We had no where to go then. My father used to take some of us on trips. I
remember, as soon as they bought this Dodge automobile—about six months
after they bought it—my father was going to take several children up to
Asheville, North Carolina. He was District Attorney from about 1914 to
1921. And so in 1916 we planned to go in this car to Greenville, his
headquarters, 'cause he had to go up every week. I'd take him up every
week, it was about four o'clock in the morning driving [UNCLEAR] And so, he said, well we'd just go in the car
that day. For some reason the car wouldn't start. And later, after he
went on on the train, I got the car started, got it repaired and took my
sister who was two years younger and my brother who was about three
years younger that she was. And we got in that car and drove all the way
to Greenville. The speed limit was about fifteen miles an hour—it took a
long time to get up there. It took about six, seven hours from Edgefield
to get up there. But we made it, walked in and surprised him. He didn't
know we were going to come. I didn't know where to go but asked where the county courthouse was, went in there, and he was
there. So we spent the night there, next day went on up to Asheville.
And got up to Asheville, we stayed several days.
Stayed at a boarding house—they had a boarding house, then you could stay
at a reasonable price. You get rooms and meals, you see. I remember we
were on a streetcar up there, he told me to sit down and I sat down. But
the next time we got on one I was walking around and we were going
around those mountain curves and the car turned quick and I nearly fell
off, but I grabbed like that—having to catch a post so I didn't fall
off.
And I remember another thing he told us. We went out to Vanderbilt's
Estate. They were selling ice cream and milk and everything there. We
walked in, he says, "Now you're not to have any ice cream, any of you,"
he said, "You drink buttermilk." Well, you see Ice cream has sugar in
it, travelling it's not so good, you should drink buttermilk. So we had
to drink buttermilk. We all wanted ice cream but we wouldn't disobey. He
was a strict disciplinarian. When he spoke we'd used to always obey
him.