I was the last born of my Mother's children but she also became the virtual Mother of my son Jamey who lost his biological Mother when he was a scant eight weeks old. That story will be told entirely in due time as I pursue the tale of my journey along the pathways of my life.

Mama and Daddy along with their young son Homer left (their original homeplace alongside "THE OLD SUNBURY ROAD" near camp Oliver adjacent to Glisson's mill pound near Daisy, Ga.) to seek a new beginning. Daddy simply took his young wife and son "down the road" toward the ocean. He veered slightly off of Sunbury road initially  somewhere around Midway and wound up in Riceboro where he found lodging for the three of them in a boarding house. Daddy worked for a time in Frank Hodges's store on the coastal highway near the Seaboard railroad.

Before much time passed Daddy found a job with the Fraser family who owned and operated a logging and sawmill business in the McIntosh community beside the Atlantic Coastline railroad. Daddy would go on to spend twenty six years there while the mill grew and prospered before finally withering to it's end approximately fifty years ago.

There remains today in McIntosh many of the original sawmill houses which were sometimes called shotgun houses. I don't know what the shotgun reference actually came from but I suspect it was a reference to how they were quickly put together and almost always laid out in such a fashion that you could stand at the front door and see the back door through the interior.

After a short time working at the mill an acre of land was purchased from the Quarterman family by the lumber company. Thereupon a small four room structure was quickly erected and Daddy and Mama along with Em and the new little girl child June  as well as Homer all moved into their new home. I am guessing that the house was first built after 1940 but before 1943. I say this because June was born in the Downs house (later to be known as the Simmons house) just West of the Quarterman place. That is where my family lived while their home was being built. It was common for families to live in crowded  conditions with two or more families  living under small roofs in crowded conditions.

I entered this world in my Mama's bedroom in the early morning hours of the third of April 1943. I've always liked my birth date 4-3-43, a pair of sevens and a lucky number. When I was born Em was away at war with the Liberty Independent Troop of the Georgia National Guard. My middle name Emory was chosen to honor Em.