Richard my Hero

A year before Richard passed away, I had the opportunity to thank him and to let him known I thought of him as my hero.
When we were kids we had went down to the creek to go swimming. It was very hot and it had been raining, and the creek banks were full and the water was swift. Richard was about 14 years of age and I was about 7. It seems like there were six of us kids down at the swimming hole that day. I do recall being told not to wade out, stay close to the bank. I was playing around and waded out to far, the water started carrying me down stream. As I struggling to hold my head up, I glanced over to my left and there was Richard running along the bank, he dove in and pulled me out of the water.
Nothing was ever said about that day, until last year. Richard had come down to his best friend Fran’s house, to stay a few days. I went up to Fran’s to see Richard, as I came through the door he came over and give me a hug and a kiss. We talked for a while and finely I said, you are my hero, and he looked at me kind of funny, like he didn’t know what I meant, I said you saved me from drowning when we were kids didn’t you? He looked at me and smiled as he said, “yes I saved your little ass.”
I will always remember those words, with that big grin on his face saying, I saved your little ass.
Thanks for the memories brother Richard, I love and miss ya.
Take the opportunity to let people know you love them, life is too short.


By Vivian Foote
July 29, 2011

The games we play

My brothers Jimmy, Richard and Leslie were always making something for use to play with. One day they build stilts out of the lumber that was left over from framing the house. My brothers could walk on them I was never any good at it I would just fall and skin my knees.
We used to find turtles and mark their back with paint and have turtle races.
We play cowboys and Indians. I used pokeberry one time to paint my face and come to find out, it did not wash off very easy. After we decided who was going to be the cowboys and who was the Indians then we would chase each other thru the wood and hills.
We had a gunny sack swing. You may wonder what that is, it is burlap sack filled with straw or leaves, and sometime we would fill it with old clothes. We might even have an old tire for a swing.
We would play tree top tag. We would go to a grove of young oak trees, climb to the top of the tree and get that tree a swaying back in forth till you could reach the other tree top and cross over to it and of course our neighbors would be there along with us to play.
Sometimes the boys would take us when they were going for a walk and we would go through some old home site that had been abandoned. We would find the old green glass jars they used for canning and maybe some tools laying around. We might have walked a mile or two, to these places. Never did anyone ever get a broken bone. We might have got stung by wasps or got cut by broken glass or step on a nail and scraped by barbed wire, but nothing serious.
We saw a lot of snakes, not one us of ever got bitten. We knew to side step or run if we saw one. I guess we had some common sense build in us.
Sometime the neighbors would come down and go swimming with us or play cowboys an Indians; we had a good time with them. We went to Everton school we rode the same school bus. They were the same age that we were.
Our favorite place to go in the summer was the swimming hole, we spend hours their cooling off.
This place holds a lot of good memories and stories.


By Vivian Foote
July 26, 2011