HAPPY DAYS - CHAPTER 1

To start off with I call this chapter happy days because to me, as far as my childhood goes, they were happy days. I felt secure in the love that was shown to me by my parents. A boy could not have had better parents. They taught me values that are instilled in me to this day. I feel blessed to have had a secure and happy upbringing during the most formative years of my life. There are no utopias, however. Signs of what was to come were there but I was too young and naive to see them. Yet I can't complain much about the first nine or ten years of my life.

I was born at Baptist Hospital in Nashville Tennessee at 11:35 AM, Tuesday, February 28, 1950. Weighing in at eight pounds and six ounces. My parents were living at 225 & 1/2 Berry Street in East Nashville. With the exception of the three years and nine months that I spent on active duty in the Air Force, and seven unfortunate months living in Florida, I have been a lifelong resident of Nashville and Murfreesboro Tennessee. Shortly after I was born we moved to Brookvale Terrace near Knob Road. It was just off of White Bridge Road in West Nashville. The only thing that I can remember about Brookvale Terrace is playing with my toy cars under the back yard clothes line. Also, the day that my sister Donna let our dog out and it bit a black woman walking down our street. I can still see the blood running down her leg. Donna told me that she got a hard whipping that day. What I don't remember is the day that I pulled a hot iron off into my play pen severely burning my left hand and forearm. The third degree burns left scars that are still visible to this day. Another thing that I don't remember is the blizzard of 51. Whenever the subject of snow or bad winter weather would come up for many years there was always an old timer that would talk about the "Great Blizzard" of 1951. Every snow was measured against that experience.

I was almost a year old during the blizzard which started out as a huge ice storm. Then it snowed eight inches on top of the ice. There have been many eight inch snow falls since then but none have shut the city down like the blizzard of 51. The weight of the ice snapped power lines. Sixteen thousand homes and 80,000 residents were without electricity. Over 2,000 telephones were out of service. Roof's collapsed and thousand's of tree's had to be cleared from roads. No businesses opened for 3 day's. Airline's cancelled flights and trains were 2 days behind schedule. The storm began on January 29th, and ended on February 1st. Nashville went into a deep freeze until the thaw began on February 5th.

People tried to return to normal activity all on the same day which clogged every road leading into the city causing a massive traffic jam. It is still ranked as the worst traffic jam in Nashville history. Lines of traffic averaged 5 miles in length. This was well before the interstates. The snow and ice didn't completely melt until February 12. I heard stories of neighbors helping neighbors through the worst days of the blizzard. Fortunately we were one of the few homes that didn't lose our power and many people stayed with us during the storm. Daddy's business partner, Mr. Kelly and his family, stayed with us while their electricity was out. My sister Carolyn told me that I was very sick and running a high fever. Many doctor's did house calls then but my mother couldn't get a doctor to venture out in the storm. She located a young pediatrician from New York just setting up practice in Nashville named Dr. Koenig. He would be my pediatrician for many years but he was always known for his bluntness. Because of Dr. Koenig, however; I am not afraid of shots. If he gave me a shot I never felt it because he was so good at it. When he arrived at our front door the first words out of his mouth was "Okay, where is the little bastard"?

 About 1954 we moved a block over to Brookside Court Annex, Apartment 3. Over the years White Bridge Road has been widened. The duplex that made up Apartments 1 and 2, and was next the road, has been moved across the street from our old apartment. Now our duplex is right next to White Bridge Road. Brookside Court was, and is, a dead end street. It sits in the shadow of today's WSMV television tower on Knob Hill. The road goes uphill in front of a string of duplexes on the left. A sidewalk runs the length of the duplexes in back. At that time a vacant field was behind the duplexes. I was four when we moved there and nine when we left. These few years were some of the happiest of my life. We were secure in the love of our parents and we lived a "Leave It To Beaver" kind of life. My parents, however; didn't walk around the house in their best clothes all the time and they didn't sleep in twin beds like the Cleavers did.

During warm weather we were always outside. At night while we and our friends played together my parents talked to the neighbors. This was before most people had air conditioning and it was cooler outside than in the house. We rode tricycles, wagons, and bikes up and down the sidewalk out back, or in the street, in front of our house. There were plenty of kids to play with. I still remember the night in October 1957 when we stood in our yard and watched the Soviet Sputnik satellite fly through the night sky. If I got into trouble my mother or father usually knew about it before I got home because my parents knew most of the neighbors. I was constantly getting into trouble and sometimes this caused friction between them. A man who lived next door to us whipped me because of something I had done and my mother was livid. She was the type of person that everybody loved and she had a sweet demeanor. Because of that she hated confrontation. On the other hand my Aunt Didi, who was my mother's sister, was feisty and combative. On one occasion I thought Didi and another woman were going to fight at our back door over some mischief I had caused. My mischievousness almost got me killed or seriously hurt on a few occasions.

White Bridge Road was a very busy road. We lived very close to it and one day when I was about four years old I somehow crossed it without being run over by a car, I made my way to a convenience store where I walked right up to a ice cream freezer and helped myself to a Popsicle. Then I walked to a nearby bus stop where a city bus had stopped to pick up passengers. I told the bus driver that I wanted to go to town. My mother and neighbors were frantically searching for me. By the time she found me I am sure the bus driver was not happy and well behind schedule. On another occasion I pulled a chair up to the linen closet in the hallway and there on the top shelf I found a loaded semi-automatic pistol. It was a German semi-automatic that my father brought home from the service in World War II. He guarded German POW's and I guess this is where he got it. Daddy walked toward me as I pointed the gun at him. I said "I'm going to shoot you daddy". Luckily mother saw what was happening from the bedroom behind me and grabbed the gun out of my hands.

Daddy worked until late at night. After work he liked to watch the late movie or the Tonight Show starring Jack Paar sitting with my mom on the couch. We had a old refrigerator that was no longer working sitting in their bedroom. While they were watching television one night I walked into their bedroom and climbed into the refrigerator allowing the door to shut behind me. Many children have died of suffocation in these old refrigerators over the years because they couldn't be opened from the inside. I panicked immediately when the door shut because it was pitch black inside. When I realized that I couldn't get out I started screaming and crying. I was kicking and beating on the inside. By the grace of God my parents were able to hear me. They ran to my aid and let me out. It is a wonder that my brother Mark and I weren't electrocuted because we would pee into the electric wall heaters. What possessed us to do this I don't know. At that age I was old enough to know better but we did it and the smell was horrible. We were pretty wild kids. Relatives would hide their valuables whenever they saw us coming.