#52stories - Week 15 (Apr 12th) - published late

Grandparents.

My paternal grandparents were John Addison Alexander and Janet Ingles Fultz. He died when my father was 3 years old.  She died when I was 2 years old.  So I never knew him and don't remember her.  John Addison Alexander was a farmer and a baseball player.  Family lore says he was asked to try out for the Washington Senators, but his mother wanted him to stay home and take care of the farm.  So he stayed home.  Here is a picture of him with his team.  And another that is a portrait taken in the early 1900s and the last one is of him on the farm.  His face is often obscured by the shadow from his hat.

John Addison Alexander Sr

John Alexander with his son, Jim.

While I didn't know Janet Ingles Fultz, I know she was a remarkable woman.  After her husband's death, she managed to raise three boys and run a farm during the Great Depression.  Before she was married, she taught school.  Family lore says that she attended Harrisonburg State Normal School, now James Madison University. She turned her home into a Tourist Home and rented out rooms to bring in income,  Dad and his brothers slept in one of the rooms in the house. She died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Here are two pictures of her.  The top one is about 1918 and the bottom one is more likely 1940s.

Janet Fultz Alexander with her son, Jim

My maternal grandparents were John Graham Barnett and Gracie Allen Van Pelt. He died before I was born, so I did not know him.  She was the only one of my four grandparents that I knew and remember.  John Graham Barnett worked for the Richmond Dairy. He also took care of his family.  He built a house next door to his own for his mother and sister to live in.  My cousin, Dorothy, told me that he was a very loving person and he really liked children.  My Mom remembers him taking her with him to visit relatives.  Here are pictures of him as a baby, a young man, and with my grandmother.

 

My first memories of my Grandma Barnett are when she visited us on the farm.  She stayed in the living room and slept on the sleep sofa.  She always had life savers on hand and sucked on them.  I also remember her at her home in Richmond and going to church with her.  She knew all the songs by heart and never looked at the hymnal.  She used to tell me that she had a very long name: Gracie Allen Van Pelt Royall Barnett.  The first three are her maiden name, Royall is her first husband's surname, and Barnett is my grandfather's surname. Here are pictures of her as a baby, a young woman, and one of her as I remember her,  The latter was taken about 1959.

Grandma Barnett and Ruth Barnett Finke

I remember visiting Grandma many times at her house on Florida Avenue in Richmond; it was stucco and the white rubbed off on your clothes and hands when you touched it.  An alley ran behind the house.  Her yard was full of flowers and she had a goldfish pond.  The house had a basement with a dirt floor and a big metal grate in the floor between the living room and dining room through which the heat was blown into the house.  The grate could get very hot and Mom says we all got burned at one time or another on that grate.  There was a swinging door between the dining room and kitchen; I think it might have been a Dutch door.  Her phone was on a telephone table at the top of the stairs and the table had a seat attached to it--these are sometimes referred to as telephone chairs or gossip chairs. She had a wooden Morris chair in her living room that I found fascinating.  I hope one of my cousins still has that chair! She had wooden book cases with the framed glass fronts that would swing forward and slide above the shelf--I think they are called lawyer's shelves.  Later I saw many of those in government offices, but hers were the first of that kind that I had ever seen; and last time I saw them, they were at my Uncle Scott's house.  She had a metal glider on the front porch.  She later had to move in with Ruth's family and then to a nursing home as dementia set in.  One of the last times she visited us in Winston-Salem, she ended up losing her diamond ring.  We were living on Araminta Drive at the time.  We searched everywhere for it but never found it.  We speculated that she wrapped it in a tissue and flushed it down the toilet by mistake.  She was so distraught. The last time I saw her, she did not really know who we were.  She died when I was in college.

#52stories - Week 14 (Apr 5th) - published late

Siblings. I have three of them: my older sister, Cathie; my brother, Graham; and my younger sister, Sally.

Here's an early picture of the oldest three of us.  Sally was born at the time this was taken, but the one picture I have of all of us taken in this sitting is not very flattering of her and she would not appreciate my including it. This was taken about 1958.

Nancy, Graham, Cathie

Cathie tells me she taught me everything I know.  She would return home from school, and I would be her student.  She is also the self-described "experimental" model, which has been somewhat confirmed by Mom not letting me do things that she let Cathie do, like take a bath with your socks on. What could go wrong?  When we lived on the farm, Cathie sprinkled horseradish powder on a slice of loaf bread and gave it to me to eat. She talked me into biting into an unripe persimmon by doing it first and saying how yummy it was.  Let me assure you that unripe persimmons define the word bitter.  And when we were playing cowgirls, she tied me up and pulled me off of a chair, my chin split, and I had to get stitches.  But that's about all of the bad stuff.  We were far enough apart in age that we didn't have that much to do with each other growing up; especially after Graham came along and Cathie started school.  We became closer after we became adults.  Right, Cathie?

Graham is only 17 months younger than I am, so I cannot remember him not being around.  And he's the one I remember playing with the most as we were growing up, especially on the farm where neighbors were not close by.  We explored the woods and creek together.  Once after my Dad had burned some trash out behind the house, Graham was waving a burning stick around and ended up burning my toe.  Also, in the Buena Vista house, he jumped off the wall, yelled "Geronimo" and started chasing me.  I ended up falling and getting a large gash in my leg; you can still see the scar today. I've told both of these stories before.  We also learned about dinosaurs together because he had a set of plastic ones whose names were imprinted on them.  After we moved to Winston, we spent less time together because we had other friends close by.  He thinks he's Mom's favorite.  But he's really only her favorite son. Right, Graham?

Sally is the baby of the family.  She was born when I was already in school, so I didn't really "play" with her growing up.  She is the only sibling whose actions did not result in my having a scar! One time, we heard a thump, thump, thump; it was Sally tumbling down the stairs.  She was just crawling at the time and Dad was supposed to be watching her.  Another memory on the farm  climbed up on a table and got some matches and lit one.  It dropped on some papers on a table, but I was able to blot out the flames before they spread.  She always seemed happy when we were children and still does today.  We also became closer after we became adults.  Right, Sally?

Growing up, I didn't always appreciate having so many siblings...too crowded in the car, not enough food for seconds, having to share the bedroom and bathroom.  But each of them have added to and continue to add to my life.  Love you all!

Here are a couple more sibling photos.

Graham, Cathie, Sally (see, happy!), and Nancy about 1958 in Fairfield

Nancy, Cathie, Sally, Graham in Fairfield - late 1970s or early 1980s

#52stories - Week 13 (Mar 29th - published late)

Memories in Winston-Salem. 1962-1970.

• I described a lot of my memories of Winston-Salem in my earlier post about elementary school.
• In the summer of 1962, we moved to Winston-Salem and lived at 2408 Ivy Ave.  I shared a room with my older sister.  The house had an attic that was floored and had dormer windows.  We could sleep up there when the weather was right if we wanted to.There was an alley behind the house.  I remember my brother throwing a brick up in the air in the back yard over & over.  Unfortunately, the last time he did it, it came down on my little sister's head. Ouch!  
• We walked to school, to church , and to just about everywhere else; sometimes we rode our bikes.  There was a man a few blocks over that ran a candy store out of his basement.  All the kids went there.  Candy bars were a nickel and there were also lots of penny candy options.
• We went to Burkhead Methodist Church in north Winston.  And when it moved to a brand new building on Silas Creek Parkway, we moved with it.  I was confirmed in the old building.  According to the church website (http://burkheadumc.org/history/), it was called Burkhead Methodist Episcopal Church, South until it moved to Silas Creek Parkway and became Burkhead United Methodist Church. Here's a photo of what the old church looks like now (photo creds to John Zielke on Google maps).  It is now the Ambassadors for Christ Revival Church on Harriet Tubman Dr, but the street had a different name in the early 1960s. The picture below it is the current church (photo from the church website).

• I saw my first fireworks at the fairgrounds in Winston.  I just remember them being very loud.
• We  took vacations to Ocean Isle Beach, NC, a couple of years.  My little sister said of the ocean, "that's a big swimming pool!" We left our plastic bucket on the beach and it washed away.  Mom fussed at us for doing that, but we had no clue that it wouldn't be there when we went back.  Dad taught us to catch crabs with string, weights, chicken necks, and a net; and how to cook and eat them.  We had eaten them before in Fairfield when my Uncle Scott brought some over from Fredericksburg. 
• We occasionally ate at Kelly's Hamburgers after church.  It was kind of like a McDonalds, but I think it predated McDonalds in Winston.
• In 1964, we moved to 205 Araminta Drive on the west side of town.  I had a room to myself because I had always shared a room with a sibling.  Cathie & Sally shared a room, but Cathie left for college in 1966 and that became Sally's room.  Dad built a partition in the basement to section off half the room for Graham.
• In high school, I performed as a majorette with our high school band and others in the region at Band Day for a Wake Forest football game.  We also performed in the Winston-Salem Thanksgiving Day parade.  Dad took this picture of me in the official band uniform before one of the performances.
  

• I don't think I mentioned before that, other than the uniform pictured above, we made our uniforms.  It kept the cost down. We had a white one with fringe (top & bottom), and we wore a white blouse with green pants or gold pants.  We made "suspenders" out of braid that we added to the green pants for a different look.
• I had a pet cat that we had brought down from my uncle's farm. He was an indoor/outdoor cat and lived many years.  I have pictures of him somewhere that I'll add if I can find them. 
• During the summers in college, I worked at Pizza Hut, and as a camp counselor at a couple of day camps.  I also had a job with the city of Hickory one summer and I stayed with my sister.

I will add more memories when I think of them.

#52stories - Week 12 (Mar 22nd - published late)

Early memories in Buena Vista. 1961-1962.

And that's pronounced like B-you-na Vista (not Veesta).  So not the Spanish pronunciation.

We only lived in Buena Vista for a year, although it seems longer somehow.  I was in the 4th grade at Mountain View Elementary School. We lived in a building that was the old school house. It was at the corner of what is now Borden Grant Trail and Mountain View Road. It had a very large flat yard on one side, which was probably an athletic field when it was a school. (I'm pretty sure Cathie had the chore of mowing that yard!)

Below is an aerial view from Google maps of what it looks like now. The house is obscured by trees, but you can see the field in the upper left.  The house with the green roof was next door and a younger girl named Linda lived there.  There was a steep hill on that side of our yard leading down to her house.  We liked to roll down that hill through the grass.  I also found lots of four leafed clovers there.

This is the only time period that I remember owning a dog.  He was a boxer named Sigmund Otto Von Dom, Sig for short.  He was a great dog, but he liked to chase cars.  Unfortunately, he chased one down Mountain View Road to the T intersection and into the next road where a car hit him.  He didn't survive.  It was the only time I saw my mother cry.

I got my first bicycle when we lived here.  It was a used bike; blue with relatively wide tires.  I had a hard time learning to ride and remember skidding on gravel and getting scraped up quite a bit.  We would ride a long way up Mountain View Rd.

There was a creek on the other side of our neighbor's house that we explored; it's called Marl Creek.  Graham and I found a large wooden bowl half buried in that creek.  Cathie raised a steer that was kept in a field across the creek.  I sometimes helped her carry feed over the creek to the steer.

That winter, we had the deepest snow I could remember.  I searched for this storm on Google and found that it was quite historic.  Here is an excerpt from This Day in Weather History: March 6.

"1962: The strongest nor'easter of this century struck the Mid-Atlantic Region on March 5-9, 1962. It is known as the "Ash Wednesday Storm" and caused over $200 million (1962 dollars) in property damage and major coastal erosion from North Carolina to Long Island, New York. In New Jersey alone, it was estimated to have destroyed or greatly damaged 45,000 homes. The Red Cross recorded that the storm killed 40 people. It hit during "Spring Tide." When the sun and moon are in phase, they produce a higher than normal astronomical tide. .... Heavy snow fell in the Appalachian Mountains. Big Meadows, southeast of Luray, recorded Virginia's greatest 24-hour snowfall with 33 inches and the greatest single storm snowfall with 42 inches. ... Roads were blocked and electrical service was out for several days. ...The Ash Wednesday storm is noteworthy for producing devastating tidal flooding along the Atlantic Coast as well as record snows and the interior of a Virginia. The extremely high tides and massive waves caused tremendous damage -worst in many of the hurricanes that have hit the region. Along the Atlantic Coast tide ran for 2 to 6 ft. above normal with 20 to 40 ft. waves crashing ashore. ...Other snow totals included 15 inches at Richmond; 23 inches at Culpeper; 26 inches at Charlottesville; 32 inches at Winchester; and 35 inches at Fort Royal, Virginia and Big Meadows on the Skyline Drive top the list with 42 inches of snow."

I didn't realize the storm's significance until just now.  What I remember is my Dad shoveling a path to the car and the snow was about 3 feet deep.  My sister, Sally, who was 3 years old, could not be seen above the snow when she walked down the path.  My Dad helped us roll a huge snow ball down the yard and we carved it into a fort.  It was probably 4 or 5 feet in diameter.

An aside:  I was telling my husband about this memory and that I found out the storm was significant and caused flooding along the coast in addition to the snow.  He replied, "That must have been the Ash Wednesday Storm."  He knew of the storm because of photos of it that were posted in a store in his small town, where the Gum Neck community had flooded.  He said he would tease his friends in Gum Neck that they didn't need cards, they needed boats.

I started wearing glasses while we were living in Buena Vista.  I think I mentioned that in my school discussion.  

One day, we heard our neighbor Linda screaming very loudly.  We ran over to her house to discover that one of her parents had chopped off a chicken's head and the body was running around the yard headless.  It's no wonder she screamed.  

Here's a picture of Mom, Grandma Barnett, Sally, Linda, Graham, and me in the yard of the Mt. View house.

 

#52stories - Week 11 (Mar 15th published late)

Early memories in Fairfield. 1954-1961.

My memories are pretty much distinguished from one another based on where I was living at the time, rather than how old I was. My earliest memories are when we were living in the brick house in Fairfield.  We moved there when I was 2 years old and moved away when I was 9. These memories are snippets more than stories, so I thought a bulleted format would suit them.

• One of my earliest memories that I can tag to a specific age was my 5th birthday.  I remember getting a coloring book that had a black Cocker Spaniel on the front.  I generally had birthday parties every other year, because Kathy Martin and I had the same birthday and we alternated who had the party.  She's a year older than I am.  Whoever hosted the party, blew out the candles first; then we would relight them and the other person would blow them out.
• I remember helping my Dad plant the garden, which was huge.  Specifically, he showed me how to plant corn by taking three steps heel to toe, digging a small hole, depositing three kernels, and covering them with dirt.  If you've never seen corn seed, they're basically dried corn kernels. We bought the seeds from the feed store and they had a white dust on them, which was probably fertilizer.
• We ate tomatoes straight off the vine, sometimes sprinkling them with salt.
• We pasteurized our own milk with a metal machine that was set up in the spring house.  My dad and sister milked the two cows that we had.
• We had a playhouse in the backyard that had an upper level, but wasn't completely finished.  It didn't matter to us.
• We would burn trash in a burn pile behind the play house, not close to the house.  One time, my brother and I were playing around the ashed with sticks and he ended up burning my toe...because of course we were barefoot.  My Dad said to put butter on it, which my brother teased him about later in life.
• When it snowed...and we had deep snows...my Dad would take us with a toboggan that he had made to a high hill behind the barn and we would sleigh ride. The toboggan was big enough for two and was wooden with a metal bottom.  Dad would wrap whoever wasn't riding down in his big thick coat to stay warm.  I think my son has that coat now.
• We had neighbors that were a field away in each direction.  The Goads lived in one direction and the Howards in the other. Eddie Howard was my closest friend while we lived on the farm and we played together frequently.  W.D. Goad and his sister were a little younger than I was, but my brother and I went there many times to play. Here's a picture of us with Eddie Howard, Feb 1958.

• The creek across from the house was good for swimming in the summer and "skating" in the winter.  We skated using rubber boots.  The first time I had the breath knocked out of me was when I fell backward while skating.  It was scary to realize that you weren't breathing.  After the first time, it wasn't so scary.
• We explored the woods that were on the other side of the creek.  
• We picked and ate paw paws from a tree that grew in the woods, as well as raspberries, blackberries, and currants.  I found the following picture online at http://www.hartapiaries.com/Pawpaws.htm.  This is exactly how I remember them. 

• We grew strawberries near the barn.  When we "picked" them, we ate about every other one. I remember seeing a black snake there and screaming. By the time my Mom got to me, it was long gone.
• We climbed on the ears of corn in the granary.  The bin they were in was deep and narrow, so it was fun to climb up with the cobs rolling out from under you. I never saw mice or snakes in the corn, but I saw my Dad pick up a blacksnake more than once and take it to the granary to eat the mice.  So both must have been there.
• We picnicked on Mary's Creek and/or Irish Creek, usually on Sunday afternoons.  Dad always seemed to find a place where we could easily wade in the water. Here's one of several pictures of us on a picnic, spring 1957.

• I remember getting our first television in 1958.  It was black and white andt here weren't many programs to watch.  We watched Winky Dink, Howdy Doody, and Romper Room
• There was a sawmill on the farm that my Dad operated.  I only remember watching him do that once. Years later my sister and I walked to the sawmill to see if it was still there, and it was.  But it was very overgrown. Here's a photo of my picture standing next to the main saw blade.

• I remember when my baby sister was born when I was 6 years old.  Mom went to the hospital; and when we went to visit her, we were not allowed to go back to her room.  We could see Sally through the window in the nursery of the hospital.  My Mom was brought out in a wheelchair so that we could see her.  That's about all I can recall.
• Because Dad taught school, the farm was often pranked, usually on Halloween.  Many times a gate would be removed and placed in a different location.  One time, the message "Poor Jack Is Stupid" was painted on the side of the granary.   Here's a photo I took in the 1980s.  The writing is still clear.  We always joked that we wish we knew what brand they used, because that lasted a LONG time!

• The first movie I remember seeing was South Pacific (1958).  My Mom took me (and probably other siblings) to Lexington , VA, to see it.  I recognized Mary Martin as Peter Pan's Mom. I saw Sleeping Beauty (1959) in the same theater; that has always been my favorite Disney movie.
• My first and maybe only Ferris Wheel ride was at the carnival in Fairfield.  I rode with my sister Cathie on the ride.  I was terrified because I'm afraid of heights.  I closed my eyes and asked her to let me know when we were down.  The ride stopped and she said I could open my eyes. We were at the very top!  The ride had stopped just to change passengers below. I can't remember going on another one since then.

I wrote about some other memories on the farm in an earlier post.  See this page.  I may add more later if I remember other things I want on the record.

#52stories - Week 10 (Mar 8th - published late)

Undergraduate School. 1971-1974.

During my senior year in high school, I decided to apply to three schools in North Carolina: NC State, UNC, and Duke.  All three offered degrees in math.  I didn't have a preference and decided to choose the one that offered me  the best financial aid package.  I filled out application and financial aid forms for all three schools.  UNC asked me to come to campus for an in person interview for the James Johnston scholarship, which was new that year.  I remember answering questions confidently, but near the end, the person interviewing me asked, what will you do if you don't get this scholarship?  That had never really occurred to me, so I'm sure I fumbled that answer.

In any case, I heard from NC State first as they offered me a student loan.  UNC offered me a Johnston scholarship of $1400 per year.  At that time, tuition and fees were $500 per year and a dorm room was $500 a year; so this would pay all of that plus books and some meals.  Duke offered me a Reynolds scholarship of $3600 a year; which would cover approximately the same costs as the scholarship at UNC.  I accepted at UNC mainly because I was concerned that the rising costs at Duke would out pace the scholarship.  I declined the other two schools.  While I never heard from NC State again, I did hear from Duke.  I got called out of class to go to the principal's office in the middle of math class.  When I got to the office, I was told that a a Duke official was on the phone asking for me.  They asked me to reconsider; and when I said I had already accepted at UNC, they assured me that I could change that decision.  But I stuck to UNC and have never regretted that.  Especially tonight as I have just finished watching UNC win the NCAA men's basketball championship again!

I went to UNC during the summer after graduation for placement tests in French and math.  We stayed in Morrison dorm, one of the newer, suite-style dorms.  I met other incoming freshman there and we talked about our experiences and uncertainties.  I expressed concern about getting a roommate who didn't want to take her studies seriously.  One of the other students, Virginia Stewart from Nashville, TN, suggested that we room together, so we wrote the University and asked to be roommates.  We ended up being assigned to Cobb dorm, roomed together for 3 years in rooms 252 and 248, and are still friends today. In fact, she is the person who introduced me to my husband in 1971. Here's a picture of Rex & me at his graduation in May 1973. We're standing in the Pit outside the student stores.

I hated early classes, so mine were usually between 10 and 3.  I took a few night classes that met once a week for 3 hours.  I started out taking Honors classes and then realized that I would be better off taking regular classes and making higher grades. I earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics, which involved taking a LOT of calculus classes.  So, I accomplished the goal that I had set in the 8th grade of getting a college degree in math.

My extracurricular activities were mainly social activities.  I did serve as dorm treasurer my senior year, but I don't remember doing much else.  I regularly attended football and basketball games.  And, my senior year, I was in Carmichael when UNC beat Duke after being down 8 points with 17 seconds left.  If you missed it, you can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO445W4mtZI

I saw some great performances at UNC, and they were free to students.  Smokey Robinson and the Miracles and Chicago are two groups that I heard in Carmichael.  My freshman year, UNC still held its Jubilee in the Spring.  It was a multiple day, round the clock (or nearly so), Woodstock type event.  Performers in 1971 included Chuck Berry, Spirit, Cowboy, Muddy Waters, the J. Geils Band, the Allman Brothers, Tom Rush, and Livingston Taylor.  Livingston & James Taylor were from Chapel Hill, so we seemed to see them often.

We also had talks from some pretty famous people, including Roger Mudd and Jane Fonda.  My senior year, my dorm hosted a pot luck dinner for a singer who was coming to campus to perform...Holly somebody.  My dorm president received a call from Jane Fonda asking if she could come with her friend Holly.  So that's how I had a pot luck dinner in the basement of my dorm with Jane Fonda.  Here's a picture of Cobb dorm.  It is a huge H shaped brick building.

When I was a freshman, women had to be in the dorm by 1 am and the dorms were locked.  So to get in after that required a call to campus security.  This wasn't usually an issue for me, but second semester, a was working at the computer lab trying to get my program to run correctly and didn't get back to the dorm until about 1:30 AM.  Fortunately, my parents had signed the permission to allow me to come in late or I would have been in trouble.  Cobb is now coed, by the way.

My senior year was the year of streaking.  The Daily Tarheel  advertised a big streaking event aimed at setting a record for the number of streakers at a university.  The title of the article was "All The Nudes That's Fit To Sprint".  The men met in one location and the women in another.  The spectators formed lines on either side of the path and the campus police blocked traffic on the roads that needed to be crossed.  I remember that I had a terrible cold but wanted to witness the event, so I went with others from my dorm to watch.  We stood near the student union.  It was quite a spectacle to see over 200 students streaking.

#52stories - Week 9 (should've been Mar 1st)

Secondary school - part 2.  

I am behind schedule on my stories because I got hung up on what to say about high school.  I didn't have any bad experiences in high school, so the mental block is confusing.  I'm just going to start writing.

West Forsyth High School - grades 10-12: I attended these three grades at West Forsyth in Clemmons and generally rode the bus to get there.  It is literally around the corner from Southwest.  In fact, when I was in high school, we played our football games on the field behind Southwest.  West did not have it's own field as it does now. And, yes, high school was only 3 years--sophomore, junior, and senior.

West opened in 1964.  I remember touring it the summer before it opened because my sister was going to go there.  It is a campus style school, meaning that there are separate buildings for different departments that are connected by covered walkways.  But you go outside to change classes in most cases.  Harold Simpson was our principal and now has a building named after him.  Mr. Anderson, one of my English teachers, also has a building named after him now.

I had decided in the 8th grade that I wanted to major in math in college, so I continued my pursuit of that by taking algebra II and calculus.  All of my math classes were taught by Mrs. Greene.  I felt fortunate to have been exposed to calculus in high school; most of my college friends did not have that option.  I also took English each year and some sort of social studies/history--whatever was required--as well as P.E.  Electives included creative writing with Mrs. Clarke, Contemporary Affairs with Mr. Robinson, and French III and IV.  I don't remember what else.  For science, I took chemistry, physics, and Advanced Placement (AP) chemistry.

A word about AP classes:  All AP classes for the county were offered at Reynolds High School in downtown Winston-Salem.  To take AP, you had to be recommended by a teacher.  My teachers recommended me for history, chemistry, English, and one more, I think; but I could only take one of them. I remember having to choose from among four. They were offered first and last period.  That way, you could have the period after or before to commute to or from your assigned high school.  I chose chemistry.  My classmates included students from Reynolds, Parkland, Mt. Tabor, and maybe more.  My teacher was laid back and we got away with a lot.  Of course, I was not an instigator, but I learned a lot from the other students.  Like, you can take the gas hose and put it in a beaker of soapy water to create bubbles; then touching a flame to the bubbles creates an atomic bomb shaped flame.  Also, if you fill a dropper with acetone and squirt it through the burner flame, it will burst into flames on whatever surface it lands, usually a desktop or the floor.  The guys also taught me to shoot spit wads through a straw...a skill I think I have lost.

My first year, I tried out for majorettes and was selected.  I hadn't twirled in a couple of years, so I was very nervous about try outs.  My senior year, I was selected as chief. That meant that I had to choreograph all of our routines and teach them to the rest of the squad.  We would get the music from the band director. We performed at halftime for all football games, performed at pep rallies in the gym, and marched with the band in parades.  We twirled regular batons at most events, but twirled fire batons at least once during football season.  We always tied our hair back on fire baton nights; and we pre-soaked our uniforms in a fire retardant solution.  Nonetheless, we always lost the hair on our forearms and smelled singed after the performance. The fire batons were owned by the school and consisted of a staff with a "wick" on each end that was about 3 or four inches long and wrapped around the staff.  We would soak the wicks in kerosene and light them just before the performance.  To douse the fire, we would swing them very fast, one end at a time.  More recently, I have seen majorettes use a contraption that looks like a tube that smothers the flame; that would've been nice.  I still have the recipe for the fireproofing solution.  I don't know if you can still get the ingredients.

I also was in the National Honor Society, Y-teens, the yearbook staff, and served as student government treasurer my senior year. 

We had lots of student teachers from Wake Forest University.  Proms were held in the high school gym and were decorated by the students. Students could smoke in a designated area if their parents gave them permission to do so.  Female students who became pregnant were not allowed to talk about it at school and usually finished their studies elsewhere. Female students were not allowed to wear pants; I remember one person being sent home for wearing a pantsuit.  And skirts generally had to touch the floor when you knelt, although that was not strictly enforced if the skirt was just above the knee. I'm sure I could say more, but I've said enough.  

Here's a picture of me with Bobby Binkley at senior prom. I made my dress...and I still have it.

#52stories - Week 8 (Feb 22nd)

Secondary school - part 1.

After 6th grade, we moved to the western side of town and stayed there though my high school and college years. I rode the bus to school until I could drive.  Then I sometimes drove to school, but I had to drop Mom off at work across town first and pick her up at the end of her work day.

Southwest Junior High - grades 7-9:  Because I had not attended one of the feeder schools to Southwest, my parents had to enroll me there as a new student.  I remember going with them to meet Principal Moses Bridges.  Everything went fairly smoothly.  But I wanted to take "new" math in 7th grade and I had missed the required cutoff score on the standardized placement test by a point or two.  My parents advocated for me and Mr. Bridges agreed to let me try it.  If he had not agreed, I would not have been able to take Calculus my senior year.  So I have always been grateful for that.

Over the next 3 years, I took math, science, English, history, and physical education (P.E.) every year.   A few words about P.E. class.  While I generally enjoyed P.E. class, it was definitely new.  We had to wear white uniforms that consisted of shorts and a top.  We were required to shower after class unless we had our periods.  In that case, when your name was called for attendance, you would respond with "X".  This was quite embarrassing in junior high.  It was the first time I had encountered the group shower situation and I have never liked it.

My 7th grade math teacher was Mr. Shepherd, one of the first two male teachers I had; he also taught my health science class.  North Carolina history was taught in the 7th grade and I had Mr. Ellingham, the other male teacher I had that year, for that.  He also taught Language Arts, a.k.a. English, in a combined class.  My electives were French, Arts & Crafts, and Fine Arts. Mrs. Broughton taught P.E.  At the beginning of the year, I went to get my hair cut and the hairdresser went a little overboard.  Also, I still wore glasses.  The result was my all-time least favorite school picture:

In 8th grade, it was Mrs. Grove for English and social studies, Miss Martin for Algebra I, Mrs. Mooney for physical science, and Mrs. Broughton again for P.E. My electives were French, art, and homemaking, which was required for all female students. 

In 9th grade, I had Mrs. Hill for English and social studies, Miss Martin for Geometry, Mr. Wiley for biology, and Miss Pruitt for P.E.  My electives were French, art, music appreciation, and health.  Mrs. Hill was a piece of work.  I did well in her class because I was a good student. But I remember her ridiculing students who didn't know how to spell Gethsemane.  After about four students missed it, I got it right and the ridicule stopped.  That's just one example that I remember.  I recall that 2 years later my brother had her; and, when he complained about her, my parents were skeptical.  But I assured them that she was really not a nice teacher and I was sure his account was accurate.  Because my dad had been a teacher, my parents usually took the teacher's side in arguments...until that year.  Also that year, I was begging my parents to buy me new glasses so that I could ditch those ugly ones from 7th grade.  They said no, but agreed to let me get contacts if the eye doctor agreed.  So, in 1967, I got my first pair of contact lenses.  And here's my 9th grade picture:

During these 3 years, I met many people who I still consider to be close friends.  We do not live close to each other but we have stayed in touch. I don't remember having any extracurricular activities during this time.  But I might have continued with safety patrol in 7th grade.  I remember that I advanced to the rank of Lieutenant, but that might have been in 6th grade. The school is still there, but is now an elementary school.  And, no, my memory is not that good; I still have my report cards for all grades, although I did not refer to them until this blog entry.

#52stories - Week 7 (Feb 15th)

Elementary school - part 2.

4th Grade:  Between 3rd and 4th grades, my family moved down the road a few miles. That meant that I went to 4th grade at Mountain View Elementary School in Buena Vista, VA.  Again, I rode the bus to school.  Mrs. Mackey was my teacher.  She was old, but very nice.  She realized that I could not see the blackboard and moved me toward the front of the classroom and mentioned it to my parents.  So I started wearing glasses in the 4th grade. My mom also told me that she was the first teacher to compliment me to Mom on being a good student.  What I remember is having a couple of the girls in the class not like me because they had always been the top two students in the class until I arrived.  Apparently, I bumped them down to 2nd and 3rd place.  This was the year we learned Virginia history.  That's about it for 4th grade. Here's me with glasses in 4th grade.

5th Grade:  We moved to Winston-Salem, NC, in the summer after 4th grade.  I started the year with Mrs. Norman and ended the year with Miss Palmer at North Elementary School on Patterson Avenue. They were both younger than any teacher I had had so far and they were both nice. I walked the a little over half a mile to school. The school was torn down many years ago, but I found this photo at the Library of Congress online at http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/hhh.nc0463.photos.212413p/.  The library has several pictures of the outside and inside of the school.

The big news/controversy at the beginning of the year was that the school became integrated.  And by integrated, I mean that one single brave black girl attended the school; she was either in the 1st or 2nd grade.  I'm sorry to say that the reaction of many parents was to pull their students out of North Elementary and transfer them to other schools.  The class size seemed to drop daily for several months.  It dropped so much that the principal decided to combine the two 5th grade classes into one.  And that's why I ended up in Miss Palmer's class at the end of the year.  Just before the holiday break, Miss Palmer assigned an extra credit project that involved making a list of words from the letters in "Merry Christmas."  She promised a special prize to the student who got the most words. I won that contest hands down...way more words than anyone else.  Thank you, Mrs. Borthwick! The prize, which took much nagging and some months to receive, was a Big Book of Answers that contained a lot of info about science and nature.  I remember one item explained how and why fireflies tails light up.  This was the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis and practicing "duck and cover".  One day one of my classmates said that he had heard that the US had declared war.  By the time I got home, I was hysterical, but Mom assured me it was not true.  It was an anxious time.  This was also the year that I learned to twirl a baton.  My next door neighbor had four children, one of whom was a year ahead of me.  She was a majorette for the Tiny Vikings, a junior midget football team.  They had a cheerleaders and a twirling team and the Mom next door organized the latter. My parents bought me the baton that I needed (and I still have) and I'm sure Mom made my uniform. I see online that this is now a flag football league; it was regular football then.  My brother was on the team.  I had begun the year with a bad case of impetigo on my chin, so I felt like I had leprosy.Nonetheless, I made friends. JoAnna Self was my best friend, but her family moved across town to Polo Road and we grew apart in middle school.

6th Grade:  For this grade, my parents enrolled me at Lowrance Elementary, which was next to Hanes High School and even closer  to our house.  I walked a little less than half a mile to school. Mrs. Oakes was my teacher.   In addition to JoAnna Self, Vickie Green was another good friend.  Vicki was obsessed with The Beatles, while I was not.  I liked their music but didn't get the screaming, swooning stuff.  She lived with her grandmother who was a very strict Baptist.  We had many sleepovers.  I lost touch with Vicki but we were reunited somewhat when she ended up at my high school.  But we were not as close in high school as we were in elementary school. I continued to be a majorette with the Tiny Vikings.  For Halloween this year, I dressed up in my majorette uniform and went trick or treating with my next-door neighbor, who wore her uniform. We were in Blum Park and there was a talent contest, so we decided to join.  We basically just twirled the baton and whispered to each other when to change to a new move (some of the moves are the pancake, double pancake, figure 8, around the world, two-handed spin).  We won an entire box of full-sized Hershey chocolate bars!  On a sad note, this was the year that Kennedy was assassinated.  Several kids had transistor radios that they would listen to on the way home (especially during the World Series).  One guy in my class turned his radio on as we were leaving the school.  So I was walking across the school yard when he called out that the President had been shot.  I think I ran most of the way home and my mom confirmed the news.  I remember that my grandmother was visiting.  It was a very sad time, even though my parents had supported Nixon.  It was still tragic.  I remember the television showing Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald.  I had just left the living room and missed seeing it live, but heard the announcers saying what happened.  We all went in to watch the TV at that point.

So, I attended four separate elementary schools. It didn't seem as disjointed as it was happening as it does now.  It was even worse for my brother. He started 1st grade at Fairfield, then had 2nd at Mt. View, 3rd at North, 4th at Lowrance and 5th & 6th at South Fork.  And it was a little better for my older sister because she attended Fairfield for her entire elementary school; and, when I switched in 4th grade, she continued to the newly-opened Rockbridge High School with her friends.  And in Winston, she attended Hanes for 2 years while I attended North & Lowrance.

#52stories - Week 6 (Feb 8th)

Elementary school - part 1.

My siblings might have expected I would turn to them next, but I'm switching from family to other things.  I initially planned to have one entry on elementary school.but it got too long, so I split it into two parts.

There was no kindergarten where I started school.  But if you ask me sister, Cathie, she'll say she was my kindergarten teacher.

1st Grade: I attended 1st through 3rd grades at Fairfield High School in the village of Fairfield, VA. This school housed grades 1 through 12.  My dad taught 8th grade science and shop there, and he was the faculty sponsor for the Future Farmers of America (FFA). My aunt, Libby Alexander, also taught there and my cousin, Mary Lipscomb, substituted from time to time.  I rode the bus to school.  You can see a picture of the school on my post about my Dad in my week 5 story. My 1st grade teacher was Mrs. Hayes. She was stern and old (to me).  The classroom was by the gym if I remember correctly.  Mrs. Hayes made me stand in the corner one day after lunch because she said I kicked Duane Fitzgerald's ice cream out of his hand at lunch.  If I did, I had no clue and it would have been accidental.  She said he told her I was swinging between chairs.  OK, maybe I did that.  Still, you'd think I had to swing my legs pretty high to knock an ice cream cone out of his hands.  I remember learning the alphabet, which Cathie had probably already taught me, no doubt. One day when we were practicing writing our whole names, my cousin Alec (Alexander) Lipscomb crept back to my desk to ask me how to spell Alexander.  So I'm guessing Mrs. Hayes wouldn't let him just write Alec, which is what everyone called him and calls him today! 

2nd Grade: Mrs. Whitehurst was my teacher and her classroom was also off of the gym, I think..  She was even older than Mrs. Hayes (in my opinion) but she was super nice.  She taught us cursive writing.  I had my first boyfriend in 2nd grade: Joey Bishop.  His family moved away the following summer, so it was a short-lived romance. I learned Roman numerals this year.  I think it was an extra credit assignment, but I wrote them on paper up to MM (2000). The rest of second grade was uneventful.

3rd Grade: This was the year I had the mumps, which I covered in my week 1 story. Mrs. Borthwick was my teacher. She had us start the day with a checklist.  If we could check off each item on the checklist, we got a star!  The list included getting in bed by 9 pm the night before, having a clean handkerchief, eating breakfast, etc.  I think it included saying your prayers, too.  One day, I checked off the items and she said (in front of the entire class), "I know you weren't in bed by 9 last night because I saw you at the flower show at church."  I was devastated.  When I went home and told Mom, she said I was in bed by 9 and she was clearly miffed at the teacher.  Mrs. Borthwick drilled us on multiplication tables.  I credit her with my knowledge of those, but her method was terrifying!  She would line us up opposite other students and would point at one of us randomly and yell "3 times 9!" If you didn't answer in about 2 seconds, you got a scowl and she would turn to the next victim...er, student..and yell "3 times 9!" That continued until someone got it right.  Of course, your chances of getting the right answer increased with each failure because you had more time to recall the answer.  Mrs. Borthwick's class put on a play every year and alternated between an Indian theme and a cowboy theme.  It was cowboys my year, so we sang cowboy-themed songs and dressed like cowboys and cowgirls.  Below is a picture of our performance that appeared in The Lexington Gazette.

Mrs. Borthwick also wanted to make sure that we recognized the military branches theme songs.  So, again, she lined us up in four lines that created a square facing each other.  She would designate one line each the Marines, Army, Air Force, and Navy.  Then she would play one of the songs and the appropriate line was supposed to march in place.  I remember her playing The Cassion Song and everyone looking nervously around waiting for someone to recognize the song.  When the pressure got to be too much, one of the lines starting marching that was not the Army line and she yelled, "No, no, no! You're not the Army! That's the Army song!"  I don't know if we ever got it right.  She had "seat work" to keep us occupied while she was working with subgroups of the class.  Mainly this consisted of making a list of words from the letters of a larger word.  My skill at this came in handy in 5th grade. Another memory is that a show was being presented in the auditorium by some external group and a live kangaroo was there.  I really wanted to see that kangaroo, but admission was a dime and I didn't remember to bring a dime.  Mrs. Borthwick let me go to my dad's class to see if I could get a dime from him.  His classroom was in a separate building but no one heard me knocking on the door, so I didn't get the dime.  I was one of about three students who didn't get to go.  We also took field trips in 3rd grade.  Two that I remember were a visit to the local newspaper at The Lexington Gazette and a performance of the National Symphony Orchestra.  Both of these were in Lexington, VA. The National Symphony performed Peter and the Wolf and the conductor (I assume) explained to us which animals the various instruments represented.  Before the performance, someone from the paper came up and got three of us seated on the end of the row to go down and see the instruments up close.  So Carol Ramkey, Duane Fitzgerald (of the aforementioned ice cream incident), and I got to strum a harp and play a drum. Our picture appeared in The Gazette, as shown below.

Looking back at these makes me think  that Mrs. Borthwick had a parent who acted as the class's public relations person.  Last memory of 3rd grade: One Sunday, Bly Ann Buzzard and I had sat together in church and whispered to each other a couple of times.  Mrs. Borthwick sang in the choir.  The next day, she began class with the announcement, "I was so embarrassed by you and you for talking in church yesterday!" as she pointed to Bly Ann and me.  Sheesh.

#52stories - Week 5

Dad.

My dad was born November 4, 1919, in Stonewall Jackson Memorial Hospital in Lexington, Virginia.  The Hospital was what is now the historic Stonewall Jackson house located at 8 East Washington Street.  Here is a picture of him circa 1920 with his two brothers, Tate on the left and Jim on the right.  This is in front of their house. Under that is a photo of the hospital where he was born (found at http://www.stonewalljackson.org/birthdayclub.html).

 

He was named John Addison Alexander, Jr, after his father.  His mother's name was Janet Ingles Fultz.  He lived with his parents and brothers in the same house in which I first remember living.  Grandma Sally (his father's mother) and Uncle John (her brother) lived with them.  The house was in the South River District of Rockbridge County on a road that is now called Borden Grant Trail.  Here's a picture taken in the 1920s of the farm, but this is pretty much how it looked when I lived there 35 years later.

Dad's father died in January 1923.  Shortly afterward, his mother moved her sons into her mother's house, which is known as Cherry Grove Estate.  It is located on Rt. 11 just north of the village of Fairfield.

Dad attended elementary school through (I think) eighth grade at Fairfield High School, which included grades 1-12.  But he did not attend high school there.  He attended high school in Covington, Virginia.  His Uncle Wiley Lipscomb, who was a widower and lived in Covington, had been ill; and one of Dad's aunts who was a nurse was there taking care of him.  The story goes that it was not considered proper for his unmarried aunt (who also was Wiley's sister-in-law) to be co-habitating with a man.  So Dad served as a kind of chaperone while Wiley's son was away in college.  Dad graduated from Covington High School in 1938, where he excelled in athletics--specifically, football and basketball.   I have many pictures related to his high school years, but I'll just insert here pictures of the schools. The top one is Fairfield from the cover of a compilation of yearbooks published about 1998.  The bottom one is a copy of a post card that I own.

After high school, Dad was offered a scholarship to attend Danville Military Institute in Danville, Virginia.  So he went there until the school closed in 1939.  Then he enrolled at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VPI, now Virginia Tech). During his stay there, World War II broke out.  His class was offered an accelerated graduation by having the students attend classes during the summer.  His graduation, scheduled for May 1943, was moved up to March 1943 and  then cancelled to further accelerate the movement of the graduates into service. Here, I'll post Dad's VPI diploma.

When dad was living in Fairfield, and when we lived there as well, the family attended Fairfield Presbyterian Church.  The church is still active today.

Dad's military career started in 1943 and lasted until 1948.  He was sent to training around the country and eventually shipped out to Italy with the US Army's 88th Infantry.  He essentially walked from Pompeii up the Po Valley through Rome to Lake Como.  After the war ended, he was deployed to occupied Japan and served in the 441st Counter Intelligence Corps.  I am fortunate to have his copies of his entire Army career.  One of the documents in May 1944 grants him 10 days of leave in May 1944.  That was when he and Mom got married.  Here is a picture of Dad in Japan in 1947.

After returning to Virginia, Dad worked in Roanoke as an agent with Minnesota Mutual Life Insurance and as a salesman for Fair Acres Farm Store.  After moving back to Fairfield, he taught science and shop at Fairfield High School at the same time that he ran a farm.  In 1961, we moved down the road a few miles to Buena Vista, Virginia, and he was a salesman for a swimming pool company.  In 1962, we moved to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, because he had changed jobs.  Initially, he marketed Top Value trading stamps (the yellow ones).  He spent the rest of his career as a traveling salesman representing various companies, including one that made chicken coops and one that made tung oil.

Dad died November 8, 2002, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  He is buried in the ARP Presbyterian Church Cemetery in Timber Ridge, Virginia.  Here's one last photo of Dad with Mom in a church directory picture that is not dated.

#52stories - Week 4

Mom. 

My mother was born January 2, 1923, in her parents' home at 3312 Florida Avenue in Richmond, Virginia.  Here is a picture of her in 1923 with Ruth, her sister, and Scott, her brother.  She said that a photographer would come by with the goat and cart and take pictures.  This is in front of their house.

She was named Jean Graham Barnett.  I don't know where the Jean came from; but she was named Graham after her father, John Graham Barnett, Jr.  Her mother was Gracie Allen Van Pelt. 

She lived with her parents, the siblings pictures above, and her half-sister, Eleanor Royall, in the Highland Park neighborhood in Richmond. This picture of Highland Park Public School was taken by by Morgan Riley (own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16024158).  It is the first school that Mom attended and is still standing at 2928 Second Avenue (at the corner of Brookland Park Blvd and Second Ave).

I'm not sure where she attended middle school, but she graduated from John Marshall High School in 1940.  She was a typist for the school newspaper called The Monocle.  They only had 11 grades at that time, so she was 17 when she graduated.  The old building has been torn down, but was located near the present campus of the Medical College of Virginia.  Here is a post card showing what it looked like (found on http://www.oldjayem.com/). 

Her family attended Highland Park Methodist Church, which was on Second Avenue catty-cornered from the elementary school.  This is a picture of the church from Google Map' it is still standing but I don't think it's a Methodist church anymore. 

After high school, Mom attended Richmond Professional Institute, now known as Virginia Commonwealth University, for one year.  She said that when they made her dissect a frog in biology, she decided college wasn't for her.  One of her first lobs was as a secretary in the Old City Hall building, seen below (found on https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/richmond/OldCityHall.html). 

After she and Dad got married in May 1944, I don't know of any jobs that Mom had outside of the home...until my junior year in high school (1968).  Then she started working for the Forsyth County Health Department.  Later she switched jobs and worked for the NC Department of Social Services office in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She stayed there until she retired.

So, I'll end this story with a few pictures of my mom over the years. From the top: Mom in Japan circa 1947; in a church photo circa late 1960s; and another church photo circa 2005.  She still looks like the last one, just a bit older.