Here's Where I Stand: A Memoir

Chapter 1 My Family in Monroe Nobody growing up ever had better home folks than I did. My boyhood days were golden. Monroe was the kind of place where you knew just about everybody and just about everybody knew you. The Monroe of my childhood was a community of about three thousand, surrounded by farmland. Today, it is a thriving small city; it is the county seat of North Carolina's fastest-growing county, and among the twenty-five fastest-growing counties in the United States. Down through the years, countless farms have given way to new homes, yet my hometown has never, to me, lost its attraction, and it never will. Even now, after all these decades, when I see that ancient town clock facing all four ways atop the Union County Court House, or when I ride through what is now known as the historic district, I see those familiar buildings of my boyhood days. At those moments, my memories instantly become as vivid as today's headlines. In the late 1740s, three Helms brothersGeorge, Jonathan, and Tilmanmigrated from Pennsylvania to North Carolina and the Union County area. Both my mother, Ethel Mae Helms, and my father, Jesse Alexander Helms, who were not related, could trace their respective Helms roots back to those pioneers. I am a part of the seventh generation of Tilman Helms' family to claim "Sweet Union" as my birthplace. (Nowadays the Helms listings in the local phone directory take up several pages, and scores of kin attended a family reunion organized some years ago.) There were five of us in our immediate family: my late brother, Wriston, who was five years older than I; my sister, Mary Elizabeth (Lib), who is eight years younger; and our parents, both now deceased. There was never a moment when I did not know that my parents loved me and my siblings. My mother might be described as a homebody. Other than being in church with us on Sunday morning, there was no place where she was happier than in her own home. She quietly took care of us and encouraged us by creating an environment where we were free of worry. She taught by example and was devoted to making sure we were well fed with vegetables from her garden and chickens from her little flock. One year during the Depression she even bought a cow to make sure that we would have enough fresh milk. Somehow, she managed to stretch every resource far enough to take care of usand have something to share when my father found someone in need of a meal. During the Depression, my dad served as both chief of police and chief of the fire department at the same time. By covering both jobs, the town of Monroe could provide my father a monthly salary of just $65. As little as that was, we somehow always had the essentials that we needed. Therefore, we considered ourselves exceedingly fortunate to have plenty to eat and a warm and comfortable home. So, to me, the good old days in Monroe were indeed the good old days. I don't suggest that there weren't occasional difficult times, but they were more than balanced by the good fortune of being surrounded with people who cared for us and for one another. We were poor, yesawesomely poor by today's standards of poverty. The Great Depression was a fact of our lives, just as it was for the rest of the country. We knew that fortunes had been lost, and our own local bank had to take a bank holiday to prevent a run on its holdings, but we were no strangers to simple living, and our economy was tied to agriculture more than manufacturing. We stuck to the basics and hoped for the best. All of us worked at whatever jobs we could find to bring in some extra money. At age nine I got my first job sweeping the floHelms, Jesse is the author of 'Here's Where I Stand: A Memoir' with ISBN 9780375508844 and ISBN 0375508848.