I grew up in rural Anson County, North Carolina back in the late forty-fifty and early sixties. Back then cotton and tobacco were king and Anson County had it’s share of cotton and tobacco fields.
My earliest memories are of starting school in the fall before I turned six in November of 1948. The school I attended was a one room school with three classes in the school. From the research I have done I’m certain this is a photo of the school I attended or very similar to the school where I started the first grade.
We lived near the railroad track adjacent to Kimberly Dairy. It was about 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile from the school and my older sister and I walked to school each day. Daddy worked at the dairy and Mom stayed home to care for my newborn baby sister. The ice man would deliver a huge ice block with ice tongs and place the block in an insulated ice box on the back porch. Mass production of new refrigerators was growing with units being sold to customers who could afford them and had electricity to their homes. At this time, many homes in rural America were still without electricity.
After school ended in 1949, we moved from South Carolina to Anson County, North Carolina. We lived on a farm near Jones Creek between Lilesville and Morven. My daddy’s brother and his family also lived on the same farm; so I grew up interfacing daily with my first cousins from that family. Ironically, although we lived on the same farm, my cousins went to Morven to attend school while my family was required to attend school in Lilesville. But, there is an explanation, my Uncle worked for the Morven school system and transported his children to school each day while we ridden a bus to the school in Lilesville. Had my uncle not worked for the school his children would have also rode the bus to Lilesville.
The class of 1960 was the last segregated class to graduate from this school. Lilesville High was closed, later demolished and a new Elementary School was built on the property.
When I graduated from school in 1960 there wasn’t much in the way of good steady jobs to be had in Anson County. Mom and Dad moved back across the state line to Chesterfield County, South Carolina. Mom went to work in one the local mills as a seamstress and Dad continuing his carpentry skills building highway bridges across North and South Carolina.
I took a job with Daniels’ Construction Company, as a payroll clerk, and help build what today is Highland Industries and Takata plant in Cheraw, South Carolina. Upon completion of that job, I joined the Air Force in December 1960 and left the cotton fields of North and South Carolina behind me to travel the world.
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[1] http://www.tagxedo.com/
[2] http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/schools/S112113000002647000/pages/S11211300358.htm
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