David Wyant

We grew up on a dairy farm.  And dad went off after milking in the mornings.  At first, when I was old enough to remember, he went to the ABC Store that was up on Main Street right across from the railroad station.  And he would come back at night and milk out on the dairy farm.  Lambs Road is my mom’s family name.  I grew up at the end of that road where the radio towers are and that was 200 and some acres.  And it went across and backed up to the Barracks.  Daddy then when they went to Barracks Road to put that ABC Store in daddy said at the time he didn’t want to be the vice office manager or something because he felt like it was too much money to deal with.  So Daddy left there, and then went to the post office.  So he spent 30 some years at the post office carrying mail, didn’t want to work inside, wanted to be out meeting the public and walked every day.  And he’d walk all through town.  He’d walk about 15 miles a day carrying a backpack with the mail in it.  And then, Mama, she was a nurse.  And Mom only worked night shift, 11:00 to 7:00, which I thought was so unique.  She’d work about three nights a week.  And the reason she went with the night shift from 11:00 to 7:00, she’d go to work about 10:00-10:30, and she’d make sure that we’d had everything ready and go to bed.  And then she was home to put us on school bus in the morning and everything.  And then when we got near Albemarle High School back in those days, I had to walk to school because that road, Lambs Road, was only a mile long.  Anybody on Lambs Road had walk to school, and I was down the road about a quarter of a mile.  So she nursed, and she did private duty at first at the University Hospital back in the -- I remember back in about the ’50s.  One guy had an automobile accident, became a real good friend of the family.  And Mom and Dad used go see him down in Fredericksburg, and then she left private duty and went to Martha Jefferson and was in charge of a floor.  And so she’d have 20 some patients with one other nurse all night long.  So, nowadays, you look at the hospital and how many nurses and everything you got to do a floor of maybe not that many patients.