The Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina provide the early setting for Tales of Two Gails. Two friends, both named Gail, close for more than sixty years, share true stories of meeting challenges and overcoming hardships with stories of inspiration, faith, and humor.

Gail Shepherd Diederich and Gail Kelly Lester began their friendship as tiny babies in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Grandparents for both provided support and love, guiding two little girls through family hardships. In the years that followed high school, the lives of the two Gails went in different directions; during decades of professional success, marriage, and raising children the two rarely saw each other but never lost contact.

Their strong bond of friendship held them close in heart. Then e-mail came along; the distance between them was bridged, and the two friends were close again. One Gail was a news writer, and both enjoyed writing a good story. They took off on a late-in-life adventure, telling of the people and events that led them successfully through their lives. Their stories are told with humor, strong faith, and hopes that the stories will inspire others to move past negatives and find the positives in life.

TALES OF TWO GAILS

By GAIL SHEPHERD DIEDERICH GAIL KELLY LESTER

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Gail Shepherd Diederich and Gail Kelly Lester
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-5447-2

Contents

Acknowledgments By Gail Kelly Lester..............................xiPreface...........................................................xvINTRODUCTION From Birth to Book..................................1Two Gails Through Sixty Years.....................................7Living, Loving and Overcoming.....................................12Taking to the Woods...............................................19Grandma's Love Lives On...........................................23Miz Shoo-der's Bikkits............................................28Margie and the Bubble Blower......................................30A Grandpa's Love..................................................33Grandpa's Coat Pocket.............................................38Sam, Prince Albert, and Buried Treasure...........................42Chicken Stealing..................................................45Mrs. Arnold's Words...............................................48Aunt Maggie and a Box of Books....................................53Bobby and the Book*...............................................58Denied but Not Rejected...........................................60Growing Up Without Electricity....................................65Going to Florida..................................................69A Different Kind of Mother........................................73Teenage Antics....................................................81Small Rumps and a Turkey Roaster Pan..............................87A Letter in the Mail and Someone Believes.........................90A New Beginning and a Final Goodbye...............................93Caught on Camera..................................................101Different Roads, Same Friendship..................................106Teaching Found Me*................................................109Miss Hazel*.......................................................114A Special Gift*...................................................117A Bully, My Kitty and Changed Ways................................119A Brown Turkey Made Me Think......................................1221 Baby Girl + 1 Baby Calf = 2 Frantic Farmers.....................124Pacifiers, Mules, and Cornbread...................................130Eatin' Taters.....................................................133My Knight in Shining Armor........................................137Bullet and the Mob Boss...........................................143Olympic Gold......................................................147Green Jeep, Pink Car..............................................152High Heels and Heavy Things.......................................156The Road to Killeen...............................................159From Pink to Purpose..............................................164EPILOGUE..........................................................168

Chapter One

Two Gails Through Sixty Years By Gail Kelly Lester

We were brought up together from the time we were tiny girls in the same rural mountain community of three families living near a dirt road. One year older than me, Gail Shepherd (RHGail in these stories) had a full head of beautiful red hair, freckles sprinkling her nose and cheeks, a wide grin, and a gleam in her eyes contemplating from where the next new experience might come. Even ordinary mundane things offered the potential of becoming something significant and worthy of exploration. She was amazingly clever, possessed a vivid imagination, and remembered most everything in great detail.

Nearly three years older than me, with the same lovely red hair that glistened in the sun, was RHGail's sister, Ann. She had a quiet smile, enjoyed reading, was more studious, and less rambunctious than the two Gails, yet she was a good playmate. Even though we were younger, Ann participated in most of our early nonsensical escapades.

Our family living arrangements were similar. Ann, RHGail, and their parents resided with Mrs. Julie Shuler, their maternal grandmother. My mother and I lived within shouting distance with my grandparents and other extended family members including my cousin, Della, who was a few years older than all of us kids. In the early 1950s, three generations living together in the same home was fairly common in our area.

The only thing separating us from each other and a fun-filled day was a small "branch" of water flowing from the mountains, tumbling over rocks underneath a narrow foot-log spanning the narrow gap between two banks, a fence gate that was never locked, and permission from adults allowing us to play together. On most days, if we behaved, permission was granted, giving us freedom to roam the hills and hollows and explore new things.

"Hold my hand tightly so you don't fall in the creek," Della would warn as she fulfilled her responsibility of helping me safely across the foot log when I was a small child.

Once across, she would let go of my hand and turn to go back home. I'd burst through Mrs. Shuler's gate with wild abandon, hardly able to contain the excitement and anticipation of exploring new things and playing with my friend, RHGail. When it was time for me to go home Della dutifully came to retrieve me and usher me back across the foot-log.

Many times, I would make her task much more difficult by wailing loudly, "I don't want to go home!"

Nonetheless, Della would coerce me up the hill with some form of creative diversion. The scene repeated itself numerous times until I got old enough to cross the foot-log by myself.

In the days before every home had television, we were compelled to find creative ways to entertain ourselves with whatever was available, finding adventure in the simplest of pleasures. Climbing trees, along with games of hop-scotch and jump rope, kept us busy. Watching for the mail man to arrive at the end of the lane with the possibility of a letter from a distant loved one sent us racing from the porch to see what had been delivered. A large, empty hole dug in the sloping road bank and used as a root cellar, providing winter storage for vegetables, became a "cavern" we explored in the summer months. The depths of our imaginations went much farther than the actual hole. The barn loft offered numerous summer activities, though some were cut short by cautious adults.

"Stay out of that barn loft. You could fall out the door or down the manger and break your neck," they'd say, and send us away from the big loft with the sweet smelling hay and drying corn.

Areas of a giant maple tree's massive above-ground roots were "houses" for our stick dolls with leaf dresses. We each had our own "house" on opposite sides of the tree and our stick people visited each other, chatting over imaginary tea and sugar cookies. Exploring the spring house usually got us in trouble as did playing in the branch. Our parents thought we would surely catch a death of cold if our feet got wet in the cold mountain water.

Long summer days provided time to discover numerous ways to fill the hours between dawn and dusk. Fat June bugs, with one leg anchored to a string, became airplanes, buzzing helplessly in an attempt to escape our snare until the poor bug succumbed to our antics. Roly polies (woodlice) that lived underground in the soft earth alongside the woodshed couldn't escape us.

"Doodle bug, doodle bug, doodle, doodle, doodle," we droned, hovering low over the powdery dirt sometimes gently stirring the dusty soil with a twig.

The pestered, dazed creatures surfaced in response to our incessant calls as if to ask, "What is it this time?!"

Near dark, capturing fire flies in a glass Mason jar offered late evening fun before we were sent off to bed, lying in the dark, windows open, and the cool damp mountain air settling around us. Pillows with feathers plucked from our own chickens cushioned our heads and we'd pull handmade quilts under our chins. The chilly dark stillness was broken only by the lonesome call of a whip-poor-will.

Wild blackberry briars and strawberry plants along with a June apple tree heavy laden with summer fruit in Mrs. Shuler's yard provided many nourishing snacks. In the fall, black walnut trees yielded nuts for us to enjoy. The nuts were encased in a thick green outer coating that was mushy inside. Once they had fallen from the tree, we patiently waited a few weeks for them to dry. Then we removed the outer shell that had turned black in the drying process. When sufficiently dry, we'd crack the walnuts with a hammer on a large, flat stone that doubled as a step from the kitchen porch. We often smashed our fingers and would frequently take our little bowls of nuts to Mrs. Shuler.

"Do we have enough yet?" we'd ask.

"Oh, I think we'll need more than that," she'd say, and we'd head back to the hammer, rock, and walnuts.

The process, including the mashed fingers, was worth the efforts, because we usually earned one of Mrs. Shuler's delicious walnut pound cakes. Using butter and milk from cows in the barn and plenty of eggs from the chickens a few feet away in the hen house, Mrs. Shuler would take her big bowl and wooden spoon and, without a recipe, put together a rich cake, stirring in the walnuts at the last minute. We'd hang around the kitchen door, inhaling the rich smell as the cake baked in the old Roman Eagle wood cookstove. Slices of warm walnut cake washed down with ice cold whole milk slid into eager little stomachs with great satisfaction.

Wild persimmons from tall trees high on the hill above my Grandpa's house caused our mouths to pucker if they weren't fully ripe and sent us racing for a drink of cold water to wash the dreadful taste away. Shocks of corn stalks tied together at the top and left to dry in the field provided us with temporary tee-pees where it was fun to pretend we were Cherokee Indian maidens. Snowfall meant no school for a few days and ample time for fun, snowball fights, and winter exploration.

Rainy days found us indoors, our curious minds seeking out new fun. We'd often spend time in Mrs. Shuler's attic prowling through dusty boxes searching for unexpected treasures, reading stories, playing with paper dolls, or cutting pictures from the Sears Roebuck catalog. One rainy day, we were at Mrs. Shuler's ancient pump organ with RHGail intensely eyeing sheet music while fingering the keys. She pumped the pedals vigorously with her feet, while pulling and pushing the assorted knobs. At last, she plunked out the beautiful sound of the old hymn, "In the Garden." Standing by in awe while attempting to harmonize the words, I thought she was an absolute genius! Even now, hearing the hymn reminds me of the time my friend figured out all by herself how to play it on the pump organ.

Because we both had the same first name and were frequently together, out of necessity Mrs. Shuler devised a creative way to distinguish one Gail from the other.

"Gail, come here!" she'd call out and, obediently, we'd both run to her.

"No, not you, the red-headed Gail," she would clarify after glancing at me.

If I was the one needed, she'd look at the red-headed Gail and say, "Not red-headed Gail, the other Gail."

Sixty years later, the names still stand.

Chapter Two

Living, Loving and Overcoming By Gail Shepherd Diederich

Telling stories about your own life is baring the soul to the world, opening a window for others to see you in ways they may never have imagined. It's life changing to write about those events that, piece by small piece, shaped us into the individuals we are with values and morals stemming from a time long past.

In a college course long ago, I heard a statement by Texas psychiatry professor Dr. Morris Massey, expressing his theory that our basic values for the remainder of our lives are laid down solidly by the time we are about ten. Dr. Massey's words that stayed with me long after the class ended were, "You are what you were when."

Over the years, I've reflected on how events and people in my life, at a very young age, influenced the remainder of my life and my general outlook. It's powerful and revealing to see the connection. Even the hardships and negatives of those years turned into positives along the way, and the lessons learned made a vast difference in choices made later in life, continuing even now that I am past the sixty year mark.

I was fortunate to have been born and raised in an isolated pocket of the Appalachian mountains of western North Carolina, an area known for its scenic beauty as well as hardworking, God fearing, and God worshipping people. They are people who value privacy, honor integrity, and are strong willed and persevering against odds. Holding fast to what they believe deeply, they will stand against the multitudes to defend their beliefs. I cherish those values that have shaped my life.

My ancestors came to the mountains of western North Carolina by way of Sevierville, Tennessee, about 1863, as the stories go. In the late 1960s, sitting in the swing on the front porch with Grandma as twilight fell, she'd tell me stories from the past of how her grandparents were fearful of the approaching Union Army, and with their household supplies, cattle, and dry food such as cornmeal, they walked over what is now Newfound Gap and eventually followed the Little Tennessee River into the Oak Grove community of Macon County. In a beautiful little hollow, they stopped, built a log cabin, and raised a family. One of their children was my great-grandmother, Lucy Morrison. She married Marion Bradley, and their first child was Julia Ellen Bradley (Shuler), my Grandma, a key figure in my life and whose values and influence I feel every day. I honored her by giving her name to my daughter when she was born in 1979.

In those wonderful mountains in February 1950, when I was thirteen months old, a special little girl, Gail Annette Kelly, was born and became part of my life. Our grandparents lived "across the branch" from each other, "the branch" being a small stream separating our properties where corn and potatoes grew in abundance every year. A narrow foot log over "the branch" completed the path between our two homes. TOGail and her mother lived with her grandparents and, until I was five, I lived with my parents and sister at my grandma's house.

Even from the youngest age, TOGail was friendly and spirited and I thought she was just beautiful in spite of skinned knees, smudged face, and unkempt hair. I also thought she was the luckiest person I could imagine because, either real or created in my mind, everyone in her family simply adored her and gave her candy at every holiday. Looking back, I realize these ideas were most likely the workings of my own overactive imagination. TOGail was like a shiny gem in a bucket of gravel, a perception I still feel after more than half a century.

Grandma's place was a large farmstead with a two story farm house built with a large front porch, a smaller back porch, and a can house for food storage that was added on later. Other farm buildings included a log barn with stalls for many animals with room for hay and corn storage in the loft, a large chicken house with a fenced hen run, a smaller chicken house, a hog pen, a corn crib, a smokehouse, an outhouse and a woodshed. Completing the farmstead was a spring house. Built under towering poplar trees with roots forming a dome over an overflowing mountain spring, the water was so cold it would make your teeth chatter even on the hottest summer day.

All of the farm buildings, including the house, and many acres were fenced. Cows and pigs roamed freely, the hogs often seeking the cool shade under the house that was built a few feet off the ground on a stacked stone foundation. As a young child, there was comfort that the animals I loved were nearby when the familiar sound of a hog scratching its back on the exposed sills underneath the house filled the night's darkness.

The farm was plentiful with life in all forms. In the spring, daffodils and jonquils bloomed in abundance and purple irises popped up at the edge of the garden. Along the fence, blackberries bloomed, their heavy briars spilling over the fence and promising the delightful berries that would come in July. Spring brought baby pigs, calves, little chicks, and always kittens hidden away in the barn or woodhouse and delightful for a young child's discovery. A large garden was fenced off inside the already fenced property and enormous amounts of vegetables were raised for canning and drying, a bolster against cold, snowy winter days.

A couple of hogs were raised and butchered in the biting cold of winter, filling many family needs. The pork side meats were heavily salted and stored in the meat box in the smokehouse where shelves held large pottery crocks. In these, Grandma kept meat skins to render for the beginnings of lye soap. Using a large iron pot underneath a giant maple near the spring house, Grandma would add necessary things, including Red Devil lye, and boil and stir the mixture with a long wooden paddle over a hot fire for what seemed like hours. She knew the right time to let the fire die, then covered the iron pot containing the grayish mixture with a cloth, and waited a few days for it to "set" so she could slice it into blocks. It was stored for the coming year's use anywhere soap was needed from washing clothes to bathing small children.

The farm supplied most of the food for our family. Cows provided more milk, butter, and cream than could be used and chickens laid more eggs than needed. They were sold or bartered for supplies we didn't grow such as coffee, tea, sugar, and flour. Corn was raised and, when dried to hard kernels, it was shelled and taken to the corn grinder at a small general store and ground for corn meal, a staple of southern mountain diets. Cane was raised, and, in the fall, it was cut and taken to a local farmer who had a grinding mill and boil-off vat for making molasses. It was a simple life that rarely included trips to the grocery store.

Store bought sweet treats such as candy and cookies were rare, so I grew up loving apples which were abundant from a variety of trees. Grandma had grafted several trees, and the flavors of many apples we had then are not found commercially today. I remember both their look and their taste with great fondness, especially a black-freckled, yellow sweet apple.

Grandma put to good use her domestic skills. In addition to canning, drying, and preserving food to see us through a cold winter, she sewed and quilted for our family and also for community members. She was never idle except for Sunday, a day of rest designated by the Bible and by people who held Christian values close.

Religion was an important factor in our early lives. We never owned a car, so we would walk to Ridgecrest Baptist Church and sit through services that, to a small child, seemed interminably long. There wasn't a children's room, so sitting still on the hard wooden pews was soothed by a small cracker and a stern look from my mother. In the summer, revival meetings in the evenings would draw us to the same church. Walking home in the dark was a treat with Daddy carrying a large red kerosene lantern that held my curiosity. It lit the path along the rocky and rough road to Grandma's house. After the revival meetings, a baptism was held in the Watauga Creek, the souls of those repenting washed clean as a congregation stood on the nearby creek banks singing songs like "Shall We Gather at the River" and "Amazing Grace".

(Continues...)

Excerpted from TALES OF TWO GAILSby GAIL SHEPHERD DIEDERICH GAIL KELLY LESTER Copyright © 2010 by Gail Shepherd Diederich and Gail Kelly Lester. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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