My Third Birthday

Memories of Cleffie Hicks Burford --

My Third Birthday

The first thing I remember as a child is the day I turned three years old.  It was the eighth day of August, 1920.    

When I got out of bed that morning I went into the living room but no one was there.  I walked on into the kitchen and there was my mother stirring something in a bowl.  My two sisters, Ruby, age eight, and Irene, age 5, were sitting at the table watching.  Of course, they couldn’t wait to tell me it was my birthday and that I was “three” years old!  They were all excited!     

I asked what was in the bowl my mother was stirring.  When they explained that it was my birthday cake she was making I got excited, too.  When they told me all the plans for the day I got more excited and by the time they had finished I felt as though I was at least a foot taller        

I don’t remember much of anything else that happened that year, but this was my birthday and that made it an important day!  (At least that’s the impression I got from my sisters.)  All the plans for the day were centered around my birthday.  All this just for me!  It must be an important day!        

We lived in the country during this period of my life.  Our closest neighbors lived about three hundred yards down the road.  They had a girl named Mae and a boy named Gilbert. Their last name was  Rudolph.  I remember walking with Ruby and Irene down to their house to invite them over to our house in the afternoon to help celebrate my birthday.  I was walking on air as I skipped along the path by the garden fence, Ruby in front of me and Irene behind.        

I don’t remember if there were other children who lived in the neighborhood or not.  If there were, I’m sure they were invited, too.  But I don’t remember of any other houses that were close to us except a little house across on the other side of the road about a hundred yards down that sat empty a lot of the time.  Sometimes a family would move into it and stay awhile and then move somewhere else.  Also, there was a big house across from the Rudolphs.  The Leggett’s lived there and I believe they had a child or two at that time.        

Even though I can’t remember all the little details, I do remember how I felt.  It was one of the happiest days of my life, and whatever else we had to eat that day, I’m sure one thing was good cold watermelon.  We had a big patch of watermelons and we dearly loved to eat them. My father would cool them in a big tub of cold well water for a few hours.  Well water is lots colder than water from the tap that we have now-a-days.

PHOTO L-R: Ruby, Irene, Cleffie, Elvin, Evalee

This picture was taken somewhere around 1923 (Evalee was born in March 1922). I have several copies of this photo, and on the back of one of them is written "we had been eating watermelon."