THE MOVE

Debbie and Janet at the Red Oak house.

    Nancy and I had talked about moving to the country for years and we started to look for our new home.  My IBM territory had always been on the northeast side of Atlanta so we looked more in that area.  We finally found a beautiful place that met all our requirements including owner financing. 

    We already had our house in Red Oak up for sale when the City of Atlanta reached outside of their city limits and were going to build a welfare housing apartment project near the Eastern School that Diane and Billy attended (But, I won't get into that).  We had to get a new appraisal every six months while it was on the market and for some strange reason the latest estimate always came back for less than the one before it.  (But, I won't get into that).  It seemed that the real estate agents would work hard and would promise about anything to get the listing and then just wait for someone else to actually sell the house.  (But, I won't get into that)  The house across the street from us sold to a couple and he was later arrested for selling drugs and then found murdered in his car one morning in Atlanta.  (But, I won't get into that).  Don't worry, the widow had plenty of company to help her through her grief.  (But I won't get into that).  Nancy finally sold our house to our Avon representative and we were able to start on our new place. 

 (Just a note- the apartment project was built and lasted about 20 years before it was torn down because it was in such bad shape that it would cost too much to fix it.  It was a rundown eyesore and source of crime for years before.  Eastern school has been closed for years and has become a dumping ground.)

     Okay, we're moving!  We moved the camper up to the country and I spent some time there alone and the family would join me on weekends.  We actually moved after the end of school.  We registered all the kids for school in the fall.  Diane and Billy were about to be put back a grade in the little country school system even though they had been making good grades and were on grade level in the big Fulton County school system.  (But I won't get into that).  They let them stay in their grades and gave them extra work and were on grade level by the end of the school year.

       Ruth, Charles wife, came down to visit Nancy one day when she was planting a long row of beans and offered to help.  Nancy had already started making a shallow ditch to put the bean seeds and she told Ruth that she would appreciate it if she would put in the bean seeds while she finished the ditch.  Ruth soon yelled at Nancy what she was out of seeds.  She had poured enough seeds for a 100 foot row into about 2 feet.

  We had planted a large garden and everything was looking fine.  Our corn was up about 1.5 feet high and was nice and green.  Our neighbor, Charles, came down to visit while we were taking a break in the shade.  We thought that everyone living in the country knew a lot more about raising a garden than we did so we listened with interest as Charles told us that we needed to put some "soode" (translated as ammonium nitrate) on the corn before a rain that was supposed to start that evening.  We asked how much should we use and he said "oh, about a double hand full around each stalk"  I had to get ready to go to work and we were sure that if we didn't do what Charles said the corn crop would surely be a loss.  Nancy loaded up the kids and went to Goldkist to get the nitrogen boost stuff.  (This is also the stuff that the terrorists use to blow up things).  The rain started before she got back but, bless her heart, she was going to get it done and not miss this golden opportunity.  She got out in the rain, waded into the garden, and put the required "double hand full" around each stalk.  I got home from work well after midnight and it was still raining.  I shined a light into the garden and saw Nancy's footprints in the mud where she had spread the magic fertilizer.  The corn had already started turning yellow and we lost it all but we did not need any nitrogen in that area of the garden for a while.  We then knew just maybe Charles didn't know what he was talking about.

When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Thomas Jefferson 

NANCY, Part 3.

 We must have had another kid living around our house named "not Me".  He or she seemed to be the one who did everything wrong.  "Who carved arrows in the furniture with a bent nail???"   They all said, ... "not me."   Nancy should have gone to college and gotten a psychology degree with a diploma to hang on the wall because she has more natural ability than anyone I have ever met.  She would ask who did something and then pick out the likely one and say "I know you did it".  They would deny it and she would tell them that she knew because she could see it in their eyes.  I thought that she didn't know who did the dastardly deed any more than I did but then they would usually blurt out that they did it and they were sorry or they would move their eyes all around to avoid looking at Nancy and look more guilty than if they had just admitted it.  I learned that it also worked for me. Nuff said.

    We couldn't afford much of a vacation with the kids so we thought we would rent a camper and go to Jekyll Island for a few days.  It worked out so well that we went out and bought a tent camper when we returned and headed to the mountains for a week.  The cost was affordable with a $4 a night charge for a tent site at Rayburn Beach.  Nancy made up the beds like home

and cooked for us like we were home.  It was vacation for us but was harder for her than being home.  She always said that she was having fun too.  

    We were at Rayburn Beach campground during blackberry time and the kids picked quite a few blackberries.  They wanted Nancy to make them some jelly.  It didn't matter that she was there with only a coleman gasoline stove, sugar, and a pot.  Nancy said she had never made jelly but she knew she needed some pectin but she would give it a try.  She cut, smushed, cooked and cooked the purple stuff and finally decided that it would not thicken up and turned the stove off but left the stirring spoon in the pot overnight.  The next morning she had this big lollipop.  It had hardened into solid candy and she picked it up with the spoon.  Not to be outdone, she heated it again until it was liquid and poured it over their pancakes and they were happy.  See, she is fearless.

    This may have been her early attempt at jam and jelly but she succeeded after that with plum, pear, muscadine, peach, and strawberry.  She would pick these little wild strawberries and make the best strawberry jelly you ever had.  They were so small that it took a lot of them to make a batch but it had a pale color and was delicious.

    We lived in an area in Hall county that had a lot of wild plum bushes.  We all helped and picked washtubs full.  Nancy called it "Wild Plum Jelly Jam".  My folks place had some old fashioned pear trees and she would make Pear Honey from them. We had planted a vineyard and got the muskadines. 

    Note:  This "Nancy" part is mainly about Nancy.  (Duh)  I plan to revisit different time frames from time to time and not just make a chronological record.

NEXT- The Move 

We once had a governor of Georgia say that before we could improve our prisons we needed a better class of prisoner.  I say, "Before we improve our government we need a better class of voter".
Bill Buffington

    
    

NANCY, Part 2.

And then there were four.

    We were fortunate that Nancy was able to stay home with our kids.  She is absolutely fearless.  She kept her sister's four kids in addition to our five and years later she volunteered to cook for 100 kids and the faculty at church camp.  Her sister's kids and ours had just enough difference in the ages to look like they were all hers.  She would go to the grocery store with 9 little ones in tow. 


 I'm sure that the store employees breathed a sigh of relief to see that they were all well behaved and not a major threat to the peace.  They each had a "buddy" they were responsible for and to keep up with and it worked well.  If any ever got hard to control there was always the threat that they would have to go to the hot car or the cold car, depending on the season.  That also meant missing out on the animal crackers.  That wouldn't have happened but they didn't know that.  


    On their first birthday Nancy would make their birthday cake and sit it on the high chair in front of them.  It was their cake, after all.  The rest of us got a piece of what was left after the little hands grabbed a hand full.


 
   Nancy always included everyone possible in all activities and that included baking Christmas cookies.  Even now, it doesn't seem like Christmas until there are cutout cookies baked.  I'm reminded of all the little blond heads with their clothes looking like they had fallen into a flower barrel all gathered around the oven watching them bake.

    Our place became the gathering place for both her family and my family and even once, both at the same time.  She would fearlessly take on the job of hostess and this is still true with our "Banquet Hall".  The cars are backed out of the garage, the floor mopped, tables and chairs set up, and it is then time to turn on the garage chandelier.  I guess you don't absolutely have to have a chandelier but you have to admit that a garage with a chandelier adds a touch of class.



     Years ago, Nancy wanted Christmas morning present opening time to go somewhat longer than the kids running in and ripping everything open, loosing some things in the wrapping and it all being over so quickly.  She came up with "The Present Chair".  Each person sits in the chair and is handed a present to open.  Everyone else watches and doesn't play with anything.  They open it, read any card, thank whoever, and get a present from under the tree for the next one.  This has spread and some friends and neighbors now do the same thing. 

    Nancy has really given thought to Christmas traditions.  Everyone would pick up the presents with their name on them and shake them, feel of them, and try to figure out what they were. She cured that by using fake names or numbers on the cards to designate who they were for.  One year she used our telephone number as the base for the names.  Billy figured out that it was the telephone number and loudly yelled out from the upstairs balcony "It's our phone number"!  Nancy said that he was right but what did that really tell him.  It dawned on him that he still didn't know which number he was.

   Nancy came up with a sort of treasure hunt game that had slips of paper with clues on them for finding where the presents were.  They were sent from the attic to the basement to find all the goodies. 

   I added to her idea by using our new toy computer.  We had a new Commodore 64 computer and I spent over a month writing a program to select, at random, each of the kids to get a present for someone else.  The commodore had a voice program on it but it did speak like a robot.  Well, it was a robot.  The gifts were mixed in with things like "get your poor old daddy a cup of coffee", "time to eat breakfast", etc.

 Richway stores had a promotion going one Christmas and used large red plastic bags for large purchases.  We had enough for four kids but needed one more.  We knew that we had another fairly large purchase to make so Nancy went to Richway.  The cashier gave her some static about getting a big red bag so Nancy patiently explained to her that if she didn't get the red bag she would walk out and leave all the stuff on the counter.  She got the bag.  You may notice that Richway stores are gone but Nancy is still here.

  

MORE NANCY NEXT TIME.


    My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
Thomas Jefferson 

NANCY

     On the left you see my High School Sweetheart.  She was the sweetest thing that there ever was and the prettiest thing in the world to me.  She would just purr like a kitten with her two glass pack mufflers and the flathead v-8 engine.  Oh, that's Nancy sitting on the fender.  She was a 1947 Ford business coup.  Not Nancy, I mean the car.  There was no back seat but it had a package shelf that went all the way back and the trunk came all the way up to the front seat. You could have smuggled four guys into the drive in movie back there but, of course, I would have never thought about doing that. 

     I'm sorry but I couldn't resist that.  No, this is about the real love of my life, my wife, my sweetheart, the Mother of my children, and the best all round best person that I have ever known.  If God grades on a curve she will be at the top and most of us won't make out too well.  Maybe it's copyrighted by Sarah Lee but "Nobody doesn't like Nancy Lee".  After her doing something especially nice for me I told her that I didn't know what I had done to deserve her and she answered that she didn't know what she had done to deserve me, either.  She wasn't smiling.

     Back in the ancient 1950's there was a thing called a soda fountain in most drug stores.  This was the hangout for the local high school age kids because they had a juke box (5 cents each or 6 songs for a quarter.) , tables,  or booths to sit in.  They had a "soda Jerk" employee that would mix up any kind of combination of drinks that you wanted and we did try a lot of things that were not nearly as good as we thought they would be.  I am reminded of a Lime Sour.  (water, lime juice, and salt)  Ah, the memories.

   I worked at various jobs while I was in high school to support my other love above and I was working at Popes Fruit and Grocery store (A kind of mini-mart store) at that time and I worked there until I went in the army in September.  I had just got off of work and a friend of mine suggested that we go over to Collins Drug store and get a Vanilla Coke, or Cherry Pepsi, or maybe it was a Lime Sour .  I don't remember.  The main thing that I do remember was that there was a cute young lady there with  her younger sister.  I started to talk to her and before long I asked her out.  

     I was making $1.00 an hour after my recent raise from $.50 an hour.  (Gas was also $.19 a gallon.)  It cost $1.00 for us both to get in the drive in movie and another quarter bought a hot box of freshly popped popcorn.  Oh gee, no, sorry, we can't double date because, uh, well, you see my car only has  one seat.  Just Darn it.

     I graduated from high school and we dated through the summer.  I worked till midnight and carried the money over to Pope and always drove by Nancy's house on the way home.  I had an Ougga- Ougga horn (Big rubber bulb that you squeezed to blow the horn.) mounted outside the drivers window and I would blow it as I passed her house.  She knew it was me because who else had a horn like that.  I'm sure the neighbors all hated me but, luckily, they didn't know who did it.  The midnight Harranger struck again.
    

The picture I carried .

    I went into the Army in September 1956 after graduating and it took the mail a couple of weeks to catch up with us and at a mail call they just kept calling my name out for letters.  There were 13 as well as I remember, all on the same day and more the next few days.  She had written them all along and mailed them all the same day.

    Later she sent me a package of cup cakes she had lovingly baked and iced for me.  Well, if anybody got any goodies from home we all shared them with the other fighting men.  I invited the troops to help themselves.  The army was very efficient and had folded the box to save space.  Someone said " hey, there is writing on this one".  Someone else said "mine too".  She had written me a note in icing on the icing. I wonder what it said but maybe i'm lucky the other guys couldn't read it..

    We were married in September 1958 and soon had a child on the way that turned out to be twins. (Debbie and Donna).  They were born prematurely and we lost Donna.  Debbie spent her first two months in the hospital before we could taker home when she weighed 5 pounds.  I have often wondered how it would have been to have two Debbie's although I know they would have been individuals like all their other siblings. 

    My hitch was up in Sept 1959 and I left the army.  We bought a house in East point when I was a 21 year old adult and she was a mere child of 20.   Soon, we had another baby we were planning for (Janet).  It took five kids before we figured out what kept causing it.  After Janet was born somehow insurance agents, diaper services, and everyone would find out about the new addition.  Nancy got tired of answering the door for another insurance agent with his pre-planned spiel, and another one knocked on the door.  She snatched the door open and announced to him "I've just had a baby".  It threw him off of his script and he just stood there and stammered.

     We were known by our neighbors as "The little boy and girl on the corner".  I guess we were young compared to our neighbors.  Nancy had led a somewhat sheltered life before she met me and  had never had barbecue, fried okra, or real french fries that were fried and not baked, just to name a few .  (Come with me Luke and I will show you the dark side!)

    The Mormon missionaries paid a visit one day and asked her if she had ever heard of the Mormons?  She told them that there was a lot of rental property in the area and she didn't know them.  The were very nice about it.  

    I joined IBM in 62 and later we built a larger house in College Park.  There we had three more children ( Diane, Billy, and Wade.) and completed our family.  We bought our International Travelall and had room for everyone.  It was larger than the Chevy Suburban and had a strong resemblance to the "Family Truckster" on the family circus cartoon.  The kids promptly named it Annabelle.  The car had some bad habits in that many times when passing by a Dairy Queen, Nancy would yell "no Annabelle" and not be able to control it.  It would turn into the parking lot in spite of everything she could do.  The older kids knew better but all of them would yell "Go Annabelle".   Since they were there may as well get everybody an ice cream.  She coined many words our kids still use such as "Buggyboos" (Pancakes made in shapes), Foo-Foo's (Potato Chips).  A mini-Ha-Ha Lunch (She was out of something and had to use baby food or other substitute for lunch).  A polish egg roll (an egg salad sandwich on a hot dog bun that Wade didn't want when she called it an egg salad sandwich on a hot dog bun.)  Weird Willie (A bony piece of fried chicken).  Boknots (A biscuit made with the last small piece of dough that was twisted before baking.) 

TO BE CONTINUED

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Mark Twain 








     

     


     

    

WE GET A LITTLE LUXURY.

    Unless you just want to test a marriage, I don't recommend building a house while you live in it but it does give you more appreciation of what goes into it.  Nancy and I look back on it now and don't believe that it could be us that did all this.

    Our furniture was all stored in the basement after the house was dried in.  It was up on old shipping pallets to keep it off of the floor.  After the builder turned the house over to us we still had all the sheet rock, trim carpentry, Doors, fixtures, painting and finishing all woodwork to do inside and all landscape, large garden, clear land, orchard, etc. work to do outside.  We had saved up some vacation time for me to do more of the work but we contracted the rough electrical, heating, and plumbing out.

    We brought up our mattresses and put them on the floor with a few folding chairs and we moved into the house.  We had a temporary power pole up on the hill and I ran a temporary drop to the house with one bare light bulb that we hung from the upstairs ceiling in the 2 story high dining/ family room.  We did have a couple of drop cords to plug in power tools, radios, and such.  I had a pager supplied by IBM that had to be charged each night that I could now do inside.  I had been putting it in a plastic bag and plugging it into the temp power pole on top of the hill.  We even survived many months without any TV.

    The sheet rock was all leaned up against the wall and the trim lumber and door package was covering the center of the floor from the dining room to the family room wall with barely enough room to get around it.  This would get smaller as time went on but we still had some there until after Christmas.  We heated the house with the wood burning fireplace until after Christmas   Along with getting permanent power came lights in every room with real switches, a large attic fan, and even an infrared heater in the master bath.  Folks could get spoiled with all that luxury.

    After the well was in but the septic tank was not, we could have a real bath or shower with a temporary drain outside for a few days.  No toilets yet.  We didn't have inside doors up yet but by leaning up some sheet rock just right we could have some privacy.  Nancy took her candle and disappeared into the downstairs bath for a long time and left word that she was not to be disturbed.  Bless her heart, she deserved it.

    To get dressed you needed to stand on the mattress so your pants wouldn't get sheet rock dust on them.  We put the Christmas gifts in plastic bags under the small Christmas tree that we cut off of our land to keep the sheet rock dust off of them.  I was amazed that if you sand that stuff anywhere the dust immediately travels to every place in the house.  We eventually had a nice house but we didn't get the carpet installed until spring just before Debbie's wedding.  More on that later.

     Months after we had moved out of the camper I told Nancy that I needed a trailer to pull behind the tractor and she said, "No problem, just burn the canvas off of the camper".  No, she was not smiling.

Hint:  A trick that my Grandfather showed me is that there is no such thing as a bare spot in a real Christmas tree if you can cut off of more than one tree.  Take a drill and drill a hole where nature didn't put a limb and cut one to fit in the hole.  We did that for years.


Fredric Bastiat:
 “Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder 

into a whole system. In fact, this has already occurred. The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the 

expense of everyone else.”

FRED THE WONDER DOG.

Shame on me.  I can't find a good picture of Fred.

    We had a few dogs over the years but this one was special.  Fred was a "rescue" dog but in a different way.  He was a Border Collie mix and smarter than some folks that I have known.  No, actually, he was smarter than a lot of folks that I have known.  We looked for our place in the country for years and one day Nancy, Billy, Wade and I were on Martin Road in Hall County looking at land when we found Fred.  He had been tied up by someone with a cotton rope and it looked like he had chewed through it and escaped.  The stringy rope end was tangled up in some brush that was left when they cut wood of of the property and it looked like he had been there a while.  (Some people actually cut all the trees off of a piece of land and then put it up for sale.)  I think he may have been mistreated because he would not let me come close to him to free him but after talking to him for a while, and feeding him animal crackers, he finally calmed down and I got his rope loose from the brush.

     He was obviously thirsty so we went to a little country store and got him some water and a can of food.  By then we were all friends.  We had Fred in the back seat of our little 1973 Honda Civic with Billy and Wade.  The dog almost went from one side of the car to the other and was lying on the boys but they didn't seem to care. We drove up and down the road with Fred in the car and stopped at every house to see who owned him with no luck so he came home with us. 



    While we were living in the subdivision in College Park Fred would lay on the front porch and let anybody come to the door with no barking but after we moved to the sticks he became very protective.  I guess he thought that these fools are out here and it was up to him to protect us. 

    After we moved we put out water for him but we noticed that he didn't drink much.   Fred had long hair and went to the creek to cool off and  and he would drink water from the creek or spring.

    We called him our family dog but in truth he was Nancy's dog. If Nancy and I were sitting close together on the steps he would root himself between us.  I guess he was jealous of me or just wanted to be close to her.  I never worried about their safety while I was at work at night because I knew he would fight to the death for any of the family.

    He loved to lie in the cool loose dirt after we had run the tiller in the garden.  Nancy would let him lay there until we were ready to plant and then tell him he had to get out of the garden.  He would ignore the first request like he didn't hear it.  The second request he would grudgingly get up and go just to the edge of the tilled dirt and lay down again.  Nancy would ask him if he thought that he was out of the garden and he would finally get up and move out of the tilled dirt.  Just like a kid. 

   Nancy use to go for a daily walk on the road and she would not let Fred go with her because he would chase cars. She would leave and he would start to go with her and she would tell him, no, he had to stay home. He would go back and lay down just like a good dog until she got out of sight.  He would then slip off into the woods and stay out of sight, he thought, and go with her all the way while staying in the woods.  I'm sure that if Nancy had ever needed protection that he would have quickly appeared.  At one point she was walking 5 miles a day.  You would see Fred come back and lie where he was when she left and then she would be coming down the driveway.  Had she been able to ask him I'm sure that he would have said that he had been right there the whole time and ask her if she had a good walk.

    Nancy would take him with her in the Travelall station wagon whenever she could.  The Travelall was larger than the Chevy Suburban and had a large area behind the back seat.  She would tell him to stay in the back and he would until she was out of sight and then he would get in the drivers seat and stay there till she returned.  She would ask him where he was suppose to be and he would climb into the back seat like that was where he should ride.  She would again ask him where he was suppose to be and he would finally climb into the back.

   A stray border collie female showed up one day and Fred had a wife.  We hoped for some little Fred's but it never happened. We lost Fred years ago but we still miss him.

Home Scoolin Time:

Frederic Bastiat was a French economist who lived in the first half of the 18th century.  His pamphlet "The Law" is as true now as it was then and is highly recommended reading.  It is only 107 pages and is free many places on the web.  The link below is to the PDF download.

http://www.fee.org/files/doclib/20121116_TheLaw.pdf



    

MORE EARLY DAYS

Billy, Janet, Diane, Debbie, and Wade.

     I could call this picture the "Cast of Characters" because they were, and still are, ... Characters.  All were brought up in the same house, with the same parents and yet each is a totally different person.  I will leave it to the sociologists to decide why, but it was, and is still an interesting group.  They do share many of the same traits.  

Nancy on the tractor.  We were clearing for the orchard.

    I don't know how I got off on this except to say that they accepted our move to the country and the hardships that came with it with a minimum of complaints. My wife, bless her was GREAT and gave up a comfortable home in a subdivision with running water, electricity, heat, attic fan, TV, clothes washer and dryer, refrigerator and freezer, stove, sink, cabinets, etc.....  I could go on and on about what a great sport she was.  (Although she didn't have to do any no more vacuuming for months).

   Ruth and Charles let us put a jug of milk in their freezer and we would get it each day and thaw it out enough for breakfast and then put it back in their freezer.  Nancy cooked on a coleman gasoline stove and we used a cooler.  We washed at a coin laundry about 10 miles away and managed to get by without much trouble.

     We had first moved into our canvas palace and I hadn't hooked up our water hose shower yet.  Late one afternoon while I was at work, Nancy discovered that the two boys had decided that they were on the wild frontier so they would be "Indians".   They were wearing shorts so there was a lot of exposed skin.  They used charcoal sticks from the campfire pit and red mud from the nearest puddle to put on their "war paint".  I never saw it but they must have done a good job of applying the "paint" even to their backs.  She grabbed a bar of soap and marched them down to the creek at sundown for a bath.  Don't worry, she used bio-degradable ivory soap.  The guys thought that it was all great fun.

Duncan creek bath tub.

Okay, Home Schoolin time!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0FJhOMc-vA

The EARLY DAYS

    I have to apologize for these pictures.  They are from an old 8 millimeter movie film that was shown on the wall and videotaped by an early VHS camera and later copied from tape onto a DVD and then had snapshots cut out with "Print Screen" and pasted into a JPG program.

    I had chosen the path for the driveway and cut down the trees.  This picture is the grader making the driveway.  After it was graded we had gravel spread on it a few inches deep.  Guess what?  Gravel just sinks into the dirt for a long time before you see that some of it is staying on top.  After we were living, er, ... camping in the house we had a lot of rain and Nancy said that she would run away from home if she thought she wouldn't get stuck on the driveway.

I was outstanding in my field.

    This picture is Charles Mitchell and I.  Charles and Ruth were our next door neighbors that supplied us with water from their faucet for a few months until we got the well in and power run to the house.


   This was our home for a couple of months.  We had an Apache tent camper with an added room and a separate dining fly.  The area under cover was 16' x 16' in the camper and add-a-room.  I had built a kitchen unit that had a small sink and some counter top space.

   We had a garden planted before we had a driveway or a house.  This is Nancy one day when we had come up to work in the garden.

   When we were tilling the garden area we had a problem with our tiller and we were going to lose the day of planting.  I was cutting down the trees for the driveway to be graded and the grading guy was due the next day so I didn't have time to spare.  Charles and Ruth were there and he said that he thought he could help.

   Well, later I came back out of the woods and Charles was seated on his lawn mower.  He had an old plow that was meant to be pulled behind a mule hung on the back of it.  The engine was revved up and the small driving wheels were throwing dirt out behind all over Nancy who was pushing on the handles of the plow with no success.  I was standing there laughing at the sight when she said "I think I could push it if I didn't have to push Charles too."

When I thought about a Blog...

     When I thought about doing a blog I asked myself if I had any knowledge that the world could not do without and the answer was, ...well, no.  I then asked myself if I had enough boring stories to fill up a lot of space and the answer was, ...YES!  So here it is, such as it is.

     I guess this will be a sort of introduction although the only people who read this will
probably be my family and they have probably already heard or lived it all. These
BLOGS will be of my remembering things and some non-politically-correct comments
on the sorry state of what our Federal Government has become.


PIONEERING AIN'T DEAD

     I am going to start in May, 1977 when we moved to Hall County on 19.5 acres of raw
land that we had bought for our move to the country. We had 5 children but the oldest,
Debbie, was about to get married. More about that later. We had contracted for our new
house to be built but we were to finish the inside. Our old house in College Park, GA was
sold and we had to move before the new house was even dried in.

     Lucky that we had a tent camper and we camped out there for 6-8 weeks until the house

was basically livable We did have running water from our neighbors outside faucet through
a black PVC pipe hundreds of feet long. We had a warm/hot shower if you took the shower
while the sun was out and were quick about it. I went to work for IBM every day wearing a
suit, white shirt, and tie since I had volunteered for 2nd shift at the time and would get
dressed in the afternoon. The shower was right next to the driveway and was only a sprayer
with the "enclosure" consisting of black plastic sheet and a floor made from a shipping pallet.
The girls had to duck down when the tall concrete and lumber trucks went by to preserve their
modesty.

     We learned of the joys of a privy that was a wooden box that I built with a hole cut in the top

and sitting over a hole that I dug and more black plastic wrapped around some trees. Talk
about an outdoor experience. The privy was just a short walk through the woods from our
temporary canvas home.

     When we move to the country, we really move to the country. We were in the middle and
about the same distance from Oakwood, Buford, and Winder, GA. We had to go at least
10 miles to get the weeks groceries although there was a gas station mini-mart place only
a few miles away that even had an Atlanta telephone. Our driveway was over 1700 feet long
with the house being built at the end of it. Just down the hill from the house was a small
spring and Duncan Creek was the back property line of our land. The valley by the creek
was filled with Mountain Laurel and was a real picture in the spring of the year. A small
waterfall running over a rock shelf poured into a small pool that the kids loved to play in. The 

creek was a nice size creek with an old mill site on our land. One of the mill stones
was still there and the remains of the old wagon road that served to bring the corn to the mill
was still visible. Also the remains of an old moonshine still was near the creek.

    Our oldest son got off of the school bus and announced that the kids on the bus didn't

believe that we were living in a tent! I just knew that D.E.F.A.C.S. would soon be paying us a visit
and try to take our kids away but I guess nobody believed it because we never heard anymore about it.  

 I think that our kids were fortunate to have had a taste of being pioneers for a short while and living in the country.


That ain't all. More Later......