North Myrtle Beach - Part Three

Living at the beach was a great time in our lives. We were making new friends and keeping the old ones that were left behind in Charlotte. We enjoyed when they would come down to the beach and spend some time with us. As time passed, I could tell the living there was helping my back and I was able to do much more work that previously I thought I could. I was able to finish building our house and as I made friends around us, I was able to help them do some the things around their houses. It was not long before the word got around that I could make home repairs which kept me busy and I could get my mind off of my back pain.We joined First Baptist Church the first Sunday after we moved; it was different from Mulberry because we had more visitors than members almost every Sunday morning since so many folks vacationed in the area. We had a good Sunday school class, Thurman McLamb was a great teacher. It did not take long to get adjusted to this church and to get involved in it. We quickly learned all the best places to eat fish and other foods by becoming friends with folks that lived in the area.

After moving to the beach we got involved with a group of senior citizens, the Nifty Fiftys, that met at the First Baptist Church each Tuesday morning from nine until noon. Each week we would have a range of attendance from 100 to 150. We had refreshments and a good program every meeting. There was a group of people that liked to travel, their motto was, " Pay the Travel Agency - Not the Doctor." Everett Beaver was our travel leader and he had us going on trips that we never thought we could do. He had us traveling all over the world! We went on trips to Asia, Europe, Egypt, Morocco, Israel, Mexico, and Canada in addition to goingall over the eastern USA. We bought our own bus; I was the bus driver and I got to go freeand with what I was paid for driving, Hazel got to go for a very little which gave us the opportunity to go when and where we wanted. We went on over thirty cruises and many long and short trips. Sometimes we would have as many as 150 going on a cruise at a time and all the trips we had to limit it to the 47 seats that we had on the bus. On a lot of our cruises we had to charter as many as three buses. Some of our best trips were to New York, Maine, Nova Socia, Prince Edwards Island, Canada, Niagara Falls, New Orleans, Mississippi River boat, Texas, Copper Canyon Mexico, Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Lisbon, and many others. On those long trips we were able to find some of our best friends that have stuck with us for all these later years. Richard King was the leader of the Nifty Fifty's for most of the time we were there. After he died James Griffith did it for a while and when he gave it up I became the leader but not for long because we moved back to Charlotte in January of 2000. Listen to me tell this story.

North Myrtle Beach - Part Two

Our house at 4504 Lewis Street in North Myrtle Beach was finished in March of 1985 and we moved in on April 1, 1985. Tom and Margaret Worthy who owned Jet Express Delivery said that they would move us for only the gas it took. Before that, every trip down to the beach we would pack the van to the fullest so there would not be so much to take at one time.
We had already taken down our beds and most of our kitchen things and already had them put up just like we wanted. On this last trip, we just had to take all of the big items and all of my shop tools which made for a huge truckload. We had planned to leave Charlotte early in the day just as soon as Tom could get caught up on his deliveries. Work orders just kept coming in; in fact, it was one of his busy days. He did not get caught up until 6:00 p.m. that Friday! We got the truck loaded by 8:00 p.m. and started down the road to the beach. Tom and I were in the truck and Hazel and Margaret in our car. It was sort of a slow trip down so we arrived at the beach around 1:00 a.m. We got a little sleep and the next morning John and Sue Rogers were there early and helped us unload the truck. It was a busy day but we got everything in place and by night fall we all were ready for a good night’s rest.
The first morning after we move in at the beach we had twelve friends for breakfast which included Tom and Margaret Worthy, Jasper and Dixie Forbes, Dale and Candy Lawson, and four kids. From the first day we had opened our home at the beach to anyone that would come to visit. We had always said that it was God’s house because He was the one that made it possible for us to have. The house was not finished, we had not built the front porch or the shop on to the back. It was high enough that I could put all of my shop tools under the house and I had just enough space to do all of the work that I had to do.

It was not long after we moved in that a house under construction caught fire and burned to the ground; it had a big load of lumber that got burned a little on the end and the man gave it to me which was enough to build most of our front porch and the framing for the shop. When Larry Lambert finished the patio homes that he was building he gave me enough cedar siding for my shop on the back of our home so all I had to buy was the roof trusses, roofing, a door, and concrete for the floor. A couple in our Sunday School Class had built a big house and the contractor had put two wrong windows in and had to take them out. They let me have them for almost nothing. Things like this happened from the start to the finish of building our home at the beach, it had to be Gods way of helping us; we could not have done it on our own.  Listen to me tell this story.