The view from here...

For my siblings......


First Baptist Church....
Where we all met Jerry B...and watched his gospel artistry chalk drawings. Where Marti and I "went forward"...and I believe Carol C did too, at the same service. Where Marti had her first (?) crush. Where Deb had a crush on the sibling...Sunday night BYF. Mom made tea towel choir robes; regularly going to family friends' houses (or having them to ours) after Sunday night church services for popcorn and pepsi (or homemade grape juice)...anyone else have distinct memories from there to add? (Maybe this should be continued in a private "sibling" email?)




This is the house at the south end, as we used to refer to it. It has recently been resided. This is the house where Dad tore out a wall and we then had a rec room...complete with pool table. We also had our first Hi-Fi....Ah, the Sutton Sisters..."I know, I know....these old bones are gonna rise again...." And this house had not one, but TWO bathrooms!!! This is where Mom kept the milk on the back porch and it would get partially frozen...then we would pour it over Capt'n Crunch (from the 33# bags Dad would buy and bring home from Quaker Oats when he trucked up there)....I still love that icy cold milk over Capt'n Crunch. Kevin became great friends with the next door neighbor who owned the IH store, where Kevin would go and sit on Mr W's tractors to his heart's content. The elderly brothers who lived across the street together...for work, they drove their wagon around town, pulled behind a tractor, and picked up junk. They even went to the Bringman's grocery store and would pick up the thrown out, expired packaged foods (chips, etc) and save them. Sometimes our family would get free potato chips that way.
We lived at this house when Marti and I went on a picnic as little girls, in the shade of some pine trees by the golf course. I saw a man driving by in a car who spotted us and stopped his car. He stopped his car and backed up and tried to chase us in his car; but we escaped on our bikes (running them up the hill between the school and our old stucco house) as we made for "Magaldine's" house. As we were pushing those bikes up that steep gravel hill, I remember thinking, "if we can't outrun him with these bikes, we'll just drop them and run as hard as we can." But I didn't want to leave those bikes unless it was absolutely vital to our escape because they were a precious commodity in our home. We only had 2 old used bikes to share among 7 children. We did make it to Magaldine's and used her phone to call Mom to tell her about the man in the car. There was no extra money for frivolous gas usage and I knew it, but Mom instructed us to wait there and she immediately came up in the car and followed us home.




Doc Enos' stucco house. Is very run down now...so sad to see such a lovely house not maintained...and the landscaping is left to its own ramblings. Ah...the escapee that ate apples off our back porch and slept in the basement (no one used to lock their doors at night back them). We knew nothing about it until the sheriff came the following morning because the stolen car was left in our yard....and the one night when we were all in bed asleep upstairs in our bedrooms (except for Dee who heard it all as she lay paralyzed in her bed) when another man came into our house, rifled through our silverware drawer in the kitchen downstairs (probably looking for a sharp knife to use as a weapon), then came up the creaky back stairs, walked down the dark hallway, pausing at each of the 4 bedroom doors. We know that God stationed His angels round about us because no one was hurt and no one else woke up.
"Magaldine" lived across the street from this house. (Her name was really Magdaline, but Marti couldn't pronounce her name correctly. Marti had trouble with a few other words, right Marti?)
Virgil S. came to live with us as a boarder while he worked to help build the new local high school. That became a lasting family friendship, until the day he died drowning, saving a stranger's life.
Deb broke her arm while jumping off the porch ledge.
Kick the Can! The neighborhood kids would come play outdoor games with us, the sun would set, and darkness silently overtook, but we kept playing anyway.




The side view of the stucco house.
I think I'm feeling sentimental because our great Aunt Gladys just died. She was the last of our grandfather's surviving siblings (on Dad's side). Family. How blessed we have been to be among so many loving people all our lives and to have a Godly heritage.