"Baseball was, is and always will be to me the best game in the world!" --Babe Ruth

Momma remembers,
     "I did not want to move to Alabama.  I loved my home in North Carolina, but Frank once again caught the restlessness bug, so off we went, like it or not.  We found a large house on Farley Drive in Jones Valley in Huntsville, where most of our neighbors worked either for IBM or Redstone Arsenal.  Barbara attended Grissom High School and Darryl went to Weatherly Heights Elementary.    

     There was a golf course behind our house, which Barbara and her friend, Catherine, walked across to school.  In the winter a freezing wind blew through the valley, whipping across the course.  When it was particularly cold, I would drive them to school so that Barbara's sensitive teeth didn't 'play up.'  
     Maureen went to college at the University of Alabama where she met her future husband, Marvin. 
     Darryl, a budding entrepreneur, collected golf balls that came over our fence.  Frank took them to work to sell to co-workers.  Darryl was rich!" 
--Joan Shelton

Bit of history:  Grissom High School, founded in 1969, was named after Virgil I. 'Gus' Grissom, an astronaut who along with Roger B. Chaffee and Ed White, were killed in the Apollo I launchpad fire at Cape Kennedy, Florida, on January 27, 1967.  


For Darryl, the move to Huntsville was transformative; it was the place were he fell in love with baseball.  As he tells it-- 

"There was a moment and a boy, Kenny Novak; they were to blame for all that followed.  I can still see his face--dirty blonde hair, parted on the side, wearing the flared striped pants and screen printed baseball shirts we all wore in the early '70s.  He was a bit older than me, and I thought he was cool--I looked up to him.  His house was across the street from ours.  

The Major League Baseball All-Star Game, sometimes called the 'Midsummer Classic' is usually played on the second or third Tuesday in July; that year, 1971, it was played on July 13th.  Unfamiliar with baseball, I was not watching the game, did not even know it existed, but because of Kenny Novak, I knew something big was happening! 

  

     Every few minutes, Kenny would rush out onto his porch, screaming that someone had scored, got a hit.  The American League won that game, 6-4 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit.  The winning pitcher was Vida Blue from Oakland, and the MVP was Frank Robinson from Baltimore.  
     I believe in my heart that because of Kenny Novak, I have forever after 'worshipped at the church of baseball!'  I have also, ever since, been an American League fan.  Some people say they're Republican or Democratic, Baptist or Catholic, Jewish or Protestant.  I say I'm an American Leaguer!      
     That day I met my future idols and heroes, the players I would watch on the field and the TV--the names Kenny screamed from his porch--Aaron, Mays, Clemente, Stargell, Robinson, McCovey, Bench, Jackson, Kaline, Jenkins--became part of my life.  I don't know much, but I know that for me, that was the day it all began.  

     I couldn't just watch the pros play the game; I had to play, too, so Dad took me to a local little league tryout.  The coaches put me on the field to catch grounders; I remember being terrified as a ball came to me, and thinking, 'What is this big piece of leather on my hand?  What am I doing here?'  
     I must've been okay, because I got a spot on the Huntsville Eagles, and best of all, I got a uniform!
I have a photo of myself in a light blue, wool Eagles uniform. which I still have, along with a Mickey Mantle bat and a softball that is all tattered--all from  1971—the year it all began.  Who still has their first little league bat and ball? Thanks Mom for not taking them to the Good Will.

                                                          

     The next thing you know I'm a baseball card collector. Mam used to take me to a dime store on the main road in Huntsville and let me buy a few things like candy, a drink, and maybe a little toy.
     One day I picked up 3 packs of baseball cards.  I can still see the wrappers with the price, 5 cents, printed in the bottom corner.  I still have every card from that day. In that year, each pack came with metal commemorative coins along with 10 or so cards. 

 



     My first big 'pull' from those ten cards was a 1970 Willie Mays Giant's card.  I still have it!  I remember getting that card like it was yesterday. There were other good cards in the packs, like Kaline and Jenkins.  The coin was a Rick Reichardt Senators' coin.  Still have it, too!  The Boys of Summer came and went, but I never stopped loving them."


                                                                        --Darryl Shelton

"You made Christmas such a magical part of our growing-up years . . .

. . . I carry all those times with me still,
               no matter where I go--
        they're in my heart . . . ."

Mam,
     You did make Christmas such a magical part of our growing-up years.  Through the years we had a succession of trees--aluminum, artificial (including the tabletop tree that came all the way from England on the Queen Mary) and occasionally a real one.
















     Often our tree was decorated with ornaments that you helped Maureen, me, and Darryl make.  I remember bells made from egg cartons, covered in glitter, blown egg ornaments with little windows cut to show holiday scenes, and baker's dough cookie cutter ornaments.


     We made carolers and angels out of magazines and styrofoam balls and dolls out of toilet paper rolls and crepe paper.  Whatever decorations were on it, the tree was always lovely; you made that happen.

   
     Some years you strung swags from the ceiling, corner to corner, with a large fluted shiny paper ball or bell in the center.  One year you decorated the farmhouse door at Farley Drive in Huntsville with little drummer boy decorations, dressed in green and red.  A little German Putz glitter village was set up on one end table, a nativity on the other.  You taped Christmas cards around the inside of the front door (I still do that)! The house was always lovely and festive; you made that happen.

      The holiday food was delicious and always included my personal favorite, mince pies with white icing, decorated with green and red candied peel.  Once or twice there was even another favorite, a pork pie.  I must've been very good those years!








      You made trifle (alternating layers of sponge cake soaked in sherry or brandy, fruit suspended in jello, a layer of custard, and then whipped cream), and a Christmas Cale--a rich English fruitcake covered with marzipan and white royal icing and topped with Christmas themed decorations like a sprig of holly.  You stuffed stocking with silver dollars, fruit, and candy.  Nothing was missed; you made that happen.
 

"I know a girl, she puts the color inside of my world." --John Mayer

Barbara remembers,

     "When I was 10, in fifth grade, we moved to Cary, North Carolina.  I attended Cary Elementary School, a beautiful, old, red brick building on South Academy Street.  You could look down South Academy Street since 1879 and see a school.
     I remember two teachers from that school--Mrs. Loretta Banner and Mrs. Hortense B. Bullock.  Being a bit of a precocious reader, Mrs. Banner, my 5th grade teacher from 1965-1966, allowed me to read Gone With the Wind and complete a project on it.  Mrs. Bullock, my sixth grade teacher from 1966-1967, loved to sing as did I, so we started each day standing by our desks, singing from a children's hardcover songbook.  I loved it!
     While I was good at reading and writing, I was terrible at math.  I went to another teacher for math, but I've blocked her name from my memory because she made me write 100 times, 'The properties of mathematics are addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.'  Really didn't help me become a better math student; in fact, quite the opposite.  I think I remember Mam taking pity, writing some of the lines for me.
     I completed grades 5-8 at Cary Elementary School, then transferred to West Cary Middle School for part of 9th grade, before moving to Huntsville, Alabama for the remainder of 9th grade and all of 10th. grade.  I finished high school, grades 11 and 12 in San Jose, California."

     "Cary was once the Gourd Capital of the World.  I remember going to the exhibit hall which was, I think, in the elementary school.  How it became the Gourd Capital of the World is really quite interesting."

A bit of history:

     "This 'road to fame' began in 1934 when a group of local ladies bought a packet of mixed ornamental seeds and divided the contents to see what would grow.  The ladies, who had read several magazine articles about gourds, were shocked at the success of their experiment.  They contacted the International Gourd Society to obtain more exotic seed and went on to exhibit their gourds at the 1937 NC State Fair.  The exhibit generated so much excitement that they organized a club on December 27, 1937 and called themselves the 'Gourd Gardeners.'

     Cary’s rise to fame as the Gourd Capital of the World didn’t stop there.  By 1938, the Gourd Gardeners had started making all sorts of crafts out of their gourds – lamps, baskets, doorstops, bird houses, rings and even toys.  This was what started Cary’s famous, annual Gourd Festival.  The Cary Gourd Festival came to be known as 'Cary’s longest running annual celebration.'  The following excerpt was found in a 1990 issue of The Gourd:

The 49th annual Cary Gourd Festival theme will be gourds as holiday decorations, from January snowmen through Christmas gourds of all kinds.  Making a return appearance from our 1952 festival, whose theme was “The Calendar with Gourds,” will be Mary and her little luffa lamb starting back to school in a gourd schoolhouse….  The Cary Festival is a free show of gourds and gourd crafts.  Crafters will demonstrate how to prepare gourds to work on, burning and cutting techniques, making and siting birdhouses and much more…"

                                                                                      from CaryCitizen.com

Cary's Gourd Festival from the 1950's

    "I had a friend, Debbie Smith; she and I roamed all over Cary which was, in 1965, still quite small with a population of about 3,500.  We were fifth or sixth graders, and in those days kids had a lot more freedom to play and take risks.

     On Halloween we would walk all over Cary collecting candy.  I wore a series of creative costumes made by Mam and Dad.  Mam, a seamstress, would buy a package of black crepe paper, sew it into a long skirt and a peasant blouse, and fashion a wig out of strips of twisted paper.  She made a pointed hat, applied a little make-up, and off I went.
     One year Dad made a torch out of a margarine tub screwed onto a wooden dowel with a cardboard 'flame' coming out of the tub.  He  spray painted the torch and a makeshift crown a turquoise color, draped a green sheet over me like a toga, and I was the Statue of Liberty.
     Another year, I wore my black dance leotard and tights, flippers on my feet, a scuba mask, and a pair of oatmeal boxes covered in tin foil for air tanks.  I must've looked a fright because I was terribly thin; kids at school called me barbwire or skeleton (my maiden name is Shelton).


 
 

     I think I was at various times also a hobo and a pirate.  Mam and I continued this tradition by making some great costumes for Erik when he was little--Robin Hood, Daniel Boone, a skeleton, Zorro, a pirate, a clown . . . .

     I had a bike with a basket on the front, and Mam says I rode all over Cary on that thing, especially to the local library which was on South Academy Street in a small white frame house behind Ashworth Drugs.  I'd fill the basket with books!  One of my favorites was Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy.  I told you I was a precocious reader.