How on earth can anyone hurt a little defenseless baby? I started out with Anna in Aug. of 2001 when she was about 3 months old. We did the learning to eat with a spoon together, the teething together, the learning to crawl and then to walk and now she's what I reckon is classified as a toddler. Now she can take direction and can actually "help". She carried 3 bags of garbage to the dumpster for me on Tuesday. Mind you, they were little Walmart bags with stuff like paper and empty plastic bottles, but she was SO proud of herself. It took 3 trips all the way from my basement door down through the yard and across the pavement to the dumpster (then I had to hold her up so she could drop them in) but she was really helping. I started watching Brittney when she was 6 weeks old and went through the spoon feeding, the teething, the crawling and the walking (at 10 months) and now she's a big girl who would be a great lil babysitter if she could just get the chance! She and Anna play together without fussing, share cookies and toys, and miss each other when one isn't there. Now, there's another lil girl baby, named Savannah. I started watching her when she was 6 weeks old and 7lbs.5oz. Now she's at least 9 and a half pounds and is eating 7 oz. at a feeding and has started sleeping all night. She's such a happy lil baby, loves to sit in the bouncer and look out the window. I look at the three of them and hear the laughter and the baby chatter and wonder how on earth can any body throw one in the dumpster or drown it in the bath tub or do anything else to hurt it. Even when they have cranky days and don't want to take naps, I still love them.....and they aren't even mine. How can a mom or a dad take their own flesh and blood and hurt it? It's beyond comprehension to me.

War 3/19/03

As I sit here typing and listening to the TV about war in Iraq, I remember when I was 5 years old. Back then, we learned everything from the radio and I remember hearing about Pearl Harbor that Sunday and wondering, as kids do, what impact a war would have on my life. I really didn't even know what war was, but from the expressions on the faces of all the adults, I knew it was something really bad. My cousin Jim who was tall and big for his age, lied about his age and joined the Army. All of the young men in the neighborhood were soon gone and also cousins who were old enough. That meant that the mill was practically run by old men and young women. Lois and Marie, my cousins, quit school and got jobs working for Dan River. I think the mill started making material for uniforms and army shirts then and continued to do so until the war ended. Back then, you couldn't see battles happening right in your living room (thanks to TV)like you do now. Whenever you went to the movies, you saw what was happening in newsreels which were always shown before the movie. I hated to have to sit through them....I was ready and willing to see Betty Boop! One evening I remember my cousin Tootie was visiting from Lynchburg and we listened to Banny Hall and mama talk about Jim and wondering where he was and we started wondering just where Pearl Harbor was. We finally went out to the hill behind our house and looked over towards Dan River and we decided that Pearl Harbor was on the other side of the river. The war lasted until 1945 and during those years everything was rationed. There were stamps for food and tokens for stuff like sugar and meat. I think each family was issued a certain amount of stamps and tokens based on the number of people who lived in the house. Even if you had money, if you didn't have stamps and tokens you couldn't get what you needed. Now war starts, we see it on TV, and in a few days or weeks, it's over. I hate it, hate hearing about it, but I know that God is with our troops and with the continued prayers of our people, we can win this battle.

Long Ago and far Away 3/25/03

I remember when I was a child living on Pickett St (which later became Highland Ct.) and how everything was so different than it is now. Every house but one had year round kids and that one had a house full every summer when the grand kids came to visit. We would get up, dress, eat breakfast and go outside to play and until Mama called us in to eat a sandwich about noon, we were cowboys and Indians, mamas and daddys, or just tomboys riding bikes and hiding from our younger siblings. Of course, there were rules, but they were for our good.....and to keep us from breaking our necks. One rule was...always stay either in your own yard or in the street in front of your own house ( this was a dead end street and hardly any body had cars so there was no chance of an accident) BUT, one rule.....do not go to the creek. This was a little creek down behind the field behind our house. One day the lil boy across the street gave Geraldine a little fish he had caught and it was still alive. She wanted to take it to the creek but our Grandpa said to flush it. Well, Gerry wasn't about to flush it, so we snuck down to the creek to turn it loose. All was well until she leaned out to pour the fish out into the water and fell off the rock she was on. She landed on her elbow on some jagged glass and cut her arm. I was deathly afraid of blood and when she came up bleeding I took off back up through the field screaming and when we got to the house, mama called a taxi to take her to the doctor to get it sewed up.(Daddy was working 2nd shift at the time and G'pa couldn't drive)It scared Mama so much that I don't think she ever punished us for sneaking off to the creek. I don't know what she told Daddy, but he never said a word about our escapade. Once Geraldine and her friend Cletus put a pillowcase over my head when I was riding my trike and pushed me off down the hill and I ran into the railings at the mill steps at top speed. I wasn't hurt because the tricycle I was riding had one of those really big heavy front wheels. To retaliate for me pushing her Shirley Temple doll's bottom teeth out(so she would look like me), her and Cletus waited for me and my friend Betty to leave our paper dolls for a minute and they cut all the legs off at the knees.And these were the really pretty, model paper dolls who had lots of pretty clothes. I remember I learned how to ride a bike the day Tom was born. He was born at home and while Mama was busy having him, I was in my element learning how to ride the bike of the lil boy who lived up the street. I guess I knew she wasn't going to be coming outside to holler me off that pretty red bike. Back then, boys had bikes.....girls didn't.All 3 of my brothers had several bikes each, but Gerry and I never had one. We had skates, but no bikes. Sometimes, I sit and remember all the times from long ago and I can't believe how easy we were to please and how simple our playthings were. No nintendo, gameboys,playstations, computers or even TV. We listened to the radio at night....we all had our favorite shows. Like The Shadow Knows, The Fat Man, Amos and Andy, Grand Ole Opry,etc. What would the kids of today do if they were thrust back into those days...so long ago and far away?

Bits and Pieces 4/10/03

Recently every time I ride by our old house on Baugh St I think how sad it looks. Sitting there empty, with what looks like aluminum foil on one of the doors and the yard grown up and weedy. I think back to when we lived there and the summers when we would all sit out on the wall and watch the cars go by. Somebody would always suggest that we go and get something to eat or else Robert, Randy and Keister would go buy something and bring it back. I don't know what the attraction was, but on any given night you could find Tami, Betty, Keister, Dianne, Linda, Robert, Bobby, Lester, sometimes Joey, sometimes Elizabeth all lined up on either side of the steps, just a sitting. I remember the night I went out and saw Keister sitting out there and some lil girl he had brought home was dancing in the yard, all by herself. A really pretty, ballet like dance with her shirt flowing softly as she spun and turned. Remember the gardens we had? I remember one hot summer day and one of the many cats that lived in our "barn" decided he/she would go lay in the shade under a squash plant and a bluejay decided the cat was too close to her nest, which was in the pecan tree, and divebombed that cat until it ran off and hid under the back steps. Remember the time one of the neighbor boys asked Raphael if he could plant some "tomato" plants down on his land and when they got up some size, the boy's mom discovered that they were marijuana plants and pulled them all up.But the enterprising young man rescued some off the trash pile and hung them up in a tree to dry. Remember the man on the lower end of the street who had all the monkeys in cages in his back yard? And all of yall sneaking off to the creek? Remember when yall would walk up to see G'ma Whitt and she would always give you icecream? And the time yall "made" T Foster go with you and then "MADE" him eat icecream? Anyway, whenever I go by if I look hard enough I see all the ghosts of past years still lined up on that wall.