I don't make this stuff up. I just write it down.

One of the best friends I had in this world was a woman named Frances Davin. Her mother, Mary, was my grandmother's best friend, so, naturally, Miss Billie was a childhood friend of my mother's. She picked up the nickname “Billie” because she was such a tomboy—always playing with her brothers, Bobby and Buddy, it was no great surprise that they tagged her with another name that began with the letter B. From that point on, she was Billie to her family and all of her closest friends. To me, she was always Miss Billie, and I loved her dearly. As a child, I thought of her as a much-loved aunt; when I became an adult, she was a close friend and trusted companion. After her death a few years ago, I was very glad I had all the memories; I treasure them.  If I had a nickel for every time I think of her, I'd have at least $1,000 by now. We spent countless hours doing some truly crazy things. I want to remember them all, so the rest of this section will probably read like ...

Part 1 This particular section may be of interest to no one other than myself, but I am writing it anyway. After all, it was a part of my life, and I like to look back at it from time to time; it's good for a warm feeling of nostalgia, and maybe a pair of misty eyes. If you are in this blog for the long haul, though, buckle up, as we will be doing a bit of time traveling. When I talk about the neighbors surrounding my current home in this section, I am referring to people who were probably living there as early as the 1930s straight through the '50s and very early '60s, when my sisters and I were young children. Before I begin, I will issue the disclaimer I nearly always put out there when talking about what was, for me, the distant past. I remember things I overheard way back then, and, as a very small child, could easily have thought they happened a certain way and for a certain reason, simply because that is the way it registered on my young mind. I wi...