Mimi and Her World: She Attempted the Absurd - and Almost Achieved the Impossible.

By Mimi Correll Cerniglia

Mimi Cerniglia's autobiography begins with the introduction of the two people who will become the parents of her two sisters and her.

You will find out why furniture manufacturing in the Piedmont area of North Carolina was important in the author's life and the state of North Carolina.

Depression era modes of transportation and communication come alive from her excellent descriptions.

Due to a family incident religion's decline and eventual rejection unfolds slowly.

An annual family event helps the reader learn about the homestead of a southern family who had owned slaves.

Terms used in local government reminds the reader that North Carolina was one of the original thirteen colonies and was settled from east to west.

Public school education in her college town was so important the citizens paid extra tax for city schools.

The end of World War II brought peace time production of everything.

College and an education career as well as marriage led to the birth of a son and a move to Florida.

More education in North Carolina and a return to Florida for the son's education was interspersed with a new marriage.

Following traveling and house building in North Carolina came death and a move back to Florida to be near her successful son and twin grandsons.

Her senior years of reading, writing and golf stopped due to illness. Recovery from illness and pursuit of academic endeavors concludes the book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 7, 2010
• ISBN: 9781456700607

Mimi Correll Cerniglia

Using historical data she tells how she lived and reacted to people and events from the nineteen twenties to two thousand nine. We have a chance to know her refined personal qualities. In this way she helped us understand what it was like living in the segregated South. Academic progress was revealed from an early age because of her excitement about the activities of the college students in her town. Her intellectual curiosity led to her earning a BA and an MA degree. Recognition of good leadership skills in business, , politics and civic life led her to hone her leadership skills in education, women's issues and free inquiry. She brings humor to her lack of musical talent and helps us contrast her poor musical ability with her academic successes. Her desire to excel in academics did not diminish her enjoyment of running, swimming, tennis and golf. Domestic endeavors are revealed after marriage and the birth of her son and later twin grandsons. People are surprised when she sews all her square dance outfits. During her senior years she has time to increase her leadership skills by promoting women's achievements in various endeavors. Starting free inquiry groups and publishing newsletters revealed her views on science and reasoning.

Book preview

Preface

You may be reading this after I die. This is why I thought my autobiography needed an introduction. Maybe you are not related to me but are interested in how a female rationalized that she would become successful even though women were not recognized as capable of advanced education or handling high-level positions.

From an early age, I wanted to know how my world worked. It did not take me many years to understand my relationship to family members: mother, father, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandmother, grandfather, and cousins.

Throughout my life, I have had the good fortune to be around successful people who were involved in retail sales, furniture manufacturing, textiles, and chemicals, as well as education, government, publishing, philosophy, art, and science.

I do not mean to leave my father out of my recognition of people that were important in my life. Daddy was handsome and very intelligent. In this book, you will read how my father recognized my abilities and how I emulated his intellectual curiosity.

Since I had no brothers I have not said much about men but I was so fortunate to have two marvelous husbands, a wonderful son, and two wonderful grandsons. You will read about the many reasons I feel this way.

You will learn why I moved forward in my profession and desired to be the leader in various organizations. I never wanted to be associated with any organization unless I knew the structure of the organization and the people who were the decision makers from the national level to the local group.

I had no toleration for mediocrity. Whether it was teaching, writing, parenting, housekeeping, bookkeeping, leadership, physical fitness, social responsibility, or good citizenship I never thought of myself as one who performed in a mediocre way.

I have provided historical data to help you paint a picture of local towns, states, the nation, and the world during my lifetime. There is data pertaining to the economy’s influence on all aspects of my life.

By interspersing world events, I have been able to point to the effect various events had on my life as well as the lives of my siblings, husbands, son, and grandsons.

It always amazed me when I saw something in someone’s home that I did not see in most homes; I presumed had been used in the past.

When I was growing up there were houses that had no electricity; therefore they used lamps and a cook stove that burned wood instead of an electric or gas stove. People who had small farms still brought their produce to town in wagons pulled by mules or horses.

Living in two centuries has made me feel connected to three centuries, because my grandparents were born in the middle of the nineteenth century. Some of the information in this book has come from my memory so if I thought something happened in a certain year and someone finds information that differs, I hope he or she will have some way to document the correct date(s).

I am proud of all my relatives and feel honored to have been reared by parents who were not dictatorial. Betty Lou, Gwendolyn, and I were good parents and our children have been good parents. I wish the same for future generations.

I hope I have left you with the realization that Mimi never let any unfortunate incident put a dent in her optimism.

Contents

The Nineteen Twenties

The Nineteen Thirties

The Nineteen Forties

The Nineteen Fifties

The Nineteen Sixties

The Nineteen Seventies

The Nineteen Eighties

The Nineteen Nineties

The Two Thousand Oughts

The Nineteen Twenties

Beautiful cars, bobbed hair, and the Charleston dance defined the Roaring Twenties in the United States. The young people thought World War I was the war to end all wars. The artificially low interest rates and booming exports due to a reduced dollar versus the pound allowed people to enjoy the booming economy as though it would never end. The first commercial radio station went on the air in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1920.

Many women worked diligently to get two constitutional amendments passed. The first was the XIII Amendment, ending slavery, and in 1920 woman’s suffrage was finally approved under the XIX Amendment. It still angers me to think any man or woman would think a woman was not intelligent enough to know which candidate or issue was important to her.

After the amendment passed to abolish slavery, the Ku Klux Klan gained its peak membership. All over the South, the Negro was treated as a second-class citizen. Negroes were not permitted to vote, stay in hotels, eat in restaurants, ride in the front of a bus, or go to white schools. In public there would be two water fountains, one labeled white and the other labeled colored.

When the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee showed the country that evolution was based on valid science, the bigotry of some of the population kept them from praising biological science as well as all sciences.

The American Birth Control League was founded in 1921. The first television broadcast was in 1927 and the same year Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean.

In November 1928, Herbert Hoover was elected president and the first all-talking movies opened the door wider for the movie industry.

Medicine made great strides when Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928. Religious groups and some women’s groups led the drive to prohibit the sale of demon rum. Little did they realize that the Eighteenth Amendment prohibiting the sale of alcohol would lead to bootleg liquor.

Rural Free Delivery meant mail was delivered to houses if the house on roads paved with gravel or macadam.. There were few phones, so the telegram made it possible people to send messages long-distance, if someone could go to the telegraph office to send it. In our town, messages were delivered by a boy who wore a uniform and rode a bicycle.

By 1925, North Carolina was producing more wooden furniture than any other state in the nation. Among the earliest furniture factories in North Carolina was the High Point Company in High Point, North Carolina, established in 1888 by lumber salesman Ernest Ansel. William and David White opened a factory in Mebane, North Carolina, in the 1880s. According to the Census Bureau, there were forty-four furniture establishments and one thousand seven hundred fifty-nine wage earners in the industry in North Carolina in the year 1900.

By 1925, the state ranked fifth in the value of furniture production overall. This remarkable success was due in part to plentiful timber in the region. Oak, cherry, poplar, ash, maple, and walnut trees, all species well suited for furniture production, grew in abundance in the central and western counties of North Carolina. An ample supply of southern laborers willing to work for steady, albeit low, factory wages also played a key role in the industry’s success.

A third factor in the rapid development of the furniture industry in central and western North Carolina, and one sometimes overlooked, was the existence of reliable rail transportation. The rail system enabled manufacturers to transport a heavy and bulky product such as furniture to throughout the region at reasonable cost. Many towns in the region, including High Point, would become centers of the industry in the state. Hickory, Thomasville, Lenoir, and Morganton were among the other small towns with furniture factories built along the railroad tracks.

Firmly established by the 1920s, the furniture manufacturing industry in North Carolina ushered in a period of general prosperity and growth. North Carolina manufacturers were selling furniture well beyond the South by then, allowing them to share in the prosperity of the nation during this period. Rising incomes, an expanding middle class, and a home-building boom brought a surge in demand for the moderately priced wooden furniture produced by most North Carolina firms.

Output from North Carolina factories nearly doubled during the 1920s in response to rapid demand for furniture. New factories were being built and improved production methods were implemented to wring additional output from existing factories. Woodworking equipment was more sophisticated and furniture factories much better designed; in some cases emulating mass production techniques and finishing processes and greater use of waterproof resin glues contributed to improved furniture quality.

Bruce Correll Meets Lena Grubb

During the prosperous 1920s, the two people who became my parents lived in circumstances so different it seems amazing they ever met. Bruce Correll’s mother died when he was four years old and his father died when he was eleven. He had a stepmother who sent him, his brother Clay, and their sister Lona to Patterson, an Episcopal boarding school in western North Carolina. Bruce and Clay excelled in all subjects. They also gained a thorough knowledge of the hardwood trees and earned extra money collecting Galax leaves, which were sold to florists. The headmaster and faculty recognized the brothers’ great potential. Bruce and Clay were introduced to furniture manufacturing and learned the rudiments of upholstery. When Bruce and Clay were skillful in upholstery and Lona skillful at making mirrors, they were guaranteed employment in a Lexington furniture company, which promised a good future. Their Patterson education ended.

Because Lexington was near the town where they had lived, it was easy for them to find a room in a boarding house. Boardinghouses provided rooms and meals. Since there were few hotels, a lot of working young people lived in one of several boardinghouses in town. Bruce was fortunate to be able to rent a room in Mary Grubb’s Eighth Avenue Boarding House. It was Mary Grubb’s youngest daughter, beautiful blue-eyed, blonde, long-legged Lena, who caught handsome, intelligent, and ambitious Bruce’s attention.

Lena was the youngest of Mary Barnes Grubb and Madison Locke Grubb’s four daughters. Before Lena graduated from Churchland High School, the Grubbs sold their tobacco farm and blacksmith business and moved to an Eighth Avenue house in Lexington. Locke had retired and wanted to travel. Mary wanted to be sure her future was secure so she turned her house into the Mary Grubb Eighth Avenue Boarding House. When Bruce came to live there, Lena was working at the telephone company. By the time Bruce was promoted to foreman of the upholstering division at Hoover Furniture Company, he and Lena had fallen in love and made plans to marry. It was September 20, 1925, when they were married in a simple ceremony. They continued to live at the boardinghouse.

Betty Lou Correll

Mimi Jean Correll

Young people felt their future was very secure. Bruce bought a new car, and he and Lena and their friends enjoyed talking pictures and an occasional traveling opera or stage play. When they realized Lena was pregnant, they were confident with no worries about starting a family. They welcomed their baby daughter, Betty Lou, on January 21, 1927. Playing with their new baby replaced some of the partying they had enjoyed with their friends. Family life was enhanced when they realized they were going to be welcoming another baby into the family. August 21, 1928, I was born. Mother chose the name Mimi Jean because she liked Puccini’s opera, La Bohème, and the little seamstress, Mimi. Daddy had thought I would be a boy, so he gave me the nickname Charlie, which he called me most of the time.

Daddy became a Mason, which was one of the many steps that led to him becoming a leader.

When I was two months old, the prestigious Hickory Chair Company contacted Daddy and asked him to move to Hickory and become the supervisor of their upholstery division.

Mother and Daddy knew no one in Highland, which was seventy miles west of Lexington. They were so confident that Bruce would continue advancing his furniture manufacturing career they were not concerned about moving their young family away from family members. They rented a house in Highland near Lenoir Rhyne College.

Highland, a small town east of Hickory, was an unusual small town. The Southern Railway ran from east to west through Highland and Hickory. On the south side of the railroad tracks were industrial and furniture factories that had railroad sidings. On the north side of the railroad tracks were the residences, retail stores, and Lenoir Rhyne College. Highland Avenue was the main street. Along this street were two grocery stores, a pharmacy, a beauty parlor, a barbershop, a laundry, a dry cleaner, a shoe repair shop, a sandwich shop, and a furniture store. The town jail was also on Highland Avenue. There were three churches in Highland: Lutheran, Methodist, and Baptist. I do not know when people in Highland voted to allow Hickory to annex them, but all my memories related to living in Hickory.

The cost of living seemed amazingly low in the twenties compared to fifty and sixty years later. A gallon of milk was fifty-eight cents, a loaf of bread was nine cents, a gallon of gas was ten cents, and a new car was five hundred twenty-five dollars.

Business people were always watching young people who were eager to work toward a good future. One of the requirements for upward mobility in one’s career was church attendance. Mother and Daddy quickly found themselves in leadership positions in Highland Baptist Church. The minister, Reverend E. F. Sullivan, was from a very wealthy family and did not need a large salary. Because of this, the church had money for social programs for young people.

Some of our neighbors were professors at the college. Mother and Daddy quickly made friends with them as well as with the local politicians. When Highland became the Ward Four Precinct in the city of Hickory, Mother and Daddy were involved.

The 1929 stock market crash brought the booming economy to a stop. Banks closed, which meant people could not get their savings out of the bank. Some business people committed suicide because their businesses were ruined and their insurance would help their family survive. This happened to my friends , Bill and Harley Shuford, whose father owned Shuford Spinning Mills in Hickory. There was no unemployment insurance to help people who lost their jobs.

In addition to the depressed economy, the dust storms in the west blew away soil and crops. I have tried to imagine how the people survived.

The October 1929 Stock Market Crash didn’t affect my parents but Grandmother Grubb lost most of her savings when the banks closed and she never trusted banks again.

The Nineteen Thirties

Gwendolyn Ann Correll

On January 4, 1932, I was three and a half years old. Grandmother Grubb was visiting, and she told Betty Lou and me she was going to put on our coats because we were going to visit a neighbor. I remember going to the neighbor’s house and a little later going home. Grandmother took us into Mother’s bedroom. Daddy and Dr. Lewis were standing beside the bed and Mother was holding her new baby. Daddy said we had a little sister whom they named Gwendolyn Ann. Dr. Lewis said he wanted to take her home with him. Immediately I said he could not because she was my little sister. I do not remember Betty Lou saying anything.

I think Dr. Lewis wanted to be sure Betty Lou and I would be happy to have a little sister. This might have been why we thought Dr. Lewis was such a good doctor.

By this time, more than half of all teenagers in the United States were going to high school. The United States population was one hundred twenty three million. In 1931, The Star Spangled Banner became the official national anthem. Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. Japan seized Manchuria. In 1932, German voters supported the Nazi party, and in America, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president. In 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, while the US passed an amendment to repeal prohibition. That same year Congress passed and President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act that would finance retirement by withholding one cent from each dollar earned.

In 1935, FDR went on the radio to talk directly to people. He called these broadcasts fireside chats. I still remember hearing him beginning his talk by saying, My fellow citizens …

By 1938, the workweek was forty-four hours and the minimum wage was twenty-five cents an hour. Fraternal organizations like the Freemasons, Odd Fellows, Elks, and Moose, provided economic help for their members. State and local governments set up poorhouses to help the homeless. Very few companies had pension plans for their employees. In 1939 the first commercial air flight crossed the Atlantic Ocean.

Just a few months later, we moved to the corner of Center Street and Highland Avenue. At this time, Highways Sixty Four and Seventy traversed Highland and Hickory via Highland Avenue and Center Street. The college campus was across the street.

The Center Street house had a full basement and two floors. A porch went across the front of the house. As we entered the house the front staircase was on the right side of the hall. On the left was the door into the parlor, which was what we called the living room. This room had heavy draperies and the furniture was covered in horsehair. Sitting on the furniture made my legs itch. We sat in the parlor when we had guests. Adults always told me to sit still but it was almost impossible to sit still when my legs were itching from sitting on the horsehair upholstery.

I remember being in the parlor getting my picture taken by a photographer. This was when Gwendolyn was very small because I remember Lyla Ruth Sullivan holding Gwendolyn while the photographer took her picture.

The front hall led to what was supposed to be a dining room but we used it much like a den was used. To the left was the breakfast room, which led into the kitchen. In the kitchen was a door that opened onto the back porch. There were a lot of steps that led to the back yard. From the den we could go into the back hall. From this hall there were stairs leading to the basement and stairs that led to the second floor and a large room. The front stairs led to three bedrooms in addition to the large room. The only bathroom was upstairs.

The basement was where we played when the weather was cold. The coal chute was in the front part of the basement. Coal trucks backed into the driveway and coal was pushed down the coal chute. Daddy shoveled the coal into the hopper, which fed coal into the furnace.

Our neighbors were Abernathy, Knipp, Greenholt, Leonard, and Suther. These were people we sometimes visited because we could stay on the sidewalk and never have to cross the street.

Lenoir Rhyne College students walked along our street on their way to the sandwich shop. If I were outside, I could talk to them. My first impression was that someday I wanted to be a college student. This may have influenced my love of reading and fed my intellectual curiosity. It was so important that I understand the why and how of everything. If I picked up an acorn, I wanted to know why it fell from the tree and why the tree lost leaves in the fall. I learned a lot of nursery rhymes and songs. I always wanted to hear happy songs and did not like to hear the sad songs I heard in church. I still cringe when I heard the words of Amazing Grace.

My parents were more successful than a lot of people but I must have listened and retained memories of them talking about people losing jobs and having to beg just to stay alive. I remember men with sacks over their backs walking along the street. Sometimes one of them would go to our back door and say he would work for food. Mother told us to go inside if anyone came toward the house.

These early years of my life were the years when I caught the values that shaped my morals and pointed me toward high ethical standards.

My parents were disturbed about how poor some people were. I remember Mother organizing a group of people to get donations of food. She had the food delivered to our upstairs back room. Some women helped her package the food and distribute it to people who were out of work and had little or no food.

During this time, Daddy’s sister, Aunt Lone Goss, and her three children were visiting us. It was great fun playing with our cousins. After dinner one evening, we heard someone trying to open the basement door. Daddy and Aunt Lona put chairs in front of the door leading to the basement. They sat in the chairs to keep the person from coming into the basement and up the stairs.

After the banging stopped, Daddy said it might have been someone who knew he and Mother had been giving food to hungry people. This must have made quite an impression on me. Maybe this is why I thought of them as the best parents anyone could have and could have been the primary reason I never questioned their saying no to some request I made. I remember Betty Lou constantly insisting that she should be able to do anything she wanted to do. Since I was the middle child, I probably always wanted to have peace and harmony, not conflict.

Gwendolyn was always following us. I never thought she was in the way when Betty Lou and I were playing but we didn’t know how to show her how to do whatever we were doing. Our parents told us to look after our sister. On the floor were heat registers. One day Gwendolyn was following Betty Lou and me when she fell onto a register. I think I cried when I saw her tiny blistered hands.

There would be a few more years before our parents built a house and we had electric appliances. Meanwhile, we had an icebox that had to have a block of ice inside to keep milk and meat cold. Each day the man driving the ice truck would go along the streets. If a house had the ice sign in a window the driver knew how much ice was needed according to what number was at the top of the sign. If someone had a sign with forty at the top, he used an ice pick to chip along the big block of ice until the forty-pound black broke away. He held the block of ice with tongs and carried it to the icebox at the back of the house. A pan for catching the melted water would be under the icebox and someone would have to empty the pan.

We didn’t have an electric stove but one with a tank for kerosene. We lit burners with a match, the same way burners were lit for gas stoves.

Before we had a washing machine, Mother took our clothes to a black lady who washed and ironed them. In the winter, we had a lot of wool clothes which Mother or Daddy took to a Chinese dry cleaning business.

When our car needed fuel, Mother or Daddy drove to the service station where someone filled the gas tank, checked the oil, and cleaned the windshield. The person who did this also collected the money for the gas. Daddy also took the car to the service station to get the oil changed or to have it washed. I remember every Friday someone came from the service station, drove the car to the station, washed it, and drove it back to our house or to Daddy’s business.

We lived in western North Carolina, which was quite far from the coast. Every Thursday a truck delivered seafood to our local seafood store. Some Thursdays Mother went by the seafood store and bought oysters or fish for our dinner. If she bought fish, she bought halibut for my sisters and me and a bony fish for Daddy and her. She didn’t want any of us to get a bone caught in our throats.

At the grocery store, a shopper gave a list to a clerk. The clerk went around the store getting the items on the list. The patron paid and left with the groceries. If a child took a list to the store the clerk delivered the groceries and was paid.

One summer day Betty Lou and I were taking turns swinging when a car rolled over into our yard near the swing and we ran to the porch. People started removing the injured and taking them to our porch. I do not remember an ambulance but a doctor and nurse treated the people.

Garages were built above the ground and a ramp led from the garage floor to the driveway. One day Daddy told Betty Lou and me to watch Gwendolyn because, after he checked the car, he would be backing it out of the garage. Being typical children, we continued playing and forgot to think about Gwendolyn. She had gone to the garage and when Daddy backed out, he backed over her, but she was not injured. I will never forget the look on Daddy’s face when he picked her up and how relieved he looked when he realized she had no injuries.

One cold morning we woke to hear people talking about the fire that destroyed the wooden women’s dorm at the college. No one was hurt. When Mother and Daddy investigated to see if they could help in any way, the college officials said the women students would need rooms. My parents volunteered to let two women stay in our spare bedroom. I enjoyed talking to the students every day. They probably thought of me as a pest but they never said so. They ate at the cafeteria, not our house.

A lot of our neighbors were college professors. One of them had a nice convertible. The college kept the mascot, a bear, in a brick building with a fenced area where the bear exercised. For some unknown reason the bear escaped and roamed the neighborhood. Before the bear was caught, it jumped on the convertible and ruined the top. I relate this from what my parents told me.

I was five or six when I received a pair of roller skates as a Christmas present. I put on the skates by putting my shoe on top of the skate and using a key to fasten the small bar on each side of the front of the shoe. A leather strap fit through the back of the skate. I could buckle the strap and the skate fit my entire foot. I had my skate key on a cord and wore it around my neck. If I had to go to the bathroom, I took off my skates before going in the house. I remember falling while trying to learn to skate. Sidewalks were poured in sections and the tiny space between the sections caused me to fall when I was learning to balance myself on the skates. Someone told me to practice on the sidewalk leading to the Knipp’s house because their sidewalk had no sections. I got permission to use their sidewalk and quickly learned to balance on my skates.

Each year my sisters and I skated so much we wore out skates and the ball bearings fell out of the wheels. We bought new wheels that would last until Christmas when we got a new pair of skates. The sidewalk in front of our house went down a steep hill. We had great fun skating very fast down the hill. We skated back uphill but not as fast. At the bottom of the hill was a bridge that went over a creek. I enjoyed looking at the creek to see if I could see an animal.

We attended Highland Elementary School. Along the front of the school were three entrances, one on each end and the main entrance in the center. On the left-side entrance was a door to the basement cafeteria. Also in the basement was a section for girls and their restroom and a section for boys and their restroom. On the right-side entrance was a rope; when pulled, it would ring the bell that was used for school and to let the community knew when the votes had been counted after an election.

When Betty Lou entered the first grade, I attended kindergarten, which was possible because my parents and some other parents paid the teacher’s salary and the school had a room for the kindergarten class. This was not available when Betty Lou had been five years old.

Mrs. Crockett was the name of my teacher. The first day she told Margie Penland and me to sit together. The desks were made with a shelf under the desktop. The front of the desk had plates that held a seat that could be folded up out of the way. This was the seat for the desk in front of it. Our desks and seats were wide enough for two children to share a desk. These desktops had a hole in the right side in which older children put their inkbottles so they could dip their pens in the ink and write.

I remember going home the first day with my worksheet. I had printed my name and some numbers. I was very proud to see my name on the paper. I told my parents I did not want to sit beside Margie Penland because she talked too much. The Penlands were friends of my parents and I knew Margie and her brother Charles. I guess my parents talked to the teacher because I had a new person to share a seat with.

The year I attended kindergarten I had a sore throat many times. Mother talked Daddy into agreeing to have my tonsils and adenoids removed. The day before I was to go to the hospital I was told I would eat early because my surgery would be early the next day. The next morning Mother and Daddy drove me to the hospital. I remember smelling ether when we entered the hospital. We went to Dr. Lewis’ office and he told my parents when they could come back to pick me up after the surgery. My parents asked if I was afraid. I told them I was excited because the hospital was a very interesting place. The nurse put a gown on me and took me to the operating room. Dr. Lewis came in and praised me for being such a good patient. He said the nurse was going to put a mask over my nose. The next thing I remembered was being in a room with a sore throat when my parents came in. In a short time, I was dressed and carried to our car in the parking lot. Daddy lay me down on the back seat. I vividly remember looking out the car window from my lying down position and thinking how different the tall trees looked while I was riding along. I was looking into the tops of the trees. I think I had previously only observed tree trunks.

The sad thing about my surgery was missing the trip to my teacher’s farm. Later my classmates shared their experiences with me. This teacher was so wonderful because she let my classmates learn to describe a sequence of events and at the same time made me feel special. It took several days before I could eat a regular meal but I got rid of my sore throats. I can still remember the smell and taste of warm pineapple juice, which was given to me to relieve my sore throat.

In 1934 when I entered the first grade I could read, write, and tell time. The children I knew in kindergarten became my friends during all my elementary years. The tragic aspect of this was the difference in the achievement level of those of us who had attended kindergarten and those who had not. My first grade teacher was Mr. Gilbert and he separated us into three groups for reading and other lessons. Because I was the only one who knew how to tell time, Mr. Gilbert would tell me to go out in the hall and look at the clock. I came back and told where the little hand and the big hand were. Mr. Gilbert would draw a clock on the board and teach the children how to tell time. Bobby Yount was always the person I compared myself to. Without realizing it, I was competing with her in the first grade. If the teacher asked her to read, I wondered why I hadn’t been asked, but I read quite often. I do not think anyone was quicker learning arithmetic than I was and I really enjoyed all tasks related to numbers, even adding long lists of numbers.

After the school year was over, we moved to the Harris house on College Street, a block away from where we had been living. The Harris house was at the bottom of the steep hill and our sidewalk was level with the porch. We could skate to the top of the hill, skate down into our sidewalk, and let the porch stop us. I vividly remember the thrill of skating so fast because the porch would stop me. A lot of times we had neighborhood children skating with us. No one ever had an accident.

I was intrigued by everything that was not part of my daily life. I was eager to learn about the jobs I saw people doing, from our postman, policeman, workers I saw going along the streets, and especially people who talked to others and wrote about what was said, which we could then read in The Hickory Daily Record. Because I was too small to hold the paper and read it, I remember putting the newspaper on the floor and lying on my stomach so I could read the comic section.

I thought downtown Hickory was a magic place. The railroad tracks that ran through Hickory from east to west ran through downtown. On the south side of the tracks were the railway freight docks, and the passenger side of the tracks was on the north side. In front of the passenger tracks was a grassy park and a cannon. There was a concrete platform where politicians talked and sometimes a loud-mouthed person would talk about religion.

The north side of the tracks was Hickory’s main street. If one started at the west end of Main Street, there was Lutz Drug Store, West Deal Men’s Store, Efird Department Store, F. W. Woolworth Five and Ten Cent Store, Melville Ladies Wear, Bisanar Jewelry Store, Spainhour Department Store, W. T. Grant Five and Ten Cent Store, Zerden’s Department Store, and another drug store. Between each store was a door that opened onto a staircase. Upstairs were offices, even a dentist’s office.

Between the railroad and retail stores was a wide street that went across the tracks. We could go west from the freight dock and along the back of a bank where the street had a sharp curve before going under the railroad tracks. This street led to the Calvary Barn, which is where people left their horses while they were doing business. There were feed stores and auto parts stores in this area.

At the west end of Main Street, one could turn left and go under the railroad or turn right. This street had buildings on both sides. On the west side was a hardware, Western Union, and Piggly Wiggly grocery store. On the east side was the side of Lutz Drug Store and a back alley that led to the entrance to the jail. The other side of the alley was the back of retail stores. If one didn’t turn into the back alley but stayed on the street, on the east side was the Town Hall which had the jail in the back of it. Beside the Town Hall were the fire station and a movie theater as well as a savings and loan bank.

When one turned the corner at the savings and loan bank on the north side of the street were Cox Grocery, Abernathy Hardware, a movie theater, and Hotel Hickory, which was on the corner. On the northeast corner was the Corinth Dutch Reformed Church. On the southeast corner was a drugstore, and the First National Bank was on the southwest corner. If one turned south on the west side of the street was a drug store. On the east side was a furniture store, Montgomery Ward, a second-run movie theater, and Belk Department Store, which was on the northeast corner. Across the street were the railroad tracks. The street that was parallel to the tracks led to Lenoir Rhyne College.

If one walked along the street that led from Main Street and crossed the railroad tracks, there was a passenger depot on the right. A block farther the post office stood on the right corner and on the other corner was Hills News Stand.

East of the street the post office fronted were food stores: a bakery, fresh air markets, and the fish market. Later this was the street where the first self-serve food stores were built. There was an A and P, Dixie Home Stores, and several others. At the east end of this block one could turn left. Going south on the right was Hotel Huffrey, a large Victorian hotel which became famous because the army closed it during World War II because some soldiers contracted syphilis there. Across the street was a large service station. After one crossed the tracks, the street led to lovely residencies, hospitals, and a street near Hickory High School.

Hickory is in the Piedmont area of North Carolina where water flowing down the steep mountains formed waterfalls. For every inch of water that fell in the mountains, a foot of water flowed into the Piedmont River. Dams were built and the water power was used to harness electricity for Hickory and towns east and west of Hickory. The Catawba River flowed north of Hickory in Catawba County. Due to the rushing water, the banks along the river were very steep.

Catawba County was named after American Indians who lived in western North Carolina. From research I did, I learned that the Catawba were peaceful people.

In the western part of Hickory was the world’s largest wagon factory, Piedmont Wagon, as well as the world’s largest desk and institutional furniture manufacturing company, Southern Desk Company. Hickory had a lot of textile manufacturing companies: socks, stockings, weaving mills, and spinning mills that spun thread from raw cotton. Along the railroad tracks east of the downtown section was the Hickory Flour Mill. Here is where farmers brought their wheat and corn. Cornmeal and flour was ground and sold to food stores.

The Southern Railway tracks carried both passenger and freight trains east and west. Steam engines provided the power for the trains and the soot from burning coal fell every time the train came through town. At night, there was a light shaking of my bed from the rumbling of the long trains, even though we didn’t live near the tracks.

As a child who was interested in how everything worked and where all the roads led, I never saw a freight or passenger train that I did not wonder about. I wanted to know where the train had been and where it was going. I found it intriguing to see the passengers sitting at tables when the train went through town at dinnertime. I wondered what it would be like to be eating while sitting on a moving train.

Quite often, we went to Lexington to visit Grandmother Grubb and Mother’s oldest sister, Aunt Nannie Yarborough. By the time I was in the first grade Betty Lou and I watched for signs along the highway. We wanted to see who could read the sign first. The Burma Shave signs were our favorites. Between Conover and Statesville was a very dangerous curve. My parents had said there were so many wrecks on this curve that it was called dead man’s curve. I paid close attention so I could be the first to say the name of the curve. We also played what we called cow poker. On my side of the road, I kept a tab of the cows I saw; a white horse was the same as ten cows. The poker part of it was when there was a graveyard on my side of the road I had to bury my cows and start over. Betty Lou did this on her side of the road. Usually there were cows on only one side of the road at a time so we carefully watched to be sure that the counting was correct. It never bothered me if I lost. I just enjoyed playing the game. This probably was an indication that I was not competitive. Later I realized I really enjoyed competing academically.

If it was dark when we were coming home from a trip, we listened to the car radio. I remember listening to Fibber McGee and Molly, but only in the car. We listened to Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy on the car radio and home radio. At home, we listened to WBT, a Charlotte radio station. By the time I was in the third grade, we had a local radio station, WHKY.

I enjoyed the radio program, Let’s Pretend, which was broadcast Saturday mornings. I listened to the Nutcracker Suite and lots of classical music that appealed to children. My favorite evening radio program was Gang Busters. It must have aired at nine o’clock because the night it came on my parents were always at a meeting. I would ask them to wake me when they came home. They would, and I would listen to the program, go back to bed and pull the covers over my head, and think about how brave I was because I had heard the police catch bad persons.

Sometimes we got up early Saturday morning and drove to Thomasville, which was east of Lexington. We went to Daddy’s sister, Aunt Lona Goss’s house. She told Daddy where on her big farm he could go squirrel hunting. Her big farm was great fun. There was a well and we could let the bucket down into the water and turn the handle until the bucket came to the top of the well. One time I drank a little of the water. The well was drilled in limestone rock and I still remember the terrible taste. We roamed all over the farm with our three cousins. When we visited during Easter Aunt Lona had dyed little and big eggs and had a basket ready for each of us. One time she gave us a duck in a pen, which enabled us to bring it home. We couldn’t keep the duck because it kept getting into our neighbor’s fish pond.

Sometimes we went to Greensboro to see Mother’s sister, Aunt Ada Fox. I thought Greensboro was very pretty, especially during Christmas time, because the downtown was decorated beautifully. So was Hickory, because the people that decorated a lot of towns, the Carpenters, had their business in Hickory. At this time, the decorations were live greenery and colored lights.

My favorite relative besides my grandmother was Daddy’s brother, Uncle Clay Correll, who lived in Salisbury with his wife, Aunt Lula, and children Lucille, Hubert, and Betty. He and Daddy looked alike and if one was not looking at either one you could not tell which was speaking. I was always amazed because they were not twins. Uncle Clay was very friendly. A lot of adults paid no attention to children, but not Uncle Clay. He made me feel important because he talked to me and he had a sense of humor.

We often visited friends of my parents who lived in Statesville. They were Monk and Dare Strange and their children: twins Betty and Bruce were Betty Lou’s age and Patsy was my age. We played in their playhouse and if we visited at Halloween Mother and Dare planned wonderful parties. It seemed strange at the dinner table because the Strange children had to ask if they could have a second serving of something. We could just say we wanted more of something if our plate was clean.

In those days, men wore hats. In cold weather, the hats were black, brown, or gray felt. In warm weather, hats were light-colored straw, not with a soft brim, but sturdy straw for brim as well as crown. Men who worked in banks and offices wore white shirts and ties. To keep the sleeves clean they slipped on sleeve guards. Men’s shoes were black or brown. In the summer, some men wore white shoes trimmed in brown.

Women wore dresses, never pants. In the winter, business and professional women wore wool skirts, cotton blouses, and sweaters or jackets that matched their skirts. Some fat women wore corsets, which had metal staves, laced tightly, and tied. All women wore stockings that had seams down the back of the leg. When women wanted to be sure the seams were straight after dressing they asked someone to tell them if the seams were straight. To hold the stockings up most women had garters, which they put on top of the stocking. They rolled the stocking over several times. Business and professional women wore hats, felt in the winter and straw in warm weather. They always wore gloves, leather in winter and cotton in summer. Some winter coats had fur collars. For dressy occasions, women might wear three or four animal skins on top of their coat collar. Dress shoes and purses were alligator, snakeskin, or leather. In warm weather, women wore cotton or silk dresses.

Both men and women tennis players wore white shorts and shirts and so did croquet players. Horse riders, young and old, wore khaki jodhpurs, which were long pants that were wider above the knee. They wore English riding boots; I never saw any western boots.

Children wore brown oxford shoes for school and play. For dressy occasions, girls wore black patent leather shoes with one buckle. We always wore socks that matched our clothes. In winter, we wore knee socks, which sometimes drooped down and didn’t look neat. Boys wore knickers and knee socks. I remember thinking that boys who let their knickers droop looked messy. Many times I wished I could tell one of the boys to pull up his knickers. Poor boys wore overalls, which made them look different. I felt sorry for them but did not know how I could help them.

Mrs. Leonard sewed our clothes. She made panties to match each dress so if we bent over someone would see our bottom covered with the same fabric as our dress. We also wore petticoats. In cold weather, we wore leggings, which we put on top of our panties and under our dresses. Our coats covered our dresses so all you could see were the leggings and coat. We also had hats that matched our coats. When we went to school, we wore scarves that tied under our chins. We wore mittens more often than gloves. I thought mittens were warmer than gloves. For dress wear, we wore white cotton gloves. Instead of boots, we had galoshes, which we pulled on top of our shoes. Each side of the galoshes had a snap so we could snap the left side to the right side and the opposite on the other foot. We wore dress clothes to church on Sunday, to funerals, to an occasional musical performance, and to formal dinners. When I arrived home, I was glad to change into play clothes because Mother was very unhappy if we soiled our dress clothes. I remember thinking it was wonderful to be free when the dress clothes were hung in the closet.

Colors were always important to me. I loved the green grass and trees, especially when tulips and daffodils were blooming in the spring. I was never impressed with rose bushes but did love to see the cut roses—their color seemed to brighten a parlor because Mother kept the shades pulled down most of the time. Hollyhocks and snapdragons, as well as some of the shrubbery, had colorful blooms during the spring and summer, which made the outdoors alive with their yellows, pink, red, and blue blooms.

My memories of swimming in the swimming pool were quite a contrast to the river and creek water, which looked red because the ground was red clay. In Hickory there were a variety of oak, walnut, hickory, beech, maple, and birch trees. In the fall, it seemed the outdoors was colored with the yellow, orange, rust, red, and brown of these trees. The beauty of these fall colors has stayed with me all my life. Many trees had leaves that fell and had to be raked. Oh, what fun it was to play in a large pile of leaves! I do not remember being scolded for scattering the leaves.

Rail, bus, and taxi service were available but we never used them. The first car I remember was brown and had four doors and a running board, which we sometimes stood on when there was an overflowing number of children. We didn’t go very far. At that time there were no laws prohibiting people from standing on the running board.

If we heard a siren from an ambulance or a fire truck, this meant some fire or wreck was close by. Many times Daddy would say he was going to see what happened. I always asked to go.

Because railroad tracks went through Hickory, there were many train and car wrecks. I remember seeing a man who had had the top of his head cut off when his car was hit by a train. Mother and Daddy always talked about what they thought caused a wreck or fire. This was a wonderful way for my sisters and me to remember to practice safety. The first time I walked across the railroad tracks I spent some moments looking both directions before hurriedly walking across, and I felt very proud of myself for doing this safely.

I had a problem. Sometimes I wet the bed, so my parents cautioned me not to drink anything after dinner. It was no fun to wake with a wet bed and pajamas. Dr. Lewis said I would grow out of it and my parents were very patient but Betty Lou used this to get me to do what pleased her or to wear something new I had never worn. She would say if I didn’t do what she wanted, she would tell my friends that I wet the bed. We were the same size and looked very similar because both of us had dark, straight hair with bangs.

Mother never cut our hair. We went to the barbershop with Daddy when he got a haircut. One time the barber accidentally nipped Betty Lou’s ear and used a septic stick to stop the bleeding. When we got home Mother was furious. She said she would never let us go to the barbershop. I was disappointed because I thought the barbershop was an interesting place. Since people did not have indoor plumbing, men would sometimes come in while we were at the barbershop and pay to take a shower.

Instead of going to the barbershop, we now went to the beauty parlor with Mother. This is where I saw the electric curling machines that were used to permanently curl hair. The machine had wires coming down from the top. At the end of each wire was a curler. After the beautician wrapped all the hair around the curlers, she put on a lotion and turned on the electricity. When the electricity had been on for a certain amount of time, the beautician turned off the electricity and unwound the curlers. The person’s hair would be very curly. Besides Mother, Betty Lou was the only one of us who had a permanent wave. This was a disaster because Mother found nits, laid by head lice, in her hair. Every night Mother used a special comb to separate each hair and pull the nits off. Mother said she was sure the nits came from the beauty shop. She changed beauty shops. We went to the one upstairs near the barbershop.

The Harris house, where we lived, was on a corner. The front yard was small but the back yard was very long. Quite some distance from the house was a barn with a hayloft. Beyond the barn was a creek. The banks of the creek were high so there was a bridge across the creek. Across the bridge was a pasture where lespedeza was planted. Seeing this flowering cattle food in the fall, it seemed almost impossible that the beautiful blooming plants would be cut down, but the lespedeza was mowed and put in the hayloft. This was the feed for the cow my parents owned. In the summer, the cow ate grass in the pasture while the hayloft was cleaned. Looking out from the hayloft made me feel like I had the world below me. Sometimes