I Remember

Memories and photos from our readers

A Different Kind of Magic

I remember the scent of salt air and cigarettes, the way they mingled in the cool winter air with my husband’s cologne. Most of all, I remember the initial disappointment in finding the Sky Wheel closed for maintenance, irritated with our decision to avoid the hustle of tourists by forgoing the summer and visiting in the off-season months. I had wanted our children to experience the magic of neon lights illuminating the night, determined to create a lasting memory they could forever cherish, as I had.

I didn't count on finding something so much more than the fascination of twinkling lights and crowds of unknown people: It was in the silent slumber of a town in waiting that we were enchanted.

I remember the night the Sky Wheel was closed, and how, as we walked past closed-up shops along the empty boardwalk, taking in the night air, we found a different kind of magic.

We found each other.

Year after year, the winter months still beckon us to return to Myrtle Beach, plaguing our memories with the promise of peace from the distractions of everyday life; and infecting our thoughts with the craving for what once was.

Diane Chattaway, Spring Lake A member of South River EMC

My family owned a home in the country near the Ashe and Wilkes County lines. My parents, Robbie and Tony, and younger brother Joe had built it by hand and filled it with items near and dear to them. Mom was a native of Wilmington and always loved going home to North Carolina. Dad was a New York boy, who grew up on Long Island there, but fell in love with the North Carolina countryside.

My parents spent as much time as they could in that mountain home, and on one fateful night, my dad died there. His death was not gruesome nor terrible. He and my mom were talking while they watched TV that night. Suddenly, dad just stopped talking. My mom, a registered nurse, knew immediately that something was wrong and rushed to his side. She did what she could, but there was no bringing him back.

When she summoned up the courage to go back to the mountain house, Mom found it to be as lovely, warm and welcoming as she had remembered it. She had feared the home would be a constant reminder that her partner of nearly 50 years had died there, but quite the opposite, she found it most welcoming, and in fact asked her daughter to bring her young grandson up from Florida to learn to love life on the mountain, too. And he did. Her younger son, too, began going back to the country house and enjoyed teaching hunting and archery skills to his nephew.

But she and her children noticed something was a bit odd. When they were downstairs in the storage room, bathroom or garage, or even in the yard, they all heard the sound of footsteps above, footsteps that seemed to mirror the unusual walking noise her husband made. Tony had to have the big toe on his right foot amputated due to an infection from having stepped on a chunk of pointed metal. After his foot healed, he learned to walk again without much of a limp, but when he walked, you could definitely tell who was coming.

We’d rush upstairs to see if we could figure out why these distinctive noises were happening. Was it wind rushing through the house, joints expanding, squirrels loose on the roof? Nothing ever made itself evident as a cause. After we stopped looking for a cause to the noises, we simply came to accept them as a reminder that Dad was still there with us.

Cynthia Thuma, Boca Raton, Florida

Molasses Memories

I grew up on a small tobacco farm in Surry County. We grew almost everything we ate, including, in some years, molasses. We had an old horse-drawn cane grinder set up on a tree stump at the edge of a field. The grinder or press extracted the juice from the cane, and the juice was cooked in a big open vat over a fire.

I remember one year when I was about 4 or 5 years old, my daddy decided to attach the tongue of the grinder to our new Farmall Cub tractor rather than hitch up the horses. He tied the steering wheel with bale hay wire to keep it going around and around and set the throttle to a slow speed. He sat me up on the tractor seat, and I “drove” the tractor while he and my older brothers fed the cane stalks into the grinder.

That was a fun time, especially when Mama served the molasses on her delicious biscuits. Much of my early life was filled with memories of hard work and harsh conditions, but this is a very happy memory.

Sewing and Life Lessons

My grandmother, Pauline Ricketts (“Nanny”), was a tiny woman with a big personality, a big heart and a big kitchen. When I was little, we traveled from North Carolina to her house in Maryland several times a year.

Much of my visit was spent playing with a “Francie” doll house, left over from when my aunts were little girls. It had original dolls with their clothes, including outfits my grandmother and aunts made. I still have the doll house and handmade clothes, 30 years later.

During one visit, my grandmother and aunt helped me sew accessories for the doll house; the picture is of my aunt sewing with me. We are in Nanny’s laundry room, surrounded by fabric. On Nanny’s refrigerator was a magnet that read, “She who dies with the most fabric wins.”

Before she passed away, my grandmother made two quilts for my infant son, so now my second son has one, too. But only one quilt has a patch Nanny hand-sewed after a stroller ride, when the fabric caught under a wheel and tore. That patch is my favorite part. I can still see her bent over it, stitching. An act of love — one among many.