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(And Didn't Want to Know) Overview: Part 2
Remember, as in most of my pages, you can click on the pictures to see larger versions.
My parents built their home when they were expecting me, their fourth child (out of 6.) On one side of us was the place that sold monuments. (Conveniently located right across the street from the entrance to the cemetery.) On the other side there was one house next to us and then you were in the country with cornfields that came up to the rear part of our backyard. It's kind of hard to describe it, but the neighbor's yard was much shorter than ours so the field was against both our yards. We played in the corn and my sister even managed to get bitten by a Brown Recluse spider while in our forbidden playground. (They are rare around here, but she managed to find one, or should I say it managed to find her.) We found Indian arrowheads in our yard. The back third of our huge yard was left to grow like a meadow most of the time. We would make forts and trails in the tall grass.
Even though this picture isn't real clear you
can see that there is a big empty space behind my brother and his friend. That
is where the corn was planted during the growing season. You can also see our
"see-saws" in this picture to the right. You can barely see the
houses way back in the picture, that is where our house got moved to around
1964 when we sold our property to a gasoline company.
Living across the street from the town's
cemetery had advantages
and disadvantages. There weren't any kids or adults either living across the
street from us. (Just dead people!) It was lonely. One nice thing though was we
could go there whenever we wanted to have a peaceful place to walk or ride our
bikes. (Except when the
caretaker caught us playing tag around the gravestones
and made us leave!) It was cool in the summer with lots of shade trees and with
the flowers put on the graves and wild flowers growing around the edges of the cemetery
it was beautiful and peaceful.
Here are my siblings and myself in our bathing suits sitting in front of our
house posing before we left for the city pool. The camera view shows you the
front entrance to the cemetery. Aren't we cute! I'm on the right.
Now a days though, I don't think I would let my kids walk alone in the cemetery
for hours and hours. Living across the street from the cemetery also meant that
we had very few kids at our house on Trick or Treat night. I guess they were
too scared.
For more pictures of my
childhood yard click here.
There was one family that lived near us that had kids. Larry and Gwen Bateman
were my sister's and my only friends. Larry's birthday is in September, one
month before mine. We started kindergarten together. His sister was the same
age as my sister and sometimes the four of us would hang out. Usually though it
was Larry and me and Kathy and Gwen.
Their grandmother lived next door to them and rented her upstairs out to
various interesting people. One time there was a young man who called himself
Dallas. He was probably 21 but to me he was the wisest and nicest man in the
world. I was maybe 13. He called me Magnolia, after the southern tree, and told
me I was pretty and would grow into a beautiful woman. This was when I was
being taunted at school and at home and told daily by my brothers that I was
"dumb, stupid, and ugly." He taught me to walk with my shoulders
still, up until then I had an annoying way of moving them with each step. He
made me feel like perhaps I wasn't hopelessly ugly.
When I was 14 two things happened. One was that we sold our house and land to a
major gasoline company (as I mentioned above) and they put a gas station where
I used to ride my bike, play, and swing for hours. Our apple and cherry trees
were left unattended. The baseball field my dad had so perfectly designed with
regulation Little League measurements went to weed. We moved our house back
across our large yard, through the former cornfield to the next block. Now
there are storage buildings in the rear of our former yard behind the gas
station. I guess that's progress.
The other thing that happened was that Larry and Gwen moved away. I heard they
moved to Atlanta, Georgia, so if you ever see them tell them to email me, I'd
love to hear from either one of them. Their parents names were Ron and Myrtle
Bateman. I was so lonely after that. Larry was my best friend. I remember hours
and hours of playing with him.
We had a "secret" clubhouse behind a shed in their yard. We dug up
the earth and it was about as deep as our shoulders when his father decided it
was too dangerous for us to play in anymore and filled it all in. We also had a
tree in his grandmother's yard that was spread out like a little house. Some
days we pretended it was a boat and we were sailing the ocean. To be sure of
good nutrition for our long journey we would bring along some M&M's,
pretending they were vitamins that would save our lives. Some days it was a
house, you know, the usual kid stuff. I am glad I had a best friend for those
first 14 years. I spent most of the rest of my life trying to get another best
friend.
How do you like this so far?
I have several of my best paintings
hereI used to live with some actors in the mountains of Malibu.
Did you ever hear of Little House on the
Prairie? We (my ex and I before we had the kids) lived with the family of
the twins that played Carrie. Bob Dylan lived up and around the mountain from
us. The twins, who went by their middle names for the show, were known as
Rachael and Robin at home. They have an older brother named Clay who they
delighted in getting in trouble. At the time we were there they were 5 years
old. Clay is about 2 years older. Clay had caught a big old frog and put it in
a tiny glass jar. One day we felt sorry for the critter and let it loose. I
think he blamed his sisters.
Their father was/is an actor too, going by the name of Billy GreenBush. It was
beautiful there and sure was great on our days off. I wonder where they are
now, the girls must be about 27 or so now.
I have two sisters. I also have 3 brothers but don't have a picture scanned of them yet.
Count yourself lucky!
Mary, the oldest and wisest of us all is a teacher in Michigan. She teaches French and English and has had the pleasure of having her daughters in her class. (Update, now, in 2002, her two daughters are in college.) Mary has been to France three times so far. In 1970 when there were riots in the streets, she was there, staying in an apartment just above the street where some of the worst rioting occurred. She made local friends who would take her and her friends out occasionally in the evenings and one time was in a restaurant with American sailors. They heard her speaking French with the others and assumed she was too. They started discussing the women in unflattering terms with a lot of American sexist words and she turned to them and told them off in English. The last time she was there was the summer of 2001 with her family. She and her older daughter when ahead of the others and traveled all over Europe. Sometimes she takes high school kids to Canada. Mary is the one that orchestrated our trip to the World's Fair in 1967 in Montreal. I was 16 and got my first job to pay for my part of it. Then we went down to Atlantic City for a few days, a place where she had worked summers for her school money. |
 Meet
Kathy,
my baby sister.
She and I were playmates when we were kids. Together we roamed our neighborhood and got into trouble. One Saturday morning we ran off to a neighborhood school to play on the cool playground equipment, giving up our favorite cartoon show, Ruff and Ready. We neglected to ask permission and boy were we in trouble! My mom thought we had been kidnapped. Another time, Kathy and I took some advertising stickers that had our dad's name on and stuck them on everything we could find. Shed doors, trees, lawn furniture and worst of all our friends' cat. The neighbors' dad called up my dad and he thinking he had a business deal went over in a good mood. When he came back he wasn't smiling. Kathy liked to pretend she was a bird and would wear her red shorts and tell us she was a robin. She'd jump off our neighbors porch and try to fly. She caught various critters and loved to put black ants into a red ant hill and watch them fight. Cool! She also fed the neighborhood spiders. Once we brought a preying mantis egg sack into the house thinking it was a butterfly cocoon. We were surprised to see kazillion baby mantis' all over the house.Now a days Kathy is an artist who makes miniatures and sculptures. She is also online a lot. |
My three brothers. What can I say about them except if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all. Only kidding, but they were brothers, you know. With two older brothers my childhood felt a bit frightening. I taught my younger brother, Bill, to read when he was two and a half years old. All three of my brothers played musical instruments. Bill also sang and still does, sometimes getting the lead tenor in Gilbert and Sullivan comedy musicals.
 John |
 Dick |
 Bill |
Choose whatever may interest you. (or go back to whatever page you came from)
I'll include my list of all my "regular" web pages at the top of each page so if you get tired of hearing all about me, you can escape to some place else. But for now, here are some more personal pages...
These are somewhat better looking pages, with more information too.
If you want to go to other pages in this series you can click on any of these. Most of these were made quickly, just to show my "artistry" (or lack of) in photography. Some are just fun pictures to look at. Below this series are many of my better pages, with both photos and stories about the people, places or things they are taken of.
Here are the pages about my dad, one made a couple years before I made this one.
| My mother very young. | As an older child. | Mom as a young adult |
| Mom with my dad | Mom with us kids. | Mom getting older. |
|
My Grandfather |
My Grandmother |
Both Together |
With Their Kids |
| As a Child | As a Child | When they were young | When all were younger |
| Young Adult | Young Adult | Middle Aged Together | When all were older |
| Older | Older | Vacations they took | Vacations they took |
| His Fishing Trips | Her Homes | With Others | With Grandkids |
Here are all the pages with
pictures &
stories of other stays with home schoolers.
When we home schooled and had to travel across the country, we were hosted by other home schooling families. Here are pictures and the stories of the different families, on our different trips. These were all great people who opened their homes to us. It was much more fun and educational than staying in motels. Thank you to all of you!
| 1 Vacation/Informational Trip: Ohio to Roanoke, Virginia, in 1985 | 7 Moved: From Ohio to Austin, Texas in August of 1994. |
| 2 YES!Seminar: Ohio to The Farm in Tennessee, in the Spring of 1993. | 8 Visitation Trip: Austin to Ohio in January of 1995. |
| 3 Pictures of The Farm itself. | 9 Custody Trial: Austin to Ohio, July of 1995. |
| 4 NCACS Conference: Ohio to Virginia then Raleigh, North Carolina, Spring of 1994. | 10 R & R after trial: (Rest and Relaxation): Ohio to California, August of 1995. |
| 5 North Carolina Camp Out: North Carolina, just after visiting Raleigh. | 11 Back to our home:in Austin (with the girls) September of 1995. |
| 6 Home Schoolers near Ashville: Going home after the Camp Out-Get Together. | 12 Our Ohio Home Schooling Group: Pictures of our support group consisting of only 4 families.. |
Hey, when I said "All about me," I really meant it!
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MaggieCRose@aol.com
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