My Childhood Readers & Favorite Books

Originally posted at YAAYNHO   http://obscurekidlitauthors.blogspot.com/2011/03

Sunday, March 13, 2011

My Childhood Readers and Favorite Books

My Childhood Readers and Favorite Books

Be prepared! There's a quiz at the end. What were your favorite books?

We were very poor when I was growing up. Because of this, I rarely received new books until I reached my early teens and began asking for them for my birthday.

I’m not claiming I was never given any books. One of my earliest was a tiny collection of fairy tales—each its own book, and once all housed in their own cardboard box. Published by Birn Brothers of London, each book was only about 3 by 3 inches, each cover a drawing of the story inside & colored mostly in royal blue, orange-red and yellow. Every other page within—they have about 80 pages each—was a rather intricate ink-drawn illustration of that part of the plot. I still have some of them: The Three Bears, Jack the Giant Killer, Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots, Hop O’ My Thumb, & Beauty and the Beast.

I tried to find these on the web but the closest I could come was at:

http://www.kidzbooks.net/kidzbooks/articles.aspx?id=16

They were my first introductions to fairy stories and fables. Once I knew them practically by heart, I always looked for more. But it would be many years before I had copies of Grimm, Andersen and Lang. When I was a preteen, I asked for someone to give me Grimm and Andersen for my birthday. I bought the Lang four volume set as an adult, along with the complete Grimm.
I love Winnie-the-Pooh! Disney, I guess, did a Winnie-the-Poo special a couple of times a year back in the day. Always something to anticipate!  Each show was a faithful retelling of a Pooh chapter. They even included the line which goes ...like this?  "...all the way from the bottom of page 2 to the top of page 4..." Piglet is my favorite WtP character. Even though he's small and vulnerable he sticks it out in the most "dangerous" 100 Acre Wood situations! Okay, so there maybe a bit of calling for help involved but he doesn't go hide until it's over. 
I named my laptop before this laptop "Piglet" chiefly because it's so small compared to the laptop it replaced. Once upon a time, a Geek Squad tech had trouble with this. I don't remember why. Maybe he had spent the previous day with Eeyore? 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My parents gave me some Golden Books. Who here remembers those from their childhood? Most of these contained one story each: shortened versions of Little Women or Little Men or early spin-offs from TV shows like Rin-Tin-Tin or Spin & Marty from the late afternoon Disney show.

The Golden Book that I remember best was huge: both thick and composed of larger pages than most Golden Books. I remember riding home from someone’s house or the store--most likely it was my Aunt Josie Mae's house--flipping through it and just staring at all of the stories and the illustrations. Treasure! Once I had worked my way through from end to end, I had consumed: Heidi, Peter Pan, Hans Brinker (The Silver Skates) and a variety of fairy tales I had never read before. My favorite involved a young man tasked to find out where three princesses went at night. (I think they went dancing.) He followed them for three nights and brought back proof of their whereabouts: a silver leaf, a gold leaf, and a diamond leaf. Of course, he was rewarded by marrying the princess of his choice.

The Golden Book that I loved best was the one on horses. I was enamored of horses at that age and I thought every color illustration a work of art. I also set about memorizing various useless but fascinating facts. Did you know that Arabian horses have one less rib than other horses? So said my Golden Book. I also had a copy of Black Beauty.

Well, by now, I’d developed the reputation for being a bookworm, so it’s no surprise that my best friends gave me books for my birthday. That’s how I acquired “Donna Parker at Cherrydale” and “Polly French & the Surprising Stranger”. This pair were my first introductions to “teen romance”, to the extent that it was mentioned or described in those days. (1950’s)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Family Cache of School Readers

Now, for a little “school reader” esoterica. You’ve been wondering when we would hit this section, right?

The core of my childhood reading collection for years were school readers which my parents had used in elementary or junior high school. Both sets of grandparents lived in the same city and parents were required to buy the readers their children used in school.
I still own my mom’s second grade reader, my dad’s 8^th grade reader and the fourth grade readers of both my parents.

These are real treasures on more than one level. Obviously, there’s the connection to my parents. In addition, most of these books were filled with beautiful illustrations. The kind which required time, skill and patience to create.
The wealth of authors involved is truly astounding! So is the variety of styles and subjects in the stories and essays! Please excuse me while I don't get up on a soapbox--and fall off--but still manage to mourn for schoolchildren who will never receive the riches that were bestowed on us year after year. To be clear, the books we were lent each semester bore little resemblance to "new". I had a history text in sixth grade which was more mold than paper. I just don't understand what happened to early education in this country since the time when I was being, uh, early-educated.

Excuse me while I bore you with descriptions of these old books.

The Winston Companion Readers---Second Reader; Winston, 1923.

My favorites: Mr and Mrs Vinegar (my mom's favorite), The Wolf and the Fox, The Keg of Butter, How the Turtle Saved His Life, How the Sun the Moon and the Wind Went Out to Dinner, Tiny, Peeriefool; Ashiepattle and the King’s Hares.
Do you see a trend here? Fairy tales!
Here's a peek at the gorgeous cover at:

http://www.amazon.com/Winston-Companion-Readers-Second-Reader/dp/B001MW2260/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299957980&sr=1-4

Many illustrations inside are nearly as intricate as the cover, especially the end papers.

 ~~~~~~~~

My mom’s fourth grade reader was my second favorite book:

Good Reading: Fourth Reader; Charles Scribner’s Sons, NY, 1927.

Favorite Stories:

The Turnip Children, The Elephant, Some Birds to Look for this Fall, Red-Riding Hood, Fables, Mice, Woodchuck Ways, David & the Giant, The Boyhood of Washington, Thor Among the Giants (loved this!); First Aid, Chip And Peep (memorized this), The Fly (memorized this), The Fairy Folk (memorized this & recited it at some kind of Brownies show for parents); A Letter from President Roosevelt, The Runaway Furniture (Intelligent and angry furniture, with a righteous cause! Very cool!).

Who are the authors? Do modern elementary school readers still try to introduce classic writers in fourth grade? Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Robert Louis Stevenson; William Shakespeare; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Walter de la Mare; The Younger Edda; Robert Browning; Teddy Roosevelt. (Wait til you see the authors in the 8th grade book.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My dad’s fourth grade reader still amazes me because of the often serious subject matter and again for the illustrious authors.

Fact and Story Readers: Book Four; American Book Company, 1931.

Divided into the following sections:
Pt.1 Sailing the Seven Seas;
Pt.2 Boys & Girls Who Became Famous;
Pt.3 Out-of-Door Tales;
Pt.4 Doing the World’s Work;
Pt.5 In Story Land;
Pt.6 The Making of America.
Much of this was pretty stern stuff compared to my mom’s reader.

The publishers chose works from a variety of respected authors including the leaders in fairy tales: 

Thackeray’s The Bronze Door Knocker (extract from The Rose & the Ring—this story scared the bejeebers out of me!)); Charles Kingsley; Hans Christian Andersen; Emily Dickinson; Andrew Lang; Jonathan Swift; Walter de la Mare. 

You can find the cover of this one here:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/58588021/1931-colored-illustrations-fact-and

What? No Shakespeare? Not in that collection or in my mom's but I did have my uncle's copy of Lamb's "Tales From Shakespeare". I didn't know what an apostrophe was so, for years, I thought the author called young readers "lambs".

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And finally my dad’s eighth grade reader. Speaking of formidable books!

The Elson Readers: Book Eight; Scott, Foresman and Company (1927)

Divided into:

Pt.1 The World of Nature;
Pt.2 The World of Adventure (which includes: Masque of the Red Death; Noyes’ The Highwayman; A Christmas Carol; and the Lamb version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream;
Pt. 3 The Great American Experiment;
Pt.4 Literature and Life in the Homeland.

Authors:
William Cullen Bryant; Wm Wordsworth; P B Shelley; Wm Shakespeare; Ralph Waldo Emerson; Robt Browning; Edgar Allan Poe; Sir Walter Scott; Henry Longfellow; Ch Dickens; Lord Byron; Joyce Kilmer; Daniel Webster; George Washington; Abraham Lincoln; Woodrow Wilson; Theodore Roosevelt; Robert Burns; Rudyard Kipling; Oliver Wendell Holmes; John G Whittier; Nathaniel Hawthorne; O Henry; Mark Twain.

The illustrations are few and tiny, and the cover isn’t impressive but you can find it here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Elson-Readers-Book-Eight/dp/B000VUM5CA/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299959953&sr=1-3

I don't know if this is clear--since I have the books and you don't--but there are very few women writers in any of these books. Principal characters in the fiction pieces also tend to be male. I never noticed this  back then, which is a blessing! I might have received a subliminal signal that “girls" don’t write.    ;-)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My paternal grandfather gave me three beautiful books a couple of years before his death--which would have been when I was about fifteen. These three are still much beloved:

“Robin Hood and His Merry Men” by Rosemary Kingston and illustrated by Alice Carsey.  So there were –some- women involved in writing and illustrating books. The exquisite illustrations were some of my favorites.

A collection of Rudyard Kipling’s "Stories and Poetry", featuring a richly-colored cover of two men on horseback chasing each other across a rugged terrain. This is the illustration for the poem “East is East, and West is West”. Which I like--except for the end. But, hey, it's Kipling.

I was enthralled before I opened the book. Wow, did I have trouble with the dialectical writing, though!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"The Complete Sherlock Holmes" This volume may have been published before authors began creating non-canonical stories. Does anyone know when the first Sherlock Holmes pastiche was written?
Six publishers had each printed multiple editions of Sherlock Holmes collections beginning in 1892. The volume my granddad gave me is copyright 1930, by Doubleday & Company, Inc.

Are you up for a Sherlock Holmes story challenge?

Doyle created these illustrations for five different stories. In which story can each be found?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And that’s about it. I’m sure I had other books—well, like the complete run of Donald Duck comics (for the mysteries, I’ll have you know).
But these are the books that I treasured as a child and that I still treasure today. God bless all those who wrote them and who gave them to me.

What books are your treasures from your childhood or teen years? Please tell us about them!

Sherry Thompson

How's that Sherlock Holmes quiz coming along?

Marooned (Narenta Tumult 1.5). 
Read Chapter 1, here! It really is going to be published. Soon. I promise!

The Narenta Tumults: SEABIRD http://bit.ly/bKBQ7x

EARTHBOW    Vol.1 http://bit.ly/b9vDW1     Vol.2 http://amzn.to/8XXrVo   (oop)

http://tree-lady.livejournal.com/

Confessions

Monday, January 17, 2011

"Confessions"  

This article appeared on the "Young Adult Authors You've Never Heard Of" blog back in January 17, 2011.

Many blog readers wrote great comments--which I've chosen to retain and place in their original positions. If you wrote a YAAYNHO blog comment back in 2011 for this entry, but don't want it reprinted, please contact me at

scrollchamberpress@gmail.com   with "Confessions" as the subject. Thanks!

Please offer new writing-related confessions in the Comments! Again, Thank you.

Confessions

Monday, January 17, 2011; revised Friday, January 6, 2017

"Currently, I am assembling files for a first draft manuscript that I began in the early-mid-1980s. Tentatively titled, “The Gryphon and the Basilisk”, it’s a huge Young Adult fantasy series, and large parts of it haven’t been touched since I originally wrote them out in longhand between 1979 & 1983."

 The longhand portions were joined by typewritten scenes and character sketches, 'notes to self' and whole chapters keyed in using WORD for the first time. 

"As I’ve been slogging through this preliminary work preparatory to my second revision, I’ve been struck repeatedly by lame brain errors that I used to make decades ago when I began to write. Some involve placing commas in the wrong places or just plain using too many of them. I’ve improved my punctuation. Really.

I'm still guilty of plotting, characterization and setting slip-ups today that I confessed back in 2011. And by now I should know better.

So here are my Writing Confessions of 2011, in lieu of a New Year’s Resolution.

What? You thought that I would end this 'Confession' with a pledge to move forward and resolve to never make these errors again? 

I know myself too well to pledge something like that.

Don't you?

I just hope I catch most of my errors in "Marooned", and in subsequent revisions of G&B and future books like, 'The Peace Bride" or the partially written "Da Boid, da Tree-Rat, n da Loser" before they are published (if ever).

Returning to 'Confessions 2011'

1. To begin, we need look no further than the first paragraph of this blog entry. Look at it there—an adverb and beginning the sentence to boot, as if in defiance of editorial protocol everywhere. Frankly, I’ve never understood why we have adverbs if we’re not supposed to use them. But, I guess that’s just me, being logical. I used to use adverbs all over the place, but I am trying to get better. “I’m Sherry Thompson, and I’ve been off adverbs for /f/i/v/e one minutes.” (See the ‘Frankly” above?)

2. Using versions of “to be” like “was” and “were” instead of strong verbs. Poor “to be”—it’s evidently weak. Maybe that’s because no writer is allowed to exercise it. It’s so weak that even when I write about its weakness, I use “is” to describe its situation—cleverly hidden in the “it’s” above. (Oops! More adverbs.)

When I found out that “is”, “was”, “were”, etc were no-no’s, I began searching for them in my documents. I instructed WORD’s software to replace each “is” for example with “IS”. This can be problematic when you have a recurring character named AlphesIS.

I/n/s/p/i/t/e In spite of the inherent difficulties in attacking manuscript revision with all of those errors hanging out on each page, I eventually expanded the practice to help me zero in on adverbs. In that case, I told WORD to replace all examples of “ly” with “LY”. This worked fine! AssembLY, alLY, and such don’t turn up that frequentLY in my writing, so I was finalLY able to zero in on the actual errors.

3. Having conquered adverbs and versions of “to be”, I moved on to POV. Though I didn’t then know the name for it, when I first began write I was evidently using the Omniscient POV, which fell out of favor a hundred years ago. Well, I’ve always been a bit behind my time.

I’m proud to say that I’ve cut down the numbers of times I switch point of view from a half dozen times per scene to about two. I’m still working very hard on this, encouraged by a friend who wrote that my less frequent POV switches remind him of switching gears on a manual gearshift. After a while, he wrote, he got used to it! Awesome!

4. Next up was learning what goes into each paragraph and what doesn’t. Back in the 80’s, I was convinced that all dialogue was sequestered in its own paragraphs, cut off for reasons unknown from the POV paragraph of the speaker. I know better now intellectually but I still have trouble convincing my fingers to follow through and do this with the keyboard.

5. Which brings me to anatomical parts. Sorry! Not as you think. I’ve discovered that I permit parts of the body to stroll off and do their own thing—especially eyes and hands. Example: “Bill’s eyes 👀 studied her face, looking for a clue to her thoughts.” Or: “Her hand grasped his hand and gave it a squeeze.” (All the while her brain was screaming through her mouth 👅 to her hand ✋ to stop doing that!) This gets weird very quickly. Sometimes in revision, I feel like I was writing horror in my first draft.

6. Other writing errors to which I succumb regularly? I got a million of’em, at least when it comes to my private stable of misspelled words.

I seem to be convinced that “amongst” should be spelled “amoungst”, making me more British than the British;

And that “about” doesn’t really need that “o” (which is a real problem since WORD doesn’t flag “abut” as a spelling error. 

And that “inspite” really isn’t (is?) one word. I still can’t deal when it comes to sorting out this one.

I do this with character names sometimes too. When I was assembling the various chapters of “The Gryphon and the Basilisk”, I noticed my character “Medea” devolved later into “Media” 📹 which in turn devolved into “Melia”. Fortunately, a WORD Replace command really did work out fine for fixing this.

7. Two more and then I’ll stop. G&B is full of angst and strong emotions. However, that’s no excuse for having everyone getting teary-eyed and even outright crying at the drop of a line of dialogue. And when the characters aren’t crying, they’re sighing.

I used to work with someone who was a part-time freelance editor. After reading something of mine maybe 15 years ago, she commented that she was putting me on a diet—I was allowed no more than one sigh per chapter or story. In this much older manuscript, written decades before I knew her, I laughed at such restrictions. Or maybe I sighed over them. One of my favorite type of “dialogue tags” consisted of “Luisa sighed and commented…” Sometimes she multitasked. 

example: Luisa sighed, 🙎 "This makes no sense."

Yes, before you ask, I realize that I’d better fire up that WORD Replace once more and input, “sigh”, “abut” and numerous other no-nos.

And yes I used to write “once more” frequently. I’m not sure what the attraction was. Because I like the lyrics to "Once More" by Locklin? Sure... That's it.  😉

Well, those are some of the forbidden writing choices I used to indulge in back in the early 80’s—and still do on occasion. Now it’s your turn. Don’t leave me dangling out here with all of my composition short-comings hanging out all by themselves. What typical writing errors have you overcome or are still battling?

Sherry Thompson

~~~~~

Below are the Original Comments in response to my "Confessions" blog entry when it was posted at YAAYNHO on January 17 2011. I hope they are readable!

Tis The Season To Be Typing

I posted "Tis The Season To Be Typing" just over six years ago at  "YA Authors You've Never Heard Of"
While I no longer contribute to that blog, I concede the blog's name still fits--at least for this former contributor. Speaking of which, any links below no longer work since both Seabird and Earthbow are currently out of print.

Tis the Season To Be Typing, December 20, 2010

Reader beware! I’m throwing this together out of nothing. I’ve been otherwise occupied by a broken ankle, when I should have been prepping this blog entry.

I’m definitely a Christmassy kind of person. Years ago, I would make Christmas tree ornaments each year for friends and people I worked with. Since I had so many to make, I always began the process in mid-summer. And to get in the mood, I would play Christmas carols while I worked. I used headphones to listen, so that people didn’t think I was entirely out of my gourd.

Long after I stopped making holiday decorations—up until right now—I’ve never given up the whole mood that goes with the holidays. I love watching “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and learning—once again—how Santa got both the name Kris Kringle and Santa Claus, what made the reindeer fly, why Santa has a beard, why the toys were put into the stockings, and so on. And I love what I consider the best song in the special, “Put One Foot in Front of the Other”. Any child that is starting to not believe in Santa Claus should be good for one more year after watching that special.

I also love watching “A Christmas Carol” (the one starring Alistair Sim!), my absolute favorite Christmas film. To say nothing of “White Christmas”, “A Christmas Story”, Miracle on 34^th Street” and most recently “Elf”. Oh, I can’t forget “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and “Frosty the Snowman”. 

I never get tired of Christmas carols and rarely get peeved or impatient by long lines in stores—except maybe the food store, but that one is a year-round vexation.

This year, Christmas activities are being outweighed by work (writing) activities since I’m housebound over the holidays. Not that people aren’t visiting or sending me cards—and I appreciate them! But normally, I would be out at church functions including Advent services and the yearly Christmas Cantata. And of course I would be standing in line, silently singing along to carols while I waited—if I could get to the stores.

Instead, I’m writing—and writing more than the average teddy bear. My “Earthbow” (http://bit.ly/b9vDW1 ) was published this year. Immediately afterward, Dave at Gryphonwood asked me what was up next.* Well, it’s like this, I told him: the next up is a three volume story currently with the umbrella title of “The Gryphon and the Basilisk”. I wrote the first draft of it back in the early 80’s and the first draft was written in longhand. Over the years, I’ve hired typists to type up sections of the manuscript, and later also keyed in other sections to WORD files. Now I’m on the third volume and face eight very long chapters that I have only in the original longhand—approximately one hundred seventy (500-600 word) pages of story that need to be converted to WORD.

This Christmas really is Tis the Season To Be Typing.

When I started working on this phase of the project, I was less than enamored with it. I still am. And then I got thinking about a Christmas many years ago—just over 50 so far as I can remember. One Christmas, I asked for a typewriter for my gift. We didn’t have much money but my parents were able to find a refurbished manual typewriter to give me. (There were no electric typewriters back then.)

Very, very late Christmas Eve—or maybe closer to Christmas morning—I slipped out of my bedroom and into the living room, to see if there was a typewriter waiting for me. There was! I was so excited! I ran my fingers over the keys and finally took a shot at hitting one of them. The typewriter—as typewriters did in those days—made a loud click. Freaking for fear I’d awakened someone, I rushed back to my bedroom. And acted all surprised a few hours later.

I learned the basics of typing and soon was turning in all my school assignments typed—even some of my math homework. (Try typing multiplication and division problems and see what ‘fun’ that was.)

A short time after this, I began typing my first written story. It involved time travel and I was the heroine, working for the government on a project to go back in time and fill in bits of historical detail missing from records. That may sound dull but it was an adventure story, since my partner (a very cute boy) and I were always getting into trouble. I showed the first part to my parents. I don’t actually remember their reaction but I do remember that they were generally supportive of any project that I did.

I also worked on a pastiche--essentially fanfic---of many different horse stories I had read. My teacher found out about the latter and asked me to read snippets from it during home room. I can’t imagine what the rest of the kids thought! I still feel sorry for them because this story really wasn’t very good.  ("No Plot, No Problem"? Really, ChrisB?)

Those two attempts at writing were my last efforts until 1979 when I was in my early thirties and tackled “Seabird” (http://bit.ly/bKBQ7x ) and “Earthbow” (http://bit.ly/b9vDW1 ) two years later. Oddly enough, I wrote these and their sequel “The Gryphon and the Basilisk” in longhand, even though I had an electric typewriter by then. One reason I did this was that I could write anywhere I thought of an idea or a new passage, even at work. 

(Laptops were still a fig newton of the amalgamation.) 

Over fifty years after first typing in the living room at Christmas, I’m keying in parts of the G&B manuscript** in the living room over the holidays. The circle is complete.

A Blessed Christmas to all, and a Happy New Year!

Sherry Thompson

* National Novel Writing Month was approaching, so I actually settled on what would become "Marooned". 

Re the debut of "Marooned" my computer is working again! I lost several weeks of revisions but nothing of importance. Well, except my train of thought. Darn thing! It's been going walkabout a lot recently.

** I've yet to finish "The Gryphon and the Basilisk" but I'm getting closer. Speaking of G&B, I used two scenes from the trilogy/quadrilogy in lieu of a Christmas card this year, "Yule on Narenta". Please contact me via email if you would like to read it. Restrictions and spoilers may apply.  (KhivasMommy@gmail.com)

This is the final scene of a greeting card snitched from the  jacquielawson.com  site--which you have absolutely got to go visit! Now would be good!

Free Smashed Pumpkins! Get Them While They're Splat!

UPDATE: EXACTLY 13 FREE COPIES OF 

THE PUMPKIN SMASHER WERE 'SOLD' BY 

OCTOBER 30 2016!

I HOPE THE READERS ENJOY MY STORIES.

Three Tales. 

A woman plays reluctant hostess to 

The Pumpkin-Smasher

and other seasonal houseguests;

Shadow Harper

An ancient legend rooted in the land of eternal autumn haunts another time, another place ; 

Sisyphus

                 Nightmare, nightmare, go away.

                 Come again no other day. 

Cover: Smashed Pumpkins. 

Four illustrations: 

'Gingerbread House', 'The Tree That Watches', 'Horror Behind The Door', 'Autumn Leaves'

The Pumpkin-Smasher's purchase price switched from $.99 (US) to free about 12:00AM (Pacific) this morning.  It will remain free until the last strokes of Mischief Night freeze your very bones. 

Download Pumpkin Smasher free before Halloween, and its companions will follow you at no additional cost. 

Beware. 

All three tales revert to their exorbitant price of 33 cents each on Halloween Day. 

------------------------- Amazon Kindle only--------------------------------

"Hurricane Hazel"

Hurricane Hazel is based on my memories from 62 years ago. I think they're pretty accurate--you don't tend to forget this kind of experience.

"Hurricane Hazel"

from my "Tree House Tales" collection pubbed in 2014

“Hazel” is not a typo. Yesterday, I said I would write down my reminiscences of Hurricane Hazel from my childhood, once Hanna had passed through. At the end of this, you’ll find an extract from Wikipedia’s entry for Hazel.

I’m writing this as I remember it from my perspective as an eight year old--with parenthetical insertions added to explain what was probably going on at the time.

We had been visiting my paternal grandparents at "Long Acres" for the previous week before the hurricane struck and I think we were originally intending to stay longer.
Long Acres was a piece of property belonging to my grandparents—right on the shore of the sound between the barrier islands and the mainland—just outside of Shallotte, NC. That's actually Shallotte, not a mis-spelling of Charlotte NC. 

http://www.city-data.com/city/Shallotte-North-Carolina.html

My grandparents had begun improving the wooded property--first sleeping in a tent while they added a one-room cabin on their own. They stayed at Long Acres during the summers when my grandfather wasn't teaching at the University of Maryland.

Next step up was a two-floor "house" where neither floor was ever divided into rooms so far as I can remember. Several beds and at least one bookcase filled the upper floor.

I have a photograph of the outside of the house but not the interior. (The original cabin is just out of frame on the left, and we're facing away from the sound)

Years later--when I was maybe 14--my grandparents had an actual brick house built next to the original house and connected to it via a breezeway. But, that was way in the future at the time of Hazel.

My cousin Stephy, short for Stephanie, was also visiting. She was approximately my age. I don't know where her older brother Lance was at the time. Stephanie was related to my step-grandmother, not to my grandfather. My parents had agreed to take Stephy to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina on our way home.

I have snatches of memory from the early part of the trip. I remember Stephy and I playing games--possibly pinball in those days-- in some kind of open-walled amusement building. Which I assume was in Myrtle Beach.. I remember having dinner in a restaurant and ordering swordfish and being disappointed. Maybe I expected a sword on the side?

The next thing I remember is staying overnight in a hotel when we didn't want to because my mother had a bad headache. My mom was prone to severe migraines. My dad hadn't driven since a bad accident when I was a toddler. If my mom were out of commission as driver, that was that.

We started north late the next morning. It was raining hard and my parents were very anxious about Hazel. We got as far as the ferry--somewhere in the general vicinity of Newport News--and sat forever in the car waiting for the queue to start moving.

Before they built a combination span of bridges between the "mainland" of Virginia and the other bit of Virginia at the southern tip of the Delmarva Peninsula, the chief route between the coastal Carolinas and Delaware was via the link with the ferries. These were huge and held tons of cars as well as their passengers.

But back to me in the car...I was bored and it was pouring rain and windy but I don't think I was scared. Eventually, "the powers that be" began to allow the people at the front of the queue of cars board the ferry.

I remember tense moments as we moved up in the line. My parents wondered if we were going to get on board in the first load. I liked the ferry ride, so I was definitely on their side when it came to getting on the ferry rather than having to wait for the next one. 

Well, we made it. Just one problem--they had no business letting that ferry launch. We had been driving north just one step ahead of the hurricane proper. During the stay at that hotel and then our wait in the queue, Hazel had gained ground on us.

I don't remember this from back then, but my parents used to talk about someone screwing up and letting the ferry load and then clearing it to launch when they had no business doing so.

We were literally just past the point of no return when Hazel's strongest winds struck us. The crew warned the passengers to grab on to something--which everyone did. I had my arms wrapped around a painted metal post. I think my mom was grabbing it up above me. My dad was nearby but not holding on to the same post.

The ferry kept tipping sideways and then up and down. I was terrified. I suspect everyone on board was terrified. We could hear big crashing sounds from below deck. As always, all the vehicles had been chained as much as was possible. But in the midst of a hurricane that didn't make every one of them secure.

Eventually, we made shore on the peninsula. I don't remember positively now but I think we might have been in the eye of Hazel at this point, because the slow slow offloading of the ferry comes back to me without the mental image of frantic tossing and turning. Or maybe we were just really secured to the dock.

Anyway we sat in the car in the dark and waited until the cars ahead of us cleared out and my mom could drive off of the boat and unto the road. Water was everywhere. Branches. All sorts of debris.

A bit after this the second half of Hazel swooped down on us. We were on the road, my mom's headache had returned and water began pouring into the car from tiny openings around the doors. It was virtually impossible to see out of the windows, but we could make out blurred shadows of cars that had stalled in the flood and had been abandoned. Some of these were right in the lanes of traffic of course. 

I wasn't much caring about stalled cars. I was standing on the back seat (no, seatbelt restrictions in those days) I was standing and looking down at the water covering the floor, and screaming. 

I may have kept shrieking from the southern tip of the peninsula the whole way north.

My mom didn't slow down much less stop the car—just kept dodging around stalled cars and debris—for that whole section of the drive. She used to say that that was what kept us from stalling out.

The next thing I remember is driving up to our house and my -maternal- grandparents racing out the door to greet us.

Later on we learned that my paternal grandparents were safe. The shops and so on, built on the closest barrier island (possibly Ocean Isle?) had been swept away as if they had never existed.

I may have added "point of no return" to my vocabulary earlier than just about any child my age—except for the other kids who rode the ferry that day.

Wikipedia:
"Hurricane Hazel was the worst hurricane of the 1954 Atlantic hurricane season and one of the worst hurricanes of the 20th century. Hazel killed as many as 1,000 people in Haiti before striking the United States just north of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and south of Wilmington, North Carolina as a Category 4 hurricane. Nineteen people were killed in North Carolina, and 81 people were killed when it subsequently hit Toronto, Ontario. It is the strongest hurricane ever recorded to strike so far inland."

You may want to read the whole Wiki entry some time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Hazel