Sollie's story continued
After a couple of years we moved to another old shack. It wasn't much better than the other one, but I remember it well. Now I had a friend next door by the name of Nan, who could play a mean game of marbles. She had a glass jar full of them! Really nice marbles too! The few I had to play with, helped to fill up her jar! She would beat me every time I played. Nan and her family lived in a very nice house up the hill from ours. It was country living, but there was a nice broom straw field and a the yard was dirt which made for good marble playing. Momma kept it swept with the broom straw broom. Nan remained my friend for many years even after we grew up and moved away. Her family and mine were close friends for years.
Sometimes several families would get together with other families to have a fish fry at the "Hoopee" river. The men would catch fish and the kids would swim in the river. I remember the Murphy family and the Claxton family were especially good friends of ours and sometimes we would even visit and spend the night, making pallets on the floor to have a place to sleep. Life was simple but good.
When I was about about 11 years old , we moved to a nicer place on the other side of the town. It was still country and only a couple of miles to town, but also close to some fine hunting grounds, a creek for fishing, and camping places. I was never bored for lack of things to do. My brother and I would tangle and fight over normal things but when we did, Momma would make us go cut a switch. If it didn't suit her, she would make us go back and get a better one. She used it up and down both our legs while we were running around and around her. She made it pretty clear fighting wasn't a good idea.
My Daddy was a barber and worked six days a week at a local downtown Barber Shop. Mr. Powell, the owner of the Shop also owned the house we moved into. Occasionally, Daddy would get off early and that was a really special time to me since we didn't see him much except on Sunday. Riding on the school bus, I would sit next to the window and lean way over looking down the road to see if I could see Daddy's old car which he had bought a year or two before. If it wasn't there, it meant he wasn't either, and I'd be so disappointed. But I would find something to do in the shed fixing something or making something. If Mother needed wood, she would send me out to find some. I had a dog who went with me everywhere. Rusty was a fine yard dog. He got into some serious trouble several times however, when he ran off looking for a girlfriend, but he'd always wind back up sitting at the back door.
Sometimes, Momma was able to get some raw peanuts and boil or roast them for me to sell in town on Saturdays. Even better was rice crispy treats which should would wrap up in waxed paper and I sold for a nickle. On Saturday we would go back to town with Daddy and sit on the courthouse square in the car while he worked. The town was a busy place on Saturdays with farmers and locals who came to shop. It was always difficult to get a place to park but Daddy has a special spot across the street from the shop where Momma sat all afternoon and visited with other ladies from around the area. It was almost a given that his car would be parked in the same spot every week-end. This was the only social life Momma ever had except the fish fry's.
Now I was a serious entrepreneur. Selling those peanuts and rice crispy bars was my way of making a little spending money. I walked around and around the square selling my wares and usually would wind up with a quarter or two. But when I was about 12 , I hit pay dirt! A new drive-in theater had just opened up down the road from our house. I got myself a job hopping cars there. When I wasn't hopping, I would stand and watch the man in the little room that ran the projectors. I knew every move he made and did it over and over in my mind, just like him. Then one day, the owner asked me if I thought I could run a projector and I told him, "Yes sir, I sure can." He paid me $25 a week. I was rich! I could buy all the candy and cookies I wanted and could have lunch in the lunch room at school if I wanted to. I could give my Momma some money. I could buy myself some new clothes and later on, I bought my sweetheart a gold ring with pearls for her birthday! I walked to work and it was near midnight when I walked back home. There wasn't a lot of time for homework but I worked there until I graduated high school.
School was never my favorite place to be. I was far behind the other children because of losing many days due to sickness and reading was especially difficult for me. It made me very uncomfortable to have to read in class and to this day, I will not read aloud unless I'm forced to. I repeated the 3rd grade and the 4th grade. I love to say that I was waiting for my sweetheart to catch up with me. Once we were in the same grade, I never repeated another one and we graduated the same year and married right away. But the inferiority I felt, because of the inability to read well, has never left me.
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