Category: Everything Fred

9 March 2021

What’s the old saying? Best laid plans…. I got a great night’s sleep – beginning at 7:30 pm. I was awake and raring to go at 5 am but waited until 5:30 to get out of the cozy sleeping bag (morning temp was 41F) and make coffee and oatmeal.

After breakfast I broke camp and packed everything up in the jeep except for a change of clothes and soap and towel for a shower and razor for a shave. I was ready to leave camp at 7:15. I got in the jeep and hit start. It almost did but then changed its mind. I had a dead battery.

I called AAA. I’ve been a preferred member for years and have only used them once. It didn’t work out. I was in the middle of nowhere in Nevada and their tow truck only wanted to do semis. I called today and they said they were having trouble finding someone. I then got a text saying someone was on the way and from the map, it looked like they were only 10 minutes away. The expected arrival time for me was 3 hours.

On an off chance I would not see them until much later, I decided to charge up a storage battery system that Michel and Nancy gave me one Christmas for my travels. In reality, it works great for charging a computer or cell phone but I’ve never tried to jump a vehicle with it. However, the literature swears it will provide at least three charge attempts when the system itself is fully charged. My problem was it was not fully charged. I had used it the night before to charge some electronics.

It took until 10 am to get fully charged. Fingers crossed, I attached the jumper cables to the battery and voila, the jeep started on the first try! I canceled AAA. Now I needed to drive back to Gainesville to the jeep dealer and get a new battery. I had called at 9 am when they opened and they said no problem. Famous last words. I arrived at the jeep dealership around 11:30. I was immediately checked in.

Jeep doesn’t make your life easy. The battery is located under the passenger’s seat. I assume they had to remove the seat to get to the battery.

One thing I noticed on the way to the dealership was the cruise control didn’t work. I assumed it needed to be reset because of the dead battery. I asked about it and the service guy looked and said it was more serious. My engine check light was on – I hadn’t seen it before he pointed it out – and when he ran the diagnostics he said there were several long time outstanding “ADS” issues. He could make an appointment. When I told him I was on my way to north Georgia and that I only wanted the battery, he started telling me about his year in Georgia. He was interested in where I was going, what I was doing, etc. He never said it was dangerous to drive without clearing the issues and said he made notations for the jeep dealership back home.

He came out about 10 minutes later and informed me the dealership didn’t have the battery in stock but they were going to check with an auto parts store. Around noon he came back and told me that store didn’t have the battery either but there was another store that may.

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Long story short, I drove out of the dealership with my new battery and some $330 poorer at 1:15 pm. I really can’t complain. The battery lasted 6 years. Keeping an eye on the service engine light, I headed out to Amicalola Falls State Park. Estimated time of arrival was 8 pm. It dawned on me I did not want to set up a camp in darkness. I called the lodge at Amicalola and as luck would have it, they had a room available for two nights. At reduced rates. A little more communication and the host gave me a deluxe room for the same price as a regular room – the deluxe has a balcony overlooking the mountains. Not only that but they applied my tent camping reservation to the cost of the room for the two nights. The rates were $119 per night – a really good price!

I’m tired but happy. I had rather get the battery changed out now instead of worrying about it the rest of the trip. The lodge and room is beautiful. I go zip lining tomorrow for four hours. Life is good.

After heading to New River Gorge from Amicalola, I may take my jeep in to a dealership in Greensboro and have them check out the service engine light. I’m not too fond of the jeep dealerships in Broward.

Oh yeah, the cruise control started working so I can only hope the service engine light is a function of the battery dying and only needs to have the computer reset. Keep your fingers crossed.

Stay tuned!

6 March 2021

I left you with my lottery pick for the draft.

That summer after the draft lottery, I worked as Scoutcraft Direct at Camp Kickapoo in Clinton, Mississippi.  My days were numbered.  After camp, I got a phone call at home from a recruiter from the U.S. Coast Guard.  I went in for testing and an interview. I had already passed my physical.  In passing, I asked the recruiter how he got my name.  He said someone recommended me and if I signed, he would let me know.  The Disney movie The Boatniks about the Coast Guard had just come out and I had seen it.  I liked the movie so I signed on the dotted line.  

The recruiter asked me if I wanted to know who recommended me.  Honestly, I had forgotten that conversation.  I said sure and he said Mrs. Sheppard.  I said I didn’t know any Mrs. Sheppard.  He said sure you do – your Aunt.  I insisted I didn’t have any aunt named Sheppard.  Apparently he lived in a duplex below a Mr. and Mrs. Sheppard.  He asked if I was sure I didn’t know a Velma Sheppard.  Lightbulb!  It was Aunt Velma and Uncle Shep.  No one in my family ever called them other than Velma and Shep.  Until he said the last name, I don’t think I even knew their last name.  

Anyway, off to boot camp.  It was my first time flying and it was out of the Jackson airport.  The airport has extremely limited flight patterns.  The jet took off and immediately I was thrown back into my seat.  I’ve never flown anywhere anyplace that the flight ascent is as steep as Jackson’s airport.  I was terrified.

The Coast Guard, at the time, operated two bootcamps.  One was in Cape May, New Jersey and the other was in Alameda, California.  Although Cape May was closer to Mississippi, they sent me to Alameda.  

At the time, USCG bootcamp was considered second only to the Marine Corps in difficulty (I didn’t know that when I signed the dotted line). It was pretty physical even for someone who was in pretty good shape (I was at the time). However, it was more mental than physical – at least to me. If one person screwed up, the entire company was punished.

PE was at 5:30 am every morning, breakfast at 7 am (the common phrase in the cafeteria was “Suck it up and get out!”). We then had another round of PE, classes in seamanship, lunch, more classes in seamanship, more PE and then we headed to chow for dinner. Afterwards we either had guard duty of we had to clean rifles and barracks.

Guard duty was interesting. You had to challenge anyone (including the company commander of our company) and if no response was given you had to roust the company out of their beds.

It wasn’t uncommon for the company commander to come in at 3 in the morning and tear the barracks apart and have us put it back together before PE at 7:3o in the morning. Occasionally I had to stand guard duty at the OOD (Officer of the Deck) for the entire boot camp. It was there will freezing my butt off “guarding the clothes line” that I saw my first fog bank. I was so startled at the sight I took my life in my hands to address the OOD and report a huge cloud on the bay. He came out and looked and laughed and told me what it was. It literally was a white wall of clouds.

In boot camp, you have all types. One particular type was “the skater.” That’s the one that does everything to get out of everything. His name was Tarpley. For some reason he took a liking to me. He very cleverly volunteered to serve as the treasurer of our company. Our paychecks were deposited in the base bank but we were not allowed access to the funds. Instead, specified amounts were removed and provided to the company treasurer for things like laundry expenses, purchase of uniform parts, etc. Invariably, when a bill was paid by the treasurer, there was left over change. Tarpley carried all the cash and change in a cash box. Because of the change, he couldn’t run. In bootcamp, you never walked from point A to point B – you always ran full out. Tarpley learned about that little gem and he never had to run again on base.

Because he thought enough of me, he designated me as his co-treasurer. Since he carried company money, he always had to have an escort on base. After the first week of boot camp, I never had to run again.

When I had my original physical with the draft board, they were unimpressed with my two flat fleet. I passed the physical with flying colors. In boot camp, we were on our feet 24/7 (at least it seemed we were) and my feet started cramping as well as my shins. I went to sick bay and was seen by a “doctor” who immediately wrote down on my chart “Boot Camp Blues” and had me report for full duty.

We also had every vaccination know to humankind. I was vaccinated for yellow fever, smallpox (for the third time), and most of my childhood vaccinations again. All in one day. To ensure we had no adverse reactions the company commander had us drop and do 50 push ups so we wouldn’t have sore arms. This was also the first time I’ve ever been vaccinated by a vaccination gun – like you do with cattle.

I was stunned to realize that people enlisted in the Coast Guard without knowing how to swim. We had a huge Olympic sized pool. If they didn’t drown you on your swim test, the next thing you had to do was jump off the high dive. It wasn’t an Olympic high dive. Instead, it was designed to mimic the height of someone having to jump overboard from a ship from the bridge. It was extremely high. Just for your information, one hand goes on your nose and the other hand cups your family jewels and you cross your legs before you jump.

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During boot camp you were tested for what position would be best for the Coast Guard considering your abilities. I seemed to score the highest on Corpsman (the equivalent of medic in the army) and as a radioman. They had enough Corpsmen so I was sent to radio school at Governor’s Island, New York.

However, the new class for radio school didn’t start until October and it was only August. They put me TAD (temporary duty) on base in an old wooden barracks. It was a great time. I had access to the enlisted mens’ club with cheap beer and booze and to the base theater and PX (think Wallyworld).

Eventually, I shipped out to New York and my barracks was across the street from the radio school. The Coast Guard taught me a lot – mostly what I knew I didn’t want to do – but it did teach me to type. As a Boy Scout, I already knew Morse Code but the Coast Guard had a really interesting way of teaching you code. The sounded out the code for the letter “A” which is dit dah (. _) and you typed the letter “A” with the proper hand position on the key board. So, as you learned code, you learned to type.

However, before we were allowed to start learning code, everyone had to pass basic math and electronics. The Coast Guard had an accelerated program of one week where they took you from 2 + 2 = 4 to algebra and from atoms (and electrons) to complex electrical circuits in that week. I learned more math and physics in that one week than I did in all my years in high school and college.

I can’t remember if I’ve written about this but while in radio school the Master Chief of the entire U.S. Coast Guard was a radioman stationed at the school. In essence, he ran it. He must have felt sorry for me because he had me join him on all inspections of the barracks (I took notes and noted demerits) and he also gave me a pass to the USCG cooking school on the first floor of the radio school building. That meant for chow, all I had to do was walk across the street for breakfast, lunch and dinner while everyone had to wade through snowdrift and the gale force winds coming off Long Island Sound to eat in the dining hall.

The cooking school turned out chefs – not cooks. If you requested an egg over easy and the chef accidentally broke the yolk, he would scrape it into the garbage and start again. It was the best food I’ve ever eaten and it lasted my entire time in the radio school.

One of the best things about duty at Governors Island was the free Coast Guard ferry to Manhattan. We could go on leave or liberty in the big city. The USO would provide free broadway tickets (they were generally front row) and I got to see 1776 and Fiddler on the Roof, among others. I also got propositioned as I crossed the street at times square by one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. It must have been the Coastie uniform that did it.

I ended up third in my class and could copy Morse Code at 18 words per minute and type even faster. (Later, I was able to copy Morse Code at 30 words per minute – considered fast – and type at 100 words per minute with no mistakes.) It was time to be assigned a duty station. I was assigned to the Eight Coast Guard District out of New Orleans. I had to appear at New Orleans to get my actual assignment. When I arrived, I was told I was to be assigned to the Coast Guard Cutter Acushnet in Gulfport, Mississippi. The Acushnet was an old rust bucket from 1942. I was told that since I was third in my class I was allowed to chose where I would go in the Eight district. The only other open berth was the Coast Guard Cutter Reliance stationed at Corpus Christi, Texas. I didn’t want Gulfport nor the rust bucket so I insisted I be assigned to the Reliance. Little did I know that the Acushnet was scheduled for decommission and the radiomen would be assigned duty at the radio station in New Orleans. I apparently was a little too full of myself and the officer in charge of personnel sent me to the “hell hole” of a ship in Corpus as punishment.

I arrived for duty after midnight when someone picked me up at the Corpus airport and drove me to the ship. I was logged in at the OOD shack and taken down winding, darkened passage ways to a bunk that I had to make up in the dark. I finally got to sleep around 2 am and at 5 am awoke to a general quarters alarm. I had no idea where I was, what I was supposed to do, what my duty station was during general quarters – in other words – lost. It was a fire in the galley. That was my welcome to the Reliance, my home-away-from-home for the next 18 months.

Stay tuned!

5 March 2021

Yes, I know I left you hanging.

One night, my Dad didn’t come home from work (he was back in the Jackson area).  We had no phone (didn’t have the money for one) and Mother paced the floor most of the night.  The next day, no news and the next night, no Dad.  Mother began to hallucinate.  She seemed to think Ruby decided to have my Dad arrested and that she was coming for my Mother.  Mother pulled out Dad’s loaded shotgun and kept it pointed at me while talking through the door to an imaginary Ruby.  She kept “telling” Ruby that if she tried to come in she would shoot me.  I stayed up two nights and two days with the shotgun pointed at me and mother hallucinating the entire time. What was most scary was she was stone cold sober.  Finally, I was able to convince her I could slip out of the apartment where Ruby would not see me and escape to the Texaco station across the street to call the police.  The first thing I did when I got to the station was ask if I could use the phone for a long distance collect call to Morton.  I was in luck.  Ruby answered the phone and accepted the charges. 

In the end, the police came because Ruby and Uncle Milton (her brother-in-law) drove like maniacs to Jackson, got the police involved, and talked Mother down.  I stayed at the gas station until they arrived.  Ruby had to wait until Uncle Milton drove over from the neighboring town of Forest to pick her up and then drive to Jackson, 30 miles from Morton.  

I went home with Ruby.  Mother was sent to Whitfield, the state mental institution for treatment.  She eventually ended up having shock therapy.  It turns out Dad had been drinking and driving in Brandon where his state highway office was located and was pulled over and taken to jail.  He had been in the drunk tank for the last three days. 

Eventually, Mom came back from Whitfield.  Dad got out of jail.  We moved to Morton.  Again.  More scary things to come.  We moved to a house right next to the railroad tracks and about two blocks from the Gulf Cafe.  Mother had worked off an on at the cafe over the years for Mr. and Mrs. Dukes.  I was in junior high school (7th or 8th grade) and often went to the cafe in the morning for a coke and a donut before walking to school.  This got to be a pretty consistent ritual and to this day, when on trips, I stop and get a dozen donuts to tide me over during the trip.  

I can’t remember if Mom was still working at the cafe and I don’t remember if Dad was still working for the highway department, but I do remember the time, just before Christmas, when I came home and no one was there.  That in itself was not unusual.  They were often not home when I got back from school.  They didn’t show that night.  I got up the next morning and headed to the cafe for coke and donut and then school.  That afternoon, nothing but silence in the house.  This went on for two weeks.  I had no idea where they were.  I knew not to go to Ruby.  I didn’t want another whipping from my Dad.  I learned that lesson.  So for at least those weeks, I cooked my breakfast, ate lunch at the cafeteria at school, cooked dinner, washed dishes, cleaned house, ironed clothes, and by that time I was working at the Gulf Cafe.  The benefit of that was I at least got my meals there free.  

I think a couple of days before Christmas, I was sitting in the living room after school and before I was to head to work at the cafe when the door opens and they walk in with a huge Christmas tree.  Both were high as a kite and acted like they had last seen me that morning instead of the two weeks they had been gone.  

Later, when Mom was sober, I asked where they had been?  After much hemming and hawing, she finally explained they were up and around the area of Canton, Mississippi and had a wreck and were both in the hospital.  That didn’t make any sense to me because we had a phone at the house and they could have called me to let me know.  I heard nothing from them during the entire time. 

After that, I wrote Archie, my brother, a long letter explaining what happened and asked if he could write or speak to Mother.  He was in the Navy and stationed in Norfolk.  He did.  Mother later showed me the letter and it was scathing.  She straightened up for a bit after that but it wasn’t long before she fell back into pass-out-drunkenness.  

By the way, Mrs. Dukes eventually let Mother go for the final time (she had been fired a couple of times before but Mrs. Dukes always took pity on her and rehired her). I ended up working sacking groceries at two different groceries.  In essence, I worked my way through junior high and high school.  If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Dukes at the cafe, Mr. Lyle at Lyle’s grocery, and Snooks and Viola Eichelburger at the Sunflower grocery, I would not have been able to afford to eat at the cafeteria at school nor had food at home.  

It’s not like they didn’t try some of the time.  I was desperate to go to the state fair in Jackson one year but there was no money.  Mother called Aunt Maxine who worked for Ferris Lumber Company and asked her to lend me the money.  I had to actually go to her office and get the money.  That was humiliating, but at least she tried to get me to the fair.

Later Uncle Lonnie offered to let me cut his grass with his mower for pocket change.  I had never mowed a lawn before, had no instruction other than the five seconds he took to explain how to start the mower.  I do remember after I had cut the lawn, he came out and chewed me out because I didn’t know to over lap the swaths so all the grass between the blade was cut.  I think I did it a few times and finally quit when I realized he was ready to chew me out but not explain anything.  Aunt Maxine could be warm but she had a haughtiness to her.  Archie always said she hated Morton with a passion and wanted to live in Jackson. 

Uncle Lonnie was actually my Great Uncle.  He was Ruby’s little, and I mean little, brother.  He was one of those late in life accidental children.  He was also pretty henpecked by Maxine.  After Maxine died, he would come around and visit my Dad when Dad was back in Pulaski living in a trailer on the old home place.  He was pretty down and out and missed Maxine terribly.  He had mellowed a little by then (I was in the Coast Guard) and he was much nicer to be around.  Truth be told, if it were not for my Grandfather Hollie and Ruby’s assistance, Lonnie probably would not have made it.  Archie tells me Hollie bought Maxine and Lonnie’s house for them.  I think he also got them his job.  Hollie was in the hardware business and Lonnie became a salesman to hardwares.

Their son Joe Lee was something else.  He had his Mother’s traits.  I was pretty much beneath him.  When I would see him on the streets of Morton, I would always say hi and he would ignore me.  Joe Lee liked to brag.  I’m not sure any of our relatives really liked him.  I know I didn’t.

His haughtiness almost got him killed one year.  Morton was the closest town to Roosevelt State Park.  It had a wonderful swimming area with a pair of diving boards on a fixed structure in deep water.  You had to swim a ways to get to the diving boards.  One was a high dive and the other was a low dive.  The dives were parallel to each other and separated by about 10 feet.  Joe Lee decided he was going to do something no one else would dare do and he could brag about it.  He jumped off the high dive and tried to let his feet hit the low dive and then dive in the water.  He missed.  His lip and nose clipped the edge of the low dive.  He bled like a stuck pig.  It was lucky he didn’t kill himself.

High school was hell for me.  Actually, junior high was pretty much hell.  I was not athletically inclined and so did not participate in sports at all in either junior high or high school.  Most teachers treated me nicely but the students were brutal.  This was the time I learned how cruel kids could be.  I was called every name in the book, belittled in front of all my classes, taunted, shunned, and pretty much emotionally abused from the 8th grade until I graduated Morton Attendance Center.  

In one case, it almost killed me.  One of our hours was spent in Study Hall.  This was before the new high school was built and we were in the old wooden building that served mostly as a junior high building.  However, we never had enough classrooms, so when a junior high class room or study hall opened up, we’d move over there for that period.  

Coach Jack Taylor was the assistant football coach at Morton and he was distantly related to me.  I used to spend time at his house with him, his wife Nell, and whoever took me to visit them.  He used to call me down to the front of study hall once a month and have me take his car payment to the Buick dealer in town (Freddy Roger’s dealership).  I’d take his check, walk in the dealership, make the payment, get the receipt, and walk back to school to give Coach Taylor the receipt.  I think the reason he asked me to was (1) we were distantly related and (2) he knew I would go straight there and back and not dawdle so it would not get him into trouble.

My senior year found me back in Ruby and Hollie’s old house along highway 80, only this time we were living in the other side of the duplex.  Mother and Dad again were drinking pretty heavily.  One day, I came home to a firetruck in the yard.  Mother had passed out on a couch with a cigarette burning and caught the couch on fire.  No real damage but a scare.  

I never ate at the house back then.  I would go to the cafe and get breakfast – at least I had worked my way up to eggs, bacon and toast back then, eat lunch at the cafeteria, and dinner at the cafe during my work shift.  I therefore ignored everything in the house except my room and the bathroom.  I cleaned those.  When I walked into the house to see about the firetruck, Mr. Armstrong, once my Sunday School teacher,  was there in the role of chief.  I was mortified when I looked in the kitchen and found stacks of unwashed dishes in the sink.  The rest of the house was a mess.  I didn’t wait too long after they left to get busy and clean the whole house and wash every dish.  Apparently, garbage hadn’t been taken out in a while.

To this day, I’m always super sensitive when people come into my house.  I always see things I should have cleaned or done while they are there.  It’s pretty much a compulsion for me.  I’m not neat, but I certainly try to be clean.  

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It was not long after that I faced something that I regret to this day.  I came home from school and Mother was raving drunk.  She was in her bed but screaming at the top of her lungs.  I knew the neighbors could hear her and I tried to get her quiet.  I tried everything – talking, putting my hand over her mouth (she bit me) and then losing all sanity, I put a pillow over her face to muffle the sound.  She had been screaming and cursing for an hour or more by that time.  She though I was trying to kill her.  I finally decided I had to let her scream it out.

She looked at me with such hatred.  It was then she said she knew what type of boy I was.  I asked her what do you mean? She said, you know.  It was then I realized she felt I was gay.  Hell, I didn’t even know I was gay but she did.  I also realized she hated me for it.  In retrospect, I guess I could have accidentally killed her with the pillow but never had the intention.  I guess I was lucky I didn’t.

It was about this time that Dad went off the deep end.  Mother had gotten sober again and Dad was sober, but there was something definitely wrong with him.  He keep talking about people we knew nothing about, saying if he could only get through June, he’d be OK – when it was October.  Eventually, Mother convinced him to go to the VA in Jackson for help.  

That was another nightmare.  The psychiatrist called Dad in and talked with him for about 45 minutes.  Dad walked out smiling, said everything was OK, and that the psychiatrist wanted to talk to me.  I went in and the psychiatrist was very friendly and warm and started me talking.  He asked me to explain why my Dad was here to see him.  I didn’t know any better but I began to tell him everything that had been going on – Dad talking to phantom figures, misplaced time lines, drinking bouts, Mother, everything.  The psychiatrist saw me out and called Dad back in.  Shortly Dad came storming out in a rage at me and accused the psychiatrist of brainwashing me.  That was the second time in my life he had accused me of being brainwashed.

Pretty soon, it was my senior year and I was happy to get the hell out of Dodge.  Mother insisted I buy a class ring.  I didn’t want anything to remind me of that hell, but she insisted and said she would pay for it.  Of course, she never did and since I had ordered on the idea she would pay for it, I had to use my work money to make the payment.

I had my heart set on being a forester and going to the Mississippi State School of Forestry in Starkville, Mississippi.  However, I decided to hedge my bets and also apply to the University of Mississippi in Oxford.  Ole Miss came through with $300 more a semester in financial aid than State did and so off to Ole Miss I went.  I got a work-study job at the library in the periodicals department (and later in my sophomore year became an RA for a dorm).  I was in heaven.  For the first time I was accepted as a human being and not looked down on.

My freshman year, I was a Powers Hall.  Powers was built in the late 50’s or early 60’s and was probably, at the time, the most modern dorm on campus.  It was across the street from Baxter hall where James Meredith lived during his time at Ole Miss.  

I shared a room with two other guys (a room built for two) made real friends, some of which lasted a life time, and learned how to study.  This was during the Viet Nam war years and if you dropped below a “C” you would be eligible for the draft.  It was called an education deferment if you kept your grades above a C average.  It was here I learned to study “effectively”.  I found I was studying a subject for 8 hours a day and barely pulling a B.  After I figured it out, I could study 2-4 hours on a subject and make that or better.  I’m proud to say I always had a B average at Ole Miss through all those years.  It’s all the more remarkable when you think that a lot of the professors wanted to thin out their classes and often made sure most could not do the coursework.  

When I went to freshman orientation at Fulton Chapel, the Dean of Liberal Arts got up and said look to your left and look to your right.  Three weeks from now, only one of you will be left.  That was true.  You could see students stand up in class, walk out, and the next time you saw them they were packing their car and leaving college.  They even drafted my English teacher out of my English 101 class at midterm.  

Family was never far away.  I would catch rides home with Tommy and Susan Puckett.  Tommy was the bad boy in Morton and everyone was surprised when he married Susan Waldrip from the other side of the tracks.  They actually made a great couple.  Tommy never charged me for gas and often when I couldn’t afford to buy a coke on the stops back home, would buy them and not let me pay.  Anyone else I traveled with, I would pay my share of the gas.  That meant I had to restrict the number of times I went home.  

What drove me bananas was Mother insisted on calling me long distance in the dorm.  We had phones in the room by then.  She would talk and I would listen.  Then she sent me her telephone bill to pay.  I asked her not to call but she did and kept sending me the bills.  

I was on the meal plan with the cafeteria.  Freshman had to live on campus and it was cheaper to eat on campus.  Even then, there were many days I had one meal – soup and crackers.  The two times I was almost totally done for financially at the college, I was saved at the last minute.  Most of my tuition was paid for by National Defense Education Grants and scholarship.  I ended up having to pay probably only a quarter of the tuition.  After I started managing men’s dorms, I didn’t have room rent.  However, that was back in the day when a professor in a single class would assign four or five books to purchase.  The bookstore (later we found out) was a tool of the athletic department and marked the books up as high as they could get away with.  The books for one course may be $50-75 in 1960 dollars.  Add that to me taking 18 hours which typically meant 5-6 courses and book costs could kill you.

One day I walked into the post office to check my box (68539) and pulled out a letter from my second cousin Hilda Topp. She was Aunt Buleah and Uncle Milton’s oldest who married a Yankee and moved to Michigan.  She just said she was thinking about me and wanted to give me something.  In the envelope was $100.  I was about to forego the soup that day because there was no more money.  Obviously, I wrote a profuse thank you note.

The next time I was destitute and about to forego the soup and crackers, the mail box holds a letter from Archie.  In there was a check for $300.  With that check and Hilda’s, you have the sum total of outside money I received to go to college.  Much later, I asked Archie what prompted him to, out of the blue, send me that money.  He said he really didn’t know.  He was just thinking about me one day and thought it may have come in handy.  

College was transformative for me.  I came out of my shell.  There was no one from my high school class enrolled at Ole Miss and no one knew me.  It was at that time I quit going by the name Freddie.  Actually, I’m a junior by name, so it was an easy transition to shorten it to Fred.  To this day I get upset when someone calls me Freddie.  Anyway, I couldn’t understand why my parents spelled my name with an “ie” instead of a “y.”  I was always taught the feminine version of a name was “ie” and the masculine form was “y.”  Must be why I turned out gay.

I survived freshman year and thrived my sophomore, junior and senior years.  I had no idea as to a major but I chose a liberal arts curriculum which gave me time to make a decision.  It was my second semester of my junior year I decided on science.  What convinced me was the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts.  Everyone had to visit the Dean once an academic year.  It was a time that he would go over your curriculum and sign off on future courses.  I told him I was torn between history and science.  His sage advice was to go with science.  I could always get a job in science but history majors were a dime a dozen and I could always “do” history on my own.  

He was correct.  I’ve never wanted for a job with a science background.  I’ve been a Youth Conservation Corps director at Tishomingo State Park, a botanist/plant ecologist with the Bureau of Land Management, a state park manager of Golden Memorial State Park, a high school science teacher, and a science professor at two different community colleges.  Each position led to a better, higher paying job.  

 Eventually, all good things had to come to an end and I was ready to graduate.  Unfortunately, the Viet Nam war was still raging.  The U.S. switched to a lottery system for the draft.  Lyndon Johnson pulled out the numbers.  I was number 19 in the national lottery.  More importantly, I was number 2 in my home county of Scott.  I was going to get drafted.  

Stay tuned.

4 March 2021

I digress again. I was speaking of Morton, Mississippi. In a lot of ways, it was the quintessential small town in the South.

However, one place you went at your own peril was Mrs. McCoy’s pasture. She and her husband lived at the junction of Agnew Street and West Second Avenue.  She would keep  few head of cattle and perhaps, on occasion, a bull in the pasture beside her house.  However the bull was never the danger.  As kids, we all had heard how mean Mrs. McCoy was and how she would shoot at you with her shotgun if you trespassed in her pasture. 

Obviously, the temptation to kids was too great and we often cut across her pasture to Doc Burnam’s pond where we fished and swam.  My religious upbringing, the moral guidance of Mary Moore  and my conscience finally got the better of me and I convinced myself to go up to Mrs. McCoy’s house and knock on her door and ask for permission to cross her pasture to get to the pond.  

She opened the door, called me by name, invited me in for cake and coke and proceeded to relate to me stories of my Mother and grandmother.  I had permanent permission from then own to cross her pasture anytime I wanted.  What a wonderful person whose reputation got smeared by kids.  I do, however, suspect it was some adult who started the rumor just to keep kids closer to home and out of the cow pasture. I made it my business to always stop by and say hello and talk with them before crossing the pasture.

Ask I mentioned, Mrs. McCoy’s house was at the top of Agnew Street (named for my great Uncle James) and West Second Avenue.  Branching south off West Second Avenue was Spring Street which led to Tank Hill.  I assume it was called Tank Hill because there was a water tank for the town atop the hill.  It became a natural extension of our childhood play areas. 

I remember most the wild plums that grew all around tank hill and I loved plum season. I was later to learn they were Prunus americana. My cousin Jimmie and I would hang out around the water tank and eat the plums.  You had to know when they were ripe and when not to eat them because of worms.  Ripe plums on Tank Hill came in two colors: red and yellow.  If there was an abundant crop, you could collect enough for you parents to make wild plum jelly – still my absolute favorite.  

I’m sure you are curious if I ever climbed the water tank.  It took Jimmie to convince me to climb it.  She was a year older than I and was always more daring.  She finally convinced to me climb it and from then on, anytime I went to Tank Hill, I climbed the tank.  The view was spectacular.  

Jimmie was the first to do everything between us.  She was the first to ride down Agnew Street on her bike with her hands off the handlebars and turn into her driveway – still without hands.  It doesn’t sound too dangerous until you realize Agnew Street is probably at at 35 degree angle.  From the top of the street to the bottom of the hill were her drive is, you could get up a great deal of speed.  If you missed, you ran perpendicularly into US80 and the accompanying traffic.

That angled street led to some shenanigans by my Mother when she was a teen.  Her best friends, Audrey Harp and Beth Lack and her decided they wanted to go to Jackson – some 30 miles west on highway 80.  My grandfather and Ruby were living in the old duplex at the time opposite Jimmie on Agnew Street.  Their property bordered Agnew Street and U.S. Highway 80.  At the time, Highway 80 was the only coast to coast highway in the United States and it was two lane.  Traffic was heavy, particularly with transfer trucks.  

Hollie had a 49 Chevrolet pickup (I think that was the model year) that had the old starter pedal as well as clutch and three speed on the column.  Audrey, Beth and Momma decided to steal the pickup for their trip to Jackson.  Audrey and Momma put the gear in neutral and pushed it backwards out of the drive onto Agnew Street (Hollie was taking his daily nap before returning to his hardware store).  Beth stood at the bottom of Agnew Street and highway 80 to watch for traffic.  When the highway was clear, she signaled to Mom and Audrey to go.  Mother, with Audrey in the passenger seat, let off the break, shifted into first gear, and as she got to highway 80, Beth jumped on the running board and Mother popped the clutch to crank the truck.  Off they went to Jackson, stranding Hollie at home.

Jimmie was also the first to get me to climb the sycamore tree that sat on the side of their yard next to Ruby and Hollie’s new house.  It seemed huge to me at the time and I was totally afraid of heights.  Not Jimmie.  She climbed high up in the tree.  Finally she coaxed me up to the first limb.  I held on for dear life.  After a while, I began to shift around and get comfortable.  She coaxed me up to the next limb.  I found that if I spent a little time getting comfortable, heights really didn’t bother me.  We lated built a tree house in that sycamore.  

I loved playing in Jimmie’s yard. Her Dad had built a “sky rocket” which was simply a cable leading from one post to another in her yard with a wooden platform attached to wheels that fitted on the cable. It had a rope attached so once you rode the “rocket” downhill you could pull the rocket back to the top and go again.

Her Dad also built a “jungle gym” made of wood and metal pipes. It would definitely not pass safety standards of today but it was great fun. Jimmie, ever the daredevil, would sit atop one of the metal bars and instead of locking her legs around the bar and falling over backwards would fall over forwards. It took me quite a while before I was willing to try that feat.

I started school when I was five years old.  Mrs. Berry was my first grade teacher in Boyle, Mississippi.  I knew how to read pretty well for a five year old since Dad used to read the comic pages with me when we were living in Mr. Crain’s house in Morton.  Mrs. Berry really made an impression on me.  I was shy around the “older” kids who started at six.  She took extra time with me to make sure I was included in everything.

I have a theory that my parents started me in the first grade too early. I never grasped the concept of math and was never any good at it. I think another year (or even two) and I would have been more mentally capable of understanding mathematics.

In 1956, I was eight years old and living in Cleveland, Mississippi by way of Ruleville first, then Boyle.  I was in the third grade. Cleveland, at that time, had a very large Chinese population.  I really had a thing for one Chinese girl in my class.  She wore pigtails and I sat behind her.  Even though I would pull her pigtails, she must have liked me because she let me cheat off her paper during math quizzes.  

Cleveland was another near death experience.  Mother had just dropped me off at school and I was crossing over to my building when someone’s mother got a little upset and hit the gas.  She clipped me as she sped away.  It knocked me down but other than being scared out of my wits, I was OK.  

It was in Cleveland I learned to stand up to bullies.  There was one kid at recess who took it upon himself to torment me.  I got no peace.  One day I was standing at the top of some stairs (probably no more than three or four steps) and he was at the bottom taunting me.  Something snapped and I launched myself from the top stair directly at him with my fist.  I hit him squarely in the face, knocked him down and then I fell on top of him and continued to pummel him.  Some teacher broke us up but he never bothered me again.  

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Over the years, I’ve had bullies get up into my face. Some of those times included graduate school with the department head of biology and another time with a colleague in a college where I taught.  I’m the type that it takes a lot to get me mad but when you do get me mad, it’s not a pretty sight (I didn’t get the gene for Agnew temper).  In both cases, I blew up at the department head and the colleague.  The department head later became a pretty nice guy to me.  I remember him saying he didn’t think botanists were violent or angry people but I convinced him I was not to be trifled with.  The colleague and I were hammering out course objectives for a botany course.  He kept pushing my buttons and I finally blew up at him.  To this day, he treats me with respect, if not with kid gloves.

One day in Cleveland, I was waiting for Mother to pick me up from school.  She never showed up.  I suspect she was passed out drunk at home.   I was the only kid left at school and it was cold and getting close to dark and it was raining.  As I was waiting, I looked up and saw the brown and tan Plymouth with Dad driving.  His window was down and I tried to shout to get him to see me.  He kept on driving.  I was getting scared and had no idea how to get home.  Three high school boys who, up until that time I would have classified as “hoodlums” pulled up.  I think two were smoking.  They asked me what I was doing all alone.  I think I probably started to bawl.  Those three guys immediately got out, put their arms around me and consoled me.  They put me in the front seat between the driver and the shotgun with the third guy in the back.  They asked where I lived and for some reason, I knew the address.  They stopped and got me a coke along the way home.  When we arrived at home, they got out, rang the doorbell, and presented me to my parents.  What could have been a disaster ended up being one of the better experiences in my life.  My parents thanked them profusely but I’m not sure they even knew I was missing.  

Just before he died, Dad and I were talking and I asked if he remembered this.  He broke down crying saying it was one of his greatest regrets not seeing or hearing me trying to get his attention as he passed by me in the school yard.  

In May 7th of 1956, Mom, Dad, Archie and I loaded up the brown and tan Plymouth and headed to Morton.  Mother cried the whole way.  I didn’t understand what upset her.  When we pulled into my grandparents’ driveway, she started to wail to Mary Moore.  I still had no idea.  I hadn’t seen my cousin Jimmie in a very long time, so I went next door to see her.  I remember I was sitting in her swing when she told me Hollie had died.  No one had seen fit to tell me.  Archie knew, but I didn’t.  

The Ott and Lee funeral home brought the body to their house and his casket was placed in the living room against the west wall.  People kept coming up to the front door (which was never used) to pay respects.  When Ruby was taken in the living room for a viewing, she broke down and began to wail.  I had never been exposed to death that intimately.  It was the first time I had ever seen a body.  I knew of death, of course.  I had two grandparents and a great uncle pass away.

In the south, there is this concept that deaths occur in threes.  Grandma Laura (Ruby’s Mother and my Great Grandmother) was dying.  I remember Archie answering a phone late at night from someone asking her prognosis.  I remember Archie saying she had taken a turn for the worse.  The next day she died.  

Soon after Grandma Laura died, Uncle George Searcy died (no relation).  I never knew much about Uncle George other than he was devoted to my great aunt Deliah (we pronounced it Deelee).  Archie later told me Uncle George flew with Eddie Rickenbacker during WWI.  As kids, we always wanted to shoot off fireworks during Christmas.  In the south where I grew up, you didn’t celebrate the fourth of July with fireworks (something about Yankees) and neither did we celebrate New Year’s eve with fireworks – only Christmas.  We were not able to as long as Uncle George was alive because he suffered from shell shock – what we would today call post traumatic stress disorder.  

The third death in the triumvirate was Hollie. I don’t think my Mother ever recovered from his death. It also led to a more tense and nasty relationship between Mother and Ruby.  The main problem was Hollie left the hardware store to my Mother.  Ruby resented that. It didn’t take Mother too long to run/drink the store into the ground.  It didn’t help that Ruby, according to my Dad, would walk into the hardware and open up the cash register and take out whatever amount of money she wanted and then walk out again.  

I loved that hardware.  It had a certain smell to it that was a mixture of leather, oil, metal, rope and dirt.  The old wooden floor was so worn that in places you could see the dirt floor underneath the boards.  It had nooks and crannies a kid could hide and never be found by inquiring adults.  To this day, I wax nostalgic when I walk into one.  Unfortunately, the new ones don’t have the intoxicating aroma of old country hardwares.

After Hollie’s death, we moved from Cleveland back to Morton and I entered the fourth grade.  We lived in Mr. Crain’s huge house near downtown.  One of my distant cousins, Mrs. Huff, was one of my teachers.  Morton elementary was trying out a new system to get students ready to move into junior high school by rotating teachers among classes.  I remember Mrs. Huff very well and Mrs. Hearn.  

In that year, 1958, a real horror occurred.  Our Lady of Angels school in Chicago caught fire.  In 1958, we had a television set and the fire was covered extensively on the news of the two television stations in Jackson, MS. Ninety-two children and two nuns died in the fire.  I had nightmares of that for quite a while.  It was not helped by the school board instituting our first ever fire drills. For years, fire drills terrified me.  

Not long after, we moved to Mr. Marler’s house just outside of town and I remember Mother telling Mary Moore to always hang clothes in the closet with the hanger facing in one direction.  Her explanation was it would be much easier to grab clothes out of the closet in case of a fire.  For years – and I do mean years – I repeated a mantra to myself every night before I went to bed to protect me from fire.  For some reason, I felt if, after I said my prayers, I repeated “fire!” three times, I would be protected.

I always think of that when I see or hear of some young child being exposed to some dramatic situation and how that can scar you for life.

Another scarring situation came about when we later moved to Jackson, the capitol city.  I was enrolled at Bailey Junior High School on North State Street.  This was a massive school.  The football field had stands that to me (7th grader) seemed to be on the same level as many national sports venues.  The building was opened in 1937 and was in Arte Moderne style.  The auditorium could hold 1200 students.  The building was two stories with a basement (see the similarity to Our Lady of Angels?) and from a kid who went to schools where 1200 was the entire K-12 experience, I was lost.  Bailey had 1200 students in three grades. The level of instruction was more impersonal and at a higher level than the small town schools I was used to.  I didn’t fit in well. 

We were living in a basement apartment a mile or so from Bailey on Poplar Blvd.  Dad was with the state highway department again and Mother stayed at home.  For some reason, she felt it was appropriate to take me to see the movie Pyscho!  To this day, I hate taking a shower unless the shower curtain is clear so I can see Bates coming to stab me.  

I generally walked to school and back every day.  If I had money (seldom) I would take the bus on winter days.  One spring day, I was walking home from Bailey on Riverside Drive when a high school kid drove up next to me with his girlfriend in the passenger side.  She was facing me on the curb.  She screamed at me with a look of horror on her face as her boyfriend reached across her and pointed a gun at me through her window.  I froze.  He fired the pistol at point blank range.  It was all a joke to them.  He used blanks but that really shook me up.

I was walking to the bus stop one day on my way to Bailey when I looked up and saw mother stopped at a traffic light.  I shouted to her thinking she had come to pick me up from school.  When I approached the car and got in, I realized she was really, really drunk.  The car was a stick shift and when the light turned green, she kept stalling it out.  Traffic was backing up behind her and she wasn’t functional.  I ran out of the car and down the hill to the bus stop.  I didn’t see her that night.  Later, when I got up the next morning, she wasn’t there.  Dad wasn’t either.  He was off on some job down further in the state.  I kept waiting for her to show up and she never did.  I was beginning to panic.  Then I noticed her car was in the apartment multi-space garage.  I started looking through the garage, under the cars, everywhere.  I couldn’t find her.  There was a flood control “creek” behind the garage so I stood on the edge and looked down.  There she was, passed out, face down, head only a few inches from the water.  I really don’t know how I got her back on her feet and up out of the creek and into the house.  

I think you can see with the new school, my fears of fire, and the shooting incident, the car incident and the creek incident, I was in a precarious state.  Then the bottom fell out.

Stay tuned….

3 March 2021

Morton, Mississippi, probably more than anywhere else, was my home town.  It was small.  I’m not sure it has ever passed 2,000 in population.  My family moved – a lot.  No matter how often we moved, we always seemed to end back in Morton and most of my early life experiences revolve around the town and its people and my relatives in the town. And we were related to almost everyone in the town. You couldn’t get away with anything as a kid because everyone knew you and would call your parents on those old bakelite phones that weighed a ton. 

Dad worked for the Mississippi Highway Department.  He did that off and on for 33 years.   That meant that every time a job was completed, you moved to the location of the next job.  I became very good in geography from his moves within the state and from his time in the military.

Dad was born in Pulaski, Mississippi, named after Count Pulaski of revolutionary war fame and was the oldest surviving offspring of three.  One child was stillborn.  There was Dad, Uncle Ray, and Aunt Sue, in that order.  He was born in 1913 and was 16 at the beginning of the Great Depression.  By the time he turned 18, he applied to the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) for employment.  He told me he was ploughing the 90 acre plot at the homestead we always called “The Old Place” when his younger brother Ray brought him his acceptance letter for the CCC.  He said he left the mule in the field to Ray and walked away. 

He was initially assigned duty as a cook.  I have to admit, the man could cook.  Often I would see him go into the kitchen and drag out what looked like disparate ingredients and whip up something more edible than you would imagine.  I suspect it was Grandma Searcy that taught him how to cook and not the CCC.  Anyway, his cooking duties didn’t last too long.  He was tall and the CCC found he could play basketball.  CCC camps all over the country had sports teams and his basketball team played all over the southern U.S. His team became the West Tennessee League Champions one year.

After the CCC, he enlisted in the army and was sent to Camp Blanding near Starke, Florida. 

He describes how his buddies came into possession of an old jalopy and drove from St. Augustine to Miami along the beach.  The only time they left the beach was having to go inland to get around rivers.  Needless to say, you cannot do that today.

He was in a hotel room in Miami on December 7th and listening to the radio when the announcer broke into the music with the news of Pearl Harbor.  

He ended up at Officers Candidate School and was shipped out to the Pacific Theater.  He was with McArthur in Australia (he remembers the troops being addressed by Eleanor Roosevelt) Papau New Guinea and the Philippines.  The jungles very kindly gave him jungle rot that he had for the rest of his life.  

He related that when the war ended, his company (he had risen to the rank of Captain by that time) was told if they wanted to go home, those who joined the reserve would be processed immediately and those who did not join the reserve would be processed in a few months.  He joined the reserve.  He wanted to get home.

Sometime in either 1947 or 1948, he was walking in downtown Morton (a short walk even now) when Christine Agnew McKay (a divorcée) walked out of a drug store with my brother Archie in tow.  My brother dropped the ice cream from his cone onto the sidewalk and started bawling.  Archie was always a sensitive kid.  He had a nervous breakdown at the age of three (probably from the divorce).  Anyway, Dad bought him a new cone and he and Mother started dating.  I came along 9 months after the marriage.  

I was two years old (and Archie was 8) when Dad was called up for the Korean War in 1950 (and back from Havre de Grace).  We were living in Ruby and Hollie’s first house – a duplex.  It had to be one of the hottest summers on record for Mississippi.  We had two oscillating fans (I eventually took one to college – they were built to last) and no air conditioning.  Mother was trying to make the house presentable and decided to wallpaper.  That was my first experience at seeing that done and for some reason I remember she used flour and water at the glue.  It worked but it also attracted roaches.  

The other thing I remember was Mother crying a lot.  I didn’t know why but knew she was sad.  Much later, I found some of her love letters to my Dad.  He brought them all home with him and she kept them.  I was surprised at the steaminess of the language and the not so subtle innuendo in them.  Apparently censors didn’t censor incoming letters.

Archie and I spent a great deal of our early years at military bases, both before and after Korea: Fort Rucker, Alabama, Fort Benning, Georgia, Fort Bragg, North Carolina and Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland.  I have to admit those were some of our happiest times.  The military housing wasn’t great but was probably better than the housing we experienced in Mississippi.  There was generally a lake for fishing and swimming and then there were the officer clubs with pools.  I almost drowned on one of those.

One Christmas, I think it was at Fort Bragg, I remember Archie getting an erector set and I got a set of Lincoln logs.  We kept those for years.  He was too big for Lincoln logs but at least he shared the erector set with me and I ended up with it anyway when he got bored with it.  

There was a lake near the military housing at Fort Bragg and I remember Dad and I going down there and catching minnows with bread and a net.  We used the minnows for fishing and I caught my very first fish there.  

I also remember Dad taking me to a house with a beautiful, from what I assume,  German lady.  I’ve always wondered if he was having an affair.  I loved the way she spoke.  She trilled her “R’s” and I would giggle.  One time I asked her one time too many to repeat a word that had an “r” in it and Dad slapped me across the room.  It taught me to be quiet and not say anything to rile my Dad.  It wouldn’t be the last time he hit me.  

Once Dad was discharged from Korea (with the rank of Major) we returned to Morton.  From there, it was back with the highway department and periodic moving.  Just within Mississippi, I have lived in Ruleville, Boyle, Cleveland, back to Morton, Pearl, Jackson, Morton, Florence, Morton, Brandon, out from Puckett, Oxford, and Fulton.  I remember moving twice within one school year and once, when I was a counselor at summer camp, my parents moved and forgot to tell me.  They remembered just as camp was about to end and sent me a postcard with the new address.

As a consequence, I never made long term friends – why bother when you moved within a year?  I grew up shy and introverted.  To compound the issue, these were the times Mother and Dad were severe alcoholics.  On one of our Morton stays, Archie finally left to live with his biological Dad, Otto McKay because he couldn’t stand Mom and Dad’s drinking.  

Otto and Dad were actually friends at one time and both worked for the state highway department.  Strange that Dad ended up marrying my Mother, Otto’s first wife.  Archie and I are half brothers.  Archie attributes Mother’s problems in life with being an only child.  He forgets he was an only child for the first six years of his life.  I suspect Mother was spoiled by her Dad,  Hollie.  She and her Mother Ruby never got along.  Part of it was her drinking but part of it was Mother/daughter tension.  

Mother was a wonder.  She was the first female to get a pilot’s license in Mississippi.  She was also the third person to live with a ruptured liver in the U.S.  She and Otto were driving around with Mother in the passenger seat with her right leg up under her body.  Otto, probably drunk, hit something and wrecked the car.  He asked if she was OK and she said “I think so” and moved her leg from under her and passed out.  I think she was bed ridden for a couple of years.  Doctor Gordon insisted she eat a lot of liver.  Archie loves liver, I hate it.  I blame Mother.  

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Otto was the golden boy, at least as far as Hollie and Ruby were concerned.  I think Ruby was more upset when he (he was cheating) and Mother divorced than Mother was.  As a consequence, Dad never lived up to Ruby’s expectations.  He was just a poor country bumpkin as far as she was concerned (she ignored the fact that she was also) and kept that low opinion of him almost until the day she died.  Begrudgingly, shortly before she died, she apologized and said he had been good to stick by my Mother through thick and thin.  It was shortly after Mother’s divorce from Otto that Archie had his nervous breakdown.

Otto and Dad always were very courteous to each other.  I think they had some respect for each other and whenever I visited Otto, he always treated me kindly and fairly, and always made sure I was involved with what was going on.  Otto married and divorced numerous times over the years.  It seems he could not keep his pants zipped.  He lost his leg as a youth in a hunting accident and Archie said he was always a little spoiled because of it.  Women always seemed to find him attractive.  Either that or they were attracted to an amputee.  Regardless, I can think of four wives and five children.  I never knew the later children but I kind of grew up with Otto, Jr. and Patsy – the results of the second wife, Vonnicil.  They were good kids.  

I think I was always a little scared of Hollie, my Grandfather on my Mom’s side.  He had a temper – much like my Mother – and most members of the Agnew family.  I remember Ruby and Hollie coming home from Sunday church service and them screaming and cursing at each other and Mary Moore, their maid,  laughing so hard at their profanity after attending church.  

Hollie wanted me to like him.  He bribed me with silver dollars with a 1923 date, the year of my Mother’s birth.  They stacked up quickly because every time we would visit, I got another silver dollar.  I must have had 50 or more of them from over the years but eventually, Mother dipped into the stash frequently to afford her cigarettes.  I think I finally gave up during my teenage years and spent what remained of them on something.  

Hollie smoked Lucky Strikes.  I dreaded when he did his morning bathroom ablutions (actually taking a morning shit).  He always struck up a smoke and the combination of unfiltered Lucky Strikes and the smell of his shit always choked me to the point of nausea.  Archie loved him and his rough ways.  Hollie always walked around me like he was on egg shells.  I think he knew I was afraid of him and he really didn’t want to scare me.  When he would come into a room, I immediately ran to Ruby and hid behind her.  

To be honest, there was only one time he got mad at me specifically.  I was being baby sat by Mary Moore, Ruby and Hollie’s maid.   It was a rainy day and so I couldn’t play in the yard.  To occupy me, she sat me down with a pair of scissors and paper and told me to cut out shapes.  She got occupied and I got bored.  I decided paper was dull so I took her rain galoshes and began to cut them up.  She was upset with me – not in a mean or cruel way – but upset.  I started crying and ran out the door.  I decided the only person who could understand me was Hollie who was at his hardware just east of main street in Morton.  I ran as fast as my legs could take me, through downtown traffic and across highway 80, then the busiest highway in the state with Mary Moore chasing me.  Poor Mary.  She was a little heavy and diabetic and she couldn’t catch me.  When I reached the hardware, I cried to Hollie that Mary had been mean to me. When Mary appeared, she explained and Hollie roared.  He cussed and yelled the whole way back to his house in the old black pickup – not at me per se but at how I could have been killed in traffic.  

Somewhere during this time, Mother took me to see Lash LaRue in Meridian, Mississippi who was appearing in person.  This was before we had a tv in our family and movies were the major source of entertainment.  That started a long fascination with cowboys that only grew over the years.  For my fifth birthday party, I had a birthday cake with Hopalong Cassidy on top.  I was even the proud owner of a Hopalong fork.  Yes, they were merchandising like crazy even back then.  I even have a photo of me, my Dad, and my six shooters and chaps in front of our house (Ruby and Hollie’s old house) in Morton.  From there, I graduated to Gene Autry and eventually Roy Rogers.  

Archie tells me the story of me getting lost in a cotton field when we moved to Ruleville in the Mississippi Delta.  I don’t remember much about Ruleville except the duck episode.  Apparently Dad and some of his friends went duck hunting in the Delta and decided to cook the ducks at a party at our house in Ruleville.  What I remember was the mistake they made of pouring boiling water over the ducks so they could pull out the feathers like you used to do when you plucked a chicken.  Apparently boiling water sets the feathers in the ducks and it’s almost impossible to remove the feathers.  The more they drank and the more they tried to pull out the feathers, the more they cussed.  Eventually, I think I remember them throwing the ducks away.

Mom and Dad used to frequent juke joints in the Delta.  Mississippi back then was a dry state and beer, wine and liquor were illegal which meant juke joints were making money hand over fist with selling all three, but mostly beer, all with a state sales tax stamp on each and every bottle.  Mississippi was not averse to taxing illegal liquor.  Juke joints were so named because they always had a juke box to play music.  Back then, it was common to have tables around the periphery of the place and when someone put music in the juke box, people would dance in the middle of the floor.  Mom and Dad liked to dance and needy me wanted to dance with them.  They would often lift me up and I would be caught between the two as they danced to Hank Williams, Sr.  I’ve always had a thing for him since then.  My favorite for them to dance to was “Your Cheatin’ Heart.“

We used to go to a country club in the Mississippi Delta that sat near a levee on the Mississippi.  It was a dinner/dance club and off we’d go in the old tan and brown Plymouth.  We’d eat dinner and Mom and Dad would stay upstairs in the club and drink illegal booze and Archie and I would go downstairs with nickels provided by Dad to play the illegal slot machines.  

One night, when Archie was not with us, it was raining to beat the band and Mom and Dad had too much to drink.  The way into and out of the country club was atop the levee.  Somehow Dad turned too quick for the off road from the levee and the car rolled over several times on the way to the bottom of the levee.  If you have ever seen those levees on the Mississippi, they are the tallest thing around (around 24 feet).  We landed upright and Dad simply drove away and back onto the road.

Mom and Dad would often drive around the Delta in the old Plymouth with me either on the back seat or in between them on the front.  Dad would throw lighted matches out the window to burn off the highway right-of-way.  To this day I don’t know if he had a bit of the fire bug in him or if this was standard operating procedure for his job with the highway department.  It was back before the state used to mow the right-of-way along highways with tractor/mowers so it could indeed have been department policy.  

I’m not sure what I was doing but it apparently it was annoying to Dad.  I was standing in the front seat between him and Mom and he turned and slapped me so hard he knocked me down into the well of the car.  Mom looked at him and said “are you trying to kill him?”  I’ve often said  that Mom should never have been allowed children and Dad should have been encouraged to have more.  I’ve seen little children so shy as to never utter a word around an adult gravitate towards him and begin a conversation with him.  I’ve never been able to reconcile those two aspects of him – slapping me around and kids naturally gravitating to him.

Another slapping incident occurred when I was in the third grade in Cleveland.  Hollie had sprung for a new house for us in Cleveland when Dad was working for the state highway department.  I had a bike, that like any kid, left it in the yard.  Mom told me to go pick it up and put it away.  I told her if she wanted it put away for her to do it herself.  I found myself flying across the room from a slap by my Dad.  I can safely say I deserved that one.  

I’ve been spanked several times by my Dad and I can safely say I never deserved but one spanking/slapping (see previous).  One time, Mother and Dad decided to go on a little drinking jag and the last person who needed to know was Ruby.  We were back in Morton again.  They arranged for me to stay with Mary Moore.  When time came for me to leave with Mary from Ruby’s house, I didn’t want to go and Archie told me I could stay with Ruby if I wanted.  The problem was Mom and Dad were to pick me up at Mary’s.  Instead, they had to pick me up at Ruby’s and she found out they had been on a drinking spree.  I got punished.  To be honest, I think I was too little to understand their machinations and just wanted to stay with Ruby.

I did often stay with Mary Moore in the Black section of town called Keen Inn.  There were two Black sections in Morton: Keen Inn and Lick Skillet.  Both were shanty towns but Mary’s house was a little nicer since Hollie owned the house and she worked for him.  I’ve never in my life ever seen a cleaner house in my life even though it was a simple shack.  Mary would take me to the black Methodist Church and I remember loving their service much more than the service at the white Methodist Church.  

In reality, the book The Help was pretty much the story of my life.  Mary Moore and Hazel Smith basically raised me during my Morton years.  What was instilled in me as far as goodness came from them.  My work ethic was based on theirs and their ability to love me showed me how to love others.  Major portions of my life have dealt with drunken parents and loving maids who took on the responsibility for me from my parents.  Mother was abusive not only to me but to Mary and Hazel, and how they stood it is beyond me. 

Once, when we were living in Mr. Willard Marler’s house on the Pulaski road in Morton, Ruby drove up with her cousin Cleo for an unannounced afternoon visit.  Mother had been drinking.  I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth when she rushed in, knocked me into the tub to get to the bathroom sink so she could gargle mouthwash to keep Ruby from detecting the alcohol on her breath.  Mother was never loving.  Her Agnew temper could peel paint off the walls.  Archie had left to be with Otto then and most of her anger was directed at me – or at least it seems so in retrospect.  

Ruby wasn’t too averse herself to manipulation of me.  I remember she put me up to asking Dad why he drank.  I had crawled up in his lap and looked up and popped the question.  He pushed me out of his lap and told me I was no son of his by asking that question.  

To be continued….

25 February 2021

Socrates is famous for saying “the unexamined life is not worth living” in response to a choice of exile or death. On the other hand, I think lives need to be examined in order to live to the fullest. With that in mind, I’ve decided to re-examine my life so far. Where to begin?

The first thing I ever remember is sitting on a concrete stoop in front of our house in Meridian, Mississippi watching my Dad mow the lawn.  As he finished, he walked up to me and shook his head and sweat fell onto the concrete in front of me wetting the concrete.  I looked up at him and said “Rain!”  I was around two years old and didn’t have much speech.  Or at least that’s how I remember it.  Much, much later, I related this memory to my parents and they said there was no way I could remember that far back, but it is burned into my memory like a brand on a calf which my father often reminded me he had to sell to pay for my escape from the hospital.  Mother often reminded me she carried me for 9 months and was in labor for 11 hours with me.  I know that for a fact since both bits of data are recorded on my birth certificate.

I was born at Saint Joseph’s Hospital in Meridian on November 1, 1948 at 1 p.m. weighing in at 7 lbs. 4 1/4 oz.  The hospital has since moved from its original downtown site.  However, I did get it see the old building later in life when my parents would drive me around Meridian pointing out landmarks familiar to them.  

Meridian, at one time, was a booming city. Since the 2010 census, its dropped in population from 41,148 to 36,347. Today its considered the seventh largest city in Mississippi; however, until 1930 it was the largest city in the state.

It’s famous for a lot of reasons including the naval air station located there and also the home of Jimmie Rodgers, the singing brakeman. In a way, country music got its start in Meridian. Everyone has a favorite song by an artist and my favorite song by Rodgers is “It’s Peach Pickin’ Time in Georgia“. A close second is “He’s in the Jailhouse Now.”

Periodically on my trips out west, I’ll stop in Meridian and have lunch at Weidmann’s. For a while there, I would travel to Meridian more frequently than the capitol city of Jackson. My grandmother Ruby Agnew would load me up in the car after church on Sunday and drive over to Meridian from Morton, Mississippi over highway 80 – 60 miles east of Morton on a two lane road filled with semis. Ruby had this habit of driving like a bat out of hell for a few minutes and then slowing to a crawl. I imagine it drove the others behind her nuts.

Anyway, dining at Weidmann’s was an experience. Weidmann’s didn’t put pats of butter out on the table with the cracker. Instead, they put out crocks of homemade peanut butter.

It was also where I first experienced a prime rib. The chef, of course, cooked it medium rare. As a little kid, it was a little blood for me.

The pièce de résistance was their famous black bottom pie. Anything with bourbon and chocolate as an ingredients has to be good. This is a slice of paradise. I have their original recipe and on special occasions will make it for friends. Or, you can stop in Weidman’s and enjoy it yourself.

Sometimes we would go over on a Saturday and go to a movie and Ruby would shop. In a lot of ways, I always thought Meridian had classier stores than Jackson.

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My next memory is sitting in an old brown and tan Plymouth in a parallel parking space in downtown Meridian with Mother in the driver’s seat and Dad in the passenger’s seat with me on his lap and Mother backing too quickly and hitting the car behind her.  I was thrown forward from Dad’s lap and hit my mouth on the hard dash and split my lip.  A meter maid stuck her head in the open window of the passenger side and asked if she could help and Dad very angrily told her to mind her own business, that his “son was hurt.”  l remember the song “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes” was playing on the radio – probably the Perry Como with The Ramblers 1952 recording doing the honors.  Much later as I played that scene over and over in my memory, I realized both Mom and Dad had probably been deep in their cups.  That was to be a pretty constant theme for the rest of their  – and my – lives.  

Another set of memories were from Havre de Grace, Maryland and of the bucking space heater and snow.  Dad was in the army and had been called up as a member of the ready reserve for Korea. He was stationed at Aberdeen Proving Grounds near Havre de Grace.  We lived in a trailer and the only source of heat in the trailer was an oil fired heater.  When lit, it would make these loud sounds like snorts as it warmed up and to me, seemed like it was moving across the floor, hence my bucking heater.  

What I remember about Havre de Grace is snow.  I think the year we were there was one of the heavier snowfalls for Maryland.  I remember my brother and I running across what looked like a level snow covered field when we both plunged out of sight.  We both had forgotten there was a drainage ditch near the trailer park and we fell through the snow to the bottom of the ditch.  

Archie, my brother, tells the tale of me saving his eyesight in one eye.  There was a junk yard near the trailer park and we knew we were not to go any where near it.  That meant it was an open invitation to Archie.  He was looking in the back of a car that the trunk top had been removed when he must has accidentally hit the latch.  The metal connectors to the trunk top immediately popped up and one hit him in the eye.  Blood was everywhere and he couldn’t see so I ran home.  I really couldn’t talk at that point but when Mother saw me crying and Archie wasn’t with me, she asked where Archie was.  I apparently led her back to Archie and off he went to the hospital.   A few millimeters to the right and he would have lost his eye.  

We were reared as Methodists and I remember Mother taking me to Sunday services in Havre de Grace.  I apparently got excited during the hymns.  I was learning to talk and apparently during “Holy! Holy! Holy!” I must have felt the spirit move me.  I was standing on the pew with Mom holding on to me and I really got into the refrain.  It seems after the hymn was over, I couldn’t let it go and continued with the refrain at the top of my lungs.  Mom had to drag me out of the pew and out of the church.  

My Grandmother on my mother’s side (Ruby Lee Agnew nee Tadlock) visited at least once in Havre de Grace.  I remember her driving up from Morton, Mississippi and apparently taking me back with her for Christmas holidays.  As we headed south, we apparently would stop to eat in restaurants along the way.  In one stop, the restaurant had a display case for cigars, cigarettes, and other sundry items.  It was there I spied a set of what I thought were wax teeth that kids used to get during halloween.  I kept motioning to Ru that I wanted the teeth.  With great difficulty, she finally got through to me that those were the false teeth of the owner of the restaurant.  He apparently put them there when they got to bothering him when he worked the cash register.  

Another time, Aunt Minrose and Uncle Ray (Dad’s brother) visited and drove me back to Morton to Ruby and Hollie’s.  I must have driven them both crazy by asking over and over if the town lights we saw approaching was Morton.  I apparently did that all the way from Havre de Grace.  I think they were relieved when they finally handed me over to my Grandparents.  

Ruby and Hollie lived in a two bedroom, one bath house that had an enclosed back porch, kitchen, dining room and living room.  On the northeast side of the house was a screened in porch. 

They later enclosed that porch and it was there they always put up a Christmas tree.  That was my first exposure to bubble lights and I’ve had a fascination with them ever since. 

These were the old lights that were wired in series.  If one burned out, they all went out and you spent a lot of time testing to find out which bulb was burned out so you could get the string back up and lit.  They are called bubble lights because the light bulb in the base heats up the methylene chloride liquid which causes bubbles in the glass tube.

Their house was also my first exposure to a floor furnace and an attic fan.  The attic fan was huge and noisy but would definitely pull air from open windows into the house and create an updraft breeze during hot summer months.  

The floor furnace was the main source of heat for the bedrooms.  On extremely cold mornings, I would straddle the floor furnace (when I was tall enough) until my groin area became too toasty and then step away, only to reappear over the furnace after I cooled off. I knew to do that since my grandmother would do the same in her nightie.  I later learned it’s not a good thing to do with blue jeans on because the metal zipper and the rivets would heat up and continue to burn after you dismounted from the furnace.  I’ve always been partial to floor furnaces ever since.  Strangely, most people I’ve run into have either never heard of them or were terribly afraid of them.  Many recall accidentally stepping on the metal grate and burning themselves.  I remember that too but was willing to take the chance to get warm.  Just a warning.  You can stand on the grate in leather soled shoes but once they heat up, you have a lingering hot foot.

Stay tuned for more and stay safe!