Journal the Last, 2.7

Journal the Last ©
Book 2 Part 7

Journal Contents

Christmas 1950s

Bikes
     Every country boy has a bike, least my bros did. I got mine one year at Christmas time, Robert got one too. They were an orangish color, with wide straddle bars. I dont remember much about exactly how they were found on Christmas morning. Either in the room where Grandma Hughes lived and the tree was or out on the front porch. I do remember Dad and Mom kept them down at the neighbors house, out of courious kids' view. The Parrotts were living there then.
     Then there's the usuall bike maitanence, country boy tools too, a pier of pliers and a screwdriver, maybe a spoke wrench. It seems like I never could get bicycle wheels to run straight, always tweeking on them. I do know about stripped, rounded nuts, pliers just never seem to grip right without slipping.
     There was one time, not this bike, I think it was a friends' bike, it had front and rear brakes. I was riding down the road in front of the house and squeezed the wrong lever, the front one. Did a flip over the handle bars. "Aint it a miricle any of live to grow old."

House Keys, 1960
Grandma Hughes died in July 1960. I dont know how much that had to do with us getting a new house. One of the reasons was for more rooms, what with four boys and all. Anyway, that Christmas I found some keys under the tree, they were just laying around loose, not wrapped up. I was 11 and a kid with an imagination. I jump up and run to look out the kitchen window across the front porch and into the yard. I was looking for new cars.

Christmas '50s
Hop-a-long Cassidy was the other tv western show, Roy Rogers was the tv western show. Well, Gunsmoke was on then too, guess it was THE western show. Anyway, Mom takes me uptown for Christmas shopping. We're in Brock's Department store, that seems right, and I have to try on a kids Hop-a-long Casside outfit, black with white trim, even had the gun and hoster with it. She said it was to see if it would fit on another lady's kid who was the same size. Many years later I decided it was Lucille's son John they were talking about. But, it ended up being under the tree at my house for my Christmas present.

More Random Stuff

     There were clubs you could join, part of the tv shows then. I've forgotten which one this was but you're were suppose to send in a quater and get some sponges. I got a card back, "Geepers, you forgot the quarter," it said.

     It must have been the year we got the tv, 1954 or 1955, it was WFBC's first year in Greenville, so the signal was the closest one to Pickens then. Dad got a telephone pole too, put the antenna on it along with a remote control for turning it. Some of the men from Runneymede came over to help put up the pole.
     That would have been during the fifteen minute Huntely-Brinkley report years. There was 15 minutes of local news and then 15 minutes of national news. That was when I first started hearing about Vietnam, the French were there then.
     Pope Paul died 1958 or 1959, that made the news, I remember the deal about the white and black smoke indicating whether or not a new Pope was elected from among the Cardinals.

     Daniel finished high school in 1959 and started college at Clemson, so he was a college student before we moved to the ridge in January 1961. He carpooled with some others. It may have been the year it snowed a lot and froze a lot too. He had left to go on to Clemson with those that could make it to our old house. They use to sit around the kitchen table figuring out the schedule of who drove when and with whom. Anyway, about mid morning one of the other guys shows up. Told Mom he had left his home about 5 that morning and was just getting there.

     Joel finished high school in 1961. He and his friends would get together at the dining room table and play cards, Canasta was one of the games. Ken came over one afternoon to help Joel cut the grass so they could hurry up and go somewhere. It might have been part of Prom night.
     He went into the Navy that Fall, just had to go off somewhere, all his other friends were going into the military. The day he was to leave, I stopped by his and Daniel's room to say good-bye. Then I went on to school.
     He went to the west coast, San Diego for boot camp. Ended up spending most of his time in service on Pac Cruises. His first trip back home was by bus, took three or four days in a crowded hot bus. He took the bus back too I guess. But that was the last time, he flew home and back on all his other trips. That was when we started going to the new JetPort over between Greenville and Spartanburg. Seems like that airport become more familar over the next several decades.

     They built the Jetport in 1963. I wanted to go to the opening but Dad couldn't go for some reason. I went with Uncle DM and his family. It was a big event, traffic backed up on the interstate a long ways before getting there. We parked on the side of the back road at the south end of the runway and walked aross the open fields to get to the buildings. One of the miltary jet groups was there, Air Force or Navy I've forgotten which. There were other types of planes there too. After the day was over we walked back to the car and started driving home. One of us had to go to the bathroom, the traffic was slow moving. We finally came up on a filling station, there was the longest line of people waiting their turn at that bathroom. Ended up driving all the way back to Pickens before getting relief.
     By the way, the modern Jetport was Jetless for several years before a real jet airliner landed there. GSP was a small stop and the airliners just used turbo-props for a long time.

     Before the Jetport, there was the Greenville Airport. Uncle Clifford took us over there one evening to watch the planes come and go.
     Besides that place there was the Donaldson Air Force base. Lucille Barron's daughter Syliva married an air force man who was stationed there. He took us out to the base a few times. I don't remember much about seeing the big plane or fighter jets, just the long ride around Perimeter Road at night. But just being on a military base was the experience.

     Uncle Clifford was a motel manager, Wade Hampton Motel. It had a swimming pool, like most of the bigger places in Greenville. We'd spend the night there sometimes on our visits to the Dodgens family. Get to eat breakfast at a motel and swim in the pool like rich folks. It was hearing the road traffic at night in the city that was part of staying there. We had just never knew what city life was, being country kids and all.
     He was well known among the traveling salesmen that came to Greenville. Lots of them said they'd start staying somewhere else after he died down at Lake Murray. But Leander started managing the place and they stayed too. At least for a while, she started working at Mackey's Funeral home later.

     When we first moved up to the house on the ridge, it was mostly treeless. There were a few small ones around the house, and the bushes and shurbery was low too. Near the time of Summer Solistice the setting sun would shine through the kitchen windows into the den. Joel was home and sleeping on the couch during one of those times.

     The picnic table got moved from the old house to the new backyard. It was later on during my high school years that I took an interest in kite flying. I picked up at the beach one of the latches and parachutes you could attach to the kite string. Played around with it some. Then one night I flew the kite and tied it off to a metal lawn chair. Started hearing this high pitch whinning sound. I called uncle DM and told him to come up, there something strange going on up here. It may have been during one of them UFO periods too. Anyway he comes up and we go out back and listen to the music chair. He couldn't figure it out so I told him.

     Dad made an old fashion box kite one time, out of newspaper. We flew it out on that long string. The wind was blowing northward, it flew over the woods below where Pittman's house is, a long ways off beyond too.

     The old house had the big oak tree next to it. Had the high ceilings too. I really don't remember it getting hot in the house. But kids don't pay attention to hot weather, nor the cold I guess, it's just the way we grew up. The new house didn't have any shade trees. Didn't have any air conditioners either, but it did have an attic fan to draw the air up and out. I must have been complaining one night about it being hot and couldn't sleep. Dad gets up and goes runs the fan for a while, then goes back to bed. The new house just felt colder and hotter I guess. Even when I moved over to my house, I lived without much of either warm or cool air, just whatever the breeze blew in. I did sleep with windows open during the Summer nights. But that's all. I was just the way I grew up.
     I was 1987 when I got Mom an air conditioner, got me one too so she wouldn't insist on me keeping it at my house.

     Mr Woods still had wheat fields around our house. Robert and I were out running around in them once when he drove by to check on them. We got called on that one, trappling down his wheat. That was probably the last time he had a crop. I remember them doing the harvesting and helped the Wood's boys load up the bailed staw.

     Robert's room was the laundry room. He used Dad's old shop desk. Slept on the concrete floor during the Winter, out on the porch during the Summer. He did sleep in our room, the middle bedroom, at first. He painted the walls and desk cammaflouge colors, greens, browns, blacks. Then came the Clemson years and it turned a little orange and purple.
     Robert spent all his time hiking in the woods, over the hills and mountains around Pickens County and North Carolina. He left a couple of times to walk from here to Waynesville, NC. Had to go pick him up at the fish hatchery up in Pisgah once, then in Waynesville the last time.
     He went with someone once, Lynn or Furman, they got caught in a rain storm and spent the night at someone's house, first on the porch and then in the man's car. The horn got blown once while whoever was in the front seat was moving around. The porch lite came on, he looked around, then it went out. Robert said they left five dollars in the car, but thought it would have cost more to have the inside cleaned up, what with all the mud and wet they left.

     On Dad and Mom's 25th anniversary, 1965, Robert and I got them a silver tea set.

     Granduncle Wilson died in 1964, he and his family lived in Brownsville Texas, or near there. His daughters brought the body back for buring at Secona Church cemetery. They stayed with us while they were here. There was lots of humor among those sisters. Dad once remarked about how they must stay up all night thinking of things to say to each other. It may have been that time or another, one of the the Cauleys had Robert help her clean off another of the older Cauley graves. That one have been at Bethelhem Methodist off of Liberty highway south of Pickens.
     Granduncle Wilson and his family would visit at the old house too during the '50s. One time I was walking by his chair in the Grandma Hughes' room and he tried catching me with his walking cane. I guess that's the only thing I remember about him.

     During the war years, Dad and Mom lived in Baltimore Maryland, he got a job there doing welding on frigid boats. They lived in some apartment and next door to a Levis family. It was during the '60s that the Levis family was traveling and stopped for a visit. I guess that was the first time they had all seen each other since the war ended and Dad and Mom came back to Pickens. The Levis family moved back to Pennsylvania. Mom had to have Leander come over and help with all the visiting, so it probably wasn't but a couple of years after her nervous breakdown in 1961.

     This was some other time when Leander was here. She left and backed down the driveway. Ran into the mailbox, hopped out of her car and started pulling on it to get it back upright.

     I guess most of the older Hughes relatives had visited us at the new house. That would have been the Powers, Cauleys and other of Dad's cousins. Granduncle Addison and Clovie. Luther Hughes too I suppose, he died in 1963. Dad was out back, seems like we were cooking steaks on the grill, some one came by and told Dad about Luther. He said, "I'll be damn." I know Gandaunt Tillie and Bertha were there, there's a picture of them together on the sofa in the living room. They were the last of the old Hughes relatives.

     It seems like most of Mom's family then would have been her brothers and sister who visited and some cousins. They were probably others but I can't remember anything special about any one visit.
     Except Aurie and Graham, they lived up in Pennsylvania then and they came down occassionally. Graham was a forest person, knew all the trees and plants. Their son is named Forest. I guess it was Graham, Dad, Robert, Daniel, and me, maybe Mike and Susan or others too, went on a walk up in Bossom Groove near Rosman. It was a hike along some dirt road mostly, in the woods, but along a paved road in the flat area too.

     It may have been the first year we were at the house on the ridge. It was late Summer, could see all the mountains then, before the Vickery pine trees got tall and ones below Pittman's house. There was a black line across the sky from behind Pinnacle and Table Rock to way past Pickens toward Clemson. It was the largest migration of birds I'd ever seen, or have seen. It had to be twenty miles long and that was just what you could see of the line. No telling how long the whole line was, it flew over for most of the day it seemed. I dont remember seeing the end of it, probably got tried of watching.

     There was smoke comming up out of the woods a good ways away one time too. It was a forest fire. Daniel, Robert and I went to see where it was, not that I remember now. Wherever it was we started to help put it out. We followed behind a tractor cutting a firebreak and cleared away some of the small brush, leaves and limbs the the tractor missed.

Cutting Grass

     The first paying job any of us boys had was cutting grass at Runnymede, that was back in the late '50s and through the '60s. It was about 5 acres, all done with a push mower. Then there was the hand trimming around the building and sidewalks, done with hedge clippers. The road up to the mill was done too, then the triangle part next to the highway included some years.
     Burlap bags was used to bale the wool, the older brothers used them too out on the lawn. After the grass was cut it had to be raked up, mostly where it was the thickest. They would pull one of them burlap bags around and stuff the raked up grass in it. One time they got the idea of pulling me along and let me pick up the grass as they went. The kid brother got a ride and they got some work out of me too. But I guess it didn't take long for them to figure out I was just extra weight to pull around.
     Robert was the fastest mower. Once he did all five acres in one day. That was much a run all the time without any breaks either. I think he did it just to do it. He didn't really have any reason to hurry that I can remember.

     Most of the time I worked outside there, it was with a riding mower. There may have been just the one for a while, but someone still had do some push mower work. It was usually a two boy job. Robin was one of them a couple of Summers. He was riding the mower around front once. It caught on fire but he didn't know it till some of the men came running out and toward him. The women in the office saw it and told others about it.
     William was another boy for one Summer. We were sling blading the weeds out back of the mill and he got into a yellow jacket nest. He was alurgect to the stings and had to go home that day. We were down by the highway cutting the undergrowth out too one time. We would carry cantens down there with us so we wouldn't have to walk all the way back up to the mill for water. I had drank all of mine and asked if he needed some. He just kinda sat there and poured out half of his, just to so how little he had drank.
     There was one time I was doing the trimming around the building. Down on my knees, clipping with the hedge trimmers and pulling up grass. I rounded a corner and there was a long snake. It was blackish but not a black snake. It scared me. I ran and got a shovel and ran back. It was still there and I killed it. Scooped it up on the shovel and took it off into the weeds. Later I got Buster to come and look at it. He thought it was a king snake that Mr Risco had bought to keep the other snakes away.
     Most of the side and back of the mill is more buildings now. Where I use to cut grass is not there anymore. There's just the front lawn, road and triangle area next to the highway now. I've forgotten what I got payed when I started, something like 75 cents an hour, then 90, then $1.25, for about 16 hours work, it usually took 2 days, a Friday and Saturday during the Summer. It was pocket money, but I managed to save enough to buy my own things.

     The only other time I cut grass for pay was for a Mr Holland, he's the Pharmcist at Pickens Drug, was then and still is. Dad drove me over to his house about three times I guess it was. That job didnt last long for some reason.

     I've been cutting grass at Mom's house since about 1962, 37 years. One time the class was having a party at Table Rock Park that Saturday afternoon. I had to get the job done before then. While I was pushing the mower around I would look off toward the mountain and think about being up there later that day. I don't remember what the occassion was, just an end of the school year party I guess. There're some vague images of what it was like. Mostly just standing around talking, some wandering around. I sure don't remember what the in-groups where up to, 'cept that they probably had more fun than I did.

     There's a rock near the curve in front of the Pittman house. It's always been there. Always past by it and over when cutting the grass. I got the idea of painting it blue once, and I did. Then it was forgotten about for years, mostly got cover up with all the cuttings. Early this year I walked down there to see if any of it was still visible. I could see a small part of it. I cleared it off again, now it's as noticeable as it use to be 35 years ago.

More Random Stuff

Bugs and Snow, 1971

     I had moved to Virginia Beach in December 1970. This probably happened the next year in the first or second winter. I still had the red VW bug then. My brother Joel and Jackie lived up in the District and I would travel up there often after I got to Va Beach. It must have already started snowing, or was going to, but I left on the trip anyway. It got really heavy up around Richmond and on toward the District. The little heater in the bug could only keep a small round spot in the middle of the windshield clear. The wipers weren't doing much to keep the snow and ice from building up either. Actually had to stop and couple of times to clear that off. So there I was, driving up Interestate 95 leaned over to the side so I could see out that clear spot. Traffic didn't slow down much either and that was when the speed limit was up around 75. Twenty-somethings don't really care how stupid they get sometimes. I slid off to the leftside onto the shoulder once. Cars just kept on going by. I eventually get back into the traffic and travel on up to my brother's place.

Street Wandering, Arlington 1971-72

     It was another winter trip up to the District. Joel and Jackie were living in an apartment in the Arlington area then, big city living. I'd usually sleep on the couch, watch late tv. One time I decided to go for a walk on the streets. I don't remember if it was early evening or late evening when I left, they may have already gone to bed, seems like it. But anyway I take off on the walk-about to see what late night, street life is like around that place. It was cold weather but not real cold. I wander around far enough and long enough to get to that stone bridge over the Potomic, the one that goes into Georgetown I think. That's where I turn around and start back. I must have been more than halfway back to their place when Joel drives up. He'd been out looking for me. Don't remember much about what was said, nothing except for be aggravated about having to come look for me I guess.

Ice Cold, 1973 or so

     Joel and Jackie had moved to Dale City by this time, and I had my van then too. Seems like most of the times I made trips up there it would be late evening when I'd start and get there about 2 or 3 in the morning. One time I just pulled up in front of their place and crawl in the sleeping bag I carried around. I also keep a bottle of drinking water back there too. Joel comes out and bangs on the door after he got up and saw the van outside. I wake up and check the water, it's frozen over. Man was that sleeping bag warm, didn't know it got that cold in the van that night.

Other sleep overs

     There were other road trips and I'd get so tired and sleepy. I'd just pull over to the side and stop, crawl into the back and go to sleep. Seems like there was more than one time some patrol turn on his siren to wake me up. I'd get back into the driver seat, wave into the outside mirror and then move on up the road.

VA B and W DC Revisited

     About 15 years after I got out of the Navy, I did another road trip up that way. Went to Va Beach, Military Circle and Pembroke malls, NAS Oceana (I just parked at a picnic area close enough to see the buildings, never did go on to the base). I made a point to go to that resturant where I use to eat often, I was sitting there wondering if the owner would still be there, the same owner that is. He comes out a little later and sits at another booth. It was the same man. Drove on up to the District and walked around the mall, capital building. I carried my red backpack with me and my walking stick. This must have been the time I went to the Vietnam Memorial for the first time, to look up all those names from Pickens County. I did that. [This should be in the regular Journal somewhere.]



Next © jwhughes 1997