Department of Education at Chapel Hill. He told me that there was money available in Special Education and encouraged me to go to the State Department and inquire about a scholarship. This was good advice. I went to Raleigh to the State Department and asked for the Special Education Department. After telling them that I wanted to go to school and would be honored to teach special education but needed money; without hesitation, I was awarded a full scholarship. I figured this was a good deal that I teach special education for five years in exchange for a college education. So I enrolled in Evening College at UNC Chapel Hill, which led to two years commuting to Chapel Hill at night. I did fairly well in Evening College, then transferred to day school. This was much harder, and my grades were terrible. I had to maintain a ing grade in all my subjects to keep the scholarship. So with much effort and studying, I pulled my grades up to A’s and B’s. Although it was difficult for a Duke Graduate to attend a Tarheel graduation, Minnie and Lizzie Grey, both graduating from Duke, were delighted to attend my graduation at UNC. I got a job as a special education teacher at Bethesda School.

CHAPTER 48

I figured that teaching exceptional children for four years was a small price to pay for a full scholarship. However, after the first week, I was beginning to wonder. I had only eighteen children in my class. The special education classes at that time were very much ignored at Bethesda. There were two classes— primary and intermediate. I had the intermediate ages 10-15. My class was located in a white house behind the school, cut away from the mainstream. When there was a candy sale to make money, they were not included. In fact, we did not even get school announcements. I was appalled, so I went to the principal. He had reddish hair and a potbelly and had very fair complexion. He was very religious and a very logical person who believed in spanking. One of his punishments was to have the kids lean against the wall outside his office for long periods of time. He could be intimidating. “I want my kids included in the school functions,” I said to him. “Now, there’s a candy sale, and there is no reason that we can’t participate.” He was understanding and allowed them to participate. All but one student sold a lot of candy and made money for the school. One student ate his candy and did not bring in the money. So I made arrangements with the secretary, the principal, and the custodians to have him work jobs for an hour each day in the school— emptying the trash, washing the lunchroom tables, etc, and be paid 25 cents per day, until he had paid up the money. I gave the money to the custodian to give to the student, who in turn, gave the money to the secretary each day. She showed him how the money was paying off the price of the candy by making a list of 25 cents down a page totaling the price of the candy, and having him mark off 25 cents on the list. He was very proud when he got to the bottom of the list and had finished paying for the candy and wanted to continue working for the school. When the custodian was out sick, the principal called on Jim to help out. He paid him several dollars. This was good training for Jim. As most of my students were reading well and able to work math problems successfully, I pushed for them to be mainstreamed in the regular classrooms. The principal agreed, and I talked to the teachers, who also agreed to have the

students in their rooms. They were spread out into different classes for two hours per day. Then they would come to me for the rest of the day. This proved to be successful. Of course, eventually, mainstreaming became a way of teaching special students across the country. I then transferred to Hillandale School because it was closer to my home.

CHAPTER 49

I had quite an experience at Hillandale. Matty and Leon were two children in my class whose family had moved to Durham from the mountains. Matty and Leon’s father was a hard-working man who refused to live on Welfare. He made money by getting junk from various places and selling it at the junkyard. His wife was uneducated and allowed the father to handle all the discipline, so when he left for the day, the kids went wild. He made his own heater for the house out of an oil drum, fixed his old truck when it broke down, and disciplined his children the only way he knew, with a belt. That meant, each day, they would get a whipping. They basically had no social skills and the language was all but unintelligible. Matty was six years old, but functioning at three. One day, I came in the small classroom and saw that my books had been dumped in the floor. “Who did that,” I asked. “Dat daugdaum sumabich didut.” Matty answered. I could not understand what she said. My tape recorder had been on, as I was recording a student earlier. Later in the day, I listened to the recorder and heard clearly what she said. “That Goddamned Son of a Bitch did it.” Another day she said, “I haftathiet.” Again, I had no idea. After they went home, and I walked in my closet, I smelled what she had said. She had used my closet as a bathroom. She had said, “I have to shit.” It took quite some time to socialize Leon and Matty. I had another student who had no control over his bowels. He dropped feces down his leg all during the day. It was like goat feces and could be swept up with a broom. He smelled so bad that kids made fun of him on the bus on the way to school and on the way home. I asked for a meeting with his mother and was warned that she would come with a gun in her purse because she was very

protective of her children and did not trust teachers. Needless to say, I was nervous at our first meeting. I told her that I realized that Ron had a problem with bowel control, and I thought we could help him. She listened quietly. I said that I would talk to Ron and give him permission to use my closet to change his underwear the minute he realized he had used the bathroom on himself. I would keep plastic bags in my bottom desk drawer with clean underwear in it. He did not have to ask permission, but he was to go to the drawer, get the underwear, go to the closet, change, put his dirty underwear in the bag and put it back in my drawer. At the end of the day, I would put the bags in his book sack to take home. His mother was to replace it with clean underwear. She agreed to do this. So I talked to Ron. He was very receptive to this plan. The first day, he grinned at me and pointed to my desk. I shook my head, yes, and he went to the closet. The other children paid no attention to him. He was so thrilled to go home with clean underwear and to have no odor. He would look at me, grin from ear to ear, go to the desk and go through the procedure. Then I made a deal with him. “Ron, if you feel you have to go, just leave the room and go. Each time you can get to the bathroom before you use the bathroom in your underwear, I will give you a reward.” He tried this several times and eventually, he was able to do this. His mother was very good about sending clean underwear. Over time, she was sending clean underwear less and less. I felt I had made much progress with Ron’s hygiene. At the end of the school year, while cleaning out my closet, I smelled the worst odor. I found that instead of putting the toilet paper in the bag with his underwear, Ron had been throwing it in the back of my closet. Oh well! We can’t be perfect.

CHAPTER 50

After teaching exceptional children, I returned to Chapel Hill to get a Master’s Degree in Early Childhood and began teaching second grade. I must say, I didn’t have the same experiences I had while teaching Exceptional children, but those experiences helped me come up with different strategies in teaching regular kids, especially those having a difficult time getting started. One child had repeated first grade a couple of times because he could not learn to read. “My mama don’t read, my daddy don’t read, and I don’t read,” he said to me. Each day I read predictable books to him, played with words in puzzles and various word games, and when I knew that he truly knew all the words in one of the books, I asked him to read to me. “Oh no, I can’t read.” he said. “Well, let’s just try,” I said to him. He took the book, read the first page, the second page, and continued to read the entire book. “It’s easy!” “It’s easy!” he yelled. The next day, I heard mumbling while we were having story time after lunch. “Who is that mumbling?” I said in an irritated way. Looking around the room, I found this student under the table with a book, reading away. I was so happy he was reading, I just let him continue. I continued with my education, receiving a Masters in Supervision and Principal Certification.

CHAPTER 51

I made money in my first year teaching that we had not counted on, and we decided to pretend that we did not have that money, and used it to go on a threeweek camping trip across the United States to see my sister in Montana. We had a small Cox camper and loaded it with food, clothes and two children. We had a station wagon with a mattress in the back. We got up early, put the children in back of the station wagon (still asleep) and took turns driving every two hours. We would stop at 2:00, assess where we were and find a campsite. Not often, but once in a while, there was no campsite to be found, and we would just camp on the side of a secondary road. The camper was very comfortable. It had two beds on each side, a sink (with a water tank so we could pump water), an icebox, a table with benches on each side, and cabinet space around the interior. It was easy to pop up, and we prepared food daily. Jan and Kathy were in third and fourth grades. We thoroughly enjoyed the trip, seeing sites we had only read about—“Corn Palace, the Mormon Visitor’s Center in Utah, Yellowstone Park, “Old Faithful,” Glacier Park, The Golden Gate Bridge to the West in St. Louis. etc. In Yellowstone Park, I could hardly sleep at night because of the fear of bears. A bear had killed a young boy the weekend before. The young boy was trying to scare the bear away from his food. He should have given it to him and run. I looked at that canvas top and those screen windows and thought a bear would have no trouble tearing it down. I wanted to sleep over my children the whole night we were there.

The next year, being young and foolish, we decided to take another camping trip to Prince Edward Island. This time, we took Minnie and Lizzie Grey. They slept in the camper with Jan and Kathy, and Dan and I slept in the station wagon on the double mattress. This was also a grand trip. We went to Maine, dug for relics on the banks of Nova Scotia, saw the amazing tides in the Bay of Fundy that rise 30 feet, the reversing rivers in St. Johns, and of course, our destination, Prince Edward Island where Ann of Green Gables was written. Minnie loved that book

and chose this trip for that reason. The campsites on the east coast were not as nice as the camps out west. In Indiana, rest sites on the side of the road had outdoor johns as well as several campsites where we stayed. Out west, the campsites were amazing with wonderful bathrooms and showers. Again, we did the cooking outside the camper and rarely ate at a restaurant. We also found the water in the pools and lakes to be very very cold, which disappointed the girls as they loved to swim each day. We were in Quebec, Canada when we stopped at a campsite. Our routine was to send the girls to the pool to swim while we set up camp and started the evening meal. When we were ready to eat, I went to the pool to get the girls, and saw that they were just standing on the side staring up at the high diving board. When I looked up, I was flabbergasted. On the board was a well-endowed Frenchman in a bikini making a swan dive. I grabbed the girls by the arm and tugged them to the camper. They had never seen a person in such a skimpy suit. Nor had I— especially a man!

CHAPTER 52

This was not my only experience with camping. Betty and I took the kids to Myrtle Beach each year to camp for a week. She had only two children at that time, so we had together four kids. We took off in her long Cadillac with a large canvas tent in the trunk. When we left home, we would all sing… . “We’re on our way. Pack up your pack. And if we stay, we won’t be back. How can we go, we haven’t got a dime, But we’re going, and we’re gonna have a happy time.”

Betty and Barbara

When we got to the campsite, we started putting up the tent, which we were really not sure exactly how to do. There were so many poles. It was hot, the kids had gone to swim in the tributary, and it took hours. When we had the tent up, we noticed at the campsite beside us two guys sitting back in their lawn chairs laughing, enjoying our labors. We looked at the tent and saw why they were laughing. The poles on one side shot high in the air well past the tent. On the other side, the short poles barely went as high as the tent, but the tent was up and fairly secure, so we didn’t change a thing. Betty’s red hair was hanging down in her eyes, sweat was pouring down my face, and we had not yet blown up the rubber mattresses. That was the last straw. We were laughing so hard, we could hardly pucker to blow. We found out later that most people stopped at the gas station and used their air hose to blow up mattresses. But we blew them up ourselves. After a week of camping came the packing up time. It began to rain as we began packing. We pulled the tent down, stood under the table umbrella until the rain stopped, folded part of the tent, jumped back on the table, folded another part of the tent, jumped back on the table, and finally we had it folded in a big wet square. We crammed it in the back of the Cadillac. We finally got everything packed, ending up with the broom tied to the side of the car, looking like the Clampetts, said goodbye to our snickering camping neighbors, and left for home singing, “We’re our way. Pack up your pack… .” It was fun being young, energetic, and foolish.

CHAPTER 53

R. T. married a girl, Mona. Both were on welfare and didn’t have the “where with-all” to make a living, so when they started having children, things were very bad. I would go to their home now and again to try to help, but it seemed impossible. I found that they had an old washing machine in the middle of the house that was half filled with water, and they had been putting shitty diapers in it for weeks or months and didn’t know how to get rid of it. The odor was horrible. The weight of the machine was so heavy, no one could lift it. I just pushed it over, and with the cracks in the floor; much of the spoils of the diapers went through the cracks. Then we shot a hose on it for half an hour until most all the lose stuff had disappeared, but not the odor. Then we put the diapers in a black bag and dropped it in the trash. She had piles and piles of clothes given to her by Social Services that she seldom used. Management was not a skill that neither she nor R.T. possessed. The fourth child, who was a girl, was in a crib with feces around the mattress. After their fifth child, the welfare department decided to operate. I was glad to hear that they were finally moving in on the problem. But then I found they had operated on R.T. and not on Mona. Later, she had another baby. “You operated on the wrong one,” I said to the case worker “You mean you think she would sleep around?” she replied. “You mean you think she would not?” I answered. They finally did operate on Mona. I kept the six child, Tom, in order for her to go to the hospital for surgery. R.T. was furious, but we convinced him that his operation came loose. R.T. eventually left Mona, or Mona left R.T. She moved back with her folks, and R.T. was on his own. He delivered papers, washed dishes in restaurants, and did various jobs he could pick up. R.T. knew everybody in town as they knew him. He lived with Bob for a while and in various rooming houses. As an alcoholic, he managed to make enough to

buy beer. Bob had him tested at the State Department, and it was determined that R. T. was unable to make a living. He was assigned a caseworker with Social Services, from whom he received a small disability check monthly. R.T. worked often with Swartz Yards where daddy worked. He was working for them at a dumping site and was picking up rubbish when a huge tractor backed up, the big steel tracks knocking over R.T. and rolling over his leg and thigh. He screamed, and the driver jumped down from the tractor and ran to see what was happening. When he saw R.T. underneath, he jumped back on the tractor and drove it back over his leg. Had the soil not been soft from a previous rain, his leg would have been severed. He was rushed to Duke hospital where a steel rod was put in his leg where his bone once was. Swartz settled with the insurance company by arranging for R.T. to receive $100 each month for the rest of his life. He is now approaching 80 years old, which is remarkable considering he is a smoker and has had treatments for cancer of the throat. He is now living with our sister, Joyce, in Grass Valley, California.

CHAPTER 54

Betty married a man named Edward Chambers, whom she met in college, and had five children. She got a masters degree in Library Science and worked in the Guilford County School system. Ed was a A. Ed always said that, what little money Betty made teaching, with taxes and four children; it was costing him for her to work. Unfortunately, Edward contracted cancer in his late 40’s and died after a year of battling the disease. Betty had the fifth baby a few months before he died. Betty grieved for a very long time, but she has persevered and has ed her church and her children for her whole life. She is a very good teacher and teaches her Sunday School class regularly. She laughs and says that she can’t get through a lesson without tearing up at times, but she charges through. Betty has always been one to accept what has to be and making the best of it.

CHAPTER 55

Betty also has a sixth sense about things and reads people well. One time she sensed something amiss with Joyce, when she came from California for a visit. She was on her fourth husband, Henry Petersen. And sure enough, Joyce received a telephone call from him telling her not to come home but to stay in North Carolina because he had found someone new to take her place. She may have suspected something was going on when she left home, but she appeared to be shocked. Minnie immediately got in touch with a lawyer in the small town where Joyce lived, and found out that Peterson was not well liked as a sheriff, and the lawyer was more than willing to work with Minnie. Minnie gave Joyce the money to pay the lawyer, and I got her some new clothes. She went back well armed and ready to take him on. She ended up getting half of what he owned, and with what we gave her; she was able to get settled in a new place. Betty could see that something was not quite right all along.

CHAPTER 56

I received a call from the hospital that was shocking. The nurse said that they had Roy Cash there, who had ed out in the grocery store and was brought to the hospital. He gave them my phone number to call. Daddy had never been sick and surely would never go to the hospital. This man, at 86, was valued at work enough by his boss that they would pick him up at home and take him to Swartz Yard to work every day. Why had he ed out? I rushed to the hospital to see what had happened. I knew daddy’s knees were giving him a lot of trouble. I had taken him to the hospital a month earlier to make arrangements for a knee replacement. When I walked into the hospital room, I immediately focused on a place on his forehead that had been sutured. The doctor squatted down on the floor before daddy, who was sitting in a chair, and told him that he had a melanoma cancer and that he would live at most maybe 30 more days. It obviously had spread over his body. Daddy just stared in space, not saying a word. “I am sorry,” said the doctor, and he walked out. I helped daddy back in the bed. “What are you feeling?” I said to daddy. Daddy just kept staring. He was a man of very few words (unless drinking). I went to see him daily. About the third day daddy was shocked that I had returned. “You came back!” he exclaimed. He was surprised that I was there for the duration. Daddy had received so little in life, that he did not expect anything from anyone. “I have a little money,” he said. “I want you to give R.T. some, and Betty some, and Joyce, and you, and be sure to give Edith some. She has been good to me.” When daddy’s third wife died, Edith Thacker moved in with him and cleaned and cooked. I had no idea what kind of money he was talking about. Another night, I went into the hospital to see him and heard him screaming. The nurses were trying to bath him and were turning him. The stench was horrible. His cancer was so far advanced that it was very painful for him to be moved. I could hardly stand it, because I had never heard my daddy cry. I stuck my fingers in

my ears until they finished cleaning him. When I went into the room, he was clean and calm. After work another day, when I entered the hall, I could not see daddy. I was so scared because I felt he had died. When I got close to his bed, I saw he had slipped in the crack of the bed, his head hanging between the railing and the mattress. He was too weak to pull himself up. I threw my things down on the floor and slid him up on the pillow. “Now, that’s good,” he said. The night he died, I was there with R.T. and his boss, Max Swartz and Max’s wife. Tears were falling down their cheeks as they stood by daddy’s bed. After all, Daddy had been a part of their family their whole lives. After they left, daddy took his last breath. I went to daddy’s house to tell Edith that he was dead and told her what he told me about his money. She was an honest person and started pulling down the shades. Then she went to the closet and proceeded to take out bag after bag filled with hundred dollar bills. There was approximately $36,000 total. Daddy had been saving the majority of his paychecks for years, while living like a pauper. We made five piles, and divided the money such that each one of us received $7,200. If daddy only knew the help this was for all of us, especially Joyce and R.T. This gave her a little savings to draw from. I put R.T.’s money in the bank, and when he got down and needed money, which was quite often, I would take him to the pay window at the bank, take $100 out of my , and later on transfer the money from his . It lasted a long time. Daddy had a fine funeral. I dressed him in the only clothes he ever wore; a starched green work shirt with Swartz and Yards printed on the pocket and starched green pants. I put a pencil and pad in his shirt pocket, because he always kept one there. His boss did the eulogy, which was very appropriate and honest, telling of daddy’s weaknesses and his strengths. I was very pleased, as I was sad. Again, I did not shed a tear. However, a month later, when I was ing by the hospital where he was, I became so emotional that I had to pull the car off the road. I must have cried buckets for 20-30 minutes just thinking about daddy’s life and how little he expected out of life. I grieved for all the times I was embarrassed about his drinking. I regretted not taking time to visit more and to ask questions about his life and his family. What a loss.

CHAPTER 57

I was teaching Second Grade at Hillandale School when I received a telephone call “Your house is on fire!” came the voice over the phone. I was told that it was too far gone by the time the fire department got there. Jan and Kathy were in high school, and all the students heard the fire trucks racing by with sirens going. Little did Jan and Kathy know that it was their house. I didn’t leave immediately because I did not see the need. When school was out, I drove down the driveway and saw a group of people standing around watching the smoke and cinders. My husband’s mother, father, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, and Dan were awestruck at the loss. They all had tears in their eyes. I, too, was awestruck, but I did not cry, because it would do no good. Everything we had was gone: the clothes, the furniture, the food and the entire house. Folks were good to us. Donations of furniture, clothes, utensils, etc. came in and an offer of a warehouse for storage. We moved to an apartment that would accept animals as we had a dog, a cat, and a rooster. Of course, we had to leave the rooster in the woods around the burned house, but went out daily to feed it. Eventually, dogs killed him. Where some people were wonderful, others were not so. The week we left for the apartment, things stored in the tool house were stolen: two mini bikes, a swing, lawn mower, tools, and even wood that had been cut up for the winter. One of our daughters was a cheerleader, so the other cheerleaders in the school got busy and had a cheerleading skirt made for Kathy so that she was able to cheer at the next game. Emotionally, these were hard times. Although I did not cry at the scene, which I attribute to shock, later in the week, after foraging through the burned debris, we were driving back to the apartment at which time I collapsed into tears when I looked back at the dark charcoaled house that had been our home. There were some light moments. Being that it was October, we had cool mornings and nights. One morning, I dressed for school, and realizing I did not have socks or hose, I grabbed a pair of men’s socks that was in the pile of clothes we had received. The heel was about at my ankle. I was sitting at the table with a

reading group, when a student noticed my socks. “Mrs. Roberts, do you have on your daddy’s socks?” said one of the second grade students. I smiled and said I did and told her that she was very observant. We eventually built another house. During the building of the house, the construction workers kept smelling a terrible stench. Finally, they had to move their workbench because they discovered they were close to the freezer that was filled with rotten food. When we moved back to the house, we used the furnishings that had been donated. It was very old and outdated but I was glad to have something. We used this furniture for several years until each piece could be replaced. I could never repay the kindnesses of people such as those in the church, in the school, neighbors, CB operators, and folks just ing by. The new house was built beside the burned house because we planned to use the concrete parts of the old house. All of the wood part including the upstairs walls and roof were gone, but the concrete part, which was the garage, storage room in back, the concrete floors on the ground level, and the three cinder block walls of the den were still there. It took years to haul off the black debris, the freezer, and the piles of ashes. I think the worst part of the losses was the pictures. However, it is amazing how many pictures were salvageable. When the roof started falling in, the picture albums, surrounded with plastics, were underneath and air could not get to it, so many of the pictures survived the fire.

CHAPTER 58

Dan was a Linotype operator with Durham Morning Herald. With the oncoming of computers, the Linotype was becoming obsolete. Many of the operators had found other jobs, and Dan decided he would buy a very old established print shop—The Durham Printery. Again, we did not have the money for such a move, but he made the jump. The shop had done very well in its hay day, but all the equipment was old, the building was old, and Dan had to start from scratch replacing one machine after another. He could continue using the linotype, the hand press, and a larger press. He bought a small computer and started jobs on it. Keeping a good pressman was very difficult. Dan worked from early morning until late at night doing much of the work himself. He didn’t make much money those first years. After paying his employees, taxes, replacing equipment, very little was left. All the years he owned the Printery, times were difficult. If Dan had been paid for the hours and sweat he put in the Printery, he would be a rich man. I was progressing in my job, becoming an Elementary Specialist, then an Assistant Principal, a Parent Facilitator in the Title I Program, and finally a Principal. Dan and I drifted apart during these times. There was little communication, and we simply grew apart from one another.

CHAPTER 59

We did make one investment that was smart. We went to the beach one summer and stayed in a five-room condo. The woman renting to us worked for the builder of the condos. Most of the condos had been sold, except for the one for display, which we were in. The builder was very anxious to close out the entire package, so he told her to sell it. We made a ridiculous offer of $75,000. We got a call after coming home that this would be accepted. So we bought it. Fifteen years later, it sold for close to $300,000.

CHAPTER 60

As I began traveling with the schools, I began to separate from the home on Guess Road. There was no time to work in the garden, to help at the print shop, and to do the things Dan and I usually did together. Being a quiet reserved man, Dan was not one to say anything about my absences, so I assumed he didn’t care. Several times, I tried to talk about the distance between us, and he would simply walk away. For ten years, we hardly spoke to one another. Finally, staying together became too much to bear. We simply went our separate ways. I started seeing a marriage counselor, Dr. Paul Mickey, who worked with me for two years, talking about change and personalities. The end result was that we divorced.

CHAPTER 61

I met John Long at a club where I was taking shag lessons. He was very handsome, but was a “pretty boy” to my way of thinking. He had attended NC State in Raleigh, where he lived. He also had been married two times, so that did not set well with me. And, to top it off, I was eleven years older than he. These things did not seem to matter to him. When I met his mother, I understood. She was approaching 90 and was as agile as a 50 year old. John was just the opposite of Dan. He was a communicator. And he loved the church, which was very important to me. He, too, had two daughters, Chelsea and Kristen, whom he loved dearly as I loved mine. I learned that having gone through a similar situation as me with his first wife, he, in desperation, had an affair. And in order to make it right, he got married. The marriage was not a good one and ended after seven years. So, here we were, two people searching for love and finding it in each other. Dan, too, found someone right away whom he felt he could be happy with, and married within the year.

Divorce is a terrible thing to go through. Everyone gets hurt. No matter how old the children are, separating is difficult. So much history has past, so many relationships have been formed from the union, and so many friends and family are involved. Also, making new roads, new relationships, and new family is not always easy. I asked my therapist, Dr. Mickey that since he had written many books on ways to keep a marriage together, why did divorce seem to be the route I should take. He said that maybe he should have written a book on divorce.

CHAPTER 62

I look back over the past 70 years, and wonder how our family could have come through those times that were so tough. But were they? All of our lives have been touched. I can’t imagine not knowing Minnie and Lizzie Grey Chandler. Both of these women were my mothers as surely as my mother was, who died of tuberculosis in her 40’s when I was nine. In my 50’s, Lizzie Grey then in her 90’s, officially adopted Betty and I. Minnie died when she was 86 of Hepatitis, which she had contracted through tainted blood after a transfusion. Through Minnie, I connected with Bethany United Methodist Church. I can’t imagine life without this connection with the people of Bethany. Dan’s family, Jane and Mickey Roberts and Pauline and John Roberts and all the many cousins are my dearest friends. I can’t imagine not knowing them and spending time with them. Then, on the other hand, John’s family is very dear to me. We have had so many happy times and fulfilling moments, I can’t imagine life without this very special family. Every time we visited John’s mother and Louise, his sister, John’s mother would say, “Louise, I’m so glad John married Barbara,” Of course, this made me very happy to have her approval. I guess, when it comes down to it, love moves in many circles. If you are capable of loving, it can spread throughout your life with everyone. I am so glad that someone back there in that crazy mixed-up world taught me how to love.

CHAPTER 63

After all those years of being ashamed of my alcoholic father, in the past ten years, I have learned to appreciate him. I became interested in my family tree and started looking it up on “Ancestry.” Day after day, I looked up “Cash,” in Granville County. Finally one day, I saw Cash, Roy and Ila Dickerson with daughter Ruby who lived with Ella Cash. As I kept searching, I discovered that Ella Cash was married to Jacob Thomas Cash, Jr. Could this be my grandmother and grandfather? The more I searched, the more excited I became. I found that the Cash Cemetery was maintained in Granville County and that a reunion was held at the Cemetery twice a year in June and in October. One Sunday afternoon, I was talking to my husband’s cousin, who was visiting us, about my discoveries. She was an adventurous type, and suggested that we go to Granville County and find this cemetery. So we drove about ten miles down Hwy 85 to the Granville exit and stopped at a restaurant to eat. I asked to borrow their telephone book, and looked up Cash. There were oodles of Cashes. So, I called one of them, who happened to be the son of the man who keeps the cemetery up. He told me where it was, and Marilyn and I started out. We looked at several cemeteries, but saw no Cash’s on the tombstones. Then we saw a small dirt road that cut off to the left, which were the directions we were given, but did not think this could possibly be it. The road had ruts in it, and it had rained so a car would surely get stuck if driven down it. The woods were thick, and a little scary. But we decided we would take a look. I parked the car just off the main road, and we started out on foot. We waded over the water in the ruts on the road, and came to a fork. I took the right side and Marilyn went left. She no sooner had gone down through the clearing in the woods than she yelled, “I’ve found it!” I flew back down the road to where she was, and there was a clearing next to an old barn with well-marked gravesites, and flowers on the tombstones. I read on the tombstones—Jacob Thomas Cash, Jr. and Almedia Cash, Jacob Thomas Cash, Sr., Wesley Cash and on and on, I read the tombstones, and stood there in shock as I thought to myself, this person was my grandfather, who never

knew me. And this person was my great grandfather. It was the most exciting thing I had ever experienced. My daughter, Jan and I have been to three reunions. And I have met many cousins who didn’t know we existed. In fact, they had a Cash Family book published that does not have our lineage in it. They had no idea that Jacob Cash had remarried at 50 years old, after his wife died, to Ella Walker, who was only 25 years old, and that they had a second family of three children, one being my father. In addition, they had an unmarked grave, and did not have a clue who was in it. I was able to tell them that the unmarked grave was my father’s brother, Alvis, who was murdered when daddy was 26, and was witnessed by my father. I found the death certificate at the courthouse, as well as the marriage license of Jacob Cash, Jr. to Ella and provided them with this information. We plan to go each year to the reunion and reunite with our cousins. I just wish daddy were alive to talk with me about his family.

As to the Calfee’s family, who were also at Wrights Refuge, Robert (or Bob) became the Dean of the School of Education in Riverside, California and is well known in education. For a long time, he was the editor of a journal on learning disabilities and has written many books. He is also an expert in the effects of testing young children. Every year he is invited to speak at national conventions, in particular The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and is called quite often as a witness in cases all over the states. We have stayed in touch over the years. James Lee (who became Jim) married Karen and called often to check in and has actually visited me in North Carolina. He has since died, a great loss. Bob has also visited. All four of the family came to visit Grey, and we got reacquainted. The Refuge and Lizzie Grey were very important in their lives as it was in our lives—part of history one might say. I have stayed in touch with the Calfee’s for many years. They call me their “sister,”—an honor. When you think of kids born today in poverty, it must be ed that with a little help from people, they could succeed and could come out of their condition in spite of all the adversities. Just a little bit of love can change the world.

Picture of the Cash cemetery and reunion. (Barbara is second from the right. Her daughter, Jan is beside her.)

CASH CHRONOLOGY

The history of the Cash family can be traced back to the first one to come here from Ireland, William Cash born in 1633, better known as “The Immigrant.” William had 8 children, his seventh being Joseph Cash. Joseph married Susannah Mason and later Elizabeth Bryant. They had 12 children, their fourth child being Peter, who was born in Virginia and served three months tour of duty in the Revolutionary War. Peter had seven children; his second child named Peter Cash, Jr. was born in 1782. Peter, Jr.’s wife, Lucretia Hoffman, had eight children. Her fourth child was Jacob Thomas Cash, born in 1818. Jacob married Mary Francis Hailey and had nine children, their sixth being Jacob Thomas Cash, Jr., who was born in 1847. Jacob Thomas Cash, Jr. married Almedia Davis and had three children. When she died, he married Ella Walker. They had three children: Roy Thomas Cash, Alvis Cash, and Ethel Dora Cash.

Roy Thomas Cash, Sr.

Betty, Barbara, Ruby Joyce, and R.T. Cash Standing in front of the log cabin on Geer Street.

Garrett & Zack, Barbara’s youngest daughter, Kathy Mincey’s sons.

Derek, Jeff, and Danny, Barbara’s oldest daughter, Jan Stutts’ sons

Mike, Jan’s husband, Jeff, Jan’s son, and Jan

Zack Mincey, Kathy’s oldest son, and Kathy.

John and Barbara Long

Barbara, Joyce, R.T. and Betty