Childhood at Pressmen’s Home

There could have been no better place to grow up. The parents of most of the kids worked nearby, and there were few other adults around our end of the valley. During the years when some of us were really too young to be left entirely on our own, my mother had a “girl” to come each day to do house work, cook the noon meal, and more or less mind the children. Mostly, we were pretty much left to our own devices.

One day, when My cousin June was visiting from Texas, and Marie Hernden from the orphanage in Greenville for a couple of weeks, they all decided to go up on the hill to swing on grapevines…a grand summer afternoon entertainment. Maybe cousin Lillian was there, too, that time.

There was a little foot bridge over a small creek that we had to go over before beginning to climb the steep hill behind the office building/press room. One big hitch: when we got to the bridge, Charlie Ray and the others wouldn’t let me come. I was “too little”. They went happily along, leaving me in tears. I don’t remember how long I played around, but after perhaps forty-five minutes, the air was filled with screams, on and on.

Mother said later those screams nearly scared all the employees to death. They dropped what they were doing and left the offices and the pressroom to see what was wrong with the children.

It seems the grape vine they had chosen to cut and swing from was around a limb that had a hornet’s nest on it.

The kids jerked the vine and the first one swung out over the hillside, and the hornets didn’t like it one bit. The children all came streaming down out of the woods, crying and running from the hornets.

You betcha I thought I had come out better than they had!