Thru Hell on the Good Foot

Thru Hell On The Good Foot
Written by Mary LaGrande Nicholas           

February 17, 1946 In High Point, N C. a baby girl was born to Novella and William Satterwhite   And this has to be the most exciting moment of my life, I never dreamed I would be able to tell my story to any one except  someone  that was interested enough to read  about the hell I went threw ...
     Some of the names have been changed to protect the people who have changed their lives for the better, or don’t want to be recognized or associated with the story, but this is my true story…..

     My story begins in High Point North Carolina 1946….

     I can’t say I remember everything from the moment I was born, but, I remember most of every thing that happened from the time I was in Diapers, mostly because my mother died when I was only eight years old, and I wanted to remember every thing I could about her, so I began to research every thing in my mind that I could remember, and being so young when she died, that wasn’t very much I had to remember.
 
        I can see in my mind a vision of my mother, a light skinned woman in her mid thirties with very high cheek bones, and almond shaped eyes, to me she was the most beautiful woman in the world that always gave me that warm secure feeling of unconditional love. I remember a time when I must have been about a year old, still wearing diapers, we were walking to the store at the bottom of the hill on Davis Ave, and apparently, when the diaper got wet it had to come off immediately and off thy came in the middle of the street.  I remember this vividly, so I can truly say I remember when I was in diapers....
 
         My mother was an identical twin, and it was amazing how much they looked alike. Sometimes I couldn’t tell which one was my mother, and they would play games with us and sand us back and forth, for instants, I would run crying to one of them thinking she was my mother, and they would look at each other and say “whose crying baby is that” and I would run to the other one and  she’d say “ I’m not your mama” and point to the other one and say” that’s Your mama, “and when they saw I wasn’t taking the joke very well , I would get double love and attention .. 

               I can’t remember too much about my father, because he worked for the city of High Point delivering coal and most of the time I would be asleep. From what little I do remember, some of it was not very nice….It was October. Halloween time my father scared me so bad with a Halloween mask, because I had discovered how to open the front door and I would open it for anybody, so he made me think that he was in the bedroom with my mother, and then he sneaked around to the front door with the most scariest mask you could image, whispering,” open the door, open the door”, and my mother in the bedroom saying,” don’t open that door!!” but, me being hard headed opened it anyway, and my father scared me so bad I was shaking ,peeing and crying all at the same time.  My mother said, “Will don’t scare my baby like that,” then she picked me up and in a very calm and serene voice said, “see when mommy says don’t open the door you must not open it  ok,” and I never opened it again.  That was their way of teaching me I wasn’t to open the door for anyone, without giving me a spanking, I don’t know which one would have been worse.   
...
     As I have grown older I put my memories together like a puzzle, and came up with the real reason why it was so important for me not to open the door for anyone was because as my memory takes me back to the time my sister and I was playing in the corn field in the back of the house, and in the middle of this corn field we came upon a corn liquor still, I was only two and my sister was four, we thought it was water, so we drank some, I don’t know how much, but it was enough that we couldn’t stand up, and my mother was frantic looking for us, because we were