CHAPTER 5 - THE TRANSITION

In January I signed up for the Air Force delayed enlistment program. There was a long waiting list because of the war in Vietnam and I was hoping that my name would come up for the Air Force before I was drafted. I asked Debbie to marry me one night while we were waiting for our hamburgers to be brought out to my car at the Krystal on Gallatin road. Nobody can accuse me of being the romantic type. I said something like " I think we should get married". She said yes and we planned to marry right after graduation in June.

Just about this time Gus Fowler's mom died of cancer. I think that it was the late summer or Fall of 1967 that she found out that she had it. She had surgery but the doctors weren't able to get it all and she deteriorated very rapidly. Mrs. Fowler was always very nice to me and she was only thirty-six years old when she died. Thirty-six seemed so much older to me back then than it does today. Oh what I would give to be that age now. We would also find out about this time that granddaddy had cancer. His cancer was terminal also. He was in a lot of pain in the months leading up to his death and would suffer a great deal.

Granddaddy died in July 1968 just after Debbie and I married. In the two or three years before he died we became close. After I got my car I would take him to the grocery store and to the cemetery every now and then to visit my mother and grandmother's grave at Woodlawn. Granddaddy would talk to them as if they could hear him. I didn't enjoy going there but he seemed to draw comfort from it. His hearing problem caused him to be isolated from people. For years I never said more than a few words to him and if I did I had to shout in his ear. As I got older I became curious about our family history and what he was like as a young man. I would lean close to his ear and ask him questions. After a while we were talking about everything from politics, sports, family history, and any other subject under the sun. I began to see granddaddy in a whole new light.

In January I quit H.G. Hill and for a short while I worked at the Big Star grocery store on Riverside Drive where my brother-in-law Larry was working in the produce department. He got me the job there. From there I went to work for Baird - Ward printing company. I didn't want to leave H.G. Hill but they cut my hours back and I was not happy at Big Star. At first Baird-Ward wouldn't hire me. Every day after school I would drive to the personnel office and ask to see the personnel manager. His secretary would tell me to have a seat and I always sat where the manager could see me sitting in the waiting room. When my turn would come he would call me in and I would ask if there were any openings. He would say no and I would thank him and leave. Each day I would return to his office and this went on for at least a couple of weeks or so. Finally, one day I was sitting in the waiting room and he stood up and walked out to where I was sitting. He said " You really want a job, don't you"? I said "yes sir I do" and he hired me .

Baird-Ward was a hard and dirty job. Harder than anything I had done to that point. My job title was jogger and I don't know why the job was named that. The presses printed such magazines as Field and Stream, Leatherneck, Humpty Dumpty, and telephone books. At the end of my shift I was usually covered head to toe in ink. When the press was running I had to tie magazine inserts together in a heavy bundle that were held together with ropes and then we would stack them on wooden pallets. Periodically the press would go down for a changeover. Then I would have to help clean out the old ink so the pressmen could set up the new type, along with threading the new paper through the press. I ruined my car seats driving home in my ink stained clothes.

I was working there the night that Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis. A few white guys were shouting things like " I hope the son of a bitch is dead" and other racist remarks. They were saying these things in front of our black employees. We only had a few blacks that worked the presses. Most worked as tow motor drivers or on the janitorial staff. Rioting broke out all over the country and in Memphis and Nashville. The Guard was activated and for several days Nashville was under a dusk to dawn curfew. The Grand Ole Opry was cancelled for the first time in its history. The only people allowed on the streets were first responders and people like myself who were going to and from our jobs. I worked 2nd shift at Plant # 2 on Powell Avenue and I could see the National Guard headquarters across the road. It was a bee hive of activity and looked like an armed camp. Armed soldiers were everywhere and military vehicles were going to and fro.

One night during the curfew I was driving home from work down 8th Avenue South. As I neared the downtown area the streets were very dark and deserted and Nashville looked like a ghost town. My car was the only one in sight. Suddenly in the distance I saw what at first looked like a mob standing in the middle of the road. I could have made a u-turn but I just picked up speed instead with the intention of battering my way through if I had to. I floored the accelerator and to my horror I realized that what I thought was a mob was actually a large number of National Guard, State Troopers, and Nashville police that were manning a road block. By the time I realized my mistake I was moving pretty fast. My tires squealed as I slammed on my brakes and an irate police officer came up to my window and asked "Where's the fire boy"? I told him that I was on my way home from work and I didn't realize who they were. Checking my license he asked where I worked. As I was telling him a car with two male Blacks pulled up behind me. They also worked at Baird-Ward and appeared to be as frightened as I was. After they stopped the car lurched forward. I think the driver might have accidentally hit the gas pedal instead of the brake. A motorcycle cop slammed his shotgun down on the trunk of the car the police jerked these guys out and threw them up against their car. The officer that was talking to me said that the area wasn't safe and I needed to get home and that is what I did.

Just two months later I was at work the night that Robert Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. This was unreal to me. I couldn't believe that two Kennedy's had been shot in the space of five years. On my way home from work the DJ on WMAK kept playing the news feed of the sounds of chaos surrounding the assassination and subduing Sirhan Sirhan. The DJ kept saying over and over that we were a sick and violent society. I resented this because I wasn't sick and violent and I knew that most Americans weren't either. This was my conservatism rearing it's head before I even knew what a conservative was or what you might call just plain common sense.

In May of 1968 Debbie and I made plans to go to the prom. I took her out on West End to have her hair done at a beauty shop while I waited in the car and took a nap. Things haven't changed much in all our years of marriage. She shops and I take a nap. I rented a tuxedo and arrived at the appointed time. This was my first prom or anything like a school dance that I had ever been to. I couldn't dance and I wasn't about to start because I was just too self conscious. When it came to the usual things associated with the high school experience I wasn't into it. I only went to the prom because of Debbie nor did I buy a senior ring or join any clubs. I only bought one yearbook and that was my senior year. Luckily Debbie bought her sophomore, junior and senior yearbooks. I appreciate that today but I wasn't looking ahead to the future. Debbie belonged to a number of clubs and was more into the social life of high school but I am not a joiner or a follower because I march to a different drummer.

We had to be home at 12 PM. Deb's mom allowed us two hours beyond our curfew of 10:00 P.M. We had a formal picture taken and then we hung around for a while and left. We didn't dance but I wish I had and there have been many occasions since that I have wanted to dance with her but I just couldn't work up the courage. We left and drove out Murfreesboro road for a while and finally drove home. We weren't party goers and we didn't drink so there wasn't a whole lot to do. The nature of our dates in these last few months before graduation were different because my car gave us more mobility and privacy. We would go on double dates with her friend Carolyn or we would go by ourselves to the Montague or Colonial Drive-in. The Montague was in Inglewood and the Colonial was in Madison. We went to see the movie To Sir With love, starring Sidney Poitier, but to this day I can't tell you much about the movie because we made out the whole time. There are no deep dark secrets to reveal here because Debbie and I remained virgins until we married.

We were both very naive but I did talk her into going out to Shelby Park one night so we could be alone. Kids would go there and park near the railroad trestle to make out but Debbie was afraid to go there from the start. She finally agreed to go but didn't want to be near anyone so we drove up to a narrow one way road above the lake and parked. After a while car lights lit up the inside of my car and I noticed a police car pulling up behind us. They shined the spotlight on us and Debbie was mortified. She didn't want her mother finding out what happened. The police officer was understanding and advised me that it was okay to park as long as I kept my parking lights on. I was willing to stay but our first and last experience on lovers lane was over. We graduated on June 6, 1968 and I really can't remember much about that day. All I know is that I felt liberated. I was poor as a church mouse but I had my girl. She was all that mattered to me at that moment.