It was a pleasant fall afternoon. The air was crisp and the leaves were beginning to change color. Walking down the road from my house I was happy. My Dad had given me permission to visit a friend of mine. She lived over on Helton Creek – about a mile…
In the 1930’s, ‘40’s and ‘50’s the milk truck and its faithful driver were an important part of rural life in Ashe County, NC. They traveled the dirt roads, not delivering milk to us but, picking up heavy metal cans filled with milk the farmers had ready for market. Every…
They were beautiful. The old timey cherry trees on our farm were in full bloom. To me, a seven year old, it looked like they were covered with popcorn. Soon the flowers began to lose their petals. With the slightest breeze they floated to the ground like snowflakes. I loved…
Everyone was excited about my first day of school except me. In the fall of 1945 I began grade school at Helton Elementary in Sturgills, NC. The big two story building looked very intimidating to a little six year old girl. It took all of my courage to climb the…
AUGUST 1940. ASHE COUNTY, NC. – The ground was already soaked with water when another storm hit. A category 2 hurricane rolled into Beaufort, South Carolina. It came inland through Georgia, traveled north along the Appalachian Mountains and then turned west, making its way to Ashe County where it stopped.…
In 1916, when my Mom and Dad were married, her father gave her twenty acres of land. A small house made of wide oak boards set on the property. There they began their lives together in the Sturgills area of Ashe County, NC, near the Virginia line, in the beautiful…
It’s reunion weekend! Or, rather, it is Decoration Day for which we are gathered here today. It’s the first time several have joined us for this annual occasion, but most all who are stretched out here across the porch and yard are family members who have attended & helped most…
I hadn’t sat down to breakfast for more than five minutes when Daddy came through the kitchen and, without stopping, grabbed his hat from behind the door. He playfully swatted me on the top of my head as he continued out the door and called back over his shoulder, “Come…
Dratts! This COVID pandemic can drive a good Christian woman to groan and moan or even cuss on occasions when she might briefly forget who is sovereign. We could not have imagined, here in 2020, that over twenty million Americans would become infected, and that we would be catapulted from…
There’s that little boy again! He’s no bigger than a young sampling and looks like he’s wearing the same faded overalls as he has these past days. I wasn’t surprised that the little scrapper wasn’t wearing shoes or a shirt since it’s mid-summer and, even here in the mountains, very…
