To all my Find A Grave Friends,
INTRO: I have decided it has been long enough not to have a bio on my profile page. I hope everyone has taken the Evelyn Wood Speed Reading course because I get pretty wordy at times...I have a friend that probably thinks I am like a talking parrot because I talk so much. Since I am 86, I'm sure I do repeat a lot of things... especially the same questions.
June 4, 1936 was a glorious day for me. I was assigned great parents; Josie Wright and Arlando Benjamin Clapp Sr., Ben and Josie, who lived in Raleigh, Wake County, North Carolina, USA with my little brother and sister. I was the third and middle child because there were two more siblings to come later.
Before I arrived, the decision was that my name would be Marlene Lynette Clapp. Mama always enjoyed telling her favorite story; the first time daddy saw me he remarked that I looked just like Pud Lucas, a beggar man who visited the house quiet often when daddy was at work. He came for food, clothing, and anything that would make life more comfortable. From that day on, from my memory, I never heard my daddy say the word 'Marlene'. Mostly my family called me Pud...but if we ever meet, you may choose the name you prefer.
MOVING DAY AGAIN! I can't remember exactly how old I was but we (my family) moved to Siler City, Chatham County, North Carolina, closer to both sets of grandparents. Guess that made me a real 'City Girl'. It was an interesting life! Don't get in the street, don't get out of my sight, don't go to the neighbors houses if I'm not with you. One thing for sure, I learned what DON'T meant...but that doesn't mean I always practiced it.
My daddy loved fried squirrel. So if it came into mama's possession it meant 'don't touch it' to the young 'uns. Yep, one day mama was preparing some squirrel for daddy and left it to cool before she fried it...wrong...I climbed up in a chair and ate the entire squirrel. When mama went to fry it, she had a pot full of B & B's, Broth and Bones. When daddy came home to eat supper after thinking about it all day, and found there was no squirrel, he was a bit disappointed to say the least...mama was a bit more than that!
Another interesting time in the 'City'...daddy raised bulldog puppies. How we loved the cute little things...until...he would clip their tails with hedge clippers, and we would think he was killing them. There were three of us crying (mostly hollowing) for hours...mama petting and daddy scolding the entire time.
Several times on Sunday evenings, daddy would take us for a ride to the country and we all loved it. I would ride looking out the windows at so many beautiful sights. One was a low place at a creek that had a wooden bridge across it. In addition, the low land was covered with orange day-lilies. Everything about the place was so beautiful to me. One day, mama and daddy told us we would be moving again and told us we would be moving to the COUNTRY where we had been going on Sunday's. They had bought a farm! One of the stipulations was that daddy buy a car for her. Now we were moving to Siler City Rural Route...5 miles from Siler City.
In 1939, I was three years old when I became 'A Country Girl'! We had moved to the world's biggest playground...big rocks that spread across the ground where we played house and had picnics, high rocks to climb on and see imprints that looked like feet and pretend the rocks were other things, we rode thousands of miles on fallen trees that became airplanes. When it rained, we paddled like ducks. County living was so much less restrictive than City living and we loved it.
A few weeks after we had moved, a man turned in our driveway in a car that mama didn't recognized. When it got closer, you'll never guess who it was...it was daddy...he had brought mama's car that he had promised if she would moved to the county. Never mind she couldn't drive, she had her car and when they had talked a few minutes a man came from Clapp Brothers, a tractor and machine business in Siler City that he and his brother, Sam, owned, to carry him back to work. She ask when he would teach her how to drive and he told her he had promised to get her a car...but not teach her how to drive, and learn she did, all by herself. Not long after, we were going back behind the house through the woods on a very little used car path to pick some blackberries at the tobacco barn. We hit something and the car stopped! There was nothing there! The car was rocking back and forth like a seesaw because she had tried to straddle a rock that was too high to get over. We all started laughing, except mama, got out of the car and walked back home...no blackberries that day.
When I was five, mama had a home delivery that was very common in those days. Dr Wrenn came out to our house, went in to see mama for a while and then left. When he came out we asked where the baby was and he told us he had to go 'to the cabbage patch and see if he could find one' but he would be back. He was true to his word so he returned and went in to mama again; shortly he came out with our little baby sister and two years later another little sister. She had a head full of little red fuzz, daddy's favorite color because he had married a red headed woman. More 'Country Gals'!!!
The farm had been progressing along...a small dairy was started; we were raising chickens and turkeys and sold turkey eggs for hatching. The young 'uns had been progressing also. We started to school at Bonlee High School in Bonlee N.C., and I became a real county girl on the farm. I learned how to milk cows by hand. Mama, a young black boy named Harvey Jr. who lived with us, and I did the milking twice a day until a small dairy barn with six stanchions could be built. We tended to chickens and turkeys and I gathered the Turkey eggs along the fence line where they laid in the bushes because they were range turkeys and never went in a house. Mama always threw in all the dish washing for me too. Not Fair! If you worked outside farming, you shouldn't have to work on the inside housekeeping. I didn't get that thought voted in when I brought it up, though.
I finished high school on Wednesday and went to work at a hosiery mill on the following Monday morning. I lasted about a year there because I hated the job and I believe my woman supervisor was akin to a witch. I never met a witch but I think she must have been like Alice Hornbaker. I was dating my future husband Robert Eugene Brown, A.K.A. Bobby, in that period in time.
I was dragging my feet looking for a job, so mama shopped the newspaper for 'help wanted' and found me an ideal job on third shift, she thought. It was also a hosiery mill. Mama escorted me to work the first night and even went in the mill to meet my new supervisor, Bill Smith. He was a good supervisor and even gave me three days off when I got married. I loved the job and the people I worked with. I worked there five years and during that time, I got married to Bobby, had my son, Benjamin Lee, a daughter, Karen Lynette and was six months pregnant with my daughter, Donna Maria, when the plant shutdown. I was a stay at home mom for approximately a year and a half. I was good at letting other people find me jobs...my neighbor came early one morning and told me she had me a job and I could ride to work with her and she would teach me how to do the job. Sounded like a pretty good deal to me so I started making arrangements to go to work. Loved the job and the people but I decided to come home and raise chickens because Bobby was a farmer. I was going to raise chickens and let him go to work with his uncle building chicken houses. In about a month he decided he didn't like the arrangement...I got another job at the mill where I worked my first job and things were much better...better job, better supervisor and didn't have to get up early because it was 3rd shift again. I got pregnant with my last son, Robert Scott Brown and when I gave birth to him...I never went to work there again.
We named him after his daddy and the Governor of the State of North Carolina (two fine fellers) who bird hunted with my Grandpa Wright. I meet him several times at Grandpa's house because Grandma Wright always had a delicious home cooked meal for the hunters like a meal that was prepared for a corn shucking when everybody in the neighborhood came. Grandma always had lunch ready at 12:00 noon, on the dot, and the hunters were always there at 12:00 noon, on the dot.
The year my youngest started Kindergarten at Bennett Elementary, my oldest graduated from Chatham Central High School. Both were country schools located in Chatham County. We were raising 'Country Boys'!
After Scott had been in school for a while, the Training Department Manager at Burlington Industries in Ramseur, Randolph County, North Carolina, called and asked if I would be interested in coming back and doing some instructing in the Spinning Department. I couldn't go at that time but told him I would be there as soon as I could. I went...I worked some on all three shifts...and I was there for nineteen years before they gave me what I called a 'mandatory retirement'. I could learn another language or change back to spinning because they needed someone who spoke a different language. People inquired as to what I would be doing after retirement; first thing I'm going to do is throw away my alarm clock! I later did part-time work at Central Carolina Community College as a Beginning Computer Instructor and later the Administrative Assistant at Tyson's Creek Baptist Church. Both were great (educational for me) jobs that I loved very much. I had to leave the position at the church due to health issues after Bobby passed in 2007. I was the first Secretary Tyson's Creek Baptist Church had ever employed and it was a pleasure for me to be the first to serve in that position. There were several talks with the treasurer about me staying but I was afraid I would not be able to work the hours needed and it wouldn't be fair to them. So official retirement day was upon me and my husband's dogs, Bob and Porky, and they sure were glad it had arrived...they had not been used to staying at home alone.
What have I been doing with my retirement? I have met many virtual new friends on Find A Grave and Ancestry.com. I have thoroughly enjoyed both of them...sites and friends.
I started on Find A Grave first because it was free. I have very few Memorials on my account, some I created and most transferred. I want to thank all the people who have helped me learn enough to log on to them and read, edited, message them, AND LEAVE FLOWERS. It is very sad when I see someone create a memorial and not take an extra minute to leave a flower. I enjoy the bios on the memorials and on the contributor's pages and spend a lot of time reading. I try to follow all rules but really don't know what a lot of them are...if you see I have done something wrong please notify me. I had several contributors who spent a lot of time teaching me things about Find A Grave...you know who you are...I THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart
Ancestry.com lets you work more with your immediate family but it is very expensive for an 86-year-old widow woman like me. I have a Caucasian tree that includes my husband, me and thousands of other people I don't know...I have a Native American Indian tree for my best long time friend, Norma Deese Fox. I have an African/American tree that includes a young boy, Harvey Jackson Lambert Jr., and his family. Harvey lived with us when he was young and helped with farm work...a friend of our family. ENOUGH, ENOUGH!!!

THANK YOU for taking the time to read my bio...I hope you enjoyed it and learned something interesting about me.

THANK YOU to all who visited my memorials and left flowers for them. I think they are important to a memorial and I appreciate them deeply.

THANK YOU to those who spent time helping me with snags I've run across.

THANK YOU for being my virtual friends.

THANK YOU for being a Find A Grave contributor.

PLEASE leave a flower to ALL memorials you frequent.

PLEASE visit my memorials and leave a flower for my ancestors.

BLESS YOU FOR YOUR LOVING THOUGHTS AND HONORING ALL THE PEOPLE YOU MEMORIALIZE!

A Forever FIND A GRAVE Friend of Yours.
Forget Me Not
M.C. Brown, Bear Creek, North Carolina, USA

To all my Find A Grave Friends,
INTRO: I have decided it has been long enough not to have a bio on my profile page. I hope everyone has taken the Evelyn Wood Speed Reading course because I get pretty wordy at times...I have a friend that probably thinks I am like a talking parrot because I talk so much. Since I am 86, I'm sure I do repeat a lot of things... especially the same questions.
June 4, 1936 was a glorious day for me. I was assigned great parents; Josie Wright and Arlando Benjamin Clapp Sr., Ben and Josie, who lived in Raleigh, Wake County, North Carolina, USA with my little brother and sister. I was the third and middle child because there were two more siblings to come later.
Before I arrived, the decision was that my name would be Marlene Lynette Clapp. Mama always enjoyed telling her favorite story; the first time daddy saw me he remarked that I looked just like Pud Lucas, a beggar man who visited the house quiet often when daddy was at work. He came for food, clothing, and anything that would make life more comfortable. From that day on, from my memory, I never heard my daddy say the word 'Marlene'. Mostly my family called me Pud...but if we ever meet, you may choose the name you prefer.
MOVING DAY AGAIN! I can't remember exactly how old I was but we (my family) moved to Siler City, Chatham County, North Carolina, closer to both sets of grandparents. Guess that made me a real 'City Girl'. It was an interesting life! Don't get in the street, don't get out of my sight, don't go to the neighbors houses if I'm not with you. One thing for sure, I learned what DON'T meant...but that doesn't mean I always practiced it.
My daddy loved fried squirrel. So if it came into mama's possession it meant 'don't touch it' to the young 'uns. Yep, one day mama was preparing some squirrel for daddy and left it to cool before she fried it...wrong...I climbed up in a chair and ate the entire squirrel. When mama went to fry it, she had a pot full of B & B's, Broth and Bones. When daddy came home to eat supper after thinking about it all day, and found there was no squirrel, he was a bit disappointed to say the least...mama was a bit more than that!
Another interesting time in the 'City'...daddy raised bulldog puppies. How we loved the cute little things...until...he would clip their tails with hedge clippers, and we would think he was killing them. There were three of us crying (mostly hollowing) for hours...mama petting and daddy scolding the entire time.
Several times on Sunday evenings, daddy would take us for a ride to the country and we all loved it. I would ride looking out the windows at so many beautiful sights. One was a low place at a creek that had a wooden bridge across it. In addition, the low land was covered with orange day-lilies. Everything about the place was so beautiful to me. One day, mama and daddy told us we would be moving again and told us we would be moving to the COUNTRY where we had been going on Sunday's. They had bought a farm! One of the stipulations was that daddy buy a car for her. Now we were moving to Siler City Rural Route...5 miles from Siler City.
In 1939, I was three years old when I became 'A Country Girl'! We had moved to the world's biggest playground...big rocks that spread across the ground where we played house and had picnics, high rocks to climb on and see imprints that looked like feet and pretend the rocks were other things, we rode thousands of miles on fallen trees that became airplanes. When it rained, we paddled like ducks. County living was so much less restrictive than City living and we loved it.
A few weeks after we had moved, a man turned in our driveway in a car that mama didn't recognized. When it got closer, you'll never guess who it was...it was daddy...he had brought mama's car that he had promised if she would moved to the county. Never mind she couldn't drive, she had her car and when they had talked a few minutes a man came from Clapp Brothers, a tractor and machine business in Siler City that he and his brother, Sam, owned, to carry him back to work. She ask when he would teach her how to drive and he told her he had promised to get her a car...but not teach her how to drive, and learn she did, all by herself. Not long after, we were going back behind the house through the woods on a very little used car path to pick some blackberries at the tobacco barn. We hit something and the car stopped! There was nothing there! The car was rocking back and forth like a seesaw because she had tried to straddle a rock that was too high to get over. We all started laughing, except mama, got out of the car and walked back home...no blackberries that day.
When I was five, mama had a home delivery that was very common in those days. Dr Wrenn came out to our house, went in to see mama for a while and then left. When he came out we asked where the baby was and he told us he had to go 'to the cabbage patch and see if he could find one' but he would be back. He was true to his word so he returned and went in to mama again; shortly he came out with our little baby sister and two years later another little sister. She had a head full of little red fuzz, daddy's favorite color because he had married a red headed woman. More 'Country Gals'!!!
The farm had been progressing along...a small dairy was started; we were raising chickens and turkeys and sold turkey eggs for hatching. The young 'uns had been progressing also. We started to school at Bonlee High School in Bonlee N.C., and I became a real county girl on the farm. I learned how to milk cows by hand. Mama, a young black boy named Harvey Jr. who lived with us, and I did the milking twice a day until a small dairy barn with six stanchions could be built. We tended to chickens and turkeys and I gathered the Turkey eggs along the fence line where they laid in the bushes because they were range turkeys and never went in a house. Mama always threw in all the dish washing for me too. Not Fair! If you worked outside farming, you shouldn't have to work on the inside housekeeping. I didn't get that thought voted in when I brought it up, though.
I finished high school on Wednesday and went to work at a hosiery mill on the following Monday morning. I lasted about a year there because I hated the job and I believe my woman supervisor was akin to a witch. I never met a witch but I think she must have been like Alice Hornbaker. I was dating my future husband Robert Eugene Brown, A.K.A. Bobby, in that period in time.
I was dragging my feet looking for a job, so mama shopped the newspaper for 'help wanted' and found me an ideal job on third shift, she thought. It was also a hosiery mill. Mama escorted me to work the first night and even went in the mill to meet my new supervisor, Bill Smith. He was a good supervisor and even gave me three days off when I got married. I loved the job and the people I worked with. I worked there five years and during that time, I got married to Bobby, had my son, Benjamin Lee, a daughter, Karen Lynette and was six months pregnant with my daughter, Donna Maria, when the plant shutdown. I was a stay at home mom for approximately a year and a half. I was good at letting other people find me jobs...my neighbor came early one morning and told me she had me a job and I could ride to work with her and she would teach me how to do the job. Sounded like a pretty good deal to me so I started making arrangements to go to work. Loved the job and the people but I decided to come home and raise chickens because Bobby was a farmer. I was going to raise chickens and let him go to work with his uncle building chicken houses. In about a month he decided he didn't like the arrangement...I got another job at the mill where I worked my first job and things were much better...better job, better supervisor and didn't have to get up early because it was 3rd shift again. I got pregnant with my last son, Robert Scott Brown and when I gave birth to him...I never went to work there again.
We named him after his daddy and the Governor of the State of North Carolina (two fine fellers) who bird hunted with my Grandpa Wright. I meet him several times at Grandpa's house because Grandma Wright always had a delicious home cooked meal for the hunters like a meal that was prepared for a corn shucking when everybody in the neighborhood came. Grandma always had lunch ready at 12:00 noon, on the dot, and the hunters were always there at 12:00 noon, on the dot.
The year my youngest started Kindergarten at Bennett Elementary, my oldest graduated from Chatham Central High School. Both were country schools located in Chatham County. We were raising 'Country Boys'!
After Scott had been in school for a while, the Training Department Manager at Burlington Industries in Ramseur, Randolph County, North Carolina, called and asked if I would be interested in coming back and doing some instructing in the Spinning Department. I couldn't go at that time but told him I would be there as soon as I could. I went...I worked some on all three shifts...and I was there for nineteen years before they gave me what I called a 'mandatory retirement'. I could learn another language or change back to spinning because they needed someone who spoke a different language. People inquired as to what I would be doing after retirement; first thing I'm going to do is throw away my alarm clock! I later did part-time work at Central Carolina Community College as a Beginning Computer Instructor and later the Administrative Assistant at Tyson's Creek Baptist Church. Both were great (educational for me) jobs that I loved very much. I had to leave the position at the church due to health issues after Bobby passed in 2007. I was the first Secretary Tyson's Creek Baptist Church had ever employed and it was a pleasure for me to be the first to serve in that position. There were several talks with the treasurer about me staying but I was afraid I would not be able to work the hours needed and it wouldn't be fair to them. So official retirement day was upon me and my husband's dogs, Bob and Porky, and they sure were glad it had arrived...they had not been used to staying at home alone.
What have I been doing with my retirement? I have met many virtual new friends on Find A Grave and Ancestry.com. I have thoroughly enjoyed both of them...sites and friends.
I started on Find A Grave first because it was free. I have very few Memorials on my account, some I created and most transferred. I want to thank all the people who have helped me learn enough to log on to them and read, edited, message them, AND LEAVE FLOWERS. It is very sad when I see someone create a memorial and not take an extra minute to leave a flower. I enjoy the bios on the memorials and on the contributor's pages and spend a lot of time reading. I try to follow all rules but really don't know what a lot of them are...if you see I have done something wrong please notify me. I had several contributors who spent a lot of time teaching me things about Find A Grave...you know who you are...I THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart
Ancestry.com lets you work more with your immediate family but it is very expensive for an 86-year-old widow woman like me. I have a Caucasian tree that includes my husband, me and thousands of other people I don't know...I have a Native American Indian tree for my best long time friend, Norma Deese Fox. I have an African/American tree that includes a young boy, Harvey Jackson Lambert Jr., and his family. Harvey lived with us when he was young and helped with farm work...a friend of our family. ENOUGH, ENOUGH!!!

THANK YOU for taking the time to read my bio...I hope you enjoyed it and learned something interesting about me.

THANK YOU to all who visited my memorials and left flowers for them. I think they are important to a memorial and I appreciate them deeply.

THANK YOU to those who spent time helping me with snags I've run across.

THANK YOU for being my virtual friends.

THANK YOU for being a Find A Grave contributor.

PLEASE leave a flower to ALL memorials you frequent.

PLEASE visit my memorials and leave a flower for my ancestors.

BLESS YOU FOR YOUR LOVING THOUGHTS AND HONORING ALL THE PEOPLE YOU MEMORIALIZE!

A Forever FIND A GRAVE Friend of Yours.
Forget Me Not
M.C. Brown, Bear Creek, North Carolina, USA