A memoir--the early years--Richmond, Virginia

This may have been first grade in Chattanooga or Richmond. That's me in the front middle with my fingers linked. I loved school from the very beginningl!

In contrast to my early life in Chattanooga, the threads of living in Richmond, Virginia, are not very tightly woven nor dyed too deeply into the tapestry of my life. Perhaps, I was in first or second grade when we moved there. Moving around as we did, we would sometimes move mid-school year. Few memories remain from Richmond, and two of them are rather frightening.

I remember that my second grade teacher had two favorite students--teacher’s pets--who got to help her do everything. They were a boy and a girl, both with blond hair. Though I don't recall that they were, they almost looked like twins. They were good looking children, and I thought that’s why the teacher liked them the best. Even in the class picture, those two students are standing next to the teacher while the rest of us sit in our desks. Spelling tests in second grade made me feel stupid. I remember feeling ashamed that I couldn’t spell very well. Still can't!

That's me sitting in the first roll of desks, fifth seat back with the plaid dress. My best friend Carol Sue is in the third roll, fourth seat back in the striped dress.

My best little friend and next door neighbor was Carol Sue Carrington. She and I did everything together, or so it seemed--we played dolls, including paper dolls, which I loved, and we played outside in a nearby woods. One time her older brother tied me to a tree in the woods and left me there alone. Hands tied behind the trunk, I could not get loose and was afraid. He must have watched one too many cowboy movies! I don’t remember how I finally got loose, but I did and ran home as fast as my little legs would take me. I tattled on him, and he got in trouble. Because Carol Sue was my friend, I felt bad about telling on her brother, but I had been terrified in the woods by myself.

For some reason, in Richmond that year, there was a divided school day, and I would go to second grade in the afternoon after lunch. So all morning long, I got to stay home and be with my mother and then have lunch with her. One day while we were eating lunch,  I somehow missed the bus. Because we had only the one car that my dad drove to work, I thought that my mom would be so mad at me for missing the bus. But instead she was not angry at all. And on that particular day, I got to spend the rest of the day with her and even take an afternoon nap with her. A sweet memory of an unexpected delight! I loved my mom so-o-o much when I was 7 and 8; she and I were very close. I have no memories of my sister from then and few of my father.

This picture looks as if we are going to church on Easter Sunday--once in a rare while I remember us going to a Presbyterian church. My father was no great photographer--it looks as if the sun is in all of our eyes! Besides how my mother appears to favor me, I also find it interesting that my sister Lynda at age 11 or 12 is almost as tall as my mother. If I were in second grade, Lynda would have been in sixth grade here. None of us look particularly happy in the picture! 

In Richmond, we children played outdoors in the streets and the yards in the late afternoons and evenings until our parents called us to come home for dinner and baths and bed. This one evening, some little boy threw a rock which struck me almost in the eye, perhaps on my eyebrow. It bled profusely, and home I scampered to get help for it. My father was home from work and seeing my eye bleeding, he got so angry and demanded, “Who did this?” Not giving any medical attention to my injured eye, he then had me lead him down the street to the boy’s house. He banged on the door, and when the boy’s father answered, my dad took my face in his big hands and pulled my hurting eye open wider, yelling, “Look what your son did to my daughter!” I was hurt and mortified and scared and embarrassed.

Thus end my memories of Richmond, Virginia. Then we moved back to Tennessee. This time to Madison. We rented a house down a long, long gravel driveway, whose backyard butted up against the wide, wide Cumberland River. A kid’s paradise. These were to be my happiest childhood days!

This is me in third grade in Madison, Tennessee, at Neely's Bend Elementary School. We moved there when I was in the third grade and stayed there until I had finished the sixth grade--nearly four years--our longest stay in any one town. I'm in the front roll, in the very middle again!