When we camped

Camp Street

I was in the early thirties of life and still living at home with mamma in her house on Vickers and St Johns up the street. Daddy and her were still together, but his time was almost exclusively spent in Crawfordville, so there was no real urgency to pull from the best of all time apron strings. For a year or so I had my eye on Mr Emory Grays upstairs garage apartment for $125 a month, so when he called and told me it was again available, the future Morrell girl Vickie having moved out, I did not hesitate. My all the years here best friend Rick Bringger and my all time best bro friend Mark Philpot helped me load my few things and haul them up the steps. 

I was now, on my own, though I still lived on mamma’s cooking every evening. It wasn’t long before good things began happening, the best being I found in the mailbox below on the steps, a letter from a girl in Williston, asking if I’d teach her photography. A year had passed since I last tried to ask her out, she dating a doctor at Shands, so I had sort of given up. I did not hesitate and sent her a reply letter and set a time. 

And so the rest was history, good history. And it wasn’t too awful long we carried our first son Landon up the stairs, to share a corner of the one bedroom in the little crib, with Callie the cat wanting to cuddle with him. 

And it wasn’t long we knew this place with a view was much too small, so we were most fortunate to see Allan Crews several blocks up on Camp Street was selling his mothers home he grew up in, so our realtor Patty Mackey worked out all the offers and such, and before you know, we were down at Terry McDavids signing paper after paper for our first home. 

And the rest was history, good history.

And we still ride past and look up wistfully, hear mamma’s feet coming up the steps for a surprise visit, hear Emorys wife scolding him for something he didn’t do and he in his easy going way ignoring it. And we miss it, we miss the good history.