A few memories and facts in no particular order.

We our called our parents Mother and Daddy. Looking back at it now, I believe that the subtle difference in the formality of those names were outward clues that nature's law of “opposites attract” was , and still is, in effect. I think that's the way the universe insures that this planet stays full of average people. And there's nothing better than being “average!”

 From late August til about the first week of December Daddy's afternoons were devoted to overseeing every football practice I was ever a part of beginning at Piedmont through my days at Central High. He was a charter member of the group of fathers who stood at the fence at the top of the hill watching us boys butt heads getting ready for Friday night's game.

 Otherwise, he was quite a socialite. He held court at his country club every afternoon after work until suppertime. Most people never knew about the club. It was at the corner of Seventh Street and Pecan Ave, right across the street from Stanley's Drugstore and it gave new meaning to the term high society. The name above the door was Haigler and Baker's Atlantic Service Station...and it was that too; but for Daddy and his buddies, it was their country club and bar. Dues were minimal. What do a couple of bottles of whiskey in a brown bag split between 5 or 10 people every week cost? Daddy was unquestionably the king of that club. His subtle, low key personality and sense of humor were magnetic. Mr. Haigler, owner of the station, told me once that my father's arrival each afternoon was not unlike a ray of sunshine after a storm. He had that effect on people without even trying.

 Both our parents grew up dirt poor. Neither talked much about their childhoods. My guess is because it was painful. My father sold newspapers at a very young age to help support his family. Later he delivered telegrams by bicycle. He told me about a wealthy man in the community who had given him the biggest tip of his life after handing him the obviouly “welcome good news message.” I'm not sure what the amount of the tip was, probably 5 dollars or so...which was a lot of money in those days. He told me that story one Sunday afternoon on the way to visit that old man, who had lost everything in the depression and was living out his final years on public assistance at Green Acres. Daddy had just given me a pocket watch a few days earlier, and asked me to let him give it to the old man. He promised to buy me another one the following day, which he did.

 All I know about Daddy's father is that his name was Thomas Myers and his occupation was probably that of a manager or clerk in a retail store. According the the US Census taken around the time my Dad was a teenager, he and his brother Roy were living with a Mrs. Brown in what I assume was a boarding house. Daddy had two brothers, that I know of, Roy and Webster, and at least two sisters, only one of which, Viginia Myers, I ever met. Virginia who served in the WACS in WW2 had a “lively and sparkling personality, and lived a long life as a single woman with her constant feline companians.

 The other sister, whose name I've forgotten, was married to a WW1 soldier who succommed to the effects of poison gas which, I'm guessing, caused her untmely death as well. They had one son, William St.George who was raised by Daddy and his mother. My grandmother always called Daddy, “Son,” and William's name for my father was, “Uncle Son.” William served as a B-17 bombadier (the men who sat in the plexaglass nose of those airplanes).One of the many artifacts that was lost over the years was a Zippo lighter inscribed to “Uncle Son” that William sent from overseas to my Dad.

Roy served in WW2 with a "reporting and information division" which I believe was part of the OSS, which was the spy agency, later to become the CIA. Daddy, was too old to be legally accepted into that division, so he lied about his age and went to New York with Roy to join, but his high blood pressure problems kept him from being accepted.

(Because of that well intentioned, patriotic lie, it kept him from receiving Social Security when he was actually eligible to do so.)

My father supported his mother until she entered "Green Acres" retirement facility in the middle 50's.

Mother's Childhood Home

 The only name my Mother hated more than her first name, Bertha, was her middle name, Viola. She was one of 4 children who were left fatherless when she was three years old. Her memory of her father was not a good one. He had just spanked her for some minor infraction That's the only thing she remembers about him. He was one of 4 brothers, two of whom, John and Levi Jolly married 2 sisters, Kate and May Cartee.  John and Kate were my mom's parents. After John's death, Kate and her four children moved  in with her father who was never too happy about having four little children around 24 hours a day...and it showed. Dirt poor was probably a step up for my grandmother Kate and her four little children.

My Dad worked for brokerage firms that were located in the Johnston building for most of the time after his marriage. As a young boy he had sold newspapers, later delivered telegrams  and later taught himself the Morse Code and became a telegrapher for Western Union. He went to New York City and became a stockbroker, Then returned to Charlotte and went to work for Abbot, Proctor and Paine, I believe.  Courts and Company is another firm that I remember he worked for, but I am about as vague about his career as a stockbroker as he was about his family and childhood.  About all he had to say about the stock market was...."It's just gambling."


One of my most vivid childhood memories was when I was about 7 or 8 years old and took the bus (6 Elizabeth) downtown (I handed my 7 cents to the driver, Mr McKeever) and met my Dad for lunch at the soda shop in the Johnson building, where he worked. I had a Coke and a ham salad sandwich. (I said it was a vivid memory) Afterward, we walked several blocks down Tryon Street and he was greeted by a number of people on the street as if he were Elvis Pressley or somebody!
I decided then and there that whatever my Dad had to cause people to be so genuinely happy to see him....I WANTED!