What a time it was!! Looking at my scrapbook memories!

What a time it was!! Looking at my scrapbook memories!
Originally uploaded by anslatadams

What a time it was!! Looking at my scrapbook memories!
This is Pat Davis (Hughes) and her brother Sam or as his parents and everybody
called him "Sambo". That was his nickname. This was Easter 1962 a year before the photo below. Behind them is a huge Gardenia bush and I always remember when I would come to Pat's house to play, around May or June, that Gardenia bush would have almost hundreds of blooms on them and they smelled soooo good!! That's why I love Gardenias to this day. Pat and Sam's parents owned a 1957 fin tail Chevrolet!! I remember many a time when the weather was rainy or icy, their mom taking us to school in it, otherwise, we would all walk to school together! We had crossing guards and we knew them by name. I remember we had Mrs. Mitchell, she lived also in our neighborhood. I can't remember the other one. We went to Wheeles Road School on(of course Wheeles Road). Our Principal was Mr. Bernie Ward who is now deceased. Those were fun times. I remember when we would walk to school, we would go to Kernaghan's Corner or Korner, a gas station/grocery store and buy candy before we had to be in school in the mornings. Because of the traffic around that corner,( it was next to Hwy. #1,) it was really dangerous for us kids to be going down there even back in those days (now it would be about 4 times worse). So Mr. Ward made an announcement one day that we couldn't go down there anymore! Darn it! We were so mad at him, but we got over it and we still loved him. He was a good man. And so were all the teachers, and darned good teachers at that. And that was back in the day
when paddling kids for misbehaving was the norm. It didn't "scar us for life" as so many whiny people say nowadays, it just kept us on the straight and narrow. And we were happy!
Unfortunately, Sam or Sambo died of heart problems while traveling in Germany
just a few years ago, he was just a year or two older than me. Pat was 8 here she would be 9 in October. I can't remember when Sam's birthday was, I think it was in the summer. He was such an intelligent boy with so much potential. He was working for the government in Washington, DC at the time he passed away. He was a faithful Boy Scout who made it to Eagle scout. Had a room full of "Mad Magazines" which Pat and I would sneak in his room while he was at school since us younger ones got out earlier than the older ones. LOL! He had them stacked about 1 ft high all the way around the walls of his room!!! Wow can you imagine that collection?? from the the 1950s and early 1960s??!! Wow! We LOVED Mad Magazine. Also Sam was a fan of the Mickey Mouse club when he was younger, loved doing "magic tricks" and in the "bomb shelters" that we all had to dig under our home basements, they ended up( thank God)
not having to be used for that and I remember at one of Sams birthday parties he invited all the kids to the basement shelter and there was a "stage" in there and he performed magic tricks!! Wow. Back then, we kids knew how to use our imaginations. Little did we know of all the dangers around us. Our parents were tightlipped about the Cold War to an extent until we were older. But I will never forget everybody talking about "Sputnik" that the Russians had shot into space and we would look at it in the evenings and the poor little dog stuck in that Satellite I think his or her name was Leika. I cried because I said to my parents, "How is he going to get back home? They were honest and told me the dog died. :-( I hated that, why couldn't they at least put a rat or guinea pig?? Why a dog??!! It made me mad. I couldn't have been but 4 or 5 years old at the time!
Well, I could write a book and I probably will about my life growing up in East Central Georgia in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s all the way to 2001. That's the year we moved up here. And then in September of that year, once again, the world would never be the same.

Uploaded by anslatadams on 3 Feb 10, 9.30PM EST.