Back in the '30s a highlight to the summer for my mother and her sisters was visiting their Aunt Beulah, who lived with her family in Southwest Virginia in the village of Mud Fork near the West Virginia border.  To reach Mud Fork they would take the train from Roanoke, about a 4-hour ride, and be met in Bluefield by Aunt Beulah's husband Uncle Dock Wagner.  The road from the highway over into the country was unpaved and extremely crooked, and narrow.  Beulah and Dock lived in the house built by his parents, a two-story farm home with no indoor plumbing.  Dock was a farmer and Aunt Beulah taught school, saving money for their sons Paul and Gene to attend college. 

Aunt Beulah looked as much forward to these visits as my mom and her sisters.  There would be a bountiful supper prepared that might include fried chicken or country ham, green beans, potato salad, fresh corn from the garden, sliced tomatoes, and chocolate cake with Aunt Beulah's special burnt sugar icing.

A community social event of the summer was the church revival.  The summer my mother was 21, she and her sister Geraldine were visiting Aunt Beulah and Uncle Dock, and all attended the revival service on Monday evening.  

As my mother went to sit down in the pew, out of the corner of her eye she saw a hat quickly whisked away by the person to her left.   At the close of the service my dad confronted her, "DId you know you almost sat on my hat?"  

Hats for men were stylish in those days.  My dad enjoyed wearing his hat, as it gave him some additional height.  This night that hat changed the course of family history.  

My dad had graduated from college and was teaching school in the community.  He owned a car.  So he asked if he might pick up my mom for church the next night.  Thus began a courtship that blossomed into a long-lived marriage.