GROWING UP
Every year when I was young, I’d go back down to Landrum to visit Cleo and we just would have a great time. They’d let me stay about a month. Every summer and we also went to Pameco Beach, which was down on Pameco River about five miles from the sound. I had a great time there because we could run anywhere we wanted to. They didn’t say, “Stay at home” or “You can’t go” and you didn’t have to get permission. We just took off and went to where we had fun vacationing. A lot of the people there were from Aurora, North Carolina, which is where my stepmother was from. It made it nice because she didn’t figure we could get into trouble in here home town. We would go out on the pier and crab and we would ride in the boats of people that actually lived in that section of the country. They had boats on the river so we’d get in them and ride around.

We would co crabbing and we would take a string with a fish head and hang it over the end of the pier. When a crab came along we’d take a net and catch him. And that’s the way we got our dinner a couple times during the week that we were there. We caught enough crabs so we had enough to eat. From there, we would go over to the Aurora side of the river and we’d go to Evan Trip’s home. Evan was an uncle of my stepmother and they would let me stay there for a couple of weeks to visit with them. We could go swimming in the river there, but the river was only three miles wide. At Pameco Beach, it was seven miles wide. It was a lot of fun growing up during the Depression because while we didn’t spend any money, we always had a lot we could do. We had fun with things you had around you.

FAMILY REUNIONS
Traveling as an adult, the train trip to California was a big trip. After we got married, while I was working at Western Union, I would fly out to our family reunion in North Carolina every summer. Even back then, we could fly all the way out. The planes were smaller then and we would change planes in Atlanta or Chicago. When I had kids and stopped working, Bill and I would drive out to the family reunion almost every year. Back and forth across the country, we would cover a lot of States.

The reunions had lots of food. We always held them at someone’s home. We’d have big dinners and everybody would bring their food. You name it, we had it. We had chicken, we had what they called the Big Thumb of Tom Thumb. It’s a sausage that’s put in a bigger sausage. It was one of those big things that most people didn’t usually eat. It was just for show. They always had Brunswick stew. It’s just a stew, but it cooks forever and ever. It had chicken, beef, vegetables. You’d put it on the stove and cook it for 24 hours in these big pots, stew pots, and you’d smell the smell all night long. The meat’s really tender and falls apart when you scoop it out. We also had cakes and pies and whatever you could think of. Apple pies, chocolate, butterscotch, mincemeat, peach, a little bit of everything.

They had black eyed peas and collard greens or whatever those were called with ham hock in with them. Not everyone would eat that today but it’s still good to me. The kids were very picky, but the grown-ups ate it all. The kids really liked the deserts, cakes, chocolate cake, caramel cake. You name it. Anyway, they’d have a whole table set up with cakes and pies and desserts.

The kids would run all around in the corn and tobacco fields and up and down the old houses. At Nanny’s house, and Aunt Estelle’s house, or out in the country. They didn’t care. They had wells and you’d pull the string and bring the bucket up and pour the water. That’s the way they got their water.

DISNEYLAND OPENS
Something memorable from back then was around 1954, we went to the opening of this new park, Disneyland. It was nice. It was not as fancy as it is now. It was kind of like a fair. They had certain places that had gifts and things like that, and they had shops that had books, and lots of other little places. These were all shops. They would have a big parade each time we went. Our kids got to ride all the rides. There was a merry go round. There was a—what do they call those tubs? I can’t think of the name of them, like the octopus. Anyway, it schlepped back and forth like this. They had the teacups ride.

They have the Cinderella’s castle. Disneyland wasn’t as big as it is now, but they had Cinderella’s castle and they had all kinds of eating places. They had cars that you could get in and ride. I remember that. Everybody wanted to get in the go carts. In the next few years, they added Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Peter Pan, the Matterhorn bobsleds. And there was food, lots of food.

We’d go back every three or four months for years every time the kids would want to go. The tickets would run $10 to $15 or so and cover a bunch of rides. They had ticket books: A’s, B’s, C’s, in different sizes and colors.

CAMPING
On our trips to the reunion, we always went and stopped in Oklahoma, because Bill had relatives there. We took a different route each time we went so we saw a different state and we camped in most of the places we went. We would find a county campground or a state campground and we’d stay in that. We had a tent that was a trailer and it opened up, and there was a tent on one side and a trailer on the other. The trailer had places for food and boxes and dishes and everything like that. It was a Highlight trailer and the top of it had a double bed. It had one wheel and it swiveled. It had two hitches connected to the car so drove like a long car.

We had a Chevrolet. We had a Mercury station wagon. It had three seats in it. Buicks, a Ford, a ’57 yellow and white Chevy station wagon. It had the tail fins. I remember that one. It was bright yellow with a white top and the fins. That was a station wagon. We had a ’52 Buick convertible too.

I was never in a car accident. I was real fortunate but Bill had several. He wrecked two or three cars. I wasn’t in them when he wrecked them. He was probably drinking for most of them. He rolled the station wagon in the picture. There were some very scary road trips back then, whipping around those mountains. It was not the most confidence-building thing, especially when there was ice.

We used to go to Yosemite every year, from the time Becky was a baby. She was about six months old when we first went. Then after that, we would go even when the kids were all babies. We’d go up and camp and I just thoroughly enjoyed it. Camping was just getting out into the open where you’d see the trees and the animals and whatever there was around to see. Dad sat around and I did all the cooking and cleaning and picking up. That’s the way it was back then. We probably went to Yosemite twenty, thirty, forty times over my lifetime.

Yosemite had the firefall when we first started going. It’s, if you go up on the top of the mountain, they set a fire on there and burned wood until it burns down to embers, and at night at nine o’clock, they would push the embers off of the mountain. Then everyone would yell, “Elmer! Elmer!” And then somebody would say, “Let the fire fall!” And then the ashes would keep coming over, and it looked like a waterfall only it was firey red and all different colors. They stopped it in the late sixties because it wasn’t natural. We really missed it.

Camp Curry there would have big name entertainers that would come in. I don’t remember the names but I know that they used to have singers that would come in and then people would put on a show. It was all live entertainment at Camp Curry.

DREAM VACATIONS
I went on a cruise to Alaska, which was my fiftieth state. I’ve been in all the states now. But I went up to Alaska, and I also went to Hawaii. I’ve been to Hawaii three or four times. The last trip was on a cruise. The cruise up to Alaska was my dream cruise.

In Hawaii, I thoroughly enjoyed the scenery and the food, entertainment.