| 15. | Fritts, Lottie Eva Ann was born in Jul 1899 (daughter of Fritts, David Henry and FRITTS, Dora J.). Notes:
ELEVEN TO GROW ON
A HISTORY OF THE JOHN D. AND LOTTIE (FRITTS) WARD FAMILY
By Mary Ward Workman, 9 Mar 1987
and her brothers and sisters
The following history of John Daniel and Lottie Eva Ann (Fritts) Ward is the story of their eleven children and their experiences growing up in a "big" family from the 1920s through the 1950s—through hard times and good times.
It is not so much a story as it is facts and information thrown here and there at random because I (Mary Ward Workman) don't lay claim to being a writer. Nevertheless, it is written out of love from our memories—for days that now can live only in the retelling. We wanted to share with you, our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, what it was like living in a big family during this particular period of time, which included a major world war and the Great Depression.
From the turn of this century to the present, there has been a rapid growth in inventions and technology. John and Lottie Ward, especially Lottie—and some of us—have witnessed great changes, from the automobile and widespread use of electricity to man walking on the moon and the age of computers, plus all that has come in between.
Our story is for your enjoyment and information... for your lives will be quite different than those of... Edith Elizabeth, Buford Allen, David Edward, Alice Ruth, Naomi Jacqueline, Doris Jean, Dan Gray, John Ray, Archie Fritts, Mary Louise, and Lottie Kaye Ward.
The Ward family descend from Lewis Ward, b. 1804 and d. 14 Feb 1851. His wife Elizabeth ? was b. 24 Jan 1800 and d. 25 Nov 1876. Son Daniel Ward, b. Jun 1828 and d. 16 Dec 1901; md. Elizabeth Ellen Luther. She was b. 7 Jun 1842 and d. 30 Aug 1867.
They are all bur. Cedar Springs Cem., off Hwy. 109 near Denton, NC.
Daniel and Elizabeth (Luther) Ward’s son Edward Atlas Ward, b. 16 Apr 1867; d. 18 Jan 1936 and md. Alice Myrah Hedrick. Alice was the dau. of Wiley and Mary A. (Miller) Hedrick. Edward and family are bur. Jerusalem UCC Church Cem., off old Hwy. 64 East. Alice was b. 7 Oct 1870 and d. 29 Jan 1921.
Edward and Alice (Hedrick) Ward were the parents of (1) Hamlet, (2) Wiley, (3) Jenning, *(4) John Daniel, (5) Betty (Ward) Weaver, (6) Sally (Ward) Beck, and (7) Archie Ward.
John Daniel Ward, b. 31 Mar 1899; d. 4 Jun 1968, bur. Jerusalem UCC; md. Lottie Eva Ann Fritts.
'G'-1-7-7-3 LOTTIE EVA ANN FRITTS, dau. of Henry David and Martha Eldora “Dora” Jane (Beck) Fritts (1874), b. 25 Jul 1899; d. 9 May 1991, bur. New Jerusalem Church Cem., Davidson Co., NC; md. John Daniel Ward of Gordontown, NC on 3 Aug 1919, by B. F. Lanier, JP, Emmons Twp., Davidson Co., NC, with J. H. Metters and Bettie Ward as wits.
Doris Hedrick wrote, “My mother Lottie (Fritts) Ward, while discussing your book, told me about one of her grandmother’s who had a son ‘hiding out’ to keep from going to war [Civil War], (a common thing), she said. He was caught and taken to Wilmington without going by home for clothes or anything. His mother, upon learning of this, rode horseback to Wilmington (a trip of 200 miles) to see him and take supplies. I thought the courage in this story overshadowed what could be considered cowardice on the son’s part and gave us a glimpse of our heritage.”
Lottie’s grandparents were: Hiram Franklin and Mary Angeline (Beck) Beck (1851), and Felix and Christina J. Ervin (Lefler) Fritts (1821). Since both Mary’s and Christina’s sons were not old enough to have served in the Civil War, it is more accurate that it was one of Lottie’s great-grandmothers. But the story is still an important part of our lives.
John was b. 31 Mar 1899, Davidson Co., son of Edward Atlas and Alice Myrah (Hedrick) Ward. He d. 4 Jun 1968 and bur. New Jerusalem Church Cem. "John was one of six children, and grew up in Emmons Twp., where he attended Jerusalem School and was a member of Jerusalem Church. At the age of fourteen, he started courting Lottie—a courtship that lasted six years. Their marriage produced eleven children, all b. in Lexington, NC, and lasted forty-nine years until his death. No man has ever lived who was more proud of his big family than our Daddy. He often bragged that 'there wasn't an ugly one in the bunch.'"
"They both grew up in Emmons Twp., Davidson Co., NC. John Daniel Ward and Lottie Eva Ann Fritts, just two miles apart from each other. He was b. 31 Mar 1899, the third of six children. She was b. 25 Jul 1899, an only child for nine years until sister Virgie was b. He attended Jerusalem School. She went to Poplar College but didn't start until the age of eight because the school was two miles away, and her parents didn't want her walking that distance by herself at such a young age. Her mother taught her at home until then. It was a one-room school with one teacher. At recess, they went to the spring for a drink of water and everyone drank out of the same tin cup. When Lottie first started school, she had difficulty learning the multiplication tables. It frustrated her so much she quit school until she learned them and then went back. There were no grade levels—you simply advanced from one reader to the next and from one subject to the next, and when you thought it was time, you just quit. She stayed in school until she was eighteen."
John Ward was not the first boy to set his eyes on Lottie. In fact, it was John's cousin who first came to call. Lottie and Virgie were outside running around the house when she saw the boy drive up by the barn in a buggy driven by an old mule, which was crippled. Lottie ran inside and had her daddy go out and ask him in. They didn't hit it off too well, and it was a short courtship.
Lottie’s second encounter with courting came when she attended revival services at the local Holiness Church one night, and a boy asked to walk her home. She later learned that he hurried back to the church and walked another girl home who just happened to be her best friend at school. Needless to say, that courtship never got off the ground.
It seems that the local Holiness Church, which was close to Lottie’s house, held big meetings (we call them revivals now) rather often. Most everyone around attended even though they weren't members. The local boys would start gathering around late in the afternoon of those big meetings, and it was on just such an occasion that one of them asked Lottie if she would go with him to church, and she said yes. A short time later, her cousin came up to tell her that John Ward wanted her (Lottie) to go with him. Lottie wanted to and said she would if her cousin would go tell the other boy.
This, then, was the beginning of the courtship between John and Lottie, who were both fourteen years old at the time. To begin with, John walked the two miles to Lottie’s house and was permitted to visit her only every other Sunday. Later, he was allowed to drive the buggy over. They courted at home or went to church together. Buggy rides alone were not permitted, but they did talk on the telephone every day.
It seems that the telephone was the one luxury enjoyed in the township, but it was only because all the neighbors got together and put up poles and pulled in their own lines. There was only one line into the town, and the phones worked with a crank handle. Lottie remembers their ring was two short cranks and one long one. On a few occasions, John and Lottie walked the two miles to Cid, where they rode the train to High Rock Lake to join in a day of activities which included boat rides, games, and listening to a band play.
Their courting years included World War I (which the U.S. entered into early in 1917 and which, luckily, ended a year and a half later before John could be drafted) and the Great Plague of 1918 (a major flu epidemic which killed thousands of people). Lottie had two cousins die of the plague, and she, herself, had it but was one of the lucky ones.
The courtship of John and Lottie blossomed over the next six years until, on the morning of 3 Aug 1919, they drove over to the small twp. of Gordontown and were md. before a Justice of the Peace. They were in Grandpa Ward's old car, and as they approached the local creek, they discovered that someone (who obviously knew they were going to get md.) had piled the bridge full of tree limbs and branches. They had to get out and clear it all off before they could go on.
THERE WAS NO HONEYMOON. They spent their wedding night at the home of Lottie’s parents in the country, near what is now Silver Valley. The following day, they moved in with John's parents, who lived in the same vicinity.
Prior to their marriage, neither John nor Lottie had ever worked at public work. John's father was a wheat thrasher, saw miller, and farmer, and John had always helped with the farming. But now it was necessary for him and his bride to earn their own way, so they both went to work at Erlanger Mills in Lexington. Lottie said at that time the mill had a bonus system whereby they would match your earnings dollar for dollar, and if you were really good at the job, you could make $30 a week... very good pay for those times. She said she never made it to $30.
The first car they ever owned was an old one-seater they bought just to drive to work. Mama said it would hardly go up a hill. They didn't keep it very long. When Ed was a baby, they bought a brand new Ford. They had a ‘35 Ford, a ‘41 Plymouth, and sometime in the '50s, they bought a big Packard. For many years during the Depression, even though they owned a car, it was expensive and difficult to buy tags and gas, so the horse and wagon were used a lot.
Shortly after John and Lottie were md., John's parents sold their farm in the country and moved to town. John and Lottie, hereafter known as "Mama and Daddy," moved in with them. They lived on Ford Street.
One winter day in 1921, while Mama was expecting their first child, she and Daddy made a trip to the country to visit her parents. Mama went into labor while they were visiting, and when they got ready to go home, discovered it was too late.
The first child of John and Lottie Ward was born at Grandma and Grandpa Fritts' house. She weighed a whopping 10 and 1/2 pounds, and they named her Edith Elizabeth. It was 2 Jan 1921, and they were now also snowed in. During Mama's recuperation at her parents’ home, Daddy's mother died without ever seeing his first child, his pride and joy. Edith Elizabeth was the beginning of the "Ward Baby Boom!"
Recently, we learned something from Mama that both startled and amazed us. It seems that while her father was not rich, he was fairly well off, and she and sister Virgie had grown up somewhat pampered and maybe a little spoiled. Mama told us she knew nothing about babies and not a whole lot about keeping house. Now, all of a sudden, with her mother-in-law dead, she was faced with looking after two men, running the household, and taking care of a new baby. She must have adapted very quickly, indeed.
In 1922, Grandma and Grandpa Fritts built and moved into a house on what is now the Old Greensboro Road, which was not paved then nor for many years. When Mama's second baby was due, she went to stay with her mother because there was no woman at home to help look after her. The first son, Buford Allen, was b. on another cold winter day, 28 Jan 1923, weighing in at 8 lbs.
In the meantime, Daddy had started building their first and only home, next to Grandpa Fritts, which he and Mama moved into early in 1924. David Edward, a 9 and 3/4 pound boy, was the first of nine children to be born in this house, on 2 Jun 1925.
The babies continued to arrive as regular as clockwork: Ruth, Jackie, Doris, the twins—Dan and John, Archie, and Mary, until 15 May 1942. On that day, a baby girl was b., and I guess Mama, who was nearing 43, knew it would be her last, for the baby became her namesake, Lottie Kaye.
Right before Kaye was b., Daddy dreamed the baby would be a girl and that she would be the most beautiful woman in the world. For many years Mama had a baby in her arms and a two-year-old tugging at her skirt. From the first to the last baby, she was pregnant for a combined total of 90 months, or 7 1/2 years.
When John Ray and Dan Gray were b. 21 May 1935, Mama had no idea she was going to have twins. At this time, she already had six children. We asked her what she was thinking when twins were born, and she said, "I thought, oh well, just another one. But I think me and John both were a little shocked."
Dan was b. first, at 11:00 p.m., and John was b. at either 11:05 or 11:25 (the birth certificate is not clear). After the doctor had left, Daddy was checking the babies over, and he told Mama that he thought John Ray's arm was broken. Daddy left right away and made the doctor come back out. The baby's arm was indeed broken, probably happened during birth. However, there was little the doctor could do for a tiny baby except pin his arm to his nightshirt with a cloth. Mama said she had an awful time trying to bathe him and change his clothes until it healed.
Dan weighed 7 1/2 pounds, and John weighed 6 1/2 pounds. That's 14 pounds total! How could Mama not have known there was more than one baby?
Dr. J. A. Smith delivered Edith, Buford, Ed, and Jackie. Dr. J. L. Sowers delivered Ruth. Dr. W. B. Hunt delivered Doris, Dan and John, Archie, Mary, and Kaye... all were delivered at home.
An interesting fact: all the Ward babies were born in the afternoon or night, except Buford, who was born at 10:30 a.m.
THERE WERE NO PAMPERS, BABY FOOD, OR PREMIXED FORMULA. All the babies were breastfed. As for food, items such as potatoes and beans were mashed fine and fed to the babies. Foods that could not be mashed were chewed by Mama and put into the baby's mouth. It was a common practice in those days. Can you imagine!
Mama never had a bought diaper. She used any old rag she could get her hands on... flour sacks, feed sacks, old worn-out sheets. She even used rags Daddy brought home from the mill, which he had used to clean machines. She soaked them in kerosene to remove the oil and then washed them as best she could. She had one bought baby blanket, given to her by her sister when Mary was born. Blankets and all the babies’ clothes were made by her own hands.
From Kaye's birth in May 1942 until Ruth md. in Sep 1942, there were nine children at home. Edith md. in 1938, and Buford was in service.
The arrival of John and Lottie's first grandchild, Shirley Ann Truitt, dau. of Edith and Doc, was a big event in the Ward family. Daddy's family was growing, and he loved it. He went by the school, picked up all the Ward children, and took all those still living at home to High Point to see the new grandbaby.
Another note of interest: Mary, the tenth child, was an aunt before she was b. because Shirley had been b. nine months earlier. Kaye was already an aunt "twice" when she was born because Edith's second dau., Loretta, was b. before her.
John Ward worked at the textile mill the first 22 years of his and Lottie's marriage. During most of those years, he worked third shift and farmed during the day with Grandpa Fritts. They raised corn, cotton, tobacco, and sugar cane for making molasses.
When Edith and Buford were young, they had to milk the cows and work in the fields every day, especially during the Depression. Edith said they never went hungry because they raised their own food, but there were times when clothes and shoes were not so plentiful. She remembers having to milk the cows before going on a date, and the cows’ tails swishing her hair (on which she had taken such pains to curl) and messing it up. Besides that, she said you could never get the smell of the cows off your hands.
Jackie hated going to the fields to work, which, according to Edith, was only about once a week. Anyway, when Jackie did go, she cried up and down each row until Daddy finally sent her home (which is what she wanted all the time).
Ruth said they also hated molasses-making time. They had to go to the sugar cane fields and strip the leaves from the stalks. The leaves were sharp and cut your hands and arms. The stalks were then gathered, piled on the wagon, and carried to the molasses mill, which stood across the road from where Ruth and Bill now live.
The cane stalks were fed between two big wheels, which extracted the juice. The juice ran along a metal trough and emptied into a large vat under which a fire was kept burning. The syrup had to boil for a long time and had to be constantly stirred with big wooden paddles to keep it from burning. Other people brought their cane to be processed because ours was the only molasses mill around at the time.
Ruth told us we ate molasses on hot biscuits with homemade butter, molasses cakes, molasses cookies, molasses candy, and Mama even made a molasses pie. Edith recalls that during the Depression and the war, everything was sweetened with molasses because you couldn't buy sugar.
According to Doris, however, we always managed to find some fun in everything. The most fun about molasses, she says, was after the cane was run through the extracting machine, it was piled into a large pile (in her memory, as high as a haystack), and the Ward children had great fun sliding down it. Doris hopefully thinks they sat on a board to slide.
Also great fun—and delicious—was the molasses candy, pulled like taffy. We enjoyed seeing the color change as it was pulled by us—we never stood back and watched—everything was "hands on." Jackie told me that sometimes in the winter when they made taffy, they would drop it out the window into the snow so it would harden quicker. She said they had been known to go out in the snow "barefoot" to get it!
Around 1941, Daddy left the mill and went into the sawmilling business with a neighbor, Tank Morgan. During this time, our home was often a haven for some wild baby animal.
Sawmilling was a rather dangerous occupation, and Daddy didn't escape the hazard. Once, when he was turning a log, the cant hook broke, twisted his leg, causing a bad compound fracture. Another time, a piece of equipment broke, sending machine bits flying through the air. A piece of metal went through Daddy's jaw and lodged around the gum.
THERE WERE NO MATTRESSES... Mama sewed up big sacks which she, and later the girls, stuffed with straw from the barn. These makeshift mattresses were called "bed ticks," because they were sewn from a material known as ticking. They also created a problem for Mama because "bed bugs" infested the straw. She was horrified of bugs crawling on her babies at night and biting them. She would sit up with a flashlight after the babies went to sleep and kill the bugs when they crawled out.
Even though fresh straw often replaced the old, you couldn't stop the bed bugs. They even nested in the cracks of the walls and the cracks of the floors and in the cane bottom chairs. Mama and the older girls had to scald the walls and floors fairly often, and they took the cane bottom chairs outside every week and scalded them.
Jackie was about 10 years old when we got our first bought mattresses. She said Daddy took all the old bed ticks outside, piled them up, and burned them.
THERE WAS NO BATHTUB... Sometimes we bathed in a big wash tub in the kitchen, but mostly we just washed off in a pan of water. Needless to say, we didn't grow up sparkling clean. In the summertime, we loved to fill the big galvanized wash tubs with water and set them out in the sun so the water would get warm. Then we would put on our bathing suits, get a running start, and "jump" into the tubs. We called these jumps "Granny Sit Downs."
Each year when the itch started at school, Daddy made us all bathe in a tub of "yucky yellow stuff." It was sulfur mixed with water, and we hated it because it smelled just awful. Daddy didn't want his children getting the itch, although a couple did.
We had an outside toilet, better known as the "John," which is an experience all its own. One thing for sure, THERE WAS NO NICE SOFT TOILET PAPER... Daddy finally gave in to having a bathroom put in the house after Mary and Kaye had married and left home.
THERE WAS NO REFRIGERATOR... To begin with, the only means of keeping things cold and from spoiling was to place them in a spring which was not too conveniently located. When the well was dug, we sometimes put the milk down into the well to keep it cold. In the winter, we kept milk on the back porch. Sometimes it would partially freeze, and we would take a jar and mix sugar and vanilla with it and make "milkshakes."
Edith remembers when she was growing up, we had an old crank freezer, and in the winter they would break ice out of the horse trough to make ice cream. Later, we got an icebox for the kitchen and thought it was grand. The iceman came by each week with a load of huge chunks of ice on a wagon bed covered with a tarpaulin to keep it from melting. He would hack us off a large chunk of ice for the icebox, and we loved to eat the little chunks that fell while he was hacking.
We bought our first refrigerator around 1948 or 1949.
THERE WERE NO SUPERMARKETS... We always raised pigs, had milk cows and a couple of horses, and even raised chickens for a while. We always had a large garden and grew our own vegetables. Other staple items were bought from Joe Hege’s grocery store, just down the road before you get to Leonard's Creek.
Back then, most people bought groceries and supplies on credit and paid for them at the end of the month, or whenever they could. When Doris and Jackie were sent to the store, they would have the Hege boys write down a few more cents for an item or two than it cost, so they could buy some candy without Mama and Daddy knowing about it.
We also took advantage of nature's bounty, picking gallons of blackberries for Mama to can and make pies. You haven't lived until you've sopped a hot homemade biscuit in a plate of blackberry broth.
We also picked wash tubs full of blackberries to sell. We hated work, but we would do almost anything to make a little money. We picked dewberries, wild strawberries, wild blueberries, and persimmons for Mama’s famous persimmon puddings. We ate muscadines and wild plums ’til we were near sick, as well as green apples. We gathered and ate hickory nuts, scaley barks, and black walnuts, going around with black-stained hands for days. We ate mulberries from a tree behind the tobacco barn. Somebody told us they were full of worms, but we didn't believe them and ate 'em anyway.
Daddy taught us a lot about nature. He once showed us how to tap a sugar maple tree and gather the sap, which Mama cooked and made into maple syrup.
During the farming years when we raised wheat and corn, we had big wheat threshings and corn shuckings where friends and neighbors all came to help. It was hard work, but we all had fun. If you found a red ear of corn, you could kiss the boy of your choice. We shucked a lot of corn just trying to find a red ear.
It was also tradition to feed those who came to help, and Mama spent all day cooking and making pies.
The same Mama who knew nothing about babies and keeping house when she married learned to do it all... and do it well. She is a talented woman, and very creative with her hands, probably having inherited these traits from her father who once carved and made his own fiddle, which he could play quite well.
She, too, was musically inclined and could play the piano by ear. Daddy, who loved to sing, once bought a piano hoping some of the children would learn to play. We all loved to play around on it, and Mama taught us how to play such little tunes as "Mama Sent Me to the Springs," "Possum Up a Simmon Tree," "Rabbit Jump, Rabbit Hop," and "Chop Sticks," but Kaye was the only one who took enough interest to take any lessons.
Mama knew how to sew and crochet, having learned from her mother. She made most all of our clothes from the time we were babies, sewing by kerosene lamp at night after we were in bed. This was before we had electricity, and during the time our power was once cut off.
When Buford was working at Efird's Department Store, he would hang his jacket over the sewing machine when he came home from work. One night when Mama was sewing, she set the kerosene lamp on the machine under Buford's jacket without realizing it. The jacket sleeve caught fire and charred the sleeve. Mama spent half the night snipping little pieces of fabric from the inside seams of the jacket and piecing them together until she had enough to patch the sleeve.
She said it worried her half to death because it was the only jacket Buford had, and he had to wear it until he could get a new one.
A lot of our first clothes were made from printed feed sacks. We delighted in going with Daddy to Hege's store to buy feed so we could pick the sacks we wanted.
Mama became quite good at sewing and could make anything... including beautiful evening gowns for the girls to wear for special occasions at school.
Once, 16-year-old Mary fell in love with a dress in the Boots shop window. To buy it was out of the question because it was very expensive. She drew a picture of the dress and described it to Mama, who bought the material and made one just like it, identical to the last detail.
During the little spare time she had, Mama loved to crochet. She made all kinds of intricately crocheted items, but we remember most the doilies, many with high, starched ruffles. She never got any of her daughters to take much interest in learning this craft.
Lottie became adept at making biscuits, much to the pleasure of her children and grandchildren, who loved them hot from the oven as well as a day old and stone cold.
She made buttermilk, cottage cheese, and butter. We helped with the butter by shaking jars of warmed milk until the fat separated from the milk and formed butter on top. Sometimes, to break the monotony, we would run around and around the house outside, shaking our jars of milk as we ran.
We packed the soft butter into wooden butter molds, which were placed somewhere cool until the butter hardened.
Mama canned fruits and vegetables, made kraut, and learned to fry the squirrels and rabbits and fish which Daddy and the boys were always bringing home.
Mama probably learned more about killing hogs than she ever wanted to. It was a tedious, all-day chore, which lasted into the night or until all the meat had been taken care of.
The hog had to be cut into hams, shoulders, and tenderloins. Certain parts were cut into small pieces, fed through the hand grinder, then seasoned and mixed to make sausage. We all had to take a turn at the grinder.
Large slabs of fat were carefully cut away from the lean portions. Some was salted down to be used later in cooking. The rest was cut into small chunks, which Mama fried out to make lard.
Nothing was wasted except the teeth and eyeballs, it seemed. Part of the liver was cooked and ground and made into liver pudding, while the rest was fried for supper or lunch the next day over our protests.
We always had the brains scrambled with eggs on the first morning after hog killing. We wanted tenderloin. Hams and shoulders were rubbed with a mixture of salt, pepper, and sugar and hung in the smokehouse to cure.
The maddest Mama said she ever was at Daddy was one day when he killed three hogs and then took off fox hunting with a man who came by and wanted him to go. Mama was left with all that meat to work up. They usually didn't kill more than two hogs at a time.
Killing and plucking chickens wasn't Mama's favorite thing... but she learned to do it. First, you had to chop the head off and let some of the blood drain, then you plunged the whole chicken into boiling water, which made it easier to pluck all the feathers.
Finally, the chicken was held over an open flame to singe off any little feathers that were left behind. Only then was the chicken ready to be gutted and cut up for frying. We probably wouldn't eat much chicken today if we had to do all this.
A good part of Mama's life was spent cooking... three meals a day. It took a lot of food to feed a house full of endlessly hungry children.
When times were good and we could buy eggs, we ate a crate a week. Mama bought pinto beans in hundred-pound burlap bags. I think we had them every day, but there were few complaints.
Whenever we sat down to eat, there were always a couple extra "youngins," either grandchildren or neighbor kids, eating "Granny Ward's" pinto beans and hot biscuits.
THERE WERE FEW STORE-BOUGHT TOYS... but we didn't seem to know the difference. Mama and Daddy were both ingenious, and they showed us how to make our own playthings.
We built wood stilts, tin can walkers, made kites and bows and arrows, and tin can walkie-talkies. We used snuff cans for the walkie-talkies, one on each end of a long string. We would soap the string because that was supposed to help the sound carry to the other end better.
We made spool toys, slingshots, soapbox derby cars, and wood sleds. We always had a big sand pile under the sycamore tree made by carrying buckets of sand out of the side ditches along the road.
In the summer, we had a big sand city by making "hoppy toad" houses. This was done by packing wet sand over our foot and then carefully sliding the foot out. Doris always had the biggest "hoppy toad" house because she had the biggest foot... size 10.
We also had our vices... homemade corn cob pipes in which we smoked rabbit tobacco, and snuff (made with cocoa and sugar and put in a snuff can).
THERE WAS NO TELEVISION. We sat around the radio at night and listened, fascinated, to such stories as "The Squeaking Door," "Inner Sanctum," "Baby Snooks," and "Archie."
We spent countless hours reading comic books, playing Chinese checkers, cards, jack rocks, marbles, pick-up sticks, and Parcheesi.
A favorite card game we learned from the adults was "set back," but Mama must have considered playing cards a little sinful because she would never let us play during a lightning storm... a little afraid the good Lord would send a bolt amongst us.
We were taught to be quiet during a bad electrical storm, and we listened pretty well because we knew we had done enough already to deserve a few bolts.
Outside, we played games such as Giant Step, Red Rover, and hopscotch. We were all physically fit from jumping plank and trying to outdo one another in "building the castle," a rope game that you keep raising higher and higher.
The big sycamore tree in back of our house was great for climbing. It was three or four stories high. When you climbed to the top, you could see the railroad, which was a couple of miles away. Doris remembers climbing to the top to see the first streamlined diesel train. You could also climb up it and watch the fireworks at the fairgrounds, also a couple miles away.
Another favorite tree was a maple just back of our house. It had a limb that was just right for "skinning the cat." This was done by jumping up, grabbing the limb with both hands, swinging your legs up and through your arms and over your head and back. Ruth fell once and knocked the breath out of herself.
Another thing we did outside was dig natural clay out of banks and mold it into all sorts of recognizable and sometimes grotesque objects.
At night—we loved to play hide and seek and a game called Ring-A-Lebo.
When the weather was stormy and we had to stay inside, we played "Who's Got the Thimble" and "I Spy."
Before the house was remodeled, we had a cement walkway out front. In the winter, when the temperature was below freezing, the older children would pour water on the walkway so it would freeze over. While they waited on the school bus, they would slide up and down the walkway. It's surprising there were no broken necks.
In the summertime, we loved to play outside in the rain. If it wasn't storming, Mama would let us put our bathing suits on and go out.
If it was raining real hard, we stayed in long enough to make paper boats which we took up above Mrs. Walser's house where we placed them in the ditch (which was filled with water) and ran along the ditch to watch them sail through the tiles under the driveways.
The land where Ruth and Bill's house now sits was once filled with deep gullies. We spent hours there playing cowboys and Indians and anything else we could think of.
We had playhouses everywhere. Out in the open, in the pasture, in the little dirt basement under Grandpa Fritts’ house, and in the hayloft in the barn.
The boys made a clubhouse under our kitchen, before it was underpinned, by nailing burlap bags up for privacy. Once Dan set the burlap on fire playing with matches. When he realized what he'd done, he sneaked down towards the barn and then came running up to Mama hollering, "Mama, the sun's set the house on fire." She was smarter than he thought, and as she dashed to put it out, she said, "Yes, the son did set it on fire alright, my son."
Doris Jean and her friend, "Honey" Wagner, made themselves a hangout in the old snake- and rat-infested tobacco barn. They managed to scare off all the critters, clean it up good, and even carried in some furniture and put up curtains.
We gathered at Al Everhart's store across the road on Friday nights to listen to banjo and guitar picking. We went to outdoor movies at Varner's store and some other place in the neighborhood I can't recall.
And we went swimming—boy, did we go swimming. Often.
THERE WAS NO SWIMMING POOL... We swam in the creeks. But our favorite place was the big water hole at the gas plant located way back of our house in a section known as "Death Valley."
Our swimming season probably began in April and ended in October. Beats any country club schedule.
We had wiener roasts at night in the pasture, using a roasting pit we built out of rocks. We also played baseball in the pasture, and you had to be careful where you put your feet.
We ran rampant throughout the neighborhood and surrounding fields and woods. Mama didn't always know where we were, but she knew our stomachs would tell us when it was time to come home.
The girls always had certain chores to help Mama with the housework, although at times, I'm sure she felt she would have been just as well off without it.
Jackie, Ruth, and Doris devised a system to make it easier. They divided the chores three ways... bed-making, sweeping, and dishwashing. One chore was more desirable than the others, and upon waking on Saturday mornings, whoever shouted out that particular chore first (such as making beds) got to do it.
Once they agreed on the system, they were fair about it and stuck to it.
We were apparently discouraged from taking every little argument and disagreement to Mama and Daddy and learned to settle things among ourselves.
What wasn't settled by the "pecking order" was usually settled by drawing straws or flipping a coin (more straw drawing than coin flipping due to availability of broom straws and shortage of coins). This system worked pretty well.
THERE ARE NO HOLIDAYS SUCH AS WE HAD GROWING UP... We made the absolute most of them. Christmas was probably the best.
We always cut a cedar tree out of the pasture and decorated it, mostly with handmade decorations. The older children made paper chains, they scrounged around to find the foil wrappers out of cigarette packs and made little decorations with that, they used pine cones and little pieces of cotton to look like snow.
In later years, we had some pretty colored glass balls, electric lights, angel hair, icicles, and an angel for the top of the tree. Kaye still has this angel. At one time we had little red cellophane wreaths which we hung in the windows.
For many years, Daddy would cut a big cedar tree which he put in the front yard and decorated with big electric lights. It was the only one in the neighborhood for a long time.
We always hung our stockings (the longest ones we could find) on the mantle every Christmas Eve and on Christmas morning they would be filled with oranges, apples, nuts, some candy, and sometimes a little money.
Daddy never believed in spending much money on toys, so there were few bought ones. Grandpa Fritts made several of the girls doll cradles and doll dressers and mirrors. Doris still has both of hers.
Mama made some toys for Christmas. Once, she even made a two-wheel cart out of wood in Grandpa Fritts’ workshop. She saved snuff coupons and flour coupons which she used to get dolls for the girls and knives for the boys.
Once, the welfare people left a big box of toys on our porch because they knew the Wards had a bunch of children and probably couldn't afford to buy toys. Jackie said Daddy didn't like it, but they begged so that he let them keep the toys.
What I remember most about Christmas is Daddy always bought a crate of oranges, a crate of apples, a big bag of tangerines, a big bag of nuts, and a bag of candy. It was a very special treat because we didn't have these things all year long like you do now.
Regardless of what we had, or didn't have, for Christmas, when he could afford it Daddy always bought a box of groceries to give to a needy family in our neighborhood.
In the years after all the children married and had children, we used to get together at Mama and Daddy's house for Christmas morning breakfasts. Each family came as they could, after their children had opened their presents at home.
The ones who had finished eating always cooked for the ones coming in. We had country ham, eggs, grits, gravy, hot biscuits, and homemade jellies.
The family soon grew too large, however, and we abandoned this tradition. A few years later, we started gathering together again to celebrate Christmas at Doris and Willis’ house.
Easter was probably our next favorite holiday. On the day before Easter, the Ward children built nests in the strawberry patch, which was between our house and Mrs. Walser at that time. We built the nests out of pine needles and sometimes lined them with flowers.
Sometime between night and early morning, Mama would slip out and put dyed eggs in the little nests.
As the girls got older, Mama would let them put the eggs in the nests to surprise the younger children, and this was as much fun to them as being surprised.
When times were a little better, we dyed a whole crate of eggs for Easter.
When you have a lot of children, you can have a "big Easter egg hunt." Ours lasted from noon to night and for several days after, or until we had eaten all the eggs.
THERE ARE NO EASTER EGG HUNTS LIKE THAT ANY MORE.
On Valentine's Day, when some of us were growing up, we bought Valentines for the neighbors. The custom was not to sign your name to them. Instead, after dark, you sneaked up to your neighbor's house, laid a valentine at their door, then beat on the porch with a stick. In the meantime, you would hide in the bushes and watch them come out and get their valentine.
Snow at the Ward place was pure delight. As soon as the first flake fell, we were outside, and as soon as the ground got white, we'd grab our homemade wood sled and head for the pasture. There were some good hills there to slide on. We used everything we could think of for sliding, even an old wooden ladder with someone on each rung. Every time we hit a bump, each person shifted back one rung and of course the end person slid off. Once, when Doris slid off, her foot got hung and she bumped all the way down the hill on her behind—couldn't sit down for days.
We had a minor problem with barbed wire fences, but they never kept us from having the time of our lives... even when someone would occasionally run into the fence. Mama got a lot of laughs out of all our shenanigans because the "big hill" was behind the house and she could watch out the kitchen window.
THERE WERE NO RUBBER BOOTS... We wrapped burlap bags around our feet and legs or pulled four or five pairs of old socks over our shoes. Sometimes when it snowed, ours was the only yard in the neighborhood without any snow because we rolled huge balls of snow all over the yard and used it all up.
We made gallons of snow cream every time it snowed. We stayed out in the snow for hours, until we were soaking wet and our feet and hands numb from the cold. Throughout the day, we would all pile into the house, along with several neighborhood kids, shuck off all our sopping wet coats, socks, and shoes, and drape ourselves around the wood heater to get warm. After warming ourselves a bit, we'd pull on the still half-wet clothing and out we'd go again. How Mama and Daddy kept their sanity and ended up still loving to see it snow is beyond us.
Growing up in a large, low-income family created some unique situations. We had to make what we had last a long time. And that went for our chewing gum as well. We didn't chew a stick of gum or piece of bubble gum for a while and then spit it out. No siree! We saved it... by sticking it under the dining room table, all of us. We didn't always get our own back either—but it didn't seem to matter as long as we had some gum to chew. Even before we had store-bought gum, we would cut gum resin out of gum trees and chew it.
For many years, we didn't have screens over the windows and we had a problem with flies. Lots of them. In those days, you could buy flypaper strips about a foot long, which you hung from the ceiling. The strips were coated with a sticky substance which attracted the flies, but once they lit, they were stuck forever. Imagine these hanging all over the house... covered with dead flies.
Today, kids don't even like to fool with pennies. But if we had two or three pennies to spend, we thought we were next to rich. Al Everhart, a neighbor, had a little store located across the road from Grandpa Fritts' rent house. Mr. Everhart lived just up the hill from his store, and he didn't keep the store open all the time. If someone gave us a few pennies, we had to run and spend them immediately. If the store was closed, we would stand down at the bottom of the hill and holler up towards Mr. Everhart's house "store," until he came and opened it so we could spend our pennies. Three pennies would buy several pieces of candy then. Al lived to a ripe old age—partly due to the exercise we gave him going up and down the hill to open the store.
THERE WERE NO BEAUTY SHOPS... Daddy gave the boys haircuts and the girls rolled their hair on strips cut from brown paper bags or on old socks, or we made little pin curls with bobby pins.
Once, Daddy didn't have the money to pay the electric bill when it was due. He drove to town to ask the people at the electric company not to turn our power off for a few days because he was getting ready to sell a load of tobacco and would be able to pay the bill then. However, there was a mix-up and they came out and shut off our electricity anyway. John Ward was a proud and stubborn man and it made him so angry he wouldn't have the power turned back on when he sold his tobacco. Once again, we were in the "dark ages"... back to using kerosene lamps... and it embarrassed Mama and the older children. The power stayed off for a rather long time until Buford went to work and had it turned on again.
It was a common practice in those days for men to travel ground on foot from town to town looking for work, especially on a main highway such as we lived on. We called them hoboes, and they often stopped at houses along the way to ask for something to eat. They visited our house fairly often, and Mama and Daddy never turned any of them away. Daddy learned much later that a family who lived on the other side of Leonard's Creek would give them directions to our house and say, "They have a house full of youngins and there's always something cooking on their stove." Even if there wasn't anything cooking, Mama would fry up some eggs.
At one time, Jackie, Robert, Rita, and Geri (who were just little girls) even lived in the old chicken house. They had just returned from Kansas City, where Robert was in some kind of school, and needed a temporary place to stay. They cleaned out the chicken house, painted and put down some linoleum and fixed it up as best they could, and moved in. Robert said the windows didn't even have glass, they were just covered with chicken wire.
And then there was the time Dan and Uncle Clyde Beck found a crow in the woods with a broken wing. They brought it home to Mama, who doctored it up and put it in a wire cage. She fed it and petted it, and even after it healed and was let out of the cage, it just stayed around. Mama said she could go out in the yard and call it and the crow would come and light on her shoulder. It would also bring the newspaper to you, but not always in very good condition. The crow stayed around for a long time, until it got to bothering the neighbors. When it started going up to Jake Byerly's and carrying off his tools, and taking the clothespins and some clothes off the neighbor's clotheslines, we gave the crow away.
IN THOSE TIMES, THERE WERE NO REGULAR VISITS TO THE DENTIST... and you had to be seriously sick for the doctor to come out. We had our own home remedies, though, and they must have worked pretty well... we all lived through it.
Mama gathered wild catnip and made catnip tea for colicky babies. Wet snuff straight from her mouth took the pain right out of bee stings. Syrup Pepsin and Castoria cured stomach aches and constipation. A rag soaked in kerosene and tied about cuts and infections saved us from blood poisoning. And Vicks salve (we called it pneumonia salve) was a cure-all for colds. We stuffed it up our noses or stood over a pan filled with boiling water and Vicks salve to help us breathe. We ate it when we had a bad cough. And we plastered it on our chest when we had a chest cold.
Mama said we stayed fairly healthy until Christmas, but after that and up until spring, one or the other of us was sick.
In addition to constant cases of measles, chickenpox, and mumps, there were more serious illnesses. Edith, John Ray, and Mary all had diphtheria. You were quarantined for all these things back then, which meant no children in the household could go to school during the incubation period and other children could not visit. Jackie said the quarantine sign stayed posted outside our front door a lot. Ed had pneumonia twice. Ruth had scarlet fever. Doris had erysipelas, which causes your whole body to swell. She was only two or three years old. Mama said it was a terrible ordeal and at one point they were afraid she wouldn't make it. She had to learn to walk all over again after she was well.
Mama had some bad times, too. Around 1947, as best we can remember, she had appendicitis. For years, she had been bothered with an enlarged goiter and when it got so bad she could hardly breathe, it had to be removed. This was around 1954. I don't know how we survived without her during those times... guess the burden fell on the older children.
Grandpa Henry David Fritts was a very talented man, and the only grandparent most of us remember (the others having died while we were quite young or as yet not born), and it was good living next door to him. This gave us more land, and another house.
We used to think of his upstairs as haunted (probably because we heard a lot of tales from folks who used to gather at Everhart's store at night... a favorite pastime before TV). We got a lot of fun out of going upstairs and flying back down if we heard the slightest creak.
In later years, when Grandpa was in his 70s, the whole neighborhood children gathered around his heater waiting for the school bus. He seemed to enjoy it.
Mama inherited Grandpa Fritts’ house when he died. She later sold it to Dan and Vononia, who tore it down and built a new house. Grandpa Fritts owned a rent house on the corner lot which was torn down a couple of years ago. One by one over the years, the outbuildings became dilapidated and were torn down.
When Daddy died, Kaye, Scott, Tina, and Amy moved in with Mama for a few years. They bought the land where the old barn stood, tore it down, and built their first house.
The construction of Temporary Interstate-85 made quite a change in the old neighborhood. But it was a fascinating time for some of us. I remember we spent hours sitting on the high bank across from Ed's house watching the machinery and equipment working. It's hard to remember anymore just how things did look before then.
Around the time Daddy retired from sawmilling, Mr. and Mrs. Hege, who owned the neighborhood grocery store, also decided to retire. Somehow they talked Daddy into retiring and running the grocery store, and for the first time, Lottie left home during the day to help Daddy.
Mary and Kaye, who were young teenagers at the time, didn't think much of Mama not being at home. After all, she had always been there. Everyone adjusted, however, and life went on.
SCHOOL DAYS, SCHOOL DAYS, DEAR OLD GOLDEN RULE DAYS... what changes have been made since we were in school... some better, some not!
We all attended Pilot School. Edith attended Pilgrim Academy her first year or two. Kaye was the last to graduate from Pilot, in 1960, before Pilot and Fairgrove were consolidated in 1962. At that time, we didn't have separate elementary, junior high, and high schools—it was all in one big complex. Edith and Buford graduated when there were still only eleven grades.
Edith was the pioneer. She had enough nerve to meet any circumstance, probably because she was the firstborn and because she inherited a lot of Daddy's spirit.
After her entry into school, the rest of us always had an older brother and/or sister to look out for us. That made the first ride on the school bus on the first day of school something to look forward to because they were doing it.
The older ones always felt a certain amount of responsibility for the younger lot, but not to the extent of fighting their battles. I guess we can credit that to Mama and Daddy who managed to teach us to love each other enough to watch out for the younger ones, but not to the point we felt it was a burden.
We were taught at home to respect authority. Doris remembers only one time that Daddy had to go to school over any disciplinary problems. Ed's teacher broke a ruler over his head and Daddy thought this action was a little too strong. Of course, like all kids, we didn't tell everything we knew and this probably saved Daddy a few trips to school and us a few trips to the woodshed.
There was no school cafeteria to start with, and the older children carried their lunches. They had good lunches, such as country ham biscuits, but they envied other students who had sandwiches made with store-bought light bread.
Ruth says she remembers when they built the cafeteria, lunches were only five cents a day. But these were hard times, and Daddy couldn't always afford to buy lunch for several children. Ruth used to help out in the cafeteria so she could get her lunch free.
I know they won't all agree with me, but I loved school. It was adventurous—somewhere to go every day, lots of things to do, lots of books to read. We didn't get to go out much or have these things at home. I even liked the school lunches, especially every Monday when we had hotdogs with chili and slaw. We never had hotdogs at home.
School was more fun then. We had some special events that we looked forward to with a lot of enthusiasm.
One of these was May Day... an afternoon set aside for entertaining our parents and relatives. Everybody brought fresh flowers from home and we transformed the schoolyard into a flower garden.
Each grade level gave a different performance, with students dressed in special costumes. I remember being a Scotch lassie one time, dressed in a plaid kilt, shoulder sash, and Scotch cap. And I remember finally getting to wind the May Pole.
The eighth graders performed this ceremony, and it was quite impressive. The girls all wore dotted swiss dresses of every color and the boys were decked out in Sunday best.
The May Pole had long crepe paper streamers attached to the top and, with each student taking a streamer in hand, we intertwined round and round the pole until the streamers were woven down the pole.
And then there was the May Queen and her court and escorts who reigned over the event. These were always high school students. Doris was May Queen one year and, of course, Mama made her gown as well as all our costumes.
Another event we really looked forward to was the competition night between the Finch and Viking Literary Societies.
When you entered high school, you chose which society you wished to join. We had meetings throughout the year, planned our competition night, selected our contestants carefully, and practiced secretly so as not to let the other side find out what we were doing.
We competed in such areas as the President's speech, solos, quartets, recitations, pep song, group song, drama, stage decorations, and so on. It was a highly competitive event with judging throughout the evening, and the society with the most points at the end of the competition was declared the winner.
Most of the kids in our family were Finches (you usually decided which you were going to be long before high school). We spent hours decorating the auditorium and making the little construction paper gold finches and Viking ships to pin on everyone who came to enjoy the competition.
The FINCH LITERARY SOCIETY Pep Song:
We have a feeling we're going to win,
Fight to the finish, never give in,
We're working hard with all our might,
To win the cup of honor tonight.
Finches, dear Finches, stand firm and fight,
So we may win the trophy tonight,
But if they win the cup tonight,
We'll say, "Let the best man win!"
The VIKING LITERARY SOCIETY Pep Song:
Mates stand together,
Don't give up the ship.
Fair or stormy weather,
We won't give up, we won't give up the ship.
Friends and foes together,
It's a long, long trip,
But if we have to take a lickin',
Carry on, don't start your kickin',
Don't give up the ship.
There was also the Fall Festival every Halloween. It was a family event, and we all dressed in some sort of Halloween costume (except Mama and Daddy, of course) and took off to school.
One of the big things then was to fill the toe of a sock with flour, tie a knot in it, and beat each other with it. Everybody had their little flour socks and we were well covered with flour when the festival was over. Our family always won a prize for having the most children there.
We always had a junior and senior play each year, both of which drew large crowds.
Our only sports were baseball, football, and basketball. Most of us played one or the other.
We also had a school spirit song which, as best I can recall, was written by a student in the early years of Pilot School. We always sang it at every assembly, and Mr. W.R. Lemmons, who was principal at Pilot for 34 years, always insisted that each Senior class sing it on graduation night.
It went like this:
"When the shadows of the evening gather from the West,
Beams shall linger on dear Pilot, that we love the best.
Now we lift our voices in chorus, loud your praises sing,
You have shown us truth and wisdom which we'll always love.
Rah, rah, for Pilot, Pilot; Rah, rah, for Pilot, Pilot; Rah, rah, for Pilot, Pilot; Pilot High, Rah! Rah!"
From the time Edith started school, and Kaye graduated, Mama and Daddy had a child (or children) in school for 33 years.
One of Edith's earliest remembrances as a child was her first trip to the mountains. She, Buford, Ed (maybe Ruth), and Mama and Daddy all piled into their T-Model Ford along with Grandpa Fritts, Uncle Ed, and Aunt Betty in Grandpa's T-Model and headed for the Blue Ridge Mountains.
She remembers they had to cross the Yadkin River by ferry because there was no road built over the river then. This was before the Depression and it was a very exciting trip. Once the Depression hit, she remembers it was all work and no play.
In later years, when times were good, Daddy loved to take us to the beach. We always had a car packed full, with a couple of the smaller children sometimes sitting on the floorboard. More often than not, one of the neighborhood kids or one of our friends went along.
As far as we were concerned, the beach was heaven. We stayed in the ocean until our skin was shriveled. Daddy always had trouble getting Mama to put on her bathing suit but, after a little coaxing, she always gave in.
At night, we stayed at the rides just as long as we could get Mama and Daddy to let us stay. I think the bumper cars were our favorite—there was usually enough of us to almost fill them up ourselves.
Family get-togethers were a big thing with us, and we usually had one each summer. Daddy especially liked to get the whole crowd together. He was so proud of "his big family." We went places like Mirror Lake or Happy Lake for a whole day of fun and food.
The World War II days were not all that difficult for us, because we didn't have many luxuries anyway. The hardest thing Mama, Daddy, and the older children had to cope with was Buford and Ed being in the service, and perhaps war rationing.
Requirements for war materials caused a lot of shortages, and ration coupons were issued for each person in a household. The United States rationed such items as meats, butter, sugar, oils, coffee, canned goods, shoes, gasoline, and tires. When you went shopping, you surrendered a certain number of coupons. Before the ration period ended, you couldn't buy any more rationed items until the next period.
We always had more coupons than we had money to buy rationed items, and we shared our coupons with the neighbors.
Buford joined the U.S. Navy and left for Norfolk, VA on Dec. 13, 1941, where he trained for communications school. On Nov. 11, 1942, his ship, the USS Joseph Hewes, was sunk in the Hawaiian Islands during the North African invasion.
Before Buford left for service, Daddy told him he wanted to caution him about two things: drinking and gambling. As most grown sons on their own are apt to do, Buford didn't heed the warning, and he had won about $300 gambling.
As the ship was sinking, Daddy's unheeded advice flashed across Buford's mind. He manned his lifeboat without trying to save his gambling money. Lesson well learned. Buford was discharged on Nov. 28, 1945, as a Signalman 2nd Class.
Ed was drafted into the U.S. Army. He entered Fort Bragg on Oct. 8, 1943. From May 1944 to May 1945, he made 30 trips across the Atlantic Ocean—from Boston and New York to Canada and Scotland. He was discharged Feb. 28, 1946.
No man has ever lived who was more proud of his big family than John Ward. He often bragged that “There wasn't an ugly one in the bunch.”
Although Daddy never convinced us that the fat on the ham was the best part of the meat, just having him in his regular place at the head of the table at mealtime helped to establish in our minds who was head of the family. He held this position without being a hard disciplinarian, but somehow we knew he meant business when he told us to do something.
When we think of him, we remember most that he was optimistic, loved people, and liked to talk. He never met a stranger, enjoyed singing, and arguing politics. He had a temper but could control it. He was a hard worker, but he always found time for his children, the church, swimming, Saturday morning Western movies, election night returns, reading the daily paper, and hunting.
He was especially known for fox hunting. Every Friday night in season, he would load up his Walker hounds and set out for Three Hat Mountain or the Conrad Hill Mines area and spend the night in the woods with other fox hunters.
Daddy was the personality of the family... and he loved the outdoors. One of our earliest memories is that of spreading an old quilt out in the yard on warm summer nights and Daddy pointing out the different stars to us. He sparked our interest in nature just by having so much enthusiasm himself.
He knew all the places where we could go and pick wild blueberries and strawberries, muscadines, plums, dewberries, and blackberries.
He taught us all to swim in the nearby creek. Often we'd spot a snake and run out squealing, but it was too much fun to stay out long and the danger was soon forgotten as we jumped back in again. Daddy never seemed to fear anything; he "graveled" in the creek bank where there were large holes, pulling out big fish, and when he saw a snake, he just moved away to give it a little more room.
Not long after leaving the cradle, the boys were tramping behind him in the nearby woods tracking rabbits and squirrels, or spending a night out with him fox hunting.
John Ward was known throughout the neighborhood as a strong Democrat. The nearby grocery store was a gathering place for discussing politics. The store owner was a strong Republican, but Daddy liked and respected him. This made for lots of good arguing around election time.
We heard most of these discussions "rehashed" at the supper table, and we took our politics quite seriously and spouted out our opinions when we went to the store. Looking back, we know the store owner enjoyed egging us on, knowing we would say what Daddy had said, thereby giving him a better chance at winning the next round.
After fighting over the funnies in the paper each Sunday morning, we knew to be ready for Sunday school and church. However, it seemed that what religion we gained from going was soon lost as we waited in the car after church for Daddy while he stopped and talked to everybody. We were usually the last to leave the church.
Although we didn't give it serious thought then, we were aware that Daddy believed in God. After being blessed with so many bundles from Heaven, how could he believe otherwise? We knew not so much from what he said, but from the way he treated others and from the joy he found in living.
Nighttime would often find him sitting in his chair, reading the Bible. Occasionally, he would read a verse aloud hoping, we think, to impress on us that this was a good book to live by.
We seldom looked up from our Captain Marvel and Bugs Bunny comic books, but as so often happens when you think children aren't paying attention, the picture of him in his chair reading the Bible was absorbed, as well as the message.
Although he knew the church wasn't perfect, Daddy enjoyed going. We think he knew that raising so many children and trying to teach them right from wrong started at home. But he and Mama knew they could use all the help they could get, and so he always took us to church with him.
He enjoyed discussing the Sunday school lesson and even tried to teach a class once, but found that as much as he liked to talk, he couldn't do it easily before a group. He didn't teach long.
On June 4, 1968, at the age of 69, Daddy died from a heart attack, in the meadow, while walking over the ground he had toiled for so many years... the land that he loved, amidst the nature to which he was so closely associated.
His enthusiasm for life and the happiness he maintained even in difficult times, along with the wonderful memories he gave us, have replaced the sadness we felt that day.
While many of our growing up experiences were hard at times, they have probably enriched our lives in ways we'll never know. But we do know that John and Lottie (Fritts) Ward have given us something very special... a heritage that we can proudly carry with us always.
Died:
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Children:
- 7. Ward, Edith Elizabeth was born on 2 Jan 1921 in Davidson County, North Carolina, USA; died on 24 Sep 2013 in High Point, Guilford County, North Carolina, USA.
- Ward, Buford Allen was born on 28 Jan 1923; died on 15 Dec 1997 in Lexington, Davidson, North Carolina, USA.
- Ward, David Edward was born on 2 Jun 1925 in Davidson County, North Carolina, USA; died on 4 Aug 2009 in Thomasville, Davidson, North Carolina, USA; was buried in Pilgrim Reformed Church Cemetery, Lexington, Davidson, North Carolina, USA.
- Ward, Alice Ruth was born on 8 Aug 1927.
- Ward, Naomi Jacqueline was born on 2 Mar 1930 in Davidson County, North Carolina, USA; died on 12 Jun 2003 in Lexington, Davidson, North Carolina, USA.
- Ward, Dora Jean
- Ward, Dan Gray was born on 21 May 1935 in Davidson County, North Carolina, USA; died on 1 Oct 2008 in Lexington, Davidson, North Carolina, USA; was buried in Pilgrim Reformed Church Cemetery, Lexington, Davidson, North Carolina, USA.
- Ward, John Ray was born on 21 May 1935 in Davidson County, North Carolina, USA; died on 18 Jan 2023 in Lexington, Davidson, North Carolina, USA; was buried in Pilgrim Reformed Church Cemetery, Lexington, Davidson, North Carolina, USA.
- Ward, Archie Fritts was born on 25 Sep 1937 in Davidson County, North Carolina, USA; died on 27 May 2012 in Lexington, Davidson, North Carolina, USA; was buried in Pilgrim Reformed Church Cemetery, Lexington, Davidson, North Carolina, USA.
- Ward, Mary Louise was born on 12 Jan 1940 in Davidson County, North Carolina, USA.
- Ward, Lottie Katy was born on 15 May 1942 in Davidson County, North Carolina, USA; died on 23 Nov 2012 in Lexington, Davidson, North Carolina, USA; was buried in Pilgrim Reformed Church Cemetery, Lexington, Davidson, North Carolina, USA.
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