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Pen Pals
By Marie Craig
Our Senior Center is sponsoring a very interesting Pen Pal project of matching older Davie residents with seniors in our Davie County High School. I have received two letters from a high school senior and have responded. It’s been interesting to learn more about this person’s interests and education. I’ve shared what I remember of my senior year in high school: wearing a skirt or dress to school, boys with crew cuts, riding the school bus because no student owned their own car, no phones, and ushering in Rock and Roll.
This reminded me that my mother, in 1929-30, as a student going to Mitchell College in Statesville had a pen pal in Mexico to further her use of Spanish. She had kept these fifteen letters and some memorabilia he had sent her. I am the owner of these now, and I dug them out of a lower dresser drawer and have painstakingly typed his cursive, beautiful handwriting into Google Documents. I don’t know Spanish, but it was fairly easy to type these foreign words. I was stunned that this program knows Spanish, and was able to suggest better spellings and the addition of accents and marks above the letters. I would type a paragraph, copy it, and paste it into Google Translate which would immediately give me the English words. Then I would copy those and paste them into the English section of my document. It took me about five days to do this because some of the letters were long. I learned a few repeating words as I typed all these letters.
The envelopes still exist which tells me when she lived with her sister and her family in Statesville. I used Google Maps to see that the house still stands. Part of the time she lived in the dorm at school. Then in the summers the letters came to her parents’ farm in Sheffield. It is amazing how few words on an envelope from Mexico could find their way to her.
He discussed November 1, Day of the Dead, which is a great way to remember our ancestors. He listed his nine siblings by name which I hope to share with other researchers. Personality traits were love of nature and ability to write poetry.
I wish I had the letters she sent him in English. I remember playing with the 13 teeny baskets and weaving that he sent her. The fibers are about the width of a human hair. Two of the baskets are about a fourth of an inch across. I remember asking her about the letters after she’d forgotten the Spanish she once knew but she admitted that he became infatuated with her and she broke it off because she didn’t want to leave her family and move to this city in the southern part of Mexico. But the portraits show him to be a very handsome man. I’ve actually been able to go on an Internet genealogical site and learn more about him. Two years after the last letter, he married and they had several children. He was in school during the letter writing and later became a doctor.
I think we all ponder how fate intervenes to dictate our futures. This was a bright spot in her life at one time that didn’t pan out, but I’m sure she treasured his attention. I’m glad she chose to stay in our state, meet my wonderful dad, and create a family — me.
Ce’ad Mile Fa’ilte or Never Too Old to Grow
Julie Terry Cartner
There’s a fine line between learning to say no and keeping an open mind for new opportunities. This seems to be a lesson I, at least, need to learn periodically. As one who is now designated as a senior citizen, and have often heard, “Oh, you’re retired. You must have plenty of free time,” finding that fine line is crucial to staying in the land of living, active, vibrant adults and being overwhelmed by too much to do, especially having too many responsibilities.
Recently I was asked to take a leadership role that I really didn’t want. My career often put me in those types of positions, and quite frankly, I’d be happy if I were never in charge of anything, ever again. And thus, when I was asked, after a surprisingly short deliberation, I said no, though not without some degree of guilt. (I’ll work on that next!) It was a role I could have fulfilled, but I just didn’t want the responsibility. I was rather proud of myself for saying that monosyllabic word, as it historically has not been one that comes easily to me.
At about the same time, I was asked to host a table for a fundraiser at my church. As I had just said no to one thing, you’d think it would be easier the second time, but sadly, that was not the case. I opened my mouth to say, “No, that’s just not a skillset that comes naturally to me, so I’d rather not.” Instead, I heard myself say, “Sure, I’d be glad to.” Immediately, I was horrified at myself. What was I thinking? I don’t even own a set of china!
Being me, I told myself – just do it; it’ll be fine. I spent the next two weeks designing my table in my head and shopping for or borrowing the items I needed along with creating and painting the decorations. And you know what? I had fun. I created something that was unique to me and was pleased with the results. Today I set it up in preparation for tomorrow, and I’m sure tomorrow I’ll have a fine time meeting new friends and talking about my theme.
For what I decided to do was capitalize on our recent trip to Ireland, so my table’s theme is ce’ad mile fa’ilte [cade me-la fall-cha] which is Irish for a hundred thousand welcomes, a statement that resonates deeply with me. We should welcome new people, new ideas, new philosophies, new challenges, and even things that are outside our comfort zones into our lives no matter what our age is. And we should do so with pleasure, with a sincerely welcoming joy. Isaac Asimov once said, “you are never too old to learn more than you already know and to become able to do more than you already can.” Henry Ford is given credit for saying “Anyone who stops learning is old whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.”
We should, therefore, embrace the culture of ce’ad mile fa’ilte, offering a hundred thousand welcomes to people, absolutely, lifelong friends, new friends, and those soon to be friends, but equally, we should open ourselves to new opportunities to grow and learn, and to try things, even if they are outside our comfort zone.
 
Life in Review
By Gaye Hoots

This morning my granddaughters asked me several questions about my childhood and growing up. This was probably prompted by their looking at old picture albums of mine. The first picture of me is of my mom holding me when I was a few weeks old. Another favorite of mine is Dad holding me under one arm and a beagle pup in the other, both of us flopping from his arms. My best memories are of the first six years of my life spent there with my grandparents.
When I was six, Faye was four and Phil had just been born. We moved to Marchmont, and I prepared to start first grade. Mom took me to Jo Cooley in Mocksville to have my long hair bobbed and Faye got the same treatment. Jo was a cosmetologist, and she was in a wheelchair. The impression of this woman overcoming her handicap and supporting herself left a lifelong impression.
Watching Mom take on having our family independent of grandparents to help was another lesson for me as I had only modeled myself after my dad and grandpa except for Kathleen Burton who held down a public job and wore beautiful clothes to work. Some of my female teachers were added to this list as well.
My childhood was a time when adults carried all the responsibility for finances, which I rarely heard mentioned other than being told what we could afford for school clothes, etc. I relied on my dad to provide, protect, and guide us, and felt I was in charge when he was gone. Mom made me stay home if Dad was gone at night. If something frightened her, I investigated and reassured her.
I was twelve when we moved to Advance, and here I assumed more responsibility, mowing the yard, milking the Jersey cow, and doing some household chores. We were never given money to handle other than the sum to purchase certain preapproved items. I have no memories of ever cooking anything unless it was in Home Economics where it was probably a group project. I was often given the chore of looking after my siblings and even babysat for a teacher now and then which was the first money I ever earned. This was a project with Glenda Potts (Boger) and we split the money. There were five children in the family, and the oldest was only six, so we earned our money.
Two days after my seventeenth birthday I married Roy Potts and moved into his mom’s house with him. I don’t think I even knew how to boil water, but I mowed the yard. My method of conflict resolution was learned from the men in my family and was probably not well-suited for marriage. I had never shopped for groceries and had no idea how to handle money but had been taught that if you did not have the money to purchase something you did without.
This was the sixties when a married woman could not open a checking account or get a credit card in her name. I went to work when I graduated and purchased a used car from my uncle, which my grandfather financed. I learned to manage money and when I divorced, I got a crash course, but I managed. I was able to put myself through undergraduate and graduate school without help from my family and to raise my two girls. When their children were young, we lived on a small acreage tract joining Daddy and Scrip Robertson’s farm. These were good times as the four grandchildren were born in four years and grew up playing together and with the Myers boys.
The younger grands and my great-granddaughter also got time on the farm my siblings and I grew up on. The farm experiences were some of the best of my memories. I admit I have traded that for the proximity to the ocean, and my love of nature, family, and God has carried me for seventy-nine years and counting.