Very Young

I am going to try to capture my childhood memories as best I can. And now is a good time to tell you that my Mother moved around a lot.  Sometimes she move twice a year-I can't remember why she moved, not can I remember the moves-I just remember being at a new place or back to the old place where we had lived before.  I cannot explain why this is so.  Before I get into the real background of my life, I will give you all some of this history as best I can remember.

As I have told you, I was born in the hills and small mountains of West Virginia, near the gas wells and coal mines and among the hills and valleys.  Not far away were the coal mines and the train yards that my Poppy later worked for.  It was the coal mining country.  We always lived in a little valley or on the top of a small mountain or at the head of a holler.  A holler is a very large gully with trees and most always a small creek.  They are very pretty places and many small animals live there, especially quail families, rabbits and squirrels and most of all many snakes.  I never had any trouble with the snakes because we always had an old dog with us when we were doing our nut hunting and exploring.  Of all the many small mountains, I had my favorite one.  This little mountain that was my favorite place to explore and go to walk on and dream of another world-I don't know why or how I knew that there was another world other than the one in which we lived.  At that time in m life, I didn't really know of another world, but something always told me that some day it would be better for me somewhere.  I do not know where those dreams came from except that my guardian angel was there for me.  I have in later years believed that there really as someone guarding my life.  Now that I am older, I really know there was a reason for me to be on the earth.  Wait until I tell you of the things I survived during that time.  I didn't really know there was another way of life and I was happy to just be me and to take care of my little brothers and my baby sister.  I was the oldest of the last four siblings in my family of thirteen children.  Ten of us survived to adulthood and three older ones were lost at birth or died soon after birth.  Now I will try to remember most of the good and bad times of my younger life.

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