Added some a few more pictures

 

Summary (Shanks Family Blog)

Summary (Shanks Family Blog): "� Page Loads Unique Visitors First Time Visitors Returning Visitors
Total 81 42 31 11
Average 10 5 4 1
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Day Date Page Loads Unique Visitors First Time Visitors Returning Visitors
Tuesday 13th July 2010 20 11 4 7
Monday 12th July 2010 32 14 11 3
Sunday 11th July 2010 29 17 16 1"

Chapter 1 - In The Beginning

 

It is doubtful that this autobiography will ever be concluded. I started it in the middle on 1994. Today is July 18, 1995 and while I have written nearly 50 pages, I’m still re-writing the first paragraph. I promise a renewed effort!

I feel good about my life and what I have been able to do and I want to tell others about it, thus, this measly effort to write my biography. As the little boy once said, “It ain’t no big thang, but I’m proud of it”!

Now, at age 60, in 1994 (and probably 1995), I truly feel good about myself and it’s time to share it with others. It has been a wonderful life and, for an old country boy - - a fairly successful one. I didn’t do it by myself. My family, my dad, my mom, my Betts, my Mike, my Donna, my Chuck, and all of my many friends - they made it possible for me to be where I am. They gave me confidence and a reason for pushing on. I’m a pretty lucky guy and I want to tell you about it - and, later on I’ll tell you why I’m telling you about it! For now, let’s get started!

He was a gentle man. Thin and well built. Not a lot of muscles, but strong. He was a religious man, but he did not preach to you. He let his daily life be an example for others. He was a soft-spoken person. He never raised his voice. He loved to tease and have fun. If there was ever a man made in the image of God, it was him. He didn't have much of an education. He probably finished the sixth grade at the most but he was a brilliant person. He could walk on water! He could climb the highest mountain. Few people will ever be as great as he was! I loved him very much. I miss him today, 30-plus years after his death. He was one mighty man. He was my father. He was Elbert Ruble Shanks and he was called Ruble. He died from lung cancer at a very early age. He was 66 when God called him home.

She was a beautiful lady. She was so perfect in so many ways. Thin in her early years but a little "plump" in her later years. She was a great cook. Her cornbread would melt in your mouth. She loved her God. She wanted the best for her children. She worried a lot. She was liked by all that knew her. She was smart. She was respected by everyone. She loved her husband and he loved her. I loved this wonderful woman. And, I miss her so very much. She was my mother.

She was Letha O'Dell Williams Shanks and she was called Letha. She died, after many years of suffering, and went to be with Dad at the age of 92.

In their lifetime they gave to this world six wonderful children. They were A. J., Thelma, Glen, Carroll, Don and Wayne. And, they, in turn, gave this world and Mom and Dad, a whole host of wonderful and beautiful grandchildren.

I was the fifth child and they named me Donald Mike Shanks. Everybody called me Don. I never really used Donald. It always sounded a little "sissy" to me. Now that I think about it, Mom and Dad never did tell me where the name came from. I don't remember it ever coming up in any conversation in my lifetime. What the heck, I like it and regardless of where it came from I have always been pretty proud of it and it seems to have served me well. In later years, I dropped the “ald” off of Donald and used Don M. Shanks. That sounded a little better to me!

I must have been “planned” because little brother Wayne came along after me. He often worried about missing out on life since he was the last. What if they had stopped at Don, he would often ask!

I was born at home on September 28, 1934 in a small rural community called Union Temple in Greene County, Tennessee. The area was rural in the truest sense. The house was huge, white and had a big wraparound porch. It was truly a farmhouse.

Union Temple was a farming community and the houses were about a mile apart. There were no stores, nor do I ever recall seeing any type of commercial operation in the community. Just beautiful, beautiful farms! We didn't stay there very long after I was born - probably 3-4 years. Dad bought a 110-acre farm in another part of the county. As I recall, I think the price was about $3,000.00. It was located in a community called Milburnton and we moved there when I was a very young kid. That would have been sometime around 1938. I was about 4 years old.

Chapter 2 - The Farm

 

The farm was so beautiful. There were 110 acres. It was pretty isolated. The nearest neighbor was about one mile away. The farm was sorta' hilly-like but the hills were small and rolling. There were two ponds for the cows and horses and other little farm creatures to drink from and in those ponds were some of the biggest frogs in the county. Our house sat at the end of a one half-mile dirt road off of the main dirt and gravel road that ran through that part of the county.

The house was unbelievable. It was a two-story building with a great big front porch where Mom and Dad did a lot of rocking in huge comfortable rocking chairs.

We had a large yard with great big pecan trees that seemed to be a 100 feet tall.

Beside the house - about 20 feet from the back door - was another small building that was called the "smokehouse". On the front of the smokehouse was a concrete porch with a roof. Under that roof was the cistern - a great big old concrete-lined hole about 25 feet deep that held our drinking, cooking and bathing water. Water ran into the cistern from the roof of the house through gutters and downspouts attached to the side of the house.

The smokehouse served many purposes. It was there that Dad hung "sides" of pork to cure. After the annual hog killing, the smokehouse was always full of some of the best hog shoulders and sides of meat in the entire county.

This building, too, served as a storage area and it was there that we had our Saturday baths. When Saturday rolled around, we could always count on Mom dragging out that old No. 2 galvanized tub and filling it with water from the cistern. She would always add a little hot water from the cook stove to ease our pain of taking a bath. She let us do most of the bathing but we had to pass her inspection before we crawled out of the tub. Usually she would soap up the washcloth and give our face and ears a good scrubbing before we were allowed out of the tub. We were teenagers before Mom trusted us to bathe ourselves.

Cleanliness was important to Mom. Our hair had to be squeaky clean before we passed inspection. Mom strongly believed that cleanliness was next to Godliness! She always had the cleanest, neatest house!

Out behind the house was the "outhouse", the outside toilet. Ours was pretty nice. There were two seats (but I never knew of two people occupying it at the same time). The latest Sears catalog was always available there for browsing and some old newspapers for cleaning!

I'll never forget the time that I went out to that old outhouse to smoke a cigarette. I was probably 10-12 years old. There I sat, smoking a cigarette, thinking I was about the coolest kid in the country, when suddenly the door opened and there stood Dad. While he was only about 6-feet tall and weighed about 160 pounds, when I looked up and saw him standing in that door, he looked 10-feet tall. I knew I was dead!

Dad never abused us kids, but when we did something wrong, he sure would give us a spanking that got our attention. I knew I had one coming for sure. But, to my surprise he didn't spank me. He made me carry several buckets of water from the house out to the outhouse and pour down in the toilet. You see, when Dad surprised me and opened the door, I tossed the burning cigarette down into the "hole". There was an awful lot of the Sears Catalog down there and quite a bit of the old newspapers there, too. Dad was afraid my cigarette would catch the papers on fire. Ten buckets of water carried from the house and poured in the hole was sure to extinguish any fire!

That was Dad's way of punishing me! I never smoked a cigarette in the outhouse again. As a matter of fact, I didn’t smoke any cigarettes for many years after that little incident.

Our house had the usual rooms. There was a big kitchen with a wood burning cooking stove. It was there that Mom did her finest work. She was a great cook.

There was a separate dining room with a long table and benches and chairs that we sat on. Our family loved to eat so the dining room was one or our favorite places.

The house had a little family room where we listened to the radio and had family gatherings. I sat there almost daily and listened to The Lone Ranger, Amos and Andy, The Green Hornet, The Thin Man, and other great shows that were on during those years. There was a big formal-type living room that alternated between being a living room and a bedroom depending on how many children were home at the time.

There were a couple of bedrooms downstairs and there were two bedrooms upstairs.

I will never forget that big old beautiful house nestled in those pecan trees with its big inviting porch and a yard that just screamed at you to come out and play. It was truly your classic old farmhouse.

Off in a distance about 200 yards in front of the house was the barn and the corncrib. A good farm barn serves many purposes. It houses the cows and the horses, the hay and the oats, the tobacco, the farm equipment and the chickens and it can be the most wonderful playground in the world for kids.

You can climb the barn's rafters until your heart is content; you can climb and roll in the hay until you itch all over; you can pet the horses and the cows and the baby calves, chase the chickens, hide from your parents, take a nap in the straw, build things with all the tools kept there and play grown-up farmer while sitting on all the farm equipment. What else could a kid want?

While growing up on the farm, one hog-killing event really sticks out in my mind. Dad apparently felt that I had come of age, so to speak, and asked me if I would like to "kill" one of the hogs.

I was never a hunter. I seldom took a gun out to hunt and kill animals of any type. On a few occasions in my life, probably fewer than ten, I went squirrel, rabbit or crow hunting. The killing of animals didn't sit well with this old country boy but it was a part of growing up in the country and on the farm and I accepted it as a part of that life.

Dad and Mom grew their own fruits and vegetables and raised their own beef and pork. The slaughtering of cattle and hogs for your food was a way of life.

Dad Shanks

Dad Shanks & Eddie

Chapter 3 - Shootin’ Pigs and Gigging Frogs

 

Dad thought that it was time I learned to kill a hog. He figured we needed to learn these things if we were going to be farmers.

I had watched Dad kill a hog many times. One carefully placed bullet between the eyes and into the brain and it seemed as tho' some gigantic force jerked the hog's legs out from under it. There was never a whimper or struggle. The hog died instantly. Dad had learned his craft well. The hog should not have to suffer at the hands of an amateur.

Dad handed me the .22 rifle. I stood about 10 feet away from the hog while he stared directly at me. Hogs would do that. I raised the rifle and aimed it at his forehead. He stood there motionless not knowing, of course, that tomorrow morning we would be having his innards for breakfast.

My hands were sweaty. The rifle seemed to move all over the place. I squeezed the trigger. The rifle fired and the hog went down. But, it was not like the ones that Dad had shot. This one struggled and tried to get back up. I had not done well!

Dad ran over, straddled the hog and grabbed it by the ears and yelled at me to shoot again. I got the rifle barrel up real close this time, probably four or five inches from its head. Just as I readied to fire, the hog jerked it's head and Dad's hand came loose from the hog's right ear and his hand fell over the hog's forehead, and that just happened to be the same place I was aiming to shoot. I closed my eyes and fired. When I opened my eyes the bullet had gone between Dad's fingers. A half inch in any direction and I would have shot him in the hand!

I think it was there at that very moment that I decided I did not want to be a farmer. I have thought of that time many, many times and how close I came to shooting Dad's hand. I have thanked God many times that I didn't!

We kids often went to one of the two big ponds on the farm in the evening after dark to go frog gigging. We had this long narrow plank with 6-8 nails driven through the end of it so that the nails came out on the other side and that was what we killed the frogs with. We would slowly circle the pond with our brightest flashlight in our hand.

When we spotted a frog we would blind it with the flashlight while someone slipped up with the board with the nails. We'd slap down on that old frog with the board and nails to kill it and then pull it out and add it to our bucket.

It all seems a little cruel now, but the frog legs were great. We ate them for breakfast, sort of like you would eat sausage or bacon for breakfast. After a good evening of frog gigging we would return to the house and Mom would help us cut off the legs, skin them, put a little salt and pepper on them and put them in the icebox for the night. The next morning, she would fry them and make some gravy and biscuits and the only thing left on the table would be just a few skinny frog leg bones! Man, it was good eatin'!

Chapter 4 - My Autobiography? I’ll explain!

 

As I prepare for this autobiography, it's 1994 (and we are now into 1995!). I'm 60 years old (and rapidly approaching 61) and we live in Pfafftown, North Carolina. Pfafftown is about 10 miles north of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. We have lived in this area since 1972. We really like it. We’ll probably die here. I'm retired and Betts and I are enjoying life. Whether this project will ever be finished is doubtful. I can already tell that it is a much bigger project than I thought. We will, however, proceed and I shall remain hopeful that it is completed. If it is not, I suppose it will be no big deal.

About the time I retired from Piedmont Airlines in 1988, I became interested in doing some research on my ancestry. It was frustrating. The records were few and far between. Several people had already done a very good job of locating some information so I never did get into any real research efforts. I just used what they had already found. Thus, any material contained here has been borrowed from others and I, therefore, can not confirm of verify its accuracy. I do know it comes from reliable sources so I suspect it is fairly accurate.

Since some other people had done all of the work, I just ended up rearranging the material that they had put together. As I would look at the names, their birth dates and where they were born, I had this burning desire to know more about them. Just knowing, for example, that my grandfather, Kelly Shanks, was born in Tennessee on a certain date didn't tell me a heckuva lot about my granddad. I wanted to know more! What was he like? How did he think? What kind of a life did he live? Did he suffer from many illnesses? And, the questions went on and on and on. Questions that would never be answered.

When you research your ancestry, about all you find are names, dates and locations. There is generally nothing there to tell you about the person and it was the person I wanted to know about.

I would often say, "I'd give anything to be able to sit down and talk with one of my Grandparents - especially those that lived in the late 1800s". I just can't imagine the hardships they must have suffered. How often I have wished that they had taken a pen or pencil in hand and wrote about themselves.

I don't want to make that mistake.

I want my grandchildren 50 years from now, and hopefully my great-great-grandchildren 100 years from now to be able to have something they can read and, at least, get a little impression of what kind of a person I was. I doubt if they will be too impressed, but, at least they will know a little about me.

My point, quite simply, is that I don't want my grandchildren, my great grandchildren, my great-great grandchildren, my great-great-great-grand- children (and on and on and on!) to have to wonder about me. I want them to know who I was, what I did, and what I think about certain things. This will be my legacy to my granddaughters and grandsons for many generations to come.

There is always the possibility that my writings will be lost with time. That happens. I have no way of controlling that. I just hope that my descendants will keep the material and pass it on to their children who will pass it on to their children, and so forth.

I need to make it pretty clear in the beginning that I am not a writer. While I enjoy writing and I look forward to this effort, I am confident it will leave much to be desired as a literary accomplishment. Yes, there will be many misspelled words (Does "misspelled" have one "s" or two? I don't know and I don't necessarily care about taking a lot of time to look it up!). And, there will be a host of grammatical goofs. Grammar was not one of my strong suits. So, my dear friends, I ask you to look beyond the many errors you will find in this dissertation and look at me, the man. Hopefully, there you will find a man that loved life and loved people. A man that wasn't afraid to say "I love you" to his family and many friends.

You need to know, too, that I have no outline for this autobiography. While that is obviously the way it should be done, you need to know that I am not a well-disciplined person (there are many who will disagree with that). For me to spend hours and hours developing an outline of my life would be boring. I much prefer to dig right in and get started. Of course, that will bring about a very disjointed discourse that will ramble from subject to subject and have very little continuity.

And that, my dear relatives and descendants, already tells you a little about this old boy! On some matters, of which we will talk about later, I am thorough, patient, disciplined, and well organized, but, on other things, I am impatient, undisciplined and disorganized. It simply depends on the interest I have in whatever I am doing at the time.

I need to make it clear, too, that this is not a tell-all or kiss and tell type of narrative. That would be too embarrassing, too humiliating and too stupid! There are some things you do in life; things done while separated from the brain and common sense, that simply must never be told and, therefore, I suppose, taken to the grave. While most (about 99.9 percent) of my life can be told, I must admit that there are moments that I must forever keep to myself. Isn't that true of most of us? I really don't consider myself much different than most people that have traveled through this life. A pretty average guy!

Please remember that my efforts are not necessarily meant to entertain as much as they are to be considered for historical purposes, that is, (and, I'm now repeating myself!) meant for my children and grandchildren, and so on, to have some information to remember me by. That's all!

On the other hand, if you find it entertaining, that would be great.