Sambo and his brother, Doug, grew up on one hill; my brother, Tom and I on the next hill, a quarter mile apart. Our hills were located a mile outside the city limits, if you could call Goldonna a city. It was more like a village, actually.

There was a post office, a high school and two churches. Jack Easley and Drape Reed and Dyson Gibson had stores in town where you could buy everything from bolts of cloth to mule feed to kegs of 10-penny nails to rolls of hay wire to staple groceries to nickel candy bars. This was the Goldonna that molded and shaped the four of us.