My two little playmates

There was a house next door to us. Billy and Betty Jean Lang lived there with their three children, Alison, Janet, and their little brother, I can't remerber his name right now. I will be talking about the little girls anyway. I used to go over to play with them even though they were about 6 and 8 years younger than I was. They would stand on their front porch and call over to our house," Tootlellen, Tootlellen, come play with us". So I would go over and play with them. That is how I got the nickname of "Tootellen", which they still call me to this day when we see each other. They were two of Mrs. Langs granddaughters, the lady that put the trailor next to our house and was our neighbor until she died. My grandparents lived in the little white house a few years after the girls lived there, and stayed there for several years until they went to live my Aunt Sue in Aberdeen, Mississippi.

Interesting Neighbor

When we were growing up we had some unusual neighbors, at least we thought so at the time. One of those people was a woman named Miss Julia Lewis. What made her unusual was she had one leg quite a bit shorter, maybe about 8 to 10 inches. I am guessing trying to remember back all those years. Anyway, I used to visit her and she would be sitting in a chair by the window usuing a big embrodiery hoop, or maybe it was a quilting hoop, quilting on a quilt. She made lots of quilts like this and I thought it was interesting because everyone else used the traditional frames which were four boards held together with c-clamps. She would just be holding the hoop on her lap. I guess she wasn't able to use the usual ones as it was hard for her to get around plus she probably didn't have anyone to help her roll the quilts as she finished a side. She always let us come in and visit her while she worked. Usually, she would give us some cookies or something. She had sone black servents to help her around the house. She lived together with her brother, I don't think he ever married either.
The reason her leg was shorter she was riding in a horse drawn buggy and the horse got spooked and starting running. She was thrown out of the buggy but was dragged behind and her leg was badly damaged. She wore a built up shoe with a really thick sole. Her brother's name was Dudley Lewis. He supplied our house with water from his "ram", a water tank, to our house until we were able to have our own well dug.