BEATTYVILLE BOY
There’a a lot of ‘first times’ that happen when a body is young. Well, let’s face it. When you start out life as a baby, everything you do, you’re doing for the first time. I talk about a few of them here. Something that surprised me a little bit is the number of ‘last time’ things that go along with the same time period.
People like to talk about their ‘bucket list’…the things they’d like to do or accomplish before they shuffle off this mortal coil. I thought about a bucket list for awhile but gave up when it kept changing on me. I had someone close to me tell me that they never made plans anymore because every time they made a plan, it changed on them and therefore didn’t seem worth the effort.
One of the things I wanted to do when I was young was to build a raft and float dow the Ohio Rriver to New Orleans and go to Mardi Gras.
When I was a bit older, I thought that I’d like to go to Rio de Janeiro for Carnival.
Then, of course, I thought it ‘ud be fun to go pub-crawling through Dublin, Ireland, and maybe spend some time in Tahiti or chisel my initials into Ayers Rock.
I still think it would be fun to take a train across Australia and Canada and I’d like to go through the locks at Panama on a cruise ship. You know, wearing the Panama hat and drinking a cold beer.
I did get the chance to ride on both an elephant and a camel and I didn’t get seasick but I can understand how some people might. January, 2018~Fair Oaks, CA
The last raft…
I was fifteen years old, the summer between sophomore and junior year in high school. It was a warm summer afternoon and I’d been hanging out at The Corner. That was the first summer I’d done that, another one of those rite of passage things.
I walked a girl home, across the tracks and, afterward walked myself down to the Old Ferry Landing at the end of Main Street. It had been several years since even a ferryboat had used The Landing and at the bottom of the hill was a pile of driftwood. I watched the river for awhile, thought about walking back to the corner but, while wandering around the driftwood, found the remains of a raft someone had built.
Over the years, I’d built a number of rafts, logs loosely tied together with a piece of rope or wire or whatever I could get. I pulled this partial raft out of the pile, added a few boards ’n a log and had a floating platform that I pushed into the river and sat down on. I could have walked home in twenty minutes or thereabout and the float downriver took well over an hour. I have no idea what ran through my head on that summer day so many years ago, random daydreams, I suppose, probably about a girl (or girls), maybe about a car…back then, when a boy was fifteen, he gave a lot of thought to ’The Car’…
Anyhow, fifteen year old boys of any time or place are not given to contemplating anything more serious than girls and cars. C’mon! Girls ’n cars…it’s the middle of the 20th Century.
It’s a ‘hole ‘nother century now ’n times might be a little different, I don’t know, but I’d bet money that they’re still daydreaming about girls and whatever has taken the place of the automobile in the mind of a teenager. Not sure I’d want’a be a teenager t’day. They all look a little mopy walking around with their electronic lifeline clutched tightly, seemingly oblivious to everything else.
So many people today seem to suffer through their teenage years. Lots of anger and angst. Could be they have too many counselors telling them that’s the way life is supposed to be. I was gonna say that maybe life is just too darn easy these days but I know that isn’t true. Kids today have more on their plate than kids of my generation ever dreamed about and I wouldn’t trade places with them for the world.
Beattyville Boy is a memoir of sorts, the time line refers to the period of time between my birth in September of 1937 and my marriage to Millyrose in 1959 and our subsequent move to sunny California.
I was born after the flood, of course. Not the flood of Noah, not a biblical flood, but the flood of 1937 where the Ohio River inundated the city of Portsmouth, Ohio, the brown water stretching from hillside to hillside. But the muddy waters had receded and the earth was returning to normal. The eternal hills were still standing. The village of Beattyville remained although some houses were missing, never to be rebuilt. Seems as though every time I get a chance to see that little village, more of it is gone. That, of course, is always the way of this world in which we live. David Smith
Beattyville Boy
Justin Other Smith
My streets of Heaven aren’t paved with gold,
but gravel and cinder as in days of old,
A village, a railroad and the river nigh,
That was my world in days gone by,
There were cats and dogs and sticks for toys,
Life was full for girls and boys,
Life was full in days gone by…
In the beginning, there was a void and all about was darkness and a voice said, “Let there be light.”
And there was light. And, in the center of that light, a small, unborn child. And the voice said, “You will be a male and your name will be David which means ‘beloved of God’. I will give you no noticeable talents for to do so might make you proud and you must be humble in the sight of God and your fellowman. Your skin shall be dimpled to show that you are not perfect and your eyes shall be of a dark blue and be a window to your soul.”
And the voice went on, “You will never be raised above your fellowman but your actions will be of your own and the consequences thereof. So, go ye forth, man-child, and be what you will.”
I use’ta tell people that right before people get born, we all get a face to face with God~At that time, God told me that He was fresh out’a talent so He was gonna give me blue eyes and dimples ’n the gift of gab and that I should make that work best as I could.
Why I said stuff like that is totally beyond me but I’m too old now to figure it out. If you’re interested, take your best shot but I hardly think it’s worth any time on your part.
It was kind of a roundabout way to get here but here is….
CHAPTER ONE…
September 21, 1937
I was born, so I was told. I was very young at the time and don’t recall myself, but that’s what I was told and I don’t think my mother lied about it. My Dad, on the other hand, might well have told a different story. As I recall, Dad would tell his stories over and over and every time, they’d be a little different. I believe that’s true of storytellers in general.
Not my Mother, howsumever. Not she who must be obeyed. One of those so described in story and song as an ‘Irish Mother’… a coal miner’s daughter though she never knew her father, being as he was killed in a mining accident when she was still a baby. It’s just that my mother wasn’t in the habit of lying anyway, unlike my father who never heard a story he couldn’t appropriate and make into his own. Think he must have got that from the Parsons side of the family because John Sam Smith, my Grandfather, never strung enough words together at any one time to make a lie. He could say more with less than anyone I know.
I did not take after him.
Speaking of John Sam Smith, the memory of him that most comes to mind is of the two of us sitting together in whatever church of the moment that my Grandmother had dragged us to. Nora Parsons Smith was convinced that her mission, indeed her calling, was to attend every church that she could get herself to so that she might help to enlighten the world.
Maybe I’m being a little harsh. I’m not sure why Grandma felt the need to spread the joy of her being by attending different churches, but she did. And she took Grandpa to every one that she could drag him to. And me. She took me. Probably recognized even at my early age that I needed it. Especially when Grandpa wouldn’t go. I remember Grandpa in his blue suit, his black slouch hat on his knee, his right toe tapping softly with the music, whatever music it was. I ‘specially remember the shoes. Old man shoes, I thought back then. Soft Kid leather, cap toe, ankle high. Every old man I knew seemed to have a pair of them. Wore them to church on Sundays. Anyway, we’d sit there in whatever church it was, Grandpa tapping his foot to the music, seemingly as comfortable as though he were sitting on the front porch of that log house in Nauvoo.
I tried to do the same.
John Sam saucered his coffee. Steaming hot, black as pitch, spill it carefully into his saucer ’n sip.
At five years old, I did the same. Tried it not too long ago but it didn’t taste the same.
And we watched the people. There’s just something endlessly fascinating about watching people. Grandpa John Sam was a people watcher. Manuel Smith was a people watcher and I’m a people watcher.
I was told I was born in an upstairs bedroom in a house on 3rd street in South Shore, Ky, where my grandparents lived at the time. I don’t remember at all and never laid eyes on it since it burned shortly afterwards.
Might have been an omen.
Oh, Doc Meadows, as he was for so many of my contemporaries, was in attendance.
Chapter Two
Spring in northern Michigan
(a short chapter due primarily to youngish age)
When I was eight months old, we were in northern Michigan visiting my other Grandmother. She was a Hunter, from Four Mile, out around Grayson. Married an Irish coal miner who was killed when my mother was a babe in arms. So I was told. Then she married Mart Howard and ended up living on a farm in northern Michigan. My step-Aunt Katharine, was showing off the walking skill of my step-cousin, Chester. Chet is a good guy, a bit older than me, a few weeks, maybe a month.
My mom, only slightly competitive, stated that if Chet could walk, so could David and with that, she put me on the floor and ordered me to walk. Even at that early age, I knew enough not to mess with her, so I walked. Never did learn how to crawl which probably caused me untold angst in later years.
Chapter Three
The years immediately following, I don’t recall all that well…. scattered memories mostly, unrelated pictures in my mind, a streetcar in Cincinnati, gleaming brass, shining wood, ’n green leather seats, which Dad always refused to believe but Mom told him that was the way she recalled the streetcar also. Doesn’t matter, I know I have those memories so I learned early that it doesn’t really matter what you know so long as you know what you know. Can you imagine a world in which people knew what they didn’t know… I can’t either.
Chapter Four
Besides, it’s always what you don’t know that’ll get your butt kicked if you don’t keep a sharp lookout… (not the same as a sharp knife). Sharp knives are handy also. I’ve carried a pocket knife for ‘bout as long as I can remember ’n I keep a whetstone beside my chair. If you don’t know what a whetstone is, I’m sorry for you. If you don’t know how to hone a knife, I’m sorry for you about that also. My daughter, Gina, the schoolteacher told me that todays children aren’t fond of Mark Twain because they don’t understand dialect. “Ju try ’splanin’ whut dialect is,” I asked ’n she just laughed.
‘Course, it’s all time ’n place, ain’t it? When you wuz out roamin’ the hills or the riverbank ’n sumthin’ puzzled you, you cudn’t just reach in your pocket, grab your smartphone ’n google it. We had a google, of sorts, back then. It was called a dictionary but you couldn’t carry one around with you. I think I must’a been in the 5th grade at South Portsmouth School when I figured out that what I called ‘wetstone’ was actually spelled with an H…what my teachers called a ‘silent H’ at that. Whetstone ’n it didn’t get wet just because you spit on it before you honed your knife blade.
I remember a largish house in Portsmouth. I think it was on 5th St. Maybe it just seemed largish to me because I was very small at the time ’n when you’re small, your perception is that everything around you is large. Anyway, back to the largish house in Portsmouth, again with my grandparents, and the house had a verandah… a veranda being a porch that goes all around or nearly all around the house. I have liked verandahs since that time.
Then, we lived in a one-room cabin up in Scherer’s (?) Hollow. I thought and spelled it as Shear’s Hollow until Mom corrected me sometime in the ’70’s. Anyway, we lived there, must have been around 1939 or 1940. I remember sitting on the bed with my mother while we (she) fed kindling into a grate fire. (Those of you who don’t know what a grate is, lookit up, dammit).
There was a creek and a nearby sawmill. I found some brownish paint one day ’n painted myself brown. Not sure why, don’t even want to hazard a guess but I can still recall the scrubbing I got. Never wanted to repeat that scrubbing.
That’s where I got my first dog…well, to be precise, he was a gift to my mother from a friend of hers, Mickie Hammonds who was worried because it was kind of isolated up that Hollow. He was a Belgian Police Dog and he doted on me…to the point that while Mom could pick me up with no problem, Dad had to do it carefully because my personal guard dog kept a close and wary eye on him. Mickie was married to General Hammonds. He wasn’t military, that was his name.
I don’t believe we lived up Scherer’s Hollow very long. Sketchy mem’ries of that time in my life.
I remember when I was about 4 years old, we lived on Mabert Rd. A neighbor girl hit me in the head with a rock and I bore the scar for many years. When they carried me into the house with a bloody head, my mother ran screaming AWAY from me and hid in a closet, because she thought I was dead. Life, then as now, is hard on young parents.
Chapter Five
Stoner Hill, in Fullerton, ain’t what it use’ta be. Fact of the matter is, Stoner Hill ain’t no more at all. They cut it away when they built the new road. Same as the house ’n the road ’n even the darn hillside where we lived below the bridge when I was in high school and above the bridge afterward.
When I was a boy, they only had the one road and then when I was a teenager, they built a new road that paralleled what became the old road. Then, when they built the ‘new’ new road, they cut away a big part of the hillside where Riverview had been. Anyhow, the old road, Kentucky Route #7 when I was a boy, was a narrow two-lane blacktop that hugged the bottom of the hills, winding south from Morton Hill, with homes on each side and a steep hill to the river below and pretty much eliminated the old ‘old road’ which was known as the River Road and only existed in spots by the time I got there.
At one point, the road deviated from its path along the bottom of the hills and, at a point called Stoner Hill, went up to an area known as Riverview because it was high enough to look out over the river and the city of Portsmouth, across the river, hence Riverview.
The last house my parents owned in Kentucky was on the southern end of Riverview, on a bluff overlooking the Ohio River and, on the other side, the city of Portsmouth. A nice house, a pretty house with red siding. I believe it was in the neighborhood of 150 years old when the State tore it down.
There were houses on the river side of the hill ’n I recall living about midway on Stoner Hill when I was about 3 years old or so…steeply sloped back yard with lots of trees…Dad had a grey Plymouth sedan then although that doesn’t have anything to do with anything except one snowy night he slid into the ditch and had to get help to get the car back on the road. Mem’ries are funny things.
Sometime after that, I think I was 4 years old, we lived next door to the Parsonage in Fullerton. Dad had a ’36 Ford that mom liked but he traded it. I recall Mom telling someone that Dad ‘ud trade anything. He replaced it with a Model T coupe that Mom and I would help push to get started. I don’t think I contributed much to the pushing but I have a memory of Mom on one side ’n me on the other pushing that black coupe down the alley behind our house.
During our time next to the Parsonage, I saw a serial at the Kentucky theater in South Shore titled The Claw. I had a nightmare about it, saw the character’s face at the bedroom window. Mom made Dad go out and walk around the house…. just to be on the safe side. A vivid memory to this day although my nightmares are considerably more mundane. Sometimes I wish I could just dream about monsters under the bed or in the closet.
Chapter Six
The house next to the Parsonage was just up the road from Oscar and Edna…Uncle Oscar Howard. Stepbrother to my Mom and, I think, the only one of the Howards that she actually liked…most of the time…well, she could be moody. I always blamed the Irish side for that. Anyway, she liked Oscar more’n she did the other Howards. Told me how, when they were young, he’d read to her from The Grit. Said the Zane Grey novel, ‘Riders of the Purple Sage’ was serialized and Oscar read it aloud. I think because of her telling me, that was the first Zane Grey book I ever read. Well, it’s the first one I remember anyway.
We moved from there to a small, shotgun house across the tracks. To walk to school, Fullerton Grade School, the path from there led across the tracks, across the field, through the alley next to the Howards and turn left, walk up the old road (new one was yet to be built) and thusly to School where I went for two years. Interesting school, backed into the hillside with a smallish front yard, steps down to the road and playground across. And, yes, I’m one of those people that started school with most of the people I grew up with and still count among my friends.
One of my first stories, (unpublished) The Golden Field, was written about that house and time in my life. The next-door lot was empty and overgrown; a deep, dark forest to 5 year old me and I mounted many exploratory expeditions there, finally getting to the other side where, as I peeped from the bushes, as far as I could see was a great golden plain. Satisfied that I’d seen the entirety of the great world, I turned and went home. Adventurers begin early in life.
We left that house, carrying our belongings, walking across planks laid over the brown flood water of the mighty Ohio, never to return. Well, to that particular house anyway. The house was next door to the Bradley’s and during our tenure therein, Pig and Sissy Phillips spent a lot of time with their grandparents. Mr. Bradley was a great friend of my grandfather. I’m pretty sure I’ll get around to mentioning Pig farther down the line. Pig had an Uncle Bob. Bob Bradley was a teenager at that time, prone to wild ’n crazy driving. Mom use’ta tell how he’d let some of the air out of his tires and drive on the train tracks. When Pig was just a baby named Gary Dale, teenage Bob was watching as he was being fed. When little Gary let out a grunt, Bob stated that he sounded like a little pig. And the name stuck. I’ve had lots of nick-names in my life mostly ‘cause my last name is Smith. I use’ta tell people that once’t upon a time, everyone in the world was named Smith but the ones who messed up had to change their names. None of my nick-names (’n no, I don’t know why they call ‘em nick-names) ever stuck but I have several friends in their 80’s who are still regularly referred to by their childhood nick-names.
Now, back to the tale of tales. At that point in time, Mom and Dad had been considering a move to Waverly, Ohio. Waverly is a nice little town between Portsmouth and Columbus. Have wondered what our lives would have been like had we moved there. But, we didn’t. We moved to Nauvoo.
Chapter Seven
Nauvoo log house….
My grandparents, John Sam and Nora Smith, lost their farm in the Great Depression. I don’t have a clue how many places they lived afterwards but they finally bought a place in West Portsmouth in an area known as Nauvoo. Nauvoo is in West Portsmouth ’n I don’t know why it was called Nauvoo. I don’t think they call it that today.
It was a log house, basically a cabin, and the only colors I remember for it were green and white. There was a front porch, a living room and two bedrooms, a dining room and a kitchen in the back of the house. It was WWII and Dad and Grandpa both worked for the Norfolk & Western Railroad. It cost .15 cents to ride the bus to work. Grandpa said he’d just as soon walk for his money as work for it so he walked to work. I still remember men in those days dressed in denim overalls with a denim jacket ’n generally a blue chambray shirt and a tie. Always a tie. Men wore ties in those days. By the way, the blue chambray shirts are where the term ‘blue collar’ worker came from.
There was a chickenyard and rabbit hutches behind (we ate a lot of chicken ‘n rabbit during the war). Behind that, a small creek cut the lot in half and the back half is where Grandpa let the cow graze. I remember also, that for a while, he raised a pig every year. Which, after it was killed, was hung on a tripod raised for the very purpose of dismantling a pig. I knew early in life wherefore come pork chops.
In Nauvoo, across the road from my grandparents, lived a family by the name of Love. I don’t recall any of them other than the name. They had accepted a job in defense, probably in Baltimore, and they offered to rent us their home. It was, as I recall, a nice little home and my parents jumped at the chance. Dad and Grandpa both worked at the N&W RailRoad and they could go to work together and…well, life ‘ud just be hunky-dory and all like that. Except the Loves didn’t like Baltimore or wherever it was that they found themselves, and they came home. And we moved again. But not to Waverly because that opportunity was gone. We moved to Beattyville.
Wow! Beattyville. Not even its real name. Real name is/was Thompson Tract but nobody ever called it anything but Beattyville. Even though it was part and parcel of South Portsmouth, Beattyville stood alone. A small, gravel and dirt street village, four homes to a block, outhouses in a back corner, water in cisterns near the back doors.
And children.
And old people.
Maybe 150, give or take.
There was a war going on. World War II. I’m sure you’ve at least heard about it, it’s in all the history books. They all say it was a really big deal.
Chapter Eight
STEAMBOATS, STEAM TRAINS, BAREFOOT BOYS ’N BICYCLES, ’n how I got to be a Beattyville Boy.
If you ain’t figured it out already, this chapter is mainly about Beattyville.
If there was ever a perfect time and place for an eight-year-old boy to grow up, it might just have been the village of Beattyville, Kentucky, across the wide Ohio River from the smallish city of Portsmouth, Ohio. I didn’t think it was smallish at that time, of course, it being the only city I’d ever been.
As a city, Portsmouth, I thought ’n still think today, was a pretty nice place to have a city. A great location, situated as it is at the junction of two rivers, the Scioto and the Ohio. Gone ‘way down hill in the latter half of the 20th Century as so many river cities have done.
But, it was a city with sidewalks and store windows and a seemingly endless parade of people. Five and dime stores, department stores, hotels and banks and buildings with elevators. Hot dogs and root beer at Kresge’s, counters full of stuff. I didn’t know to call it merchandise then but the dime stores had toy counters. Not one but lots of them. Of course, the fact that there was all this stuff didn’t mean that you could actually have any of it. Stuff cost money and money was hard to come by. Heck, every kid I knew back then knew the value of money.
Movies were a big deal when I was a boy and Portsmouth had a plethora of them. The Garden, The Laroy, The Lyric ’n The Columbia, all pretty much right downtown. They had one called The Westland, which closed when I was still pretty young and another called The Eastland where I hardly ever went. Well, hardly ever pretty much covers a lot of bases. It cost money to go to the movies. Kids I knew searched avidly for beer and pop bottles. People paid a deposit of two cents on every bottle and the stores were obligated to buy them back. Five bottles was a dime and it cost a dime to get into the Garden Theater.
When I was 11 ’n 12 years old ’n could go to the Saturday matinees by myself, I mostly went to The Garden. It was the cheapest, at 10 cents (child price, of course) and showed a lot of westerns on Saturdays. As I grew older, I tended to go more often to the Laroy or The Lyric. I still went at the child’s price, however. Got away with it until I was 15. Cousin Richard, when he turned 12, marched up to the window and asked for an adult ticket. I thought he was nuts. His older brother, Robert, continued to argue for a child’s ticket for himself when he was 15 ’n 16. I guess I figured if he could do it, so could I.
When I was a boy, we pulled our shoes off in May…wudn’t really supposed to, still a little chilly….and ran barefoot most of the summer. We had boundaries, sort of, the river on one side, the railroad track and the green hills on the other. We wandered the riverbank and the hills endlessly. And we had imaginations. Well, of course we had to have. It was wartime and there were no toys to be bought if any parents had money to buy them with….and they didn’t. Not in Beattyville anyway. Don’t think it mattered.
I remember Victory Gardens and paper drives. People would save their newspapers and we kids ‘ud pile all the old newspapers we could get into wagons and pull them up the school hollow to the gymnasium of South Portsmouth School. People saved all sorts of things for The War Effort.
We were all aware of The War. Just as we all knew what the black ribbons ’n the gold stars hanging in some windows were for. And we knew about bond drives and ration books and the faraway places with the strange sounding names. Names like Kwajalen and Tarawa and Iwo Jima. Not too long ago I heard a woman asking the difference between VE Day and VJ Day. I couldn’t work up enough energy to get angry about the ignorance so I just told her the difference. They tell me I’m part of the ‘silent’ generation. I can’t for the life of me understand why. I’m not at all sure how old I was when I learned how to talk but since that day I don’t seem to have been able to shut up. Yakkity-yak!
When my brother, John, told his granddaughter about stick horses, she thought he was a little crazy. Looking back, I suppose it was a little odd to put a stick between your legs and run. Still, as I recall, those kids whose parents had the money could have a stick horse purchased from a store, a painted one with a horse head. And probably shouldn’t wonder that this was the generation that would grow up to market the pet rock.
We made our own bows and arrows so we could emulate Robin Hood. The arrows were mainly what we called horseweed. Straight and hollow, a tiny rock for an arrowhead and we shot them at each other. We had wooden swords and we learned to thrust and parry and whack just like our movie heroes. We carved wooden rifles and pistols (lasted longer than the sawdust ones in the stores) and used the riverbank as a substitute for those Pacific Islands we read about and saw in the newsreels of the day. We were, I s’poze, a violent bunch but I don’t think any of us grew up to become murderers. I don’t know for sure, of course, as my childhood friends spread all around the country, maybe farther, and one does lose track.
When I got to see the sandy beach on my first Pacific island, it wasn’t all that much different that the sandy bank of the Ohio but the water was a lot different. First of all, it wasn’t brown and secondly, you couldn’t see the other side.
First time I ever went swimming in the ocean was in Okinawa. We went to a military controlled beach, checked out goggles and flippers and such (my first time with such exotic gear) and walked into the ocean. I dove under a small wave and began to swim but when I came face to face with what to all appearances was a sea monster, I decided that sunning myself on the beach was a lot more appropriate for a country boy.
And I wasn’t exactly a country boy. Wasn’t a city boy either. Heck, I wudn’t even a small-town boy. Beattyville barely qualified as a village.
I got my first bicycle after we moved to Beattyville. It was a 20-incher. If you don’t know bikes, that’s a small one. It wasn’t new. It was 2nd hand. Except it was probably more like a 4th or 5th hand but that’s alright. It was new to me. It was red. Not a bright red but a darker shade. As I grew, the 20-incher got passed along to my brothers.
I remember brother John came down the crossing hill, pedaling as fast as he could, fairly flying down the street and making a right turn at the alley between the Kieth’s and the Fultz’s and going head on into the fence, catapulting over the fence into the Fultz’s side yard. He can joke about it now.
Dad didn’t fool around when it came to bicycles, however, the next one he got for me wasn’t a 24-incher (the next size up) or even a 26-incher (standard size)…Nope! He got a bigger one. A 28-incher, as I recall, double framed with chrome fenders. Darn near as heavy as his ’37 Oldsmobile and almost as big. ‘Way too big for a ‘wee broth of a boyo’ like me. I was small for my age and couldn’t sit down and pedal the bike. Nosirreebob, when I rode that bike, I stood to reach the pedals. I think I was in my teens before I could sit and pedal at the same time. I don’t know what happened to that bicycle. Neither John nor Jim inherited it. The world was changing. It was after the war and they had a job and like most people, they wanted ‘new’ things. So, they bought new bicycles.
After the war, one of the most popular stores, at least for boys was the Army/Navy store that opened in Portsmouth. They sold pretty much everything pertaining to the military. I remember buying white metal helmets at the Army/Navy store and Vinson Euton painting them in camo as we continued to wage war on the gravel streets of Beattyville. Warriors to the end, every one of us.
There were two churches in Beattyville; the Christian Church which I believe I might have been inside once or twice and the Methodist Church where I went with my parents and most of the village just about every Sunday. Actually, it was more properly called the Southern Methodist Church of South Portsmouth and had been built in 1848 and still stands today although it is no longer a Methodist Church.
It was not air conditioned. Didn’t have huge overhead fans either. Got warm inside when it was full of people on a hot summer day. They’d open all the windows and lay out paper fans in the pews and…well, you get the picture, I’m sure. I don’t recall the church being heated in the wintertime but it seems like it must have been.
Chapter Nine
Winters in Beattyville must have been hard on the adults. Most people heated their homes with coal and while coal was plentiful, it wasn’t cheap. A lot of the people in Beattyville, not all, but a lot of them augmented their fuel supply by picking up the coal that fell from the trains that passed every day. Now some of that coal came to ‘accidentally’ fall off the trains because of a practice called knocking. Knocking consisted of a man or boy with a long stick standing alongside a moving freight train and encouraging lumps of coal to sort of fall off that train car. There would be times when, for some reason or other, a coal train would be stopped and some there were who would take advantage of that by climbing aboard and giving a more helping hand. Railroad detectives discouraged that practice.
Living along the riverbank, we didn’t get a lot of snow but what we got was wet and packed down nice and hard made for outstanding sledding. And it seems that no matter what else we kids may have missed out on, most of us either had sleds or access to them because we all sledded. The RR crossing on the street where I lived was the most popular sledding spot in Beattyville. You could take a running start, bellydown on the sled and go the entire three blocks to the end of the street. I was never able to make it past that to the path that led down to the river but, I tried.
Lotta moisture in Kentucky snow and the longer you played in it, the wetter you got. Until you reached the point where you’d have to go inside, strip off the wet clothing, dress in dry and go back out to do it all over again. On good sledding days, every house in Beattyville that had children had clothing drying.
When I got older, I joined with the older kids in going around the School House Hollow and sledding down a much higher hill. A much, much higher hill. With a narrow, somewhat twisting path from top to bottom. And at the bottom, after a too short level, a creek. Now, even though the creek had a skim of ice covering the surface, the ice didn’t last too long with the onslaught of sleds and if you weren’t careful (’n sometimes despite being careful) you’d end up in the creek and have to walk home thoroughly soaked. Made for a chilly walk. But it was a fun ride.
One of the highpoints of my childhood was when they (the parishoniers) raised the church and built a basement beneath. One of the first events that took place in the new basement was a skating party for the (us) children. We weren’t used to having a large, smooth surface on which to rollerskate.
Adults rotated being Sunday School teacher for our little semi-wild bunch but they all told us stories out of the Bible. Some of them were pretty exciting. Well, the Old Testament stuff anyway. Not so much the New Testament. We understood wars and battles and such stuff because that had been a part of our daily lives. One of the lessons that I took away from Sunday School was that the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. I later found out that you have to get really wet before you truly understand that adage.
Somewhere I discovered in that time period that Classic Comics did the Bible in comic book form so I set out to get the entire Bible in comic book form. And that’s where I read the Bible, well, most of it, the first time. The collection was destroyed by fire along with the rest of my books while in storage at my Aunt Eunice’s home.
Chapter Ten
In 1946, I became a Cub Scout. For a uniform, I had a blue Cub Scout cap and a yellow scarf. The Boy Scout presence in Beattyville was attributable to Delbert and Iva Fultz. Delbert was Scoutmaster for the scouts and his good wife, Iva, was Den Mother for the Cub Scouts. We met in the living room of the Fultz home ’n I haven’t the slightest idea what we did or talked about other than I was a Cub Scout. And later, a Boy Scout.
The age limit for joining the Boy Scouts of America back in those halcyon days was 12 but I got in when I was 11. Well, to be fair, it was the summer before my 12th birthday and the Scouts were going to spend a week at Camp Oyo and I really, really wanted to go to camp and so Delbert bent the rules a little. He also bent them for Marvin Anderson who was only 10 years old at the time but was already 6’ tall or pretty close to it.
The Andersons -- Wayne, Marvin and sister Delores, came to South Portsmouth school that year because there had been a fire at Fullerton elementary and the children got parceled out all over that end of the county. Delores didn’t like South Portsmouth and changed schools almost right away but Wayne and Marvin both stayed for that year.
When Wayne and Marvin joined the Scouts, they were the only boys in the troop that had Scout uniforms. The rest of us made do with caps ’n scarves ’n belts ’n suchlike. When we got to Camp Oyo, a lot of the Scouts from elsewhere had uniforms but, as I recall, the Beattyville Boys were undaunted. Well, most of us were. At that time,I don’t think many of us were familiar with Shakespeare and the phrase, “If ignorance be bliss, t’is folly to be wise.”
Doug Noel didn’t like being away from home so he ran away from the Camp and went home, using a riverbank log to aid him in his swim back to Kentucky. Midway through the week was Parents Day ’n Marvin, who was a little homesick (big as he was, he was only 10) went home. ‘Course, to be fair, they had put him and me to work painting the concrete block headquarters building an olive drab (still don’t like that color) ’n I don’t think he liked to paint.
I brag about getting the Order of the Arrow during my week there but then I kind’a spoil the story by explaining that it wasn’t such a hard thing to do as it mainly consisted of sitting by yourself in front of a small campfire in the darkness of the surrounding forest. We were told that we’d have to spend the night there but when it got late, a student counselor came and got us ’n escorted us back to our cabins. There were small campfires about every 30 or 40 feet with sleepy boys sitting ’n staring. The next day our chests were painted (with iodine) with an arrow ’n we were congratulated. It was, I was solemnly told, ‘A Rite of Passage’…not sure I understood what that meant at the time but it sounded good.
But, y’know, a rite of passage can be (and is) many things…. your first milkshake, maybe, or your first kiss. There are a lot of them. And, as my cousin, Robert, deep in his dotage, said, “Cuz, life just keeps coming at you.” Rites of passage. Who knew?
On a side note, when I was a teenager at McKell, a bunch of us rowdies re-joined the Boy Scouts because as Scouts, we could go to Camp Oyo in the wintertime when it was closed and spend the weekend in one of their cabins at no cost. Fortunately for us, when Pig Phillips almost accidently burned down the cabin, we were able to put the flames out with no noticeable damage but that’s another story for another day.
Chapter Eleven
The green hills of eastern Kentucky are riddled with caves ’n the hills that overlooked Beattyville were no exception. One, in p’tick’lar, The Devil’s Den, is still talked about t’day. I don’t think I’d know how to even find it these days, but I had no trouble finding it when I was a kid. All the boys knew where it was although I’m not sure how many actually crawled into the dark interior. It’s very dark inside a cave, any cave.
And the entrance to The Devil’s Den was small, easily navigated by little boys. Turned out it was another one of those rite of passage things.
Now, back in that golden age of yesteryear, when you needed a flashlight, you couldn’t just reach in your pocket ’n pull out your cell phone. Matter of fact, flashlights, while available in lots of places, didn’t exactly come easily to hand while wand’ring the green hills of Kentucky. What a boy could do, how sum ever, was to stick a candle in his pocket along with some stolen kitchen matches and, son of a gun, light.
Except in the darkness of a cave, you find out that candlelight don’t show a whole lot. No reflection, don’t you know.
About 6 or 8 feet or so, inside The Devil’s Den, was a hole. A deep hole. Don’t know how deep, exactly. Dropping stones ’n listening for them to hit bottom don’t tell you a heck of a lot…well, except to tell you that it was deep.
On the river side of the hole was a ledge, wide enough to crawl past the hole. Trouble was, it was so dark, even with a candle, that you couldn’t see much past your nose. But, I’d been told by my father that beyond the hole was a room that you could stand up inside. At twelve years old, I figured if my father could do it, I should be able to do it also. Just another rite of passage. When you’re twelve years old, rites of passage can be scary.
Chapter Twelve
At South Portsmouth School, the transition from Grade School to Jr. High was simply a matter of climbing to the 2nd floor along with the High School students, difference being that 7th and 8th grade students were contained in one room. Same as downstairs grade school. Two grades to a room. As I said, it was a small school.
Funny, but I don’t remember my Jr. High teachers. Well, I have dim memories of two of them. One of them was Johnny Howerton. He could flip a small piece of chalk from behind his desk and hit any kid in the room. Today, if a teacher bounced a piece of chalk off a student’s learning center, they’d no doubt end up on the evening news, the center of a national debate. We had another teacher, I recall, was a substitute, and I don’t remember anything about her except she encouraged my drawing. Funny thing about that is that she was the only teacher I ever had in my formative years that ever actually encouraged me to do anything. I never gave that much thought until one day when I was encouraging my oldest granddaughter, Emily, about her drawings.
I ‘graduated’ from the 8th Grade in South Portsmouth School. Don’t recall exactly how many kids in my class but I was a book-ender. Along with Charley Hale. We were, Charley and I, at 5’2” tall, the shortest kids in the class. They lined us up ’n had us sing a song. Ain’t got a clue what song it was, but I do remember the teacher telling me (’n some others) not to sing, just hum. After that teacherly advice, I found myself unable to sing out loud in public. Took me a couple years to got over it but get over it, I did. As my wife ’n children will testify.
I remember, thanks to the instincts of my “Irish’ mother, that I wore a tan camel’s hair blazer for that graduation. My brother, John, later wore the same blazer for his 8th Grade graduation. Situations like that as a child teach you to never waste resources. And people today wonder why old people are all such hoarders. Tsk, tsk!
Chapter Thirteen
1952 The last Christmas in Beattyville
Whether or not it was the actual ‘last Christmas in Beattyville’ is debatable. Fact is, it’s the last Christmas in Beattyville that I remember. One of those ‘coming of age’ moments that happen so often.
The N&W RR was on strike and Dad had taken a temporary job with the C&O in Lexington, Ky.
Now the mileage today is the same as the mileage ‘way back then but the roads and automobiles are a lot better today so it’s a much faster trip between the two places today than it was at that time. And the weather that p’tick’lar Christmas was inclement. Cold, and blowing snow. Not the huge wet snowflakes that ‘ud cover the ground ’n give us a white Christmas but the small, hard, pebbly flakes that stung when they hit naked flesh.
Dad had been scheduled to work on Christmas Eve and also on the day after Christmas and, being a depression-era survivor, Dad worked whenever it was offered. So, the plan was that he would just stay in Lexington for that Christmas. I mean, it was a long, hard drive home and would mean another long, hard return trip with only a few hours to spend with family.
So, what that meant was that night, I became the other adult in the house. My brothers were all asleep tho’ I doubt the visions of sugarplums. Mom was ‘icing’ the tree. The icicles of that age were metallic based and Mom was extremely particular about how they went on ‘Her Tree’. Other people could get frustrated ’n throw them on in clumps or however, whichever way they wanted but, not my Mother. No sirreeBob. She put them on in the way the Good Lord had intended~one at a time! And her trees always shimmered and were always beautiful. I had been put to work bringing the gifts out and placing them under the tree. I had just finished, was kneeling on the floor and Mom was hanging the last of the icicles. I recall that I looked at the clock on the wall and it was eleven-thirty.
“Sure wish Dad could be here.” I remarked.
And the door opened and there stood Dad in his brown leather jacket and brown fedora with the snow blowing around him.
And that’s the last Christmas that I remember in Beattyville.
We lived in Beattyville through the blizzard of ’52. Didn’t get a lot of blizzards in Beattyville, something to do with the river and the shape of the hills and the fact that old men tend to make up answers when little kids ask them stuff…and little kids always ask old people questions about stuff. I liked talking to old people when I was young. Still like to. It’s just that at my age, it’s harder and harder to find someone older than me.
Anyway, in 1952, February, I believe, there came a blizzard…snowed for 3 0r 4 days, shut everything down…after it kind’a blew itself out, my Dad got out and walked to Portsmouth (‘cause he couldn’t get his car down the alley) and bought a set of auto chains so that he could drive in the snow and ice….when he got home, he put them in the trunk of his car where they remained until he sold the car and the chains went (unused) with it….
Later that year, before school was out, we moved….up the road…still in South Portsmouth but up the road, ’n if you’re wondering about the up ’n down of things, up referred to upriver ’n down, of course, it’s a sunrise~sunset kind of thing. Day follows night, always did, always will.
Anyway, the house was sited across from the new Post Office, a smallish cinderblock building stuffed into a spot carved into the side of the hill…right across the road from where we now lived….did I mention that it was across the road? We lived below the road…the 2nd story of our house (where I slept) looked directly out upon the road…and/or more or less directly into the kitchen windows of the house across the road, next door to the Post Office (where we had Box #71 for years but that’s another story for another time)…
The Harr’s lived there. Ronnie Harr, the son, was a little shit. Meaner’n a snake, responsible for almost all the vandalism in that general area. Looking back, I realize that his life was a mess and people didn’t like him and he was fighting back in the only way he could but, at the time, it was just a fact of life that Ronnie Harr was a little shit. I think the high point of his life at the time was when a group of scouts from Portsmouth were hiking in the hills above and met Ronnie. Ronnie had a gun. A .22 Cal rifle and he robbed those scouts at gunpoint. And was never arrested for the deed. Probably because it never got reported in Kentucky.
Ronnie had a sister. Don’t remember her name although I knew it at the time. She was older and she’d stand there in the evening, in front of her kitchen windows, wearing only a bra and panties, and wash dishes. She seemed to wash dishes a lot.
At that house, I had my very own bedroom. It was a large room. With a closet. The closet is important. It’s the reason I had my own room all to myself.My brothers, John, Jim, and Willy Bill, all slept in an adjoining room. Together. Their room didn’t have a closet.
And all because of a story told on the streets of Beattyville one summer evening. Can’t recall (right now) the name of the older couple that lived across the street from the little brick house in Beattyville but they had the remains of a once upon a time ice cream stand fronting their home. It was kept painted white and dark green and kids would gather there on those long-ago evenings and tell ghost stories. Once such story, Old Shiny Eyes, so terrified my brothers that because Old Shiny Eyes lived in a closet, they were scared to sleep in a room with a closet. So I had a bedroom to myself.
In the fall (Autumn, for purists) I changed schools. I was asked why and I had to think about it, it being such a long time ago. I had attended South Portsmouth School since 3rd grade, was familiar with durn near ever’ inch of the old place, had friends there, kids I’d known since (wait for it…) 3rd grade.
I’d also read every book in their libraries, upstairs and down, knew all the teachers, was looking forward to taking classes with Miz Opal Bassler…everyone loved Miz Opal and she might possibly have been one of the very best literature teachers I’ve ever known. That was my one regret about leaving South Portsmouth School.
But I knew people at McKell also. I’d gone to 1st and 2nd grade with a lot of them and McKell was a larger school with a (slightly) larger and more diverse curriculum AND I couldn’t go to Portsmouth. I knew better than to even ask although I believe had I asked, my Mom would have done everything she could to have sent me there. Nah! I knew we couldn’t afford something like that.But, I could go to McKell. McKell was a County School.So that’s what I up and done.
Chapter Fourteen
1952~I can remember my very first morning at McKell. I can recall the jacket I was wearing, a brown windbreaker with plaid lining. And it was chilly as is often the case in September in Kentucky. Septembers back there come with morning frost and cool temperature and sunny and warm afternoons which means the jacket that felt so good in the morning got carried in the afternoon.
As schools go, McKell was not a large school, but still larger than what I was used to and I managed to get lost. Well, it was confusing for a poor boy to come to the big school and I wasn’t sure what class was where. I could say that was the only time that ever happened to me but it’d be a lie…over the years, I’ve managed to get confused and lost in my many and varied attempts in search of the Holy Grail. I tried a lot of things that I should have researched a little more and when you’re told that it’s never a good idea to leap into an unknown pool of water, you should probably pay attention. On the other hand, us born adventurers often find ourselves swimming in strange waters. Us born adventurers also end up with knots on our heads as part of the price.
I enjoyed my high school years. Lot of good friends that I’m still in touch with, lot of good memories. Girls and cars and hanging out at The Corner.
The Corner, still talked about today.
By more than one generation.
On one corner was Bennett’s Tea Room. Ten cent hotdogs and nickel Pepsi. A large room with a counter and overhead fans. A second room with wooden booths with scores of carved initials. Would love to have just one of those booths today. The school bus picked up and dropped off in front of The Tea Room. It was a good place to meet girls. Or to plan to meet girls. Or to talk about meeting girls. And the Bennet’s and the people who worked there were nice. They put up with us. Generations of us. Must be a special place in Heaven for people who are able to abide teenagers.
Across the street was Roberson’s. It was basically a department store. A grocery store, a dry goods store and a hardware store, all under one roof. Across from Roberson’s was Paul Davis Gas Station and across from that was an empty lot which served as a parking lot for Stanford Harvey’s Appliance store. That was the basic corner.
Summer of ’55, after graduation and I had a car, a 1947 blue Plymouth coupe, had a girlfriend, Reba Warnock, couldn’t find a job, any kind of job, anywhere~well, didn’t really know how to do anything~went fishing one day with Denver Mullins ’n Sonny Thompson out on Schultz…lazy day fishing, nothing but sunfish in Schultz anyhow but I didn’t catch any fish. I never caught fish, was always a lousy fisherman.
Sonny said he thought it was a good idea if we all joined the Air Force, said they had the best uniforms and it was a good deal and after serving, they’d pay for college.That was a pretty good deal to have your college basically paid for because otherwise where are you gonna get the money. No such thing as school loans back in those days.
Probably should have questioned my motives a little more but I was bored, I mean, bored…maybe Bored.
So I done it.
Well, the three of us done it.
When we go for our physical, Sonny tells us that he doesn’t think he can pass the pee test because he’s diabetic. I don’t think we had known that about Mr. Thompson. I volunteered to pee for him and that’s how he got in the military and served his time and got out and went to college and became a big-time preacher down there in North Carolina.
Hurray for Sonny.
We did that, the three of us. Off to upstate New York for basic training.I’d never been on an airplane before. I got airsick. The first longish car trip I ever made, I got carsick, and the first time I was ever on a large boat, actually, a big ferry boat across the Mackinac Strait, I got seasick so it follows that the first time I went up in an airplane, I got airsick. As I recall, we made that journey in three hops. I was sick for the first one, slept through the second hop and fine as frog hair on the third hop. Never was airsick again.
Chapter Fifteen
I, and a bunch of others, came drifting home in 1958 to find that the job situation was pretty much unchanged. Still no jobs in eastern Kentucky, a situation that has remained pretty much static over the course of my lifetime (Today, sixty years after I left there, they are finally talking about building a factory there but I believe most Greenup Countians will take a wait ’n see attitude). Anyway, after a few months of group analysis (boozing, yakking, etcetera) we went to college. Well, me ’n Ed Phillips ’n Marcus Leadingham ’n Paul Brickey did. And there were others just like us. A few from other towns that I’d met in the military doing the exact same thing as us. There were some went back to the military ’n others did first what so many of us ended up doing in the future…emigrated. (’n yes, there’s a difference between Emigrant and Immigrant, lookit up). They went to Michigan, Florida, Texas, and California. Well, actually pretty much all over, including Australia and New Zealand and only God knows where.
Anyhow, we took ourselves out to Morehead State College…and that led me to Millyrose and changed the course of my life…(which, by the by, really needed changing)…
Chapter Sixteen
THE REAL BEGINNING
Our first date was for a dance at Morehead. On January 3rd, 1959. We married in Morehead on May 23rd that same year. We got married in the basement of the courthouse in Morehead. Happy Chandler, Governor of Kentucky, was giving a speech and offered to officiate but for some long forgotten reason, we turned him down. In 1960, we were living in a small apartment in Canton, Ohio, $28 dollars a month rent, thank you…we both had underpaid jobs…well, underpaid simply because there was a shortage of jobs and a glut of people looking for a job…
I worked in the toolroom at Hercules Motors. I’d go to work in the morning right before sunrise, punch a time clock (the only time in my life)…I had an office in the middle of the toolroom, four walls lined with file cabinets…on the ground floor of the building…the bathrooms were on the third floor…I’d trek to the bathroom, stand on the sinks and crank the window open and stick my head out to get a look at the sky….hated the indoor job.
In the waning afternoons, I’d catch the bus, ride it to the foot of the street where we rented a house at the top of the hill…$28 dollars a month same as the apartment and watch the sun go down. In the summertime. Northern Ohio is pretty, I guess, but I hated living there. Well, looking back, I guess I didn’t hate it. I haven’t spent much of my life hating anything. Don’t always like everything. Don’t care for cauliflower, for example, but I guess I don’t hate it.
We bought a car, a 1957 Ford Fairlane 500 convertible…black and Inca gold…pretty thing…borrowed most of the money for it from Milly’s father…first and last time I ever borrowed from a relative (I think)…really bad idea to borrow from relatives.
That was the car we fled Ohio in… our own covered wagon. We were accompanied by a Manchester terrier named Tiny and we caravanned with Milly’s Uncle Alan and his wife ’n family is what we did…all the way to sunny California.
We came into California early on a September morning, drove down the San Gabriel mountains in the sunrise, through acres of orange trees. Never saw so much traffic in my life and had my very first experience with the fabled California smog. Found myself on a freeway (first time) surrounded by traffic, smog tears streaming, holding steady at 60 mph (top speed limit in the entire country at that time)…cars on the right of me, cars on the left, in front and behind and a motorcycle cop pulls up beside me, motions for me to roll down the window and yells at me to speed up or get off the damn freeway. Welcome to California!
I’d passed through California a couple times…up in the middle of the state, Santa Clara valley, to be precise…and I thought that was what California was like…pretty ignorant I was as most non-Californians were and to a large degree, still are…California is a damn big state. You can still begin at either end of this state, drive for ten or twelve hours and find yourself still in California. It’s almost as bad as Texas.
The first time I drove across Texas only took about a month or so or maybe three days that just seemed like a month. I made an illegal left turn in Dallas, I think it was, and a giant of a cop pulled me over. Big guy, crawled out of a small car. In the pouring rain. He questioned about me having a Kentucky driver’s license and a car with Ohio tags and I explained that we were emigrating to California because there was no real work in Kentucky or Ohio and he let me go with a warning. I like to think, looking back, that if I’d been a Texas cop standing in the rain on a dark night, looking at two children and a pointy-eared dog, I’d have done the same.
Chapter Eighteen
In 1960, Sacramento had a population of about 200,000….It was the largest city I’d ever lived in, larger than Canton, Ohio, where Millyrose grew up…and spread out all over creation and maybe a bit farther…
I put the top down on the Ford and pretty much left it that way well into November…somewhere there’s a picture floating around of me washing the topdown Ford on or around Christmas…I was shirtless and barefoot….but the top went up and stayed up thru January and the first three weeks of February and then I put it down and it stayed down until June when I decided it was preferable to bake rather than fry…OMG, as they say today, it was HOT!
Sacramento weather took some getting used to, especially back then when everyone, well, not everyone but most working people didn’t have air conditioning, not even in their cars. Homes, for the most part, had water coolers (swamp coolers, they called ‘em) I’d never heard of them before I came here but they worked really well in this arid clime.
Wow! 1960 to 2018 in Sacramento. There’s well over a million people in this area now, crowded streets, the street behind our house, Sunrise Boulevard, probably has more vehicles in one day than my home town would see in a year. On the other hand, it isn’t that long ago that a dog could go to sleep in the middle of the street where I live and Willy, my little dog, and I go strolling (I don’t walk, I stroll, I amble, I follow Willy) down the middle and rarely step aside for vehicle traffic. Fair Oaks Village is two blocks long and Willy and I cross the street and walk around Plaza Park which is full of chickens, a couple guinea hens, squirrels, young parents and children, and other old men and women walking their dogs. We’re a busy lot. As for downtown Sacramento, I, m’self, hate to go there now but Milly ’n the kids love it…
The kids! The kids are growing older as people are wont to do even in this day and age and this old world just keeps spinning around…Millyrose and I like where we are, an old house in old Fair Oaks Village.
An old house for an old couple.
Funny ’n finally, I never ever thought about getting old, it just happened. Like life itself.
I guess you could say, we acclimated!
