Memoirs -The Beginning of Life as I Remember

By Beverly Player

What would you do if the spirit of someone you knew, who is now deceased, came to you with a message? See what the author did. Are you aware that there is a cloud of witnesses that encompasses us? From early childhood, the author sought adventure and to know God on a personal level. She was adamant about finding both. In spite of growing up in a town with a population of just over one thousand, life still proved adventurous. From serving meals at her great-aunt's dinner parties to visiting relatives and friends near and far, the author acquired enough memories to last a lifetime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9798886448344

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Foreword

Memoirs

Preschool

Tree Climbing

Auntie and Mamaw

Pranks

Taking Trails to School

The Quest

Mount Zion

Traveling

Traveling Continued

Pop/L. M. Harville

Bike/Car Riding

Jobs

Visiting the Elderly and Spiritual Encounter

Seventh Grade

Ministry of Helps

Aunt Jennie

Eighth Grade

Good and Evil

Charles Harris and Mack Kinley Ford

Indianapolis

The Dismissal

Under the Hill

High School

Buddy McCauley and Graduation Celebration

Kansas City

About the Author

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Memoirs -The Beginning of Life as I Remember

Beverly Player

ISBN 979-8-88644-833-7 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88644-834-4 (Digital)

Copyright © 2022 Beverly Player

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

Foreword

My hometown, Plain Dealing, Louisiana, is a southern town located in the northeast section of Bossier Parish, about six to eight miles south of the Arkansas border and is a part of the Shreveport-Bossier City metropolitan areas. The population of Plain Dealing during the fifties and sixties was estimated to be around 1,080 give or take.

Plain Dealing was a bustling little town when I was growing up. We had businesses, banks, car dealerships, grocery stores, hardware stores, a cotton gin and warehouse, a plywood plant, and truck stop. We had dry good stores, gas stations, Fox Theatre, a telephone company, DMV, and the list goes on. My grandfather, Willie Harris, owned and operated a small neighborhood grocery store in the Bell Subdivision, the Sugar Hill Community. We had doctor and, later, dentist offices. Thompson's Dry Cleaners was also in operation during this time.

There's been a major decline in population and business ownership since then. Currently, the town takes on the appearance of a ghost town. However, there are hopes and plans for future growth and developments. I believe this will happen with hard work and much prayer.

Memoirs

The beginning of life as I remember.

If Aunt Maudie is ‘acoming,' just flap your wings, flap your wings, we would sing. The birds kept gliding and circling overhead when we were in the yard. I didn't know what kind of birds these were, but they were large and visited quite often. Why they chose to circle around our house and play area all the time, I didn't know.

Looking up at them, we would chant our tune again, if Aunt Maudie is ‘acoming,' just flap your wings, flap your wings. We sang until they flapped, and boy, were we happy because we knew then (in our minds) that since they flapped, surely Aunt Maudie and Uncle Martin would be coming from Houston to visit. Now that I think about it, the birds could have been vultures because of their size. You see, we lived in the woods. We lived in a two-room wood frame house with a porch with our parents and five little barefooted girls. We had each other—a lot of love and a lot of fun.

The only close neighbors that we had as I can remember were Mrs. Demoss, our landlady, who lived in a large white frame house closer to the main road. Mrs. Demoss was a very kind White lady that allowed us to get all our water from her house. She had a hydrant in her backyard, and we toted water in whatever buckets we had from her house to ours. We girls would be in a line walking through the trail, and everybody had a bucket of water. My sister Clara and I were small, so we always carried a bucket together—one on one side, one on the other.

Mrs. Demoss, whenever we'd see her, acted as if she was glad to see us. She would smile and say kind things to us. I remember her looking at us sometimes as if she was in deep thought. She would tell us things like we were cute little girls or complementing us that we were very well-behaved children. We didn't see her very often probably because we didn't have to knock on her door and ask her permission to get water. We had standing privileges. She had a daughter named Earline, who was a schoolteacher. I don't remember much about Earline, just that she was not married, was a schoolteacher, and lived with her mother.

Our other neighbors were the Nobles that lived across the road from where we lived. At that time, there wasn't a four-lane highway—just woods. My mother and Bessie Noble became best friends during the few years we lived there. The Nobles' home is still in the same location with several structural additions since then.

My dad had an old pickup truck. Sometimes, he used his school bus for personal purposes. He started out as a bus driver for Bossier Parish and transported Plain Dealing students to Bossier Parish Training Center in Benton, which is probably where Aunt Maudie B. met her husband, Martin Player, because he lived in Benton. Two sisters married men with the same last name. Uncle Martin was a handsome, brown-skinned basketball star in school. I guess he swept Aunt Maudie off her feet because they got married when she was only sixteen.

Not only did my father drive the school bus, but he also finished his high school education during this time. You see, he went off to the army before he finished high school, and when he returned, he got his diploma.

Sometimes, when my father was working, my mother and us kids would walk to our grandparents' house. They lived in the quarters in town. The quarters is the area of town where the old First Baptist Church was located on South Perrin Street. My mother's parents lived in a house one block from the church. My grandfather Willie (Custard) Harris built the church. He was probably one of the leading carpenters in Plain Dealing at the time. He built houses and did carpentry work in the Black and White communities. Some of the houses that he built in Plain Dealing are still standing to this day. Our house on Sugar Hill is one of them. He and my father's uncle, Peter Stromile, built our house. I'll probably never forget going to see the house for the first time after completion. My father took us to see the house in the school bus. I was wearing a pair of shorts and my Sunday black patent leather shoes. They were the only pair of shoes that I had. I think I was about four or five at the time.

My mother had two sisters and five brothers. Her youngest siblings were twins, Clarence and Clarice. Aunt Clarice lived in the quarters with my grandparents while she attended Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. She was courting Jimmy Allen, Mrs. Lue Hattie and Judge Allen's son. They also had boys named Judge, Archie, Larry, T.C. aka Terry Curtis, John L., Alton, and Emmitt. Their daughters were Susie and Mary Lee. Jimmy was a handsome, dark-complexioned, mild-mannered young man. I liked him, and I could tell Clarice liked him a lot.

My grandfather had put a piece of green linoleum on the bottom portion of the kitchen wall—the same kind that you put on floors. It was slippery. While Aunt Clarice washed dishes or cooked, I would go in and talk with her. I used to stand with my back against the linoleum and slide down to the floor while talking with her—up and down, up and down I slid as we talked. I always knew how to get her to laugh. I would say Clarice, not Aunt Clarice—just Clarice. It was a while before we started calling her Aunt. I'd say, Clarice, I know who your boyfriend is.

She'd say, Who?

And I would say Jim--e (real slow). Then the cackle, she got the biggest kick out of that. Her laugh was not something you could easily forget. I loved hearing her laugh. It was like a cackle. I guess Jimmy was the love of her life because that's who she married and had three beautiful daughters that my siblings and I cared for as if they were our little sisters.

I don't remember a whole lot about our time living in the woods; I was very small. However, I do remember my older siblings lifting me by one arm from the ground onto the porch all the time. We had steps, but I reckon it was probably easier for them to just lift me than helping me get up the steps. Mama warned them about doing that, but it happened anyway. My arm was pulled out of socket, so I walked around with a limp arm for a while. I wasn't using it at all. My oldest sister, Jerrie, told me since we've been adults that she felt so sorry for me during that time because I looked so sad and was unable to play, so she prayed to God that He would heal me and let me be able to use my arm again. She said that shortly after she prayed, she noticed that I was using my arm. Thank God for a praying and believing sister.

So after moving into the new house is when life became a real adventure. We had so many neighbors; there were so many people to meet, so many people to visit, and, hopefully, many kids to play with. This little girl was in heaven, heaven I tell you.

Dad and