You’ve done this before- you’ll be sitting around the dinner table chewing over the local news, what happened at church, laughing- and it will remind someone of a story...

A recent picture with Mom and Dad up front. Across the back (L to R) Donald and Ginny Williams from Pawleys Island, SC, Karen and Dale Williams from St. Mary’s, GA and Kim and Doug Williams of Inman, SC

The two notebooks filled up by Dad. An example of his writing style.

At our home, that was usually my Dad. He had stories about Nazi POWs, working the farm, plane crashes, mules, Christmas trees made totally from ice, his family-there always seemed to be a story that fit right in and had an interesting or humorous ending.

Mom could hold her own with stories from New York then Florida in the years after the war and the coming of the Space Coast, their construction company in the boom years and some of the meanness she and Uncle Jimmy got into as youth.

As we grew older, of course, we recognized that not all of Mom and Dads stories of growing up and family and friends had happy endings after all. Business deals that went a little sideways, dilapidated houses that had a thread spool nailed to the door as a handle, doing chores for others for ten cents a week, disturbing church business.

Several years ago, I suggested to Mom and Dad that they start writing down their recollections of past events, family members, etc.

Then a few months later I asked again. Then again.

The following Christmas I bought a Moleskine notebook for Dad, who seemed to be warming up to the task. About the middle of the following summer, Mom suggested he might need another. I asked if I could see the first one.

Every page was filled completely from the top to the bottom line, 40 lines, front and back.

And he was looking for another. Which I gladly supplied. The second book took a little over a year to draw to its’ conclusion.

In a Word document, the combined journals are 504 pages.

I am sharing these two journals on this website so that you might enjoy a couple of good stories as well. I expect that the people who gain the most will be our family, of course. A number of you may find yourself in these pages, without your permission of course.

The text has been left pretty much as it was written. I made a very few minor corrections in the spelling and grammar categories- none to the content of course.

The goal is to publish new chapters on a regular basis and include some photos that are relevant to that particular chapter.

One of the amazing things in Dads content was his memory of our street addresses as we moved from town to town. Google Earth links have also been added and I will try to describe what you are seeing.