I received a small brown Teddy Bear the Christmas after I turned four years old. He was my confidante for many years. "Teddy" as I named him, listened to all of my concerns and fears. He was there at night when the lights were turned out and "things" lurked about in the dark.

    He rode with me when I played "Cowboys and Indians", when it was still politically correct and acceptable to do so. After all, who would mess with a cowboy who had a bear with him for a sidekick.

    Teddy's eyes were replaced several times. He met with several optical incidents requiring eye patches, emergency opthamology, buttons and surgical stitches.

    Other siblings received "teddy bears" as they came along, but none as special as my "Teddy". When I went away to serve the country in the U.S. Marine Corps, Teddy stayed behind to guard the home front.

    Upon one of my visits to Moma and Daddy's home, after returning from Vietnam, and after wedding my Georgia bride, I discovered Teddy silently resting on a closet shelf, patiently waiting for an invitation to join in the games again. I quickly agreed to take on the responsibility, once again, of raising a Teddy bear. He rests, today, as a sentinel, at the head of my bed, over 45 years later.

    Not long after being presented with "Teddy", I was also given a "Popeye" punching bag, nearly as tall as I was. At four, I was only about thirty five inches high, so that was not a large as it sounded.

    As I was given this glorious toy, I watched Daddy's face turned red as he filled it with air from his lungs to make it play worthy. When he was finished, he counseled me to "Never, never push anything like a screw driver or a nail into the side of this punching bag. It will not be any good, any more, if you do.!"

    At about that same time in my life, we lived in a small house near the edge of the airport. That would have made it close to work for Daddy. The family remained in this housing- it was civilian housing- for some months beyond his discharge from the Army/Air Corps.

    Having been a motorcycle policeman in the service, Daddy was comfortable riding motor bikes. For his own use, he had a "Scooter" which he provided rides for the neighborhood children on. He attached my little red wagon behind it and would ride kids all over the streets with it. He did this so often that he wore the wheels of the wagon. It has to be mentioned, that a "Scooter" make the wheels of a child's wagon turn much faster than a four year old can pull it.

    This was not Daddy's only mode of transportation, though. He was real sporty in his Black 1946 Ford Coupe. It had running boards that reached up to magnificent wheel fenders. The running boards were ideal as a stool for Jane and me when Daddy was not driving the car. We spent many lingering moments sitting on them, playing our little imaginary games.

    We quit doing it, though, when one day, we left some of our toys on the passenger side running board. Those toys took a joy ride, but we were not very joyous when we realized they were not coming back. I guess they got scattered all over U.S. Highway 17, as Daddy pulled out into the street.

    I pick a dandelion from the yard, blowing the seeds as hard (or softly) as I can, de-pending on the mood I'm in, watching its petals drift away on the gentle breeze that is unconsciously cooling me in the late after-noon. As I peer skyward, I begin to identify the objects I see in the white puffy clouds that are gathering for the late afternoon rain.

    I see a sand dollar lying on the beach, then another, then another, as the stiff breeze slaps me in the face and the smell of the marsh invades my nostrils and the sound of diving seagulls strikes at my ear drums.

    I slowly and apprehensioulsy unwrap a Hershey's chocolate bar, taking care not to tear the wrapper, for no particular reason, and when the smooth creamy dark chocolate is exposed, I (carefully as a surgeon) break off the first row of squares and place it on my tongue with great anticipation.

    I tear open a pack of Jell-o and after dumping its contents into the bowl of cold water, lick any residue that remains clinging to the waxed paper envelope.

    I scheme to buy all the utilities and all the property on the expensive side of the Monopoly board and place as many houses and hotels there as the game will possibly permit.

    As our mother prepares the noodles for Spaghetti, I beg for and receive one or two strands of uncooked pasta. I feel the crunch in my mouth as I bite down on the strands, holding one piece between my thumb and forefinger mimicking my dad smoking a cigarette.

    Because I display all the symptoms of a cold, my mother rubs Vicks Vap-o-rub all over my chest and covers it with Saran Wrap before my shirt is put on..

    Onto warm fresh baked bread, I spread home made butter so thick, the crust is no longer visible .

    Syrup for pancakes is made in the South by grinding Sugar Cane with a huge metal wheeled device that is turned by a mule hitched to a "swing pole" The mule is hitched to the pole and walked round and round. This action turns two huge metal wheels in toward each other. The stalks of sugar cane are passed between these wheels and the juice is captured as it runs out of the cane.

    The juice is then cooked for what seems hours, until it becomes Cane syrup.

    A foam, called "Skippy" is skimmed from the top of the syrup as it forms. This "Skippy" has an intoxicating effect on its consumers.

    Rock candy forms in the bottom of jars of Cane Syrup not used very frequently

    Saving Blue Horse coupons. (With 5,000 and $0.50, you could get a yo-yo.) About the time we had saved a sufficient quantity to trade for a bright colored baseball cap, I would see some worthless trinket some school mate had, and trade the coupons for it. One time, I got a Knight's helmet that came off the top of a cologne bottle. What a deal that was!

    My First Communion was prepared for during what seemed like years. I have never regretted one day, the time I was instructed in the meaning of the Eucharist, thanks to the sisters of the Maryknoll missionary. They were the Catechetical instructors in Walterboro; Sister Xavier, Sister Bernadette, Sister Maria Kim. . . God bless them and when the time comes, God rest their soul.

    Bazooka bubble gum always had a cartoon sheet inside the wrapper. It made the gum that much better.

    Grape Nehi and Grapette soft drinks were served in bottles that must have held no more than 6 ounces. It was the sweetest six ounces of nectar ever bottled.

    Homemade bologna sandwiches (ground bologna, pickles and mayonnaise) on fresh, homemade bread taken to school for lunch could be traded for any hot entrée in the cafeteria. When Moma sent these sandwiches to school with me.

    I had a standing invitation from Jimmy Grayson to choose anything on his tray in exchange for my sandwich.

    Do you recall. . . when a hairbrush is brought into play as an instrument of discipline?

    I made a collection of Coffee Can "Keys" and pretended I was the jail keeper. A coffee can key was soldered to the base of the can that coffee was sold in, by the manufacturer. When it was time to open the can, the consumer broke the key loose from the base.

    The slot at the end of the can was used to "twist" off a thin metal seal that had been engineered into the top rim of the can to free the lid.

    A "leader" had been left for the consumer to thread through the eye of the "key". The key was then twisted, winding the band onto it, until the consumer had encircled the entire can, thereby creating a void between the can and the lid which kept the contents fresh.

    There was an unmistakable "whosh" when the first air was let into the vacuum sealed canister, and the first aroma of fresh coffee escaped. It made the anticipation of the fresh cup of coffee more intense.

    A coffee can lid nailed through its center, to a wooden slat, made an excellent make-believe plaything. I pretend it is my car and I run all around the yard, going from rose bush to shrubbery, pretending I am stopping off at various mercantile establishments...

    Do you remember the show , or can you sing the opening theme to:

"The Mickey Mouse Club"

"Howdy Doody"

"Mighty Mouse"

"Yogi Bear"

"Dudley Do Right,"

"Tom Slick"

"Spin and Marty"

"The Bulwinkle Show"

"The Lone Ranger"

"Superman"

"Roy Rogers and Dale Evans"

"Lash Laroo"

"The Buster Brown Show"

"Hopalong Cassidy"

"Gene Autry".

    Home made Glazed donuts spread all over the kitchen table in our home. The glazing has dripped all over everything. The smell of raw bread dough still lingers above the smell of the doughnuts. . .

I wait patiently for my turn to ride the new bicycle and as my sister returns, I hear her say, raising her hand and pointing one finger into the air, as she pedals by,

"Just one more time, okay?"

    I am sitting on a home made swing which consists of wooden board that has been placed in the loop of a steel cable that formed when its ends were wrapped around a stout limb of a huge live oak tree, overhead; a friend holds onto the wooden seat from behind me, and pushes me and the swing forward until that friend passes under me due to the arch made by the swinging steel cables; a technique commonly requested by whining

"run under me! ".

    My Dad's oldest sister, my Aunt Hazel, was married to Nicholas J. Kramer. They lived in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. The ground around there home was primarily hills of granite boulders that had been broken up over the centuries since deposited there during the most recent ice age.

    To clear his land of boulders, Uncle Nick took an old junk car and modified it to use as a sort of tractor. With this "tractor," he continuously "relocated" rocks the size of the U.S.S. Enterprise to one pile or another on his property.

    Uncle Nick's home was adjacent to an old junk yard. I recall one weekend when we were visiting and Daddy's youngest brother, my Uncle Charlie went on a search and seizure mission through the junk yard. He brought back about two dozen "buttons" with various sayings on them that owners of the wrecked cars had abandoned when their cars were towed to the junk yard.

    Some of the buttons were censured by my parents before they were handed over to Billy Kramer and me, due to their suggestive content. Things like, "Well Diggers do it deeper" and "Game Wardens do it all night long."

    When I was in the tenth grade, my Biology class was required to turn in science projects. Henry Ulmer, from Brunson, SC, and I were lab partners.

    He and I reassembled the bones from the carcas of a stray dog we found decomposed in the woods behind the house I lived in. We had little knowledge of what we were doing, and did not even have all the bones that originally went into building that dog. We gave it our best try, anyway. Besides, I (that is, my Daddy) had a drill to make holes in the bones so they could be wired back together.

    I suppose vultures had carried away parts of the carcass with the bones yet attached. We had no model to go by. If we saw a passing dog, they would not stand still long enough to let us get a good look. Besides, they still had the skin covering their bones. We just put things together that looked like they went together.

    When we were finished, we had what looked like it could have been a dog in another life. As I recall, we got a "B minus" for our effort, which was pretty good.

    My family lived in Rhinelander, Wisconsin in 1958. Daddy was injured in an accident while trying to earn a little extra money during vacation, and could not get us back home to South Carolina before the new school year started. Jane, my oldest sister and Hank, my (younger) oldest brother and I enrolled in St. Mary's Catholic School for that year.

    During our stay, we were introduced to a local Optometrist who proceeded to test all but Hank's ability to see well. In the course of his exams, he determined that Jane and Daddy had a "lazy eye" apiece, that required correcting with the use of an eye patch.

    Now, this was not the black patch pirates wore. It was a "flesh" colored patch that was "stuck" over the "lazy eye" in question, using an adhesive back, similar to a "Band-aid". It was worn for a period of several weeks, and was not, according to them, an enjoyable task.

    When Doctor Peepers (not his real name) was done, prescriptions for new pairs of glasses were issued to Bud, Merle, Jane and me. Jane and I wore our glasses for nearly a year. They slowly were worn less and less, until they were finally abandoned and forgotten. The only evidence of them was the yearly school pictures that were made with us wearing our glasses.

    Bud and Merle, who were in their mid thirties at that time, were a little ahead of their time for needing glasses. That usually begins around age forty. I guess they were both early starters. I later found that I could benefit form wearing my glasses regularly, but it was not until I was about forty, myself.

    While attending Wade Hampton High School, Jane and I drove one of the family cars, a 1957 Ford Sedan, to school one day a week. The justification for this was C.C.D. (Catholic Catechetical Development) or "Sunday School on Wednesdays.

    The Maryknoll Sisters, who were resident in Walterboro, came over to Hampton, on Wednesdays to conduct these classes for the Hampton County students. They held class in Walterboro on another day (which we also attended in earlier years, but that is a different tale, all together.)

    When High School dismissed, Jane and I would drive over to the home of Bill and Louise Dreyfus, Gayle and Anne' parents. There, we would wait until the time for religious class to convene. We would spend thirty to forty five minutes at Anne's house, until class time, at which time we would all drive over to the church.

    Mrs. Dreyfus usually had some sort of snack for us. She did not seem to mind us dropping by. She and Bill, her husband had been best friends and frequent visitors with our parents when the Dreyfus's lived in Walterboro. Daddy even worked with (for) Bill at the local Western Auto Associates store, there, which, before I learned to read, thought was pronounced, "Wester Nauto".

    It was after one of these classes that Jane and I were on our way back to Yemassee when the accident occurred.

    The highway from Wade Hampton High School, between Hampton and Varnville, to Lane's Motel in Yemassee is twenty miles of concrete that has but three or four mild curves in it, after which it quickly resumes its due East trajectory toward Yemassee.

    The road was constructed in the early fashion of forming up twenty yard sections, pouring concrete into it, smoothing it out, letting it dry. . . then pouring the next twenty yards. Therefore, there is a seam in the road every twenty yards, which, when riding on a public school bus, results in a rhythmical thump, thump, thump, thump for twenty miles.

    This one particular afternoon, I was driving Jane and me home. The road, being straight and level as it was, made it simple to see oncoming traffic. We found ourselves behind a slow moving vehicle, just East of Early Branch. I checked for oncoming traffic, then pulled out to pass the slowpoke ahead of me.

    At that very same time, the driver of the lead car realized that he had reached the access road to his property. He, therefore, began making his left hand turn in the direction of his home, which sat some few hundred yards beyond the railroad track that ran parallel with the Hampton / Yemassee highway.

    His left-hand turn coincided simultaneously with our effort to overtake him, resulting in his car pushing us and our car into the ditch along side the road. As he got out of his car to see if there was anything he could help us with, he exclaimed, "Well, if'n you teenagers didn't run up and down this highway with these GIRLIES in your cars, you wouldn't be a'gettin' into this kind of trouble." I quickly let him know that Jane was not a GIRLIE, but was, in fact, my sister.

    When I told him I had not seen his turn signal, he reminded me that EVERYONE knew he lived up that road and he saw no need to waste the time making signals. He had lived there for years. A turn signal was not necessary.

    He offered to take us back to a Gas Station in Early Branch to call the police or our Mommie. No sooner did we arrive than he pulled a beer out of the cooler. Naturally, that way, he could not be accused of having been drinking previously, and had an excuse for there being beer on his breath. He also had all of the witnesses in the station to back him up. No matter, the State Trooper did not show up until the following day to investigate. Daddy had to leave work in Walterboro to pick us up.