Growing Up in The Desert

The Woods home was basically a happy home with lots of love and much laughter. We had all kinds of pets, horses, dogs, cats, white rats, ducks, birds, gold fish, and even five Gila Monsters in a cage for about three years. The Gila Monsters weren't really pets, they were on display for the customers of the business.

I was raised in and a part of, a business ever sense I was able to stand on tip toes and see over a counter. Dad said I knew how to make change for a customer before I knew her A B C's. Being raised in a business that catered to tourists as well as local people and transient laborers, brings one into contact with just about every type of personality you can think of. Desmond use to call the old place the "Character's Lodge", because they met so many different characters. He said many a time he was going to write a book.

We had as customers of almost ever race of people, people from the loneliest cotton-picker to ex-governor McFarland, Wrestlers, Movie stars, Cowboys, Farmers, All kinds of salesmen, and hundreds of Tradesmen. I went to school in a two roomed building at Cotton Center through the sixth year. From there I went to Mesa and lived with her cousin {Carolyn McLellan, Imma Ruth's McLellan's step daughter}through the seventh, then I returned home to attend Buckeye Elementary School in my 8th year. During the summers, I helped my parents work at the store, either as a waitress or in the grocery section of our store. That’s the way I earned money to help provide for my cloths for the following year.

Some where along the way in my younger years I began to feel rejected and unloved by my parents & siblings. Being a middle child contributed to the frustration as well, too young to do the things my older brother did, too old to be treated like the baby. It was the Pitts. Velvet was favored by the grandparents and she was a sweet, cute little thing.

I did well in gamer school & then the teachers decided to advance me from the 5th & 6th grades in one year. That was one of the worst mistakes my made in my life. From that time forward I would fall behind in my ability to comprehend and my grades plummeted.

So at the ripe old age of 16 (June 7 ,1959 and only a Junior in High School) I became engaged to Woodrow Killman Jr. & we were married{on the re-bound from Harold Colville} in June after my Junior year and as a result the school system would not allow me to attend high school and therefore I did not get to graduate.

Woody and I were only married four years, and we had two Children, I found myself divorced, with basically no financial. I went to work in Phoenix, AZ at the Playboy Club as a Bunny {cocktail waitress.} I worked in several different restaurants in the Phoenix area for a couple years. Many unfortunate things happened while I lived in Phoenix but those are a whole nother ball game.

I moved to Houston Texas, got a job bookkeeping and soon started an Specialty Advertising Company. Self-employment suited me well.

In 1981 she met John L. Norsworthy on April 1 and they were married in Houston on the11, 1981 in my home on 2408 Chimney Rock, Briarcroft Subdivision in Houston, Texas (we were literally total strangers). It took a year to sell the advertising company to Stotts Advertising. We then moved to Summerton, SC on December of 1982.

I became active in the Clarendon County Clemson Extension Organization and served as President of the local Roland Subdivision Club, then President of Clarendon County Extension as well. I also served on state and regional levels of the extension organization.

John cat fished for about a year then started his own Santee Log Home construction company. Later he went to work for Coker Builders in Turbeville, SC. then moved on to Mascot Homes in Sumter, SC in 1984.