Memories Of My Past

Early Days as i can Remember

As i was growing up i picked up on things that happened when i was born . I was born June 1950 . My Mother went into labor at a hospital in Newton NC. Dad used to tell me when they brought me home ( dad carried me out ) . Dad said there was this yellow stuff running down his arm . You can imagine what that was . I had yellow jonyers and i got sick with Pneumonia for 14days . I weighted 8 pounds . Dad said when he was bring us home that he went around a sharp curve near what is known today as Murray's Mill that mom fell out of our car and rolled down a hill . If he hadn't been holding me i probably would have went with her. Dad managed to mom back in car and was crying so bad that he took her down to my grandma's to cry it out .

A couple years later when i could remember things on my own . Mom and dad had another child named Richard Born July 1953 . When they brought him home mom really watched the door and held on .

I can remember living in my grand parents basement . One day mom was going down steps and saw a long black snake laying in the floor . She fainted and dad run and got the hoe . That ended us living in a basement .

We moved into the town of Catawba in a flat house in 1953 . We lived on the left side and an elderly woman lived in other side . I can remember eating out of mom's slop bucket . She would smack me good when she could catch me doing that . One day my uncle James give me a hammer and i was outside one day hammering any thing i could to beat on . That elderly lady came out and took my hammer away and i never did get it back .

We lived beside the train tracts and we would run out and the conductors would throw large pieces of peppermint candy . One day one motioned me to come down and he give a big hand full of Penney's . Mom saw that and whooped me till i got to the house .

The town of Catawba is where i got my first haircut .

Sometime in 1955 we move to Irdell county across the river from Catawba to a place called the brickyard where dad got a job making 90cents an hour . That is when i started to school . Dad learned me how to set out rabbit traps and what to put in them . If we didn't have any thing for the traps we would just pee on them . I would go check the traps before school and dad would go get them critters . some times you would look in them and you would have a opossum grinning at you . Never stick your hand in a trap with a opossums in one they will tear your hand up . We eat a lot of rabbits back in those days . Dad loved them opossums . But you sure didn't want to be in house when they were cooking . Mom would boil them opossums for a long time to boil the grease out but when she baked them after boiling them you still had a lot of grease . Sure did stink during the hold process . He also liked coon .

I can remember one time that got me in trouble . Dad told me to cut tv off and let it cool down . I being to smart that i did a dumb thing . I went to the ice box and go two trays of ice you know i melted all that ice on top of that tv . It sure cooled it down . Dad came home from work and was watching tv the something happened , smoke cam up from back of tv and it stopped working . Told dad what i had done . after a much need whooping dad took it to be repaired and repairman said it was a wonder i hadn't got electrocuted . Dad ended up getting another one . I never did that again.

Another time a man sent one of his kids down and wanted to know if dad wanted a squirrels a rooster and a rabbit . Dad said yes . They brought them critters down and dad looked in to that bag and they had frozen them with fur and feathers with out even cleaning . That ended accepting any thing else from them people .

One day i some how chopped my brother in the head with a steel hoe . Mom got bleeding stop but later that night blood started gushing out . Dad had to take him and wake a doc up . It took 17 stitches to sew him up .

A couple months later my brother got real sick . He went in to convulsions and dad had to rush him to hospital . A cop got behind him and tried to stop him but dad kept going own . He drove into hospital emergency room entrance . When that patrolman saw my brother with his eyes rolled back into his head he took him out of mom's arms and carried him in . They said he had quit breathing but was able to revive him . He laid in a coma for over 30 days . Dad had to mortgage everything we had to pay bills and provide a nurse to watch my brother while he worked . He finally woke up and got to come home . They said he had gotten Encephalitis's . They said it would set him back around 3 years that would affect him in later years learning things .

About a month later he was out side peeing and i noticed him peeing red . I told mom and they took him back to doctor and he spent 6 weeks in hospital getting it cleared up . They said at hospital the he had bright disease .

In early 1959 my dad was at work and he had to change cars that had brick stacked on them between kills to the burning kill to put the color in as brick is today . While he was changing one to another a couple brick fell on top of his foot . It didn't break the skin so he kept on working . A couple days later his foot started hurting . He went to doctor and doc said it was rheumatism . It kept getting worst and he went to another doc and that doc put his leg and ankle in a cast . He got home and i can remember crawling on my knees lifting his leg so he could move around . It hurt him so much . He finally had to go to hospital and when they cut that cast off he had developed blood poison in his right leg . His ankle had swollen up and was full of pus . Doctors thought they might have to take his leg off . when the got him on the operating table the doc stuck a scalpel in his ankle and the force that was there shot that puss out on it's own . They didn't have to do anything else but the pus in there had eaten up the bone in his ankle and he ended up wearing a steel brace the rest of his life .

We had to live on 36 dollars a week for 36 weeks and when that run out we had to move .
Back then 36 dollars went a long way . I can remember gas being 12 cents a gallon, Soft drink 12 ounces 5 cent,5 pound hamburger 99cents.

In September 1959 we moved to Catawba county near grandparents house . Grandpa's had given mom and dad a piece of land and bought a small mobile home that was 8 foot wide and around 37 feet long . We lived in that little trailer till April 1970 . My brother and i took out income tax check refunds and paid down on a 12x60 foot trailer . That was the first time we ever had a bathroom inside .

I wanted to make some money on the side and grand paw said he had a job for me. He took me to the barn and said he would pay me to clean the stable . Polly the cow was having trouble getting into her resting place . I got down there at eight o'clock and begin to clean You had to use a pitchfork on that stuff . It took me 3 days to clean that stable . It had over 3 feet of manure in it . When i got done grandpa give me 50 cent . I learned not to ask anymore after that .

We used to go to cotton fields at daybreak . grandma would fix us a dinner and we didn't come home till the cotton was hoed .Did the same when it came time to pick that cotton . It took a long time to harvest all that cotton . Them roe's were as long as you could see . We or at least i would pick all day and go to smoke house and weigh our sacks but i would only have 3 pounds in my sack where others would have 60 or 70 pounds in their's. Grandpa would take the bounty to cotton gin on a wagon fixed so he could pull it with his truck to sell it . That was the way paw made money to get threw the cold winters we had back then. After the cotton went away around here . Grandpa would work in the saw mill. They had one saw mill that they transported to the site and set up . They would use horses and i mean big horses to pull the trees they cut down to drag to the saw for grandpa to saw into boards .Later on the owner bought a tractor to replace them horses . Grandpa worked in the saw mill till he retired .

I remember this wonderful black man named Babe that was 75 years old . He was friendly as he could be . We would go and sit on his porch and he would tell us some of the most wonderful stories . He sure knew how to grow water melons .

We would come home on our school buses but instead of going to other school to pick up kids . We talked the bus driver to let us off close to our home . This one day i took a very large sack to school . I wanted me one of them water melons . We jumped off that bus (driver wouldn't stop but would slow down) I hit the ground and went end over end before i came to a rest . I didn't try that again . when we got to that patch of very large melons . They were hard to pick one they were so large . I got one and it was all i could do to get it into my sack. I drug it to the edge of our woods and went home to get my little red wagon . I finally got it home and put it on bathroom scales . It weighed over 85 pound . Even thou it was stolen it was the best water melon we had ever tasted . Later own we went back but because of our actions , Babe was so mad at us kids that he went to that field and stomped every one of those melons to keep us from getting them .

Another farmer around there had another way of keeping kid's out of his patch . He would take a needle and squirt croton oil in them water melons and if you picked the wrong one . Well let's say you didn't have time to make it to the bathroom or even the woods .

Later on a few years us kids would start trying to smoke . We would go to the edges of a field and there was this stuff that growed in stalks and the leaves were silver in color when they started to dry . We would strip them leaves off and when we got enough we would roll a joint up in brown paper and try and smoke it . This stuff was called rabbit tobacco . If you puffed to hard really fast it would engulf in to a big ball of fire . You had to watch you hair if you wanted to keep any. Later on we would walk to a local store and buy cig's . I would buy a menthol type . and a brand called half and half . I made a mistake one day and took my mom the mail forgetting i had them in my shirt pocket . I got up to her and she saw them cig's and took them from me . I never heard anything else from her or dad but one Friday evening Dad come out of the Grocery store called Winndixie . ( none around here anymore) Dad handed me a pack of Winston's and yo know i didn't want to smoke anymore after that .

I used to live in a duplex apartment back in early eighty's . I was home one day and sitting in my easy chair . I happen to look up and where the phone was on the wall i noticed a hole developing next to it . All a sudden this head appeared . It was a rat . I went over and stuffed a wash rag in that hole . A little later that dang rat pulled it into that hole . I went into the bedroom and got my rifle . Sat down in easy chair and waited . I shot at that rat several times , never did hit it but there was several more hole's in that wall . I went to store and got several boxes of rat poison . Throwed some down them holes and in utility room . A couple days later the yard was full of dead rats . Still had them holes but got rid of them critters .

Another time i used to shoot flies off screen door of our mobile home but that another story .

Back before my mother died , i heard her scream and i ran to where she was . She was putting some trash in trash can and something moved . I looked in it and there was a baby opossum in the trash . Later that day after i deposed of the critter we saw something run across the floor . It turned out to be another one . In all there were five . That was in the spring . In the fall we found 6 more . Some ran out from under my bed . I did away with four and i took two to work to show i wasn't lieing about them opossum's . I guess that is why our dog was so upset when she got under our mobile home . Found out they were coming in around the pipes that was under the sink .

Back in 1967 not long after I got my Lic to drive , a couple friends of mine were crusin around and stopped at a store and i bought 20 , 5 cent packs of peanuts . About an hour later my belly started hurting and I needed a bathroom . No bathroom around at 3 in the morning . Stopped at a closed gas station and there was a phone booth . I had to go so I used the phone booth . Later that day we drove buy that station and the phone company was there with a steam jenny cleaning that booth Not to long after that happened they took that phone booth out all together . That is about the worst thing I ever did .

Back in the old days i would go down to my Grandma's and sit in the yard with my grandparents , grandpa would light up a King Edward Cigar . and cut a piece of tobacco off his plug . Every once in a while he would fart . We got to having contest to see who could fart the best . Well let me tell you grandma knew how to fart with the best of us . It was so funny sitting in that yard or porch with us farting and listening to the whoop-per-whill's sing back off in the woods . Some times you could hear a screech owl holler out . That sound , sounded like a woman scream .
I miss my grandparents so much . The memories of those days were precious .

My dad died in 1983 my mom in 1990 . Since i have been living alone Makes me miss my parents so bad it tears me up inside . It is hard to cope some times but in time i get alright . I am not ashamed to admit i cry . Crying to me helps relieve the loneliness and stress of being a lone now .

My first car was a 1954 ford that had a broke rear spring . It sure would spin . Traded it for a 1957 Chevy 4door . Was coming home from school one day and was going to show how the four barrel kick in . Well it blew up . That ended that car . Next car 1959 Chevy . Had a rotten floor board because i got in back one day and foot went clean to the ground . Next car 1960 Chevy . Then a 1963 Chevy that when going down road at night lights would go out . Just had to pray you got stopped before you hit a ditch . Next was a 1964 Chevelle , turned out to be best car i owned . Next 1967 Pontiac fire bird . Fastest car i owned . Next 1968 chevelle . Next 1969 chevelle . Rest 1972 Chevy truck, 1969 nova , 1983 Chevy truck , 1996 Chevy truck that i drive today . That is my history of vehicle's i have owned .

What i have written Is true . I love to write and i hope you have enjoyed what i have put forth . Mayne you shed a tear , got a chuckle or rolling in the floor about now . Thank you for the time it took out of your life to read and maybe learn something.

Written by
Wayne