The Rural Southerner
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.
Dad had his most successful pastorate at Calhoun. The people may have been a bit higher type than previous congregations, and they appreciated him. But unfortunately there were others harder to please, particularly the church at Downsville, a more rural community and more "redneck". Huey Long was in his heyday or at least Longism, and there was no middle ground; you were either for him or against him. If you were not for him, his zealous partisans would "get you" one way or another. They "got" Dad because he just wasn't "for" Long enough. Naturally he tried to maintain a middle posture, but he was never really noted for political posturing; in fact he was much too outspoken to be a good Methodist preacher; he might have made a good plain speaking Quaker. One other noteworthy thing happened before we were forced to leave Calhoun. Daddy's preaching was very compelling. I was 9, and one day when my Sunday School teacher and her husband went down to join the church, I joined them. I was received on profession of faith just like anyone else would have been. Not a lot was made of it at home.
That summer Margaret and I went to the "model school" at Tech. I discovered some wonderful books, although I never again found exactly what I had found so fascinating (I think it was some sort of fantasy). My class built a log cabin during the summer. I was busily planing the bark off one of the pine logs when I broke free of the bark and pulled the draw knife into my shin. That was the end of my carpentry career. For the rest of the summer I sat and read. That barked shin also took a long, long time to heal, after several visits to the doctor.
Later that summer I went through Mother's Freshman French book (French was her minor at Tech). That was my first and last exposure to French.
9. September found us at Clay, a hamlet a few miles south of Ruston. We had a large front yard--an empty field actually, where preachers in the past perhaps had grown corn. Dad was no farmer, and the main thing we did with that field was to put some tin cups buried at ground level here and there and use it for a golf course. One of the primary crises of my life occurred when I was sent to school. Clay was too small to have a high school. It had the first 4 grades. I was in the 4th grade, and I wanted to attend it there, but it was ordained that I must go on the bus another 5 miles south to Ansley. Ansley was an old sawmill town with real roughnecks, and they gave me a hard time. The children were not intellectually oriented, and they didn't appreciate or affirm anyone who was. I pleased my teachers and suffered the contempt and opprobrium of my peers. This event caused me to turn inward, and I became quite an introvert. In fact I remained an introvert until I had my awakening religious experience at the age of 30. I have always considered that experience of having to go to Ansley as one of the great misfortunes of my life. The worst thing about it was it was completely unnecessary. The rational of my being sent there in the 4th grade was that I would have to go there anyway in the 5th grade, so I might as well get used to it. Actually I attended the 5th grade in Baton Rouge and Denham Springs. An entirely new chapter.
Mother and Dad graduated that year. In passing I want to note some of the effect their college experiences had on my impressionable psyche. Perhaps most significantly they instilled in me a healthy contempt for the academic world. Margaret and I heard about their teachers. They called two of them Whiskers and Windbag. Several years later when I was older I remember visiting the campus with Dad and going to see Windbag. Dad said he had tried again to stick a pin in Windbag. Mother got one C. It was in Chemistry. Ironically I practically majored in Chemistry when my time came and found it duck soup (but later a Duke I found my only C to be in Organic Chemistry). She got her degree in English and later her master's in English.
I think I must have absorbed her command of English by osmosis because year's later when I journeyed up to Durham to enter Duke, I took the English placement exam and was told to skip Freshman grammar. Other than Chemistry Mother must have made A's in everything. One of her courses was Journalism with Mr. Somebody. I enrolled in his class only 8 years later although at the time it seemed like a generation. I'm sure he knew who my parents were although he never mentioned it. At the end of my semester with Mr. Somebody he informed me I had made a B. I said that's great. The quzzical look on his face suggested to me that he thought I would be all broken up because he failed to give me an A. Life is funny. I guess people are funnier, and maybe professors funniest. I have a whole bagful of funny stories about professors. Of course I always wanted to be one. Dad majored in History. He always loved history and acquired quite a library of history books, many of which still grace our shelves.
Dad had a real problem with Dr. Magee, one of his major professors. He had contempt for Whiskers and Windbag, but he had active hostility against Magee. Magee was an atheist. Magee gave a true false quiz every morning. Because students had apparently caused him problems by claiming their F's were T's and vice versa, he had taken up black and green as the appropriate symbols. Dad claimed that Magee used to stand on a table in the back of the room while he gave his questions. The purpose was to prevent the students from cheating. I suppose Magee probably suffered more cheating on his True/False (Black/Green) quizzes than any other professor in the school. How easy it was for example to alter the angle of your pencil 30 degrees. I duly found myself in Magee's class some 8 years later. It transpired that Magee had been an idealistic young man and chose CO in the first World War. In those days CO's were not treated very well. Magee had apparently become embittered, lost his faith, and wore his cynicism on his sleeve so prominently as to make himself perhaps the primary butt of the campus. Sad. I felt no hostility toward him. I liked him and identified with him. I suppose my Dad must have felt that Magee threatened his religious faith, which made him defensive and hostile.
Mr. Bond was president of Tech, and my parents felt real admiration for him. I never had the pleasure of his acquaintance. That's about it for Tech for now. Well maybe one other mini-story. We went to a few football games, although this was several years before football became practically obsessional to me. I don't remember the games, the opponents or the outcome. I just remember one scene. Little Eddie Wojecki was the trainer, a tiny man beside the football giants. But more than once we saw him put one of the (injured) giants on his shoulder and go running off the field. They don't grow men like that nowadays.
9) They graduated and we moved on to the next place. I have already told about the L.S.U. fellowships. That transpired shortly after graduation, and the upshot was I didn't attend the 5th grade at Ansley, but in Baton Rouge. Dad must have gone back to Ansley on weekends to preach, until conference (as I recall conference was in November in those days). From Sept-Nov we lived on 3rd Street very close to down town Baton Rouge. Across the street was a large park or playground, and there I took up touch football. It immediately became a consuming passion. We even did some football at school. The 5th grade is big enough to have real teams, and the instructor was apparently trying to build a team. Of course I was about the littlest, scrawny specimen on the field. One day we all lined up to catch passes. Everybody dropped theirs but me. The "coach" derisively pointed out to the others that "that little fellow" was the only one who had caught their pass. In the course of time I became a really outstanding glue fingered end (for my size of course), but that happened in later years.
Across the street in the park was a large American Legion building where they conducted Bingo every Thursday night. In our kitchen we could hear the repeated admonition "ARE YOU READYYYYY...?", and that became one of the memorable phrases and hoary old jokes of the Clayton clan. (I'm afraid I've annoyed Ellie with it more than a few times.)
10. Conference came in November, and Dad was assigned to Denham Springs. It had been part of the old Walker circuit, so he was coming back to people he had served 10 years before. It was possibly his best appointment to that point. For the first time we had plumbing (although we didn't get hot water until we moved back to New Orleans 4 years later). For me the school wasn't quite as bad as Ansley had been, but I never was anything but an outsider.
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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.
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