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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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.
Just incredible.