Back-tracking

I’ve been told that I have a memory like a steel trap. It is true that I can remember details from age three, even as to what someone was wearing and the topic of conversations. I don’t know why, but it has always been that way with me. 
However, since I began this book I’ve gone back over the previous chapters and I will remember something missing that should be in a chapter. I’m starting to think about some of my foundations that weren’t always fun and games.

I grew up during the Great Depression, but the first six years of my life were not those of the poverty-stricken thirties. My step-father, Okie B. Woods, was a hard working man with a good income until the market went belly up in October 1929. Loss of jobs did not hit our family hard until 1931 when the employment bubble busted. I recall the Christmas of 1930, mom and I lived alone in apartment upstairs over a loan company. My mother always lived in town. She wasn’t about to be known as a country girl. Too much vanity. Mom and my step-father had split earlier in the year. We lost our big house on Edgewood Drive near the country club and were beginning to learn what it was like to do without. 

The family doctor gave us a Christmas tree, otherwise we would not have had one that year. She always let me help with the decorations and I recall crawling under a buffet to reach the electrical socket with a cord from the tree lights. I plugged the light cord into the wall and slam, bam, thank you ma’am, I picked myself up on the other side of the room. The lights were old and the fabric covered cord had worn thin. Consequently my fingers were wrapped around the frayed line and when the plug connected to the current I got a never to be forgotten shock and journey across the room that jolted the daylights out of me. Since that time I never plug anything into a socket without checking the cord.

(CHAPTER XXII)

My mother was working at the West Side Diner right across the street from our apartment at the time so she was able to be home more with me, plus which she brought me over to have lunch with her every day. The Christos who owned the place were a big part of my growing up. Two of their sons, George and Gus went to Bigley and Lincoln grade and junior high schools with me. George and I were in the same class. Gus was two classes ahead. Over the years Gus and I became close. He later took over the restaurant after his father died. Even when mom didn’t work there, I was always asked when I went in if I was hungry. Gus and his father took care of my hunger more times than I can remember. When I came home from the war Gus threw a welcome home party in my honor. 

Throughout my early teen years Gus was very special in my life, like an older brother. Not being athletic or rough, older boys picked on me. It was something I tried to avoid, but I just seemed to be a punching bag for some older guys who enjoyed bullying weaker or smaller boys. Gus, all everything athletically, took up for me on more occasions than I can remember. One punch from him and any of them would back away. All too often, however, someone would catch me when Gus wasn’t around. He always told me, “Anybody bothers you, you let me know.” I never told him though. I didn’t want him to feel obligated. 

Aside from the Christos and family, I was amazed almost to embarrassment the as to how many guys who mistreated me when I was in school who were suddenly my friends when I came back from World War II. It was like they all had an ephifany while I was gone and saw me in a different light. I found out later that some of them didn’t make it into the war for one reason or the other and supposed the others suddenly had respect for a fellow service man. No matter the reason, I felt for once in my life I’d done something worthwhile. Even my two uncles Fred were different. Out of 13 cousins only myself and Bill actually wanted to see the world or whatever.

(CHAPTER XXII)

The war changed the world. We were no exception. Women who were home makers and housewives prior to the hostilities had replaced their husbands and fathers in the work force. Rosie the Riveter was a slogan of women in defense plants while the men were fighting Nazis and Japs. The genie was out of the bottle. It was the beginning of women’s liberation. Girls who grew into their twenties working for the military needs would no longer accept the old way of bedroom, kitchen and living room. They had finally achieved the suffrage promised by Susan B. Anthony and were finally able to be recognized for all they could accomplish if the door opened and World War II opened it wide. The country was better for it in so many ways, but whether we liked it or not men had to take on more responsibility for raising children.

I enjoyed the post-war years and grew with all the new discoveries and inventions that came about due to necessity. One thing I have never forgotten, however, is where I came from and where I got my basic training. My people were hard workers surviving the most severe conditions of the Great Depression. I learned two things early on: The work ethic and the knowledge that no matter how high I soared that I would always be a hillbilly from West Virginia. Some things are well worth remembering.
The war was over and so was the age of innocence.
THE END

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My Big Break

While I worked at the Pennsylvania Hotel, I still had the urge to sing with a band in a night club. One night of from work I took the IRT Subway down to Greenwich Village and strolled down Third Street where clubs and bars lined both sides of the street.
There was one club, I believe it was 52 Third street, that fascinated me. There was an awning covering the steps to the club’s entrance with all the glitter and glamour that a hick from West Virginia could gawk at all night and still not have enough. A big Black doorman in uniform with brass buttons patrolled the entrance with the menacing look of a Pit Bull, making sure that only the right guests were allowed in.
In those days, despite my fears and lack of knowledge about protocol, I was not afraid of a challenge. Always willing to take a dare, first one to climb a roller coaster car or jump off the cliff into an uncertain bottom of a river, I wanted to sing and maybe this would be my opportunity. I didn’t know anymore about agents than I did about the New York Stock Exchange but that awning and the doorman’s shiny brass butters were invitations to adventure. Remember I was still only 17 years old, with barely any fuzz on my face or anywhere else. I was a kid as long as nature allowed.
So I swaggered right up to that doorman. He saw me coming and said, “Whatcha want kid?”
“I’‘m lookin’ for a job.”
“What kind of job?” He looked me up and down like a juvenile detective.
“I sing. I want a job singing.”
He scuffawed. “Get outta here.”
As it so happened the manager of the club, Mr. Stoneman, stepped outside and lit a cigarette just as the big guy with the shiny brass buttons was shushing me away.
“How’s it going tonight Joe?”
“Kinda quiet tonight Stoney, except this smart-assed kid who thinks he can sing.”
Without hesitation Stoneman said, “Oh.” and motioned me to come up to where he was standing.
I kinda stood numb for a second or two when Joe said, “Did you hear him kid? Get your ass up there.”
They might have been planning my execution, I’d heard about how the New York Mafia bumped people off – just like that, but I raced up the steps to the club level.
Stoney went to the core of my situation. “Whadda ya sing kid?”
“Oh, everything,” I blurted with all the confidence and power of a piss ant. I’m sure he smiled inside at my brassy response. 
He lifted my elbow and said, “Come on in. We’ll talk.”
Inside it was a cozy room with a dance floor surrounded by tables and chairs. The band was just finishing a set and couples were returning to their tables and drinks. I liked the place right away.
We sat down at Stoney’s table where his business partner, Babe Baker was already sipping a fresh drink.
“What do you want to drink?
I knew it was a night club and even though I wasn’t 18, the age you were allowed to consume alcohol, I also knew that I would like a damned fool if I didn’t order alcohol so I ordered a slow gin fizz, definitely a kid’s brew.
Mr. Baker, who hadn’t said a word, asked ,“What’s your name kid?”
“Ray. Ray Strait.” That brought a broad grin to Babe’s face. I would
soon learn why.
Stoney motioned the back of the stage. “See that short guy at the piano? He’s our band leader. The guys just took a break before the next show. Go up and see if he will let you sing a couple of songs. Tell him I sent you. Then come back.”
I bolted out of my chair as though lighting had lifted me up and crossed the dance floor. The orchestra leader was a small guy, very cordial. “What would you like to sing?”
I gave him two titles , A song that was contemporary on the radio made popular by The Andrews Sister, FOR ALL WE KNOW, that would later become a jazz classic, and MURDER, HE SAYS, a jump tune popular with the jitterbug crowd recently recorded on Decca Records by singing movie star, Betty Hutton, whose sister was Glenn Miller’s girl singer. I always knew what was hep and what wasn’t just as kids follow rock stars today.
When the set was over the pianist thanked me and sent me back to see Stoney.
I was always a little cocky, but my knees were weak as I approached the manager’s table and I really need that alcohol jolt.
His facial expression never changed. Stoney was a big man, six foot plus with plenty of muscle to go with his oversized belly.
“Twenty five a week, plus tips.”
The twenty five bucks was a lot in 1942. I’d never made that much a week in my life. Even in the navy I only received $21 a month. Plus room and board of course.
“What tips?”
“For singing requests at patrons’ tables. We have a roll around piano and when someone requests a song, the pianist rolls the table right up a table and you sing a song if they ask. You do know more than two tunes I would assume.”
“Oh yes. Hundreds.”
“Good You can start at 9 o’clock Friday Night. Six nights a week, one show on Sunday. Monday off.”
I was suddenly a star in New York
I later discovered why Babe laughed at my name. THE HOWDY CLUB was New York’s number one drag club. Owned by “the boys” they had another one in Hollywood, Florida. I was the only member of the cast that didn’t perform in drag. Some of the most famous drag queens in the world performed at both clubs; Jackie Maye, Leon LaVerde, Ray Bourbon just to cite a few of our headliners that drew larger crowds than Phinoccio’s in San Francisco. They were all older than me and were not interested in young guys. Actually they were mostly all connected with someone.
Yes, lest I forget, one of my first tips was $50 and it came from a very famous and wealthy couple. Fur magnet John Jacob Astor, the second or third and his equally super star date Hollywood film beauty ,Hedy Lamarr. 
After I moved to Hollywood years later to work as Jayne Mansfield’s press secretary a friend introduced me to Hedy and she remembered that night.
“Why,? I asked, “had he given you such a large tip because he was never known for such generosity despite his wealth. He said, ‘He looked like a kid that had never seen a fifty dollar bill in his life and I wanted to see the expression on his face.’”
I’m sure he was gratified. I’d never been so shocked and astonished in my life. I wasn’t about to question it for fear he might have made a mistake.
There was another lesson I learned from an equally famous political personality. Believe it or not, Wendell L. Wilkie who ran on the Republican ticket against FDR in 1940 came into the club one night and invited me to lunch the following day at the Commodore Hotel for lunch. It was nothing like you may be thinking. He requested a song that brought him almost to tears because it reminded him of someone dear to him that had recently been killed in an automobile accident.
The crux of the story has to do with dessert and one of my missing out on some table manners. Grandma used to make deep dish apple pie and always served a paper cake cup with white syrup on the side. As you might have guessed already I ordered deep dish apple pie and it came with a crinkle cookie cup with white liquid which I took to be syrup. When I went to take a sip of it to see how sweet it was, I barely had it at my lips when Mr. Wilkie put his hand on my arm and said, “Ray, that’s the finger bowl?”
No firecracker on the fourth of July could have possibly matched the ruby red flush on my cheeks. I’m surprised my hair didn’t go up in flames.
So much for a hillbilly singing star in Greenwich Village. 

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New York, New York

When I was discharged, the U. S. Navy paid my train fare from Portsmouth, Va to Charleston with a small severance pay in cash. I saw my mother on the platform at the C&O Depot. Still angry, I wanted nothing to do with her. My life was screwed up and I blamed her.

I walked several cars back and got off toward the rear of the train. With so many people getting off, I slipped into the waiting room and out the other side. Instead of going home, I took a cab to a downtown hotel.

For three days I holed up in my room and tried to figure out what to do. Finally, I called my friend Sonny Lofts. He met me at the Summers Street Diner. Sonny played piano and sang. We had worked some of the beer joints in town as a duo, but both wanted something more. During my running away days, New York had been one of my destinations. I’d spent only a few days there before a one-way ticket awaited me at the Greyhound Depot, but New York had seduced me. I knew that someday I’d be back.

I was so angry with my mother I swore I would never go home ever again.

So that afternoon in my hotel room Sonny and I made our plans. He had some money. I had my severance pay, minus my hotel costs. Mom had remarried some cowboy from Montana before I left for the navy. They both were working days, so it was easy for me to slip into the house, pack my bag, spend the night at Sonny’s and hit the highway by way of thumb on our way to Parkersburg where we bought two one-way tickets to New York. We didn’t purchase tickets in Charleston because mom my would be working and, even if she wasn’t, there would have been a phone call from one of the other waitresses. I had no intention of having anything to do with my mother because she caused me to get kicked out of the Navy.

The bus took us north to Pittsburgh and across the Pennsylvania Turnpike to Philadelphia and on to New York. Sonny and I managed to get seats up front close to the driver. As the bus approached the Holland Tunnel, it was late at night and I noticed an orange light on top of a building in the distance. “What’s that little building?” I asked.

The driver laughed. “Son, that’s the Empire State Building, the tallest building in the world.”

I shrunk down into the seat and shut up.

New York, New York

Due to the war with so much troop movement, most transportation terminals set up information bureaus. An attendant in the Greyhound Depot directed us to the YMCA on 23^rd Street where we checked in for the night.

Aware of the need to find some kind of job right away, the following morning we hit the employment office. There were more jobs than man power. Sonny found work in a mid-town restaurant. I was hired as an elevator operator at the Pennsylvania Hotel. Of course these were to be temporary jobs. We were entertainers and intended to find employment as a duo. That would not be our future in New York.

I’d never heard of the Café Rouge, The Pennsylvania Hotel’s big band venue. Since I had no experience operating an elevator, I was not immediately designated as a main lobby operator. Instead my job would be the back elevators that led down to the Café Rouge, which meant that my passengers would be the night club’s patrons and employees which, included the band members.

I did not know that I would be part of music history. I got to meet many famous band leaders and their singers, which included Glen Gray and Glenn Miller and his crew; Tex Beneke, Ray Eberle, the Modernaires and Betty Hutton’s sister Marion.

One of the great delights of my young life occurred with Glenn Miller.

He’d always ask, “What would you like to hear tonight, kid?” I was called on the carpet several times when I kept the car door open, ignoring the buzzer so I could hear the Miller Orchestra’s wonderful tunes drifting out of the Café Rouge.

When the hotel transferred me to the front elevators I missed the music. I remember one celebrity while working the main elevators. My passenger was cowboy movie star Roy Rogers who asked directions to the Lincoln Hotel where Harry James and his orchestra were playing. He was so friendly I couldn’t believe he was a movie star. People I’d met from Hollywood over the years always insinuated that they were all unapproachable. Of course, being a dumb-assed hillbilly they probably thought that Hollywood would be beyond my educational level. Mr. Rogers threw a monkey wrench into the argument. He was about as plain and respectful of others as anybody from up the holler.

There were more treats for me in the Big Apple and some disappointments also. While I worked at the Pennsylvania Hotel, I still had the urge to sing with a band in a night club. One night oft from work I took the IRT Subway down to Greenwich Village and strolled down Third Street where clubs and bars liked both side. My luck was about to change.

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My Intermediate Years

I don’t know if all kids who grew up during the Great Depression were addicted to lying and petty theft, but I certainly was. I often would pilfer my mother’s tip jar she kept in the kitchen. Usually, it would be small change, and she wouldn’t notice. I went overboard one morning. Mom had worked the late shift at Greyhound and was sleeping in, so I went a step further and took a fifty-cent piece out of her purse before she had deposited her tip change in the jar.

At the local grocery, I spent the entire fifty cents on Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit Chewing Gum. I had ten packets of gum spread out on my bed when, without warning, my mother appeared in the doorway.

“Where did you get all that gum?”

I didn’t have my usual thought out alibi, so I began to stutter and stammer. “I, uh…”

“I asked you a question, young man. Where did you get that gum?”

Quick on my feet for a change, I said, “I helped Mr. Martin stock shelves at the store. He gave me the chewing gum as a salary.”

It was such an obvious lie that she almost laughed out loud. “Is that right?”

“Yes, ma’am. That’s right.”

“That was very nice of him, but why didn’t he give you money if you worked?”

“It was early, and the cash register was empty. I was the first one in the store.” The plot thickened as I walked right into the noose with my name on it.

Mom didn’t say anything else. She turned and went into her bedroom. Within minutes she was back in the sun porch where I slept.

“It so happens that there is a fifty-cent piece missing from my purse. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

With my best angelic, lying face, I sort of weakly whispered, “No ma’am, I wouldn’t know about that.”

She still didn’t say anything, so I figured for once I had actually got away with stealing money. Not so. She sent me out back to rake the yard. While I raked, my mother slipped out of the house. When I came back inside, she was waiting for me at the kitchen table.

“I visited Mr. Martin. He tells me you gave him a fifty-cent coin for ten packages of Juicy Fruit. So are you ready to tell me the truth?”

Tears began to flood my eyes and stream down my face. I didn’t say anything. For the longest time, my mother sat at the table and stared at me.

“What am I going to do with you? Do you know much fifty cents is?

It is a lot of money, especially in these hard times. What hurts me most is that you would steal from your mother. I work hard to support you and give you the necessities of life, and you do this to me.”

(Growing Up Hillbilly – Chapter XIX)

She started to tear up. I couldn’t stand to see mom cry. When she got talking seriously to me about life and my behavior, I hated it. I would much prefer to get the switch and get on with it, but I simply couldn’t handle her ‘look how much you hurt me’ speeches.

To add to my misery, she sent me off to live with grandma, where I received a lecture on God and hell’s punishment. Grandma rarely said bad things to me, but this time she really let me have it. “Young man I fear you have an appointment with Judas in the hereafter.”

I was well into my teens when I realized that I didn’t want people to see me as a lying thief. The Junior Sanders caper finally cured me of such outlaw activities, except for one major lie.

After I graduated Lincoln Junior High School, I enrolled in Stonewall Jackson High School. In elementary and junior high schools when I became bored with classes, I would simply skip them. I developed a pretty good skill at forging my mother’s name to excuses for my absences.

I had no athletic abilities. P. T. teachers were supposed to be great examples of manhood. They bored the hell out of me. Consequently, my association with the so-called he-men was the company I kept. I hung out with the roughest and rowdiest boys in school which earned me swats and detention hall. When I skipped detention, my hours were extended. I developed a pretty good tolerance for pain because I received more than a normal amount of swats.

In July of 1941, I decided to join the Navy. Everybody said we would soon be at war with Germany. I never thought of war as killing or getting killed. It could have been boy scouts at camp as far as I knew. At seventeen, I was not old enough to enlist on my own. My mother, who never practiced pacifism with me, refused to sign the permission papers.

“You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re just a kid.” I got so tired of hearing, “you’re just a kid.”

All my begging and pleading gained me nothing but refusals. So, I went my usual route to get what I wanted. I both lied and committed a crime at the same time.

I went over town to the Navy recruiting office and picked up the permission form, “for my mother to fill out and sign.”

You can see where I’m going. I had a friend who owned a typewriter to fill out the form. With all my experience of forging my mother’s name, I had no trouble doing it again. I marched down to the recruiter’s offices and submitted the form.

I especially didn’t tell my cousin Bill what I was up to. His big mouth would have spread it all over town. With only the clothes on my back and a small bag of personal stuff, I was among a group of a dozen or so, who took the oath of office and on July 25th found myself on the nine o’clock C&O passenger train, The Virginian, en route from Charleston to Norfolk, Virginia’s naval training center and boot camp.

(Growing Up Hillbilly – Chapter XIX)

I didn’t worry about anybody looking for me. Remember, I had quite a history of running away from home. Usually, I became tired of being hungry, homeless and broke. So, like a bad penny, I usually turned up somewhere waiting for my mother to finance my trip home by Greyhound.

I finished boot camp in late August, and with a three-day pass, I hitched a ride back to Charleston. Nobody in my family knew where I was and certainly didn’t expect me to show up in white Navy duds. I arrived in Charleston after an all-night ride in the back seat with two drunk hillbillies who broke every speed limit known to mankind. I spent a night with those maniacs who were from Charleston, a second 24 hours in a hotel and then hit the highway back to Norfolk.

I arrived at the base barely an hour before I would have been listed as AWOL.

Some old biddy had seen me in downtown Charleston and thinking I’d been home, called my mother to say how surprised she was to see that I had joined the Navy. My mother, even more surprised, got in touch with the local recruiting station and discovered that she had signed the papers, that I’d completed boot and would soon be assigned to a ship.

She contacted the base commander in Norfolk. My summons to the Captain’s office also came as a surprise. I had no idea why someone so important would want to see me. Maybe I’d been an outstanding trainee. If so, it would be an even greater surprise.

No such good luck. He gave me the worst chewing out you can imagine, raging on about the cost to train me, etc., etc., etc. Of course, it didn’t take long to get rid of me. On September 11th, 1941, I was discharged ‘Under Honorable Conditions for the Benefit of the Government.’

I wanted nothing to do with my mother for a long, long time. I’ll never know why kids blame their parents for their own errors in life.

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The Great Ohio River Flood of 1937

After my mother married the radio announcer, we bounced around a lot, or so it seemed to me. Bob was in a business not unlike the television news of today. Anchors and others at a station would sometimes be transferred, especially with the independents. WCKY, a Cincinnati station was located across the river from Cincinnati in Covington, Kentucky, straight south from the Queen City Suspension Bridge out of Cincinnati on the southwest corner of Covington’s main street and Fifth Street.

 We lived on the third or fourth floor of an apartment building diagonally across the street from the radio station, at the northeastern corner. The station was located in the corner offices and our west windows faced those at the station.

 As I’ve said earlier, my mother was a very vain lady. Put that together with jealousy and all hell is bound to break loose at some time or the other, and it did.

 Mom came home one afternoon with a set of binoculars.  Being a kid in fifth grade and an avid comic book freak, I saw all kinds of possibilities if she would let me use them. No way. They were not purchased for my amusement. Mom had her own spy program. 

 She suspicioned that my step-father was having some kind of affair with the studio’s secretary and was sure she saw them smooching in the window. The binoculars were in her possession so she could get a closer look at such shenanigans than was possible with the naked eye.

 Bob worked the six to midnight shift most of the time. No sooner would he be out of the apartment and across the street to the studio, and mom would be propped up in a chair, resting her back and head against a large cushion with binoculars positioned at the ready. 

 I don’t think she ever saw anything near to what she suspicioned, but if her husband was caught having even a conversation with the young lady, mom would be all over him when he got off from work. I remember any number of times hearing her go on and on in their bedroom into the early hours of the morning.

 I previously described my exploits in crime as a youngster. I forget about another episode of theft. That happened while we were living in Covington quite some time before my Charleston crime sprees.

 A furniture store adjoined our building on the north side. I liked to hang out there. The smell of new furniture always gave me a good feeling. The salesmen tolerated me. It became my home away from home. One Monday morning while I was visiting the guys I wandered into the back of the store where the sales desks were located.

 Temptation is an evil siren. Four one-dollar bills resting on top of an open receipt book grabbed my attention. For a kid my age, at that time, four dollars was a hellova lot of money. The lure was a force beyond my resistance, so I slipped the bills into my pocket, made my way to the front of the store where I said my goodbyes and my swift ascent upstairs to our apartment ought to have been some kind of record. 

 How could I spend the money? A kid with four dollars cash in any kind of store was sure to raise suspicions. Remember we were still in the depressed thirties. So I came up with one of my not so brilliant ideas, and this time it worked.

 Our living room had a lay-down imitation Persian carpet. I lifted the corner and placed my ill-gotten loot flat on the floor and dropped the carpet cornerback in place.

 That evening after Bob left for work, mom and I were listening to the news on the radio. She wasn’t paying much if any, attention to me so I sat down on the carpet and began to fidget with the corner, pulled it back and, lo and behold I said, “Mom, look what I found under the rug?”

 I was waving the green bills back and forth in front of my face. 

 “Where did that money come from?” she said.

 “I don’t know,” I lied. “I lifted the rug, and there it was. Maybe you or Bob put it there and forgot. Here,” I said as I got up off the floor with greenbacks in hand, and presented them to her with an oh so innocent expression on my smiling face, “you can have them.”

(Growing Up Hillbilly – Chapter XVIII)

 Nobody ever caught me. No one in the furniture store ever questioned me.

 Not too long after the 1937 flood, we moved back to Charleston for a brief period. I was soon taken out of school for the umpty-ninth time because Bob had accepted an announcing job with radio station WSAZ in Huntington, West Virginia.

 I completed my fifth and sixth grades at Buffington Elementary School in Huntington. I had both good and bad experiences in Huntington. I loved the city and being close to the Ohio River. Our first apartment was located on Third Avenue two blocks over from Fifth Avenue, which, at that time, was the main drag. Our apartment was on the second floor. The landlord owned a restaurant on the first floor.

 He had a red Chow dog that did not like me. Usually, he was kept tied up in the alley behind the building. Every time I’d go down the back stairs he snarled at me. One day, when I came down the front stairs, that dog was loose on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant.

 Without provocation, he growled at the sight of me and lunged forward. I was wearing shorts. He sank his fangs into my thigh in the groin section, and the blood started to flow. As he made a leap toward my throat, I threw my left arm up to defend myself and he caught me in my left armpit. Several people on the sidewalk yelled at the animal. He ignored them. As luck would have it a doctor, in a Chevrolet Coupe stopped in the middle of the street and rushed over to me. He kicked the dog so hard in the balls that it went wailing back towards the restaurant.

 Someone called an ambulance, and I was transported to a local hospital where I spent eight days recovering. My groin wounds were so bad that I couldn’t stand even a sheet to touch me. A straight-back chair was placed at the foot of my bed and the sheet was lifted over it so it would not touch my body.

 When I was released from the hospital, my mother had already hired a lawyer and sued the restaurant owner and we moved.  I came home to a new basement apartment on Fifth Avenue.

 For a while, I had a part-time job with a nut shop. My job consisted of standing out in front of the shop with a bowl of cashews which I sampled out by the spoonful to pedestrians as they passed by. The lady who ran the shop liked me but let me go because I ate more nuts than I dispensed to prospective customers. I still love cashews best of all nuts.

 I then became a paperboy with the Huntington Advertiser. I have two memories of that time. One good. One disastrous as far as I was concerned.

 The good experience came about when Joe Louis beat Jimmy Braddock for the world heavyweight boxing championship. The fight was held at night on June 22, 1937, at Comminsky Baseball Park in Chicago. For some reason this was a fight that rated a newspaper EXTRA edition, so all paper carriers were ordered to be out front of the Advertiser’s offices where the paper was printed. Most papers had their own presses on the premises then.

 There was a lot of prejudice in the fight game during the thirties. Braddock was the White man’s dream boxer, sort of a male Cinderella. However, Louis was a clean-cut young man from Detroit whose star was rising in professional boxing. We only had radio for sporting events in those days, so the paper mounted loudspeakers on the outside of the building to air the round by round reports from the arena. There was a crowd of several hundred, mostly men, gathered outside to hear the sports announcer reveal the fight, blow by blow.

 Braddock knocked Joe down in the first round. It was pretty much assumed by boxing fans that Braddock would retain his crown. However, by the eighth round it became obvious that Braddock was tiring and with a terrific blow to the head, he was finished and Louis was the new heavyweight champion of the world. Blacks were dancing in the streets across the country.

 The presses were already set and immediately began to print out the extra edition. In less than an hour, I had my papers and was mouthing my spiel, ‘Extra, Extra – read all about it. Louis defeats Braddock!’

 As I mentioned early on, my life of crime began before my exploits with Junior Adams took place. On Sunday mornings I was out on the streets with the Sunday Edition of the Huntington Advertiser. I paid for my papers and hit the streets. When I ran out, I never went back to buy more papers. No, I did the criminal thing. I went into neighborhoods where papers had been tossed and scooped up more papers from subscribers’ driveways.

 I’d been doing that for some time, but one day someone saw me and called the Huntington Police Department. Soon, unbeknownst to me, a squad car was following me down the street.

 Of course, an officer took me into custody. I rode to headquarters in the back seat of the police car and was sure that I would be locked up for a long time. Instead, the sergeant in charge of juveniles phoned my mother. She had to come down and get me in person. After a sound berating he sent me home with mom, a punishment worse than iron bars, in my opinion. By the time she finished her mother to son talk guilt had invaded my body like a bad flu shot. I would rather have had the switch.

 As a result, I no longer sold newspapers on Sundays. Weekdays were okay because Monday to Saturday it was an afternoon paper. Go figure.

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Search: Growing Up Hillbilly – Chapter XVIII

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I was without so much as a step-father when my mother married Bob Kliment, a radio announcer at WCHS in Charleston. Bob was from Rochester, New York. He came from strong German stock and was a no-nonsense individual. He was mom’s fifth husband, and in the beginning, he and I rarely spoke. I resented rather than disliked him from the start.

It had been just mom and myself for several years since her divorce from Okie. Before her marriage to Bob, the biggest influence in my life had been my grandmother. Bob intruded into grandma’s turf. Whereas grandma concentrated on basic life facts and situations, he set out to romance me into liking him.

I was in fifth grade, and Bob thought I should be given a birthday party. Mom had a thing about clothing styles which did not suit me at all. In sixth grade, I was still wearing knickers to school with a button-up shirt and tie. I was allowed to invite several classmates, eight as I remember them.

On the day of my party, only one boy showed up; a kid who lived down the street from me by the name of Jackie. He was a shy kid, very polite and somewhat a loner. Instead of the dining room table, she set up a card table and covered it with a linen cloth. Jackie, my mother, and Bob sang Happy Birthday to me. She served us Vanilla ice cream with chocolate cake. Everyone tried to make happy, but my heart was broken to know that my classmates were not my friends. They must not have been, or they would have been there. When one is that young, he has a tendency to believe the world is him and everything around him. Not me. Whatever world I lived in suddenly abandoned me. I felt so alone and deserted.

Corduroy sports ensembles, combining jacket and long pants were the rage with the guys at school. As I’ve said, my lifetime embarrassment was that my mother forced me to wear knickers which I detested. I begged for corduroy and was told that “stylish young men wore knickers.” She spent too much time, in my opinion, reading about English schoolboys and not enough about our neighborhood.

Anyway, not long after my disastrous birthday party, I came home from my paper route one afternoon, and there was a suit-sized Frankenberger’s box on the living room couch with my name on it. Why would I get anything from Frankenberger’s? That was the most expensive men and boys store in town. Nobody in my family ever shopped there. We were strictly Sears-Roebuck and Montgomery Ward patrons.

Bob was working that afternoon at the radio station. Mom was home alone. “Open the box,” she said. “It’s for you. Your father got it as a gift.”

He wasn’t my father, and I always resented it when she referred to my step-fathers as my father. I didn’t raise my usual objections. “Why would he buy me something?” I asked.

“You’ll have to ask him,” she said. “Now go ahead and open it. I’d like to see what he got you myself.”

If she didn’t know what was in the box, then we were both in for a surprise. Mine would be a joyous surprise. Hers would be something she accepted with some reservations.

I undid the ribbon and lifted the lid. There to the most amazing surprise in my life was a brand new brown corduroy suit with long pants. My first pair ever. That was the day Bob became a real father to me, and I never forgot it.

My step-father was a bundle of surprises, all to my delight. For Christmas that year I didn’t make any special requests to Santa. I always got whatever mom chose and learned not to be ungrateful if it wasn’t what I wanted.

On Christmas morning I was up bright and early, almost before daybreak. I hopped out of my bed and in my PJ’s. Under the Christmas tree was a box wrapped in holiday wrapping with my name on it. Once again, he seemed to know me better than I knew myself.

I was somewhat a photography nut without a camera. I anxiously opened the package from Bob. My Christmas was brightened when I discovered a Kodak Brownie Camera. That was not his last surprise, superseded only by the fact that they would split up within a year and leave me destitute for a man in the house. In the January month that followed my camera experience, I came home from school and discovered a new Excelsior bicycle. I thought some were visiting.

When I got inside, I found mom sitting on the couch, listening to a soap opera on the radio. I even remember our address, 521 Ohio Avenue. I knew Bob would be at work, but if there was a bicycle out front where was the owner.
“Who does the bike belong to?” I asked,
“It’s yours, I believe.”
“Where did it come from?”
“Your father had it delivered.” By then, I accepted Bob as my dad and was not offended. He had earned my respect and love, as much as I knew how to extend it.

“Why did he buy a bicycle? Something wrong with the car?” For whatever reason, it did not hit me that the bicycle was for me. After all, he’d thrilled me with a Brownie Camera for Christmas.

Mom was as casual and cool as a cucumber. She was never that stoic when he gave me a present. She’d go on and on about it, always trying to impress me with how much he cared. By then, he had more than won me over.

“I think it is for you.” Flat and cool. “Now let me listen to my program.”

Not waiting for anything further, I raced out the door, jumped on the bike, and raced down the street. When I got back, I hit the brakes too hard, and the bike slipped out from under me on the icy street. I looked up, and mom was watching me from the porch. My first instinct was to blame her.

“Now, look what you made me do.”

What she made me do with bringing the bike inside and grounded me for a week.

My mother did not tolerate any kind of sass from me. Not ever.

Many years later, when I was movie star Jayne Mansfield’s press secretary, we were in Buffalo, New York where Bob had been residing since his divorce from mom. He had remarried to a wonderful woman, Loretta. They had two daughters. The youngest, Roberta, still lived at home. Her older sister was married and living in Florida with her husband and children, I looked Bob up in the phone directory. He was now an insurance broker, having left radio for a better financial opportunity. We talked on the phone, and he said he’d like to see me. I spoke with Jayne. She invited him, his wife and daughter to dinner before her evening show.

It was a great reunion for me, and I think for him. Roberta and I twisted the night away. What fun we did have. Later as we sat before the restaurant’s open fireplace reminiscing about his time as my step-father, he said, “You know Ray, if it hadn’t been that you were so close to your grandmother, I would have taken you with me when your mother and I divorced but didn’t because of your grandmother. I wouldn’t have wanted to hurt that dear old lady’s feelings. She absolutely doted on you. So I just couldn’t do it.”

I regretted my response the minute the words came from my lips. “I wish you had.” I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. He was the only real father I had growing up, and because of his influence, I had a career in singing with big bands for many years before I ever met Jayne Mansfield and later became a writer.

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Search: Growing Up HillBilly – CHAPTER XVII

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The Baby Brother I Didn’t Have

As an only child, I often felt lonely and left out.  My cousin Bill, with siblings coming every year, did not have that problem.  He was always happy to be away from what he called “too much family.”

 I had an older sister and would later find out there were five other sisters, but they were from my father’s other marriages.  Not with my mother and I never met them until I returned from the war in 1946.

 Anytime I raised the subject of wanting a younger brother to grandma, she would tell me mom couldn’t have any more kids, and I’d have to make do with my situation.  “What is, is,” she would tell me, and that would be that.

 Despite grandma’s admonishments, I would sometimes bring up the subject with my mother.  “Only God knows about those things,” she told me. Don’t you have something better to do with your time than ask questions?”

 I was in my mid-teens, I believe when my mother said she’d like to have a personal conversation with me.  My mother never had personal conversations with me unless it was a really serious matter. My first conclusion was that I had done something wrong.  What else? 

 “I’m already going to be late for school, “ I said.  “Can it wait until I get home?” I was hoping I’d be able to figure out some excuse by 3:15.  That’s when school let out at Lincoln Junior High.

 “It can wait,” she said without the slightest inflection in her tone that might give me a clue of what I might be in for.

 By lunchtime, I’d conjured up a dozen punishments for the unknown sin I had committed.  All morning I’d been unable to concentrate on the classroom. All I could think of is my awful deed that would not go unpunished.  Just before lunch, my homeroom teacher asked if I was feeling well. I assured her that there was nothing wrong. 

 “I’ve got some important things on my mind.”

 She smiled and said, “You’re a smart young man.  I’m sure you will figure it out.”

 The bell rang, and I made a quick escape from any further discussion with my teacher.

 Fortunately, my last class of the day was my favorite.  Mrs. MacLaine’s Social Science class, a subject that always left my mind floating into worlds I couldn’t possibly know anything about.  I never left her classroom without dreaming of faraway places that I would probably only know about from textbooks and lectures.

 Bill and I walked the B&O tracks toward our homes.  We missed a freight by five minutes. Okay with me. A long walk would help me figure out how to handle my mother.  Usually, he and I yakked like magpies when we were together, but not that day. He seemed to understand that my mood did not lead to conversation.  So we slowly plodded along the graveled rail berms in silence. At Crescent Road and Birch Street, we parted. He would be kicking it alone on to Magazine Holler.  Two blocks away were Bigley Avenue and home for me.

 Grandma was humming a hymn as she gently swayed back and forth on the porch swing. 

 “Your mother’s in the kitchen.  She wants to talk to you.”

 “Okay.” That said, I opened the screen door and entered what I felt certain would be my doomsday.

 Mom was overly polite.  “Would you like a glass of milk?  I can squeeze some orange juice if you’d like.”  She didn’t sound angry. Score one for me. “Sit down, and I’ll fix you a baloney and cheese sandwich.”

  This was not the way my mother spoke when she had some crow to pick with me.

 My current step-father, a roofer,  had been working on a job up the river in Montgomery and hadn’t been home in several days, during which time mom closed up the house and came to stay with grandma.  I alternated back and forth. For the moment I was staying at grandmas.

 Mom kept busy while I indulged my sandwich and milk in silence.  Then she sat down across the table from me, reached out and took my hands in hers and asked, “What would be the most wonderful gift you can imagine that we would both be blessed with?”

 What the hell? I couldn’t possibly have had any thoughts about blessed gifts.  “I dunno, maybe you get a new car. Maybe even a new house. Mom, why are you asking me such a question?”

 “Because something is going to happen that will make us both happy.  There will soon be a new addition to the family.”

 I still had no idea what she was talking about.  So I said, “Is somebody coming to live with us?”

 “Not right away, but yes, a new family member.”

 Density took over my thinking.  My dog had recently died. Maybe I was getting a new pet.

 “Come on, mom, who is it?”

 “I’m going to have a baby.  You always wanted a baby brother.”

 Stunned would have been a mild expression for my reaction. I stammered, “You adoption another kid?”  That’s all I could say.”

 “No, silly.  Robert and I are going to have a baby.  I’m pregnant.”

 To my way of thinking, my mother was old. Older women didn’t have babies. Actually, she was only 38 or 39.   My world went rocking and reeling. Didn’t she want me anymore? Was she finally tired of all the trouble I got into?

 “What about me?” I said.

 “This is as much for you as for us.  You’ll have someone to teach how to behave, and he’ll profit from the mistakes you made growing up.”

 My next thoughts made the whole thing sound like some joke.  “How can you know it’s going to be a boy?”

 “I just know it.  That’s all. I want you to think about it.  A baby, at my age.”

 I already thought about that.  One of God’s miracles, as grandma said when something impossible became possible.

 “You go on now and do your homework.  We’ll talk more about this another time.”

 With that, I was shushed out of the kitchen to a small table in the living room where I dropped my books on the way in. 

 I didn’t say a word to grandma.  I was too afraid. I remembered a month, or so earlier, my Aunt Annie showed up, bulging like she had a watermelon stuck in her belly, and I said to grandma, “Is Annie pregnant again?”

 “Watch your mouth, boy.  You’re too young to know about things like that.”  For Christ’s sake, at that age, I probably knew more about sex than anybody in the family, or at least I thought I did.”

 For weeks all I could concentrate on for more than five seconds was the idea of having a baby brother. Someone, I could tell what to do and how.  I was going to be the best big brother on earth. I bragged to my friends and anyone who would listen. You would have thought that I was having the baby.

 Early in June right after school let out for the summer, mom seemed not to be feeling good.  That went on for several days. I didn’t understand it. Bill said it was probably morning sickness.  “My mother gets it every time she is expecting to squirt out another one.” He had five or six brothers and sisters. Bot I was a novice.

 When my step-father came home from his job, I moved back up the holler.  I wanted to be close to mom. She needed me. I remember so vividly that Sunday morning.  It will always be Black Sunday to me, despite the bright sunshine day that it was.

 I woke up to the sweet aroma of bacon frying in an iron skillet and quickly dressed for breakfast.  Instead of mom, Robert was at the stove, basting eggs.

 “Mornin’,” I said.  “Where’s mom?”

 “She’s sleeping in, not feeling so hot.  It’s just you and me pal. Hungry?”

 “Sure.”  I was always hungry in the morning.

 I thought little else about it until sometime before noon.  Mom never slept that late, so I sneaked into the bedroom to see if she was awake yet.

The bedside light was on, and mom was just layin’ there in the bed, awake, but looking like death warmed over.

 “You all right mom?”

 “Sit down here.  I have something to tell you.”  She patted a spot on the bed. I did as asked, wondering what was going on.  Did she and Robert have an argument? I could tell she’d been crying. Her eyes were red and watery looking.

 “About the brother, I promised you.”

 “What about him?”

 “I hate to disappoint you.  Robert and I are also disappointed.  Sometimes these things happen, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it.”

 “What are you talking about?”

 “There will be no baby brother this time.”  She started crying again.

 “What do you mean?  Is it going to be a girl?”  One day there’s a brother coming, the next day zip.

 “You’re old enough now,” she said.  “Look in the bowl.”

 There was what looked like a porcelain baby potty with a lid on it by the bed. I stared at it but didn’t move.

 “Go on.  You need to see what happened.”

 I gently slipped off the side of her bed and lifted the lid.  What I saw made me want to vomit. In the bowl was a lot of blood and tissue mixed.

 “What’s that?”  It looked like something grandpa might throw up after a weekend of drinking with his buddies at the river.”

 “That’s the brother I promised.  I had a miscarriage during the night.  I’m so sorry.”

 I’d heard about miscarriages, but never really conceived what they might look like, and I don’t think I would ever like to see another one.

 It took a few minutes for it to sink in.  My baby brother was nothing but a rotten looking mess in a slop jar?  I must have let out the most god-awful scream, and I didn’t remember anything after that until I came to on the couch with grandma at the house and a cold washcloth on my forehead.  Robert, not knowing what to do, left me there with mom and went to get grandma.

 I have lived with the memory of the baby brother I didn’t get for all of my life.  That scene is etched in my brain.

 For weeks I blamed my mother.  A lesson like that sometimes hardens a person to live.  That’s when I learned that you couldn’t be sure of anything until it happens.

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As a kid, girls were not usually on my radar, as a matter of fact, they were somewhere beyond the horizon.  However, when I was about twelve or thirteen a blonde-haired, blue-eyed neighbor caught my eye, and I suffered through my first case of being lovesick, and boy did I have it bad.  My relationships with female sex became a lot more complicated as an adult. Norma Westfall. In seventh grade, it began and went on for almost a year. The very mention of her name sent me into panicky tremors.  That I turned out to become bi-sexual would certainly have not been considered in the minds of most folks in my life at that time. All I thought of was Norma Westfall. She had a pert pug-nose, and angels had sculpted light freckles on a face I was sure.  Her medium blonde curly hair must have been grown by the seraphs who manufactured corn silks. Oh yes, I was love-sick from the floor to the sky and beyond.

Never the daredevil, when it came to Norma Westfall I was melting putty in boiling water.  I overheard my mother talking to a neighbor one day, “I’ve never seen him like this.  Mooning around all afternoon instead of getting out of the house and doing something with his buddies.”

“Oh, Jerry, I wouldn’t worry.  He’s at that age.  Don’t you remember how boys were in their early teens?  We could wrap them around our little fingers.” “Yeah,” mom said, “but he had always given me the impression that when he got into puberty, I’d have to deal with a boyfriend, not a girl.” “C’ mon, Jerry, during their early and mid-teens they don’t know what they want.   For a long time, I thought my youngest brother would go that way. It was always boys, boys, boys, and then one day at the supper table he announced that he was engaged and wanted dad to sign permission for him to get a marriage license. Dad said, absolutely not. Two years later mom signed for him and he took a bride at 17. What’s more, it wasn’t the girl he couldn’t live without.  I wouldn’t worry. “
 Needless to say, in the long run, my mother knew me better.

So I hungered and yearned for Norma Westfall and, when she went to visit an aunt in Bel Air, Ohio for a month during summer vacation, I moped around the house like a limp dishrag.  Even two weeks on the farm didn’t help.
 Although Bel Air was maybe 90 to 100 miles upstate on the Ohio  River, it might as well have been Saudi Arabia.  I thought about hitch-hiking, but then what would I say when I got there?  Where would I bunk down? In August, a week before school started, Norma Westfall was coming into the Charleston Greyhound Station, where my mother worked.  I wanted to be there, but I didn’t care to be seen making a fool of myself (and I was sure I would do that). However, in my life, there have always been a however. My cousin Bill, the instigator, went with me. “What you got to do, Raymond is a run-up to her when she gets off the bus and plants a big wet kiss on her face, and she’ll know that anybody who would do that in public must mean it.”

“No way I’m gonna do anything like that.   Ain’t gonna happen.”
There wasn’t any way on earth I would do anything so stupid, much less in front of God and the passengers getting off the bus from Bel Air, Ohio.
 No way?  No way! The bus docked into a slot, and I saw her profile two windows back from the opening door.  Everything started to grow hazy, and that’s the last thing I remember until she slapped me so hard that I fell smack on my butt on the platform.
 I got the gory details from my mother after she came home from work.  Apparently, at the last minute without thought aforehand, I did exactly what I said I would never do.  Grabbed her as she put her foot on the ground and, I don’t know how wet it was, but my kiss was planted squarely on her astonished mouth.   Her reaction was as though a mugger had tried to kiss her in the park.

That was my one and only surprise kissing of anybody.  Also, it was the end of my passionate feelings for Norma Westfall.  How could anybody who liked me be so cruel?

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School days, school days, good old golden rule days. I was always curious about learning, but I never considered myself studious. Having fun and experiencing the natural phenomena in the West Virginia Mountains and streams interested me more than anything. However, history and geography always fascinated me. I wanted to know about other people and other cultures. I quit high school after two months in tenth grade. I lusted for other things. It was after I got out of the Air Force that I began to dedicate myself to some formal education, attending colleges, business schools and even the stenotype institute. One might consider it self-education. Maybe, but travel had a great deal more to do with becoming educated. I don’t consider myself brilliant, but I can hold a journeyman’s conversation at a party or IN any social situation.

 Even when I lived with my grandmother, my mother’s residence was always my home address. Fortunately, it didn’t matter much when both lived in the Lincoln grade and Junior High School districts. Most of my good (and sometimes bad) experiences in school took place in the Lincoln classrooms.

 My homeroom teacher at Lincoln Junior was a very proud, sophisticated and vain lady in her late fifties.   She would sit at her solid oak desk, in front of the blackboard, and spend the entire homeroom time powdering and painting her face to the point that she appeared almost clownish. She relished attention. I made a point of giving her all of mine during my hours in homeroom. She took a liking to me and sometimes invited me to her home for snacks after school. My flattery kept me away from her mean side. If she felt a student had offended her in any way, they would have hell to pay.

 Through her kindness, I met her son, whom I grew to almost idolize. There’s an old saying that teachers and preachers have the most ornery kids on the planet. Bobby was the perfect example of a bad boy. I was the moth, and he became my flame.  Older than me and a drop out in 8th grade, he always found the wrong way to do things which, to me, were the right way. We became great friends, and I spent a lot of time with him in his mother’s elegant home. We were both rebels, and since he was the older rebel, I absolutely worshiped him. If he broke tradition, I wanted to break tradition. He was my first inspiration to buck the system, and it got me into a lot of trouble at school, and sometimes elsewhere.

 His father, a practicing family law attorney and equally practicing alcoholic sometimes took us fishing.  Although Bobby’s parents were divorced, they didn’t seem to hate each other or anything like that. She tolerated a lot more from her errant son and ex-husband than she ever did in the classroom.

 On a Saturday afternoon sometime during the month of June in 1939, we decided to hike up the railroad tracks that ran parallel to Elk River. Neither of us had any idea where the tracks were going except we knew there were a lot of coal mines up Elk River because every day we saw trains coming into Charleston from that direction, pulling dozens of coal cars behind the big steam engines. 

 When we approached a trestle over a creek, we’d go under and hand walk our way to the other side, then climb back up on the tracks and start all over again. After about two miles of hiking, we came to a trestle over a small creek emptying into the river. Under the tracks, we began to hand walk. The train whistle in the distance seemed to be far away and had nothing to do with us – or so we thought.

(GROWING UP HILLBILLY)

 About half-way across, with the creek a good twenty feet below us, the large smoke-belching steam engine hit the trestle, shaking the structure so violently I thought it was all over. The trestle would either collapse or shake us both into the shallow water below. I didn’t move, merely hung on for dear life expecting my extinction at any second.

 Bobby made the mistake of letting one hand go ahead of the other instead of holding on the railroad tie. When he did, unable to hang on with one hand, he plummeted down into the creek. Afraid to look down, I held on until the train passed and then went like a bat out of hell, one hand over the other, to the north side of the tracks and literally slid down the bank to the creek, certain that it was all over for Bobby and wondering what would I tell his mother.

 He had landed feet first and sank up to his knees in creek muck, which I am sure saved his life. To him, the episode was just a lark. As for myself, it was the last time I ever went anywhere with Bobby unless it was in downtown Charleston with sidewalks to get me from one place to another.

 Bobby was responsible, in a way, for causing me to narrowly evade being kicked out of school forever.

 I had a commercial class right after lunch in 8th or 9th grade. The commercial is known today as Business Math. The teacher was a sort of misfit who didn’t speak. She whined and annoyed everyone in the class except guys on the football team. She would throw weekend swim parties at her house and invite most of them. It was more or less reliably rumored that she did more than swim with them. 

 She particularly didn’t like me and often went out of her way to say something to embarrass me. I complained to Bobby about it because he always said, “If somebody gives you trouble, give it right back to them.”

 “She’s a whore,” he said.  “Call it what it is. What do you care? She ain’t doin’ you any favors.”

 So, when she called me out one day with one of her smart-assed remarks, not only did my face redden with embarrassment, I paid heed to Bobby’s advice.

 “You’re a whore,” I blurted out. The entire class went silent, and her face blistered with anger.

 “Go to the office. Right now.”

 I knew that meant swats, but not how many. She sent along one of her sniveling rat-faces to explain my language.  The little snit didn’t stop with my words. Oh no, she added her own dose of poison. E. C. Richardson was a tough customer and loved to swing the paddle. He later made a name for himself as Principal of Charleston High School.

 On that particular day, he immediately considered suspending me. I never begged so hard in my life. Nothing he could do to me would be worse than what my mother would if I got suspended from school. I whimpered and cried, like I always did when I got caught doing something bad. 

 The outcome told me that he had no intention to suspend me. What he wanted was an opportunity to blister my ass with his leather-covered paddle.

 “Tell you what, Mr. Strait. I’ll give you a chance. I can kick you out for the rest of the year or, if you like, you can trade suspension for swats.”

 Of course, I opted for swats. I expected maybe three or four. He had other ideas. My punishment was three swats a day for a week. That was fifteen swats to begin the following Monday. I took my punishment like a man — not one whimper. I was so happy not to be suspended. 

 On the last day, a Friday, when I went into his office, he relented. He suspended my last three swats. Needless to say, there was one redeeming factor. I never attended that teacher’s class again.

 I would later learn that Bobby begged to intervene through his mother, saving me more swats and possible expulsion from the school.

 Last time I heard of Bobby, he had joined the Coast Guard in 1943. By then, I was doing other things, like singing with bands and scooting from town to town discovering America.

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“Read all about it!”

After my father deserted us, my life alternated between city and farm until I started to school in 1932, a year best known for the Great Depression and election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the 32nd President of the United States.

According to Grandma Mr. Hoover had all but destroyed the country and Mr. Roosevelt was going to put it back together.  It was also the year I started school and began to take an interest in what was going on outside my own little world. The only close friends I’d had were inside our family, mainly my cousin Bill.  

Grandma and Mama talked about how bad off everybody was but that didn’t register much in my young brain.  I was more interested in my crystal radio set and listening to ball games out of KDKA Pittsburgh with Grandpa.  Being poor didn’t mean we were different because as far as I knew the whole world must be poor. I knew how to count before I started school, so I had no problem signing up for The Daily Mail as a street salesman for the afternoon paper.  The Gazette was published early in the morning and Grandma said I was too young to be passing morning papers. Besides, she insisted that I go to school, but I could sell newspapers in the afternoons without interfering with the rest of my day.

“Read all about it,” became a mantra for me and with my tousled blond hair and beaming smile, I became a hit on Capitol Street in front of the U. S. Post Office, a bulky concrete structure several stories up which later became the Charleston Public Library.  It was a sweet spot because the post office was a busy place.

Nobody told me I could take up residence there, I  saw that nobody else was hawking papers on the block and sort of took it over.  During my first year there, I had a couple of scrapes with kids who tried to muscle in on me, but I knew a good thing and never hesitated to defend my territory, even if I ended up with a black eye or bloody nose.  I got respect, not because I was a born fighter, but because I didn’t care if I got bloodied. No bully was going to push me around. Once word got around that I wasn’t afraid to fight back, they left me alone.

One year I read something about a man who fell into a lake up in Canada in February and lost his voice.  It wasn’t long before I was emulating the poor guy. “Pa ah, Mi her?” became my mantra and believe me, it sure helped sell a lot of Daily Mails.

Once a man stopped to buy a paper and asked me, “What happened to you son?  Have you always been tongue-tied?”

 I had no idea what that meant, so I said, “Ah au mos dihd ‘n uh aak.”

 “You were swimming?”

 “Uh uh.  Fawyd ‘n. ‘N Canda.”

(Growing up Hillbilly)

And so it went.  My trade grew as did my tale. I managed to weave a sorry picture of a young boy who got dumped out of a rowboat in the middle of winter while on vacation with my family in a lake north of Toronto in Canada.  Who vacations in Canada in the middle of January? You wouldn’t believe how gullible people can be. Not one person ever complained or disbelieved me. Of course, a couple of years later, I suddenly got my voice back and explained it as some miracle from God.

As I grew older, I took on a Gazette paper route, which meant I had to be at the sub-station no later than four in the morning to fold and bag my papers.  I had a bike by then and threw papers from a basket attached to the handle-bars. I still hustled the afternoon papers at the post office.

Tossing newspapers at five in the morning is risky business.  People let their dogs run loose and all too many times my feet peddled so fast I barely outdistanced a bulldog or ferocious  German shepherd.  

I finally gave up on newspapers when, in 1937, Charleston’s first drive-in restaurant opened in a vacant field on West Washington Street within walking distance from our house at 812 Bigley Avenue.  A classmate became one of their first employees. One day he stopped by the house to boast of his good luck.  

 “Raymond, I’ll bet you’d get a job if you talked to the manager.  He’s a neat guy and he’s still hiring.”

 “I don’t know,” I said.  “What kind of work is it?”

 “You’d be a carhop, like me.”

 “What’s a carhop?”

 “You serve food on a tray to people sitting in their cars.  You’d love it. I caught on right away.”

 “How do you serve trays of food to a car?”

(Growing up Hillbilly)

 “They’re not like regular trays,” added.  “They’re metal and clip on to the window. I mean when the window is wound down these trays clip over the door.  I could show you. It’s easy. And you get tips.”

I knew all about tips because most of mom’s money came from tips.  “How much does it pay?”

“Ten cents an hour, but you’ll make three times that much in tips.  Think about it. Sixteen to twenty dollars a week. You ain’t never made that much money hawkin’ papers, and you don’t have to get up at four in the morning.”

That part appealed to me.  The next day I put in my application and Pete, the manager, hired me without asking much about my experience, which did not exist.  I soon learned why. He liked boys my age for something besides car hopping. He taught me how to hop in bed with him. I wasn’t alone.  All the other boys went through the same ritual. Only one wouldn’t do it. He lasted a week and then got the axe. There were no laws in those days to cover that kind of conduct.  You had the option of agreeing or finding another job.

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