Christmas - A Time to Reminisce - A little bit of nostalgia to remind us all that it's the thought that counts.
The following appeared in a December 2004, issue of The Herald-Dispatch, a Huntington, West Virginia, newspaper.
In 1950, the little bit of Christmas shopping we did took place at Emmit and Lessie's Store in Bowen Creek, West Virginia, for our trips into the big city of Huntington were rare. My brother Philip and I had our eyes fixed on a matching necklace and earrings for Mother. Each piece resembled a flower with an emerald-colored setting, and the petals surrounding each were gold-colored filigree. We were convinced there was none prettier. Still, there was a problem. We couldn't come up with $2.98 to seal the deal. In our hearts we knew they would make Mother's Christmas her happiest ever. What was the solution then? We presented the situation to Mother, telling her we needed money to buy something special. Sensing the urgency of the situation, she commenced digging in her purse, somehow coming up with the needed finances. After handing it over to us--mostly in pennies--we dashed to the store, arriving only seconds before Lessie closed. And it was the day before Christmas--a close call. When Mother opened her gift the next day, she was ecstatic, and her eyes sparkled. In our young hearts, we knew it was her favorite gift that year.
A Valentine for Mrs. T.
The following is a newspaper valentine message for my wife, Janet. It appeared in a February 2005, issue of The Herald-Dispatch as well.
The first time I saw her hazel eyes was in fourth grade—fifty-two years ago. She giggled and chased me across the playground, while I darted about—scared. But in ninth grade, I allowed her to catch up. We kissed at our end-of-the-year party, and I turned to butter immediately. In high school, we were close friends. The years whisked by, and our lips never touched. Afterward, we went our separate ways—she to college, and I to business school. The Vietnam conflict escalated, so I served my country, while she taught little children to read, do math, and say the Pledge. My heart longed to see her, so in a moment of weakness, I composed a letter. She answered. Wow! My chest pounded as I read it over and again. Once my tour in Vietnam ended, I returned home, telephoned her immediately, and we were together the next evening. We kissed, and it was ninth grade again. My next assignment was in Chicago. She and her sisters came for a weekend visit, and I proposed on the sand-duned shores of Lake Michigan. She accepted. Thirty-seven years have passed, but she still loves me, despite my faults. I’m mad about Janet.
Time to Let Go Again
Thoughts about one of the cruelties of life...
Thirty-one years ago, Janet and I stood at the door and watched Anthony, our son, board the school bus for kindergarten. We both cried, knowing he would no longer be ours completely. We had to share him with the rest of the world for it was the law! Three years later this scene repeated itself. Our youngest son, Nathan, left for kindergarten, just as Anthony had done on another September morning. Now, the world and my wife and I would play a tug-o'-war over a fifteen-year period for possession of what we felt was rightfully ours. Time would determine the winner.
The years clicked away, and both sons matured and moved out--Anthony to marriage and a career in nursing and Nathan to a life of his own as a microbiologist in North Carolina. I longed to have them little again--longed to do a better job of parenting the next time around. But life doesn't work that way. We are forced to let go of the past.
Several years after Anthony and Cheryl were wed, they asked us to join them for dinner at Outback. Cheryl handed me a gift bag from across the table. It contained a pair of booties, letting Janet and me know that grandparenting would soon be part of our daily routine. After months of waiting, Andrew arrived. Three years later, Tanner came along. Now, in a sense, both my boys were little again. Here was my chance to do a better job the second time around, and I really believe I have.
Again, time passed, and Andrew was off to kindergarten. Today, and three years later, Tanner did the same as his Uncle Nathan. It hurts just as bad as before--this having to share my grandsons with the world. Now, the tug-o'-war has begun anew for it is time, once again, to let go.
Margaret
This is a story told by my wife's aunt about what it was like traveling from a rural area in West Virginia to high school in the 1930s.
Margaret
My wife’s aunt— Margaret Adkins— told me once about her ninth and tenth grade years of school in the 1930s. She had grown up at a place called Raccoon Creek in West Virginia, a community with three one-room schools. There, students were educated in grades one through eight. After that, however, their schooling ended at Raccoon Creek because parents couldn’t afford to send their children to high school in Barboursville, nor was there any means for transporting them. The summer after she finished her eighth-grade year at Raccoon Creek, though, a change took place. The Cabell County Board of Education made arrangements for these students to continue their education at the high school level. As a result, a used, flat-topped bus was acquired by the board for the daily trek to Barboursville. Its interior contained a long bench on either side and another across the back. Down the middle was another row of seats that accommodated two students each. In all, the bus held twenty-five or more pupils and their driver, Steve Ramey, also known by all as Ripgear Ramey. Margaret’s testimony regarding some of the hardships she encountered follows:
The winters were the worst. Nobody has any idea how bad things were. I had to be ready to get on the bus by five in the mornin’. It was bitter cold because there weren’t any heaters, so some of us would sit on our feet to keep ’em warm. Sometimes I’d take off my mittens and put ’em on my feet to help keep ’em warm in that way.
It took about an hour and a half to get to school, and we were nearly always late. The road from Raccoon Creek, up Bowen Creek, and all the way to Salt Rock was muddy and axle deep. Sometimes we’d get stuck on Green Valley Hill, so the boys, they’d get out and help shove the bus up the hill. One time Ancil Ramey— that was Ripgear’s boy— slipped and fell underneath it, but the bus was sittin’ still at the time, and he was lucky it didn’t roll back on him and maybe kill ’im.
Besides me, the others that rode the bus were: Tessie Keesee; Hattie Adkins, Ancil and Alfred Ramey; Ruth and Estel Bartram; Sue Adkins; Willis Adkins; Harry and Lorna Adkins, who walked to Bowen Creek and caught the bus from off Hickory Ridge; Ethel and Vernon Lucas; Thelma and Halsie and Verlie Childers; Iona Jenkins; Edithe Parsons; Verda Childers; John Ross; Thelma Walker, Ruby and Ritzel Lucas; Jane and John and Dorothy Holton; and Mabel and Nellie Bias.
On the way to Barboursville, we’d get off in Salt Rock at DeJarnett’s Store and wait for the driver to make another run. Then he’d come back and pick us up and take us on to school. We didn’t have any money to buy anything at the store either. And once we got to school, they’d let us go and clean the mud off our shoes. Nobody ever complained, though. We were just glad to have a way to go to school.
A few of the kids treated us different, but not many. Everybody was poor then. Most of us did without lunch almost everyday. It was the ’30s. There was no money. Some took their lunch, but a loaf of bread cost ten cents, so I couldn’t afford to take mine. They had homemade soup, homemade pie, and hamburgers for five cents each, but I couldn’t afford any o’ that either. My mother called me into the kitchen one mornin’ and gave me eight cents for lunch. And one day during lunch at school, I was standin’ in the hallway lookin’ out the window. Mrs. Spellman, one of the teachers, asked me if she could buy my lunch for me. I wouldn’t let her do it, though. I had too much pride. Now, Harry— we were just goin’ together then— he took biscuits to school but went to the boiler room to eat ’em. You see, he was ashamed to eat ’em in front of the other kids. Oh, we always had a hot breakfast before leavin’ home in the mornin’ and a meal waitin’ when we got home at night, but for the most part, we did without lunch.
On the way home from school, we’d stop at Hatfield’s Grocery over at Roach, get off the bus, and wait there for the driver to come and pick us up and take us home. We’d stop in Salt Rock to fill up with gas, and the driver, he’d fill up two five-gallon cans with gas and put them on the bus, too, so we’d have enough for the trip back the next day. Imagine how dangerous that was. But, like I said— nobody ever complained. We didn’t get home till way after dark in the winter. Sometimes it might be as late as ten o’clock before we’d get home, and our parents, they’d be headin’ out lookin’ for us.
When I was in the ninth grade, they gave us an I.Q. test. Fourteen out of the whole class made above average, and I was one of ’em. I quit school after tenth grade, though. Me and Harry got married. He wanted so bad to finish school, though. One semester, he went to Grayson, Kentucky, and attended Christian Normal School, a place where he could work his way through. He was the only one old enough to drive, so his job was to make the runs for supplies. Harry, he got too homesick, so he came home and finished up at Barboursville, He was twenty-three when he graduated.
Once Margaret had finished her story, I thought, Maybe my having to get off the bus daily to walk across that rickety bridge at Martha when I was a student at Barboursville High in the late '50s and early ’60s wasn’t so bad after all.
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