Our Move from the House where I was Born

Mr. Railey had built a new home just a mile from us. And he moved in on my birthday (the day I was born). The day I was 8 years old, we moved into his house. We thought they were kinda uppity. But they somehow or another couldn't meet their payments on their house, so papa and Mr McGee signed the contract. They divided up Mr. Railey's property and we got the house section because it was closer to our land. We moved in there the day I was 8 and the Railey's moved into our old house. It was the only painted house in the community!

We had neighbors to live down the street. One of my neighbors and I became real good friends. We went to school together and worked in the field together. I wore overalls. We hoed cotton and picked. Everything we did, we did it together. Maybe we would work in their field one day and our field the next and our parents didn't seem to have any objections to that.

When we moved to the Railey house, we had to walk to school and we walked down the railroad tracks so I learned to walk down the rails. A couple three years we got a school bus, a homemade school bus. They got a truck and put a body on it and put benches down longways on it. I was 9 or 10 when we got our school bus. We lived about a mile from school in our new house. It was about a quarter mile from school at our old house.

We had a basketball team for the girls and one for the boys. We had an hour lunch. We just swallowed our lunch whole so we would have longer to play. At the end of school we always put on a program - plays. We used the front porch of the school for our stage. In one of them, I was a mean little girl. They had a desk out there with some stuff on it, a mirror or glass and I was just throwing stuff all over and broke it.

The school we always had a Christmas tree for the community. They would get out and cut down a big pine and put it in the school and would decorate it. when I graduated at the end of the year we had special speakers. Students who had done well would make a little speech. We had around Easter time, box suppers. We would take a box and decorated up with a meal in it for two. The men or boyfriends would buy the boxes and they would have to eat supper with them. There was this bachelor, he always wanted to buy my box even though he was in his forties because he knew my mother was a good cook. They got to where they teased me about him because he always bought my box. That's how we made money for the school.

Our school went through the ninth grade. The last year I went to school there, we were playing the basketball tournament and we had won and had one more night to play and I was sick and laid down on the floor. I was sick and had the measles. Mam said, what's the matter with you? you just played to hard . The next morning she woke me up to go to school, but I was just covered with measles. But the kids when the got home from school when come see me through the window.

We had a lot of fun there at the school because of our friendships. This one girl that we were real close buddies and my brother George kinda liked her so we double dated a lot of times with some couples.