03/27/2024
Thoughts While Shaving
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Thoughts While Shaving‘Bout this time of the year, my mind drifts back to days gone by.  Being the son of a share-cropper, we begin to think about gathering the latest crop and decide if a move was in the immediate future.  We were a big family, six children, and share-cropping was ‘a way of life’ in those days.  We would gather all the belongings, load all we had on a wagon pulled by a mule or horse and move, not far.  All the moves we made were in the Zion Hill Baptist Church area, north of Bladenboro and never more than 3 or 4 miles from the church.

Kinda looked like the Beverly Hillbillies.  As the oldest of six, one of my biggest decisions was to determine the bus number that served our new home address.

Times have changed, today farming is big business, large farms, lots of equipment and a small labor force.

In the 50s and 60s, just the opposite, turn plows, peanut weeders, drags used for harvesting tobacco pulled by a mule a horse or both, tobacco sticks, suckering, topping and grading tobacco, picking cotton, pulling peanuts and harvesting corn by hand.  Gardens were a way of life and hog-killings on cold days, shared by neighbors, was a big party.

Those days helped me make a very important decision about my future.  I had no desire to be a share-cropper.  The sharing was about a work-load, very little sharing of proceeds for anyone.

Mentioned a recent opportunity to speak with and share some time with WECT’s Bob Townsend, who has retired from full-time chores of the early morning show.  He will be making an occasional appearance, in his new role as a retiree.  I think back to others who were there for a long time, example, Wayne Jackson, still in the Port City.  Many who became a part of our life, via the tube, are deceased.

Childhood is the most beautiful of all life’s seasons.  Author Unknown

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.  Graham Greene

If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.  Tom Shoppard

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