So many stories to tell about my dad that it is hard to know where to start. He was a family oriented man. His job was important in that it took care of his family. He was also a stay-at-home man. As long as I can remember, my dad came home for lunch. When I was young, he walked to work and walked home with lunch in between. A lot of times, my brother and I would meet him on his way home from work. We would wait all day and watch the city clock to make sure we didn't miss the time to go. At about 4:45, we would run to the corner of Fifth avenue and East Second street, stop and watch for cars before crossing the street and then run down the hill to Sixth avenue. From there, after crossing the street, we would go to the corner of East First street and Sixth avenue and walk up East First street to daddy's work. He would be mad if he saw us running. His company garage was on the corner of Eight avenue and Broad street where the new Georgia Power Co. office is located. Usually we would see him coming and we started telling about the things that had happened that day. Sometimes we were good and sometimes not. We had plenty to do at home. Larry's job was to take out the garbage and mine was to wash dishes or sweep the kitchen.
One of the many things that my dad did with me was see-saw. We lived across the street from the old Neely school and the play ground had swings, see-saws and monkey bars. Dad would push us in the swings and help us walk the monkey bars and then see-saw with him on one side and me and Larry on the other. And he played ball. Any kind of ball, it didn't matter. He was a Georgia Cracker fan back then and Ga Tech. When he was growing up in Atlanta, he became a Tech fan. We used to go to the B-team games when they had them on Thanksgiving day. One day after my mom died, we went to Rosemary's house and we left from there to go to the game. It snowed on us the whole time. I thought I would freeze to death because I didn't have a blanket. Dad finally decided to leave at the half because of the cold. We listened to it on the radio. After Kenneth started to UGA, then he became a Ga Bulldog.
Now I can just barely remember my mother having a wringer washing machine. It sat in the hall in the winter time because it was to cold to wash on the back porch. And in the summer time, she set it up on the outside on the porch. Daddy had cut a hole in the hall floor for mother to drain out the water. Now that I am , grown, I think that idea was ingenious. This had happened when I was a little girl, so when we got an automatic washer, I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. It was a front loader and Larry and I would sit in the floor and watch it slosh the water just like watching TV. It sat in the kitchen under the dish cabinet and dad had installed a drain pipe on the wall beside it and the washer pumped the water into this drain. This was great because we didn't have to run the clothes through the wringer and catch our fingers. Our hands didn't even get wet.
Dad bought this house just before Larry was born in 1945 and I lived there until I got married. It is still standing now but it is used for offices. Sometime in the 1950's, my dad put siding on this house. It was Masonite and it is still on the house. The color was a light sage and it was beautiful. He replaced the wooden porch with a concrete one and had wrought iron pillars instead of the wooden ones. Beside the steps, were hugh slabs of marble and Larry had fallen from one of them and received about 6 stitches. He was forever falling and getting stitches in some place or the other. He even lost two toes cutting grass. They could not save them but he has just enough to keep from having a limp. Plus he didn't have to go in the army. Now in this house was a long hall that went down the middle and my aunt Doris lived with us. She came down this aisle when she got married to Dudley Sheppard in 1951. I was suppose to be in her wedding but I broke my arm and couldn't make it. Continuing with the house, there were 3 rooms and a bath on one side and 4 rooms on the other side. The front room was considered a foyer or a room for coats. We never used it for anything else until dad put in the beauty shop. There were beautiful sliding doors. So heavy that I was about 12 years old before I could close them by myself. There was another set between the living room and the dining room. My bedroom was next to the bathroom and I had it all to myself. Larry and Kenneth shared the other bedroom in the back of the house. Before Kenneth was born, Larry and I shared a room and dad rented out that back room. At one time, my uncle Ed and aunt Beatrice lived there. After their daughter, Jean, was born, they moved in the house with Ma Jones and Pa Jones on the farm that belonged to James Whitehead. But this story is suppose to be about dad but I can't separate all of the things that went on that happened there without telling about all the people involved. Too many stories over too many years.
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