Growing up in the big woods

School Days

When I was two and a half years old, we moved to Hawk Pride Mountain,

When I was old enough to attend school, I went to New Bethel Elementary School.

I went to New Bethel for six years. 

My second sister, next to me, attended New Bethel from first to fourth grade.

My third sister attended New Bethel from the first to the second grade.

We would ride the school bus eleven miles to school.

On the school bus, we would sing songs to pass the time.

Some of the songs we sang on the big yellow school bus were Sugar Shack, Hang Down Your Head Tom Doodle, Found a Peanut, and Honeycomb.

Bertha Hester taught me in the first and second grades. 

She would start the day by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, and we would say a prayer. 

We learned how to read from the Dick and Jane books.

Mrs Hester had a large cardboard wheel that began to read words, and we would practice every day from it.

Recess lasted thirty minutes and most of the time we were outside.

Some of the games we played outside were ring around the roses, drop the handkerchief, and hopscotch.

We also like to swing, turn flips, jump on a jump board, play baseball, and kickball.

I remember one hot day when our class ran into the school building from recess, lined up at the water fountain, and then dispersed to the restrooms.

On this peculiar day, my best friend Kathy and I were lagging behind.

So to catch up with the other students, we started running down the hall.

I was running down the hall pretty fast when someone opened the lunchroom door.

 Wham! I ran smack into it. 

I did not have time to stop, and the door lock hit my forehead.

I was knocked to the floor, blood pouring down my face.

I was taken to the first aid room, where a bandage was placed on my forehead.

I spent the rest of the day lying on a day cot that was in our classroom.

Each classroom had its own cot for when students were sick or hurt.

Some of our school activities included cakewalks, donkey basketball games, and special assembly programs in the gym. 

I played the witness against the Litterbug in The Litterbug Play.

I played an Indian girl in the Indian War Dance program.

Everybody's dresses were made from feed sacks. 

Having fun with friends and family 

My favorite television show was Bonanza, which ran from 1959 to 1973.

The show was about a rancher named Ben Cartwright and his three sons, Dan, Adam, and Little Joe. 

We were pre-teens, so we still liked to ride stick horses, and we were married to the Cartwright men.  

My neighbor friend Juanita and I liked to play dress-up.

Juanita's aunt had given her many of her old, discarded dresses, and we loved to dress up in them.

She had a rainbow of dresses in varying lengths; some were pleated, while others had straight skirts.

Some of the dresses were covered in pearls, beads, and buttons. 

Some of the dresses zipped up the back, while others buttoned up the front or laced up both the front and the back.

There were red high heels, black flats, brown loafers, and beaded ballerina slippers to put on our feet that matched the dresses.

There were hats of all shapes and sizes, some with feathers, some with nets, and always one that matched the dress we were wearing. 

Some hats and handbags matched the dresses. 

Most of the dresses we wore were way too long; we didn't mind because we were dressed up to paint the town.

One of my favorite shows that aired on television was Adventures in Paradise.

The star of the show was Garner McKay, who was the captain of a large schooner that sailed in the Pacific Ocean. 

Juanita and I would pretend that we were riding on Gardner McKay's large schooner.

We would place large boards over logs and rock them back and forth. 

Once, I wrote a letter to Garner McKay's fan club asking for a picture and they sent me one.

I placed his picture in my scrapbook, and I still have it. 

Dad made us a swing using a long cable he threw over a huge limb of the oak tree next to our house. 

Next, they took an old wooden plank, notched on either side, and slid it between the ropes for us to sit on.

We lived on the side of a hill, and when we swung, we thought our feet could reach the big blue sky.

My handyman dad built us a go-cart. He used an old wagon frame and built a wooden platform on top of it.

He attached a lawn mower motor to the back side of the wagon.

The go-cart had to be cranked like cranking a push lawnmower.

Our steering wheel was made of rope.

There was no stop button; we either had to pull out a spark plug or run out of gas. 

It was a lot of fun. 

Sitting in our front yard under the hickory nut tree was an old car without a motor; it was just a shell. 

But to us kids, it was a toy. 

We discovered that when we put our legs inside the steering wheel, it would rock back and forth. When we would get out of the car, our bodies could still feel the swaying of the steering wheel. 

In the fall of the year, we would go looking for hickory nuts. 

We would get the most enormous paper sack we could find and head to the woods. 

We would fill the paper sack full of a variety of hickory nuts. 

When we had had enough, we would head back home. 

We would then look for something to crack the nuts open, with most of the time it was two fairly large rocks. 

We would have to be careful cracking those nuts between two rocks because sometimes we would mash our fingers. Boy, did that hurt!

We would fill a plastic bowl with the cracked nuts, but we still couldn't get the goodies out without a pick, and our pick was a bobby pin.

This was an all-day process. 

Where we lived were just a few houses and woods all around us.

We had to walk quite a ways, but behind our home was a creek that wound down the mountain. There were all sorts of rock formations. There was this one rock that we climbed upon that was as large as most people's living rooms, and once on top of it, we could see for miles.

Above the creek was this cascading waterfall, about twenty feet tall.

There was a creek above the fall that was filled with moss, and it could be very slippery when you got close to the edge. 

The water flowed constantly; it never dried up, even during the dry seasons.

Below the fall was a pool deep enough for us to swim in and we did on many a hot day.

We even went into the woods when the woods were freezing cold, just to get an icicle from the frozen falls. 

Behind my neighbor Juanita's house was a bluff about fifty feet high called Horseshoe Bluff. (Cherokee Indians once lived in this area)

Juanita's grandmother was a full blooded Cherokee Indian; she lived next door to Juanita.

We were told not to go near the bluff. 

There were many rock formations around the bluff top.

We had to walk several miles to reach the bottom. 

We found that by climbing down from the top of a firm tree, we could reach the bottom.

People have fallen off that bluff; they were not familiar with the area.