Home and Billy

Growing up we lived in a white farm house on a lot of acres. We had several barns, lots of woods, goats, chickens and dogs. Next door to our house was and old shack that mom fixed up for her sewing shop. When I got old enough to go to school Mom opened up a bigger shop downtown in Rome. Once Mom’s shop moved downtown my nephews and their Mom moved into the shack next door. At that time I had 3 nephews and we were all close in age since my brothers were so much older than me. When my brother’s youngest baby was 6 weeks old he was shot and killed and that is when my nephews and their mom moved next door. During the summers my sister would watch us while my mom and my nephew’s mom worked during the day. The boys were very rambunctious and mischievous so many days my sister would lock us out of the house until it was almost time for Mama to get home. Those days were long… But, we would always find something to get into. We would climb up in the barns and play hide and seek, build forts out of old lumber, and one time the boys’ even spray painted the dog! They were always doing stuff that got us all in trouble. One time my nephew who was a little over a year younger than me shot me in the butt with a bb gun, Lucky it wasn’t loaded, but it sure did hurt! It was fun living on that farm; Dad had a golf cart he would let us ride. It was a 3 wheel golf cart, one day he finally let me drive it and I turned just a little too sharp and turned the whole cart over. I don’t remember ever getting to drive that cart again after that. The goats were also fun to get to feed, but we had this one Billy goat and he was mean…. His name was Billy. He would get out of the fence all of the time, so finally Dad put up an electric fence. The boys would always trick me into touching that fence saying it wasn’t turned on and I would get shocked every time, they would just laugh. Billy still would get out though and it would make Mama so mad. Mama had just gotten her a used Cadillac and Billy got out and took to butting her car and dented it all up, she started hollering at him and then he came after her and butted her up pretty bad. After she got loose from that goat she went right into the house and called somebody and by the time Dad got home, Billy was gone and I was glad. I moved schools a lot when I was younger, I think Mom was trying to get me in the smart schools so I would make something of myself, but I hated the private schools and they were just too expensive for them to keep up with the high tuition. By the time I was in 6th grade I had been to 4 different schools. I liked public school it was fun, and the work was so easy since I had been to the private schools before that, the teacher’s were a little stricter though and one time my teacher called my mom just because I put on makeup at school… that was a disaster Mom did not like to be called about bad behavior. The other thing about public school is they had paddles, glass paddles. The principal had them lined up all different sizes in his office hanging on the wall, I never got a paddling but my nephews sure did on more than one occasion. Mom wouldn’t let me shave either when I was in the 5th grade, it was horrible. That was the year everyone was wearing the tight rolled jeans just about 2 inches of your leg would show, so I would shave just that 2 inches of my leg so mom wouldn’t notice. Finally in the 6th grade after much pleading and begging she finally let me shave. Everything was good, I still spent a lot of time with my nanny and there was never a dull moment at our house. We always had lots of company from our Aunts and family and Mama bought me a karaoke machine and would have me perform every time someone would come over. I think Mama thought I was going to be a famous singer one day, but I really didn’t sing all that well. She also tried to teach me piano, but I really didn’t take to that either. The only goal I really had at that time was I wanted a baby, I didn’t want to be a doctor or lawyer or nurse, I wanted to be a Mom even at the young age of 12 and actually even earlier than that.