Told thru the eyes of an 8 and 9-year-old

Mr.Jesse Andrew Averett. also called [Uncle Dick],[Mr.Dick],.born in Clifton Tenn..in __..He and his bride Mrs.Ada Ledbetter married in April 28,1909….and had 13 children. Their son Mr. C.W. Averett was our granddaddy. Grandpa had 450 acres that he made it with thru the Great Depression with. Every year on Father’s day there would be a big gathering at Grandpas It was located on old Hwy 13 or Cherry St. it is just across the road from Dickys gathering spot ..oh me it looked like the tables of food went on for miles .. with 13 children it was quite the gathering …

Dicky and Grandpa were often traveling buddies. Grandpa would get out his wagon and old mare and he and Dicky would take off for their travels. On some of Dickys and my adventures, we would often visit with grandpa and sit on the front porch he had strings tied on the front porch for the kitties to have some play pretties we didn’t talk a lot we just did a lot of watching. Grandma was bedridden at this time we would go in and say hi to her and go back to our watching. Once grandpa got on to mama for tearing down his spider web he told her,’now I like to watch that spider make its web and it wantan hurting nobody.

Grandpa would walk over to the blacksmith shop for as long as he could and there would be several other men that would stop and talk for a while telling some truths and some near truths when Dicky and I would see grandpa coming Dicky would run to one side and me the other and walk with him to his sitting place. Dicky learned a lot in the blacksmith shop he had heard about some caves we were planning on exploring we thought we may be the first humans to ever go in them. Dicky was always out at the shop with grandaddy working on something grandaddy would give him the bent nails and Dicky would straighten them out …

We lived with our grandparents for a few years when mama moved us back from Ohio in 1957 .. mama couldn’t keep Dicky from going out to the blacksmith shop she would take off his shoes and she said he would just run faster to get there. ..After Grandaddy would close the shop he may have to do a few errands usually if you saw grandaddy you saw Dicky this one-afternoon grandaddy was leaving out by himself in his 56 chevy pickup so he thought. Mom, grandmom, and I were on the front porch shelling peas as granddad was making the loop around the feed mill to the right all I saw was mama jumping over my head taking her higheals off at the same time and took off like a banny hen running. Grandmama was hollering Peggy, Peggy he is standing on the bumper holding on to the tailgate get him off…Dub C.W. stop…

Mama runs to the left of the feed mill and cut them off at the pass before he pulled out on hwy.13.
Dicky was having the biggest time enjoying his new found freedom and free ride he sure meant to go to with grandaddy.
Mama knew how to multi-task she could hold you up in the air by one arm and you would skip at the same time ……yep I do believe Dicky came back with a sore butt..but I can tell you this it didn’t stop him from going out there to meet grandpa and grandaddy everyday..
by Belinda and Dicky Bastin