Winter 1950s
Sledding
Big Bros Daniel and Robert and some of their friends did lots of walking around the country woods and fields. I usually cried my way into making them let me tag along. Dad had made us a swing set with sliding board one year too. They would take the sliding board off and use it for sled when it snowed. So that's what we did one Winter, walk around the country side, dragging the sled behind, looking for hills to sled down, four or five of us at a time. There was this one field, I dont remember where it is, but most fields around here are terressed, which made for a bump - jump type of ride. There's no brakes on a sliding board type sled either, so we either rode the ride till slowed out, or hit something, or just rolled off into the snow. That's what the big boys did, roll off the sled before it hit the brair patch at the bottom of this one field. I was too scared too, till I felt the brairs slapping against me, then I decided to roll off, into more brairs.
"Aint it a miricle any of us live to grow old."
1950s
Fireworks
I guess this was Winter time, could have been Fourth of July, but Winter time feels right, maybe it was anytime there was justifiable reason for kids to play with fireworks. Bros could always find a reason for fireworks. And back then, fireworks were real fireworks; not fizzle, sizzle pop like now, the really big KA BOOMMMMM kind of fireworks. Even that wasnt big enough for the Bros and their friends. Dad welded up a two inch pipe to a plate for us, that was our rocket launcher and cannon.
At the old home, the one on Farr's Bridge Road, we had a really big back yard, a concrete wall was at the back edge of the yard then there was a field where Dad and Mom did the garden. On pass the field, across the new highway to Greenville, was a branch and then the Pickens Mill baseball field. Part of the Pickens Mill Village was over there too. It was a couple hundred yards altogether from the backyard to the baseball field.
The big Bros would get the rocket launcher - cannon and tilt it up against the concrete wall toward the baseball field and Mill Village. Then they would light the cherry bombs and TNT bombs and drop them into the pipe. KABOOOM. Then another kaboom as the echo came back from the mill hill.
Most of the rockets back then would fly the couple hundred yards to the baseball field too. I remember one that landed there, then a minute or so later, we saw the grass fire growing. Robert took off running down the field, across the highway, into the bushes and brush along the branch, through the back gate to the baseball field and over to the fire. He did a diving roll across it.
There's store bought fireworks... then there's home made fireworks. Pickens Mill was/is a cotton textile mill, which meant spindles for winding the cotton thread on, which meant great big firecrackers. Big Bros would go up town and buy a can of gunpowder, maybe it was black powder; they'd come back by the mill, pick up some spindles that had been thrown out, then on back home. The afternoon was spent drilling holes in the spindles for fusses, packing one end with paper, pouring in the gunpowder, packing the other end closed. They would set the bomb on the ground, light the fuss and then run like crazy. Dont remember much KABOOM, but there was lots of smoke.
Ha, crazy kids having fun back then; probably get arrested for terrorist activity these days.
"Aint it a miricle any of us live to grow old."
1950s
Redneck Country Hoodlums
Way up in New York City there were such things as street gangs, typical sterotype stuff I suppose, like WestSide Story. Teens belonging to a group, just to be belonging, or some other justifiable reason for being a teen hoodlum.
Didnt have any big city streets or blocks or EastSide WestSide UpTown or DownTown hoods around red dirt country. Had Mill Village hoods, High School hoods, Country hoods, Town hoods though. Didnt have many or any handguns or fancy switchblades either. Had BB guns and rocks and fists though; had hunting rifles and hunting knifes but those were for rabbits and squirrels.
There was Pickens Mill Village hood, dont really remember who was who over there across the branch. And there were Big Bros and their friends, I remember most of them. Dont remember if there was anything specific that started the hood fighting, probably didnt need any, other than it was just different redneck country gangs.
Anyway, next to the garden field below the back yard were an old meat house and chicken coop. Use to climb up on top of the meat house and jump across to the top of the chicken coop and otherwise play around. There was a really big oak tree there too, had the beginnings of a tree house in it.
One time Bros and their friends were playing around on the buildings and stuff, shooting the BB guns at anything worth shooting at. Baby Bro (me) tagging along and climbing around too. Then the BB's started whissing by, the village gang trying to break up our fun, I guess. Baby Bro gets told to get down flat on the roof, the other's were doing the same. They fire off a few BBs in return. One of the friends stands up to take aim, he gets a stinging round in the leg. Then it's pretty much over.
Big Bros and their friends did lots of walking around the woods in the country. There was this pine woods on the hill across another branch where they hung out some. They built a lean-to out of the the dead wood and pine needles one summer. We'd play around there and wander around more. They may have camped out there once or twice, but I never did. Bros and friends went over one Saturday afternoon, when they got to there they found the lean-to all torn down. The mill village gang had made a hit.
Only time I had a run in with them was when I was walking the railroad tracks that ran pass the substation on up to the cotton mill. I had been balancing on the rail for a long and was seeing how far I could walk it. I looked up ahead and saw two of the mill village gang headed my way. They were in their late teens or older, I must have been about 8 or 9, they looked big and mean to me. But I guess they knew who my Bros were and I guess that made me part of the wrong gang. I just kept on walking toward them and they toward me. If they were going beat me up they would have whether I passed on by them or ran from them. So I just kept on walking the rail. As when met I made some comment about how long I been balancing on the track. They just looked at me and one of them bumped into me trying to knock me off. He did. I got back on the rail and walked on, didnt even look back to see if they were watching. So that was stand against the Mill Village hood.
"Aint it a miricle any of us live to grow old."
1950s
Halloween
For what seemed like forever all I got to do for Halloween was watch my Big Bros and their friends leave the front porch of the old house and walk off into the night on great adventures. Cry, cry, cry, ... whin, whin whin.
Then there was two or three years I would get to go with them to the neighbor houses on road till we got to the highway. Then one of the Bros would walk me back home then run to catch up his friends. Still thought I was missing out on all the good stuff.
Finally one year I got to go with them; walking the country roads and town streets with the other big kids. Have to do lots of walking around redneck country roads to get the loot. Those town kids had it easy, the mill village kids too, houses all bunched up together. Course we'd hit the town and village too along with the country homes get there and back. I watch the big kids play their tricks and get chased out of yard, look at the soaped businessed windows and egged cars.
I suppose most every Halloween the railroad handcart got loose on the tracks with the help of a few teens a tricking. It was already loose on the tracks up towards town when we came up on it. We'd had made the rounds through town and was on the way back home, so Big Bros and their friends decided it was time for a ride, after all the walking. We all get on, I was probably lifted on, and couple of them started pumping. It rolls out of town next to the street leading toward the mill, kinda down hill on past the mill, wind blowing past my face. About that time it's moving fast and Big Bros and friends start talking about how do you stop it. No one knows so they decide they have to jump. They do. I'm still on the thing trying to make myself jump, scared, on my way to Easley seven miles down the track, nothing but shadows whissing by. Out of the darkness I hear, "Jump Jerry Jump". I do and its over with. I guess I closed my eyes, didnt want to see what I was going hit. Must have thumped and rolled but I was ok. Not bad for a kid tagging along with teens.
"Aint it a miricle any of us live to grow old."
1950s
Spooks
Jamie was one of my friends one Summer, he lived down in Georgia and he spent some Summers with his grandparents across the road from me. We did lots of things together.
One day we decided to play ghosts and made plans to meet under a tree in his grandparents field, it was near the corner next to the road. We talked about bringing pots to beat on and what kind of screams we would do. We were to meet about eleven I guess, though I dont remember how I was to know when that was, didnt have a clock or watch. Anyway I lay in bed waiting for everyone to get to sleep and when I felt like it was time, I snuck out of the house. No one came looking for me so I must have made out. I went down to the tree and waited around. Jamie never does show. I walk up to back of the neighbors house to where I knew which room he was in and started tossing pebbles up against the window. He never answers and I keep tossing and calling out. A flashlight comes on putting me in the spotlight and Mr Cater looks out the window. He asks what I'm doing and I make up some story, dont remember what. After a few minutes of asking and lieing he tells me to go on home. I do and sneek back in. Next morning I get kidding from my Bros and a lecture from Dad.
60s
Radio
It was a crystal radio during the 1950s. A really small device with one of those plug in ear pieces like a hearing aide. The brothers probably put it together from a mail order kit. There's some vague sense of the big room grandma Hughes stayed in and I would be there listening to it. And probably elsewhere around the house and outside.
Transistor radios arrived during the early 1960s and every teenager had to have one. There were small carry around kinds and then the pocket size radios. I would tune in the old WFBC station, 1330 AM. What comes to mind is being out on the pourch with the power adapter plug into that outlet. Running the tuner up and down finding different stations.
Later after starting college at Clemson and I had moved into the front bedroom, where I'm staying now, August 2002. I would sit at the desk and tune in the far away stations. The AM signal would bounch up and down between the ground and ionosphere from distance cities. WOWO Fort Wayne Indiana, I think, was one of them. I was avoiding studying the books and would just let my mind drift away about some electronic signal with music getting from there to here.
Then came the 1970s, the Navy and Virginia Beach years. It was the Van radio then. Cruising around and road running up to the District or back to Pickens with the van radio blaring away. What was that song, Radar Love?, and other road tripping music, "It's girl, my lord, in a big, black ford, slowing down to take a look at me."
Listening to the oldie - goldies stations were the radio times during the rest of the 1970s and part of the 1980s. That got old, eventually, and the radio signals finally faded away.
1950s - 60s - 70s
CB Radio
Dad was a volenteer fireman. The Pickens Fire Department got CB radios during the late 1950s. Weldon Day was the electronics hobbist, I think it was he who put all the kits together. And there was Pete Finley the next door neighbor who was a volenteer firement too. He put one together for himself, and helped with the others too.
It may have even been during the first years of the 1960s when the fire department got one for all the men. I can remember CB's before and after we moved to Fox Squirrel Ridge.
There was one time I road around with Dad. It was the night the firemen had decided to test the range of the radios. I don't remember where and all we drove to that evening. But we did.
Of course after the trucking and CB movies, oh yeah, Smokey and the Bandit, there was one in the Van. No wait. I had one in the Van during the Virginia Beach and Navy road trips. But anyway, all that was mostly keeping up with the trucker talk and where the radar and patrol vehicles where and the traffic problems.
Maybe it was the late 1970s and early 1980s when the CB radio craze happened. Those were the times of riding around to high places to catch the signal. To and from Tri County Tec. Buying the house antenna from Don Harvell and setting up the CB in the study room.
I traded the last CB radio for the HP calculator. That was with Jamie Rackley, a friend at work.
1975 - 1998
Calculators and Computers
Besides office supplies, paper, notebooks, brief folders and such, my addiction has been calculators and computers. For others it was records, 8 tracks, cassettes and compact disks, or camera stuff, or something else.
I've had most all the latest in calculators, even some in college I think. During the first years at Singer it developed up to the Texas Instrument SR52 programable and recording strip version.
I got the PET 2000 during 1979 and became one of 100,000 home computer owners. I ordered it from one of those computer warehouses up in New York somewhere. The computer part came but the printer/terminal was back ordered. I hassled them too much over when it was to get here. I was out painting the house when the neighbor came over and said Mom had called. They had air shipped it and arranged for a taxi cab to deliver it and he needed directions.
So for the next 20 years, almost, I would get a new computer system occassionally. I've had, ..., the PET 2000 with its cassette tape and that printer/terminal; an 8088 system, Standard Brand I think, about 1987; a 386 system by Gateway in 1990 or 91 when I quit work; then the 486 type by Tiger from Base Technolgies up on Main Street when I worked there for a while and finally this 1997 or 98 portable which I got for that Hagood History project.