I am Sunshine Tucker.  That’s my given name.  I was born at home after a long, stormy and thunderous night of a most difficult delivery for my mother.  Breech birth, just as the dawn began to break.  My daddy looked out the window as the doctor was about to sign my birth certificate and  exclaimed “Thank God, there’s sunshine.”  Mistakenly, the doctor thought he was referring to me.

       I’m to be married in approximately six months–give or take some decisions and indecisions, questions and fears. That is why I’ve decided to set about writing all I can recall that may be important:  How our town came to be; my early memories; the foibles of the neighbors; disturbing things I’ve been told by family and friends, and gossip I have heard throughout the years.  If any of it makes sense when I am finished, it may help resolve what I feel in my heart I must do.

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       In the late 1800’s, Jeremiah Pitts, a successful business man from New York, decided that it would be fortuitous to spend his latter years as a ‘gentleman farmer’.   The only farming he’d ever done consisted of watering his wife’s potted plants on their wrap-around veranda; however, he sold his profitable funeral and furniture business, pulled up stakes, packed up his wife and two sons and purchased approximately two and a half square miles in southern Ohio.

       After three unsucessful years of attempting to grow crops, he realized that if he wished to retain any of his wealth, he’d better leave the farming to the farmers.  Jeremiah developed the land, laid out the streets, parceled and sold lots, set up his sons in various business ventures, and named the town ‘Pittsville’.

       Within a short period of time, the town boasted:  Pitts Savings and Loan, Pitts Funeral Parlor, Pitts Grade School and the Pittsville Fire Department.  Later, as the town expanded, Pitts Department Store and the Pittsville Police Department were added.  As the town continued to flourish, the residents were overjoyed by the addition of the Pitts Movie Theatre, and Pittsville High School–the ‘Patriots’, whose colors were red, white and blue.  The motto, appropriately enough, was ‘Go Lady Liberty’.  Evidently you could take Jeremiah out of New York, but you couldn’t take New York out of Jeremiah.

       The Pitts’  family continued to prosper, and a third generation of Pitts boys arrived on the scene.  This generation was not as focused, dedicated or productive as the previous two.  Three of the five young men:  Jeremiah the Third, (Jerry T), Paul, (Paulie Boy), and Robert (Bobby), were regarded by the old-timers as ne’er-do-wells, by the middle-agers as wild and unproductive, and by the eligible young women–many of whom had lost their virginity to any of the three–as the “best husband potential in all of Pittsville.”

       The fourth son, Leonard, was a little slow, however the family saw to it that he was engaged in activities such as collecting tickets and selling popcorn at the movie theatre, keeping the Dalmatian fed and exercised at the fire station, and greeting customers at the bank.  He was large and cumbersome–disliked by some, tolerated by others, and liked by those understanding enough to look beyond his limitations.

       Bobby Pitts ran Pitts Auto Agency, but he knew little about the auto business other than taking his ‘flings’ out for a spin in the shiny new cars to ‘break them in’.  It was suggested that he was referring to the girls–not the autos.

       The youngest of the sons was considered wholesome and upstanding–Theodore Alan Pitts, (Tap).  Pat Tucker, my daddy, and Tap were best friends and it was Tap who saw to it that Bobby hired my father at Pitts Auto Agency in 1932, the year my older brother was born.  My daddy named him after his best friend, and he was given the nickname ‘Teddy’.  Four years later, I arrived exactly nine months and six hours from the night my mama and daddy kicked up their heels at Tim’s–the local tavern, and then literally, at home.  Teddy was none too pleased, but my parents informed him that I was there for the long haul.