During the occupation of Japan, we had visited Aomori, Yokohama, Yokosuka, Tokyo, and Sasebo. Then we exploded mines behind mine sweepers off the Pescadores Islands and visited Shanghai for Christmas in 1945.  The crew of  the Lucky Eleven went our separate ways from Sasebo, Japan, in early 1946.   A few stayed aboard the ship a while longer, and some new members were assigned to help bring her  back to the States.  I went to the Philippines on PGM 13 and took a flight with Creekmur and Borsch to Neilson Field at Manila.  From there I sailed in LCI 464 to Cavite and on to Subic Naval Base.  Then aboard Santa Monica,  I went by Samar and Guam to San Francisco. I left San Francisco on my birthday, April 8th, and arrived at Charleston, South Carolina, on April 13th. I had a physical exam on Sunday and was discharged and went home on Monday, April the 15th.

Shipmate George Blasius stayed with LCS (3) 11 to her final port, and below he summarizes the ship’s activities in 1946:

Left Shanghai, China, at 0940 on the 3rd of January;
Arrived at Sasebo, Kyushu, Japan, at 2000 on the 5th of January;
(Throughout the entire mine-sweeping operation in this period,
            we sank 3 mines, and 4 buoys)
Detached from Mine Pack at 830 on 21st of January; 
Left Sasebo, Japan, at 1400 on the 25th of January;
Arrived  at 1930 on 31st of  January at Saipan, Mariana Islands;
Left Saipan  at 1745 on 9th of February;
Arrived at 0815 at Eniwetok, Atoll,  Marshall Islands, on 16th of February;
Left at 0715 Eniwetok  on 17th of  February;
Arrived at Pearl Harbor, Hawaiian Islands, on 28th of February;
Left Pearl on 21st of March;
Arrived San Francisco, California, on March 30th.

At San Francisco George Blasius was transferred from the ship on the 16th of April to  Treasure Island.  Next he traveled to the Great Lakes Base, Illinois, where he arrived April the 23rd.   He was discharged from the Navy on April 28, 1946.

Some crew  members joined the ship and served just long enough to help bring her back to the States.  Gerald “Jerry” Hoye  writes in a letter:  “my assignment on the USS LCS 11 was very brief.  In February and March of 1946 I had enough points to be discharged, and I was transferred to the LCS 11 for a voyage home from Sasebo, Japan.  I remember it was a long, long, long trip with many engine breakdowns on the way.  For a period of several days, the sea was absolutely calm, flat as a mirror.    We arrived at San Francisco on April 1, 1946.  I’ve never forgotten seeing the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge appearing above the cloud and fog bank.  I had a hard time believing I had actually survived the war.”

Paul Weir, Scotty Rogers, Kellogg, and I among others, were transferred to different ships at Sasebo, Japan.  Scotty, a quartermaster from the Lucky Eleven, went aboard  PGM 22 which was bound for Hawaii.  Scotty says, “I remember I conned the captain into not making me stand watch by agreeing to take morning and evening position sights.  Paul Weir would come down and wake me an hour before sun-up, and when I’d dressed and put on my shoes, he would tell me it was raining and there were no stars visible.”  Scotty adds,

I remember I spent the whole trip playing cribbage in the engine room with the chief motor mac.  I seem to remember Paul Weir and Reginald Hill swinging baseball bats trying to kill rats in the officer’s cabin;  and I remember Knock-about and me squirting bug spray.  Boy, that ship was dirty!

Paul  recounts  that he left Sasebo on a PGM but that he didn’t know which one it was. Scotty Rogers replied that the PGM was number 22.  That puts Kellogg, Rogers, and Weir on the same ship destined for Hawaii. Weir says,  “We left  Sasebo, Japan, on that PGM at flank speed” and remembers his trip to Hawaii and  the States this way:

We traveled alone for a while.  But that didn’t last too long as we got orders to escort a crippled APD to Pearl.  The skipper of the APD outranked our skipper, and we toured the Pacific Ocean while he took pictures for a book he was going to write.  I recall Gunter was a cook on there.  The range broke; it was over-worked, and I don’t remember how many days we ate corn beef hash. We finally arrived at Pearl.  A few days out of port our skipper decided that the PGM should be sharp when it got to Pearl.  The Bosun broke out the paint and everything that went with it and ordered all hands to turn to.  All that happened was that the ocean depth rose from all that paint,  hammers, and so forth, that went overboard.  Seeing no progress, the skipper asked Boats [the Bosun] what was wrong, and Boats told him all hands were petty officers going home for discharge and couldn’t care less about the ship.  Upon arrival at Pearl, the skipper went ashore and got replacements for all hands.  We didn’t spend a night in the outgoing unit.  We flew out that night on a C-54 for San Francisco. Because of weight limits, I left all my souvenirs there and took just a suitcase.

LCS 11 went to San Francisco to be decommissioned, arriving at the end of March.  The deck log for Saturday, March 30, 1946, reports in the midnight-to-0400 watch, signed by B. B. Vedder, Jr., that the ship was underway in formation 500 yards to port of APC 27, the guide ship for the formation.  LCS (L) 17 was 500 yards astern of LCS 11.  How about that!  LCS 17 was the ship I lived aboard for several days at Aomori without its skipper and my own skipper knowing about it.  The 0800 to 1200 watch says: “Underway on various courses and speeds entering San Francisco Harbor.”  And finally at 1245  LCS 11 “Moored  starboard to LCS (L) 16” in Anchorage 6-3.

On Tuesday April the 2nd twenty men were transferred off LCS 11 to the US Naval Receiving Station at Treasure Island for discharge.  Gerald Hoye was in that group that included the LCS 11 regulars Sidney Darion, Elmer Jensen, Everitt L. Terwilliger and George Robert Waldron.   The next day, ten more were transferred off.  Among them were Dewey Fussell and James E. Hayes.

LCS 11 reached San Franciso under the command of Walter Cameron.  He was the second skipper of the ship, having been moved up from executive officer when White took command of Group 8 in the fall of 1945 at Sasebo.  It’s fair to say that Cameron did not put as much of a barrier between himself and the crew as White had done as skipper.  Darion remembers “leaning over the bow rail one evening while Skipper Cameron told me about his experiences in Normandy.  I was amazed that he could be moved from one active war theater to another so quickly.  I also remember having very good feelings about him as our C. O.  There were no airs or bullshit about him.  He was a friendly, competent commander who got our respect without a sledge hammer.  I know I felt comfortable with him on the bridge.”

Other officers still aboard the Eleven when she got to San Francisco were Vedder, Henry, and Kehrwald.  Some enterprising  photographer took a picture of  LCS ll  as she came into San Francisco Bay.  About that photograph  Mr. Vedder says, “You’ll note at least one hose hanging over the side discharging water, an example of the many mechanical failures the Eleven suffered on the long voyage home.”

By April 15, 1946, most of us were civilians again. We sent each other Christmas cards for a while and then we drifted away. Fortunately, while we were at Shanghai, Sid Darion and Willis Rogers thought of writing and distributing a "yearbook" of our crew.  Sid, one of the really good writers in our crew, wrote the following about the log:

The war over and time on our hands in Shanghai, Scotty and I got the idea for writing a ship’s log something like the graduation books we got in high school.  We got enthusiastic support from the communications gang and out came that booklet with everybody’s name and address and a paragraph about each of the crew members.  Scotty and I spent long and happy days and nights putting that together.  I’m amazed at the quality when I look at it today.

As an example of the paragraphs written about crew members, here is what the Log says about Ernest G. Kupfer, EM 1/c our electrician story-teller from Cleveland, Ohio: “The Old Man was always ready with a sea story, and he’d split a pint with anybody. Always popular, Kup was respected as an electrician who really knew his job. He was always ready for a spot of tea in the evening, and anyone who thought Kup was really old, changed his mind if he happened to be in the passageway when the Old Man made one of his famous dashes for the generator room.”

The mast-head page shows that Sid and Scotty wrote most of the text for the 42-page Log;  Bob Faller and Jim “Spanky” Creekmur did the art work;  Chuck Hammond, Junior Dennis, Lawrence Smith, and Curtis Pace typed and produced  it.  We used stencils and a mimeograph machine. The Lucky Eleven Log  (or as it has sometimes been called The Shanghai Log) was to be a great help to me when I began to search for members of the crew on June 26, 1987.

The value of our experiences together on the ship through the war is remarkable.  It may partly be explained by the intensity of sharing life-threatening dangers and of living in close proximity to each other.  We grew to depend on one another in times of danger and became good friends in times of recreation.  In the process, our days together took on  a large importance in our lives. Our reunions forty-odd years later confirm that. As Blair Vedder put it, “The crew of the Eleven is one of the finest, friendliest groups of people I’ve ever had the luck to be associated with.  The  experience on that rust bucket created an amazing family.”

     ________________________________________________                    

                 THE BOOK IS AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON.COM

Here at Johnson Brothers Truckers we have several dogs that are turned loose in the fenced area around the warehouse at night to keep intruders out.  This morning I heard them barking from their pens.  Their “Boo, woo, woo, wah” reminded me of cold sunny winter days near Christmas down on my father’s farm in Rowan County many years ago.  I suppose the dogs I remember are the ones owned by Frank Wright—or maybe Uncle Phar Litaker— down near Enochville School.  I could hear them those miles away because sounds really carry a long way on clear crisp mornings.

On this date each year, December 21st, the sun reaches its farthest point to the South, making this the shortest day of the year, the day when winter officially begins.  I have noted often before that it is difficult to judge the hour of the day by the sun when it is so far south.  This phenomenon helped to make Christmas mystical for me in my childhood years.  I would hear shouts, babies crying, and other familiar sounds from nearby farms, giving me a feeling of belonging to a community whose members were anticipating Christmas Day with all its celebrations and festivals honoring the birth of Christ.

I was thinking along these lines early this morning, and I pulled out my diary for 1942 from its resting place.  I read it and reflected on our feelings, fears, and hopes of those war years.    I was an eleventh-grade student at Landis High School and drove school bus No. 69.  On December the tenth, another student bus driver, Richard London, was ill, so I took a load of his students in my bus after taking my regular load to school.

Thursday, December 10, 1942
Today was cloudy and fairly cold.  Richard London has the mumps so I went and got his first load.  We had military tactics out in the yard today.  We did mostly reviewing for our exams which start tomorrow.  I am getting along fine in typing.  When I got home, I cut wood and tonight we went down to Mr. F. H. Kerr to practice for choir singing Sunday at the church.  Uncle Phar came up and got a Christmas tree [a cedar tree from our farm].

Friday, December 11, 1942
Today was clear and cold early this morning but soon clouded up and the wind blew and it rained some this evening.  I took an exam in physics which was pretty hard, but we only had an oral test in chemistry.  NEWS   Hubert Smith left for his camp at 9 o’clock tonight.  Ray and Billie didn’t come up tonight.

Saturday, December 12, 1942
Today was clear and cold.  It was foggy early this morning.  I took Daddy down to Uncle Phar’s and they went rabbit hunting.  I took Mama and Violet Mae to Kannapolis to do some shopping.  I paid the piano payment and bought me several things for Christmas.  I bought me a 71 cent pocket knife.  I also bought me a white shirt and some 10-cent books at the dime store and also some black shoe polish.  Our fire crackers came this evening that our club ordered Monday.

Sunday, December 13, 1942
Today was cloudy and windy and pretty cold.  We had church as usual.  We drew names to give each other gifts.  This evening we practiced our Christmas play at church.  Mr. Hugh Yost and a fellow named Johnson had a car wreck down at the forks [Saw Road and Enochville Ave].  Mr. Yost’s wife’s head went thru the windshield.   The cars were damaged only slightly.

Monday, December 14, 1942
Today was cold and cloudy.  Lois Outen has just gotten over the mumps and Carl Outen has them today.   I made 93 on my physics exam and around a 100 on my chemistry exam.  Mr. Frank Overcash came up this evening and we went to get him a Christmas tree.   Ray and Bill came up and we divided out the fire crackers.  We got around 275 fire crackers a piece.  It cost us 50 cents a piece.  Wayne Deal pulled me off this morning [my bus wouldn't start, a common occurrence because all motor vehicles used 6-volt electrical systems at the time].

Tuesday, December 15, 1942
Today was clear and cold.  The sun shone bright for the first time in a long time today.  Hugh Brown ran out of gas this morning and I took his load the rest of the way to school.  No. 3 broke down and I had to get his last load.  I made 98 on my typing exam and would have made 99 if  I had told how to type a V instead of U.  I cut fire wood this evening when I got home.

Wednesday, December 16, 1942
Today was cloudy and rainy this morning.  I burned my lights on the bus this morn.  It was the darkest morning I have seen this late.  About 11:30 it began to SNOW and I mean snow.  The ground was wet and it wouldn’t lay.  We had chapel and saw a few skits of the senior play, “Miss Smarty.”  It began to lay about 1:30 and we went home.  About the time we got home it quit snowing.  We cut and hauled a few loads of wood.

Thursday, December 17, 1942
Today was clear and cold.  The snow is frozen very hard.  I couldn’t get my bus started this morning, until Andrew and Gene and several others of the boys came over and helped push it off.  I didn’t get started until 5 til nine and school starts at nine.  We had a picture show at school, “Arizona Bound.”  I didn’t see it because I was so late.  This evening I went over by Uncle Clyde’s to Herman Ritchie’s and went to see the senior play.  It was very fine.

Friday, December 18, 1942
Today was clear and warmer.  We had a bus drivers meeting this morning.  We are to eliminate all stops under 1/4 mile apart.  We got out of school at 12 o’clock.  I cut fire wood this evening.  The gas situation is very critical.  An order was sent out [at] noon today that no gasoline could be bought unless the tank of your container is less than 3 gallons.  Only for emergencies and sickness can more gas be bought.  I don’t quite understand it.  We got out of school for our Christmas vacation today.  We will go back on Jan. 4.

Saturday, December 19, 1942
Today was clear and fairly cold.  Daddy went hunting this morning with Uncle Phar.  Jackie, Paul, and I cut some wood and hauled it.  This evening we went to town.  I bought a gift for a boy in my Sunday School class.  I bought 2 cakes for tomorrow’s dinner.   They cost 19 cents apiece.  Some cost as high as $3.05 apiece.  I bought 1 lb. of pecans at 29 cents.

Sunday, December 20, 1942
Today was cloudy and cold.  A damp cutting wind is coming from the north.  I look for it to begin snowing long before dinner.  We went to church and came home and ate dinner and when we started back for practice of our Christmas play, it began to sleet.  It sleeted for 30 minutes or more then the sun came out, but it was so cold the sleet didn’t hardly melt.  There is still some snow left from Wednesday’s snow.  We went to Uncle Will’s church to the Christmas play at old Bethpage.

Monday, December 21, 1942
Today was clear and cold, very very cold.  The temperature at 11 o’clock was 12 degrees.  Last night and early this morning it was right around 0.   It was 11:30 before we got the pump thawed up. [The well at the back porch of our house had  a hand pump for getting  water].    We cut firewood this evening.  It really is cold weather.    NEWS  The Allies are doing fine in North Africa.  We have almost complete control of the Solomons.  The British have invaded Burma.  Grady Bost (former school bus driver at Landis) was wounded in New Guinea near Australia.

Tuesday, December 22, 1942 
Today was clear and cold part of the day but foggy and hazy the rest of the day.  I stayed around the house and in the house most of the day.  It was really cold.  NEWS We got a long letter from Uncle Dannie [Mama's brother in the Navy] who is in New Caledonia near Australia.  Duane is starting to get over his mumps and Bruce is taking them.

Wednesday, December 23, 1942
Today was foggy and cold in the morning with ice on the ground from last night’s rain which froze.  Andrew Smith and I went rabbit hunting this morning.  I got 1 rabbit.  Ray & Bill and I went down to the Church.  Cousin Claude took us down [to the church] in his wagon in which we took a Christmas tree and some cedar decorations.  Ernest, Gene, Carl, and all went down to the creek; we really shot fire crackers. 

Thursday, December 24, 1942
Today was foggy early in the morning.  I took Daddy down to Uncle Pharr’s and brought the car back and Mama and I went to Kannapolis.  I bought me a Hohner’s harmonica, the finest in the world.  It is in the key of D.  I also bought one in the key of C, a Sanglind harmonica.  I bought some nuts and other things.  I also bought a cake and a new Reader’s Digest.  I went rabbit hunting but didn’t get any.  I went with Ernest and Carl.  We shot firecrackers this evening.

Friday, December 25, 1942
Today was cloudy and rainy.  Most of the little ones got up so early there wasn’t much sleep for me.  Jackie got his bugle and I got a pair of socks and a new diary for next year, also the 2 new harmonicas.  I ate nuts, candy and cake all day.  It rained as Ernest, Gene, Jackie, and I played Parcheesi.  We went squirrel hunting and I got one squirrel.  This evening I got a tie at the church; this was in my class where we exchanged names.  We had our Christmas play.  It was very fine.  Bruce has the mumps today.

Saturday, December 26, 1942
Today was fairly cold and cloudy.  Daddy went rabbit hunting today.  We at home played games this morning and cut wood this evening and hauled one load of sand from the creek to put at the back door step.  I listened to the radio this evening.  NEWS  I haven’t heard of a ship sinking off the coast for over a month.  Admiral Darlan was assassinated Christmas eve.  He had gone to Africa to join with the Allies, but he still didn’t have much favor with everyone.  He would have been beaten in the forthcoming election anyway.

Sunday, December 27, 1942
Today was cloudy, misty and cold.  The sun hasn’t shone since Thursday.  We went to church as usual.  We had communion at church today.  This evening we played Parcheesi, we played six games.  Ernest, myself and Jackie and Gene made up the teams.  NEWS Our Lone Wolf Patrol joined the Open Road Pioneers Club and became the Lone Wolf Chapter.   I received my Wilderness Trail book on Christmas Eve night.

I clearly remember cutting wood and how my brother Jack kept blowing the bugle over and over between pulling the cross-cut saw and splitting the blocks.  I found my diary for 1942 so interesting that I almost forgot about the Christmas-only aspect.  For instance, my diary says that on Feb. 21, 1942, the Gem Theatre in Kannapolis burned down.  On March 1 Concordia Church burned down.  Grandpa Horne was scheduled to come from Florida to visit us but Sunday, Sept. 13 entry says, “Grandpa didn’t come today because of financial difficulties.”  Then on Sept. 16, “John Payne, Jane Wyman, and Jinx Faulkenberg arrived in Kannapolis a little after 10 o’clock today and sold war bonds.”
    Well, to get back to Christmas, I think the 1935 Christmas is the first one I can remember well, and that is when Mom went to Florida with Uncle Earl and family, and Dad kept me and my brothers at the farm.  That year it snowed before Christmas, and there are some pictures of us made some time that season.  I remember the cows got loose and made some tracks in the snow near the front porch, and Dad speculated to some of my younger brothers whether these were Santa Claus’ reindeer tracks on Christmas morning.  I remember that year I got a baseball glove, and we pitched some ball in the snow.

One thing about Mom and Dad at Christmas, if they possibly could, they made sure we had some special things to eat.  Our “brown bags” always contained an orange, apple, pecans, brazil nuts, English walnuts, and some of that colorful hard candy or candy sticks.

Dad always had a special feeling for the farm animals at Christmas time.  I remember we took pitchforks and raked up pine needles and leaves especially to make the hogs a warmer place to bed down.   And Dad would give the horses and cows an extra Karo syrup can of ground feed on Christmas Eve night.  This feed had molasses in it and even smelled like a Christmas treat.  He would also put some extra pine boughs over the cracks around the hog pens, or give the horses some oats.

And Mama—I don’t know how she worked in the dark.  But I remember lying awake in the dark in the middle room and listening to her sort out the various brown paper sacks that were set aside for each of us near the fire place, before the bathroom was built there.  After hearing the whispering she did to Mack, and the crackling of paper and bumping around, I would go to sleep with a smile on my face, knowing that in the morning about 5 a.m. I would hear more crackling sounds as Bruce, or Duane, or Carol and the others began to try to find their Santa Claus sack, and finally Mom would light the lamp and build up the fire in the fireplace, and I would begin to hear the sounds of harmonicas, bells, ukeleles, cap busters, or squeals as the entire household joined in the happiness of Christmas morning.  Then Jack, Paul, and I would run down the road toward Uncle Will’s shooting firecrackers, to be met by Ernest, Gene, and Carl.

Mom could take blackberries and walnuts and make the finest tasting fruit cake you ever tasted.  The blackberry juice made it more moist than Claxton or Benson fruit cakes.  I remember very clearly the morning Mom tried to get breakfast while Jack serenaded us with his new ukelele.

And in those days before electricity came to our house, it really was “Silent Night, Holy Night.”  I remember that I had to walk all the way around Claude Smith’s house to see the pale light of a  kerosene lamp glowing from the front room window and know that someone was still up.  When everyone was in bed, there wasn’t any night light, except the moon.  Even the fire in the fireplace was allowed to die down, unless you happened to have a very safe fire screen which most of us did not.   
                                                                                        Merry Christmas,    LBS.

Christmas was one of the powerful experiences of my childhood.  These joyous times surely must have been just a few years about the time I was ten. But in memory the years are numerous.  Waiting for that special season kept me and my brothers counting days and hours through December.

Of course, in school the decorations going up, the singing of Christmas carols, and the drawing of names for exchanging gifts among classmates added to the excitement of the season and whetted my appetite for the big day when I could open my gifts from Santa Claus. Beginning about the middle of December,  Dad would bring home treats like oranges and nuts.  On Christmas eve we usually went with family to services at Saint Enoch Church and sometimes participated in the pageant.

When I got to bed on Christmas eve, sleep came suddenly even as I was thinking I would never fall asleep.  And the next thing I knew, one of my brothers would be whispering that it was time to get up.  Or I would hear someone already stirring in the front room below where we always set up our tree.  Mom would urge us not to get up until a wood fire was burning in the heater.

We came blurry-eyed and half-dressed down the stairs, but soon we were wide awake. Then we were unable to heed any call except that of the brown paper bags arrayed on the floor around the tree.  These had been filled and placed there mysteriously during the night.  We were cold but could not find time to put on warm clothes; we needed to go to the bathroom but procrastinated until we danced about the room with our legs crossed, examining the toys and snacking on candy.  Then before it was fully daylight, we were outside, testing our new cap-busters or BB-guns.

              Ray Outen,  Kearney Smith, Kenneth Smith,    

                   and   Danny Smith  with  Cerberus

One of Dad’s favorite snacks in winter was baked sweet potatoes. He usually took a couple of them with him when he went out on the first hunt of the morning. Hunting season usually opened on Thanksgiving day for the game we hunted: rabbits. Squirrel hunting season opened earlier as a rule, around the first of September, and so did dove season. But rabbit hunting offered the best sport for Thanksgiving.

In the 1940′s Uncle Phar Litaker came to our farm to hunt on Thanksgiving day and other days through the winter when he was on a holiday or on vacation from his job in Cannon Mills. He brought his beagles in a dog box in the trunk of his tan 1940 Chevrolet. On the coldest mornings he came into the front room, warmed himself by the wood heater, and recounted earlier hunting trips he had taken with my Dad. These hunting adventures had occurred at our farm or on some other farm belonging to one of their friends. Uncle Phar smoked Camel cigarettes one after another as he talked. The smell of cigarette smoke was a sign that we had a visitor since none of us smoked. He usually came early, even before breakfast, and while he waited for us to eat, he would have coffee with cigarettes.

Finally Dad and the boys old enough to hunt would gather in the front room to finish putting on warm clothes and boots if the weather was really bad. At these times Uncle Phar began telling the stories of former hunts. Some of the hunts that he remembered were as far back as when he and my Dad were boys. He didn’t know the names of me and my brothers, maybe because there were too many of us to keep track of. So at times in his narratives he would point at one of us and say, “I wasn’t much bigger than that boy over there.”

“Remember, that time, Mack,” he would start, “we was over at Em Butler’s and had just two dogs, that little bitch-dog that was such a good jump dog. We had just started out and she was in the creek. . . .” The stories typically stressed an unusual or remarkable fact and often ended with laughter and some such expression as “That beat anything I ever saw!” The circumstances of a hunt that made it memorable and worth recounting could be the number of rabbits found in one field or the jumping of two rabbits at once. One of the stories that I remember was of a squirrel that– in attempting to jump from one tree to another– impaled itself on a sharp snag sticking out of the second tree. Dad usually didn’t say much at these times but laughed and acknowledged that he remembered the hunt Uncle Phar was describing.

There were particular rounds we made when hunting on and near our farm. One was to begin by going directly to the front of the house, across what is now Campbell Road and by walking the field on the far side of the apple trees. If the field had grown up during the late summer and fall, it was an especially good place to stir up a rabbit. If Uncle Phar was with us, we followed his beagles through the fields; if not, we examined each clump of straw or growth for a sitting rabbit. Then we angled south toward Uncle Will Allman’s pasture where certain gullies in the woods seemed to be favorite places for generations of rabbits to sit (we said “set”). We walked through these woods at a little distance from each other, and in one of these ditches, invariably it seems, we would hear Dad say softly, “There’s one over here against that maple.” If we wanted the meat, one of us with a twenty-two rifle would come abreast of Dad, who would point out the sitting rabbit. The animal is so well camouflaged that its eye was the first thing one was likely to see.

The rifle usually did the work, but those with shotguns stood ready in case the rifleman missed and the rabbit jumped up and ran. If we were hunting with beagles and were willing to risk losing the game, we jumped the rabbit and allowed the dogs to bring the rabbit around. Hearing the dogs run is one of the pleasures of the hunt. When being chased by dogs, a rabbit will instinctively run about a half-mile circle and, in doing so, return to the spot where it jumped. Maybe that’s the rabbit’s way to throw the dogs off his track– by crossing his own trail. Anyway, the hunters place themselves strategically in the best spot to see and shoot the rabbit when he makes that second appearance.
After searching the gullies of Uncle Will Allman’s pasture, we crossed over to Loyd Goodnight’s farm and hunted the open fields. Dad called this the Henry Smith place because that’s how it was known when he was a young man. Next we circled down by Outen’s farm before returning to the house. Sometimes we hunted the woods on the hill above Johnson’s shack which was a hay barn standing by the creek opposite the Ben Ewing and Kurt Herlocker farm. The abrupt hill behind this shack was cleared and had been under cultivation some years earlier although when we hunted there, weeds and scrub had grown up.

I remember one occasion when I sat with Dad at the top of that hill and looked down on the junction of the two creeks. One stream flowed from our farm pasture and by Uncle Clyde’s house. The other was the creek that began in Uncle Will Allman’s pasture and flowed through Uncle Will Outen’s pasture. The latter creek was the one we dammed in summer for our swimming hole. The two streams join in front of Johnson’s shack. As I sat there with Dad on this particular occasion, he told me about how his brothers and sisters and he rode down that steep hill on homemade snow sleds. He remembered on one occasion that one of his sisters–Aunt Ruth– rode the sled right into the creek and was scratched up going through the briar thickets that grew along the bank.

This typical round of hunting on Thanksgiving morning would usually take two or three hours depending on how good the hunting was. If it took most of the morning, we had dinner (the noon meal) before going out again. Another round that we made was to go down by our barn to our creek and cross the Upperside and hunt through the woods down to Ritchie’s bottom. Hunting along that creek was good sport when we had a good jump dog—that is, one that would go down into the creek and search the brush and thickets along its bank. We walked slowly along the banks on either side, allowing the dog or dogs to sniff out any hapless rabbit that had settled there the night before. When we heard the first yelps of the dog, we grew alert for a sign of the rabbit moving through the tangle of weeds and bushes on the creek bank. And almost invariably the rabbit came out one side of the creek or the other and ran across the open bottom. This run, most often toward the wooded hill, gave the hunters on that side of the creek a clear field of fire.

The Richie creek and bottom must have provided good rabbit hunting for years before I came along because Dad told of hunting there when he was a boy about ten years old. The following account was recorded on tape by Duane in 1962 when Dad was recalling an old double- barreled shotgun that had belonged to Uncle Will Allman:

It’s about the first breech-loading shotgun ever made. It had a lever under there, t’push and pull to breech and unbreech it. I shot the thing. One time–I was just a boy, I don’t know how old, I carried it huntin’. Walter Rodgers, Uncle Howard, and several others were livin’ over here at the Deal place and several of them went rabbit huntin’. I think it was Thanksgivin’ or some time pretty close to Thanksgivin’. And goin’ up the bottom over there at Richie’s–Richie’s bottom right there beside of the woods. I was walkin’ along the edge of the woods, and I saw a rabbit settin’ beside of a sweetgum, y’know. And–I just–instead of jumping it or shootin’ it–I just walked around behind the tree. I didn’t care if it did get up–I just reached my foot around and set my foot on it, y’know. The thing set there and I picked it up. Walter Rodgers–he always talked funny–and he said, “Aye dod, next time I go rabbit huntin’ w’you, you’ll hafta leave at ol’ dun at home. You don hafta do nuthin only go pick em up.” Oh lawd, they just laughed–tickled all of ‘em.

Dad continued to put his foot on or otherwise catch rabbits in their beds thoughout his life. When he no longer caught them himself he pointed them out for us to catch. During World War II and for a period up to about 1955, the family hunted to supplement food for our table. Hunting was not just going out to shoot. Dad’s skill at catching a rabbit in its bed was the economical way to get the meat. In fact, we usually carried only a few cartridges for the rifles or a few shells for the shotguns in those days. If we went out and saw nothing, we brought the ammunition home and laid it back on the Middle-room shelf.

Uncle Will was my Grandmother’s brother. He had several children. Maggie married Howard Rumple, and Scott was killed in a shooting accident when he was about twelve. Emma married Leroy Wilcox. Another daughter, Bertie, lived with her parents until their deaths. I don’t know whether she ever married.  Uncle Will’s two sons who were left after Scott’s death, Jim and Dan, helped their Dad do farm work. Dan was unmarried and, like Bertie, lived with his parents.

I remember Jim and Dan coming with their father to cut firewood for us. My Dad and my older brothers cut poles and stacked them above the barn under the horse apple tree in preparation for the visit of Uncle Will and his cut-off saw. It was a circular saw mounted on the back of an old truck which I believe was a T-Model Ford. As I recall, the saw was powered by a one- cylinder engine. Dan loved to tinker with machinery, and this rig was probably one of his inventions. He was in his thirties when the Allmans lived near us.

Dan drove an H Farmall tractor on his father’s farm and also did work for other farmers in the vicinity. One of these jobs was with the combine. My guess is that the name “combine” came from the fact that the machine both cut the wheat stalks and threshed the kernel from the stalk. It was a two-man operation: Dan driving the tractor and another person riding on the combine. On one occasion I worked on the combine. But in most of those years Dallas Campbell did that work.

The duties on the combine behind the tractor were mainly attaching empty burlap sacks to the box where the newly husked grain poured out, tying sacks with a short piece of twine as they were filled with grain, and sliding filled sacks down the chute to the ground where they lay until picked up by others driving trucks or tractor-drawn wagons.

It was hard, dusty work that included two other important demands. The person tying sacks had to be careful not to dump filled sacks of grain on turns where the tractor might run over and burst them on the next round. He also had to tie the sacks securely to keep them from opening and spilling when they hit the ground.

Dan Allman and Uncle Clyde became fast friends in those days. They created interesting projects, all for the purpose of having fun. For instance, they decided to build a recreation hall in a bank overlooking Buffalo Creek in Uncle Clyde’s pasture. That bank was across the creek from a spring which Uncle Clyde called, in his fanciful way, “Honeymooners’ Spring.” The building was going to be a place for the several families and their friends to have cookouts and to make music. Dan used his Farmall tractor with a front-end loader to dig out the hillside.

On an occasion before that, Dan and Uncle Clyde held a nighttime festival at the creek in Uncle Will Allman’s pasture. It was a kind of outdoor masquerade party. Ray, Kenneth, and I rose to the challenge by trying to dress up like pirates. Bertie was always enthusiastic about such festivities, and she and the Campbell girls came dressed as pioneer women.

The party was held in the late afternoon and lasted well into the evening. Dan and Uncle Clyde hung coca-cola bottles filled with kerosene to light up the area. A rag wick was stuffed down the necks of the bottles into the kerosene; then the bottles were suspended from wires strung up ten feet overhead between trees. We had a grand old time running about, hiding in the pine trees, jumping out to scare each other, and playing all sorts of games.

Dan and Uncle Clyde also organized a cookout at Ritchie’s Creek where it flowed past a wagon crossing down behind Uncle Clyde’s barn. Some of the Outen children came; and Joyce, Shirley, and Donald were there. We roasted hotdogs and marshmallows. Throughout the evening we could hear the frogs along the creek bottoms toward Ritchie’s farm and the crickets all around us as we gazed into the blazing coals and watched the juices drip out of the wieners we held over the fire, spitted on sharpened hickory sticks.

Now, shortly after midnight, having hitch-hiked from Charlotte, I arrived by Kannapolis cab in the total quiet darkness of the farm house yard.  As the cab pulled away, I turned toward the big old farm house.  Every tiny undulation in the yard was familiar to my footsteps, and perhaps it was my self-image as  a recently world-traveled Navy veteran that kept my surge of emotion in check.

I gently opened the never-locked front door hoping not to disturb the slumbering inmates.  A tiny night light at the foot of the stairs glowed faintly under the “middle” room door and lighted my way into the cozy warmth of the big oil heater there.  I set my sea bag down and spread my hands to the gentle heat.  In a little while I would find a place to bed down, but just now total contentment was mine, just being there.

Then I heard the sounds from the upstairs  back room–Dad’s bedroom.  The springs squeaked ever so slightly, followed by the sound of padded footsteps moving to the head of the stairs.  My attention was fixed on the stairway door.  Then it opened and Dad stepped down–the same strong man, perhaps a few pounds lighter than I remembered.  

His eyes seemed to twinkle a little as he stopped and ran his fingers through his tousled white hair.  He chuckled ever so slightly.

    “It’s gettin’ sorta fresh out there tonight, ain’t it?”  We both grinned and laughed gently.
    “Yeah.  Makes ya appreciate this fire.”  We reached for each other’s hand, our faces animated and our eyes bright.

My brothers and sisters will recall that, unlike the Hornes, the Isaac Smith clan never quite got the hang of hugging one another and making a physical demonstration of emotion.

It was quite enough for me–his getting up in the middle of the night, that sparkle in his eye, and his pleased grin.  It was all in all an understated body language which those of us close to Dad were privileged to sense and to have no doubt about its meaning.  

He had heard the car come up outside.  In his characteristic way, he knew what  it was all about.  And this time it was about being glad that I was home!

He said that, as a young man, he used to walk through the Allison Place almost every night. He was courting a girl who lived several miles from his father’s farm on the opposite side of that large tract of land. Since Uncle Will didn’t want to use one of his father’s work horses to go to the house, he walked through that property as the easiest and quickest way to get to and from her home each night.

The Allison Place was named for Allison Overcash who owned it more than a hundred years ago. At some time in the early twentieth century the land was bought by James Cavin who was a prosperous businessman living in Enochville. Mr. Cavin had a store, and I’ve been told that he and Will Wright owned a cotton gin and a sawmill which were located near the parsonage of the St. Enoch Lutheran Church.

In recent years the Allison Place has been divided among the Cavin descendants. But it kept the name all those years, I suppose because it remained wooded and was used only as a source of timber. In the intervening years a few logging roads threaded through the pine forest, but no main roads were close enough to bring in sounds of automobile traffic. I remember looking for huckleberries there during the summer with my brothers and cousins. All we could hear as we searched for berry bushes among the tall pines was the sound of insects and blue jays and the occasional cawing of crows in the distance.

Returning home late one night, Uncle Will was crossing the Allison Place when he heard –or thought he heard — someone walking the gravel road behind him. When he stopped to listen, the sound of footsteps behind him stopped too. Well, he said he always walked with a big stick about six feet long. So he was prepared to use it as a weapon if need be. He felt the hair rise on the back of his neck, and he decided he would confront whatever was following him. He slowly crept back to a turn in the road. It was a dark night but he could make out something hulking at the road side. He didn’t remember seeing it there when he first came by that spot. In one quick burst of speed, he dashed at it and thrashed it soundly with the big stick and then ran for home as fast as he could go. The next day at dusk on his way to his girl’s home, he discovered that the specter from the night before had been a small pine tree.

Uncle Will said his way of courting a girl was to go to her home and sing with the family around the piano. He could sing and liked to sing. His voice was gruff, but it had a special charm. On more than one occasion he came to our house and sang with members of my family. He read shape notes and could pick out his tenor part by singing do, re, mi, and so forth from the song books.

He said that his skill as a dedicated singer was sorely tested one night at his girl friend’s home. He and the family were singing hymns around the piano. The only light they had to see the hymn books was produced by kerosene lamps. Because it was a hot night, the doors were open and the windows were raised. The moths were always attracted to these lamps, but he said the moths were particularly plentiful that night. During one song Uncle Will reared back and drew a deep breathe and sucked a moth into his mouth. “But,” he said, “I never lost a note.”

I’ll start at the beginning. Just before Fiddler began, the lights went down, and an announcement was made to the audience over the public address system. It welcomed everyone to the theater and ended with the words, If anyone in the audience has a cell phone, please be sure to turn it off, before the play begins.

I know. Yes, I know a wireless phone is a complicated thing. A wireless phone is an unruly thing. If your cell phone isn’t properly trained, why it’s as unpredictable as a four-month-old puppy.

In the old days people used telephones to talk to other people in distant places. But that’s only a minor role in the life of a cell phone. Why, a cell phone will do almost anything. It will take your picture. It will play music. It will write love letters and book reports. A cell phone will do everything (so far) but brush your teeth.

In fact, it will do almost anything EXCEPT let you talk to someone during an emergency. When you’ve got an important call to make, your cell phone gets moody. That’s when people with normal-sized fingers can’t push just one of the minuscule buttons on a cell phone.

Well, yes, times have changed. Talking on a phone in the old days was a private matter. In the old days if you wanted to talk to someone by phone in a public place, you got inside a phone booth to do it. Not any more. Nowadays, whether you are in a restaurant or a prayer meeting, you just yell your business at your cell phone and to anybody within rock-throwing distance.

But I couldn’t begin to tell you the ways a cell phone lets you know you have an incoming message. A cell phone doesn’t ring––not usually. But you can set it to do anything from wiggling in your pocket to playing the Star Spangled Banner loud enough to start a World Series baseball game.

Guess what happened during that performance of Fiddler. Right. At the worst possible moment in the play, an untrained, uncontrolled cell phone got loose in the audience. Was it one of the quieter noises a cell phone can make? I’m afraid not. Was the owner able to quickly get control of the beast? Again, no. Not until the owner had stumbled up the aisle to the back of the auditorium was he able to silence the device.

What was the cause? I wondered. At first I asked myself two questions: Did the owner know how to turn off his cell phone? If he knew how, I reasoned, did the owner not understand English (still the major language in the country)? Neither of these questions got at the root cause, I finally decided.

No, I believe that the phone belonged to someone sitting in the seat next to him. This person in the seat beside him didn’t realize that he had brought his cell phone to the theater. When it began to play the 1812 Overture, the owner quickly and deftly slipped the phone into his neighbor’s pocket. That explains why the poor innocent fellow went up the aisle trying to turn it off but not knowing how.

I was discharged without having to serve an enlistment in the Air Force because I had spent four years in the Marine Corps. At Lackland I enjoyed counting cadence in the salty leatherneck fashion as we marched before daylight to the chow hall. The upperclass cadets in charge of us asked me to do that on several occasions as we took the “scenic tour” by the women’s barracks.

Falling in before daylight in front of our barracks, we would be quizzed on things we were expected to memorize as part of our training. I still remember having to say a portion of General Washington’s farewell address to his troops:

The general is sorry to be informed that the foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing–a vice heretofore little known in an American army— is growing into fashion. He hopes that officers will by example and influence endeavor to check it.

Several of my brothers were interested in flying too, and we found ourselves one Saturday at the Miller Airport in Mooresville. It was located on the road to Salisbury heading east out of the town. The airport was on the Miller family farm and the strip in those days—scarcely longer than two thousand feet— lay in the cow pasture. When I visited the strip recently, I saw that the cows are excluded now and a row of houses stands along the strip. The residents are aviators and several of the houses have hangers as well as carports.

The three Miller brothers—Jim, Howard, and Harold—were pilots. Jim lived on the place and managed the business. He flew regularly to the Statesville Airport where he had other aviation interests. In addition to instructing student pilots, he did freelance flying around the country. Howard and Harold were both working pilots too. One flew for Eastern Airlines, and the other flew a company plane for Krispy Creme Doughnuts. But the two younger brothers were often on hand at the Mooresville Airport and helped Jim instruct student pilots.

Several other interesting pilots were regulars at that airport. A teenager named Mike kept his clipped wing J-3 Piper cub hangered there. I remember he flew it to the west coast one year. Another fellow named Outlaw worked at the Statesville Airport but flew his big yellow Stearman double-winger to Mooresville occasionally. I watched him fly it in a local air show at Statesville once. Outlaw moved down to the North Carolina coast and took a job crop dusting and was killed doing that work.

My brothers and I decided to buy a J-3 cub. Jim talked us into it when we told him we were wanting to get pilot training. He said, “You’re going to need something to fly after you get licensed.” The cub cost us twenty-one hundred dollars. I’d like to find one now for that price. Of course, that was more money then than it is now.

The Piper Cub is fun to fly and lifts off at about forty miles per hour. The story is that when that plane was introduced to the public, someone asked a company man who was telling about its features, “But will it kill you?” The company man responded, “It just will.” Because of its high-lift wings it wasn’t as much fun to fly on windy days, but when the air got still at dusk on summer days, you could hardly tell you were moving.

One day Harold borrowed our cub and took it up about six thousand feet. He cut off the engine and did a near stall to stop the propeller from turning. Then he glided around over the field while we watched. Jim and Howard were there with us. They watched and grinned, but I could tell Jim was a little nervous about his little brother’s stunt. After circling the field a while, Harold brought the cub in on a perfect landing and rolled without the help of an engine up to the hanger.

The instruments were few but good enough. The plane had dual ignition with two magnetos. We would check each magneto in pre-flight, switching to right, left, and then back to both. There was no radio, of course. We could tell when we were getting low on fuel by looking at a stiff wire that stuck up through the lid on the gas tank. It was directly in front of the windshield. That wire ran down into the tank and was attached to a cork that floated on top of the gasoline. Besides rudder pedals and a stick in front and back seats, it had an altimeter, an air-speed indicator, a ball compass, a trim-tab crank, throttle, and a carburetor-heat control. When flying alone the pilot operated from the rear seat to give the plane better weight distribution.

Once near Statesville, I was surprised to look over my left shoulder and see a DC-3 flying almost as low as I was–-a couple thousand feet–on the same heading. About the time I looked, the pilot rolled his plane back and forth to check to see whether I knew he was there. I rolled the cub the same way to let him know I saw him.

We enjoyed flying the cub over our farm and buzzing a little store over on the Mooresville-Landis highway where a young woman liked to sunbath in the backyard. Since we had just “student tickets” we took turns flying alone. Sometimes one of the Miller boys would hail a ride with us when we were taxiing out. I guess it was a chance to check our flying and curb any bad habits we might have developed. Jim and Harold checked my flying a couple of times that way. One day Jim pretended he wanted a ride when I told him I was going to Statesville.

I took off and was lining out northwest when he reached over and put the throttle back to the idle position, and said, “Where would you put down if your engine quit here?” I started looking for a smooth cornfield ahead of us, and he asked, “Why not the airport?” It involved doing a 180-degree turn without power and coming in over the electric power lines at the high end of the field, but I managed the landing to his satisfaction. Jim was a fine fellow. He always made us laugh when he walked up to us around the airport and asked, “Why aren’t you boys flying?”

We enjoyed those couple of years, but then we moved on to other things. A few years after that, I heard that Harold had died of a brain tumor. Then in the early 1970′s Jim was taking off from the Mooresville airport in his twin Beechcraft. Someone had siphoned gasoline out of a wing tank and left the lid off the tank. Jim had not noticed that when doing his pre-flight check. He had just got airborne when the partial vacuum over the wing pulled fuel out, and it was ignited by the exhaust from the engine on that wing. He tried to bring the plane down in a field beyond the strip. He had made emergency landings there before, but this time the plane was enveloped in fire before he could get it down safely.

As the cool of evening settled along the creek, crickets sang about the house, yard, and fields. And frogs called from the reedy bottoms of Ben Ewing’s pasture. The conversation was intermittent. My Uncle never seemed compelled to keep talking. For long periods he looked out past the large tree in his yard into the growing darkness.

And when he did speak, what he said to us never sounded like an attempt to entertain children. He spoke as though he were talking to adults. The things he said between puffs on his pipe were about the daily occurrences around his farm—-of seeing a fox in his pasture or of planting a particular field the next year.

Donald, Kenneth, Ray, and yours truly (photo by Frank Outen)

Meanwhile, his daughters Joyce and Shirley went to and from the kitchen and dining room area and the other parts of the house, a trip that required passing along the covered porch which ran half the length of the house. They rarely spoke directly to us unless we said something to them, but occasionally, if Joyce was nearby when the conversation turned to a subject that interested her, she would comment. More often, if she or Shirley said anything, it would be a rough but affectionate command to a dog lying underfoot on the porch. When speaking this way to the dog, they cast a sidelong glance at us to see our reaction.

When supper was ready–and they always seemed to eat later than we did at my home–one of the girls would announce it to their father and the boys on the porch. If we were shy about coming in, everyone urged us to come in and eat. Aunt Cora Edith would say, “It’s not much, but you’re welcome to it.” When I first learned Aunt Cora Edith’s name, it sounded like one word, Coredith.

Although I never heard her express it in words, I could tell my Aunt was very proud of Uncle Clyde and their son Donald. She made a certain facial expression when speaking of something they had done or said. Joyce and Shirley took the cue from their mother and listened attentively when either of the men spoke. But on the visits I am describing now, Donald was not there. Perhaps he had already gone into the Army by that time.

Uncle Clyde’s oldest daughter Violet Mae had married and moved away when we made our visits to his farm in the late 1940′s and early ‘50′s. But I saw her often enough to appreciate her gentle good nature. The next oldest daughter, June, was more spunky than her sisters, and she was more talkative too. She had a way of gaining from Joyce and Shirley the same respectful attention they gave Donald. June enjoyed going to the movies and kept a stack of movie magazines lying around. Because she was extroverted and because she more frequently left the farm to go to Kannapolis, she could speak with greater authority about subjects beyond the knowledge of her younger sisters.

From the porch we entered the kitchen where the odor of burning kerosene blended with the aroma of food. Because the family lived without electric power, the house was lighted by kerosene lamps and meals were cooked on a kerosene stove. We turned right from the kitchen into the dining room. There we seated ourselves around a table which was lighted by a lamp placed at its center. Steaming bowls of potatoes and beans and other vegetables in season were passed around, and we drank coffee from pint fruit jars. Our conversation at the table usually continued one begun on the porch—the dry weather, the danger of springs drying up, or the kind of season the Enochville baseball team was having. All the while the kerosene lamp projected our large, wavering shadows against the walls and ceiling.

Uncle Clyde was a carpenter and a bricklayer. For most of the 1940′s he did not own a car, and he walked to the Big Road or farther to catch a ride to work. He passed by our house twice each day going to and from work. Going home, he passed the Outen house where the road became a rough logging road. It led through the woods and across a field of bottom land owned by the Outens. Next he crossed a foot log over Irish Buffalo Creek, went past the spring from which the family carried water each day, and walked the last hundred yards up a slight incline to reach his house. On many of those days he walked all the way to Enochville and back.

I remember lying in the yard of our house at dusk, as the grass became moist with dew, and remember suddenly becoming aware of the regular tread of his feet on the gravel road as he drew even with us. Our idle talk ceased as we watched him. Sometimes greetings were exchanged when we were close to the road, but usually he went by without turning his head in our direction. He wore overalls but his bearing was aristocratic and his silence—like my father’s—was powerful. The smell of his pipe tobacco would linger on the twilight air as his figure disappeared into the gloom at a place in the road we called the Mud Hole.

 
Aunt Ruth and Mama thought their little darlings were too little to walk the two  miles from our homes to the school and back each day, so it was arranged that we would ride with Uncle Will each morning and evening and stay with Grandpa and Grandma Smith before and after school.  I believe Uncle Will had a Dodge car then.  I remember it had a contraption Uncle Will fastened to the windshield that looked kind of like a bee hive frame, and he could hook up a wire that would make this thing defrost his windshield.  I remember that in  rainy and snowy weather, Uncle Will had to leave his car in our front yard because the ruts were too deep to get through at the Mud Hole and on the little red hill near his house.  
 

In those days Cannon Mill employees put in 12 hours a day.   So in the morning we left home in time for Uncle Will to drop us off and get to work on time.   We stayed at Grandpa’s house until about 7:45 a. m. when we walked up to the school house.  In the afternoons we left school about 2 p. m. and walked back down to our grandparents’ home to wait for Uncle Will to take us home.   So we spent five or six hours with Grandma and Grandpa Smith each school day.

Before school started that year, Daddy took a tow sack of peanuts to Kannapolis and sold it and bought me an “airplane cap” to wear to school.  It had only been four years since Lindbergh had made the first non-stop flight to Paris from New York in The Spirit of Saint Louis, and airplanes were very much in the news.  Ernest got him an “airplane cap” too.   These black leather caps had goggles and flaps that covered our ears and snapped under our chins.   We were hot stuff in the Lindbergh aviator caps.    Can’t you imagine us little aviators striding along the main thoroughfares of Enochville in our aviator caps.   When it was too warm for our ears under the flaps, we could snap them together on top of our heads, revealing the beige fur-like lining on the undersides of the flaps.  Walking along the streets of Enochville in those days, we didn’t have to worry as much about getting hit by cars as we did stepping in horse or cow manure.

Oh, the misery that our present day little students have!  I read in the paper recently that some kids weren’t being fed breakfast after they got to school.   And parents were upset.  Well, Ernest and I ate breakfast at home.  In the evening, while we waited for Uncle Will, Grandma treated us to some of her good sandwiches.  We carried our lunch.  Ernest possibly had fancier lunches than I did.  But I remember mine were fried egg sandwiches, or even onion sandwiches, and later peanut butter became a staple sandwich, too.

I did find it, but that turned out to be a useless effort. The problem was that the plastic frame of my glasses had broken, and there was no way I was going to get the lens to stay in. Fortunately, I use glasses just for reading, so I was able to get my bag from the overhead storage and get off the plane without walking on anybody or falling down the steps.

For a time I put off trying to buy a new pair. My wife and I stayed in Madrid a couple of days, and I was able to read the wine lists and menus with just my left eye. Meanwhile my right eye took a vacation, staring through the empty hole where the right lens should have been.

We went through Toledo and spent a night in Salamanca on our way to Portugal. No opportunity to shop for glasses came up in these towns. About a week later in Sevilla, I took the time and went to El Corte Ingles (I think that’s the correct spelling) and bought reading glasses.

El Corte Ingles is a chain of department stores in Spain, and all the large cities have one or more of these stores. The chain gets its name from the founder. He was an Englishman who was a tailor. The name means “cut of English.” That name started with his tailor business. El Corte Ingles became the name of his first store, then of the whole chain.

The store is several stories tall and has everything. The problem is to find the department you need, then to find your way out of the building again. We came out on a different street from the one we left to enter because the store covered an entire block.

“Donde estan las grafas?” I asked. Let’s say that the clerk did not mistake me for a native speaker. She pointed me in the right direction. When I got to the appropriate department, I asked a clerk whether she spoke English. She said, “a little” and made a sign with her finger and thumb indicating a tiny amount. It didn’t take any Spanish to explain my problem. I showed her my pitiful-looking glasses.

With a little English and a little Spanish and a lot of hand signals we gradually came to an understanding of what I wanted. Did I want to buy a lens to replace the missing one? Or did I want new glasses? I showed her the old glasses frame and pulled it apart to show the break and said, “Toda cosa.” That brought a big laugh from her and another clerk standing nearby. But they understood.

While we were having so much fun at my expense, I decided to have another joke when they came back with a new pair of glasses for me. I remembered a story from my old copy of Cuentos Humoristicos Espanoles. It is about a man from Aragon who goes to Madrid to see the sights. He is impressed by all the magnificent buildings and so forth. But he is greatly impressed by the number of people reading newspapers. He also notices that almost all of these people are wearing glasses.

When he sees a store featuring a big pair of glasses in its window, the fellow from Aragon decides to be fitted with reading glasses himself. The clerk gives him several pairs of glasses to try out and hands him a newspaper to read. The customer looks at the newspaper with the glasses, one by one, but says none of the glasses are any good. After trying in vain to satisfy his customer, the exasperated clerk finally says to him,

“Are you sure you can read?”

“What a stupid question!” The man from Aragon says, “If I could read, why would I need glasses?”

I put on my new glasses, and the clerk held up a chart covered with writing in different size print. The words on the card were all written in Spanish. I looked at the card then said to the clerk, “These glasses are no good. I still can’t read Spanish.”

I know. She didn’t think it was funny either.

I remember one day in late summer, we went to some fields belonging to the Ritchie family. This land bordered on Uncle Clyde’s farm. We went through my uncle’s pasture to the point where Ritchie’s Creek joined Buffalo Creek. There we turned up Ritchie’s Creek till we came to the boundary fence. From there the object of our journey was in view. We had decided to check on Mr. Ritchie’s apple crop. We had noticed a month or so before that his trees were loaded, but the apples were still a bit green. We guessed that those golden delicious apples were getting about golden by now. We could see the grove of trees in the distance, standing in the middle of a large hay field.

I was with my cousin Ray and my brother Kenneth that day. We surveyed the situation and then looked at each other. The unspoken danger was that the trees were mighty exposed. In that grove of trees we would be vulnerable to a sudden appearance of Mr. Ritchie. We would not be visible from the owner’s house, but a farm road ran within just a few yards of the trees.

If there was a risky or dangerous thing to do, Ray and I usually let my younger brother Kenneth take on the job. For instance, the summer before we had been very interested in finding a crow’s nest that we could raid. We had seen what fine pets crows make when we watched the movie It’s a Wonderful Life. When we saw a stick nest near the top of a pine tree, we sent Kenneth up to see whether there were young crows in it. Crows never build in any trees but pines—and usually very tall pines. To make matters worse, in the midst of the woods, pines never have low limbs. For us—– well, for Kenneth—that meant a trunk-hugging struggle up the tree to the first limbs which were always twenty or more feet off the ground. And pine bark has a disagreeable way of scratching your arms and shelling off into your hair and clothes as you climb.

Standing there looking at the apple trees, Ray and I decided that Kenneth ought to go first and get the lay of the land. If all was clear, he could motion for us to come on. And that’s what we did. We had judged exactly right. The apples were beautiful. We ate a couple right off, and then started to put a few in our pockets. The goat was chewing on the over-ripe apples which had fallen among the weeds under the tree.

We were having a merry old time, when suddenly we froze. We heard something. It was the unmistakable rumble of Mr. Ritchie’s truck coming down the gravel farm road. The truck was coming in sight when we made a mad dash from the grove of apple trees to the nearest woods. It was more than a hundred yards. As we ran through the knee-high growth of alfalfa , my little goat—bounding in high leaps—raced after us.

We paused only long enough to scoot under Uncle Clyde’s pasture fence and then didn’t stop running until we were on my father’s land. There we held a conference and decided we had escaped detection.

The next week we had to start back to school at Enochville after having the summer off. Except for that, things seemed to be going well enough. Then in the afternoon, we were waiting in line for our school bus which had to travel from the high school in Landis.

Among the teachers on bus duty that day was one of my former teachers, Miss Myrtle Karriker. She lived up near Concordia and was related to the Ritchies. She came over to us in the bus line and spoke my name.

“Do you like apples?” She asked. I began to have an uneasy feeling, but I pretended not to know what she was talking about. Then she smiled and said, “You have a little white goat, don’t you?”

At the southwest corner of my father’s farm stood a group of trees that our family called the “Shade Trees.” In summer when hoeing and plowing in the adjoining field, we took breaks in the shade of these trees. There we rested and drank cool water from a fruit jar. The Shade Trees stood on the border between our land and the land belonging to Howard Campbell.

When I was about seven or eight years old, Howard built a small house under these trees for his aging father, Charlie Campbell. We called the old man “Grandpa Charlie” although he was not kin to us. My cousins and brothers and I watched him keenly because he did interesting things.

He kept chickens in a small coop in the woods not far from his little house. But the chickens could range freely in the surrounding woods, and they dug under the oak leaves for grubs and beetles. The hens laid eggs in the coop, but they also laid eggs in brush piles in the surrounding woods.

Grandpa Charlie also made walking sticks of hickory saplings. He cut small trees and, while they were still green and malleable, he bent them around the trunks of other small trees. After several weeks in that configuration the saplings dried and thereafter kept the desired shape for the finished walking canes. When playing in the woods near his house, we sometimes came upon one of these saplings in the process of drying. My Grandfather Horne, from Florida, visited us every few years, and he and the old man became good friends. One summer Grandpa Charlie gave my grandfather one of the walking canes.

Another thing Grandpa Charlie did was to keep a couple of goats for the milk. Goats’ milk is reputed to be easier to digest than cows’ milk. He may have had an allergic reaction to cows’ milk. Anyway, he kept milk goats, but each time one of these goats came fresh, the old man was left with a couple of unwanted kids to get rid of. The little male goats in particular were of no use to him, so he would castrate and sell them.

I had seen these young goats rearing up and butting each other and playing on trailers and other elevated platforms like picnic tables. I was highly entertained by their behavior, and I decided I needed a little goat of my own. I managed to save the price of a goat–about two dollars– and asked my brother Paul to go with me up to Grandpa Charlie’s to buy one. Paul, about eight years older than I am, agreed to help me make the transaction.

Grandpa Charlie had two male kids for sale that summer—one was spotted and the other was solid white. I decided I wanted the solid white one. All that remained to do was pay for the animal. But my mother had made a strong stipulation that I could not have a goat that had not been castrated. That was because a male goat which has not made that sacrifice gives off a horrific stink. My brother Paul, who was about sixteen at the time, had been instructed by our mother in no uncertain terms on that subject. So he decided to make absolutely sure before giving the money to Grandpa Charlie.

Paul asked, “Now, you say the goat has been castrated?”

Grandpa Charlie’s response was puzzling. And we laughed about it for years. He looked Paul in the eye and said emphatically, “That bag is as empty as yours!”

Recently I learned of a good music site on the web called Pandora.  I was introduced to it by my son-in-law, Rich.   In brief, using Pandora you enter the name of a song, artist, or a composer, and the site starts downloading (and your computer playing) music of the kind you have suggested.  It doesn’t matter what kind of music you like; you can get Pandora started exploring the type.   As it plays, you will be able to give a thumbs up to the pieces you like and a thumbs down to the ones you don’t like.  In response, Pandora “genome” of music starts refining the selections it plays, making them more to your liking.  Anything from classical on down can be selected.  (Of course, you need to have DSL or another fast download connection.  I think most computer users have such connections these days.)

You are, in effect, making a “radio station” that you personally prefer.  In fact, you can make several stations like that in various categories and, thereby, have at your fingertips—depending on what mood you are in— a wide variety of genres.   Any time you tune in again to Pandora, you will find the different radio stations that you designed earlier just waiting to entertain you. That includes the pieces you heard and liked last time and new additions to the set of pieces.

The downside of trying to record classical music from Pandora is that only short movements are played. Usually a short movement is played all the way through, but occasionally a part of the movement is clipped off at the end.  I would not want a recording of any piece of music that is clipped off or distorted in any way.  Sometimes—-and this is not as common—even a three-minute popular song doesn’t finish.  In such cases, of course, there is nothing to do but trash any recording of it that you have started.

There are albums indicated when you select an artist or a song.  You are able to order the albums you like.  Also Pandora provides little biographical sketches of the artists or composers, including a critique of the style of the performer or composer being heard at the moment.  It also lists other artists/composer whose music is similar.  So it’s a kind of music education too.

I have MediaSource software that came with a Sound Blaster Card (Audigy LS) to replace the sound card that came in my computer.  The Audigy LS is an older card but its software has good features.  I learned about this software and the sound card from a friend who bought these for me on E-Bay.  When I installed the card and software, I turned off the sound-producing software that came with my XP because I wanted more realistic sound patches with which to play MIDI files.  The sound for recorders that came with my new computer was not good at all.

Besides having good sound, the MediaSource software has other good features for listening to music.  You are able to chose the ambience of the sound: auditorium, room, hallway, tunnel, concert hall, and numerous others (including some silly ones like sounds made underwater or in a stone quarry). 

With MediaSource you can make digital recordings of your old vinyl records and cassette tapes (if you have such things), and—- as you are recording them to your hard drive as MP3 files—- you can remove scratches and pops and other annoying sounds coming from your turntable or cassette deck.  Probably other digital recording programs will do that too.   Magix Audio Cleaning 11 Lab will do that, but I find it an incredibly complicated program to use.

Back to the subject of recording music: I create a folder for each type of music that I am recording from Pandora.  Then I select the appropriate one as the target folder when I am recording.  For example, you might create one for bluegrass, one for baroque, one for movie music, etc.  You could also name a folder for a particular performer, but you can expect that Pandora will play the music of other performers who have a similar style.

I have an MP3 CD player in my system at home and an MP3 CD player in my car.  So when I have a sufficient number of songs or pieces recorded in a folder, I burn an MP3 disc with a CD burning program like MS Media Player, Nero, or Acoustica MP3 CD burner.  For those who don’t know it, a disc of MP3 music files holds about 8 times as much music as the commercially recorded audio CD.

With the right software you can make a regular audio CD for a friend who doesn’t have an MP3 playing machine.  And you can make recordings on an ipod or other compact device.  But if you are sensitive to fidelity, you will want to record your MP3 files at a setting of at least 300 kbps.