This is the best picture I have of me and my dad George Potts Sr. This was one Christmas in Moss Point, when all of us from Houston, Texas, had come home for the holidays. Daddy was in a jovial mood that night, with the help of whatever holiday spirit he was consuming. He was like a big jolly Santa Claus, except we were the ones showering gifts on him. Yes, that was a happy time, back in maybe the mid-late 1980s. Daddy passed away in 1993.

Being my daddy’s... firstborn and there being eight years between me and the next child, I remember the old house, the old land, the old days, the old ways. I remember when grandpa Abe got killed in an automobile wreck and daddy inherited the house and the land in rural Moorhead. Daddy used to hunt a lot back then and I would beg to go hunting with him. I realize now what a sheltered child I was. Daddy never let me go hunting with him. One of my fondest memories is when daddy took me fishing, somewhere called Blue Lake, and we fished all day and the only thing we caught was a turtle. Or the time when daddy took me shopping in Indianola, and I saw this skirt and jacket that I just had to have. The outfit cost the whole $50 daddy had planned to spend on me that day and he tried to talk me out of it, but it was what I wanted and he relented. It did not matter to me at the time that I could have gotten three or four cheaper outfits at another store. This was in the early 1960s. Daddy let me have my way.