To the Glory of God

PART I

Let Linda Tell It

My name is Linda. I was born on March 2, 1942. My mother’s name is Eleanor, and my father’s name is Earl.

The place where I was born was Urbana, Illinois. It was in a hospital. The doctors said I was the best baby they ever had in the nursery. I never cried. I weighed eight pounds and four ounces. I was born at 1:40 p.m. at the Carle Memorial Hospital. Dr. Bodine was Mommy’s doctor, Dr. Gillespie mine. I was fat and red, and they thought I was very healthy. But I had a little red birthmark on my left shoulder.

Ford Doolittle was in the crib next to me. He cried all the time. He was long and large-boned. He left the hospital before I did because he was born in February. His Mommy and mine both got beautiful birth certificates of us with a picture of the hospital on the front and on the back a poem about angels and a picture of one. The G. C. Willis Co. Store gave it as a present.

Ford’s Mommy, Mary, and my Mommy were good friends.

Ford and I always knew each other. When I was eighteen months old, we moved next door to Ford, to the “little white house” at 113 W. Pennsylvania Avenue. It was in September 1943.

Before that, we lived in the house I went to when I left the nursery. It was rented. It was on South State Street in Champaign, the twin city to Urbana. We lived at 715 South State Street until September 1943. We had a tremendous garden there because the lot was over 200 feet. It went way, way back to a road. There were eleven cherry trees. We grew lots of vegetables. Mommy put the fruit and vegetables up in jars.

The most beautiful cherry tree was in the middle of the lot in back of the house, next to a grape arbor that the landlord had built. There were red cherries on the tree.

The other cherry trees were Royal Anne. They were yellow. All of the cherries were delicious. There was one apple tree. It had two kinds but only two apples on it. It was grafted. We ate the yellow one. A horse came through and ate the red one.

We had peas and tomatoes and lettuce and carrots and string beans and okra and corn and soybeans and all kinds of things from the garden. We had angel food cake a lot because Mommy gave me the yolks of eggs and used the whites for the cakes.

Eleanor, the girl next door, was old enough to stay with me sometimes. There were the Hyde girls too. One said I looked like Shirley Temple. She liked me and was very jolly. She stayed with me lots of times. Her name was Margaret.

Another neighbor, Miss Lawson, said I would be a preacher because I always stood on the screened-in front porch talking and pointing up to the sky with my index finger.

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