Editor’s note: As part of Xpress‘ annual Kids Issue series we invited readers to submit past stories from their childhood in WNC. This is one of several entries.
by Barb Knight
I was born with cerebral palsy in 1960 and grew up on Beaverdam Knoll. My parents wanted me to experience life to the fullest, so one thing my daddy always did was take me for long walks pushing me down Beaverdam Road in my wheelchair that I named Black Beauty.
Mostly we’d roll down to the candy store at the end of Beaverdam, where the road splits to go up to the Blue Ridge Parkway. But on the day I am writing about we did something a little crazy! Daddy handed me a stick and said, “Point the direction you want to go, Barb,” and I pointed toward town and called out, “To Lord’s Drug Store!”
And off we went.
It was a very long walk. Daddy would move me off the road when cars came. When we arrived at Lord’s (an old brick building just a bit down from the corner of Gracelyn Road and Merrimon Avenue), he got me a delicious root beer float and himself a coffee from sweet Ms. Nora Bell, who worked at the soda fountain. He then called my mother from the pay phone to come pick us up for the return trip home. We both were pretty exhausted.
That adventure lived on in our family stories for years.
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