Author: owenwbrown

The lady’s at the school all thought I was wonderful and that made it unanimous.

It was a place of many firsts. My first hair cut, balloon, doll, toy gun, candy, and movie. It was my first town and I was afraid to cross the street with all those cars. Give me wild horses anytime!

We rented a room in what I know now was a run down hotel. My sister said that we were not able to use the bathroom, there was just one in the hotel, because a family of Mexicans had moved in.

We used a hot plate for cooking even though they were against the rules. We were evacuated one evening because someone fell asleep in bed and their cigarette caught the mattress on fire. Another first was seeing a fire truck with real firemen. The upstairs window was opened and the smoldering mattress was thrown from the upstairs room to the alley that separated the buildings.

Miriam told me many years later that Mother was very depressed about the circumstance that mom found herself in but was encouraged by how happy her baby boy seemed to be.

President Truman ordered U.S. forces to South Korea and General Douglas MacArthur was named the UN Commander in Korea. The United States sent soldiers to aid South Korea in the summer of 1950. The KoreanWar would continue until the summer of 1953. Garvis became part of that conflict. That war claimed 54,246 deaths. Get even with those that help you. Those that love you touch you even in their absence.

The National Council of Churches was formed. We went to church and Sunday School every Sunday. We stayed there long enough for mother to learn what she needed to know about fixing hair. Then we returned to Hamburg. Some Puerto Rican nationalists tried to assassinate President Truman. We are not going to be special to everyone, but we can be special to someone.

What a great day. A new place and many adventures were surely waiting for me in this place. That night I played so hard and was so thirsty that I drank several swallows of semi cool cooking grease. I was so sick that death would have been welcomed. The low point of my life. Everything got better from that moment on.

I discovered a soon to be friend next door. Glen Riles and I spent many hours playing together. He was about five years older than me but very patient with his new neighbor. He taught me how to catch a baseball. To have a friend you must be a friend. Self image just might be the single most important factor in performance.

Years later I purchased my first glove. It was a four fingered glove but I could catch anything that was hit to the outfield.

It snowed that winter but didn’t do that again for another ten years. We lived in a duplex with a bathroom that we shared with just one other person. It happened to be the woman that owned the house but what the heck, everybody loves a little redheaded boy. Well, most of the time.

Mrs Young was a music teacher that had outlived her husband. I am not sure which one was the luckiest! I thought her yard was a jungle and even though it wasn’t very big I never did explore all of the undergrowth during the four years that we lived there.

My brother joined the Air Force shortly after that. I worried so much about him. He didn’t take his rifle with him and that just compounded the problem. Mother said he would be all right without it. As it turned out she was correct but I just didn’t feel right about him fighting the Koreans without that twenty-two. “What if we don’t win” I would ask her and she would say, “Then they will come over here and rule this country”.

When I thought about that at night, sleep was hard to come by. “Communists were infiltrating the State Department”, Senator Joseph McCarthy warned us. The fear was compounded by the occupation of Tibet by the Chinese communist forces. We even passed laws that restricted communists and communist parties in the U.S. I always thought a party was a good thing.

Fear makes the wolf bigger. If you plant a seed the harvest will come.

Some mornings I would wake up and there my brother would be, sound asleep on the cot in the kitchen-bedroom. I wasn’t allowed to wake him. When I returned home from school he would be gone. Little brother was the last thing on his mind.

The principal mode of transportation was our own two feet. We walked everywhere until, of course, I received my bike. When Mother and I would walk home from church on Sunday night, I would play a game with her that I called Trust. I would close my eyes and hold her hand. It was her assignment to get me home without letting me fall down the steps or tripping in a hole.

When we got home she would always ask me what I wanted for supper. It was a treat to have warm corn bread and butter- milk. It was Mother’s favorite also. There were times when we would substitute the buttermilk for turnip greens. Life really was uncomplicated.

Miriam was a senior in high school and I was in kindergarten. Mrs. Vera Mae Nolley Barham was my first teacher and friend. In reality, it probably wasn’t an actual certified kindergarten, but it was the closest thing we had to it. Miriam would get me at noon and we would eat in the high school cafeteria. I think my sister was very popular and a very good student. Mother was very proud of her. You have to give your approval for someone to make you feel inferior.

There were two hotels in town. One was named The Elite. John Spivy has his office on that corner now. The other hotel was named The Eureka. Jack Carpenter opened his Furniture Supply store in that building. I became friends with a blind man that lived in the hotel across the street from mother’s beauty shop.

I do not remember the blind man’s name but I do remember how he would take his glass eyes out and show them to me. I tried with little success to take my eyes out the same way. He told me that he had lost his sight when the explosives he was using to blow fish out of water went off in his face.

That year I was the groom in a Tom Thumb wedding and Emily Kay Wells was the bride. Miriam and Emily Kay’s sister were good friends in high school. I made friends wherever I went in Hamburg. Good friends are hard to find, hard to leave, but never forgotten.

The adult business men would come by the beauty shop where mother worked and take me to coffee break. Bill Law and Billy Veazey were two of my special coffee break friends. It was a great place to grow up. Their encouragement is a gift that keeps on giving.

Billy Veazey had a grocery store on the northern corner of the same block that mother’s beauty shop was located. His morning break would begin with him and Bill Law picking me up at mother’s shop and taking me to Golden’s cafe for coffee. I didn’t think much about two grown men taking that much interest in me because I was sure that I was great company for them. Charles Spencer later purchased that store from Mr. Veazey. End of coffee breaks!

The Veazey family has a special place in my heart. Ann, Billy’s wife, was one of my Sunday School directors in junior high. Ann had a son, Bob Hall, by an earlier marriage. He delivered groceries for his step father. He used this big bicycle with an extremely large basket on the front for the deliveries.

Mr. Veazey told him not to let me ride with him when he delivered groceries because he thought it wasn’t safe. Bob took me anyway. I was told never to let his dad know that he was taking me. Bob was an important part of my community experience. What a person says can be forgotten, the things the did will pass away, but how they made you feel will linger forever.

The Presidency has been limited to two terms according the passage of the 22nd Amendment by Congress.

Dr. Barnes, one of three physician that I knew in Hamburg (White, Cammack, and Barnes), stepped out of his office as I was running by. He knew me well because he had been giving me shots in the butt for years.

Every time I had a cold mother would send me to Dr. Barnes and he would say, “lay down here and pull your pants down.” That was when he would pull out that long needle and insert it into the container of Penicillin that he got out of the, I called it an ice box, but it really was a refrigerator.

Then when I would ask him the question that I knew he would lie about, “Dr. Barns, is this going to hurt?” he would say, “it is only going to sting a little.”

But on this particular day, Dr. Barnes had something to ask me. As it turned out he had a rabbit that he wanted to give me, if mother would allow it. I said there would be no problem but he insisted that I go and ask and if it was alright then I could come to his house later an pick up my new friend.

For some reason mother allowed me to accept that rabbit. It was a Dutch breed that was black with white chest and blazed face, we became fast friends. Uncle Robert made Peter a cage. People that I didn’t know would come to town and ask if I was the kid that had the rabbit that followed me on a leash? They always wanted to see my black and white rabbit. Imagination is not limited, knowledge is.

Dad Chapman was the barber next door to mother’s shop and he had the most beautiful wife. Mr. Chapman was many years older than her but there was no doubt in my mind that they were made for each other. I often went to their house for lunch. She taught me many things about politeness and correct use of my spoon, fork, and napkin.

When Dad Chapman died it was very sad. I was allowed to visit him in his home while he was sick. I am thankful for him and his family. They say to touch another is saying you care and trust them.

When his family moved away Maxie Ann Wilcoxin moved in. Her parents had divorced and Maxie and her mother moved into the Chapman house. A Chevy dealership was located there several years later. Maxie Ann was tall and had long pig tails. She could hold her own with anyone and we treated her with the respect that was due.

CBS transmitted the first color broadcast on the newly introduced color television. I am glad that I wasn’t aware that any of this was going on. It was often so hot that mother and I would make a pallet and sleep on the screened in front porch. We had a radio, don’t know where it came from, that I often listen to as we tried to beat the heat.

As I lay there in the dark I would look into that radio and imagine that the voices I heard were people inside that plastic box. There was even a light that showed me which tube their bodies were living in. Amos and Andy was a favorite of mine. They taught us that a sense of humor is something that one can’t afford to lose. What ever happened to Kingfish? Life was so uncomplicated.

My sister Miriam moved to Little Rock to attend college and become a nurse. That was every young woman’s dream. Norman Vincent Peale’s book, The Power of Positive Thinking, was one of the few books that my mother owned.

Garvis left a 1949 Ford for Mother to take care of while he was away. I remember very little about the car, but I do remember Mother driving it. We made trips to the country to visit Grandma and Grandpa.

Mother always had to stop on the way home and hide in the bushes while she relieved herself. I asked her why she didn’t use the privy that I used while at Uncle Ernest’s house. I know now that she could not stand going into that toilet and was willing to take the chance of stepping on a snake while moving through the weeds. On one such trip, she was so frightened by a large snake that fear took the place of relief.

One trip from the old home place found us using another back road to reach Uncle Claud’s house. Mother was traveling so fast around a curve that she moved closer to the center of the gravel road than was safe. As often happens, another person was committing the same sin, and the result placed us within inches of disaster. The two cars passed so close that the piece of chrome trim on the door was pulled off. A hairs difference either way would have guaranteed sure death or a clean get away.

Mother didn’t want me to talk about the near disaster. As I was setting in the front seat one afternoon, the side door flew open and I remember thinking that I needed to jump from the safety of my seat to the sure pain of the road. I have no idea why I didn’t sail out that door, but I didn’t. I have remembered that urge with wonder all my life.

Garvis eventually took back his car and we became walkers again. I know that it was hard for Mother to walk to and from work every day, but I will always believe that it helped to keep her young. I will never forget that August 2, when Mother turned fifty. I asked her how old she was and her response, “Half a hundred.” Made her seem ancient.

The Sears and Roebuck Catalogue was a great source of entertainment. I remember looking through the pages that contained the many things that I couldn’t have and wishing for most of them.

Most of all, I wished for a father. My suggestion to mother was for her to order one for me. I didn’t understand why I should be the only person in my world that didn’t have one. Years later Mother told me why she had made the decision not to remarry. There was lots of unreturned interest from men that Aunt Estelle would send by for Mother’s approval. She explained that there was a chance that a male in the family might abuse her children and she didn’t want that.

Since Garvis and Miriam were grown and out of the house I guess I was her major concern. One of the many ways that mother sacrificed herself for her children. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is taking action in the face of fear.

First grade was a sign that I was growing up. I was proud to tell everyone that asked that I was in the first grade. Mrs Myers was my teacher. She is the one I wanted and she is the one I got. I guess that mother made every effort to get me the teacher that I desired but I only suspect that to be the case.

I was no longer the top dog. There were boys on that playground that could kick my butt and I knew it.

No one knew their way around town like I did, I still ruled there. I didn’t know it then but the two classes of first graders would stay close together for the next twelve years. Of course we added a few and lost a few but mostly the class started together and stayed together.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was our President. His Vice President, Richard Nixon, was the first to be broadcast on television.

I saw a television for the first time at Aunt Estelle’s house. I went home with them and there it was, a little box with a round screen that showed a target in the center. It really did look like a target. That was the first time that I had ever been away from home. My Aunt said, “Harold why don’t you come home with us” and I said “yes I will”. Mother gave me a lecture when I go home the next day. Television was only broadcasting for about twelve hours a week and no one was working at ten o’clock at night. It looked like a waste of time to me.

We spent Christmas night with Aunt Frances and Uncle Alton. It must have been a lonely time for Mother. Garvis was gone and if Miriam was home that Christmas I don’t remember it. They always made a point of visiting us. I especially remember Uncle Alton going out with me and shooting firecrackers. On one of his Christmas visits, we did our ritual of shooting small firecrackers. He held a lighted cigarette and I put the fuse next to the heat. When it sparked, I would throw my bomb into the road.

Neither of us saw the car approaching until it was upon us. He told me to wait, but the fuse was already lit. I took him at his word and the firecracker took my finger. I do not know which person hurt the most. Uncle Alton never stopped telling me how sorry he was. He fell asleep with a lit cigarette and died in the fire December 10, 1976. His body was found next to the front door. He had evidently been overcome by the smoke.

Jerry Jacks solidified my desire to be an artist. I was the only first grader that got the loan of his paper because as he told others, “Harold is going to be an artist someday”. Jerry and I were great friends until his mother, a school teacher, moved to another town for a teaching position there. Mrs Jacks always had a big jar of marbles that she collected from the older boys when they played keepers at school. Sometimes she shared the contraband with us.

I remember setting outside Jerry’s house, on the sidewalk, waiting for my pants to dry. When I left his house I needed to pee so bad but I would not ask his mother if I could use the bathroom. It was more that a six year old could hold. It took three hours for my pants to dry enough for me to go unnoticed through town. Failure is the first step to success. Someone tore that house down after they moved to Monticello.

The polio vaccine was developed by Dr. Jonas Salk and the first contraceptive pill was more than an idea. This was a time of prosperity. For $1,200 you could purchase a Microwave oven the size of a refrigerator. We were part of the baby boom and a building boom. The Bible was published in its Revised Standard Version. It will keep preachers busy for years.

I discovered something interesting that went on at night in my home town. There was a man the would spend his late evenings sweeping the streets. He had this large broom and every night he would take that broom and a large barrel and clean the streets around the town square. Everyone called him Conk but only the adults called him that in a polite way.

Conger Knight, Jr. was a tall man that didn’t talk with a lot of clarity. His speech impediment was more than physical, my cousin Leland told me that Conger was retarded. Conk died while I was away at college. The streets never looked the same after he left. Years later they purchased a vehicle that didn’t do the job half as well. I suspect that there are very few, if any, that remember Conk and what he did. How silent the world would be if only the best birds sang.

Grandpa Walker died November 24, 1953. Even when death is expected, it is unexpected. He was 94 years old. Someone came to our house long after we went to bed. There was a loud knock on our door and some whispering between mother and some person standing in the shadows. I don’t know who it was but I suppose it was Mr. Jones from the funeral home.

Mother put me in the back of Garvis ’49 Ford and she drove the eighteen miles of gravel road to Uncle Ernest’s house. I had spent many years at that place but that night was very freighting. Mother didn’t want me to go inside so she insisted that I stay in the car and sleep. Sleep was not possible. Every demon that had ever existed was out that night and passing before the car windows. Bravery and fear walk together. I did survive.

Second grade was even better than first. I was no longer a little kid. Second grade just sounded more mature. Mrs. Miller was my choice as a teacher. She often sent me outside because I talked too much in class. She also understood my ability to move around town and often sent me on trips to the high school to pick up and deliver things for her. That would never work today.

Mrs. Miller knew Garvis and that gave me an advantage. I was always looking for an advantage. ChuckYeager, a test pilot for the U.S. Air Force, set a speed record in a rocket plane. My brother owns the record for four mile curve on the south side of town. He earned that record in his ‘49 Ford. I think his hood flew off but he kept her on the road! Glory isn’t gained without difficulty.

Garvis would let me drive his car on the back roads of Ashley county. One of those roads was where the “Dirt Dobber” lived. This man had made his house out of mud, you know, like the insect, a dirt dobber! I recall the first time my cousins showed me his house. I just imagined this person liv- ing inside with a set of wings and six legs. He may have looked like that for all I know because I do not remember ever seeing him. That mud house stood for years. I guess the Dirt Dobber finally died and the house eventually was knocked down. It doesn’t stand today and I have trouble identifying the the exact location where it stood.

Most all the roads in Ashley County were back roads. As I set on my lofty perch, my big brothers lap, no obstacle was to great for me. The game warden, Mr. Bird, was one of the conquests of this young driver. My brother took great delight in telling others about the day I passed Mr. Bird. It’s no wonder that I turned out to be the driver I am. It took five years but my brother finally helped me catch that bird. Remember, the moment you commit to a goal, achievement is assured.

I had been trying to save money for a bicycle. The thirty dollars it would take was almost impossible to save. I swept the sidewalk in front of the beauty shop and barber ship, raked yards almost anything to make a dime. I decided that my best chance of getting that bike was for Santa Clause to bring it to me for Christmas. I wrote a letter to Santa and evidently it made it to the local newspaper.

When I woke up Christmas morning and saw that bicycle I knew without a doubt that there really was a Santa Clause. Bill Law spoke to mother before Christmas and told her to get that bicycle for me. She told him that she just couldn’t afford it. His response was, “Take as long as nec- essary to pay it off.” He wanted me to have that bicycle and would have given it to me on his own but knew that mother would never agree to that. Mother finally agreed to payments and Mr. Law deliverd that bike to the house after I had gone to sleep. This second grader could just barely reach the peddles. That bike and I grew up together. I road it until it couldn’t go any more.

Grandma Walker came to stay with each of her four daughters for about two weeks each after Grandpa Walker died. What a special person she was. Grandpa told her that she would join him in about two years. The timing turned out to be very close.

My responsibility was to return home after school and stay with her. Like she really needed me! As I think about it now I know that it was just to prevent loneliness. I had a baby bed that I slept in, until my feet were hanging well outside the rails, and mother slept with grandmother in the larger bed. I had lots of questions for grandma and she had lots of answers. She never judged me for all the confessions I made and always had a story for me when I asked. Grandma stayed a short time with each daughter and rotated with each of their families over the next two years.

Over the last two years I had developed a friendship with Tommy Evans. We did lots of things together. His mother was sure that I would never amount to anything so there was never any spending the night or things like that. Forget and smile, don’t remember and be sad.

Mrs. Evans was the first woman that I had ever seen that smoked cigarettes. This was the year that cigarette smoking was clearly linked to lung cancer. (Sally Evans died from cancer, that went to her brain, the third week in September 1999. She had been sick for a long time.)

We rode our bicycles all over that town. Well, I did more riding than Tommy because his parents didn’t want him out of their sight. Tommy and his brother Jim often told me that I was lucky because I didn’t have a father to tell me what to do. (Jim died from a drug overdose that he took the day that he learned of his mother’s death. He lingered in the hospital until the 23 of September before death came to take him.) Maybe I didn’t get into a lot of trouble because I was responsible for me and that was pressure enough. Mother always said, “Just promise me that you will be a good boy”. I was as good as I could be for the most part.

War time research had helped develop our science and technology. The structure of DNA was determined by Francis Crick and James Watson. New industries had brought us plastics, electronics, and television.

Tommy had a new television. I saw Howdy Doody in 1948 for the first time at his house. Black and white was the thing, color was several years away from my home town. As far as I knew Tommy’s family was the first to have a TV set in Hamburg.

Mother allowed me to make occasional visits to the Noble’s for my favorite television show, I Love Lucy. It was on the air in 1951. As a youngster the Noble’s welcomed me into their home. My instructions were to accept no invitation to supper. Man, my mother could be cruel sometimes. I always graciously declined their invitation but they often brought me a piece of home made pie just the same. It was always fun when their grand children came to visit in the summer. I remember one of their grand daughters having long black hair. I believe her name was Taresia. Some years later her family move to Hamburg and she got her hair cut. What a mistake!

This would be my last year at this school building. The first through third grades used the same building but had a different playground area. That prevented the big boys from picking on the little ones. This was the year of the bullies. L.W. Ward, and Jerry Bozeman were the terror of the yard. Jerry was a leader and L.W. was a follower. I later learned that Jerry’s father was a brute and L.W. really was a decent sort of guy. Love not given is a life wasted.

Jerry left town before he finished fourth grade but not before some of the bigger boys at the high school taught him a lesson about picking fights. L.W. followed the rest of us to our senior year but dropped out of school with one semester left. I never heard from or about him again. Success is based on backbone not wishbone.

Mrs Pickens, my third grade teacher, was the prettiest teacher in the school but “pretty is as pretty does” so they say. She had her favorites and I was not one of them. Her husband taught at the high school but I do not remember what he taught. I studied hard and made good grades but I often got in trouble on the play ground.

The threat of my generation was developing as we entered 1954. Vietnam was preparing to divide into North and South. Segregation based on race in schools was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. I had seen the school that the negro children had in my home town and it was, outwardly, as well built as the white children’s school. I asked my mother where the negro children went when they finished grade school and she told me a bus took them to another town. Their band marched in the fair parade, there was none more exciting.

Dr. Jonas Salk’s vaccine of polio kept us all in line. We had to have the vaccine to go to school. I would have gladly dropped out right then. We went to the county court house three different times, standing in long lines each time. Roy Sanders was not one of the luck children. He developed polio and was confined to a red wagon throughout our grade school years.

I was given permission to take in the local Saturday night movie. It became a ritual as long as the theater survived. Fifteen cents would get you in and ten cents would purchase a coke and candy bar from the local grocery store. There was a balcony for the negro movie buffs. I never thought it was fair for the owners to refuse me admittance to the upstairs. We view things not as they are, but as we are.

The man that was the shine boy at the barber shop taught me how to polish shoes. I did not know then that we were not equal. I am sure that some of the things that I thought were generous on his part was fear of the white man. What is said and what is heard isn’t always the same thing.

I think about how many times I called Mrs.Young’s house cleaner Nigger Mattie. I thought Nigger was her first name. She was a wonderful woman. I would often ride with Mrs. Young when she took Mattie home and that was only if it was raining or storming. She lived on a dirt street in a part of town that was just full of shacks. The ditches were wide and deep and I think she had a wooden board, we called them planks, for a bridge. A brown paper bag was the only umbrella that any of us knew about. A reputation is what others think of you, but character is what you really are.

A kidney had been successfully transplanted. People were introduced to Billy Graham. Under God was added to the Pledge of Allegiance. Comic books were selling at a rate of twenty million copies a month. Mr. Spencer would run us out of his grocery store if he found us reading his comic books. He knew that we had no intention of purchasing one. On the rare occasions when I did purchase one of his nickel comics I had to hide it so that mother wouldn’t found out how I had waisted my lunch money. Sports Illustrated made its appearance but none of us were interested. William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies. It became one of my favorites.

Aunt Myrtle would appear out of the blue during the summer. Her school in Wilmont was just like my school. Even teachers got some of the summer off. She would come by mother’s beauty shop and ask if I wanted to go swimming with her grand daughters. I wanted to go swimming but I wasn’t crazy about being seen with two girls. Dutchie was the oldest and Kathie was the youngest. They turned out to be lots of fun. Your beliefs may change, but the truth does not. Sometimes Aunt Myrtle would pick up Sandy and the four of us would have a great time in the Crossett swimming pool. The best present you can give yourself is a friend.