write a book about my family

It will be a dark comedy and a best seller.

He and my mother both played guitar and sang songs. It is there…. from my earliest memories, my parents playing and singing. My dad was in the Air Force for 14 years. He intended to stay 20 years and get a retirement. That was all it took back then. The problem was the Vietnam War. I remember as a kid him being over there and us watching the evening news and watching reports of any where up to 50 American casualties in a day of fighting. Americans generally didn’t understand the Vietnam War. I don;t think we understand it even today. My Dad was a man’s man. He went…. 3 times. Then he came back and was told his squadron was being deployed on a permanent change of station to Thailand and that he needed to get prepared for an unaccompanied long tour. He had just come back from a year when he got this message. His reenlistment came due and he decided to get out instead of being separated from his family for an indefinite period up to 3 years. Dependents generally weren’t allowed to go to the Vietnam theater. I understand some few of the officers wives did get to go to Thailand to some locations. I don’t think any of them went to Taklii or Udorn, Thailand, where my dad’s squadron went. Any way as an enlisted man my dad’s family couldn’t possibly have gone. He got out. He went back over there for another year as a civilian, in 1968. I’m not sure where he went, but I know it was an Air Base in Thailand. He was working as a contractor for Philco Ford and his earnings were 4 times what he would have been paid as a military man. He did it for the money. I think he also did it because part of his reason for getting out of the military was self preservation and he may have felt he had something to prove or something. Any way, between going as a military guy and a civilian, he wrote a song about it. I sing it sometimes. It is a good song from a guy who was there. It should be published somehow.

He wound up working at Worthing Bags in Nashville, Tn. It was while working on that job he met my mom. He was one of the workers who worked for my mom’s dad Oival, who was a supervisor at Worthing Bags. My grandmother, my grandfather, my uncle, my father all worked there when they were all younger than I am now… That was around 1949. My dad was already an auto mechanic tinkerer. Daddy had an old Buick. It broke down by my mom’s house and Daddy came to my mom’s home. She flirted with him and asked him to ask her out. When he did, she stood him up and went out with another boy. Daddy asked her out again and she waited for him and he didn’t show up. Then he called her up and told her he’d show up if she would go. She went. They went to Mount Pleasant, in the country by Nashville. When Daddy brought her home he told her dad they wanted to get married. Her dad gave his approval. They dated from Oct ‘49 until Feb ‘50 and then drove to Iuka Mississippi and got married. Henry went with them and signed for my dad to get married because my dad was only 18. Henry signed with an X. Mama had already had a baby and given it up for adpotion. She called him Steven, but I don’t know if that was his official name, since he was adopted at birth. Daddy went in the Air Force in 1952 and got out in 1966. He learned a lot about mechanics in the Air Force. He was always in flightline maintenance. He worked on generators and air conditioners and tugs and all the stuff they called AGE (Aerospace Ground Equipment). He went to Sand Island, population 7, in the South Pacific. He was stationed at Johnston Island and was sent on a remote from there.

As I mentioned, Henry lived in Muscle Shoals, but he was from Southern middle Tennessee. I think near a little community Hoenwhal, Tn. That is where he is buried. I remember just my dad and I took a road trip from Alabama, where we lived, to his grave there in that community, when I was a little kid. At that ttrip, my dad drove a Mercury ParkLane. One of those cars with a roll down back glass that was slanted in toward the cockpit at the bottom. My dad didn’t want to keep rolling the window up and down when I wanted him to do it… he told me dust would get in the car to shut me up. It was an air conditioned car I think….. anyway… I think that is where Henry had lived. They took him there and buried him in a Church graveyard. Henry had relatives there that would take him in, for a while at a time, I think. There was this old man named Clyde who had a huge lump behind one of his ears who attended a funeral I went to as a kid. It may have been my Great Grandmother’s funeral. I think I went to it as a young kid… I just have this one vague memory to go on.

He worked on the dam. He was a crewman. There were 18000 men brought in. He was one of them. They were provided housing both by the government and in the community. Henry may have been taken in by a family, and that was the undoing of the family. He got in good with the lady of the house…her husband was one of the big wheels on the dam… and oops… They got caught and the big wheel lost his woman to my granddad …. That left Henry and my Great-Grandmother. Her name was Eliza. She was a renamed Cherokee Indian, full blooded. That was pretty common in those days. She took a Christian name and married a “white man.” She was slender and beautiful… My Granddad had two kids by her that I know nothing about, except that they were boys. I don’t even know their last name. By the time they had the two kids Eliza’s daughter by her previous relationship, which was a formal marriage, unlike her relationship with my Grandfather, got to be 13 years old…... well, good ole granddad, he took up with that girl…. now it was in the 1920’s so maybe this didn’t have the shock value then that it has now….. well, granddad married her….. and they had 5 kids…. my dad is one of those kids, the second youngest…. Through all this, I don’t think my granddad worked…. he didn’t smoke cigarettes, but he didn’t work either…. when he had money he was drunk all the time. When he didn’t he was just a bum, off whoever would give him a bed. They were on relief, and relief wasn’t enough for 5 kids, so my granddad did the only reasonable thing (to him). He took care of himself… He had an Old Age pension from the government. This was before Social Security. My Grandmother divorced him (or left him, I don’t really know) but she took another man his name was Slim… he was the grandfather I knew… He was a good man. He was very, very slim and he had a hunched back, but he was a sturdy, consistent, talented worker in wood… he was a cabinet maker by trade and he was very good at it…... Still, Slim had issues, too. I remember riding with him one time to the orphanage in Nashville, where two of his kids were living…. He had abandoned two kids at some point in his past…. He talked about working for the Railroad and he talked about making moonshine liquor. He and my Grandmother had one child…. Melvin. He was a halfwit, according to my mom, but she was definitely severely biased in the things she said about all of my father’s family…he seemed pretty witty to me, but then I was young… I remember one night out in Kansas, watching Melvin, crazy drunk, running along a roadway and falling and tumbling down a long grassy bank.. It looked like fun to me. one of Daddy’s real brothers had gotten married and his first son was a retarded kid, that was much less capable than Melvin… His name was Donny… My Grandmother raised Donny, although she had done poorly with raising her first set of kids, she came around, later, I guess…. or she may have been doing the absolute best she could do at all times and just could not provide…. I really shouldn’t venture a guess and I certainly should not seek to judge someone who mostly lived a full life before I ever came on the scene. My grandmother did take in ironing for other families. I know that. She probably di dthe best she could. My mother told us she took care of Donny because he got a Social Security check every month that she wanted…. I don’t think that’s true…Anyway, Melvin was Slim and my Grandmothers only child.. I remember when he got to adulthood he refused to work…. My dad was pretty much homeless, bouncing from relative to relative….. and relatives didn’t really want too much to admit they were relatives….. My dad’s best gig, as a kid, was when his oldest brother got a milk route. He let my dad ride with him on the route and do all the leg work in exchange for all he cared to consume off the truck… I suppose that was probably butter, buttermilk, and milk…. maybe cheese…. anyway, my dad had to scrabble to survive and he was much abused and despised for even existing….. he had this habit during my entire childhood that every evening before he went to bed he would crumble a piece of cornbread up into a glass of buttermilk and drink it down. I have always thought that was gross. He absolutely lovedit. He was an absolute saint of a dad…. he knew what not to do… it had all been done to him…. he knew he hadn’t liked it… he always worked two jobs, traded in used cars and boats. He was a mechanical genius… he could fix anything…. He went in the Air Force when he was 18 and that made the difference….. he now had three hots and a cot and a job and an education of sorts…. rules were in place, and even harsh rules were OK with him…..he just naturally made it through everything…. right up until he got cancer… He couldn’t beat that… Dammit! I wish he could have… I’d like to talk to him for a little while, today…. It breaks my heart, still.. He died at 47. I’m 54…........

The Granddaddy I always knew growing up wasn’t my “real” one. My real Grandfather, my father’s father was Henry. He came to Muscle Shoals as part of a government works project to build the Wilson Dam… I don’t know where he came from before that. He was an old man when he got to Muscle Shoals. His mother and father both lived in Nashville. They were known to me only as Big Ma and Big Pa…. they were both very large people. Both tall and fairly heavy, but not fat, they were “meaty” and strong. I saw a picture of them once I think. They weren;t friendly with my grandfather, their son… I believe he was what was known as a “Rounder.” He rarely ever worked. He free loaded off whoever would take him in, relative wise.

My 1955 Chevy experience. I bought one for $15 and another for $20. He brought a wrecked car home as well. They were all 2 door cars. One was a Delray, One was a 210 post and one was a Belair. One had a good engine, an original 265 cubic inch v8 with no oil filter. It was an automatic powerglide. It was the Delray. it was a 2 door post. I built that car from pieces from the others. I chose the best seats, put the three speed manual in it out of the 210, I had to mount the clutch swivel to the frame. It was bolt on. The threaded holes were already in the automatic’s frame. I remember thinking how odd that was. The frames were universal, I guess. I remember when I pulled the powerglide transmission out of the car I got myself trapped underneath it while I was under the car. It fell on me. I couldn’t roll it off me because the transmission tunnel wall stopped it. I yelled for help but no one heard me. I managed to squeeze out from underneath it after 15 or 20 minutes of pure panic, struggling. It was a stupid thing to have done. I could have been really injured or killed. I was 15. I made it. The car body had been painted with green house paint and then with blue house paint. There was a furniture refinisher business in the neighborhood. I worked for the old man who ran the business, stripping furniture with this toxic stuff he called “eater.” I got some of that from him. I whole pint of it, and used it on the paint on that car. I scraped the whole car down to metal with a putty knife. Then I painted it with that red oxide spray paint. That was as finished as I ever got the car. It looked pretty good that way to me. Even the best fenders I had were rusted out a little above the headlights. Almost all the ‘55s rusted out there. It was before Detroit got smart with the steel alloying. I screened and bondo’ed the fenders I put on the car. They looked very good. You couldn’t really tell they were repaired. It was my first experience with bondo, far from my last. My dad used bondo to patch a hole in the bottom corner of the car battery in that very car. The batteries in ‘55s are fire wall mounts and I stopped fast without it being tied down and it rolled off. He fixed it. It worked as long as I hsd the car, about 6 months after I “finished.” I actually did a half way job. I almost traded it for a dark green ‘56 chevy 2 door with a 396, 4 speed, but my dad wouldn’t let me do it because the ‘6 had bullet holes in the fender. I found a ‘65 mustang fastback 2+2 with a 289 4 speed for $800. I sold my ‘5 for $400 and got the mustang. I was in heaven. I would venture to say if I had that ‘55 back, just like I sold it right now, I could get many thousands of dollars for it. Same with the mustang. 2nd gear started grinding, and my dad wouldn’t help me fix it properly. I took it out once and he helped me replace the synchro and it didn’t gring for a while, but it started back within just several hundred miles…. certainly due to too many incomplete speedshifts while racing. I raceda ‘55 that had a 283 4 speed in it through a 1/4 mile and that mustang couldn’t handle it. I sold it for $400. Again, if I had that car today…. thousands. I got a ‘65 dodge dart with the 318. It was an automatic. It had the nice factory wheels, too. I paid and sold that car for $650. ..... again, blah, blah, blah…. Then I got a ‘65 Mercury Montclair, 390 automatic with bucket seats…... I really loved that car. It was Black with a red interior…... Got married at 19 and traded it for a ‘69 LTD wagon with the 428 cobrajet engine…. pass anything but a gas station :) Next I started on British sportscars. I had 2 Austin Healey Sprites and a Sunbeam Alpine. The Alpine was the best of those three. I rebuilt the engine in one of the Sprites… It never did run right. It did get 50 mpg. It would go almost exactly 300 miles on a tank of gas. It had a 6 gallon tank.

He was a top mechanic and he worked very hard. He was absolutely a solid human being and he had a knack for making both money and friends. People trusted him instantly. He became a favorite with a loan officer at a small loan company in Huntsville. The man gave my father first chance at buying every car he repossessed. He repossessed a lot of cars. My father began buying all he could. He got many, many good cars. All of the ones he bought had problems that he would have to resolve before they were salable, so he would get them very cheaply. He would repair them and sell them off by putting them in our front yard with a price painted on the windshield using white shoe polish. My mother would help him by cleaning the cars. He would always be working out deals for engines, transmissions, body parts, and whatever else the cars would need. I was considered a very lucky boy to have a father who was always working through cars. He would buy cars and let me drive them for a while and then just sell them off. I went to work with him all through the summer months and be his gofor so he could be more productive at work. He paid me a few dollars. Really, I always had money in my posket. He made sure of it. I bartered for and bought my own car when I was 13. It was an old Peugeot with a straight shift on the column. It would never go faster than 45 MPH. My parents let me drive it by myself all over the country roads out where we lived. It had no tag and I had no license. They warned me not to get on the highway. I would ride back and forth up and down all the roads I could get on without using the highway. There were several miles of roads. When I was 14 I had a friend who had a 1955 Chevy. He was around 21. He drove it through the swimming pool parking lot at the motel where I swam during the summer. We swam costing us 75 cents per child each day. We got to swim several days each week during the summer. Any way, I told my dad about that and he asked if I wanted to build my own ‘55 chevy. I told him I did. He began collecting junk ‘55’s for me.

Irene finally decided to get away from her husband OD. He had been so bad for so long he finally wore her down. She filed for divorce after 15 years of marriage. Divorce was an almost unheard of thing in pre WW II America. She was extremely brave and things had gotten extremely bad to precipitate the action. In addition to everything else, with OD being such a violent man, her very life was being risked by taking the action. She had to get the police to restrain and remove him. OD wound up dying in an insane asylum, strapped to a bed, blinded, probably by bad moonshine liquor. After the divorce his mother and father took him in to their house for a while. Irene continued her job at Worthing Bags, a cotton mill in Nashville, Tennessee. She worked in the spinning room. She had a house on North 1st St in Nashville. She never drove a car. She took the bus system whereever she went. She worked until she had earned a retirement from the cotton mill. It amounted to $33 per month. She raised Earl. He was an excellent student and a good football player. He was captain of the defense for Maplewood High School. He became a computer programmer after taking a job as a bank teller. Programming was a new art. He was good at it. He ultimately became a bank VP, but it only lasted a little while. I remember when we lived in Nahville he was at the very peak of his career. He bought a house in a good suburb of Nashville for $19000. I remembr my mother and father commenting he would never be able to afford the house over the long term. It was a huge house up on a hill in a select location, surrounded by others like it. He had arrived. Of course he started drinking and his wife began taking diet pills. They had 4 kids in 5 years. When the oldest was 5 and the latest arrival not yet walking, Earl and Linda both passed out from substance abuse or at least simply fell asleep, partying in their living room. One of them had dropped a cigarette on the carpet. The house burned. They were both killed. The 5 year old saved his siblings lives and his own by opening his window and screaming for help. The milkman on his route heard them and saved the boys. The house was a total loss. Earl had insurance and each of the boys got an equal share. They were adopted by Linda’s family, two to Linda’s parents and two to Linda’s brother and wife. I don’t know if our little nuclear family were part of the placement process for the boys or not. We had just moved away from Nashville and having a tough time ourselves, or rather, I mean my father was having a tough time providing for us. He waas working as a mechanic at a full service gas station in Huntsville, Alabama, near Redstone Arsenal. He was attempting to find a job on the Army Post. He ultimately made a career as an auto mechanic.

He was the original issue of the tough James Dean played. He was always working an angle. He was a lady’s man. He was the first to use and get addicted to heroin. He got addicted to heroin when he was a medic in the Navy. He served in the Navy from 1951 until 1955. He spent a two prison sentences in Nashville Prison. He served a prison sentence in Kilby Prison in Alabama. He was a night life only type guy when he was out. He had flashy looks, a scar across his cheek from a knife fight. He hung out with the rougher element in North Nashville. He worked construction scams on the road. He especially worked Catholic Churches. He was always in possession of lots of cash. He would leave Nashville for months at a time, always coming back with loads of cash. He brought a beautiful redhead home with him named Faye. She was also a heroin addict. They had two kids. The kids didn’t fare well. One married and got away at 16. The other, a boy, wound up being simple and had to be taken care of during his childhood by human services. He got involved in the drug scene in Nashville and worked in a basement industry that exists there, growing marijuana in rental houses. It is, or was, a big illegal activity there. my mother says his mental condition was due to child neglect and abuse. It is really a sad story throughout. Lloyd was killed at 29 by Faye. She shot him 7 times as he stood in his bathroom shaving. Faye never had any charges filed against her. The equivalent to the DEA in Nashville considered it a drug related death and refused to investigate. That Faye shot him is only a story I heard as a child. I can’t know the voracity of the story. After that happened OD, Lloyd’s brother, began a relationship with Faye. They lived together for a few years. it was all so sick. Heroin addicts all.