Robinson Church. ….
   I think I was about four years old when we lived next to the Robinson Church, just outside Charlotte, NC which would have been 1946/47. We lived in a very small house with two rooms. I found that house a few years ago and it was then that I saw just how small it was, it’s used as a storage house now 45 years later. I was happy because I remember so much from there. The area was very country then, there were farms and lots of woods and the roads were not paved. In fact while we lived there the state came out and put a counter wire across the road to count the traffic in consideration for paving. That night my father and a friend drove their cars back and forth over that wire for most of the night and as many times as they could until the wire was taken up. Well not long after that we got a tar and gravel road and everyone was very happy. Back then my father liked to hunt and so did our neighbors, I remember he bought two hunting dogs, Blue Tick and Red Bone hounds, they were Coon dogs. It was quite a sensation to hear them bay in the night. The Red Bone I think his name was Brownie was a nightmare to my mama. Brownie would come into the house and go into the cabinet and get mama’s lard and carry it out in the yard for a treat. We didn’t have screen doors, air conditioning and all that; the cabinet was on the floor level. 
   Mr. Homer Ford lived in a white frame house just next door, he was my buddy, and I was fascinated with everything about him. Mr. Ford always wore bib overalls and you guessed it I wouldn’t be satisfied until I had some just like his. I learned how to stand around with my hands in behind the bib just like he did. Mr. Ford had a car but much of the time he would hitch up his mule to a wagon to run his errands. He’d call me, boy you want to take a ride, sure do Mr. Ford, let me go ask mama. Once I remember he was going over to a neighbors farm to get his mule sheared, we rode that mule bare back and I thought that was the biggest mule I had ever seen, my legs were straight out like I was doing the split. I still remember how that mule smelled and I think I liked it.

The preacher’s visit …
   One night mama had to go to town, my daddy was sick in bed with double pneumonia so my brother Dub and I stayed with him. My father liked country music and was trying to learn to play the fiddle, he’d turn a straight chair upside down in the bed and put pillows on it and just saw away (driving all of us crazy), but we wouldn’t bother him. We were always told not to let anyone in that we didn’t know and that night a man that we didn’t know came to the door. He knocked on the door, I said who is it but I didn’t recognize him. Our back door didn’t have a lock on it like we have today, it had a hinged bar on the inside and there was a hole next to the bar about 1 ½ " in diameter. The man said I’m the preacher open the door and let me in, my mama said not to let anyone in! My father was still sawing on that fiddle, the man stuck his finger through the hole to try and reach the bar and we’d grab his finger, he’d jerk it back out. I guess that must have gone on for some time cause the preacher didn't like givin up and we wouldn't let him in, but he finally left  and I don’t know if he ever came back.

Our pet pig …
   Mr. Ford came over one day and told my daddy that a man’s sow pig had died and there was a new litter of pigs to take care of so he was giving them away, we took one. We had to feed it with a baby bottle until it was able to eat. That pig thought it was one of the family, he ran around in the yard like a dog. Mama had to keep running him out of the house. All was well until he got hungry, he would come up and bite you when he wanted something to eat. At first that wasn’t too bad but then he got bigger and bigger and his bite was worst that his bark. So It was time to get rid of him, we were getting ready to move to Portsmouth, Virginia to be near my grandmother and Aunt Francis. My daddy took the now hog over to my Uncle Hurley’s house and he said he would take good care of it and promised not to kill it, but I guess we knew different. That was the last I ever saw of our pet pig, and that’s when we moved away from Robinson Church and Mr. Ford.