I started this blog a few years back and after reading it one day I realized how depressing it sounded so I stopped writing. So today I'm going to start all over. This is basically a story of my life and how very blessed I have been. I am writing it for my family and if you happen by, you're welcome to read. Remembering what I already knew is in reference to the many good things in life that I have been taught and the fact that at times all of us forget how very blessed we are. We all have trials and we all have disappointments but we all have good that comes to us and we have a Heavenly Father that loves us so much.

Remembering What I Already Knew:

May name is Jackie and I am 51, soon to be 52 years old. I grew up in the small southern Tennessee town of Fayetteville. It is just a few miles from the Alabama state border. My father was Bobby Nix Davis and my mother is Carol Ann McDow Davis Bartholomew.

I was born in the Lincoln County Hospital on June 28, 1960. We lived in a small house near the Flint River. I don't remember living there but we moved just a few blocks from there before I was three. That is when I have my first memories. I remember going back to visit our next door neighbor. I don't know his real name but we called him Pa Stillman. I can't remember his face but I do remember that he would give me candy and that he was very sweet.

We lived across from the Central High School in Fayetteville and our house faced the back lot of the school. I would watch the band practice everyday after school. I had a baton and I would mimic the majorettes, marching back and forth down the side walk. I must have been about 4 then. We had neighbors beside of us that my mom was friends with and they had a boy about my age. His name was Billy Dale Helums. We would play at his house sometimes. He had older sisters and they went to the elementary school that was one the corner of the street. They would come home for lunch everyday. I thought they were so mature and grown up. I wanted to play with them but they were always in school.

Our backyard butted up against the yard of another little boy. His mom worked, so they had a housekeeper that watched him. I never went to his house but he and I would play through the fence. I do think I once climbed the fence and the housekeeper had to bring me back home.

My mom was a good mom and kept a very clean house. Everything was always neat and clean. We had hardwood floors and they were shiny and while she was waxing them, she would have me sit on the couch and I would watch her as she danced around waxing floors with her hair in curlers. She would have the radio on and there would be songs playing that I can still remember to this day. "Downtown" was my favorite, then there was "Breaking Up is Hard to Do". In the car, my dad would play the radio and I liked a song about tan shoes with pink shoe laces, a polka-dot vest and man oh man he wore, tan shoes with pink shoes and a big panama with a purple hat band. Then there was "The Elephant Walk" and Charlie Brown oh what a clown and "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay". My parents were always singing along. I loved music.

My mom and dad had a few friends that would come over sometimes. I don't remember their names but they would play Rook and we would go to a school and my dad and his friends would fly gas powered airplanes, I say fly, mostly crash. My dad would spend endless hours working on and fixing his airplanes and we would go to fly them and then they would crash. But it was fun while it lasted.

Once my dad and one of his friends were trying to make helium to fill up balloons. They had some sort of concoction in a Coke bottle. They would fit the balloons over the mouth of the Coke bottle and they would blow up. One blew up and burst, getting the concoction in the eyes of my dad's friend. I thought he was going to be blind. They took him into the kitchen and washed his eyes out and then he was fine.