Memory Lane Monday~

Here is this week's entry from my dad's journal that I'm including on our blog for our kiddies to have someday~

Well, yes, we have moved again and this time from Doraville to Stone Mountain. A new beginning for Grandma and Graddaddy and another school for us to get new friends, make new enemies (always happens and though I want to shun those memories away, they are still here, just suppressed with more good memories than bad), and get used to a new school layout. The new house is the most new we have ever lived in. Paula still got her own room, Tony, Al and myself got another and that was that. I was in the fifth grade here to start, just 11 years old and big for my age. Dad taught me to cut the grass and that was a help for him around the house. We had long since started chores and though allowance was 50 cents a week, I found ways to make monies.

I started cutting neighbors' lawns for them. Most of the yards were flat, used their mowers and gas, but there were no string trimmers. I used a pair of hand snips to go around the mailbox and areas where the mower would not get. We had a group of kids in the neighborhood who liked to play all the time. Hide and seek at night, "woofle"

{wiffle} ball was tops and I was good at it.

This is where they penned the name Webster on me for good for reading the dictionary all the time and reading other books. I loved books. Sports, history and science fiction all helped me to escape from the reality of a disappointing home life with money issues. Mom and dad still did not go to church though I visited a couple in the area with some friends, including Stone Mountain Methodist where a girlfriend of mine went. I got to go to Six Flags with her and her youth group when I was 12 and it was a great day. No brother or sister to mar up the day with their own agenda. Tony was so much smaller than me, whenever we went out, mom would always make me watch over him. Some days it was fine, others he caused me headaches. Tony liked to fight and it did not matter how big the other guy was, he always knew I was near.

This is the downtown of stone Mountain, complete with hardware, drug store with fountain and what was called a dry goods store. I loved to just go there and walk through the stores. The fountain had the best strawberry ice cream cones and chocolate sundaes ever made.

The mountain was exactly one mile from home or about 5 minutes on bikes. Me, Tony of course and several friends would meet at the mountain and play army, cowboys and Indians or just hang out. This was long before they put a fence around it and started making you pay to enter. I bet I have climbed this mountain 500 times in my life. 75 of which was one summer when I was 32 and did it almost every day as a means of losing some weight.

The Ku Klux Klan still met in the area and in a field not far from our home. We could hear them when they did meet. The music and speeches, hatred of blacks/ foreigners/"gays" and all were loud. Several times, me and a couple of friends would go over and sit in the woods nearby where we could see and hear it all. They had a shed in the field where we broke into one day and it was full of army stuff. We helped ourselves to machetes with sheaths and belts, army helmets, hand held axes and some small shovels. It wasn't being used by them, and we were just kids, so what was going to happen? Seems the mayo was chief klansman and carried a lot of weight in the area.

Dad had found some new work we still bowled on Saturday mornings in a league but at Belvedere Plaza, not Tucker. Christmas was as usual wit a live tree, minimal gifts, stockings and a time to drive around and look at lights. We still went to the drive in as often as possible.