These delicate winged creatures carry me back to my youth growing up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains
“Butterflies are like angels in disguise. They seem fragile but are amazing and wise. They come to sup on a sunny day and sail gently on the sun’s bright ray. When sad or hurting I find healing balm and a troubled heart becomes calm when a butterfly comes dancing by to cheer my heart and delight my eye.”
When I was a little boy, my mother, Durell Dickerson Justus, a sensitive, caring person, would let me help her tend flowers she planted in beds around house and garden, and in pots which were displayed on window sills. The flowers added pleasing colors to our plain frame house with a shingle roof. Besides planting flowers, Mother and I would go find wild flowers along the nearby stream and forest. These colorful flowers were placed in vases containing water to brighten our home.
My grandmother, Lela Dickerson Justus, also loved flowers and she would get me to go with her to cut dogwood blossoms to put in pots in her house. She would also tell how the dogwood blossom depicted the figure of Jesus who was crucified on the cross for our sins.
In our mountain valley of Rabun County, Georgia, which was named Germany Valley, after early German settlers, spring and early summer displayed fresh green grass on lawns and fields and wild flowers along the streams and in the surrounding forest. Our first house was a simple frame dwelling, with plank sidings and shingle roof, built by Grandpa Dock Dickerson, a sawmiller, and Neal Justus, my father. The house was heated by a wood burning fireplace and stove.
Although poor and coming out of the Great Depression and into World War II, we children had Christian parents that were hardworking and caring folks. We worshiped in the little white church nearby where I attended the first five grades taught by a single teacher. I had a solid beginning to a varied and sometimes adventurous life. I came to like farm life but farming was not my future.
