From the (Elizabethtown, N. C.) Bladen Journal of Aug. 24, 2005:
Much of her world is more than two centuries old
BY JACK McDUFFIE Staff Writer
White Oak resident Laurie Smith lives and has lived most of her life only a few hundred yards from where she was born into a family with deep roots in Bladen County.
[snip]
The daughter of Roland and Winefred Beard Robeson, Smith grew up on a farm in a remote part of the county that was one of the last to get wired for electricity.
[snip]
"I remember one thing that sticks out as particularly amusing from that time," she said, with a hint of a smile. "We had an uncle who lived in Fayetteville who gave us an electric lamp five years before we got electricity. It was a really nice lamp, and when we moved across the millpond where the house had electricity, I remember how pretty it was when we were able to use it.
[snip]
[Read the whole story]
Ah... this story reminds me of the days when, because of the cold, my parents, my brothers and sisters and I would huddle together around a candle on the living room table.
And when it was really cold, we lit it.