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“OUR
HAMLET” Stories
The Spring Street Gang
(1956 through 1958)
by: Jean Raby Nelson
On
in
he knew best. We returned to his hometown, planted a garden, got some
chickens,
a cow and a pig and were in a position to not starve to death. I think
they
call that survival today.
Dad was returned to Hamlet and his railroad job about 2 months after we had
moved to the mountains. We lived 6 miles out in the country in a Big
House. It
was on a hill and when the wind blew, the curtains moved. We named it
Breezy
Hill Farm. Gwen and I had to feed the chickens, slop the hog (gross) and
milk
the cow. Just the thought of that amazes me. I was 9/10). Dad
came home every
two weeks to help care for us and the farm. In Hamlet he lived in an upper room
in the old Hamlet Fire Station until we were able to move back.
He found this wonderful old house with high ceilings, a fireplace in each room,
I think it had 11 rooms and it was big time dilapidated. There was no heating
(or air) system in the house. I remember hearing he had paid $2200. for it. Dad
was a wonderful carpenter and Mom was a visionary so they saw the potential in
the house. We had a wonderful home at 415 Spring Street.
We had quite a few kids in my age bracket that lived up and down Spring
Street.
They are Jimmy Liles, Patsy Boney, Ashley Fetner,
Glenn Davenport, David
Davenport, Harold Roper, Vickie Parker, Sybil Harris, George Cox, Dee Dee
Bradshaw, O. W. Altman, Betty Moore, Bonnie Brown and Eddie Johnson lived on up
the hill on Spring Street.
We had a ball. If kids today knew how to
play as we did back then, they would
be a happy little bunch of people. This will sound as if I am rambling
but what
is so unusual about that. I am thinking of things that we did.
We played Horse (a basketball game) on the school grounds. I remember OW
being
particularly good at that. One summer we spent a lot of time in the ball
park.
I think we were about 13 at that time. We use to “Walk the Wall”
in the
ballpark. There was one place that you had to get down on your tummy and
slide
under the electrical lines. Thank God none of us were injured. It
was during
this time that we “learned to smoke”. We started out with
“Indian Cigars” and
then we did a little rabbit tobacco. Thank God we didn’t kill
ourselves. We
“graduated” to cigarettes because Dee
Dee had easy access to cigarettes from
Bradshaw’s (back when it was a store). We had some good times hangin out in the
ballpark. We were so stupid running around and smoking in the gas station
rest
rooms. It probably looked like a fire when we opened the door.
We also took up tennis at this time. Dee Dee,
Betty and I use to call Bert
or 8th graders and we actually had a crush on him. I am sure he thought of us
as
pests. I was never a great tennis player but we had good times. At
one time
there was a hole in the fence at the tennis courts. I don’t know who
but
someone pushed Kirk Kirkley’s VW in there and
rewired or roped the fence
opening closed..
We use to “Ride the Pine Trees” up at the ballpark. We would
somehow get a rope
to a top section of the young, pliable pine trees and someone would climb to
the
top and the people on the ground would pull the pine towards the ground and
then
let go. You went whomp, whomp,
whomp like windshield wipers
until it quit
moving. Thinking back on it, that was not really a lot
of fun because pine
trees have prickly stuff and sticky sap on the tree. It was not
really
comfortable at all.
Little League games were the social event of the time. The boys went to
play and I am sure we went to see and be seen and just maybe watch the
game. My
“First Love” was George Cox and I don’t remember how it came
about but we were a couple after a Little League game. He was a
Cutie Pie Cub.
My old scrapbook is falling apart so I took pictures of what I wanted to keep
and it is pretty much trashed now.
The Raby front porch was quite a social
hall. They could have put that glider in the Smithsonian as a relic with
a past. LOL. We had people there outside and being
loud until
days with fans and no air conditioners. We probably entertained them as
much as we bothered them. We also played a lot of Canasta at that
time. I played so much I have never wanted to play again. Then
there was the famous incident with Jimmy Liles and the hula hoop. We had
such a great time.
We use to have parties at each others home. We had parties for no reason.
We use to dance to “old 45s”.
We called it close dancing or shagging, depending on the tempo. We also
had some great “Sock Hops” after school
in the gym. Anyone remember the old record players
that were brown plastic, almost square, had no top and played 45’s
exclusively. I just had a
flashback to those aggravating little yellow or red things that you had to put
in the center of the
records so the 45s would fit the spindle. We had to use the little
inserts after we graduated to a record player with
High Fidelity and it played 33s. . Well, I think the reason for the parties was
to dance, play “Spin the Bottle”
and “Post Office”. Those are little numbers games where you
guess a number to get a partner and go kiss in a closet.
We had a few parties at Dee Dee’s too. LOL.
What innocent fun. George and I use to give each other our numbers.
In the 7th grade Dee Dee and I were particularly good
friends. The two of us
together spelled TROUBLE. We got caught writing “Just
Married” on cars with
soap at the Junior-Senior Prom. We got caught and punished. That was
probably 1957
so if we wrote on your car, I would like to apologize now.
I was absolutely forbidden to go to “The Purple Top” grill on
think they must have sold beer there so it was forbidden turf. They had good
hamburgers. It was located next to the Esso
Station. We use to go there, put
money in the jukebox and dance. That would have been me, Dee Dee, Betty,
Harold Roper, Mike Harris, George Cox and probably Delores Maples
(who lived close by but not on Spring Street). I was forbidden to hang out at
The Hub
too but I practically lived there at some points during my life. I loved
Frog and Walter Bell.
They looked after us girls when strangers would come to our car and talk.
We had some PJ parties that will not soon be forgotten. The deal was to stay up
all night and sleep all day. It seems the later it got, the more
adventurous
you got. I think the one at my house was the most famous LOL. My
Dad was a
light sleeper and he had to go to work so we had to be quite. Can you
imagine
getting a bunch of 8th grade girls to be quite. The
next morning we walked all
the way over to Gene Winfree’s house on Minturn
Ave (I think) at about 6 a.m.
We loved our 8th grade teacher, Mr. Winfree, but he
probably didn’t care too
much for us at that time. We had one at Bonnie’s
after she moved to Hamlet
Ave.and were doing the “Can Can”
for truckers in the middle of Hamlet Ave. I
think the police came to that one. The fun part of the PJ parties is that
the
boys crashed them. We had one at Shirlee
Russ’ and they were doing some work on
their house at the time and the boys were climbing up the scaffolding. As
a
bunch of giggling 7th and 8th grade girls we loved to call WKDX and dedicate
songs to anyone and everyone we knew. I can still here them now saying
“this
goes out to Dee Dee, Doe Doe,
Radiator and Tater Head”. That would have been
Elizabeth Bradshaw (Dee Dee), Delores Maples was Doe Doe, I was
aptly named
Radiator because I was so shy that I blushed all the time and Tater Head was
Betty Moore. I don’t know the full story but in 5th grade she got
in a fight
with some guy and got the best of him. She was called tater Head after
that. I
never hear “Night Train” that I am not immediately taken to that
era of time
once more.
Betty, Dee Dee and I use to sleep out “:Under the stars” in Betty’s back yard.
I can’t imagine the mosquitos and other
crawling things. I am not talking a
tent here. We took a blanket and got at one end and rolled up in
it. You
couldn’t have run if you had to. One night there were some boys
sleeping in a
tent in the neighborhood. We went over about
stakes up. We were running between house laughing and screaming. We
had a lot
of fun in clubhouses too (fun…nothing bad). Sybil
Harris had one that we were
allowed to paint. I can see it today. We had one Pepto Bismol pink wall with
Maynard Clebb (the beatnik) painted on it. The
other walls were other colors
but they all had very large polka dots painted on them. We had such a
good time
there in our little corner of the world. The Cox family lived next door
and
George had a nice Clubhouse the guys use to play in. Pretty much as it
has been
portrayed all along, the clubhouse was a guy thing. I think that is where
they
went to get away from us.
I had a good friend in high school who confessed to me that she was terrified
to
come to HHS because “we” would be there. I had no idea that
we were so famous.
After our world expanded in high school our friendship circles greatly
expanded.
Well, high school was pretty interesting too. We were all good kids and
had a
blast. I am sorry that the kids today can’t (or don’t know
how) to have fun
like we did. We gathered on the
Raby home porch until I left home in 1965. We
had some good times there. I am more than sure my Mom was looking through the
blinds.
I will quit now but it was fun strolling down memory lane. I will show
this to
my kids and we will laugh. Our kids love my stories. When they were
young they
would say “tell us a story Mom” and they weren’t talking
fairy tales. They
didn’t have the privilege of living in one place and having roots.
I think they
lived a little through mine.
I am thankful to have grown up in Hamlet. Those were definitely the last
of the
June Cleaver days.
This is a picture of the
house that I found in a trash pile
when we moved into the house in 1956.
I can’t place all of there
people. This was taken in 1959 after the blizzard.Beth
McEwen, not sure about who is behind her, Jean Land,
Harold Roper, Patsy Boney, Robert Brown and I think Rosalind McEwen on the
right front.
love today too
but I do enjoy reminiscing in the past. I frequently hear people talking
about bad
childhood memories, I was blessed to be in the family I am in and to have grown
up in Hamlet, NC.
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“OUR
HAMLET” Stories