Hanging out in the Seventh Grade

Dear Grands,

May 1, 2020

Back to my school days.  In the school year, 1949-50, I had turned 12 and was in the seventh grade at Lattimore School and our room was in the basement of the high school building just as when we were in the sixth grade.  Mrs. Hugh Harrill, a preacher’s wife, was our teacher. 

One thing that stands out in my mind is how we would have reading class.  Students would have to take turns reading in the order of how we were seated, and the teacher would call our name when it was our turn to read.  It seems that my row was the last row and I had to listen while most of the others read in their turn. I would read much faster and would go ahead and read further along, but I also had to be sure I knew where we were as a class so that when it became my turn I would be in the correct place. Today this seems more frustrating to me than it did at the time.  If we were called on to read and didn’t know where in the story we should begin reading, the teacher was not happy.  I wonder if I remembered anything about the reading lesson of the day. Despite that awkward way of reading, I never gave up my love of reading. 

Back in the day, perhaps it is still the case, 12 and 13 year-old girls formed little cliques.  There were five of us that usually hung out together and would go spend the nights with each other on occasion.  For some reason, our clique often had someone in our little group that we would decide to shun.  I was occasionally the odd man out in our group, but there was one girl that we regularly shunned.  I will call her “J”.  J would get very upset and hurt and would cry so that once when we were shunning J, our teacher called the others in the clique in during recess, one by one,  and scolded us and Mrs. Harrill would sometimes cry she was so upset about how were acting.  I think maybe she would read a passage from the Bible to us.  Looking back, I think that was the only time I can remember being mean to someone, and I so regret it.  By the time we were in high school, we were no longer forming cliques and J was one of the more popular girls in the class. 

Martha Mason, my friend who had polio, returned home that year spending most of her time in an iron lung.  She had missed the sixth grade while she was hospitalized, so after she was back the teachers would go to her house (she lived near the school) and teach her.  Sometimes I and some others would go visit her and she could be out of the iron lung and be on her bed for a short time as we visited.  I recall she was always cheerful and interested in what we were doing. 

Hanging Out with Grandpat in the 1948 Polio Epidemic

The front of the book that Martha authored with a photo of her and Gaston on the front. 

One of my friends asked if I would write about the polio epidemic of 1948, so here is the letter to my grands that describes what I remember about it.

 Letters to my Grandchildren:  

Summer of 1948 in Cleveland County, NC

In May of 1948, my classmates and I finished the fifth grade and were looking forward to a fun early summer before we returned to begin the sixth grade in mid-June.  However, the poliovirus changed that summer for us and changed one of my friend’s life forever.  My classmate, Martha Mason, contracted polio. *

I remember that summer we did not go to school, churches were closed and everyone was warned to pretty much stay at home.  For my sister, our friend Betty Jo, who lived next door, and me polio interrupted our summer very little.  We were out in the country where we played outside as we always had, but we did listen to a Sunday school lesson on Sunday mornings broadcast by WOHS, the local Shelby radio station, rather than going to Double Springs Baptist Church. My parents read the daily papers and commented on the many cases of polio that were occurring in the county, mainly children, and often there would be mention of a child dying. It really didn’t hit home to me, because these were children I did not know.   I don’t remember being frightened but I can imagine my parents and other parents were terrified of the epidemic (I don’t know if it was a pandemic then or not.)

Neither we nor my Grandma had telephones but received news through the newspapers or through the grapevine.  One Sunday my Aunt Frances who lived in the Pleasant Ridge community, closer to Lattimore, brought us very bad news via the grapevine. She had learned that my classmate, Martha Mason of Lattimore, had contracted polio and that her older brother Gaston had died from the disease. She knew that Martha was in a hospital, in Asheville I think, but she was not aware of how sick she was. Now that someone I knew, someone who was my friend had the disease, polio suddenly seemed real to me.  It was pretty sobering to eleven- year- old me.

Another event that occurred because of polio, perhaps the same summer of 1948, but it could have been during another outbreak, really scared my parents. We did not have a washing machine at the time, so whenever we had a load of dirty clothes (once or twice a week) Daddy on his way to work would drop these off with a lady who lived across from Eskridge Grove Baptist Church and who laundered our clothes.  The basket would be returned with the clothes clean, beautifully ironed and folded. Then one of her children contracted polio while a basket of our clothes was at her house.  When Daddy brought these home, although they were clean, ironed and folded, he built a big fire under a black wash pot that belonged to Grandma, filled the pot with water, and boiled them for a long time, before he would let us near them. (That washpot is now in my yard filled with pansies.) One of you will undoubtedly inherit it so please cherish it.)

The polio epidemic of 1948 is the only epidemic I experienced before this current 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.  I think many more people are going to die from this one.  Our state is now on lockdown where citizens are encouraged to “stay home”, and I am following those suggestions. 

Photo from the internet of some unknown patient, not Martha, but the iron lung is like the one she lived in.

*Martha not only survived, but she led a remarkable life despite being a quadriplegic and spending most of the rest of her life, she lived to her early 70s, in an iron lung.  She graduated from Lattimore High School, Gardner-Webb College, and Wake Forest University with honors (Phi Beta Kappa) and lived to write a book about her life.  I have several copies of her book so I think there will be one for each of you, and please read it. What an inspiration!

There will be more letters about my friendship with Martha.

Fourth of July Parade in Small Town America

Lattimore is a small town in Cleveland County, North Carolina, and each year the town has an old-fashioned Fourth of July parade.  I'm partial to this little town, because that is where I attended school for twelve years.  Back then I'm pretty sure they didn't have a parade on the Fourth, but for some time now this has been a tradition.

PJ waiting for parade.

I happened to be in Cleveland County this year for the Fourth, and my friend PJ and I found us a shady spot along Main Street to view the parade.  Folks began lining up along the parade route early in the morning anticipating the 9:00 am event.

This pretty little miss is decked out in patriotic colors.

The Fites waiting for the parade in front of The Depot restaurant.

Many folks from the older to the very young were decked out in patriotic colors.  It was great for "people watching" even before the parade began.

I love this hat.

The youth from Lattimore Baptist Church were selling biscuits along Main Street before the parade began, and I had my opportunity to have a livermush biscuit.  So good!!!!!

My livermush biscuit.

And then a little after nine along came the parade.  

Here comes the parade.

There was the color guard and then vehicles of all kinds--- vintage cars, lawn mowers, tractors---, people walking and those on horseback.

Huge tractor from the Greene Farms.  (Photo by Peggy Rhyne.)

Fire truck. (Photo from Lattimore Historical Society.)

Vintage car. (Photo from Lattimore Historical Society.)

What's a parade without horses?

After the parade folks gathered over at the ball field for food, games, and more celebration.

Ginger.in red, white and blue. (She was one of Martha Mason's caretakers)

Ann, Steve and grandaughter Caroline.

Libby with her grands.

Mrs. Cooper the grand marshal of the parade. (Photo from Lattimore Historical Society.)

This is the perfect way to celebrate the Fourth of July.

Cousins, Near and Far

My first cousin once removed, Robin Stice from Virginia and first cousin twice removed, Elizabeth Stice from West Palm Beach, my sister Martha Cabaniss from Bostic, and I from Raleigh visited our second cousins, Jimmy, Shelva and Jerry and second cousin once removed, Donna, in Cleveland County recently. Donna is the family genealogist (I hope I have these relationships described accurately) and Jimmy and Jerry know a lot about the military history of our family on the Hawkins side.

My Cleveland County Cousins (l. to r.: Jimmy Hawkins, Donna Wilson, Shelva Wilson, Jerry Scruggs.)

Hawkins Family Photo (Photo courtesy of Jerry Scruggs.)

Jerry had a family photo of the James B. Hawkins family.  JB was my great grandfather, my grandmother's father. In the photo above, my great grandfather is the gentleman with the white beard, James B. Hawkins.  The woman beside him holding the baby is my Grandmother Greene, Dora Hawkins Greene, JB's daughter. She is holding my Aunt Edith.  Dora's husband, my Grandfather Greene, is the handsome man with the black mustache in the middle of the back row.  My Grandfather Greene had a white mustache when I was a child, and once as a teenager I asked my grandmother if the mustache didn't "tickle" with a kiss. She replied "The blackberries are sweeter when you have to go through the briars to get them." *

This has just whetted my appetite for learning more about our family history.  I have enough hobbies though without taking on genealogy.  Well, I can at least dabble in it.  And I can rely on my Cleveland County cousins as a source for a wealth of information. 

*I've been married for 24 years to a man with a mustache and a beard---my grandmother was right.

Lunch At The Depot, Lattimore, NC

The Depot Cafe operated by Wanda Jones Nixon and her husband Rick.

I was in Lattimore yesterday meeting some of my former classmates to plan a reunion for our Lattimore High School class and ate lunch at The Depot.  This little cafe with the spiffy red canopy, red framed doors, and pretty red and white umbrellas out front is in an old building that was never the town depot but one that housed the J. W. Martin General Store.  (It is across from the old Seaboard railroad track though.)

The Depot Cafe.

The store was next door to the Milling Company that Martin ran from the mid 1940s to the mid 1990s.  It was here that the farmers of the area brought in their grain to be milled and where they bought everything from groceries to livestock feed to hardware. It was a gathering place for the men of the neighborhood, and one of my Lattimore friends that I ran into at the Depot said that his Dad would go to the store every day  to have a "coca-cola" that back then cost  a nickle.

The old Martin Milling Company, Lattimore, NC

The restaurant is colorfully decorated with railroad memorabilia and copies of old photographs taken around town in years past.  Breakfast and lunch are served Monday through Friday,  and lunch is served on Sundays.  The menu offers a lot of choices.  The food is good, like home-cooked, and the prices reasonable.  I was pleasantly surprised by the large crowd there, but I was there at the peak lunch hour. The word is that there are long lines on Sundays.  I'll have to remember to go early on Sundays.

Railroad memorabilia.

Railroad memorabilia and view of little private dining room in back.

I don't remember the old store, but I have  fond memories of the little town of Lattimore where I went to school.  It's quite nostalgic to go back.