I guess it is appropriate as I come to my 82nd birthday that I think back over previous ones. My memories as a matter of fact are few. Since my birthday is December 21, it seemed like it was largely ignored. It just got mixed up with Christmas. Presents were usually sent as for birthday and Christmas.
The first one I remember is my 8th. By that time I was living with Grandmother and Granddaddy Collins [Amanda Jane Perryman Collins and Albert Buell Collins], down in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Daddy [Carlos Collins] had gone to work in San Antonio and was not able to be there. (He would be there for Christmas, however.) He gave me a little cedar chest (which I still have) containing a box of chocolates and also gave me my first Bible. [2012: Anna now has this little chest.] 
I think at least once I had a birthday party where I invited classmates, but I remember nothing about it.
On my sixteenth birthday Daddy gave me sixteen dollars (which for that time was not an insignificant amount) and the lavaliere that had been my mother’s. I was going to give it to Anna on her 16th birthday, but couldn’t find it. I seldom wore it because the chain was so fragile and expensive to have repaired. I had kept it in the safety deposit box but when I went to get it was nowhere to be found. I apparently had taken it out. I did finally find it and gave it to her, but missed giving it on her 16th birthday. I tried to have the chain replaced with a sturdier one, but found out that it was made of gold with copper in it and was nowhere to be had. Several years later when we went to Europe we looked there for it. We tried several places including Harrods’ which is supposed to have everything. We were walking down the street window shopping in Stratford on the Avon and saw one. So now it is sturdier.
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