Truckin' on the Western Branch

The railroad was switching from steam to diesel, so my father bought the old water tanks from the station on Bruce Road and the POWs used the timber to build a shed on the farm. My father was so pleased he made sure the POWs got fresh vegetables and milk for their lunches rather than the government-issued food. He was impressed by their abilities and work ethic. I graduated from 11th grade at Churchland High, escorted Alice Kirchmier to a debutante ball, and went to Furman College for two years. Then the Korean War broke out, and I got drafted and ended up an Air Force pilot flying fighters.

I didn’t want to farm. I had sweated in the fields, topping corn. My brother James was the main farmer.

I loved being a fighter pilot and was Top Gun for a while. I flew with Chuck Yeager. He would murder the King’s English but he got his point across. He had legendary eyesight. When I thought I was going to have to bail out for engine trouble, Yeager radioed me that it was merely a problem with one engine and that I could turn around and make it back to the deck. And I did.

Even now I see a full moon and think “Great night for refueling.”

“So much for romance,” Janet Lilley adds.

R. C. and Janet Lilley have been married for thirty-plus years. She grew up on Courtney Road in Churchland, near enough to Ernie Hardee’s house to see the flames from her bedroom window when it burned. R. C. flew SuperSabers and used to come home to the farm to help his father. They were burning the field after harvesting wheat and prepping for soybeans, and he suddenly saw a car driving down the road next to the burning field. It was me and my mother, and that led to the love story. I graduated from Churchland in 1959, went to Longwood for a semester, and dropped out to work at Mutual Federal Savings and Loan. We lived in Northern Virginia for 22 years when R. C. left the Air Force and flew for Eastern Airlines. We came back to the home place when he retired and built our home in 1996. Some of the Lilley land had been sold to developer Buck Wheeler to satisfy the city requirements for a development plan. Now the old farmhouse is next door to us and Lilley Point has become a family compound. Eloise Lilley Holland Eloise Holland remembers stories of her parents coming to the farm house and her mother being dismayed at seeing a dirt floor in the living room and snakes slithering around.

She remembered her father saying later, “She loves me and does what I want her to do.”

R.C. Lilley and Eloise Lilley Holland. Image by Sheally

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