I’m Grateful

There are so many things for which I’m grateful today.  I have paused this week to consider my good fortune – not luck, because there’s no such thing as luck for the Christian.  It’s all a part of God’s plan.

I am thankful that I have a God who’s always with me.  I don’t have to search for Him.  I don’t have to find a place to seek Him.  He’s here beside me always, inside me and directing my way. 

I’m grateful for a good man who’s been beside me for 54 years.  I’ve never had to worry about being mistreated.  I’ve never had to be concerned about his abusing alcohol or drugs.  He’s always been here.  He’s a hard worker – perhaps to a fault, but there’s not a lazy bone in his body.  He’s always been good to our children- and to those who have become a part of our life, sometimes providing for them too.   He has given us all he had, including a comfortable place to live.  I give thanks every day for a warm house in winter – and a cool one in the summer. “Thank you, Lord” is a phrase I always pray when I walk in the door on a cold winter night.

I’m grateful that I had good parents who loved me, provided for us, and taught me about the important things in life:  loving Christ, remaining faithful to my beliefs, loyal to those God has entrusted to me, giving to others.   God has allowed me to have a mother with me for almost 99 years.  She prays daily that the Lord will just take her home to be with Daddy.  I tell her that it just isn’t His plan, and she’ll have to hang around with me until He’s ready.

My children are the joy of my life: those to whom I gave birth, and those who came to me by chance.  I’m so glad I was allowed to have them in my life.  How blessed I am to have had the opportunity to teach them, love them, and learn from them.

I’m grateful for others who have entered my life and contributed to my happiness:  in-laws, mates of my children, grandchildren.  What a blessing to have around us those who love us.

My years as a teacher will forever remain a part of my life for which I am grateful. I hope that those whose pathway I crossed caught a glimpse of my caring for them, of my love for children, and for my love for learning.  How grateful I am for the ability to continue to learn, even today!

I’m not sure what kind of legacy I will leave, and it really doesn’t matter, as long as I have accomplished what the Lord wants me to do.  I am grateful for the life He has given me, and for the privilege I have had to have those around me who have made my life what it is.      

Life on the Edge of the Mill Hill

Life on the edge of the mill hill was a secure one for me.  My mother and daddy worked in Alice Mill for all of my young life.  Since my brother and I were not allowed to stay by ourselves, we were taken to my grandparents early every morning.  My grandmother fed us breakfast and sent us on our way to school. We always knew someone was close if we needed them.

When I was in the 6^th grade, I decided I was too old to eat breakfast.  I had heard some of my friends say that they didn’t eat  breakfast; they just got up, got dressed, and came to school.  Now that didn’t get it with my grandmother – but she didn’t say a word.  Instead, the next morning, she had prepared hot biscuits (hers were great!) with real butter, homemade apple butter, and a milkshake.  Now Ma knew there was no way under God’s high heaven I would refuse such a feast, because those were my favorite breakfast foods in the whole world!  So I ate! 

It was not until I returned from Winthrop one fall that I reminded my grandmother of that occasion. In her own quiet way, she said,” Oh, yeah, I never did tell you – I used to put an egg in that milk shake and made  eggnog.”   She knew not to tell me at the time.  I never would have touched the stuff!  It was really a pretty good breakfast though:  bread, milk, egg, and even a little bit of fruit.  A smart lady she was!  I always ate breakfast after that –I still do!

My brother and I walked to school every day.  It was just up the hill from my grandparent’s house on Park Street.  At the top of the hill, we had our first encounter with what folks today call “bullies”.  His house was the last house on the right before we got to the school.  His name was Jack.  We approached his house in fear, because he threw rocks at us.  He never left for school until he had his morning “fix” by persecuting us.  By the time we got to the top of the hill, several others had joined us.  One morning, somebody suggested that we pick up the rocks and throw them back at him!  We did, and it only took a few days for him to stop antagonizing us. We never did become his friend, but we tolerated him!

After school, we walked down the hill and my grandmother always had snacks ready for us (and for our friends too, if they followed us home). My brother and I were always included in everything that our grandparents did:  garden work, raking leaves, picking grapes or cherries, planting potato plants – anything they did, we were expected to do.

Daddy and Mother (one or both of them) usually got off work every day around 3 P.M., and they would come by our grandparents’ house to get us and take us home.  We actually thought of both places as “home” and had free reign to go from one place to the other as long as somebody knew where we were.  To leave without giving notice however, was a definite no-no!  Daddy usually rested for about an hour when he got off work.  I remember once when I decided that I could go to my cousin’s house and get back before he got up.  Well, I just forgot all about time!  Daddy started calling around to see if he could find me, called my cousin’s house, and told her mother to just let me stay until I got ready to come home.  It was dark-thirty when I thought about going home. That’s the only time in my life that Daddy spanked me.  I never did it again 

I remember one day, my brother was helping Pa feed the pigs, and his friend Murray was with them.  Murray had a biscuit in his hand that he had brought from home and no longer wanted to eat.  So when they fed the pigs, he threw the bread into the feed trough.  The pigs had had enough and didn’t eat it.  Chuck (my brother) said, ”Look, Murray, even the pigs won’t eat your Mama’s cooking!”  Pa really got Chuck for that!

Some folks thought that living on the “mill hill” was to be frowned upon. We never felt that way.  We didn’t live in the mill village itself, but the mill provided our livelihood. And we never felt threatened by anything.  Our doors were left unlocked.  We were able to walk to school without being afraid.  We played on the sidewalk after dark.  I walked four blocks to take piano lessons by myself, when I was in elementary school. And if anyone threw rocks at us, we just threw them back! 

Daddy

Don Remembers

                “My Daddy was a good man.  I still remember him kneeling beside his bed every night and praying.  He prayed for all of us; and I remember that he specifically always prayed for the troops during World War II.”  He didn’t live a long life.  He died of pneumonia at the age of 50.  Penicillin was in the research stages and some was flown in to treat him, but it arrived too late.  We were young:  I was 10, Richard was 11, Martha (Sister) was 12, and Edwin was 16. The loss of Daddy was life-changing.

                When the family was very young, we lived in town, in Chester, S.C.  But when I was six years old, Daddy and Mama bought a farm out on the Great Falls Highway, and we started farming. We loved being out in the country.  Daddy knew all about farming, because he was brought up on a farm in Williston, S.C.  He had a job as salesman for Hormel Meat Packing Company and he traveled from store to store selling products wholesale.  But he loved farming.  Every afternoon when he got off work, and on Saturday, he and all of the children would work in the fields.  We grew and canned the extra food which we ate during the winter months.  We also kept chickens, and hens for eggs; we milked cows; and pigs were grown for pork. But the bulk of the work was in the fields during growing season.  In addition to providing food for the family, we also had to grow enough hay and grain for the animals.  Daddy was a hard worker, and he expected the same from all of us. 

We used horse-drawn farming equipment, and always kept horses and mules for the farm work.  Caring for the horses and mules was a job itself.  We had a horse named Beauty who had a tendency to run away, and she could really run!  One day, Daddy was plowing with her and came in for lunch, bragging about the fact that Beauty had done so well that morning.  He went back to work after lunch to continue his plowing.  Beauty obviously didn’t want to work!    Suddenly, she broke loose and started running.  The ropes from the harness were wrapped around Daddy’s wrists and the horse started dragging him and the plow.  She finally hit a stump and his hands jarred loose.  She kept going though, and ran through the chicken fences, tearing them down, ran through the fence at the pig pens, ran into the garage and knocked it off its foundation, and when we finally caught up with her, she was calmly standing in her stall chewing on hay.  It took us a couple of days to repair the damage she did.

                Daddy liked to go back to Williston to visit his brothers and sisters. I particularly liked to visit Uncle Dess and his family.  He had lots of children and we all enjoyed being together.  He and his family were asparagus farmers, and we were usually there when they had big flat bed wagons loaded down with asparagus.  We usually took some home, along with a great big watermelon.  His sister, Aunt Eloise, had never married, and she was an elementary teacher in Williston.  For years, when I would go to meetings, people would ask me if I knew Miss Eloise.  “She taught me,” many would say.   All of Daddy’s brothers and sisters lived around Williston.  Uncle Dess, Will, Dewitt, and Land were all farmers.  Aunt Eloise and Ilma were his sisters.

                Uncle Will was Daddy’s oldest brother and often would be in charge of his younger brothers.  Daddy told the story about Will and his brothers plowing a field with a mule in the springtime.  The mule lay down and wouldn’t move.  Uncle Will told his brothers to build a brush fire around the mule and it would get up and move.  It didn’t, and they lost a mule!!

                Cooking was one of Daddy’s favorite things to do, but he didn’t like the electric stove.  We had a big wood stove that he liked to use.  He believed that the food was just better if he fired up the wood stove and used it when he cooked.  He always cooked breakfast for the family.  He would stir crumbled sausage into a big pot of grits, or cook grits, country ham, and red-eye gravy.  And everything was always cooked just right.

 Daddy followed the troops in World War II religiously.  He daily pinpointed Patton’s trek through Europe, marking the progress on a wall map.  During this time, our farm and the neighboring farm was used for maneuvers.  They practiced full-blown war including the use of howitzers and all kinds of artillery.  They dug foxholes all over the fields and woods.  The Crain’s farm was called the red army.  Our farm was across the highway, and it was the blue army. We grew lots of big watermelons; the red army had none.  So Richard and I decided we would take watermelons to the red team.  We knew we would be rewarded with candy bars (which were practically impossible to buy during the war) if we made it through the enemy lines.  We each got a watermelon and started crawling under kudzu vines to try to get to the red army. We didn’t make it.  We were captured by the enemy and kept hostage. Daddy had to come and negotiate with them to get us out of enemy hands.

I also remember that on one occasion, the truck containing the kitchen for the troops was sent to another destination, leaving one company behind without any way to prepare food; so Daddy and Mr. Crain, his good friend, cooked breakfast for 120 of the men.  After church every Sunday, Daddy and Mama always took some of the soldiers home for dinner too.  Mama always had fried chicken and all of the trimmings for them. They loved it! 

One day Daddy was working at clearing some bottom land, and he got too hot.  That seemed to be the beginning of his last illness.  Mama was in Florida to attend her daddy’s funeral, and Aunt Eloise came to stay with us.  Daddy couldn’t seem to recover from working and getting so hot.  Then, he and I got the flu.  Both of us had a high fever, and Daddy decided to get out of bed to try to help around the house.  He became much sicker the next day, was taken to Charlotte to the hospital, and the doctors discovered he had double pneumonia.  He died the next day.  I didn’t go to the funeral.  Betty, Edwin’s girlfriend (later his wife) stayed with me. I was 10 years old.

               

                 

Granddaddy’s Florida Farm

Don Remembers

                Mama’s family lived in Florida, and we didn’t get to see them very often.  When we did go, it was quite a trip. We left early in the morning and traveled all day.  We passed the time away by counting the mules and horses and cows along the way.  If we encountered a gray horse or mule, we could double the number that we had counted.  Richard and I counted one side of the road and Edwin and Sister counted the opposite side of the road.  We looked forward to the trip simply for that game alone.

                Granddaddy lived in Sanford, Florida, and he was quite innovative for his day.  He heated his house with solar energy before it was even an idea in the mind of others.  He grew a variety of produce on his farm:  celery, melons, and papayas as well as other vegetables.  Mama would receive big barrels from Granddaddy with papayas and watermelons carefully packed in excelsior to prevent their being bruised or broken.  Mama loved them, and he frequently surprised her with them.  He also had turkey houses, where weasels often would invade the premises and kill his turkeys; he had to remain diligent. He also had to deal with rattlesnakes, particularly in the terra cotta irrigation pipes where the turn-off valves were located.  At night, they slithered into the pipes, and I remember that he used to tell us about popping their heads off. 

One of his major projects was the breeding and growing of gladiolas.  He had acres and acres of them.  A particularly beautiful one that stands out in my mind was big and white with a red throat.  The flowers were packaged and shipped all over the country.

                Granddaddy was married to his second wife.  We called her Aunt Emily, because that was the name by which we knew her.  His first wife died young, and we never knew her.  Aunt Emily was her sister, and the two of them were married after she died.  We just always thought of her as our grandmother.

                When we were in Florida, Granddaddy would always take us fishing in the St. Johns River, and we never went without catching lots of fish.  It was always one of the highlights of our trip.  He always took us to see Uncle Bob Garrison who was Mama’s brother.  He farmed hundreds of acres in the Sarasota area, and was so busy he seldom took a lot of time with us, but we liked going to see him. Uncle Bob offered me a job one time, but we were already building a house and involved in our own farm work, so I refused.  Aunt Betty, one of Mama’s sisters lived in Bradenton and was married to Uncle Ed L. They were always fun to visit.  (Aunt Betty used to make persimmon pie that was so good.)  They lived on the Manatee River and had a dock that projected out into the river.  Manatees would frequently swim within view of the house.  She always warned the children to stay away from the shores of the river because alligators attacked anything within their reach.  We believed her!

                Granddaddy became very ill, and Mama went to Florida to see him.  He died seven days to the hour before Daddy did. Mama lost both of them within a week.

 

 

My Friend, Willis

Don Remembers

I was six years old when we moved to the farm.  The neighboring farm was owned by Mr. and Mrs. Monroe Crain.  Mr. Crain was the Chester county extension agent, and Mrs. Crain was an elementary school teacher.  They had one son, Willis.  Willis and I became close friends.  That was 60 years ago, and we have remained friends ever since that first encounter.   During our childhood and early adulthood, we shared work, and play, and school. We used to go camping in the woods behind Willis’s house and cook our meals over a campfire.  We built a swimming hole by damming up the creek and swinging across it with a grape vine.  Tackle football was a major game for us – no touch, regular tackle football.  When I got to high school and got pads, I thought I was hell on wheels.

When we were 12 or 13 years old, we went to 4-H Club camp together.  He and I worked all summer to earn the $4.00 to pay to go to camp for a week by working for Mr. Jim Bagley.  He had a farm about ½mile from us.  He had the only hay baler and combine in the community.  We would work with him from daylight to dark for $1.00 a day, going from farm to farm to harvest everybody’s corn and grain.  We would cut the corn with a machete and pile it around a “corn horse” – a wooden structure around which the corn was stacked.  After the corn dried, a shock of it would be loaded up to feed the horses. The hay baler was a wire tied baler which was fed with a fork.  If, in the process of feeding the baler, we broke a pitch fork, we would have to work a whole week to pay for it, receiving no other pay.  When wheat was combined, it had a sacker instead of a bin.  We used 200 pound sacks, and we stacked a big truck full of wheat.  Mr. Bagley’s son, Sam, was very strong.  He could lift the 200 pound  bags of wheat and hoist them on to the wagon or truck as if they were nothing.  It would take two of us to arrange the bags on the truck. We always took the grain to the grain elevator in Shelby, N.C. That was where the closest elevator was located, so we had to leave at 4 A.M. in order to get there.  Sometimes we would have to wait long hours to unload because of the traffic ahead of us.  We also harvested oats for the livestock. Oats were cut with a grain cradle and tied it up in bundles. We loaded it on wagons and stored it in the barn to feed the cows and horses. It was all worth all the work to get to go to Camp Long 4-H Camp. Camp Long was in Aiken S.C., and it was one of the few times when we did nothing but have fun all day.  We had swimming, canoeing, archery, and all kinds of recreational activities.  Every morning we got to go to the canteen to buy snacks.  I had only 25 cents to last the entire week.  The only thing available for a nickel was Luden’s Cough Drops, so that’s what I got every day.

Willis and Richard and I worked together on everything – for Mr. Jim, as well as in our own fields. One year we had an acre of cotton and made a bale of cotton off that acre. Willis’ dad became very ill, Daddy had died, and the three of us did all of the farm work together. Both of our fathers died much too early. The three of us worked well together and made the farms produce a living for us. 

We sold our cows before my senior year in high school so that I might play football.  Willis and Richard started to Clemson, and I finished my senior year in high school.  The following summer Willis and I started working for Borden Milk Company in Chester during our summer breaks.  Those summers were hard work but we earned 90 cents an hour!

 Willis, Richard, and I stayed good friends, continuing to work together on the farms until we left to go to Clemson. None of us did very much farm work in Chester after leaving to go to school. Mama went to Winthrop to work as a house manager and sold our farm.  Willis still lives in the house where his parents lived.  We still keep in touch with each other. Every time I see him or call him, he’ll say, “Hello, my friend”.    

Remembering Parenting Classes

Child development and parenting classes were probably the favorite things that I taught.  I had the best of both worlds:  the high school students, whom I loved, and the little children who just wrapped themselves around my heart.  To see the high school students teach the little ones and have the children respond to their teaching was priceless.

 In the child development room, we had an observation booth.  A third of the class of students worked with the children while the other two thirds observed, using structured observation sheets.  The students who worked with the children had the responsibility of planning and executing activities for the children.  The high school students were divided into groups who worked together to do the work required of them.  We never had a problem with “slackers”.  They were generally anxious to work with the children and wanted to have good plans made.  We often had people to enter the observation booth unannounced, and the workers wanted to have their day with the children work smoothly.

The room was divided into centers, concentrating attention to specific subjects:  a reading center, a numbers center, an art center, puzzles, dress-up center.  The students who worked with the children were assigned a center where they were completely in charge, and one student in the group served as the chairman and supervised the group. He or she would sometimes have to step in to take the place of a student who was absent, though absences were rare when the group was working with the children.  They loved that day. Their responsibilities in the group rotated with each work day, so they had the opportunity to plan activities in a variety of subjects.  Each work day had a theme and the activities must be planned around that theme. 

On the days that the children were there, my job was to stay in the observation booth evaluating the students who were working with the children.  I never went into the room with the children unless a problem came up that the high school students couldn’t handle.  That rarely occurred. Most of the students were so involved with the program that they foresaw any problem and were able to handle it.

The school provided us with a fenced yard where the children participated in outdoor activities.  The students carefully planned the outside fun so that the little children were not just freely running about, but were engaged in learning activities too.

As their teacher, I observed extreme maturity taking place in the high school students.  They discovered a lot about themselves while they were in the process of learning about children and working with them.  Their class time without the children was intense.  For one whole semester, we studied the developmental skill patterns in children: how they should behave at certain ages; what was normal and what wasn’t; what happened if they child missed a particular stage of development; how long it took a child to catch up if he did miss a stage of development.  All of the class time focused on child behavior, and the students looked for those behavior patterns in their observations.  We had several students to go to college to further study child development and early childhood education as a result of taking the child development classes.  Some of those students are almost ready to retire from teaching!  Doesn’t seem possible!

In the second semester of the class, the students studied parenting skills:  responsibilities of being a parents; correct ways to handle a child’s behavior; the relationship between the parent’s behavior and the child’s behavior; the difference between discipline and punishment; allowing a child to suffer or enjoy the consequences of his own behavior; determining factors for a child’s learning; teaching a child to take responsibility for his own behavior as well as his own learning.  In addition, we studied home management skills as it would apply to the family.  The students put these skills to practice when they planned their programs for the child development room.

The first half-semester that the students were in my class was spent in the study of child development skills.  Sometimes it was hard for them to grasp the idea that they had better learn these skill patterns because they would be using them in just a few weeks. Most of them settled down and studied, especially the closer time came for planning for the children. The second half-semester was spent planning for and working with the children. 

The third half-semester was spent studying parenting skills, and the fourth half-semester, they worked with the children again.  They made visuals and posters, planned skits, decided how the centers would be set up, made written plans for the work to be done on the days that children would be present; tried to decide  what a parent would do in certain situations. Again, a surge in maturity took place during the time that they worked with the children and studied what they would do if they were the parent.

The high school students had many opportunities to guide the behavior of the younger children. They used the techniques they had learned during classroom time, and most of them did an excellent job in directing the children.  One day, one of the little girls wrote all over a table with a crayon, and the student working with her told her she would have to scrub the marks off the table.  She looked with disdain at the student worker and said, ”No, I can’t. I won’t do it.”  The student calmly went to get cleanser and a wet cloth and presented it to her.  She crossed her little arms, protruded her lips, and sat with a horrible frown on her face.  My student sat beside her. The other students and children went outside for play time.  The two of them sat!  When the rest of the class came in and got ready to have a snack, the little one was not allowed to eat until she cleaned up the table.  It didn’t take long until she started scrubbing. When she finished she looked up at the older student, smiled and said, “Now!”  That is taking responsibility for one’s own actions!  We often do not want to take time to allow a child to do that.

Hopefully, the students who enrolled in those classes learned something that made their family life a little easier.  We never know the impact we have when we endeavor to give example – not just teachers, but all of us.

        

Recalling a Walk on the Beach

                The beach is almost deserted. No human voices, no mechanical sounds, no street clatter.  Quiet.  Almost lonely.  I shuffle my feet in the dry sand, walking just above the most recent tidal high-water marks.  Even there, the water soaks my sneakers occasionally, making me more aware of the crisp October afternoon.  Lost in my thoughts, it was a while before I became aware of all of the noise around me – sounds that one did not hear in the summer when the beach was crowded with beach-combers and sun worshippers.  One by one, sounds besieged my reverie; sounds which came not as clanging trashcans would, but sounds which quiet the soul and bring peace to the spirit.

                I walked by a group of gulls blabbering to each other as they sat around their tidal pool bistro.  They reminded me of a club of little old ladies who had not had the opportunity to talk to anybody lately.  Their loneliness - and aloneness- gone, they were relishing the moments of togetherness.  Their conversation and chatter made me laugh.

                Above my head, terns were screaming delight at having narrowly missed a friend while performing acrobatics.  I am reminded of  my children when they were young, playing hard, never running out of energy, delighting in the joy of youth and of each other.  Sharing the same air space with the terns was a flock of pelicans, brown and gray, flying in formation – formal, organized, with only the rhythm of their wings revealing evidence of their adult, grown-up presence. Skimmers were raking the surf, expecting a smorgasboard but having to return over and over to find just a morsel of seafood.

                The surf commanded my attention, beating out a message of strength, controlled by some unseen power.  And then out of the water, the dolphins came into view, playing leapfrog with the waves, rising and falling and whistling to each other as they announced the joy of their adventure in the sea.  It was as if they were making fun of the waves and their force and fury.

                Around the next turn, a blue heron was cautiously pursuing his next meal, webbing his way silently through the tidal pool. And an egret stood bemired in the marshy grass, revealing his presence in the occasional splash of erupting water.

                As I turned to walk across the board-walk which traversed the tidal pools, there were crabs silently taking a crooked stroll, sidling through the rivulets of water.  Sea oats caressed the sand dunes, whispering to the wind and to the surf and to me.

                Sounds…..Silent Sounds…..Sounds which quiet the soul and bring peace to the spirit.     

                Quiet in the midst of nature’s noise!