Beverly Young enjoys trips in the family camper to Auburn University and post-game fun at Toomer’s Corner. CONTRIBUTED

MADISON – When Beverly True Young grew up in Madison, recreation centered on a nighttime game of kick-the-can down Church Street.

Young and her friends pursued badminton, croquet, riding bikes, softball, shooting BB-guns, catching lightning bugs and ‘June bugs,’ horse riding, swimming, pleasure reading and Scouts.

A train ride to Gurley cost 75 cents, “but you wouldn’t have time to drink the 25-cent coke you ordered,” Young said.

“Everyone knew everyone and helped each other out. Memory does tend to make things better, but Madison was a fine place to grow up … that ‘village’ we all needed and few degrees of separation with most anyone. And keeping the family name well respected was important,” Young said.

“I miss my parents, Pud and Gladys True, my sister Eleanor Ann Raney, my stepson John Young and my cousin Percy ‘Tootsie’ Keel,” Young said. “In honor of my mom and Tootsie, I am in Madison Station Historical Preservation Society that they helped to start.”

Her parents owned True’s Food Store, now occupied by Old Black Bear. After school, Young and her friends enjoyed free candy at the store. “Daddy called me his ‘Little Profit-Eater’ but enjoyed all kids who were regulars,” Young said.

“My daddy called people who came in with Redstone Arsenal ‘new people.’ He didn’t go on Daylight Savings Time, which he called ‘fast time,'” she said.

After ninth grade, students attended either Sparkman or Butler high school. “I was in the Butler bunch. We had to provide our own transportation. I didn’t go to a desegregated school until twelfth grade and am embarrassed now that I didn’t pay much attention to the Civil Rights Movement going on right around me. News didn’t come on but once a day,” Young said.

As teenagers, Young’s daughters Jennifer Edens Christa and Robbyn Edens Taylor rode their horses through Hardee’s drive-through with no worry about traffic. Jennifer teaches at Rainbow Elementary School. Robbyn is a stay-at-home mom. Younger daughter Ashley Mays Trammell is a clinical pharmacist in Montgomery.

“My awesome husband, Dennis Young, is a retired IT website developer who worked for Chrysler and Jacobs,” she said. Young’s stepchildren are Allyson Young and Alex Young. “I have six wonderful and busy grandchildren — Ben and Beth Christa, Jackson and Jake Taylor, Emerson Trammell and Alyssa Young.”

For 38 years, Beverly worked as an elementary teacher and counselor at Harvest and Madison Cross.