The first summer after we moved to Lewisburg, my family took an extended vacation to North Carolina to visit relatives. We went to Winston Salem and Wilson and Raleigh and spent the last week staying with my Aunt Ann at her cottage at Morehead City, across the sound from Atlantic Beach. Every day, we packed up the car and went to the beach and I have great memories of splashing in the surf, building sand castles, gathering sand fiddlers and fishing off the ocean pier. But one of my most vivid memories of that vacation began in the back yard of Aunt Ann’s cottage. We were sitting on her lovely screened porch overlooking Bogue Sound when I saw a brightly colored bird land on the clothesline pole. I assumed at first it was some kind of tropical bird, native to the coast, and I continued to watch as it remained on the pole. Finally, curiosity got my the best out of me and I went outside for a closer look.
It was a beautiful, blue parakeet. I inched closer and closer and the bird never flew. When I was within an arm’s length, I held out my hand and finger and the bird flew right to me.
Carefully, I turned and eased my way back into the cottage and safely onto the porch. When the door was safely closed, I had a new pet. Since he was something of a vagabond, I named him Tramp. Now confined safely in his new bird cage, he accompanied us back to Lewisburg where we set up his residence in his cage on top of the refrigerator, Quite a friendly little bird, and obviously someone’s pet before he met me, Tramp was quite a talker, but in parakeet, not human language. He sang and sang throughout the day and if you held your hands under the faucet to gather water, he would fly in and take splashy baths. If you held him close to your face, he would peck gently at your lips. He was a dear and sweet little bird.
We let Tramp fly around the house quite often, always warning my younger brothers and sister that Tramp was on the loose, but one September afternoon, someone left the front door open and out flew Tramp. I called and called, but he flew high in a tall pine tree and then disappeared. I was crushed.
Several days past, when one afternoon I hopped on my bike headed for a touch football game down the street. As I was pedaling along, something swooped down and almost hit me. It was Tramp. He had tried to land on my shoulder and once again flew to a clothesline pole. I dropped my bike, walked over, held out my finger and once again I had a pet parakeet.
Memories like these never go away.