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Free Preview – THOUGHT PROVOKING LESSONS OF LIFE: True Short Stories from the Real World

add_book7As an old Clay County country boy from Doctors Inlet, Florida, I’ve learned a lesson or two about the vagaries of life. I’ve experienced and seen many good things in my 67 years, as well as some things which did not go quite so well. Let’s just say I, like many of you who read this book, have had some very thought provoking lessons of life.

As a youngster in Clay County, which is just south of Jacksonville, Florida, I saw and experienced some good and bad like most. Though things were not great when I was just a child, I really didn’t know much better at the time. But, I did realize by the early 1950s, we were quite poor. As the situation was, I wouldn’t have even known that if I had not been required to attend Doctors Inlet Elementary School, which I might add, I hated! Despite that,  it didn’t take me long to realize that most of my  classmates’ parents had new cars or trucks, electric  lights, refrigerators, washing machines, indoor  plumbing, some even had telephones, televisions,  and a lot of other things which we didn’t.

One of the best things I can remember is when my father mail ordered a green manual hand pump from Montgomery Ward, and when the postman brought it, Daddy lifted it onto his shoulder and walked to our old shack about a half mile back into the woods, and then attached the pump to sections of water pipe, which he sunk into the ground for over 25 feet. Afterward, the pump had to be primed before the elixir of life could be sucked out of the unseen water aquifer beneath, which became our primary water supply.

Usually, when people hear such an account of poverty, they typically talk about how love helped them make it through those tough times. For some reason, people tend to think of the Walton’s of television fame, but in our day, that kind of thinking didn’t really apply. It was not that we didn’t love each other, but by the time I was eight (1952) my fiery, petite, and beautiful mother who had raven hair and sparkling hazel eyes had been institutionalized. Her part Cherokee blood must have had a great influence on her physical beauty, because at just over five feet tall and 98 pounds, she turned the heads of just about every male in Clay County.

With the accepted and general knowledge we  have today, postpartum depression may have  been a contributor to her sometimes strange and  erratic behavior, which country folks, or doctors  for that matter, knew little to nothing about in the  early 1950s. It was 1950 when my younger brother, Talmadge, was born.