I grew up in four bedroom ranch that sat on the banks of the Elk River in an unincorporated part of Charleston, West Virginia called “Crede.” If you look up the definition of crede in the dictionary the meaning is; believe one who has had experience: trust me. I always tell anyone who asks that I grew up below an airport, by a railroad track near a highway and on the bank of a river. There was no shortage of a means of transportation, that’s for sure.
The house was general contracted in 1961 by my father. He also had the help of various Stonewall Jackson High School football players who helped him do some of the labor on the house. I remember them crushing stones on the road with a manual stone crusher. I thought that they were “really strong!” The house was on a quarter acre lot that was close enough to the neighbors to run a string-can telephone line. The living room was flanked by a huge picture window with drapes that draped open like those on a stage. My sisters, brother, our friends and I used this as our stage often for our own impromptu productions. Sometimes it was a play, sometimes a concert, and sometimes …when the tomatoes were ripe in the summer; a restaurant! The West Virginia mountains flanked it on both the front and the back side, as it sat in a valley along the river and at the foot of “Ashleys’ Mountain.”
My years from birth till 10 or 11 years old were much like that of the Walton’s. (Or at least the memory of it was) Mom and Dad were happily married, (I had thought), had a new child coming every year to three years, lived in a new house and drove nice cars. Both my parents were very nice looking over achievers with beautiful children. The abundance of females was quite noticeable; my parents had six daughters and one son. Every night, Lynn, the oldest and the leader would lead the group of us children, laying warmly snuggled in our beds to the nightly procedure of the Lords Prayer, The bedtime Prayer; ”Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the lord my soul to keep…” The ending of the nightly procedure was very much “Waltonish” as we all had to say from oldest to youngest “Good night Mommy, I love you, Good Night Daddy, I love you, Good night Lynn, I love you, good Night Christy, I love you, good night Carla, I love you, good night Lisa, I love you, good night Cindy, I love you, good night Curt, I love you, good night Julie, I love you.” This was repeated nightly and the rule was that if you skipped anyone, you had to start all over again.
My parents also took us on vacations to far away places that you could drive to every year that also had campgrounds. We had a twenty-two foot trailer that we took on various adventures, to Quebec, Canada, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, all the New England states, that both my parents really loved. We spent a few Easter breaks at Lake Cumberland, Kentucky and also ventured down to Florida. Humbleness was not one of my father’s strongest qualities, and many a child, student, teacher or acquaintance would be invited by my father to come into his office at school, or sit down at the kitchen table sitting with a cup of coffee, relaxing with his legs crossed and propped on the desk or table so that he could share with them where the family had visited and all that he had accumulated, including children! He would always include the house that he built, the land where he grew up in along Mill Creek in Ansted, West Virginia, the land consisting of approximately fifty acres in the town of Trout, in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, three horses, two to three cars, a motorcycle, and a camper. He would go down the line and talk about each of the children from oldest to youngest. Some children had more to positive aspects to elaborate on than others. I was one of those children with the stories that were connected with me were more adventurous, mischievous and entertaining. I was always an average student despite my grades in grade school being better than average.
There always was and still is, many entertaining stories that go along with me. I suppose when you are the “black sheep” of the family in some ways, that you have more than one way of sticking out. Out of all seven children, I was the only one that had dark hair and the only one that could be considered “short.” Some of the earlier stories that went along with me were when I ate my dads’ mirror, drank gasoline, and was hooked to mattress spring and I also ran away from home.
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