Time Traveling With Daddy

Taken from notes I took on a warm, beautiful July day talking with my dad in his backyard.

It's July 8, 2005. I bought daddy a free-standing hammock and put it under the dogwood tree in his backyard. He wanted to be outside and the most pain-free way for him was to be able to lie down. As he looked up through the filigree of tree branches which shielded him from the sun on this early July morning, I pulled up a chair to sit next to him. I felt it - this was going to be a special day with my dad. I had a notebook and pen in hand because I wanted to document wherever his thoughts wanted to take a stroll. I wanted to hear - - everything! I wanted to capture the oral history of the first man in my life.

Daddy started talking about when he was a young boy in Leaksville, NC. Leaksville is in Rockingham County, the county from which all my father's ancestors came from. There were three towns much alike in culture and industry: Leaksville, Spray, and Draper. Leaksville was the oldest of the triplets, in fact it was the oldest town in the county. Colonel William Byrd was given a grant of twenty-thousand acres when he led a commission to establish the dividing line between Virginia and North Carolina. He said it was the most beautiful area he had ever seen and he called it "The Land of Eden." In 1967 the three unincorporated towns incorporated into one city called Eden.

Daddy told me he loved going on Saturday afternoons to see the black and white spaghetti westerns at The Grand. They usually were Tom Mix westerns. Tom, "the King of Cowboys" and his intelligent horse Tony always "saved the day," and when the picture was over daddy would run home and recount the entire story to his mom and dad. He said they hated when he did that but would tolerantly listen. Daddy said he loved going to the movies and whatever the music was, people came out of the movie house humming and singing. Most times the movie reel broke so you'd just sit in the dark waiting for it to start up again! Daddy good friend, Tommy Smith, sold popcorn in the lobby. He always managed to give daddy popcorn that was only half popped. If he happened to take a girl to the movies he's get cherry smash (coke and cherry syrup) and they'd share a bag of half-popped corn.

Back then, he explained, we had ice wagons that came by. You'd chip off whatever you needed for your icebox. As the ice melted it ran through a hole cut in the bottom into the basement.  Another inconvenience was no running water. There was a pump out back and everyone drank from a common dipper which hung from a hook. Of course we had an outhouse too.

Two times a year a hog was killed and they would make bacon and sausage and hams, sharing with the neighbors. When those neighbors slaughtered their hog, they would do the same. Those were simple times, simpler than today for sure. If some of us kids wanted to play ball we'd get string from the mill and make a ball with it, then use a limb from a tree as a bat. One time, daddy said, Buck threw the ball and my glove finger got bent back and the ball hit my nose and broke it. I had to walk across town with to the doctor's with my nose bleeding. Another time Buck and I were jumping on the bed and we broke the bed! Buck tried to convince me to let him use a blowtorch to try and fix it but I was afraid he'd burn my house down. He gave me $5 to tell my mom and dad I did it. I'd do anything for money!

Back then Henderson was a mean town. Aunt Lola, my father's sister, lived there. Buck's dad was stabbed to death on the street one night for no good reason. Lola was a good person. She drove around a lot. She killed a kid one time that ran out in the street from between two cars. Lola never drove after that.

Daddy talked fondly of the Leaksville Boys Club (YMCA) which became like his second home. The club was on Harris Street, the same street as his family home. During the Depression, like so many other families, the kids had to seek inexpensive entertainment and playing basketball and baseball at the Boys Club provided good clean fun. The man who ran it during the 1930's was Thomas Jefferson Carter. He became like a second father to daddy. His own father drank too much at times and could be an angry drunk. Grandpa had a hard life, but one typical of the time in history and the place. He was a smoker and I remember an odd thing - his legs from the knee down were entirely hairless, just smooth pale skin. I found out later it was because when he fought in WWI their uniforms were wood britches and long wool socks. He wore them so much that the hair on his legs never grew back. Grandpa had only a third grade education, and went to work at the Marshall Fields Mill (later Fieldcrest Mills) when he was 13 and had to stand on a stool to reach his work area. He worked there until he retired at 65 as a mechanic. He never owned or drove a car, but walked every weekend from his home to Washington Street, the main drag, to hang out with his buddies drinking coffee and playing checkers at the diner. He did that as long as he was alive.

Greystone Rock Quarry is in Henderson and was one of our swimming holes. Buck and I would go skinny dipping out there in that cold,
clear water. I'd get him to hand me down my clothes which sometimes he didn't thinking himself very funny.  His brother, Gene, was a nice guy. He was a radioman on the Langley aircraft carrier during WWII. Gene was a good baseball player.
I like poetry. When I was 12 years old I was cutting up in class so the teacher made me quote "Birches" by Robert Frost in front of the class.  I graduated high school when I was just 16 then started working in the mill in Spring until I went to Portsmouth, VA because I wanted to be enlist. Raymond Shouhf and I walked over to the Marine recruitment headquarters one day. We had nothing better to do and we had been turned down by the Army Navy because of our vision. We were told that the Marines had just come out with a directive that if your vision could be corrected to 20/20 with glasses they would take you. So that's how I became a Marine at 17 years old. Something funny, if you look at my military ID picture you'll see my eyes are looking off to the side. That's because there was an office full of girls off to the side and I'm checking them out while having my picture taken!

Before going to basic training, one day we went driving in Raymond's dad's car with some girls to go shopping in Danville, VA. A spring came lose under the car and we went off the road and flipped over. Raymond's girl was thrown out and pinned under the car in a ditch. I took off running for help. While I was gone Raymond was able to lift the car up just enough with his back for her to get out. Fortunately she only had a broken rib.

I did my training in Paris Island. I got off every Saturday until Monday morning while there because they found out I was somewhat of a sharp shooter so they made me a coach. I also got extra pay, but I paid for it when I was deployed. When I got over to the Pacific they gave me a 16 pound Browning automatic to carry along with extra ammo. Some of the time a bigger fellow Marine in my platoon had pity on me and carried the Browning.

At the end of the war I ran into a nice Japanese soldier who was from Nagasaki. I have a picture of him. We exchanged weapons, my rifle for his sword. Our own little detente I guess. Sometime later after marriage and kids, Martha and I went to England. When we visited Branscombe, England I felt like I'd come home again. It was just like the mountains of North Carolina or Virginia. We loved sitting in the Mason Arms Pub and visited the local anglican church. In the sermon the pastor said, "If we can't get along with each other what do we have to say to the world?"  What indeed?

There's a poem I memorized when I was younger. It was written by Robert Frost and called "Mending Wall." I think I agree with Frost -- "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." I think that day at the end of the war, the Japanese soldier and I tore down the wall for just a moment and became neighbors.

MENDING WALL

‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,

One on a side.  It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.'

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

'Why do they make good neighbors?  Isn’t it

Where there are cows?  But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That wants it down.'  I could say ‘Elves’ to him,

But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather

He said it for himself.  I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father’s saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.'