Page 162 - my-people-abbie-harris-beck

After the war we had election parades. We could watch from the porch. That was
the rule. We watched the parades and people walking down the sidewalk to town. We
had a man in a wheel chair who was there all my days on main street. We were told to
stay out of his way. Never make fun of him. Then there was a man with a wooden leg.
We were never to laugh at him either.
The next few years were about the same. In the summers now we could go to
the pool, mother would take us or if we found a ride with another family or once a bus
went out to Lake Geneva. The bus cost ten cents each way.
When I was in the sixth grade, daddy and mother took us to Atlanta. We went to
Sears to buy our school clothes and we visited Stone Mountain which was not finished at
that time. We visited the Cyclorama, story about the battle of Atlanta when Sherman
came through. It was my very first city to visit. I fell in love with what was out of
Geneva. My wanderlust was born. Of course I could not wait until I grew up to go to
California. Daddy and Aunt Maye had told me about San Francisco and I wanted to go.
No Screens on the windows, no insects, and it was cool year round.

Life was changing on Main Street. From 1943 to 1949 was my childhood on Main
Street. It represented freedom, independence, learning to get along with others and
following the rules.
Life was simple, we were happy. We were growing up and we moved to the hill, Trinity
Lane. We moved in the summer of 1950 and that fall, I would be in the 7th grade at the
new school house on the hill. Life was changing and becoming a teenager was getting
complicated.