By Delores Wilson, September 13, 2018 — What me and my three girl cousins thought was part of the boardwalk to the beach, my grandmother, who was native American, set the record straight. She said, “No children, it was part of a slave block.”
My mother’s side of the family was great storytellers. Knowing how to keep us engaged and working at the same time.
Each one of us girls would have a large bowl filled with beans to shell and snap. Grandmom at the same time would engage us with exciting stories. My grandparents owned a tobacco farm in Little Washington, North Carolina near the Reak River, a tributary of the Atlantic Ocean.
My two brothers and myself were sent there [each] summer until we were 12 years old and we started going at 6. I appreciated the city and country experience. The year that my grandfather passed, my grandmom supposedly said, “You will be back for me.”
My uncle was wise, he told my grandma he would build her a house. My uncle had inherited the farm even though the house that my uncle and his family lived in belonged to her. She wanted her own house. Every Sunday before he took her to church, grandmom would walk up the road to see the progress of the house. I overheard my uncle tell my mother that he really had to get going and complete the house. Twenty years later, the petit, just over 4-foot giant became alive again, sharing stories to whom everyone would listen.