When I was growing up on Church Street several decades ago, life was very different than it is now. Everything revolved around family, friends, and church. All of the neighbors were close and helped each other out. Daddy and several of the men on the street shared the produce from their gardens with a lot of other people. The rule was that vegetables were free but you had to pick your own! Everybody looked out for everybody else, and those times were sweet and innocent, as I recall them. In the evenings, everybody was outside either visiting or just resting.
Even though our neighborhood was in town, it was also like a farm in some ways. My Grandfather Smith had a barn and several outbuildings, including a granary. He and my dad raised chickens and pigs, corn, and other vegetables. I don’t remember the cows, but there must have been some, or else they wouldn’t have needed the barn. I distinctly recall the pigs that Daddy kept in a fenced lot in our back yard. On occasion, they would get out and chase the kids. I was petrified of them. In fact, the only animal that I loved then was my dog. I also had one sweet kitty, named Peanut Butter, whose life I desperately tried to save after she was injured in an accident.
As I have mentioned before, my cousins and I rode our bicycles on the street, never giving a thought to speeding drivers as there are today. The street ended three houses below ours, so the only people who drove on it were the people who lived here. Not only did we ride our bikes in the street, but we also learned to roller skate on the sidewalk at First Methodist Church. We were never concerned about strangers and never locked our doors until one summer night when a stranger ran through our yard during Masonic Picnic week. After that incident, we always locked our doors.
My favorite possession as a child, if you can call it that, was my playhouse. The building was about 8 feet by 12 feet, perhaps larger, was originally one of my great-grandfather’s chicken houses, and sat on the spot where I live now. Daddy painted the outside and fixed up the inside, even adding a bar and a cabinet. He put a desk and chair in it and also a mirror and an old stove that had been a gift from the overseer at Boxwood when I was a child. I had tea sets and old clothes that had belonged to family members. It was a very nice place after he fixed it up and much better than being stuck in the house. My next-door neighbor and lifelong friend, Dianne, and I used to hang out there a lot.
What good memories! Writing this series brings me much pleasure, and I hope you are enjoying it. There is more to come.