Bette Cox                                             Fiction, Nonfiction, and Inspirational Writing

Bette Cox, Feb 2010

Bette Cox

Elizabeth G. "Bette" Cox grew up in Florence, in the heart of South Carolina's Pee Dee region. She attended the University of South Carolina at Florence, now Francis Marion University, and in 2006 received a Certificate as Oral Historian from UCLA-Davis. This site is dedicated to her first love, writing.

Contents

The Simsville Inheritance

Avery Alderson has inherited an entire town from her Aunt Myrtle. What on earth will she do with it? Here's the next chapter.

Chapter 28 - Call the Boss, or
Not Call the Boss?

A nagging thought kept running around in the back of my mind. Whatever is going on in Simsville is getting bigger and bigger. Too big. Maybe it was time to call my office.

Sure, I was on a leave of absence. Sure, they didn't expect to hear from me for another week or so. But a little unofficial help would be welcome, and I had no doubt it would be offered if I explained my situation to my boss. I could do a lot with the resources I had at my disposal but to do more would require my supervisor's authorization. Matt Ryan's authorization.

Did I want to explain the situation to Matt? That was my number one question. I'd worked very hard to arrive at my position, one of responsibility and respect, one where I knew what I was doing and others came to me for help. Not one where I went to someone else for help. It was sort of a running joke between Matt and me. He was Mr. Macho, I was Miss Know-it-all. He and I liked each other and our roles were complementary as a rule, not competitive.

The problem was, we were looked at differently by the higher ups. In spite of the fact that I had solved some difficult problems and saved our agency a lot of embarrassment as well as money, Matt got the credit for it. He didn't strive for the credit, he tried to make sure I was recognized for my efforts, but that didn't matter in Richmond. His immediate superior didn't believe any woman was truly capable of excellent work. It tended to create an air of tension between Matt and me.

Which got worse after our social lives began to coincide. First we discovered a mutual interest in jazz. Then a mutual interest in old classic movies. After running into each other several times at concerts and theaters, we began to schedule our free time to "coincidentally" coincide. We'd never had a date you could exactly call a date, right out. That was sort of frowned on around the office. Still, with coffee and burgers after a movie, wine and cheese at a concert or a long walk to wind down after a long day, things were progressing. Not fast, just comfortably. Any tension on the job could be dealt with after work in a sensible conversation, ending with laughter and a good night kiss. I wanted to keep it that way.

So, call the boss, or not call the boss?

Continued...

Bette's Blogs

Family Memories

Glimpses of life growing up in northeastern South Carolina in the 1940's, 50's and 60's, give or take a decade or two. Here's a sample:

You can't get there from here

“Where was your daddy’s photography studio?” a fellow asked me the other day.

“Well, I went to his studio once or twice when I was little. Remember when the China Shop used to be downtown? (No.) Next door to the old Post Office on West Evans? (Okay.) I thought it was upstairs in that building but then somebody told me his studio was somewhere else. (Where?) Remember the bank on West Evans with the back door on Dargan Street?” (No.)

“Well, remember the Kresses downtown that had a back door on Dargan?” (Oh, yeah.) “The back door of the bank was next to the back door of Kresses. There were some offices upstairs in that building. Daddy supposedly had a studio up there.”

Notice all the “remembers?”

Well, there’s no China Shop downtown any more. No bank on West Evans and Dargan and no Kresses. If that fellow had been any younger, I probably would have had to walk him down the street and show him in person! Our conversation was sort of like giving directions to get somewhere out in the county. “Remember when old man Kirby’s tobacco barn burned down? Twenty years or so back? Turn left just past there.”

Unless you grew up around here, you might not be able to get there from here!

Of course, all that made me remember some other things from the 1950’s. Like the fact that banks in downtown Florence used to close at 1:00 o’clock every day. One day a week, I think it was Wednesday, they weren’t open at all. And of course nobody ever heard of a branch bank.

Or the fact that you could set your watch by the whistle at Florence Manufacturing Company just outside of town. For years nearly every working woman in Florence had a job in that sewing plant, down at the end of Chase Street near the Darlington Highway railroad tracks. Some days they made shirts, other days they made dresses.

Every drug store had a soda fountain and a soda jerk, something you seldom see in 2007. I can hear some of you young’uns ask, “Soda jerk, what’s a soda jerk?” (Look it up.) High school kids hung out at their favorite fountain after school. One on the corner of West Evans and South Irby Street had black and white hexagonal ceramic tile floors, tiny glass-top tables and bow-legged metal chairs.

Fountain Coke was served in hourglass-shaped glasses and cherry coke came with a real cherry on top of crushed ice. Banana splits were available but few teenagers had enough cash for one of those. We usually made do with scoops of plain vanilla.

Continued...

To contact Bette Cox:

1231-1 Via Ponticello
Florence, SC 29501
(843) 665-7620
E-mail bettecox@bellsouth.net

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