From the time we first met in kindergarten, Betty and I were almost always together--except for a few grades in elementary school when we got different teachers.
We lived in Cochran, a town of five thousand with a college at one end and a string of stores at the other.
We went to the First Baptist Church and we were both in G.A.s (Girls Auxiliary, for those of you who didn't grow up Baptist). Depending on how many Bible verses a girl learned in G.A.s, she'd attain a certain royal ranking: Maiden, Lady-in-Waiting, Princess, Queen. On the only thing in which I ever bested Betty, I made it all the way to Queen, and she stalled out at Lady in Waiting.
By high school, she was the star solo twirler--and I was amazed watching her toss two flaming fire batons into the night air over the football field, dancing, twirling, never missing a beat. I never even made it to basic majorette.
In the eyes of our piano teacher--Miss Marguerite--Betty was clearly the superior talent. "Exquisite!" she used to say to Betty. To me, she said, "You have a nice touch."
Betty tells me that my IQ was two points higher than hers (we snuck a peak in the principal's files one day while he was away for the day), but it's Betty who has a steel-trap memory, not me.
We have just spent three days together in the beautiful North Georgia mountains. What a remarkable thing it is to have a friendship that has lasted for over 60 years! With Betty's memory, she can instantly transport us both back into the chalk-dusty classrooms of the 1950s and she can make me laugh harder than anyone, ever.
When we were girls, we spent hours and hours sitting in my parents' car (Lloyd's and Carlene's) or in her parents' carport (Charlie's and Ethel's), talking. We took off whenever we felt like it and walked through the woods or played at The Big Ditch or under the bridge by the college. Nothing much ever seemed to happen in Cochran, Georgia, but we had complete freedom to wander, unsupervised, all over our safe little Mayberry of a town.
Once or twice, stirred by some revival preacher--we actually considered going to Africa as foreign missionaries, but that plan didn't last long. Another time, inspired by a movie, we fantasized about getting pink jeeps and round pink beds and matching pink poodles.
Betty insists she can't write--she's ceded that to me. I may be moderately humorous, but Betty is hilarious. Here's her memory of her fourth grade teacher:
"Mrs. Garrett—here's the deal about her—she was the sort of person people liked. It was a curious thing, Linda, that people loved her, and yet she was crazy. And I knew both things at the same time. I liked her and I feared her and I knew something wasn’t quite right. I remember Kathy and I going to see her where she lived--you know those apartments up by the college? Mrs. Garrett told us about daddies who took their whole families up to the attic and chopped them to pieces and convicts coming and killing whole families. And big birds at the center of the world who hatched babies that would destroy us all."
As a 4th grade student who caught on fast, she was among the chosen few in Mrs. Garrett's class who were allowed to make papier mache ducks and candy houses while the slower students looked on longingly.
"My cousin Frances Nell had had Mrs. Garrett the year before and Mother seemed real pleased that I got her. I remember the conversation between Charles and Ethel about what a good teacher she was--based in part on the fact that Frances Nell had made As and B's all year. Well, on my first report card I came home with three Bs--and Ethel was not pleased! She marched right down to the schoolhouse and had a talk with Mrs. Garrett and all the B's but one got changed to As--and I never got another B."
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