CHAPTER 1 - A GROWING FAMILY IN THE AGE OF MALAISE

After my discharge from the Air Force and our return to Nashville I was ready to adjust to civilian life again. I was accepted at M.T.S.U. before I was discharged and my plan was to go to school full time and work full time. It wasn't a good plan but for some reason I tend to make my life unnecessarily hard for myself. I also didn't have a clue what I wanted to do with the rest of my life at that time. History was my favorite subject and the only path that I could settle on was to be a history teacher. I chose history as my major while minoring in sociology and political science. It was early May and we moved in with Debbie's parents until we could find a place of our own. The family was always crazy about Robbie and everybody made over Misty since she was now the baby. Even my brother-in-law Hulon was crazy about her which was unusual because he never seemed to like kids that much.

 I tried to find a job through the Tennessee Department of Employment Security and the VA rep there sent me to several places but I couldn't find anything that I liked. I was being somewhat picky because whatever job I took had to line up with my hours at school. After enrolling in the summer quarter I was going to school three days a week. I had never been without a job for very long and after a couple of weeks without employment prospects I was getting nervous. One day Baird-Ward printing company called to offer me my old job back. I didn't know it at the time but this was required by law. My options weren't good at this point and I reluctantly accepted their offer. Baird-Ward was the last place that I wanted to work right then. I was assigned to plant number one this time which was directly across the street from 100 Oaks Mall on Powell Avenue. A Wal-Mart store is located there today. I hated this job and resolved to find a better one as soon as I could. Luckily, I was only there about eight months.

 Not long after going back to work I started hunting Civil War relics. It had always been my fantasy to buy a WW2 mine detector when I was a teenager but I never did. One morning I was reading an article in the Nashville Tennessean about a local man who had bought a metal detector and on his first time out he found over fifty minie balls and other Civil War relics in his back yard. He lived in a subdivision on a hill overlooking Murfreesboro road near I-24. Until this article I didn't know they even made metal detectors for relic hunters. I found a dealer in the yellow pages and he sold Whites brand metal detectors. My first metal detector cost me about 100 dollars. Interstate 65 was under construction near the intersection of Thompson Lane and Franklin road. This was near the battle of Nashville monument and was part of the Confederate center on the first day of the battle of Nashville, December 15, 1864. The Confederates had been here for two weeks prior to the battle and the construction area was a short walk from where I worked. I worked the 2nd shift and one night just before dark I hunted for relics on my thirty minute lunch break. Almost immediately I found a .69 caliber drop Minie ball in nearly perfect condition. It was unique because it had very little oxidation on it. Every Minie ball that I have found since was white with oxidation after being in the ground for so many years. Minie balls were soft lead with a silver color when new. I can't describe the excitement I felt at that moment and every moment since when I find something that I know to be from the Civil War.

 Hulon had been collecting Indian relics for years and had a great collection of arrowheads. I had tried to interest him in Civil War relic hunting but he told me that he only wanted to hunt Indian relics. One weekend, however; I talked him into going with me to my spot near the battle monument. By this time I had found a number of bullets and Union eagle buttons. Hulon had a keen eye for finding things on the ground. One time we were driving down a street and he told me to pull over because he had spotted money lying in the street. On this day I was using my detector while Hulon was walking behind me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him bend over and pick something up off of the ground. It was a Union eagle button. From that moment on Hulon was hooked. He bought a metal detector and we hunted together until his death in 1984. Hulon had more patience than I did and was actually better at metal detecting than I was. He found some things that I never found like cannon balls, a Union belt buckle, and bayonets.

 On a very hot summer day I took Debbie, her brother Ronnie and his fiance Diane, who was also his 2nd cousin, to Stones River battlefield to hunt for Civil War relics. All we found was junk and we were all covered in ticks. I thought that I had removed them all of them but a few days later my head started itching. There was a bump on my head with a tick embedded in it. I removed the tick with tweezers and thought no more about it. A few days later I woke up with a dull headache and my eyes hurt every time I moved them and for about a week I was sick as a dog. My head was pounding and I developed a low grade fever. Debbie took me to the emergency room and the doctors gave me several prescriptions. The medicine helped the symptoms but then I started throwing up and couldn't stop. This lasted for another week and Debbie took me back to the emergency room. The doctor gave me suppositories that finally stopped the nausea but I was still feeling like crap. I went to my family doctor for a physical and he sent me to have tests done on my gall bladder which turned up nothing. I finally returned to normal after about three weeks but this was the sickest that I had ever been in my life and the longest. Not until years later did I connect that tick bite to my illness. I read that ticks carry very serious diseases as well as Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and there is no doubt in my mind that I had some form of tick fever. The article said that diseases caused by ticks are hard to diagnose unless you tell the doctor that you were exposed to ticks.

 That summer I found a map of the battle of Liberty Gap near Bell Buckle. Hulon and I drove to the battlefield site which was very rural at the time near the small town of Bell Buckle. There was a farm house next to Liberty Pike and we stopped to ask the owner if we could hunt on his property. The owner was a nice old man in his eighties named Webb Lynch. Every time that we came by he was always very hospitable and we usually visited with him before we set out to hunt. It wasn't long before he we had an open invitation to hunt on his property any time that we wanted. He told us that we didn't even have to ask first. Over a period of about eight years we found many Civil War and WW2 relics there. The property not only had been a Civil War battlefield but the WW2 Tennessee maneuvers were held on this property. Tennessee was a good training ground for the European theater of war because the terrain was very similar. Between Hulon and myself we found M-1 blank rounds, a mess kit with the name Pvt. Dabbs, October 1941 etched into it. A whistle and a U.S. Army Signal Corps ring. I also found about a third of my Civil War collection there and a Union breast plate was my best find along with half of a Confederate ID tag.

  After my discharge  my sister Donna told us about a new subdivision being built near Antioch called Fair Oaks. Debbie's family wanted us to live in East Nashville so we would be close to them. There were just too many bad memories for me in east Nashville, however; and south Nashville was the only area of town that I was not familiar with. I had grown up in west, north and east Nashville and wanted an area of town that didn't remind me of something bad. We found a ranch style house for 18,950 dollars which would cost over 121,000 dollars today. It had three bedrooms and one and a half baths. The house was 1,100 square feet with a carport. As always when it comes to something like a house or car I am looking for the cheapest payments and I don't really think ahead. At that time I could have had pretty much anything I wanted because my credit was very good. Something with a garage and big enough to grow into. I was scared that I couldn't afford the higher payment so I settled with less. We signed the papers but we weren't able to move in until around September.  I didn't have put anything down but I paid 2,000 dollars down on the house and bought furniture for every room out of my inheritance. I inherited about 8,000 dollars from my dad's estate when I turned twenty-one. 

 After my parents died daddy's debts were paid off before any money could be distributed to his survivors. He didn't leave a will and all of his assets were placed in probate. After everything was settled each one of us received 2,500 dollars a piece. Carolyn, and Faye were his children by his first marriage and there was Mark and myself. Donna was left out because Daddy never adopted her. This is why it is important to have a will and designate who you want to raise your children in the event of your death if you have children. A trust fund was set up for Mark and myself because we were minor children and Didi was responsible for this trust fund since she was our guardian. Unknown to us she was putting our social security checks into our bank accounts each month and she was raising us on her salary at the telephone company. This is why I inherited 5,500 more dollars than I started out with. Since Mark was younger when they died he received around 10,000 dollars when he turned 21. Eight thousand dollars had a lot more value in 1971 than it has today. It would be over 51,000 in todays dollars. When I became Mark's guardian, just before leaving for Colorado, a social security lawyer came to the house on Boscobel Street. He was there to explain what was expected of me as a guardian. I asked him how I was supposed to spend the money. He told me to spend it on anything that I wanted to as long as Mark was properly cared for. By this time I had found out that Didi had been saving our money for us and I asked him if I should do the same thing for Mark. He was incredulous because he had never heard of anything like that before and said that Didi was a special kind of person. I will always be grateful to her for unselfishly caring for us. 

  We moved into our new house in the Fall of 1972 and were the second family to move in on the block. Right next door was Jerry James and his wife Gwynn. They had a boy and girl named Marty and Christy. Marty was Robbie's age and Christy was Misty's age. A few years ago I learned that Marty has since passed away. We became close friends with the James. Our house was on a cul de sac which made it safer for the kids to play. It would not take long for the rest of the block to fill up with neighbors. I was driving to Murfreesboro three days a week in order to attend classes at MTSU. Besides my job not paying enough I hated it so I applied at Oscar-Mayer meat Co. and was hired. My timing was perfect because they were looking for veterans to hire. I was making great money there but it was a miserable job. We had to work in huge freezers while wearing heavy parka's. One freezer was so cold that we were only allowed to stay in there fifteen minutes at a time. I worked weird hours because one shift was from 6:30 P.M. until 2:30 A.M. The other was from 8:30 P.M. until 4:30 A.M. These shifts were killing me because I was getting very little sleep. There were nights when I arrived in the parking lot and I couldn't remember how I got there and that was scary. I was nodding off at the wheel and it was a miracle that I didn't kill myself.

 Jerry James asked me if I wanted a job one day where he worked at Colonial Baking Company. It was a hard decision because both jobs paid about the same and the health benefits were similar. At least I would be warm and the hours might be better. I took the job in March of 1973 and would end up working there for nine years. Between my G.I. education benefits and my salary I was making good money. The Vietnam Era G.I. Bill was great and much better than the later Montgomery G.I. Bill that I qualified for as a retiree from the Air National Guard. My credit record at that time was perfect but I fell into the financial trap that many young people are susceptible to. We signed up for credit cards and started financing everything. When the money was pouring in we weren't investing, saving money or paying off our bills. After a while we were overextended and soon the collection agencies were calling.  As a result the decade of the 1970's was a lot tougher for us financially than it should have been. Let's call it paying the "stupid tax" as Dave Ramsey might say.

 I was blessed with a beautiful young family but I was stretched to the max working long hours and going to school. There was little time left over for them and when I was with them I was wore out. In 1973 Debbie was late on her period and made an appointment with her gynecologist, Dr. Crafton. He had an office on Gallatin road in east Nashville. After a pregnancy test he told her that she wasn't pregnant and gave her medicine to start her period. Unfortunately she was pregnant and the medicine caused her to miscarry. The loss of an otherwise healthy baby hit us both very hard. It is bad enough to lose a baby due to natural circumstances but when it happens because of medical malpractice it is even harder to take. Because of this we tried to have another baby and soon she was pregnant with Jon. I look forward to meeting not only our child that we lost in heaven one day but my sibling that died along with my mother in 1963.