Granddad JC and time with cousins

Here's Granddad JC talking about his time with cousins

It was a stupid thing. I was wanting to go to visit my cousins in North Carolina. But I was the only one wanting to do it. I don’t know what happened, but I put on a raincoat, I was barefooted and was wearing short pants and all.

I went down to Aunt Docia’s. She lived on Fair Street on the corner right there by the school and she was a nurse. And I was going to see if she was going to North Carolina – I might have asked her for money to ride the bus up there. I dunno, it was crazy--it never materialized – she said oh yeah, so she put me in a car and brought me back home. <chuckles> so this was the end of my trip to North Carolina.

My cousins always came down here. We all had so much fun. When they came down here we all got out of the beds and let the older people use on the beds and we slept the floor. That was fun. We’d sleep there and then get up in the morning and we’d go out and play, hide in the hay stack and all this stuff. That was fun. All this was open land around here – farmland. We played like Blind Man Buff or you cover your head and everyone goes and hide and you go out and try to find them. Mostly Red Rover Red Rover. You ever play that? <chuckles> We’d do that. Crazy.

They’d come at Christmas time; maybe Thanksgiving. Not really other times.

In the wintertime, we’d set trout lines down right down there in the pond and catch catfish. And we’d have catfish stew. Every-well we'd need some more so we would go down there and run the line.

Somebody said they were down there runnin' the trout line and they got the boat on top of a stump when there was an alligator, comin' around there. It was on the stump, so they couldn't move the boat to get away from the alligator! They must've hit it on the head with a paddle or something to get away; I dunno exactly how they got away.

That was over at Aunt Julia’s over the top of the hill up there. It’s all grown up now. The house is gone now, I don't know what happened.

Yeah, those were fun times. Fun times for the kids.

Aunt Docia on right as a recent nursing school grad

Note: I assume that the cousins in NC were Cora Lawrence (nee Connell)'s children. Does anyone know?