Prologue

“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

Proverbs 22:6

I’d like to take you on a journey through my life that started in the South during the 1950s. I was raised in the small community of Bradford Heights, in Gastonia, North Carolina, located on the southeast part of the United States of America, and also living up north in New Haven, Connecticut, one of the New England states along the eastern coastline of the Atlantic Ocean. I felt like a little ragdoll being pulled back and forth.

In the community where I was born, there weren’t many black families that owned cars, so most people had to walk for miles up the hill around the long dirt road to catch a bus to get into town. I remember walking up and down that road many times as a child with my Grandparents. In later years, the road was covered in black tar and named New Hope Road. Eventually, the bus came down into the neighborhood to pick up those riders. My

Grandma Duff said that was a blessing from God for everyone.

My mother, Johnsie L. Carter, was the oldest of eight children; (seven girls and one boy) born to Lucille and Arthur Carter. Mama said she didn’t know where all those babies were coming from! All she knew was that they were her sisters and brother and she had to help take care of them. She told me about her life growing up and that she was never told anything about the reproductive system of a woman or sex. She said she would often wonder, but when she asked about the babies that kept coming to her house, she was told the stork brought them, or they came from a tree trunk and even from the Sears and Roebuck department store.

My Grandma Carter suffered from Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA), which is a long-term autoimmune disorder that primarily affects the joints. It resulted in swollen and painfully stiff joints that caused her to be confined to her bed for most of her life. She was not able to walk during her last two pregnancies. She was able to rule her home from her bed. She taught my mother how to cook, wash clothes and keep the house clean. As the children grew older, they all had chores to do to help keep the house running.

My Grandpa Carter was employed at the local cotton mill. He loved his family and worked hard to take care of them. After living uptown in a rented house for years, Grandpa saved enough money and brought some land in a newly developed community called Bradford Heights. After working long hours in the cotton mill, he would go down to his property and work on constructing their new home. He also planted a large vegetable garden to help feed his family, and a few walnut trees. When the house was finished enough that they could live in it, Grandpa moved his family from uptown Gastonia to their new home outside of in the countryside. He wanted to lift his wife’s spirits, so, he planted beautiful rose bushes all around the house, especially in the front yard where she could see them from her bedroom window. She loved those gorgeous roses!

Due to Grandma Carter’s sickness, Mama had a lot of responsibility put on her at a