That was 55 years ago. It was really an outstanding memory. She was aptly named. Now, people call her Joybell. At Thanksgiving, I loved the turkey dinners with my in-laws especially. My wife and mymother-in-law were both good cooks. They’d grind up the cranberries and grind up the oranges and make a cranberry salad with nuts. My mother made a wonderful cake. It had raisin icing. The cake was yellow and made from scratch. There were no box mixes in the 30s and 40s. And we’d gather around the piano and sing hymns. I’m a pianist. Everybody’s favorite was ‘What a friend, what a friend we have in Jesus.’”
my favorite. We always had a big turkey. They made punch, cranberry sauce...the works. For dessert, my wife used to make a chocolate chiffon cream pie. Everybody liked that, especially the grandkids. My wife and I, we always walked and talked. We loved to walk. We went to Niagara Falls on the 28th of December one year. They all said you’re crazy, but it was
father hacked down from the woods. Now, today, people don’t do that. People come and sell you one.”
“We lived in Kansas for a while and we had a really deep snow in Kansas. We had about eight feet of snow and one of my children lost their contact lens in the snow. We were trying,
we have Thanksgiving and that created excitement, but then Christmas was a most exciting time. I was in a big family and my siblings and I became so excited with the coming of Christmas. We lived on a farm near Shelby, North Carolina, and there were cedar trees all over so my brother and I had the duty to go find aChristmas tree, cut it down and bring it home. The smell of a live Christmas tree still brings memories. And my mother did a lot of baking at Christmastime. She baked fruit cake that had everything in it and she made a fresh coconut cake that was wonderful. And the smells of baking filling the house...I still get
Thanksgiving is our wedding anniversary, so there is no way to forget or not celebrate it. This will be our 63rd year. We got married in my mother’s living room the day before Thanksgiving and our thought was we were going to Fontana Dam on our honeymoon. We were in Goldsboro, North Carolina, with no snow tires and no chains and we forgot the mountains didn’t have a lot of restaurants. There were no open restaurants. We did get to Asheville finally and spent the night and got up the next morning. I found out things I didn’t know about my husband before. His curiosity. We passed a trashcan and a skunk was trying to get out and I said, ‘No, no, no, no! Don’t go near,’ otherwise I was going to have to spend my honeymoon with my husband smelling like a skunk.”
his cloak. Now that I’m living [at The Carolina Inn], I put it outside my door, but at home I put him on my foyer table.”