Legacy Of:

ADENA KINCAID FLESHMAN LUSHER

Started in 1984

"Just A Minute"

"I have only just a minute,

Just sixty seconds in it.

Forced upon me, can't refuse it,

Didn't seek it, didn't choose it.

I must suffer if I lose it,

Give account if I abuse it.

Just a tiny little minute,

But eternity is in it."

"Redeeming the time, because the days are evil." (Eph. 5:17)

"Will try to redeem some of the time left. It may be short."

PREFACE

I was born into a poor farmer's home. We lived in poverty most of our lives, Worked hard but did nothing to improve the world God gave up except work hard, raise a large family with God's help.

After twenty-two years of married life with my husband, he was taken away by death, leaving me to raise our family as a widow With God's help. But God blessed me and I could feel his presence, and I am thankful he gave me a good Christian heritage to remember from my childhood.

My mother was an angel while here on earth and I am sure she is one in heaven, so I thank god for every blessing and ask him to help me write a few incidents that happened in my past life that may be of interest to the younger generation, as the world changes some each year.

I have been asked by several youths of this day to do this, so please bear with me. You may find many mistakes to be corrected.

OUR FAMILY TREE

(Date of Birth)

HENRY NOEL KINCAID November 16, 1859

ELIZABETH JANE BURDETTE May 30, 1864

(These were married - June 18, 1882 and unto this union were born twelve children - seven boys and five girls.)

OLEN JEHU KINCAID March 31, 1883

HETTIE FRANCIS KINCAID March 5, 1885

EVERETTE ROSCOE KINCAID May 20, 1887

PEARLIE RANDOLPH KINCAID Dec 21, 1889

ANN AND PRISCILLA JANE KINCAID (twins) May 15, 1892

CHARLES MONTVILL KINCAID Nov 20, 1894

HENRY MARVIN KINCAID Feb 15, 1897

LUTENA FLOSSIE KINCAID Oct 30, 1899

ADENA KINCAID July 18, 1902

BERNARD ESTELLE KINCAID Jan 23, 1904

AUSTEN THELMORE KINCAID Nov 9, 1907

I was four years old.

The first thing I remember is when my oldest sister Hettie was married to Calvin Landy in 1906. The month of September. The wedding was to be in the living room of our old farmhouse. My mother would meet the guests as they arrived, take their hats, (most every lady wore hats then) and mother would take them and lay in a back room on the bed.

One lady wore a hat that was trimmed with a bunch of blue artificial grapes. I thought they were real and when no one was looking I climbed on the bed, pulled them off the hat and was trying to eat them when one of my older sisters caught me, and O'boy did my fanny pay for it. But still I like the blue grapes. Huh!

The next thing that comes to my remembrance is November 9, 1907. We lived on a farm and my dad usually started in cold weather to feed the cattle and do up night work about 5 pm. But this special day he went out extra early. Also my older sisters got and early supper. We all ate our supper. We had a big wood stove in Mom's room where we all stayed most of the time to play and work, get lessons and sew, etc. But we had what everyone then called a parlor. It also had a bed in it for guests who would drop in occasionally.

So after supper on this special night, someone had built a fire in that room, as it was November and rather cool. One of my older sisters took all of up smaller children back in there and wouldn't let us out. Finally she put up to bed in there. Well, that was unusual, so I, being a nosey kid, began to want to know why? I thought of everything I could to find an excuse to go out through the house because I could hear voices in the hallway and other parts of the house. I had to go to the toilet; I had to have a drink of water. So my dad, who never had much patients anyway, brought me a drink, then gave me a spank and told me to lay down and go to sleep or he would get a willow switch to me. Well, I remembered the blue rings left around my legs before from a switch, so I didn't want that. I laid down and went to sleep shortly.

Next morning when we woke and went to Mom's room, there was Granny Lusher, feeding a newborn baby. Mom said, "See our new baby! We call him Austin Thelmore, he's your brother." He was #12, the last of our gang.

There we were, a whole dirty dozen as we often referred to ourselves. We grew up together in poverty, but one thing we had plenty of was LOVE. We did a lot of fighting among ourselves but one thing sure, we all would fight the world for each other and we shared everything together until the older ones began to get jobs and leave home or marry and go into homes of their own.

My sister Flossie was next to me and we were real companions. We slept together, played together, worked together, wore each other’s clothes and told each other secrets, etc.

Back in the years when I was a child growing up, things were so different to what they are today. People grew their vegetables in gardens, spun wool into yarn and knitted their socks, mittens and sweaters, etc. They picked berries and other fruits in summer and dried them to have to eat in the winter months. They never went to a store to buy their food like they do now. They would have big barrels of dried apples put away for winter and when they were cooked and made into pies, they were so delicious. By the time I was grown into adulthood, people had begun to can their food in glass jars instead of dried food, and put in cellars for winter use.

They sewed, made most of their clothes, knit socks, stockings, gloves and sweaters, etc. By taking wool of their sheep and spinning it into yarn and then knitting it into garments.

They even made soap to wash their clothes. How did they do it? I can remember when I was a small child helping Mom and Dad make what they called an "Ash Hopper." Most every family had to burn wood in wood stoves to heat their homes in the winter, or a fireplace, thus they had a lot of wood ashes to dispose of. They made the ash hopper and put the ashes in it. It was a big box made of planks, wide at the top and tapered at the bottom, with a few holes bored in the bottom. We kids had to carry water and pour into toe top of the hopper. When it drained out the bottom it was caught in a stone jar. Then it was lye. They put it into a big iron kettle and when they butchered hogs each fall, they always cleaned the entrails and took them and all meat scraps that weren't used for food and boiled them in the lye until it ate up all the meat. This stood over night to get cold and then it was cut into squares and laid in a cool place to dry. That was our "cakes" of soap. That's what we used to wash our clothes, dishes and floors and most everything else. Sometimes we had to use it to bathe with and if we children got poison ivy on up, Mom would wet the soap and Rub it over the place that was broken out with the poison ivy. It hurt to beat the thunder but it always killed the poison and that would save paying a doctor bill for other medicine, see!

One day a message came to Dad that someone had found our brother Monty on the road near Sandstone which was about ten miles from where we lived. He was so sick he couldn't sit up. Dad saddled a mule and went to get him, took him to a doctor and found he had diphtheria. There were seven of up kids at home at the time and diphtheria is a contagious disease. We all had a round with it and by the time we began improving from that, poor Mom came down with a bad spell of asthma which she was subject to at different times of the year. She had overworked herself taking care of us also. I was only ten years old at that time but I had to take over cooking, milking cows, churning milk to make our butter, etc. Well, in short, all the house work, because diphtheria had left Flossie with a bad throat which kept her sick for some months before she really got able to help with the work. All the older girls had already left home, gone to homes of their own or had jobs away from home. Dad and I had to wait on Mom and Flossie and do the best we could with the housework. So I have been cooking, washing dishes and etc., ever since. Now I am eighty-two years old. A lot of water has run under the bridge since those days.

The diphtheria had left Flossie with a bad throat that did not seem to get better very fast. She was sick for months. I was worried about her. She was not able to go to school and I was afraid she would die. Christmas came while she was sick and some neighbor gave her a dish doll for Christmas, "because she was so sick."

Our Grandpa, his name was Lewis Burdette, came to spend Christmas with us and brought a bag of candy hearts for up kids. They were about half the size of my hand. When they were divided we all had one apiece. The rest of the kids ate theirs but mine was so pretty, I kept it to look at. One day I wanted to be extra good to Flossie, so we were playing with our dolls and mine was a rag doll Mom made for me but Flossie's dish doll had a wee mouth, so I told Flossie I would give her half my candy heart and we could eat it. But when she tasted it she didn't want it as her throat was still sore. So we poked it into her doll's mouth, tiny wee bits at a time until it was all gone. Then we both cried because we had no more candy heart.

When I was only eight years old I remember our old big two-story farmhouse burned down. We had all had a spell of the flu and were just getting over it and some of the older children had gone back to school. Dad had gone somewhere to get some lumber, Mom was at home with us smaller children when she discovered the house was on fire on top of the roof and she had no way to get up to it. All she could do was get up kids out and away from it. So out we went. But I remember brother Bud was upstairs in bed asleep. I ran back, dragged him downstairs, he was almost as big as I and I couldn't carry him. He was screaming for life it seemed, so Mom came running back and helped us both to safety. She took up all across a creek. The house was falling in by this time. I have never forgotten that awful fire.

My Dad and older brother came back just as the house was falling in. Nothing could be done but watch. Everything was lost. There were nine of us children at home at this time plus Dad and Mom. Nowhere to go and no clothes except what we had on. It was the 9th day of February 1910, cold and snowy. But God in his mercy took care of us. When night came we scattered over toe neighborhood to find a place to sleep. There were so many of us so we didn't all go to the same place. But in a few days arrangements were made. A neighbor and his wife had gone to spend the winter with their folks and left their house furnished. So he gave Dad permission for us to stay in his house until we could make other arrangements. There were to many of us to stay with our neighbors all together.

Dad finally got things together and built a four-room shanty as he called it, for us to stay in until he could do better. He never did build another. All the food that Mom had worked so hard through the summer to can up for winter was destroyed in the fire. Back then people had to raise their crops in the summer to have something to eat in winter. My Dad raised a crop of cane each year to make molasses, corn to make bread, potatoes, beans and other vegetables, hogs for our meat, cows to make our milk and butter. People did not go to the store and buy food then as they do now. So we still had cows to furnish milk and butter, and as the "corn crip" (as we called it) was far enough away for the house so it didn't burn, thus we had our corn bread and milk from the cows. We lived mostly on milk and bread until weather got warmer and we could plant and grow our garden again.

As time went on, my older sisters and bothers began to get jobs and move away from home. Some married and some went into homes of their own. Brother Olan married Nora Holcomb. Roscoe married Isabelle Bowen. Pearl married Chlora Goddard. Ann married Dana Kelly. Priscilla married William E. "Billy" Knight. Priscilla And Ann were twins. Monty married Lolta ( I can't remember her last name.) Marvin married Catherine Harrah. So that bought us down to Flossie - my dearest companion.

By this time she was dating the boys, and one steady boy became her special date. His name was Randolph Reynolds, which proved to be her mate for life. When she told me she was going to be married I begged her not to, and Oh how I cried. But love won out and she was married to Ran Reynolds on December 25, 1917 at the Reynolds home at 11 O'clock am, Christmas Day. The families of both bride and groom were to be there. I didn't want to go, but Mom made us all be present. When the minister said " I Now Pronounce You Man And Wife", I burst into tears and ran out the door and ran home to weep. I felt I had lost my very best friend. I didn't realize it meant happiness for her and Ran, because I had never been in love.

A short time after Flossie and Ran were married, our dear mother was stricken with tuberculosis. It's no wonder, the life she lived. She started raising babies at the age of eighteen, gave birth to one every two years until there were twelve of us. She never had a washing machine and had to tub the dirt out of our clothes on a washboard. She never had any of the conveniences we have today to make-work easier. She made all our clothes, scrubbed wood floors with a broom, raised a garden in the summer and canned food for winter’s use, with all the extra work that goes with raising a family. Everything had to be done the hard way. It's no wonder her health broke at age fifty-two. Bless her soul. I never heard her complain once about anything. She was a real angel all the time.

I waited on her and did all the house work the best I could, as she was sick several years. Then on January 15, 1919, she left us and went to be with Jesus. I'm sure she is in heaven. I'm sure there was never a better mother. We all missed her so much, and still do.

That brought us down to four in the family. Dad, two younger brothers and myself. I was somewhere around sixteen at this time and Mom had turned a lot of the house work over to me in the past two years because she was not able to work. But now it all fell on me to manage. Our Grandpa Burdette stayed with us a lot. He had two other children living, Uncle Ben Burdette and Aunt Josie Grimmett. So he just visited around between the three children and had no real home of his own. He stayed mostly with us. He was with us when Mom passed away and stayed with us for several months after Mom passed away. I can't forget the day he left. He went to Aunt Josie Grimmetts and I can see him now as he started out walking with his cane. He was real old and soon after that, he died. I never saw him after he left me that day.

When I needed advice, I would go to Aunt Leah Harris. They lived about a mile and a half away from our home. Soon I began to look to her as a mother and she was always there to help me or give me advice when it was needed. Bless her heart. She was so precious to me.

We all had to work in the summer to help raise the crops; corn, beans, potatoes, cane and what ever else we could raise to live on. We never had much money except Dad kept a small flock of sheep to furnish what money needs we had to have, such as doctor bills, clothes, taxes, etc. Every May or June he would gather the sheep and clip the wool off them and take it to market, then on October or November he would take what lambs he had raised to market. Those two sales were all we had for money unless he would sell a calf or two. We had to save it to buy our shoes, clothes and books for school.

We kids had to go barefoot after the weather got warm in the spring until it frosted. Then Dad and Mom would go to the little country store in our neighborhood and buy us all a pair of shoes apiece and clothe to make our clothes out of. Mom would start sewing until she was around to each of us with an outfit. That's the way we grew up until the older children began to leave home for work or marriage.

After Mom passed away the days were so long and lonely for me. I missed her so much and spent long hours crying alone. We had to walk five miles to get to church and then five miles back home, so we never got to church very often, but there was a one-room schoolhouse in our neighborhood where we had Sunday school. All the neighbors would gather in this little schoolhouse for Sunday school services. Once in a great while we would walk the five miles to Green Sulphur Springs, to church. Mom had been gone about two years when I noticed Dad begin to get restless. Seemed he was not satisfied anywhere or with anything we kids did.

My sister Anna came home to visit when she lived in Ohio. She wanted Dad to go home with her for a visit so he got Aunt Leah Harris to come and stay with us kids and he went back with Anna for a week visit. While he was there he met a widow woman. Her name was Cassie Cooper. They corresponded by mail for a while. Then Dad went back there, married her and brought her home to West Virginia. We kids didn't like the idea but there was nothing we could do about it. It was after dark the day they came home so she couldn't see the surroundings of our home until daylight the next day.

I got up as usual, made breakfast for us all and when we had eaten; she walked out in the backyard and looked all around. I was standing in the kitchen door. She said "Well! There is one thing I can say, your father is a truthful man". I said "Sure he's truthful, but what do you mean?" She said "He told me when he proposed that he had nothing to offer me but himself. All he had was three children at home and a little cabin built between two hills in West Virginia and the only way one could see was straight up! And I decided he was a wealthy man." I knew right then she was looking for a wealthy man and had been disappointed. But I had to laugh! That was in the latter part of November.

During the winter months Cassie talked Dad into selling everything and going to Ohio to live. She owned her own home in Ohio. Dad did as she wanted him to but was not satisfied in Ohio. We children either had to go with them or get jobs and go out on our own.

Brother Ted (as we called him then) was too young to get work, but brother Bud found a job on a sawmill in the neighborhood and boarded with a neighbor. Ted had to go with Dad. I went to Oak Hill and got a job doing housework for an invalid lady, taking care of her while her husband was at work. He was a railroader. When he went out on a run, he would be gone for two or three days at a time. My job was to take care of his wife and do the housework. His name was Lloyd Bryant and his wife's name was Vivian. I stayed with them one summer, but kept in touch with my brother Bud by mail, and also with Dad and Ted.

One day a letter came from Ted saying Mother Cassie had put up a restaurant and another woman was helping her, and all she would give Ted to eat was the leftovers from the restaurant and he was begging me to come and get him. I had no place to take him. A few days later I got a card from Bud who was still working on the sawmill, and the card had this verse on it; "Some people pray for sunshine, some people pray for rain, sometimes both together. But I pray for sunshine in my heart and try to forget the weather." Well, I knew he was homesick too, and neither of us had a home to go to. I cried for days and prayed for God to please show me what I could do. So finally I wrote to Bud to meet me at our cousin's house, Charlie Harris, who lived at Green Sulphur Springs, at a certain time. I left Oak Hill and came back to Green Sulphur. Brother Bud and I got together and talked things over.

We decided to find a way to get Ted from Ohio, and Bud keep his job on the sawmill. The next problem was to find somewhere to stay. That's where our dear Aunt Leah H. came in again. She let us have two rooms of her house to live in. So I wrote my Brother Monty, who lived in Huntington, to go get Ted and bring Him to us at Green Sulphur, which he did after a week or two. Now there were, three kids trying to make a home for each other and nothing to go on except Bud's wages at the mill. Aunt Heah Harris was elderly and not able to do very much, so she was glad to have us close to her. She told me we could make a garden in her garden since she was not able. That I did and she shared the vegetables that we raised. We lived there about a year.

To go back to my childhood days while Mother was still living... It was my job to drive the cows into the gap at milking time and help Mom milk them and put the milk away. So when one of the cows had a beautiful white-faced heifer calf, I asked Mom if I could have the calf for my own. She said yes, if I kept it for a cow. I promised her I would keep it, but when Dad and Cassie had their sale, Dad wanted to sell it. But I bucked and had a neighbor to bid on it for me and keep her until she was a cow, which was the next year. She was already a milk cow when we three went to live in Aunt Leah's house and she had a big pasture field, which we turned her into. That's where we got our milk and butter while we were at Auntie's house. By this time we had been there about a year and Ted had grown to be a big boy. He and Bud decided to go hunting for a better paying job. They went to Greenbrier County and found jobs in a coalmine. As well as I remember, they went to Bellwood, where our other brother Marvin lived.

I stayed on with Aunt Leah and worked around the neighborhood, helping where neighbors needed help and making my home with Aunt Leah. I had met a beautiful boy that had black curly hair and brown eyes, and I soon discovered there was a different feeling in my heart for him, what I had never had for any other date I'd had. I soon found out he felt the same way about me so we started going steady. I had decided to stay with my Aunt Leah, always looking forward to my date on Sundays. Auntie was always my chaperone. I looked to her as a mother.

This is the month of February 1985. My mind goes back to February 21, 1923. Sixty-two years ago.

That curly haired, brown eyed boy I mentioned before had a team of horses, and a few days before the 21st of February, he saddled them up and we rode over a mountain from Red Springs to Alderson, West Virginia to visit my older sister Hattie. Her first husband had passed away and she had remarried. She and her husband Lester Fleshman lived at Alderson. We had planned this trip for some time but didn't tell anyone our plans until we arrived at Hattie's home. Then my intended husband had to get on a train there and go to Hinton, W. Va., to get our marriage license, because it was in the same county we lived in. We planned to be married at my sister’s house. It was a surprise to her but she way happy for us.

On February 21, 1923, I became Mrs. Adena Ewell Fleshman. Reverend Henry Dillon performed the wedding ceremony. We were so happy for a while, only about 22 years. I am sure God meant us for each other. We shared all the ups and downs of life together until death separated us. God called Ewell home on November 19, 1946. Words cannot describe the feeling that went through my heart and mind as he breathed the last breath here on earth. I was right there by him.

I felt I could never endure the task I knew was before me. Broken hearted and scared, I had to give him up. I was so thankful for my dear sister Flossie and her husband Ran that had come to visit us at that day. They were there to comfort and care for me. At that time I could not understand why God would take Ewell and leave me to care for the children. He was an intelligent man and I felt I didn't have what is was going to take to raise the children, fed and educate and guide them through life. But now I understand. God knew the future. I didn't.

All the income I had was sixty-five dollars a month from V.A. But our blessed God was with us. He didn't let us starve or freeze to death. It wasn't easy. We lived on a farm and it was hard to be daddy and mom both to seven children. But I was so thankful he had given us all seven of them. I felt I had that much of Ewell left to me and I still praise God for the children and his mercy. Many times I had to hide from the children in order to be alone with God. I had so much I wanted to talk to him about.

I wanted to bring the children up right and I needed Gods guidance. So I would go out in the woodland to be alone with God to pray and sometimes the children would miss me and come to hunt me, but I would stay there and talk to God. I felt He was the only one that understood my feelings. When I could feel peace in my heart, I would thank him, then go back to the children to care for them.

My thoughts go back to a date in 1920, while I was staying with my cousin, Charlie Harris, and family. It was the month of January, just after a hard cold freeze, and the weather had warmed up. Everything began to thaw out. Charlie came in one morning and said to his wife Etla, "This is a good time to open our sugar camp." She said, "Go ahead while Dena is here to help you boil down the syrup." They began to get things ready, the boys; Julian, Olen, Charlie and I went up into what they called the flat hollow where there were a number of big sugar trees. We notched and put spouts into them and vessels under them to catch the water as they began to drip sugar water. While the vessels were filling we started preparing a place to boil it down into syrup. His wife Etla stayed at the house and cooked for us. The trees would drip as long as it was warm. Then a cold spell would come and they would freeze up again only to thaw again with the next warm spell. When we wanted to make maple sugar, we boiled the syrup until it was real thick, then poured it out into a stone crock and beat it for a few minutes. Then we camp (as we called it) until the sap began to rise in the temper, then we removed the spouts from the trees and started making garden.

This A.M., March 1985

I am thinking of the time when we lived on the farm, after Ewell passed away, and my income was only sixty five dollars a month from V.A. We always raised a garden, always kept 2 or 3 cows, hogs, chickens, etc., but had to be careful to make ends meet as the saying goes. With the children in school and out, sometimes we got pretty close to nothing. One morning I got up, built a fire in the old wood cook stove and had nothing to cook. I kept praying to God to help me find something to feed the children. Billie had gotten up and gone out to feed the hogs. He knew I had nothing to cook. He came back in and said, "Mom, give me your sifter. I will sift some of the fine part of middling out of the sack and you can make us some wheat cereal." I said, "Praise the Lord, I have sugar and milk." We made wheat cereal for our breakfast. That was just one of the many times I built a fire in the cook stove and had nothing to cook. But God always provided something. He didn't let us freeze or starve to death. "Praise His Name."

We all had to work hard and manage close to get along. But God didn't promise sun without rain, or joy without pain. But He did promise to never leave us nor forsake us. I knew He was with us.

After a few years my oldest daughter, Maxine, who was a nurse in a hospital in Virginia, met a man, Harry Scruggs, and they were married. Also my second daughter Margaret had met Kenneth Filly and they were married in March. Maxine and Harry were married on April 17, 1948. Margie and her husband had gone to live in Rainelle and work at the shoe heel factory. Maxine and her husband lived in Virginia but Margie’s health broke and she was unable to do her housework. When Kenneth took her to the hospital, they found she had cancer. By this time my third daughter Annie had met her mate for life and married Buddy White. My son Sammy, as we called him, (his right name was Henry J Edward), had gone to Rainelle, got a job and left the farm. I couldn't do much farming alone so I rented the farm and moved to Rainelle, where I could take care of Margie and be with her while Kenneth was at work. We lived in Rainelle until she passed away on August 8, 1950.

We moved back to the farm, my youngest daughter Emogene, the two youngest boys, Billy, Jack and myself. I was still drawing money from the V.A. for the children’s education but as they finished school or reached age sixteen, their money stopped. So we tried to raise everything we could to eat. Billie was still to small and young to do heavy farm work, but he and I would take turns plowing the old big turning plow and a team of horses until we got the garden plowed. I drove fence posts, split rails, stacked hay, shucked corn, etc., until my health broke. Then I rented the farming ground to neighbors for a share. They would put up the hay on shares for several years so I would have feed for my stock. We continued this until Billie was sixteen years old and he refused to go to high school. Jackie had become a victim of epilepsy and authorities had put him out of school on account of him disturbing other pupils when he’d have a seizure. I couldn’t find a place then that I could put him where he could get an education. I tried to teach him myself.

Emogene was the last to graduate from high school. Billie just refused to go to high school. I tried every way to persuade him to go but had no luck. He would say, “I am not going to high school. All that bunch down there thinks of is sex. I am going to hunt me a job and go to work.” So there I was; bad health and Jacks seizures to contend with. I knew I couldn’t do much farming alone, so it was a time of prayer, crying and waiting to see what God would do.

December 27, 1985: This is a cloudy day.

While I sit here alone, thinking of the past, I remember while Billie was in his last year of school in January 1952. I took a bad spell of coughing and nothing I could find would stop it. I would cough so hard my nose would bleed. Then one day I coughed until I hemorrhaged from my lungs. Buddy White came in and saw I had bled so much, he went back to tell Annie. There were no phones, so she came rushing back with him to take me to a hospital. Annie had called Maxine, my daughter in Virginia, but somehow there was a misunderstanding and Maxine started to West Virginia the same time Buddy and Annie started to Virginia with me. We passed each other on the road in the night. Maxine called the hospital to tell Annie to wait at the hospital until she got there, that she was on her way. We did wait until she arrived. I spent a week in the hospital before I was released. The tests showed I had Tuberculosis of the lungs. They sent me home to make arrangements to go to a sanitarium. It’s winter time and 3 children in school that have to get up at 5 O’clock each morning to catch a bus to ride 5 and 10 miles to school. With livestock to feed, and fires to keep burning, etc., I just couldn’t leave them alone.

Annie and Buddy decided to move in with them if I would go on to the sanitarium in Beckley, but I prayed each day that God would grant me a speedy recovery and help me get back to take care of my dear children and heal me and leave me with them until they were all grown and able to take care of themselves. Then I would not ask for more time here on earth. I also promised Him I would try to the best of my knowledge to live for his glory and honor. He answered my prayer; I came back home in April of 1952. Now my children are all grown and have families of their own, except Jack. Since his careless teenage years he has settled down and is standing by me, caring for me, helping me pay all the bills. He’s helped me pay off the debt on our home. I feel he is really born again because he goes to church when he can or is able. He still has epileptic seizures but he comes to my room each night before he goes to bed kneels down and prays with me.

Christmas Day, 1985

He is a great blessing to me and I am praying Gad will never let anyone put a stumbling block in his way. All the children are too far away to come home for Christmas, except Annie and Buddy. They came for a little while in the evening but Jean and Ted are here. They have been here since November, to spend Christmas, but little does she know or realize it may be my last Christmas. They stay up in their room all the time with the door shut. They just come down once in a while to get a cup of coffee or a bite to eat. I don’t know what is the matter with them. I am just thinking if it is my last Christmas, I will be going home to heaven. “I am happy with Jesus. Praise His Name.”

Jack has been staying around with me, doing all he can to make me happy. I know he is lonely too, but has given up all his outside life just to look after and care for me. I pray God will make his later years very happy. My children are all good to me but he has been here longer and had a better chance to do for me.

January 12, 1986

I am reading this morning in my Bible, Galatians 6:7, where it says, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” I know by experience this statement is true. Be patient and I will try to explain.

After my father and stepmother separated, which I have mentioned before, my dad came home from Ohio, back to West Virginia and made his home with his children, going from one to another after visiting with each for awhile, since all we children were married and had homes of our own. He stayed mostly with me and my husband. One day he said, “Well, I am going to go over and visit Hettie for awhile.” My sister still lived at Alderson and we lived at Elton, W.Va. He liked to walk, as he said, for exercise. He would take his cane and walk through the mountains, which were 12 to 14 miles away. He would take his time and rest occasionally. He would make the trip in about 10 hours. I packed him a lunch and he started out from our home about 8 a.m. one day and went to see her. He was elderly and not in good health. Of course I was very uneasy about him making a trip like that alone, although he usually got alone fine. But the next evening about 5 O’clock, I looked out and there he was, coming in the yard at our home. So I was surprised and ran out to meet him. I said, “Oh Dad, what happened?” Knowing he had intended to stay some time with Hettie. He looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, “Lester Fleshman is not human. He told me it was not his place or job to feed me and for me to leave.” That was in 1934, but it sure did bring back memories of what Dad had told his father-in-law in 1919, when my mom passed away. What I am trying to say here is, Gods word is true, even though it takes years for it to be fulfilled. So let us all try to be stepping stones and not stumbling blocks to our fellow man in this world, always trusting God.

To explain what my dad did in 1919, then reaped in 1934 is; He asked my dear old grandfather Burdette, (after mom passed away) if he didn’t think Uncle Ben Burdette or Aunt Josie one had a better right to look after him (Grandpa) than my dad did, and I did not know at the time, but learned later that he had said this to Grandpa. I know now that was why Grandpa left so suddenly that day long ago with tears in his eyes. It still hurts me to this day when I think about it.

October 4, 1987, Lonesome Sunday.

It has been some time since I have written in this book but Jack and I have spent the day alone. We are both sick. Jack usually goes to church on Sunday, but today he didn’t feel like going. He has been very sick for over a week.

There was 34 years of my life between the happenings of the first part of this book and now, that I want to mention.

After I couldn’t run the farm any longer, the children were all gone except Billie and Jackie, one of my old school mates came back from Illinois where he lived. His wife had passed away. He came visiting our neighborhood and we met. He told me he had been saved but was so lonely. I was lonely too. He wanted me and my boys to go back to Illinois with him. So we were married at Clifton Forge, Va., on May 3, 1955 and the boys and I went to be company for him. We lived in Bloomington, Illinois for two years, then he sold his home there and we moved back to West Virginia. He was a good husband and treated the boys and me wonderfully, but he had been a railroader and retired, not being able to farm, he bought another home and I let Maxine and her husband have the farm, which everyone called the “Sugar Knob Farm.” We only had about 5 years together before he passed away on January 15, 1961. Then came another spell of lonely years. I still get lonely at times, though I try not to. I keep busy. When I can’t work because of bad health, I read my Bible and get a lot of joy out of Gods word. Old Brother Paul said, “In whatsoever state we are in, be content.”

December 31, 1986

In a few hours, 1986 will be past history, the same as 1985. Both years have been filled with heartache and disappointments, sorrows, sickness and many problems; even death. Our own beloved Granddaughter, Dawn Ann Fleshman was shot to death by a jealous lover in 1985. Only in her teen years. So young to die. I have not had any desire to write of that event, but now as 1987 is approaching and I am still sitting here alone thinking of how good God has been to all of us regardless of our disappointments, etc. According to his blessed word, we are to count them all joy and start counting our blessings.

This world is so full of crime and evil, so many people are homeless, starving and suffering more then we. So I am praising His dear name tonight and hope to do more for Him in this year, with his dear help. I thank him and praise his name. He has kept me out of the hospital now for more that two years where in past years I have had to enter the hospital several times a year to be treated for a few days.

One thing I thank our dear God for is my Christian parents. They left me a Christian heritage which is more precious to me than silver or gold. I praise God for them and thank God that He is going to take me home to Heaven some day to meet all our loved ones who have gone on before.

ADENA KINCAID FLESHMAN LUSHER

Passed away

May 15, 1988

Psalms 46:1 God is our refuge and

strength. A very present help in trouble.