Joann Casto Simons My name is Joann (Casto) Simons. I was born February 2, 1936 in Ravenswood West Virginia. I've been married twice. The first time I got married to Kenneth R. Null. We had three children, Karen Lea, Kevin Wayne and Allen Null.

My second marriage was to Ray Simons. We had one child, her name is Belinda Rae Simons. I can't seem to remember much at all about my childhood days, but I do remember when I was about 5 or 6 years old. We lived down by the Kiser Plant just outside of Ravenswood on Rt. 2.

We lived in a little house by the railroad track. There were places we were not allowed to go to and one of them was the tracks. One day several of us kids were out in the middle of the railroad trussle and it was high off the ground. All at once we heard the train whistle blow, now you talk about us scrambling back, we sure did. We were so far out on the trussle that we'd never made it off in time if it wasn't for the train whistle. Boy did we get a good whipping over that. We were also never allowed to go near the river, and we never went back anyways.

I can remember when we lived over on the Flavy Litton farm on Parchment Valley Road in Ripley, West Virginia. Flavy had his grains in these large barrels, well one day a bunch of us kids, including Jimmy Litton (Flavy's son) stripped off naked and jumped into those barrels of grain. We were having so much fun until Flavy found us in there, he gave us a good lecture, but Flavy was a good man, he was harder on Jimmy than us. Flavy's wife, Maria, made these delicious pies and had big dinners every weekend. One day we smelled the pies so Jimmy went and stole us one and we went up into the woods and ate every little crumb of it. We were so ornery. Dad had this bull, it wasn't a big bull but it got out of it's pen and got in the house. Boy! Did we have a heck of a time getting that bull out of the house. Finally we got it out the back door and back into it's pen. Seemed like everywhere we lived, something always had to happen. We always liked to play down in the bottoms over the hill from the house. One day Dad had went down there to mow and he told us kids to stay out of the bottoms while he was mowing. All the other kids took off and scattered, and I got sleepy so I laid down in the grass and fell to sleep. When Dad had stopped to get hima drink of water he saw me, boy did I ever get a good whipping over for scaring Dad so bad.

I remember living down where the County Farm is now, we didn't live there long, but there was these people that lived down the road from us and they had a daughter about our age. I can't recall their names, but their house was so big and their daughter had so many beautiful clothes, all kinds of toys. The weird thing about it was, she wasn't allowed to play with us. I was just about 12 years old when I stayed with my aunt and uncle, Juanita and Glen Morrow in Parkersburg. Glen worked for the B&O Railroad where he would get special privileges once in awhile. So one day he had gotten us tickets to go to Washington D.C. on the train. I was in the compartment and I got so sick. I thought I was going to die. When we got there we stayed at the Pennsylvania Hotel right across from the White House. There was a big convention going on there, so Glen & Juanita asked me to go down to the lobby and across the street to get coffee and sandwiches. I went and got the stuff and started back to the room, of course I got off on the wrong floor. I opened this door and there was a group of colored men in the room eating and drinking. I got so scared and embarrassed that I started crying, one of the men got up and said "are you lost little girl?" I couldn't hardly talk but he sent me to the right floor, I sure did get a scare out of that. When Glen and Juanita lived on Core road in Parkersburg, they liked going out on the weekends so I watched their two boys Tommy and Danny. Juanita and I used to wear shorts and tank tops a lot and there was this older man that would walk every evening past the house and he would stare at us until he would go out of sight. Well, this one night in particular, I was watching the boys when I heard this terrible noise on the back porch, like someone was breaking in the house, so I got the boys up and hid them under the bed. Then I tried to call the police but something was wrong with the phone, so I started hollering. I guess someone heard me and called the police cause in a short time the police were at my doorstep. They never found out who tried to break in, but the whole screen door was tore off. That was the scariest thing that ever happened to me when I was little.

There are other things and times that I probably could remember if I would think hard enough about it, but I'll move on to when I married my first husband, Kenneth R. Null. We had three children, Karen R. Null, Kevin Wayne Null and Allen Null. I got married to Kenneth Null on August 26, 1954. We lived in Torch, Ohio. We were like a lot of couples, we had our share of problems. Later divorced, he went his way and I went mine. Then I married Ray Simons on September 21, 1963. We had one daughter, Belinda Rae (Simons) Anderson. Our children are all grown and living their own lives with beautiful families. I lost my beloved son Kevin in an automobile accident in June 2002. I am a mother, grandmother and great grandmother. I was from a large family. My Dad and Mom were good parents, our life was hard but I guess it made us appreciate all the good times we had.