Oscar and Annie

"I remember Daddy and Annie Hudgins married after we moved to Acworth. She always loved the kids. She was always good to me, and I tried to be good to her. I was eight when she and my Daddy got married.
"She already had a boy, Clarence. He was 10. She didn't make no differnce between me and him. In fact, sometimes she leaned to me more than she did Clarence. She'd sit up with me many, many a night when I started smothering from asthma. She'd stay up with me and give me coffee. Rub me with salve. Fan me. Sit there with me until I'd go back to sleep. Anything she could do to try to help me.
"When we moved to Acworth, I remember, we lived near Highway 41, which goes through the town, and it wasn't even paved at that time. It was dirt. When winter come down there, the roads would get pretty rough. The police -- the black and whites -- they had a team of mules. They'd go down there in that hollow and they'd pull them cars out when they got stuck outside the house. They’d get 'em going again. But boy, them Northerns, they would cuss every time. They could get through the ice and snow, but they couldn't do nothing with that mud." -- Carl Bishop