I’m 71 years old and today is “Mother’s Day” 2025.

My mother was born on February, 22, 1915.

My mother died on December 16, 1980 at the Onslow Memorial Hospital in Jacksonville, North Carolina. She had suffered for several months with Leukemia. I was 26 years old when she died. During her working life, as I knew her, she weight around 116 pounds, but at the end, she had lost weight and only weighed about 84 pounds. “Skin and bones” and too weak to walk.

*Colonel Harlan Sanders (KFC fame) died the same day as my mom, and he too had Leukemia. They were not the same age.

For most of her later life, she worked as a Civil Service Clerk Typist, and much of that aboard the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base near Jacksonville, North Carolina. She would leave the house at the corner of Queens Creek Road and Highway 24 at about 7:30 am each work day, and then return home about 5 pm. The drive was about 30 minutes each way, and she had a 30 minutes Lunch. *This was probably the time when she worked at Building 66, which was the “Naval Medical Field Research” Building. The short explanation was that they blew up army boot, with real human cadaver feet in them to measure the effects of an explosion on the human body. They probably did a bunch of other things we don’t really want to know about because I also got my Collie, which I called “Lassie” from one of the dogs that they used for testing purposes. The names of the people she worked with at Building 66 included Barbara Brainerd, Robin Short and Rip Jackson. **Rip Jackson helped her get Lassie, and some years later, she gave him the money and he bought fishing tackle for me which included a Penn Peerless No.9 Reel, a rod, a tackle box and assorted lures, of which there was a shiny white shrimp lure which had three pronged hooks. I still think that it would have scared away more fish than it would have attracted. I’m not sure that I ever caught a single fish with any of that tackle, but I still have the Penn reel. ***Mom took me out on Christmas morning and we went fishing at the Bogue Sound Fishing Peer (Atlantic Ocean). We didn’t catch anything and there was an old fisherman that was reeling one after another in… until we sidled up beside him, and scared the fish away. He moved.

She also worked as a secretary at the Labor Board, which was located at the entrance to Camp Lejeune (Main Gate). That building is no longer there, but was iconic for many years.

She worked several years at the Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia. For several years she lived with her sister, Zeta Littleton, “Aunt Pete.” Aunt Pete’s home was at 521 Riverside Drive, and the Naval Hospital was about 35 blocks away near the other end of High Street. I don’t think they had opened London Blvd, which cut the travel time greatly. High Street had many stop lights for many but not all street blocks.

She was a fast reader. I recall once that I was sitting on a couch, reading a letter from my girlfriend Debbie, and my mother was standing behind me. I am a slow reader. At some point, my mom asked me a question about something that was in the letter, and I hadn’t gotten to that point yet. I pulled the letter from out of her view. I didn’t expect there to be anything that Debbie would say in a letter, that I might not want my mother to read, but I knew I didn’t want to take the chance.

She liked to work outside, in the yard. She might dig in the dirt and plant flowers around 204 Johnson Blvd. in Jacksonville, or mow the yard sometime with a small push mower. *I actually liked mowing the lawn, with either a push mower, or when mowing at Mary Ann’s, using one of their riding mowers. It’s relaxing to sit and think as you mow, and all you have to do is make sure you “don’t miss a spot.”

I do recall that once I moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina to work (in August of 1995) and there was no one living at 204 Johnson Blvd., I still kept a small mower in the house there. This worked for quite a while, maybe several years, but then one day when I came into the house in Jacksonville, I saw signs that someone had been sleeping in the house and there was a orange painted X-acto knife on the floor. I presume for protection. But, the small lawn mower was missing. Damn. I had to go to Sears in the Mall and found a used push mower for sale. It was about a horse power and a half stronger than the mower that had been stolen. It was a good price and I bought it.

I filled the new mower with gas, and checked the oil, and started to mow and to my surprise I finished mowing at least a half hour faster than I was used to completing the yard. It does make a difference when you have more power. The blade must cut easier through the grass. Almost imperceptible to the mower, but not to the overall process. I kept the new mower down at Mary Ann’s and would load it onto my truck (the Dodge RAM 1500 – Blue & Silver, extended cab) take it to Jacksonville, unload it an mow and then load it back up to return to Mary Ann’s barn in Hubert. This worked fine I think for a couple of years and then one day, I off loaded the mower from the truck, and then was unable to start it. I had to load it back up without having mowed the yard. I think I got Ray to mow, although he had other things to do.

Mom wasn’t a great cook, but she could make a delicious “fried chicken” dinner, and with that she made some good potato salad which would include large diced white potatoes, onion, sweet relish, mayo and some sugar. *I haven’t made any potato salad, or German potato salad in a while. I like both, but don’t need the starch. With the fried chicken and potato salad, we might have some corn (from the can or on the cob), garden peas, sliced tomato and some dinner rolls. And that’s another thing that I rarely have (if ever) those “store bought” dinner rolls. Maybe a little margarine spread on one.

Once or twice a year she would make a meal of corned beef, potatoes, and onion stew. I do recall us eating boiled crabs one time. She spread newspapers on the table and put the plates with the steamed crabs on the paper. As we broke the shells and ate the crab meat, we would put the shells around the plate on the paper. After we were done it was simple to remove the plates and cutlery, and then just fold the newspaper up with the shells inside and throw it all it the trash.

I don’t recall what our standard fare was for dining each night, but I know it improved greatly when we moved to Hubert to live with Aunt Sis (Carrie Kellum). Sis was a great cook. I recall after mom moved to Portsmouth to live and work, I remained in Hubert to finish my schooling at Swansboro. I would arrive back home about 4 pm each school day, after an hour ride on the yellow school bus, and rush inside to watch “Dark Shadows.” Before I went back to my room to watch TV, I would snag something to eat. And my Junior year, I got into the habit of mixing lemonade, without any sugar or sweetener, in a little round orange plastic jug. I think the jug was a promotional gimmick by one of the juice companies. It had a handle. I would drink a lot of unsweetened lemonade and the result must have been eating less and ultimately losing a bunch of weight.

I lost so much weight my Junior year that I was able to do “one handed” pull ups either over or under handed on the children’s swing at the side of my aunt’s house. I even thought about trying out for college football, but that was a really stupid idea that I never followed through on.

Each day, Sis would have at least two different meats on the stove, and three different veggies. It might be fried or stewed chicken, or some kind of cooked pork or beef, green beans, boiled potatoes, green lima beans, black eyed peas, corn, or tomatoes. As the week progressed, she would rotate the different veggies and at the end of the week, any left over veggies would probably go into a delicious vegetable soup. *We didn’t have Vidalia onions back then. I think she did cut up cucumbers & onion with a little vinegar and sugar. The vinegar would have been Apple Cider vinegar, and if we had sweet bell peppers they would have been green. They didn’t offer different colors of bell peppers until I was an adult.

The two main things I learned to love from my Aunt Sis, who was like my second momma, was the love of food, and the love of riding around in her car. For most of my life I’ve enjoyed getting in my car and riding around the neighborhood… and the neighborhood got further and further away from home through the years. I do love watching TV and movies on TV, but riding around is always sure to provide something new to see.

I’ve lived in Fayetteville, North Carolina for 30 years. My journeys have gotten progressively further from home in all directions. At points around the clock. 12 noon would be Raleigh, or maybe as far as Henderson, Oxford or Roxboro. Louisburg, Rocky Mount, Tarboro, Wilson, Greenville, Goldsboro, Mount Olive, Clinton, Elizabethtown, Whiteville, Tabor City, Conway (SC), Florence (SC), Bennettsville (SC), Cheraw (SC), Laurinburg, Hamlet, Rockingham, Albemarle, Robbins, Asheboro, Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point. I especially have fallen in love with Asheboro in the past year. But I also love Asheville and visited about five weeks before Hurricane Helene came through last year. A wonderful short visit, and a shame about the devastation.

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I like to eat at David’s for breakfast, and No. 1 Chinese Buffet in Asheboro. This Chinese restaurant reminds me of many of the Chinese restaurants I’ve eaten at through the years. I feel comfortable at the main library, reading the current issue of “Our State” Magazine. *Elizabeth Hudson, the current Editor, is from Asheboro originally. *I saw no current issue on the racks during this visit & I looked. I did look through a couple of cookbooks, one on bread. *It was a rainy day in Asheboro (05/12/25). I came back to Fayetteville via back roads through Coleridge and Bennett, with a little detour along the way.

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Back to mom:

At some point, she bought a Singer Zig Zag sewing machine and learned how to make her dresses for work using Butterick, Simplicity & McCalls patterns. She would wait for the Pic-n-Pay or Thom McAnn stores to have their shoe sales that happened about every six months, and then buy several pairs of cheap shoes. Maybe even a dollar a pair. The pairs of shoes would last until the next shoe sale before they began to wear out.

I’m not sure if she was ever “self conscious” about the cheap shoes & hand bags, and her homemade dresses. If so I don’t recall her saying so. But, as an adult (now) I would think that would have been in the mix. It’s human nature, but she did what she did. I guess you wear cheap shoes, and carry inexpensive purses, and wear dresses you’ve made so that you could give “Little Billie” a brand new car his Senior year.

I recall that my mom was a G.S. 4 along with a group of other secretaries and at some point they all got promoted to G.S. 5’s but she was not. It was never clear to me why, and I’m not sure it was clear to her either. It could have been office politics. *Mom would come home from work and then she would “unload” on me her adult problems. I’m not sure how old I was, but one day she had been telling me her problems and then she stopped and said, “You’re not listening to me.” My reply was that I didn’t listen to her the first time she told me something about her work problems. I said, the second time she repeated the story, I listened for key points, and the third time she repeated the story, I listened and asked questions (if I was interested). I’m not sure if this stopped her from dumping her adult problems on me.

She didn’t remarry, and the main reason I gleaned was because she was afraid of getting pregnant again. The doctors had told her she might die if she ever had another child. She never dated again, and I never recall her mentioning anyone who was a “love interest.”

My dad, Billy Gene Gibson, was much younger than my mother. He was a Marine when they met and then married. Mom was 39 years old when I was born and I always thought that was “old,” but through the years it’s no longer old to be 39 or older and have a baby. I think dad was 25 when I was born.

My dad left my mother shortly before I started 1st Grade, and I only saw him twice in 19 years after that. One time he came up from Georgia and we stood beside his car, parked by the old house on Queens Creek Road. That location would now be where the current Swansboro Burger King is located. *I recall three things from this visit:

• Bill’s brother, Lewis, came up with him on this trip to N.C. Lewis was bald, and he was sleeping on the backseat of the car. I thought it was a mannequin laying on the seat and my dad and I had talked for a long while before Lewis moved. I jumped and said something to the effect, “I thought that was a dummy.”
• At some point my dad pointed out, and picked up a silver dollar from the side of the road, and gave it to me. It was shiny and almost new looking. I think the date on it was 1885. At some later point I wanted to make it shinier and I started to shine it with sandpaper. Cringe if you need to. Yeah, it only took a stroke or two for me to see that the sandpaper was scratching the coin’s surface, and I stopped. I later also poured a coating of some painter’s oil on the coin and it gave it a brownish patina. *Years later, the thought came to me that my dad might have dropped the coin for me to find, but he never said anything about this. Still, it would be hard to imagine that an almost pristine silver dollar could lay in the dirt from about 1885 until the 1960’s untarnished.
• My dad gave me a slot car and hand controller. The car had copper tubing for it’s frame and a plastic body that could easily be replaced. I think it was a Cox controller, which I seem to recall the sound of a spring inside it squeaking as you pressed the speed plunger. I never made it to the commercial slot car track at Ron-Cor in Jacksonville to try it out. Or, at least I don’t think I did.

My dad’s second visit happened on a Sunday when I was either in 11th or 12th Grade. He was dressed in a sports coat, and had a hat on. We rode around in his car for about an hour talking.

My mom bought a brand new Ford Mustang, a 1964 1/2 model. A few did come out before 1965. It was Prairie Bronze in color and a 2+2 Fastback. She paid about $2,800 for the car which was about what she made in a year working as a secretary. It was the first car we had that had a rear seat that folded down so that you could put “long stuff” in the car that was in the trunk & car interior. Some young Marines stole the Mustang from our garage and took it for a “joy” ride and wrecked it over near the Stella bridge. Mom never thought the car ran quite as good after that. I think it had been turned on it’s side or upside down and the battery acid had leaked on the inside under the hood.

Amazing that brand new cars could go from being less than $3K a year to now $50K or more, easily.

I’ve had several cars in my lifetime that had fold down rear seats. The Mazda 626 had a split fold down seat. One side had a narrower fold down seat than the one beside it. The AMC Pacer (butterscotch in color) that we had had a fold down rear seat which provide a large area for carrying stuff.

My mom also bought me a brand new 1971 Pontiac LeMans (blue body and white roof) for my senior year at Swansboro High School. Oh my gosh! What a woman! I had the car for a year, and then when I started college, UNC-Chapel Hill in 1972, I couldn’t have a car as a Freshman, so mom took the LeMans.

It’s a little blurry, but one year (1970 – 72) mom was living and working up in Portsmouth, Virginia. She was still driving the Prairie Bronze Mustang. My prom (one of them) was coming up and she was supposed to drive down from Portsmouth so that I could drive the Mustang to the Prom.

It was getting to be late on a Friday, and when she finally drove up into Aunt Sis’s yard, she was driving a light blue Mustang. The story was that she had been taking the Mustang into the car dealer to have it tuned up for me, and someone had motioned her across lanes of traffic. She pulled out, and someone was coming and hit her. *I’ve never seen anyone bruised as badly as my mom. Her whole left side was a solid bruise. She must have been knocked hard against her driver’s side door during the impact.

They had repaired the car. Now that I think about it, it was in surprisingly good condition, except for the light blue paint job. She didn’t have time to let the paint dry and had to take it out to drive down, and sand had gotten in the wet paint and dried. It was like a rough light blue sandpaper. Oh, and the car was missing a couple of hub caps. Seems like we went out on Saturday morning and she bought a couple of used Mustang hub caps, so that I could drive the car to my prom. that night. *That must have been the prom in 1970 because mom bought the 1971 LeMans for my Senior year.

I must have confused the two proms. One prom I took Debbie, but the other I took Rida Ring. And one prom I took my date and Steve Cooper & his date and when I got to the prom, I had forgotten my tickets. Instead of going inside to straighten it all out, I let Steve out and drove all the way back to Sis’s to get my tickets. What a stupid ass. I could have saved all that time by just talking to a teacher and proving that I had paid for tickets later. The prom was at the John Yancey on Atlantic Beach which was closer to Atlantic Beach than to Bogue Sound, so that was a long way back and then back to the Prom.

I didn’t treat Rida well. I was selfish and inconsiderate. Nothing I can do about that now, but I am sorry and you were more than right to be angry at me.

At one of the proms, the Drifters were supposed to play. But, they had just come out with their new hit, “Far Away Places” and they backed out of our gig. I don’t recall who played, or if it was just recorded music. I didn’t realize until just now that this song had been made popular first by Bing Crosby back in 1948. But, this “Far Away Places” became “Beach Music” to me.

I just used Google Maps to figure out how many miles I drove one time on a date with Debbie. I was living in Hubert with my Aunt Sis. I drove down to Holly Lane in Cape Carteret to pick Debbie up at her house. We then drove back, through Hubert and in to Jacksonville to the Northwoods Rocking Chair Theater but nothing was playing that we wanted to see, so… We drove back through Hubert, through Cape Carteret and all the way down to Morehead City. We may have seen a movie down there (maybe not). But then I came back to Cape Carteret to drop Debbie off at her house, and then finally I drove back to Hubert. When I just mapped this route out it came to 116 miles and about 2 hours and 49 minutes of drive time. I don’t think we thought a thing about this. *I know we saw a Barbara Streisand movie down in Morehead City one time. It could have been the one with Omar Shariff. Maybe not because “Funny Girl” came out in 1968 and I wouldn’t have been driving yet.

This has nothing to do with Mother’s Day, my mom, or much of anything else. But, the prom that I took Debbie to, John Sharp, Steve Cooper and myself stayed in John’s dad’s camper at “the Point.” We drank Boone’s Farm Apple & Strawberry wine. The next morning I was going to see Debbie, but the new bridge hadn’t been opened to the public yet. John drove me to the beach side of the bridge and I had on my brand new black dress shoes that I had bought for the prom. They couldn’t drive across the bridge yet, so I started walking across the bridge and it didn’t take me too long before I wore blisters on the heels of both of my feet and had to take my new shoes off and walk barefoot. **Oh yeah, and John and Coop would have to drive all the way back to Atlantic Beach cross over and come back home on Highway 24. Not sure if they still had the auto ferry running, but I’ve always remembered this story as their having to drive all that way just because the new bridge wasn’t opened yet. ***No, if the ferry was still running, we would have just crossed over and I wouldn’t have had to walk.

So the DOT maintenance people had planted grass seed along the new road, and then spread out straw and then sprayed the straw with tar. This would keep the straw down on the ground protecting the new grass seed. Well, it didn’t take long for me walking barefoot through this straw and tar to have it cake on the bottoms of my feet and I didn’t need shoes. But, what a mess! I don’t recall how long it took me to get all that mess off my feet (days), but needless to say, I couldn’t go in the Sutton’s house. Debbie did drive me back home to Sis’s house in Hubert.

Steve Cooper died before our 20th Swansboro High School Class Reunion. I walked into the reunion and looked on the wall and saw Steve’s picture on the wall with about three other persons. I asked why his picture was on the wall and they told me he had died of a heart attack. *I guess that’s why we stopped conversing via emails. He was doing some interesting things with beaming home, color video, up to a satellite as it would pass overhead. Sort of a “high tech” version of Ham Radio. He also had a job working with a computer mainframe at (??? maybe) the University of Nebraska Hospital. Funny. I had just started my new job at Fayetteville State University for about $27K a year and he told me that as a signing bonus, the hospital had given him $27K. My yearly salary was his signing bonus. I think he was also married to a surgeon and that was at a $1 Mill a year salary, at least.

I just noted in the above images that when mom was mowing at the cemetery, there is no headstone for her mother, but there appears to be a marker at that location. In the present day image of the cemetery, there is a marker for her mother in the same style as her father’s headstone.

I don’t recall “the Mercury” but, the story was that they used to park their car(s) on Johnson Blvd., in front of the house at 204 Johnson Blvd. That was until someone ran into the parked Mercury and totaled it. *I never thought to ask if the carport hadn’t existed before the Mercury was totaled, but if it had there would have been no reason to park on Johnson Blvd.