Highland Springs - 1949-1955

PKs and Playmates

One day when I was four years old, I woke up in a strange house.  My parents had moved the family from Hamilton to Highland Springs where we would live for the next six years.  Pop was a Methodist minister and the house we lived in on Holly Avenue was called a parsonage because that's where the parson lived.  It was owned by the local church but the parson's family got to live in it along with the parson.

Holly Avenue was one of the cross streets intersecting Nine Mile Road, the main road through the town.  I still want to know who decided to give each cross street the name of a tree, bush or plant.  Coming into town you would pass Ash, Beech, Cedar, Daisy, Elm, Fern, and Grove Avenues before you got to Holly Avenue, and then beyond Holly Avenue were the Avenues Ivy, Juniper, Kalmia, Linden, Maple, Oak, Pine, Quince, Rose, and Spruce.  We lived two blocks from the church on Holly Avenue in an old two-story framed house that had been painted white but had become dirty with age and needed to be repainted.  It didn't get a new paint coat while we lived in it.


It must have been exciting to live in Highland Springs in the 1890s when the streetcars ran up and down the main road connecting the big city of Richmond to its suburb, but there were no streetcars when we arrived in 1949.  Sometimes a circus would come to town and there would be parades. 

I don't remember my sister in Hamilton probably because she was spending most of her time in her crib or just learning to walk, and I hadn't waked up good enough yet to the world around me to notice her. In the two photos I found of myself taken in Hamilton, I was sitting on the front porch or standing alone in the yard and not smiling. By the time we settled in Highland Springs, she had mysteriously arrived, and I was happy to have a playmate. She was named after my mother and took her first and maiden name, Kathryne Creighton, but everyone called her by her nickname Kacky the sound of which I hated. We must have agreed on the disagreeableness of her nickname and came upon the idea that we'd call each other by our initials, KB and JB. There was nothing the adults could do about it. The initials have stuck to this day.  

The front of our house sat close to the road and was the first house on the left side of the street after you passed the post office and barber shop.  Gone were the hammock, porch glider and green grass of the Hamilton front lawn replaced with dried up and worn out dirt and a towering maple tree that provided shade.  Bushes ran along the front porch. 

On the right side of the street at the corner of Holly and Nine Mile Road was a pharmacy and a parking lot.  Adjacent to the parking lot was a medical office building.  Beside the medical building and directly across the street from us lived the Cavedos in a red brick house. 


Since we were PKs (preacher's kids) new in town, we were each others sole playmates except for the Cavedo children, Marilyn and Linda.  They played  hop-scotch and jump rope with us and invited us over to play with them often.  Marilyn was about my age and Linda was KB's age so we made a great foursome.  Sometimes we'd pair off in the ditches on either side of the street and throw rocks at each other.  We thought that was great fun. 

Chester and the Chicken Coop

Mr. Cavedo liked to hunt and he took with him on his hunting trips his big reddish brown hunting dog named Chester.  Chester never did bother or frighten us.  I sure was glad about that.  The Cavedos also had a chicken coop in their backyard.  Marilyn and Linda asked us if we wanted to start up a secret society.  We said yes and the four of us held our secret meetings in the chicken coop without much of an agenda, but it was fun just being together, pretending we had important business that needed attending to.  Mrs. Cavedo, who worked at the telephone company, would let us gather eggs in the chicken coop and deliver them to her. 

Sometimes she let us visit Marilyn and Linda in their home. I remember being in their parents' bedroom once though I don't know why I was there.  On the nightstand beside Mrs. Cavedo's side of the bed was a Bible.  Our parents didn't have a Bible on their nightstand.  Our father kept his cigarette butts in an ashtray beside his bed.  The Bible was saved for reading from the pulpit during Sunday morning services.  Since he was also the Reverend, he kept a lot of books about the Bible called concordances in his study.  He probably read those to help him prepare his sermons. 

Every morning before we could eat breakfast, since he was the Reverend, he read The Upper Room, the Methodist daily devotional.  We sat in our chairs at the table watching our food get cold on our plates while he read.  There was always a Bible passage at the end of the reading followed by a prayer.  Then he would pronounce the blessing and we could finally eat.  It seemed like some things adults did just had to be endured.  

The Commander-in-Chief

In Highland Springs I became aware that I also had a brother my parents had brought with them from Hamilton.  There he was -- Gilliam Dickson Bentley, Sr. ("Dick")-- and he was already 9 years old.  He was a loner, playing outdoors by himself with his plastic toy soldiers lining them up against the side of the house in two parallel lines. He'd arrange his armies so that they were positioned to fire on each other.  They were tiny green toy soldiers with guns and he was their commander-in-chief .  He didn't have any buddies and since he wasn't interested in his baby sisters as playmates, he often stayed outside for hours playing with his toy soldiers.  One day years late, raging battles would be waged inside his head with voices telling him people were going to die so that he felt compelled to amass an arsenal of guns that would have to be confiscated.  I think he had a harder time than we did being a preacher's kid mainly because he didn't have a brother and his name was only slightly different from our father's name so he had to carve out his own identity by himself.  KB and I had each other.  He only had his toy soldiers. 

I don't have much of a memory of my brother during those years in Highland Springs mainly because he didn't seem to be around much.  I have often wondered what he did during those pre-teen years.  I remember him talking about happy summers he had spent on Uncle Nowlin's farm.  I never met Uncle Nowlin.  He was the husband of one of my father's sisters. I'm glad my brother has some happy memories of his childhood when he lived with Uncle Nowlin.

Horse and Hammer- two close calls

My sister and I had our occasional fights over various sibling  rivalries, the causes of which I cannot remember.  I do remember one summer day I got so angry at her that, without thinking a thing about it, I found a hammer and whacked  her on the head with it hard.  One Mother explained to me that I had really hurt my little sister, I felt terrible afterward for a long time.  It was the first time I remember being consumed with a fury that would spring up apparently without much provocation and cause me to act in ways I would later regret. I think I took my sister for granted until the day I almost lost her for good.


A parade came to town and KB wanted to take a picture of the majorettes so Mother let us go unsupervised by ourselves to watch the parade.  Standing on the side of the road, KB was holding a Kodak box camera looking into it ready to snap the photo of the twirling majorettes when suddenly a horse got spooked by the loud band music behind it and reared up on his hind legs with his front legs flailing in the air until they came down on her, flattening her on the ground beside me and knocking her unconscious.  I thought she was dead because her eyes were wide open starring straight up at me and she didn't move or breathe.  I screamed and hollered until some man scooped me up and got me in his car and took me home trying to calm me down. He kept saying, Now, don't tell your mother that you sister is dead. She's going to be all right.  I didn't know who he was or why he was trying  to get me to tell Mother something I didn't believe.  As soon as he let me out of the car, I flew inside ahead of him, screaming and crying to Mother, KB is dead, KB is dead! He was able to explain what had happened to Mother and reassure her that her daughter was not dead but had been struck by a horse and was being taken to the hospital.  He seemed to know all the details.

I was frightened as I sat in the back seat and my parents drove to the hospital.  I was allowed into the room where KB was so I could see for myself that she wasn't dead.  I was told that she had a pretty bad concussion and that's all I remember.  It's a hard thing for a 5 year old to take in that her little sister could die before she even got a chance to be grown and there would be nothing she could do about it.  I wouldn't have a sister anymore and I'd be lonely like my brother.  I was coming to realize that the world wasn't a safe place and terrible things could happen at random that didn't make any sense.


If KB was preoccupied or not interested in playing, I had to entertain myself.  One day I decided to see how far I could jump off the front porch that sagged and was held up by two white columns.  I fell smack into the boxwoods along the edge of the porch and nearly impaled my genitals on one of them.  A large maple tree and another tree with long slender pods that dropped to the ground and looked like brown string beans were the only trees in the front yard.  I liked to break open the pods and suck out the sweet insides.  They tasted like molasses.  In the left side yard were massive old oak trees.  On the opposite side yard, lilies of the valley grew against the house. I used to lean down close to their tiny white faces and inhale their sweet delicate fragrance that smelled like perfume. An outdoor faucet provided plenty of water to make our mud pies. There was a well there too where kittens had fallen in and were rescued and brought in at night from the cold soaking wet.  I remember one night seeing Mother in the kitchen holding a tiny kitten in a towel and feeding it warm milk with a syringe. 

The turtle and the cherry tree


The right side of the house was sunny and had the most grass and was my favorite place to play.  I used to climb up the limbs of the cherry tree and when the cherries were ripe, I'd steady myself with my legs wedged between two limbs and feast on the juicy ripe berries, spitting the seeds to the ground.  One summer afternoon as I was happily engaged in cherry picking, my father and brother came outside and stood below the cherry tree.  KB has since told me that she was there too and saw what I saw but I don't remember her being there.  My father held up a little turtle he had captured for my brother's inspection.  He flicked his cigarette lighter and held the flame under the little turtle, laughing as the turtle's legs flailed wildly about in the air.  My brother was laughing too as they watched the  turtle squirm helplessly in my father's hand.  I had seen my father, a Methodist preacher, intentionally torture a helpless creature he had captured for his amusement.  I identified with the little turtle in that moment and realized I had about as much chance of getting away from my father as that turtle did until my father decided he'd had his fun with his prisoner and let him go.  As I watched the turtle hobble off seared and scarred, I felt relieved that the turtle was still alive and could get away and maybe one day, I could get away too.  Climbing the cherry tree didn't interest me much after that.

Running Away


The garage at the back of the house where Pop kept his handyman tools and Nash Rambler was the site where KB and I dreamed of running away from home.  We'd pack our suitcases and drag them into the garage where we'd scheme our secret getaways.  Sometimes we'd even carry them with us down to the woods two blocks away.  There I could dream of living in Africa with Albert Schweitzer, a medical doctor who loved and took care of sick children.  Soon it would get dark and we'd get hungry and have to drag our suitcases back for supper and warm beds.

Summertime Is for Canning


In the summertime, Mother would do a lot of canning from her backyard vegetable garden.  She'd sit on a step at the screened-in back porch and shell butter beans and sweet peas and snap Kentucky Wonder beans and let KB and me help.  Mother's pantry on the back porch was stocked to the brim with her dry goods and all the fruits and vegetables she had canned during the summer. We could eat all year long just about from the food she had put up in her pantry.  I remember eyeing all the jars lined up on shelves filled with food that would eventually wind up on our plates.  She canned watermelon rind pickle which I loved because it was crunchy and sweet,  made cucumber pickle, and filled quart Mason jars with canned peaches and string beans, sweet peas, black eyed peas and tomatoes. 

Snowball

It was in her pantry that our white Manx cat Snowball had hidden the kittens she had given birth to.  Snowball fearlessly defended her territory against the neighborhood dogs.  If any dog mistakenly put his paws in our yard, he lived to regret it.  We'd see him galloping out of the yard and down the street, yelping all the way with Snowball riding his backside, her claws firmly implanted in his flesh.  

Mrs. DuBois



Mrs. DuBois, who we decided was the meanest old lady in the neighborhood, lived next door to us and despised our cats, including Snowball, whose habit of jumping  the fence and snooping around in her yard caused Mrs. DuBois to threaten to kill Snowball if she ever caught her in her yard again.  She made sure to tell us that if we weren't good, the old ragman who pushed his rickety green cart down the street each week collecting newspapers and soda bottles to recycle would abduct us, cut us up, take us to Richmond in his cart, and sell us at the open air market for ten cents a pound. We believed her too and it scared the living daylights out of us.




The Doctor Is In


Mr. and Mrs. DuBois had a grandson living with them.  He was several years older than KB and me -- I'm thinking about 9 years old -- when one afternoon he invited us over to play doctor in his tent set up in the yard on the far side of the house.  We didn't know what that game was but he  said we had to take our panties down so he could  examine us and we complied.  After he had examined me, I sat in the swing in the yard while KB took her turn.  Mrs. DuBois must have been watching  from her window because no sooner had I got into the swing than she came out of the house and I was afraid she would catch KB in the tent with her panties down.  I have a hazy memory of the sequence of events but I have a vague memory of feeling frightened and ashamed because Mrs. DuBois was ordering us to go home like we had done something bad with her grandson and I think she must have told Mother what happened too but I'm not sure about that.  Anyway, we never went over in her yard to play with  her grandson again. 

I couldn't understand why Mother couldn't spend more time with us as we were growing up.  She always seemed so busy with the household chores and preoccupied by her duties as a minister's wife. She also taught chemistry, biology and math every weekday at the local high school. In spite of all this, she managed to find time to make some of our own clothes, especially new Easter dresses, and later when we were older she taught us how to sew. Mother was a fantastic seamstress and even made our winter coats with inner facing and lining --all on her Singer sewing machine.  If Mother couldn't get around to making our clothes, she'd buy them at Lerner's or some store that sold clothes inexpensively and sometimes we'd get hand-me-downs donated by church members for the preacher's kids. A corduroy skirt with Lady and the Tramp imprinted around the hem made me cringe, but I had to wear it anyway. To this day I can still see that horrible skirt.


Today I know that Mother was an amazing and smart hard-working woman determined to raise three rambunctious children and be a professional working woman outside the home as well as meet her duties as a preacher's wife.  Only a third of married women in the 50s worked outside the home and this was before the women's movement had begun.  The prevailing socially conservative message at the time was that a woman's place was in the home, preferably in the kitchen and the bedroom.  It is clear to me now that Mother was in her own quiet way bent on having a full life on her own terms.


That full life included boyfriends.  I remember one of them was a man named Mr. Mosher, who taught math at the high school.   He used to call her at night after work and want to talk and when he would call, Pop would  announce loudly so Mr. Mosher could hear and we could too, Kitty, your boyfriend is on the phone!  Everyone called my Mother Kitty though that wasn't her real name.  Mr. Mosher's efforts at courtship, if that is what it was, didn't last  long with Pop making fun of Mr. Mosher every time he called.  I don't know if Mr. Mosher ever came to the house but Mother's other boyfriend did and  he even went to the beach with us once.  He was a magician with a deep base voice and he was tall and slender.  I don't know where Mother found the likes of him, but I knew he liked Mother alot and apparently she liked him so he would visit  her and pretend to like us kids too.  I thought he was kind of  yucky especially when he was with us at  the beach and he sat at the water's edge with his private parts hanging out of his swim trunks.  I was glad when he stopped coming around to see Mother.


To maintain her full lifestyle, Mother always had a maid to help with the housework and once KB and I were old enough, she divided the housework between us which we had to finish each Saturday before we could go outside and play.   

Some People Are Just Ignorant

My first playmate besides KB and the Cavedos was the daughter of my mother's maid. One Saturday morning when I was about 5 years old, we were happily playing on the parsonage porch when old Mrs. DuBois came down the street with a bag of groceries under one arm. She took one look at my playmate and me and yelled, You shouldn't play with a nigger! Frightened and upset, I ran inside to tell Mother what Mrs. DuBois had said. I didn't understand why Mrs. DuBois called my friend a nigger. I didn't know what that was. Mother just calmed me down and replied, Don't pay any attention to her. Some people are just ignorant. When I returned to my friend on the front porch, I looked at her as if for the first time and realized we had different skin color. Hers was dark and mine was white. It was Mrs. DuBois that first introduced me to southern racial prejudice and made me feel somehow dirty and ashamed for playing with my mother's maid. Unbeknownst to me, however, my Mother gave me a great gift--she chose not to pass on to me the prejudice she surely had grown up with in South Carolina where her wealthy parents had black field hands and house maids. Later Mother let me know that Mrs. DuBois was a Christian Scientist. I had no idea what that was and Mother didn't explain it, but she said it like it was a peculiar thing for anyone to want to be. Thus, she did pass on to me her religious prejudice that somehow there was something not quite right or at least suspect about you if you weren't Methodist or at least Baptist. She allowed that it was okay to Baptist since there were some Baptists in our family on both sides, but it was preferable to be Methodist in any case.

What Five Cents Could Buy in the 50s


I must have been about 5 and KB about 3 when Pop decided we could each have a weekly allowance of a nickel.  In 1950 for a nickel you had an endless array of choices at the local five and dime -- a chocolate candy bar like a Milky Way, Three Muskateers or Hershey's bar with almonds, a Sugar Daddy sucker, 5 penny candies like Mary Janes or Tootsie Pops or red hots, long strings of licorice, a roll of Life Savers, a roll of Necco wafers, a pack of chewing gum (my favorite was Juicy Fruit)--or over at the High's Ice Cream store across the street on Nine Mile Road you could order a single scoop of chocolate ice cream or two popsicles stuck together--cherry, orange and grape were my favorites.  My first major life decision was what to buy with my weekly allowance. 


Directly across the street from the parsonage was a professional building.  The Cavedos lived next door on the left and on the right stood a pharmacy that faced Nine Mile Road but had a back door for easy access to the pharmacy's assortment of chewing gum and candy.  Sitting on the counter was a gallon jar of dill pickles.  It soon occurred to me that I could get more mileage out of one of those dill pickles in that jar than I  could out of a candy bar because I could suck on it and chew it a little at a time but I  would inevitably devour a candy bar almost before I could get the wrapper completely off because it tasted so good and chewing gum soon lost its flavor so I often salivated over the jar on the pharmacy counter until the clerk reached in with some tongs and pulled out a dripping wet dill pickle as large as my left hand, wrapped it in a sheet of nearly clear thin paper and handed it to me with a napkin in exchange for my sole nickel allowance.

This Hurts Me More Than It Does You

The fact that we'd have to wait another whole week before we'd get another allowance presented us with our first dilemma demanding  immediate attention.  It didn't take long before the idea of squirreling away our favorite candies from that five and dime store seemed a perfectly natural and reasonable solution.  After all, why should we have to wait for another week after the dill pickle had been consumed when there were rows and rows of candy set out in the open and right at eye level for any 5 year old who might decide to visit on any sunny afternoon except Sunday and all one really had to do was reach up and grab a few when the clerk wasn't looking and tuck them in a pocket?  And why did the store owner put  all that candy out there anyway in easy reach if it wasn't meant to be snatched up by little hands that had already given away their weekly allowance for a dill pickle?  It just didn't seem fair that we would have to deny ourselves for a whole week what we could easily enjoy with a little gumption and ingenuity. 


Somehow Mother soon caught on that we had carted home way too much candy for five cents, and we had to fess up that we had taken it from the five and dime without  paying for it.  Having to confess to being thieves and taking what did not belong to us was bad enough -- and was one of many occasions to come when Mother had us select appropriate switches before standing us side by side with our panties pulled down to our ankles and reminding us that this hurts me more than it does you. She always liked to say that, but I didn't believe her.  I don't think KB did either.  What was really humiliating was that she made us go and apologize to the clerk at the five and dime and admit what we had done and promise never to do it again. 

The Secretary


I'm not sure the lesson took as it should have since we continued to get our weekly allowance and the craving for candy didn't leave us.  Mother made up for it by baking batches of cookies, cakes and pies and Pop contributed by buying half gallons of ice cream that we could consume at one sitting. 

If all else failed when a sugar craving hit, there was Mother's mahagony secretary with several cubby holes where she kept her important papers.  On the bottom of the secretary were several drawers stuffed full  of old photos and miscellaneous receipts and documents.  At the top were two glass doors that could be locked with a key she kept in the key hole.  Among the items on the shelves behind the glass doors was a candy jar with peppermints in it.  No  sooner had I spied the candy jar than I figured out a way to climb up in a chair while Mother was in the kitchen washing dishes or doing laundry and ever so carefully turn the key, open the glass doors, take the top off the candy jar and reach in and grasp a prized peppermint. I wasn't pilfering the five and dime anymore.  I had found something even better -- Mother's secretary.

Holidays


My favorite holiday in Highland Springs was Halloween because that was the one  time when Mother would allow us to eat as much candy as we could haul home from our night of trick or treating.  On Halloween  night we'd dress up in scarry costumes and go door-to-door collecting candy handed out by our neighbors and all we had to do was say trick or treat when a neighbor opened her door. KB and I would come home each with a grocery bag full of every kind of candy sold at the Five and Dime and we just couldn't believe our good fortune--it was free!  We'd dump it all in a big pile on the living room rug  and feast until we had our fill.  I loved the caramels, tootsie rolls, Mary Janes and M&Ms the most.  There were little tiny plastic  bottles filled with different flavors of juice that were so good too.  If Mother caught us eating chocolate or any other candy any other time that she had not specifically sanctioned, she would make us drink Milk of Magnesia and she managed to catch us  more times than I care to remember. 


Christmas was my second favorite holiday.  Pop would buy a live tree and we'd decorate it with strings of popcorn.  We opened our presents on Christmas Eve night after supper.  Mother would make identical nightgowns or bathrobes for KB and me so we wouldn't be jealous of what the other sister got.  Mother often made identical outfits for us to wear to school or church too which made some folks think we were twins, but I was 18 months older than KB and I didn't think we looked much alike.  I still don't.

Rolling Free

I got roller skates for Christmas one year.  They fit onto my shoes by tightening them with a skate key.  I loved skating down the sidewalk on Nine Mile Road all the way to the high school several blocks away.  I'd skate around the front of the school and in the parking lot before turning around, feeling of the breeze blowing against my face and hair, happy that my feet, legs and arms, all in perfect syncopated motion, could keep me balanced and upright.  Later when KB learned to skate too, she and I would go to the local skating rink and join other neighborhood kids, holding hands in a line as we rounded the rink.  I  got to be really good on skates, amazed at how easily my body maneuvered in motion.  When I was skating or playing with my sister or the Cavedos or my friend who was the daughter of my mother's maid, I felt free and happy in my own world.

Pot Luck


Because we were preacher's kids, we had to go to church alot and not just on Sundays to Sunday School and church but on Wednesday nights too and there were always revivals that would last all week.  The best part of going to church were the church pot luck suppers that occurred throughout the year for one reason or another and the brunswick stew the men of the church would  stir up in big round black pots out on the lawn every Fall.


And in the summer time, there was Vacation Bible School that was held for a whole week.  I didn't like being dragged to church all the time, but Vacation Bible School was fun because we got to play games outside like London Bridge is Falling Down and A  Tisket A Tasket A Green and Yellow Basket.  It was during Vacation Bible School that I met my first boyfriend, Kenneth Ensley, who lived on Kalmia Street.  He had dark curly black hair and cute freckles and there was something about him that felt like an electric shock when I would get close to him, especially  when we held hands and sat side by side on the church pew in the sanctuary.  The tingling sensation all over my body was so intense that it almost hurt.  I think I pursued Kenny more than he pursued me because I would go over to his house more than he would come over mine.  Maybe my parents had something to do with that.  I was sad when his family moved away to Burkeville.  I never got to see him again and I have always wondered what happened to him.  I've even tried to find him on the Internet without any luck.  I  didn't have another boyfriend until I was in junior high school and that is a mighty long time to be without a boyfriend.  A child can have strong feelings for someone. Grown-ups call it puppy love.


Useful Scars

I entered first grade in Highland Springs at Stonewall Jackson Elementary School.  My teacher Mrs. Shands wanted each of us to be able to distinguish our left hand from our right.  I was upset because I couldn't tell which was which and went home anxious to for Mother's comfort.   She had an answer ready for me.  When she asks you which hand is your left hand, just remember to look at the scar where the dog bit you in Hamilton. That was my first lesson in the usefulness of scars.


[first grade - safety patrol- air raid drills - Mrs. Shands - reading]
report cards

[grandparents]


I didn't get to see or meet my Grandfather Creighton because he died two years before I was born.  Years later after I had finished college and grad school and was encouraged by a psychologist to go to law school, I learned from my Mother that her father had been a lawyer in South Carolina before he heard the call of God on his life and felt compelled to become a Methodist minister. How many years he was in the pulpit after he left the practice of law I don't know, but Mother said that one day he did or said something that his congregation didn't approve of and they asked for his resignation to which he replied, To hell with you all. I'll just go back to practicing law, and that's what he did. He had been married before and my Grandmother Creighton was his third wife so Mother had half-sisters by his previous marriages. KB remembers a great story Mother told her about "the sisters" and what Mother thought of them, but I'll let her tell it.



[get KB to recount story here]