Sara at the State Fair, 1935.

“In the fall of 1935 some of my friends and I rode the train to Jackson to the state fair. You could make the round trip for $1.00 and at each little town along the way other boys and girls got on. We met some boys from Cruger, which is about fifteen miles from Greenwood. I began corresponding with a boy named Junior Griffin. He would call me long distance from Cruger, which was very exciting. In December he called and wanted to know if he and a friend, Shelby Parker, could come up to date me and a friend. I think I asked Lena White to date Shelby. That was my first real date and since Mama failed to tell me what time I had to be in, we just kept riding around until 12:30 a.m. She was frantic when I finally came in and from then on it was 11:00 on the dot.

Junior Griffin at the State Fair, 1935.

“I dated Junior all that spring, we wrote regularly to each other, and he called a lot, and I thought I was really in love. Thinking back now on that skinny and not so handsome boy, I wonder why. He was a lot of fun though and always had plenty of money to spend and since his Daddy had the Chevrolet agency in Cruger he could always get a car and plenty of gas. He later married Hortense Spann, a friend of mine, and they lived down the block from us when we first built our house. He was later killed in an automobile accident.”

Personally, I think Junior was quite handsome in a fourteen-year-old sort of way. And who knew Cruger had a Chevrolet dealership? The wonders of Sara’s memoirs never cease.