From Judith:
"Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphics to those inquiries he would put. He acts it in life before he apprehends it as truth."
From Julie:
"Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphics to those inquiries he would put. He acts it in life before he apprehends it as truth."
From Julie:
Apollo with A-1 Handyman Services repaired my deck today. He and his crew did a quick, competent job. The price of $1247 was within reason.
I am so glad to be able to quit worrying about it.
Mary Joseph took to me to Lady Lake today to have cataract surgery done on my right eye. It seemed to all go smoothly.
As of 7:45 this evening I notice that the color blue is more noticeable. I hope that my distance vision will be sharpened. Tomorrow I have a followup visit with Dr. Mc Nair.
...
A week after surgery the computer screen is sharp and clear with my right eye without correction. The good eye seems to dominate but if I close it, I can see how much improvement the new lens is providing
I was born in New Orleans where my grandfather had come to study law at Tulane and to become a charter member of the Unitarian Church that still operates up there on State Street or somewhere thereabout. I became aware of this in adulthood, but can't recall ever going to that church. Granddaddy worked at the Custom House where some 40 years later I was to enlist in the naval reserve as a way of staving off the draft. After he got his law degree he practiced in Ruston for a while, and then returned to Concordia parish where his father had established the town of Clayton. Contracting tuberculosis he went with his family to Roswell New Mexico and is said to have recovered, but soon contracted pneumonia and died.
Grandmother returned to New Orleans. Mother and Dad met at the Epworth League (youth meeting) at First Methodist Church, then on Lee Circle 12 blocks above Canal St. 30 years later I attended that group for a while--it was just one of the churches I visited in those days. When the Mississippi River bridge was built the church was razed. I found it quite interesting that Edgar Cayard was I believe Daddy's best man, and in the next generation I found Edgar and Grace Cayard to be close friends of Ellie's family in Algiers. Dad worked in New Orleans (I don't know what he did) where his two children were born: Margaret in 1923 and Larry in 1926. When I was six months old he joined the Louisiana Conference (entered the Methodist ministry) and took his first appointment some 100 miles north of New Orleans.
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Larry & Mother 1926 |
For me there began an almost rhythmic decadal oscillation between town and country, and the continuous nomadic lifestyle that finally came to mean that any spot on God's green earth seemed about as much "home" as any other. I was in many ways a typical second child, a happy child, at peace with family and world.
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Larry & Margaret 1929 |
At age 6 or 7 I tried my luck with a rock, and much to my dismay watched it come to rest upon the head of a young female acquaintance. This earned me a corridor-conference with the high school principal; only my communal identity as preacher's son saved me from corporeal punishment. The principle examined my young psyche thoroughly searching for a reasonable pretext to spare me.
We were dirt poor, but in the dirt poor communities in which Daddy served, we were the social elite--and spiritually unique. I never thought of us as poor, never had any inkling that we were poor. To this day I have fairly limited material expectations, but then and now with no cost to my inner sense of security. I can envision starving to death and glorifying God in the act--perhaps just an extravagant conceit, but who knows, it may be simple reality. (Now in the seventh day I lack for nothing, but still don't consider affluence or relative poverty to be very important.) (It's really strange how similar our financial circumstances have been to those of my parents.
They always had to live very modestly. Never anything to spare. Sometimes Dad's salary was paid in molasses, potatoes, whatever. Money was short. One Christmas we went to Memphis where mother's family lived. We had been living on eggs and sweet potatoes that winter. When we returned we found all our chickens had disappeared. Similarly Ellie and I had a very limited income most of the time. She went to work to pay Mark's college expenses. But both families came to retirement with plenty to live on. No problems.)
The 5th place we lived was where I started school. Prior to that there had been:
1) New Orleans: Perrier Street where I was born. Daddy went into the ministry about the time I was born, and when I was 6 months old we went to his first appointment.
2) Walker is in Livingston Parish between Baton Rouge and Hammond. I believe we were without electricity there. The parsonages we lived in were without plumbing until Daddy's 8th appointment when I was 11. We were probably at Walker for only a year, and I have no recollection of that period. But I found my first cousin once removed, Myra Clayton Minton, a lovely lady of 70 odd, lives there today, and has extended us an open invitation to stay with her at any time. Family is wonderful.
3) Patterson, Dad's second appointment is somewhere down on the bayou in southwest Louisiana, Cajun country. My only (dim) recollection of Patterson was sitting on a sofa with two pretty young things singing My Blue Heaven, a popular song of the day. (I suspect a recollection like that is more of a memory of a recollection than the real thing.) Of course some psychologists claim that everything is there written on the brain cells and potentially capable of recall just as fresh as the day it happened. I have to wonder.
4) Guedan was also in Cajun country, and I can't at the moment recall anything about it.
5) We moved to St Francisville when I was 5 or so. The memories begin to emerge there like mountain peaks above the ground fog. A river town, an old town with considerable rural type wealth, it was probably a better appointment than any Dad had received to that time. The parsonage and the church were side by side on a street that ran right along the bluff which dropped down into the flood plain. The bluff was eroding, and in all likelihood those two old buildings have long since fallen down into the flood plain. A nice old man lived across the street. Whenever possible my sister, Margaret, 3 years older than me, and I went over there to enjoy his warmth whenever possible. On one occasion Mother had some reason to go over there, and she meant for us to stay at home. She gave emphatic instructions to that effect and warned us she would spank us if we went over anyway. We went over there anyway, and she spanked us. Oh parents were so cruel in those days!
In those days Margaret and I were close. She seemed to enjoy me and was perhaps able to affirm me in various ways. At some point a few years later that changed, and she seemed to enjoy making me feel little and dumb and inadequate in a multitude of ways. That led to an estrangement that I felt until very recently. I had to get my own family, have my own life and become completely weaned from the primary family experience before I could deal with her as another person rather than as the tormentor of my childhood. My view of course is subjective, and I'm sure her's was vastly different. That's life. One discreditable memory sticks in my mind. I must have been five when I discovered physical aggression. I was on the sidewalk in front of the house and someone came along. Perhaps he greeted me; I walked over and hit him, feeling very proud of myself. Needless to say I was instructed that is not the right thing to do. Another memory was of a pageant at Afton Villa. That was one of the old plantations on the river with the usual alley of oaks extending in front of the house. I was selected with mother to represent a pioneer mother and child. We just stood there while various scenes unfolded. I must have been a pretty child because that sort of thing happened to me more than once in my school career.
There was another house over toward the river, a large house, probably not the equal to Afton Villa, but an old mansion at any rate. It burned while we were there. I remember the warning whistle and our finding out what had happened. This house must have been on or near the railroad because I heard also about a negro man who had to go out there periodically at night for some purpose. According to my informant he was afraid and allayed his fear by making a noise like a train as he went along the track. Such stories were quite common in my parents' generation and used to express depreciation and contempt for the negro. Of course that spirit still lives but has been underground for a number of years in all but the most benighted communities. Well that about exhausts my recollection of St. Francisville.
I did begin school there but have very little memory of it. One thing I do remember: everyone called me brother. The teacher tried to deal with what I should be called. As it happened there was already a Bro. Clayton in the community, my father. Robert was out of the question because of my grandmother's antipathy for the name. If they used Lawrence that would mean two Lawrence Claytons. That's when they settled on Larry, which has been my name since I started school.
6) After a year at school Daddy was ready for his 5th appointment. We moved this time to North Louisiana, where he had always been more comfortable. Incidentally Louisiana in those days, and probably still today, is really two entirely different places and cultures. South Louisiana of course is highly influenced by the French culture. In those days we were told that the French spoken in one parish was so distinctive that it could barely be understood by the French speaking in another one. It all has a distinctive flavor that today we call cajun. New Orleans of course shares this French influence as well as the cosmopolitan flavor of a world port. North Louisiana in contrast is a part of the solid south with pure Anglo- Saxon people, probably the most homogeneous ethnic stock to be found in the country.
Several reasons for this come to mind. Probably the chief of these is the fact that when the large scale European immigration occurred throughout the north, the south was terribly backward, clannish, and probably generally inhospitable to foreign immigrants of any sort. My father was suspicious and contemptuous of "polacks, dagoes", etc. etc, and I'm sorry to say some of that ingrained attitude certainly rubbed off on me. (It costs a gigantic effort to lay to rest those types of feelings.) At any rate I always saw myself as a flaming liberal in contrast to my father. Dad's 7th appointment was in a little town called Athens. Incidentally all of these places were more like villages than towns.
Generally speaking the lower you are in the clerical hierarchy the "countrier" your appointment, and for most of Dad's career he was near the bottom. Athens was the usual dirt scrabble town. The parsonage was a little above the level of the previous ones. It was an old house with 4 large bedrooms upstairs, the typical old family farmhouse that was the style about 1910 perhaps. (When we retired in 1988, we would have been delighted to find such a house--in good shape of course-- but you don't find many like that still in upland South Carolina.) We lived at Athens for only a year and only a few memories remain. Here it was that the rock throwing incident occurred. For the rest of my stay in Athens I was very reluctant to walk down main street because an old man, who sat at a store front looking out (as some do even today in Salem) always recognized me and denounced me for what I had done. In general of course I was a model student, which may have had some bearing on the principal's reluctance to paddle me.
The school work was much easier for me than for many of my classmates. On one occasion (I think this was still the 1st grade) we had a written test to take. I improvidently found myself without a pencil. The school desks were double there, and the boy next to me was a 3rd time repeater of the first grade. He had a tiny stub of a pencil, which he readily shared with me. Knowing the answers I used the pencil first. Of course I would not share my answers with him; that would have been dishonest.
One other thing I remember is the WPA project that Daddy was instrumental in getting for our town. It was a recreational facility, a playground in fact. It involved moving a lot of dirt to make a hillside level. The memorable thing is a tennis court was built, and the Clayton family took up tennis. Since I was only 6 or 7, needless to say I didn't develop much proficiency, but I did acquire a love of the game that now, 80 years later burns as intensely as ever.
We remained poor but Dad, too, must have been a pretty radical non-materialist. Daddy advanced funds from his almost microscopic income to assist a talented young woman pursue an academic career. His reward for that magnificent generosity was the vision that he, too, could pursue an academic career. With two small children in school and a microscopic income Mother and Daddy went to college--a lovely place called La. Tech--for three years and emerged respectively ranked valedictorian and 5th. (Dad did so poorly because he also had a job and family to support.)
Surely this should entitle one to assistance from the state for further education. They duly submitted applications to L.S.U. and duly received the usual form letter: "Your application has been placed on file." Daddy was pretty easy going, but capable of fury. He went to see a friend who had recently become a federal judge. He sat in the man's office and watched him call the Dean. The conversation (at least the side of the conversation that Daddy heard) went something like this: "Dean Frye, I have two friends here, Mr. and Mrs. R.L.Clayton, who are interested in fellowships at your school. I would appreciate anything you could do for them." Daddy went home and three days later found the fellowships in the mail. That happened almost eighty years ago, but even now as I recount it, my blood pressure has gone up 30 points and my righteous indignation almost overwhelms me. What a filthy world we live in. That filthy lesson sunk into the innermost recesses of my flesh and blood, and those close to me on innumerable occasions have heard me say that yes, I deal with the devil every day. I usually add that when he starts quoting scripture, that's when I start getting nervous.
The filthy world--and the lovely Spirit; the dichotomy has from the earliest days remained one of the basic themes of my life story. Athens was about 30 miles from Ruston where mother and daddy were going to school. After a year there Daddy got an appointment only half as far away.
8. This was Calhoun where we lived for two years, which I think of as my last two happy years until the 4th day. The parsonage was right alongside US 80, and Monroe (the metropolis of northeast Louisiana) was only about 20 miles east of us. We more often went to Ruston, to the west. Several teachers were in the congregation; we had a secure and warm place in the community. I remember a Mrs. Hodge, and a Stewart family who lived on the State Experimental Farm a little way east of Calhoun. I had a friend, the first whose name I remember, Earnest White. He lived a little way east on the highway on the other side. In school I shone as usual. One of the happy moments was when a teacher sent Joyce Calhoun and me off together on an errand somewhere for something. Joyce was a lovely girl, also an achiever; I perceived that the teacher was throwing us together, and I appreciated it.
I remember baseball. I was allotted the shortstop or shortfield position, being an excellent retriever: "good field, no hit". I had aspirations to pitch, but didn't often achieve that. One of the high points was the Christmas play. I was selected as Santa Claus. I can still see myself: a little tyke with two pillows strapped to his midsection and the usual red suit and white beard, ponderously dancing with the little children. Then there was another dramatic presentation where a bunch of us stood up in a line and recited "we were gallant soldier boys of the war of 61." The war of 61 was very big of course at that time and place. Our parents were going to Ruston almost every day, and on Saturdays that sometimes left Margaret and me on our own. We had some memorable fights during those Saturdays, but always declared a truce and straightened up the house before the folks got home. Margaret was stronger and usual got the best of me until I grew a bit; then for some strange reason the fighting came to an end.
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Larry with football |
Sports became the big thing in my life about that time, especially football. In Denham Springs we played tackle; thankfully no one suffered any serious injuries. We also played softball in season. I was excellent in both of these sports for my size, which meant that I just managed to keep a place in a group in which most boys were larger. I also took up boxing briefly. We had a match with the Live Oak group, and I was matched with a boy who looked smaller than me, although he weighed as much. We went three rounds during which I was exhorted to attack, and did, but he knew how to retreat and get boxing points, and he won. I remember Dad reminding me before the match that I could always throw in the towel. I also remember after the match being back in the locker room with some older boys who discussed my match casually and told me I should have won easily because my arms were 4 inches longer than the smaller boys. The truth is we had me measured arms before the match, and they were the same length. My legs were longer, but not my arms.
Some time later I was on the playground and happened to be right behind Mr. Hornsby, our principle. He was talking to some other adult about the boxing, and he mentioned a little fellow wearing a red sweater who really knew how to scrap. I was a little fellow wearing a red sweater. Were I as brash then as I am now, I would have asked him if he meant me. At that time I would not have dreamed of making my presence known. The athletic activities of that sort are foremost in my memory of Denham Springs.
The other big thing was the Scouts. I lived for the day when I might became a Scout, at the age of 12 in those days. That was about the longest year in my experience, but I finally became a Scout. Our Scoutmaster, believe it or not, went by the name of Daniel Beard. I worked hard and became a Second Class Scout. I never believed that I could make First Class because you had to swim 50 yards, and that for me was in the same category as flying to the moon. But shortly before we left Denham Springs Mother took us to Biloxi, and wonder of wonders, I learned to swim.
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Larry & Mother 1937 |
I did some serious work with the piano while we lived at Denham Springs. I think Mother realized what a lonely child she had, and she provided me with as much instruction as I wanted. She neither encouraged nor discouraged me from practicing, and it became quite sporadic. I guess my character was being formed in all these activities: studying French, the piano, etc. etc. I became a dilettante in everything and master of nothing. As the vernacular has it, I became a jack of all trades. Everything except the mechanical. In that I was and remain an idiot.
Our parents were attending L.S.U. during this time while we went to grammar school. Mother got her Master's in English very easily. Dad must have gotten crossed up with his History professor, because after one year he changed to Education and got his Master's in that. Meanwhile he was teaching high school at Springfield, some 20 miles east of us. We used to refer to him as a triple dipper. That's what they called Huey Long machine politicians who had their hands in the till at three different places, a quite common occurrence in those days. Unlike the politicians I suppose Dad must have been working awfully hard going to graduate school, preaching, and teaching in high school. All to keep food on the table and clothes on our back. We don't realize how good we have it these days.
Denham Springs is some 15 miles east of Baton Rouge, and our Scout troop like others in the area had the duty and privilege of ushering at the L.S.U. football games, certainly the most grown up and exciting thing I had ever done. The football team were my heroes, especially the ends. L.S.U. had two All-American ends during that time period. I remember the day Ken Kavanaugh scored 4 touchdowns against Holy Cross (a football power in those days). My most memorable experience was the L.S.U. Rice game in Baton Rouge where I was sitting in the stands with 35,000 other fans. It was scoreless down to the last 30 seconds. Then Cotton Milner kicked a field goal from the 35 yard line and L.S.U. won 3-0. I jumped up screaming; it seemed like a half second elapsed before the people around me realized what had happened. A few year's later (I must have been 15) we were coming toward New Orleans from North Louisiana when the car broke down--late at night. Dad gave me permission to hitchhike home. A car picked me up driven by a homosexual. He claimed the whole L.S.U. football teams were such. I wonder. Of course he made advances which I was able to ward off fairly easily.
Our Scout troop was a good one, but it had the usual problems. I suppose that sooner or later authority is tested in every troop. One of Dad's best members, Mrs. Jackson, had a large house and must have been relatively affluent. She also had a son named Leon, several years older than me. Leon belonged to the troop, likely a patrol leader. He instigated an uprising against the Mr. Beard and was expelled from the troop. Years later I was in the Rainbow Room at Piccadilly Circus, a famous U.S.O. facility through which had passed most of the G.I.'s who got as far as England. Idly thumbing through the guest book I found Pfc Leon Jackson's name.
It must have been the summer of '38 when we made our first trip to California--in August and Sep. Since school had started in July (their summer vacation was March to July so the school children could pick strawberries), Dad had to get special permission to take his children out of school for that extended period. The principle was perfectly amenable and suggested that we take notes on the trip in order to give a report to our class upon return. From that time to this California has been the never, never land for me, as it no doubt is for a large proportion of our population. Mothers sister, Auntie is a lovely lady; she had a lovely house, and she and her family introduced us to a lifestyle quite new and enchanting to us rural southerners.
I have about as many memories of that month in California as I have of the two years in Denham Springs. Dad generally drove an average of 500 miles per day. The second night he drove late and we finally got to Van Horn, Tex, where US 80 and US 90 come together. We got a motel. The next morning we went outside, and there were the mountain peaks all around us. It was terribly impressive; actually they are rather puny mountains relatively speaking, but to an 11 year old flatlander they were monumental.
I vividly remember the time we picnicked (was it in Griffith Park?). My cousin Vernon was a month or two older than Margaret. The three of us started up a steep canyon filled with loose rocks. Margaret and I soon turned back, but Vernon keep going for another hundred feet, then started crawling sideways over the face of the slope. He soon got stuck. Two hours later the patrol came and rescued him--from the top of the ridge. California is big and beautiful, and it will hurt you real fast if you don't know what you're doing. On our second trip to California two years later Vernon and I went up the path to the top of the ridge above the Bray's house and along the crest for a way. I then proposed to him that we go straight down. He acquiesced, but without much enthusiasm. We achieved that descent, but suffered from poison oak over our entire bodies for the next few days.
I don't recall which of the trips to California it was, probably the second, when Dad was operating on a financial shoestring. It was an altogether pleasant experience, but there was just enough money to get back--if nothing happened, or as the Quakers say, as way opens. He could buy gas until San Antonio, and from that point he had a credit card to manage the rest of the way. Well something happened and way closed decisively near the town of Ozona. Dad managed to get the car to a garage, and they looked at it and said $40. No way. I remember going into a hamburger joint where we all ordered hamburgers--good old fashioned ones with lettuce and tomato. It was taking Daddy's last two dollars. We ate them slowly wondering where our next meal might come from. We Claytons are lucky, and the usual luck held. Not knowing what else to do Dad went over and knocked on the door of the Methodist parsonage, a far nicer house than we had ever lived in. Rev. Eugene Slater was the pastor, and he took us in like family. Mrs. Slater served delicious pocketbook rolls for supper (and I forget what else). Mr. Slater endorsed a bank draft for Daddy for money that he didn't have, we got the car fixed and went merrily on our way. I felt like that man ought to be a bishop, and sure enough a few years later Rev. Eugene Slater did indeed become a bishop.
That's one of the Methodist positives in my mind that outweighs a multitude of negatives. Back in school after the first trip I soon found that my teacher had no desire for me to report on my trip. So I confined myself to mentioning a few experiences from time to time with or without her permission. I'm afraid my attitude toward teachers tended toward the critical. Dad told the story of the little boy who came home complaining about his 1st grade teacher. His father said, "Son, we're supposed to suffer fools gladly"--a quotation from scripture of sorts. The little boy replied, "That's what I say, make 'em suffer." I was that little boy more than once. I suppose my most notoriously inadequate teacher was Miss Cangelosi in Baton Rouge. The subject of albinos somehow came up, and the devil got in me or something, and asked her if alibinos came from Albania. And she answered in the affirmative. Poor thing. I hope she soon married and retired from the teaching profession.
One other thing I remember about school at Denham Springs. A teacher was talking about cleanliness, and she asked for a show of hands as to how many of us bathed more often than once a week. Few hands went up; I kind of halfheartedly raised mine. But Laverne Travis, the daughter of the Baptist minister was indignant. "Why I sometimes bathe twice a day." Good for her. I still remember the "Should have said" that I refrained from. Sure Laverne, but you have hot and cold running water. Maybe the only child there. I guess I was a pretty emphatic democrat even back in those days.
It was at Denham Springs that the worst experience of the first half of my life occurred. I was getting into the second day, beginning to tune to the peer group rather than the family. I could be irritable, and one day coming home for lunch I was irritable. Mother had made spaghetti. I was much thirstier than hungry. I said I can't eat this and started back to school. Daddy ordered me to come back, but I foolishly went on. He came after me, faster and faster, and I went on, faster and faster. He couldn't catch me. I got half way to school and he overtook me in the car. I let him grab me and put me in the car. He took me home and belted me. The physical pain was nothing, but it was a humiliation from which it took me 20 years to recover fully. And worse it ended any chance of a close and affirmative relationship with him. Thereafter he was my enemy. I lived with him until at 16 I was able to escape, then never went back (emotionally that is). Mother had tried to spare me that punishment, but she was ineffectual. For hours I fantasized about leaving that afternoon, but luckily for me never quite reached that point.
11. After two years at Denham Springs Dad got an appointment at Kentwood, a slight promotion. It was one of the iffy appointments and in this case contingent on another appointment. A young man at Kentwood was to be sent to Franklinton, another small town, but a county seat. We all waited tensely for the resolution of the uncertainty. Finally word came he was indeed going to Franklinton and he gave a shout of delight. I thought it was pretty immature for a pastor to act in that way especially in the presence of others whose situation and point of view had to be very different from his. I have unfortunately felt a rather low opinion of a lot of ministers through the years.
Kentwood was probably more of a town than we had lived in since New Orleans. It was also the 8th school I attended, being in the 7th grade. (I really shouldn't count my summer at Tech model school.) I had a really first class friend their named Stanley Price, but he moved to Baton Rouge within about a year. His cousin, Hope Breeden, was the first girl I ever had a real crush on. Her daddy was the banker, and she was certainly a cut above most of the girls I had known. My romantic feelings for Hope were largely at long distance, but they endured for a couple of years. We were both attracted to one another, but without the personal assurance to make anything significant out of it.
Swimming was really big at Kentwood. In the summer we went down to the creek just about every afternoon. I acquired considerable proficiency, and probably might have succeeded in the 50 yard test if there had been a Scout trip. Actually there was a Scout troop briefly. Daddy was euchred into acting as Scoutmaster, although he never really acted. The troop soon came to an end. We had scheduled a camp on the Tangipohoa River. So one morning about 15 of us found ourselves out there in camp---but no adults. A minor version of Lord of the Flies ensued. One of the gang leaders, not a scout leader but a gang leader decided that everyone would have their penis spat on. The Lewis boys left hiking for town. I took no part, but was subjected to the same indignity as everyone else. Of course adults heard about the episode, and that was the end of the Scout troop. I was 12 at that time and in no position to influence the outcome of an event like that.
On the whole, especially after Stanley Price moved, I was very lonely in Kentwood. Very much of a loner. An outsider and the preacher's son. My only social and emotional fulfillment came through the sports activities in which I had a part. I built a "club house" on the flat roof of the garage, but there were no other club members. I climbed on the roof of the house, and way up to the top, a really scary experience. I used to throw my football on the roof and try to catch it as it came down, and fantasize that I was in a game. I even had a whole team of imaginary players.
The biggest thing at Kentwood was football. We had a really gifted coach named Sanders. He became my 8th grade teacher as I recall. In the 9th grade I went out for the team. I was simply too small, too scrawny, too light to really compete, and after he determined that I was not going to
We won almost all our games and late in the season we ended up at Arcadia in North Louisiana, playing for the state championship (Class B). (We had lost the semi-finals the year before.) This year we were really almost a one man team. Stump Jones weighed 180 that year, and very few high school boys could stop him. That game was eerie. Arcadia had three very talented little scatbacks, boys who knew how to move and gain ground. On their first three possessions those three boys got the ball, one by one. On each play the scatback went through our entire team to Stump Jones, the safety man. Stump tackled each one and each one fumbled. I swear, it happened three times, just like that. With the help of Stump we stayed in the game for the first half. In the second half Stump had been tackled and was lying prone on the ground. An Arcadian play came running up and fell on his knees sliding into Stumps face. He knocked Stump crazy. After that we had no chance. The coach was furious; some words were exchanged and things became pretty tense. We were badly outnumbered up there, 200 miles from home, but luckily cooler heads prevailed, as they say, and nothing worse happened. We got jackets saying Louisiana champions.
12. But by that time I had gone on to New Orleans and never had a chance to wear my jacket. Conference was always a very tense time. Men and their families waited to find out where they would be living the next year. The appointments are read on Sunday, the last thing, and in those days people sometimes learned their fate at that time. People broke down at conference in various ways, and mother's time came at conference; it must have been 1939. She had been going downhill for some time, I'm afraid. She probably worried about everything. I don't know just what was especially stressful about conference in 1939, but it precipitated in her a nervous breakdown, from which she never fully recovered. At least she was never the person she had been. They put her in the hospital at Ruston, and Daddy didn't know where to turn. Rev. Hicks gave him $5. I thought it was a pretty puny contribution considering what Dad was up against. Of course if every member of the conference had given Dad $5, it would have gone a long way toward paying the bills. Since private hospitalization seemed out of the question, Dad put her in Jackson, the State Mental Hospital. We made several visits over there to see her. I don't remember much about that period. I guess we all went on the best we could. My mother was gone.
To lose your mother at the age of 13 is certainly nothing like losing your mother at 6. I was probably able to cope fairly well. When Mother had been at Jackson for six months, we went to see her, and she seemed no better. Dad made a courageous decision. He simply put her in the car, and we went home. Then he called the hospital and told them that he had her. They were upset of course, but there was little they could do. Kentwood is 4 miles from Mississippi, and he told them she would be out of the state in 15 minutes. Actually she had not been committed, so it wasn't as serious as it might have been. Dad had her admitted at St. Vincent de Paul in New Orleans. It cost $150 per month, an astronomical sum for him in that time and with his circumstances. Actually he bought groceries on credit for quite a few months. I'm not sure he ever paid for those groceries. Anyway Mother spent another six months at the Catholic hospital, and came home.
Over the course of her life she had several other hospitalizations, none as serious as the first one. Once a psychiatrist told Dad that she would gradually get worse. I think he had no business saying such a thing. I don't believe it was necessarily true. What he meant was that he didn't know how to help her. Dad and Mother lived together for another 30 years until he died. In retrospect I have to give him credit for that. Of course many times I blamed him for her condition. I suspect that he deserved credit and blame, as most of us do for most of the things we do. The psychiatrist at de Paul's got mother able to function in the world. She passed for normal and lived a fairly normal life.
Her illness had a considerable influence on my outlook and viewpoint about life. In the first place I felt, and still feel that much of mother's problem was due to poor mental hygiene. She got hardly any exercise. She would read, by the hour, simply for escape it seems to me. She was a manic depressive, and knowing her, and myself has given me some insight into that illness or tendency. I certainly believe that I had the same tendencies. For many years I had a pronounced mood swing. Periods of great activity followed by extremely listless times. I came to see how mental and physical habits can exacerbate such a tendency. I came to see that strenuous exercise was a good antidote. Mother had insomnia for most of her life. When she became exhausted, she became panicky to the point of paranoia. On that account I have always been very sensitive about the amount of sleep I get, and very eager not to let myself get too tired. A habit of plenty of sleep and plenty of exercise has stood me in good stead through the years, and now at age 65 (88 now) I feel like I may escape the curse that afflicted my mother for most of her life. But I carry the genes in me.
Well that's how it was in the 30's.
Second Day
I talked to Dad about it and he came down to school one day, and they allowed me to transfer to Spanish. That was the end of my mechanical
career.
I enjoyed Spanish. We had Miss Serrano, a real Spanish woman, and we all got along well. Spanish became one of my major interests. I did two years of it in high school and another two years with Professor Castellano at Duke, but didn't achieve any speaking capability. Later visiting South and Central America I did learn to use it a bit in general conversation. In fact at one time I was more articulate in Spanish than in English, not so
much due to a command of the language, but rather because I experienced a different, freer persona in Spanish. Spanish is a very eloquent language. I once waded through Don Quixote and understood
that 50,000 different words appear in it. That meant an awful lot of consultation with the Spanish-English dictionary. On the other hand in
Columbia we were told that the longshoremen had a vocabulary of 60 words.
Edgar Quillen, son of a prominent member of Dad's church was a year younger than I, but in my grade at school. He and I became close. 50 years later Edgar was the only person outside my family that I had known since high school days. Mother and especially Dad often depreciated Edgar (I don't remember just what deficienies they found in him), but he was virtually my only friend, and a good one through the years. I thought they were pretty insensitive not to realize his importance to me. I suppose most or all parents seem insensitive to their children at one time or another.
The day we first arrived in New Orleans I had put on my skates and rolled uptown to Canal Street, some 38 blocks. That was a really exciting place.
I came out in the city center, looked around a bit, and rolled back to 3839 N Galvez St. I needed wheels, but a bicycle had always been out of the question economically. At that time I was getting an allowance of 30 cents per week. Dad gave me a job cleaning up the church which brought
me another 50 cents, and with these financial prospects I contracted to buy a second hand bike at 15 dollars on time. Prior to that I had saved
my money for a couple of years and bought a $3 Spaulding tennis racket, but I had little opportunity to play tennis in New Orleans.
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SECOND DECADE
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Built as Wood Lake in 1944 |
Some time in March I got word to report to the Wood Lake, a new T2 tanker being commissioned at the shipyard in Mobile. I went over and went aboard in time for the shakedown trip, which lasted a few days and happened largely in the gulf in the immediate environs of Mobile. I was just a passenger on that trip because a special crew used the radio equipment. Later two other radio operators came aboard. Since I was so young and inexperienced the Captain decided I should be the 3rd officer; it still seemed pretty impressive to me. I had a commission and uniform as an ensign in the Maritime service, very similar to that of a naval ensign.
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LARRY CLAYTON - RADIO OFFICER |
We left Liverpool just in time to escape a German air raid. This was the first of two occasions when I was near combat, but never in combat. I suppose we were near combat a few times during the voyages without necessarily knowing it.
The Merchant Marine suffered higher casualities during the war than any of the military services, one reason that draft deferment was virtually automatic. The German submarines had inflicted heavy losses on Allied shipping in the Atlantic in the previous year, but by the time I got out there the submarine menace had been brought pretty well under control. Actually a tanker had been sunk 30 miles out of Mobile shortly before I started, and some of her crew had been reassigned to our ship.
On our trips back and forth across the Atlantic we often got submarine alarms or rather possible submarine alarms. Sonar signals had suggested the possibility, perhaps set off by whales or whatnot, perhaps by by submarines. The British corvettes and American destroyer escorts constantly scurried around the convoy checking out these alarms. We had large insulated wet suits to use in case of being sunk. Drummon slept in one of these as I recall. But generally we became quite accustomed to the alarms and paid little attention to them.
Still when I got home, I was napping on the living room sofa when someone rang the doorbell, and I jumped about two feet. Strange. I had grown accustomed to the alarms, so they didn't bother me. But apparently at home I had let down my guard and released the genie out of the bottle, the residue of fear of which I was unconscious.
Allied merchant ships preserved radio silence throughout the war, so I never sent a signal until after VE day. Our work consisted of spending four hours sitting beside the radio and monitoring incoming traffic, then 8 hours off, then 4 on and 8 off as long as the ship remained at sea. The radio watch was secured in port, making us especially privileged characters since we had nothing to do unless we were at sea. Another facet of the privilege about the position was that no one knew anything about our job. We had no supervision to speak of and lived more or less in a world of our own. The only person we reported to was the Captain, and he rarely had time to pay any attention to us. During these watches I took up smoking to while away the time. I remember that I would allow myself one cigarette an hour and it would last about ten minutes. Three cigarettes would get me through a watch. I didn't stop smoking until some 13 years later.
After some days on the east coast we made a trip over to Casablanca. It had been liberated a short time before this. We heard terrible stories of westerners who went down into the medina or Arab quarter and suffered horrible mutilations. We stayed in the French part of town. We didn't stay long, but soon returned to New York. A baby flattop was sunk in that area shortly after we left.
Our third trip took us to Bristol. Once again we stayed only a night or two. Fitzpatrick, the second radio officer, was something of a lady's man. we had just cast off our lines and were heading for the sea when he came running up to the dock. We waved at him, but he had missed the ship. Later we learned that he had managed to getaboard another tanker belonging to our company.
Of course his pay stopped the minute he missed the ship. He worked in the galley of the other ship. The convoy got almost to New York when the other ship got orders to proceed to North Africa. I met him in New Orleans some years later. It had taken him over a year to get back to the states. It seemed to me that his whole personality had changed, perhaps as a result of that sobering experience. He was learning to be a printer, and now seemed a very serious sort.
We were paid well in the war zone. Base salary was about $150 a month for me, but there was a hundred percent bonus plus $5 per day in the war zone, all of which came to about $450 per month. In those days that was a princely sum, or so it seemed to me at the time. With no living expensesI saved a considerable sum of money--about $5000 over the course of the years I went to sea.
We were in Bristol about two weeks before D-day, but on D-day we were in Houston. I remember being on the main street there on the fateful day and turning into a big church. Everyone went to church that day, no special services, just go in, sit down and lift up the troops.
We went from Houston back to New York. It was time to sign on for the next overseas trip. I had been on the Wood Lake for about four months. We signed on a voyage at a time. I started to sign over, as we said, but decided I would go home for a visit. A lucky decision since the ship went from New York to the South Pacific and was out there for the next two years.
Going home from New York on the train I met a young woman who lived in Pensacola. Up to that time I had had very little experience with the opposite sex, but I suppose in my uniform I was a handsome devil. We were taken with each other and agreed to write. After a couple of letters in fact I went to Pensacola to see her, but nothing came of it.
I was a member of the Radio Officers' Union of the AF of L. When I got ready to ship out again, I went down to the union officer and met the union rep. An old sailor, but a man of some culture, I don't remember his name. He got me a berth on the Pan York. This was an old tub built about 1900. We had given it to the Panamians, but due to the war we took it back. It ran between New Orleans and ports in Panama and Columbia. It's speed was about the same as the tankers; it had once been a pretty good ship.
We almost always went first to Panama (the Atlantic side). There were two towns on the coast there: Christobal, where we usually docked and where the U.S.military reservation was located. We sometimes visited the army installations and enjoyed their good and cheap ice cream. The other town was Colon, the native place. About all we knew of it was the bars and brothels.
In Panama I took up drinking. I was still 18, and I found that in port I was on the ship by myself; everyone else was over in Colon drinking. So I went over and joined them. The most common drink was rum and coke (20 cents). I consumed many a rum and coke over the next six months; I did most of my drinking when we were in Panama. I remember a couple of drinking friends. One was a seaman who had absolutely nothing to say aboard ship. But when he went ashore he usually lasted a couple of hours, and his shipmates would bring him back all banged up (from a fight) and just about out of his mind. This man was a great checker player. I had him up in the radio shack a time or two for a game. As I say, he never had anything to say, but he knew how to talk with checkers.
Another hard drinker was the purser. He was a fairly high class man, but he was bad to drink. One day in the saloon (that's what we called the officers' dining room) in a half sober state he turned to me and said "Sparks, ou're a nice kid, but you sure are getting to be a terrible wino." Me, I thought, my Lord; I don't drink half as much as you do. But he made me do some thinking about it as a consequence of which I got off the Pan York at the end of that trip.
That trip had an eventful end. We passed through a hurricane in the gulf. The double bottom was flooded; a gigantic wave took off the lifeboat just outside of the radio shack. The Captain decided we had better break radio silence and contact the Coast Guard. So the Armed Guard Officer, who had custody of the code books, encoded a message telling them our position, course, speed, and predicament. I had been up all day of course, and I didn't intend to keep working without lawful compensation. So I asked the Captain if he wanted me to work overtime. He said no, so I went to bed.
I actually slept longer than I should have and missed the 3 A.M. BAMS (Broadcasts to Allied Merchant Ships). At 6 I got a coded message asking for further particulars, but by that time we were in the river. At New Orleans some Coast Guard brass came aboard for an inquiry. In the course of the inquiry they called me in and wanted to know where I had been between midnight and 8 A.M. “In my sack" I said. No response. Lucky I was not some kind of poor devil of an armed forces personnel.
After a brief vacation from the Pan York I was assigned to another brand new ship; this was the Sea Dolphin, a C III that had just been built in Pascagoula. These were superior types of cargo ships; they went about the same speed as the tankers.
I'm not sure which trip it was that I visited Rouen and LeHavre. Seems like it must have been the first trip of the Sea Dolphin. I was the chief operator on this ship, and I have very little recollection of the boys who worked with me. Going across the Atlantic in a large convoy we were apparently rerouted with a radio message to the south of France, but for some reason we didn't get the message and showed up in Rouen. I don't suppose it made a great difference since hundreds of ships were going to all those ports at that time.
I had gone to London from Liverpool, and now I figured I had better see Paris while I was in France, so I took a train up the Seine. It was beautiful, but I was completely out of it there. No one spoke English, and no one seemed in the least interested in being of help. That is, until I found a USO. I walked in and met a GI on leave. He showed me Paris, but I don't remember much of what transpired. The next day I went back to Rouen.
On our next trip we went from New York to Calcutta, through the straits of Gibraltar (without stopping), Port Said, the Suez Canal and the Red Sea. We stopped at Aden, a British Crown Colony for routing instructions (It now goes by the name of Yemen.) The Captain, the armed guard officer, and I went ashore about 8 A.M. It took about half an hour to finish our business. The Captain asked the Limeys where we could get a beer. They said no alcohol was served there before noon. The skipper said, "Humph, I wouldn't stay here until noon for Cleopatra herself." It was about 125 in the shade, but soon we were in the Arabian Sea with cool breezes.
We got to Calcutta 28 days out of New York. We had set a record for a freight vessel. I remember the excitement of going up the river to Calcutta. From the deck you could see villages scattered around in all directions with cultivated fields between them. Teeming with people, tremendously exotic.
At Calcutta we saw people whose only home was the street, people dying of cholera, etc. A rich man had opened his home to the Allies; it was like a museum, certainly not the kind of place you would want to live, but with European masterworks of art on the walls, big overstuffed sofas, everything associated with western affluence. We heard that he fed 150 beggars every day. We visited a temple with carvings of sexual intercourse in 50 different positions. We visited the burning ghats (?) where the dead were brought. We saw one corpse being burned; the heat caused the tendons to contract and the poor body started to rise up. The attendant grabbed a stick and beat it back down. The sacred river was right there with all sorts of dead things in it and people bathing.
Dozens of children followed us around begging. I bought a leather suitcase from a merchant on the sidewalk. He asked $100 for it, but sold it for $10. I could probably have gotten it for less, but I had gotten tired of dickering with him.
Calcutta made a powerful impression on me. I felt the powerful need of help that so many had there. I felt that I had a choice, to dedicate the rest of my life to trying to help them, or to harden my heart. It's obvious which choice I took, since I left a few days later and never went back.
We went back around the Cape of Good Hope, stopping at several ports of call in East and South Africa. During that trip and the next one we visited Zanzibar, Mombasa, Beira, Port London, Elizabeth-town, Capetown. and perhaps some others I have forgotten.
I was deeply impressed with the animal grace of some of the blacks; they moved like gazelles. And they were so black. (We don't have many blacks in our country. We have a mixed race which contains some black blood. Black in America is really an ethnic rather than a racial term, although few people realize that.)
I rented a sailboat in the bay at Beira. Mozambique was a province of Portugal. Of course it became independent like all the rest of the European colonies. Kenya and Tanyanika each became something else, and some of those graceful blacks became bloodthirsty maus-maus. Zanzibar was a bazaar, a meeting place of Asia and Africa; we westerners a microscopic minority. The ports in South Africa were middle class, clean, more like ours than anywhere else I visited in my travels. Gen Jan Smuts was in charge, a liberal. Apartheid settled upon the country suddenly and drastically a few years later.
The South African girls were very receptive. I remember one party with about 4 couples that lasted most of the night. Everyone had a lot of brandy. We all expected to go home with the girls, but by the time that time came we were too inebriated to pursue them any further. Such is life. I was young and innocent and my time..not yet.
On that or the next trip, which also involved east and south Africa, VJ day occured--the end of the war. A wild celebration that I had little to do with. As usual I lived in my own little kingdom--the chief radio operator now, with a nice two room apartment on the boat deck, far from any other quarters.
It must have been the next trip that the fog incident occured. With the war over convoys no longer sailed, it was very ship for itself. And the Atlantic was about as clogged with shipping as it has ever been, before or since. A mad rush to bring home the GI's and all their paraphernalia. Hordes of ships in the main shipping lane between the United States and the United Kingdom.
We encountered a pea soup fog. And we knew the sea was crowded with monstrous steamers going back and forth. With the cessation of hostilities it became appropriate to use radio communications. Every four hours I would send out our position, course, speed. And we were copying all the similar messages we heard. I would gauge their position with my limited navigational ability. The ones that seemed closest I would take up to the bridge. The Captain always thanked me, but didn't seem too concerned. Then I got one that really looked close: dead ahead and heading straight toward us. I took it up there, and he was interested. He gave me a message to send back to the other ship. I readily made contact and sent my message; we were changing course in order to avoid them. He acknowledged. We soon heard the ship's fog horn in the distance over on the port side. Exciting.