Blue Birds and Courage
On the 23rd of December 1953, my parents married in the parsonage of Bethlehem Baptist, Mom’s home church. Aunt Margie and Uncle Max served as witnesses, signing their license, certifying them in holy matrimony.
Family legend has it that Daddy borrowed a pick-up, and they spent their wedding night at an Asheboro Motel. In his youthful exuberance to check in and escort his brand-new bride into the room, he neglected to turn off the headlights. The next morning, Christmas Eve, brought a dead battery requiring a stranger’s jumper cables. Mom was twenty-one; Daddy, twenty-five.
They made their way back to Carthage and started their life together in a small wooden house on Grandaddy Barber’s land. With a scrawny cedar tree, one that they chopped down in the woods, they celebrated their first Christmas. I’m not sure how many ornaments it had, probably not many and certainly no lights as electricity cost dinero. Personally, I only knew the red glass lantern and the little blue bird that were said to have been with us from the beginning, but fourteen years and four children preceded me.