THE HAPPY DAYS - CHAPTER 6

In September 1950 WSM, Channel 4, became the first television station in Nashville. In 1956 construction began on a new television tower just off of Charlotte Ave. at Dakota & 38th Ave. This was to replace the old 578 ft. tower at Compton & 14th Ave. South where the Metro Police Communications center is today. Upon completion the tower would be 1379 ft. tall. Everyday if I looked to the southeast I could see the WSM tower slowly rising higher and higher toward the sky. On February 4, 1957, twenty four days before my 7th birthday our 1st grade class went on a field trip to the Children's Theater. Which was located near the old Children's Museum in downtown Nashville. We didn't return from the field trip until late in the afternoon. I immediately realized that the tower was missing from the horizon as our bus pulled into the parking lot at Martha Vaught Elementary school. When I got home I asked my mother why I couldn't see the tower anymore. She told me that the tower had collapsed killing 4 construction workers. They were Donald Kinnan, 25 of Tucson Arizona. George Presler 33 of Union City Tn. Ray Maxwell 33 of Jacksonville Florida and Robert Kirshner 30 of California Missouri. A fifth man Harold Kirshner 29 was treated for shock because he had just climbed down off the tower minutes before it collapsed. The men fell 700 feet to their death.

The tower was made out of a new steel alloy that was supposedly 3 times stronger than regular steel. There was little wind that day and it was unknown why the tower fell. Donald Kinnan was interviewed by the Tennessean a few day's before the accident and he said "I would not drive a race car. Too dangerous. My jobs safe because I know what I'm doing. Besides more people get killed stepping off curbs than in my line of work". The tower fell at 600ft. in a residential neighborhood. and a 300ft section skidded down a hill stopping just short of a house. A piece crashed through a house on Lookout Dr. The only casualty in the neighborhood was a dog that was crushed. Television viewer's watching a soap opera called Modern Romances could hear workers screaming for help. Viewers heard an excited voice say "Oh my God, send help. The tower has just fallen down, help quick". A few days after the collapse I remember my mother taking us to see the crumpled tower. It was just a heap of twisted metal for hundreds of feet. Beginning later in the year WSM bought 100 acres on a a 680 foot hill behind our house called Knob Hill. At that time we were outside the city limits but WSM wanted enough area that if the tower fell again it would not endanger anyone. The original tower cost 100,000 dollars. The new tower on Knob Hill cost 600,000 and it went into service on March 25,1959. This was just before we bought our house in Charlotte Park at 6222 Henry Ford Dr. WSM eventually settled a lawsuit valued at 1,000,000 dollars for the families of the four construction workers. In today's dollars that was a lot of money. The first picture is the test pattern that WSM viewers saw after the station signed off the air at night and before it came on in the morning.

Mother and daddy met each other in the late 1940's after daddy was discharged from the army in 1947. Both were married and divorced before they met each other at Walgreen's at 5th and Arcade. Daddy learned to fill prescriptions while working at Walgreen's and mother was a LPN working for Dr. Martin who was our family doctor when I was growing up. He remained my doctor until I married and joined the Air Force. Daddy married a pretty red head named Mamie in 1939 when he was 19 and working at Walgreen's. My oldest sister Carolyn was born in 1940 and Faye came along in 1943. Daddy was drafted into the army in 1944. He got caught up in the draft when they were drafting older family men with children because of attrition and volunteerism fell off. My wife Debbie's daddy was in the same situation. He had two children like my father and was nearly thirty years old when he was drafted in 1944. Daddy worked in supply during the war and later became an M.P. During the war he worked in prisoner of war camps across the South maintaining Italian and German prisoners captured primarily in North Africa. He was always proud of the fact that he guarded many of Rommel's men. As far as I know he was inducted at Camp Forrest in Tullahoma, which was also a P.O.W. camp, and he went through basic training at Fort McPherson Georgia. Daddy was typical of most men who served in World War II. Out of sixteen million men who served in the war only three million ever saw combat. Most of them, like my father, served on the home front or in rear areas overseas. As far as I can tell daddy served primarily in Florida and after the war he was stationed for awhile at Ft. Benjamin Harrison Indiana. I believe he was also stationed at Ft. Knox Kentucky. He was discharged in 1947.

Daddy, was a womanizer until he met my mother. There was an awkward situation when daddy had an affair as a teenager with an older woman named Bertha. It was my understanding that she was warned to stay away from him by family members. As to who was to blame for daddy's divorce from Mamie I don't know. I heard that daddy cheated on Mamie and I have also heard that she cheated on him. My Aunt Didi told me that daddy once walked into his house as one of Mamie's boyfriends was climbing out of a back window. My sister Carolyn believes that Mamie only started cheating after she caught daddy cheating on her. A few years ago I ran across some love letters written by an Army-Air Force pilot that was flying what we in the Air Force called C-47 Goonie Birds over the "Hump" to supply American Forces fighting in the far eastern theater of China and Burma. The Himalayan Mountains were called the "Hump" by these pilots. I have several love letters written to Mamie from Lt. David Cramer. The following letter was written on August 7, 1945, the day after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

Yunnan Province, China

August 7, 1945

My Darling Mamie Lee,

We had some mail in today darling, but I didn't have any from you. I was rather disappointed, but I guess I can't expect mail from you everyday, I imagine your much too busy to write everyday. I can't complain too much, because I have received three letters from you in the past five days. How have you been, sweetheart? I hope the children and you are just fine. I'm feeling very well myself, only I'm very lonesome for you. That was a very sweet letter I had from you yesterday. You were saying how you would like me to take you in my arms, and love you, I dream of such things like that all the time, honey. I hope and pray with all my heart, that someday your wish may come true, because you see, it is also my wish. I try not to think of how all this might turn out, I keep telling myself it will all turn out alright, and that someday you will be mine, we will at least hope for the best.

Well honey, it doesn't look as though I'll be at this base too much longer. There were a couple of majors down here this afternoon from headquarters and they are going to cut the personnel of this base down to about fifty enlisted men and five officers. I had a talk with one of the majors and he said I have a very good chance of getting back to flying the hump. I hope so, that will cut my time over here down to one year. Just think honey I would only have about seven more months to go. It's just about time to go to supper, darling, so I'll close now with love and kisses to you. Take care of yourself, write and miss me.

All my love

Dave

This is one of several letters that I have from the Lieutenant but I don't know what became of him. After she divorced my father she married a man named Mickey Flannigan. It was because of Mickey that Carolyn and Faye were raised Catholic. They attended St. Cecelia convent in North Nashville. He was from Nashville I believe and owned a liquor store on West End for many years. Carolyn and Faye spent many weekends at our house when I was growing up. I saw Mamie many times and she was more like an aunt than my dad's ex-wife. Mother got along with her well and Carolyn told me that she loved my mother more than her own mother.

As I said earlier mother met and married a man named John Phillips. After awhile it was discovered that John was already married and mother had the marriage annulled. Donna was born in March 1946 and she never knew her father. John had physically abused mother during their relationship. After daddy was discharged from the Army he went back to work at Walgreen's. He met mother because she would stop in for lunch. I am guessing that they met sometime in 1947 or 48. At one time couples had to have a blood test before they could get a marriage license. Their blood test was dated December 16, 1948. So I am guessing that they were married in December 1948 or early in 1949. Daddy would open his stores sometime in 1949. Donna always considered daddy to be her real father until Aunt Vera revealed the truth to her at the age of nine. He was a real father to her and she always saw him that way and Mark and I always considered her our full sister. My sister Carolyn dated soldiers from a very young age from Ft. Campbell. They would show up at the house in their starched and pressed uniforms and spit shined jump boots. She would marry a twenty six year old veteran of WW2 and the Korean war named John Kemper when she was fourteen. I have lost contact with Carolyn by her choice over the last few years. John and Carolyn moved to Hawaii in the late 1970's and the last I heard they were still married. My sister Faye has been a long time resident of Nashville who married into wealth and has been successful in her own right. Carolyn had several children and Faye also had several children.

Sometime in the late 1950's, as I was walking to school I heard a lot of sirens up on White Bridge road. I was almost to school and they sounded like they were near my house. Later that day, after I got home from school, mother told me that Mark had stepped into a hole and his foot was stuck. My mother couldn't get him out so she had to call the police for help. One Friday night I was at a church that we attended that was very close to our house up on a hill. I must have been there for some kind of youth service because my parents were at home. There was a wooden railing that ran the length of a walkway in front of the entrance to the church. I don't know what possessed me to do this but I jumped up on the railing and began walking on it. About halfway around the railing my feet slipped and I fell hard straddling the railing. I was in intense pain from crushing the family jewels but after the pain from that subsided I felt a burning pain on my upper thigh near my crotch. Crying from the pain I hurried home and told mother what happened. She made me lower my pants and there was a little blood in my underwear but less than I expected. The burning sensation was coming from a huge gash on my thigh that was about two inches long. She took me to the emergency room at Baptist hospital. The worst part was when the doctor stuck a needle injecting novocaine in the middle of the cut. The nurses held me down as I screamed out in pain. The doctor told my mother later that I was lucky because the cut was very close to my femoral artery and I could have bled out on the spot.

In 1959 we moved into our first real house at 6222 Henry Ford Drive. It was a two bedroom ranch style brick house with a one car garage that sat on a hill. When we moved to Henry Ford Drive I had every expectation of continuing the happy and idyllic life that I had enjoyed on Brookside Court. Charlotte Park was a fairly new subdivision and there was new home construction going on everywhere. Many people who lived there worked in the nearby Ford glass plant and many of the streets were named after Ford cars like Edsel and Fairlane. Of course our road was named after the Ford company founder Henry Ford. The main road through the subdivision was named American Road. Our prospects seemed even brighter because we had always lived in duplexes and limited space. Brookside Ct. was so much fun and I had so many friends that I really didn't mind living in a duplex. Mother and daddy on the other hand must have been ecstatic to finally have their own home. Daddy made good money for the 1950's and living in the South. For whatever reason, however; he was not able to buy his own home until he was thirty-nine years old. By comparison I bought my first home when I was twenty-two and I am sure that daddy made more money than I did, at least in 1959 currency.

Henry Ford Drive offered a growing boy of nine almost unlimited opportunities to have fun. I loved our house even though Mark and I did not have our own bedroom. We slept on a pull out couch in our wood paneled den. Donna had the front bedroom and mother and daddy had the back bedroom of a two bedroom house. Looking at the house from the front the bedrooms were on the far left. The den was in the middle rear of the house. When you walked in the front door you were in the living room with an adjoining dining room to the right. The bathroom was to the left of the den and the kitchen was to the right of the den. We had a built-in oven which I thought was neat. The back door opened into a one car garage that was about two feet lower than the kitchen. A door in the garage opened to our back yard. My sister-in-law Judy Helms owned a house just like ours in East Nashville for years. At first we had a gravel driveway that sloped uphill from Henry Ford Drive and curved in behind our garage. Daddy eventually had a wall built about three feet high that lined the driveway and steps that led up into the back yard. After awhile daddy had the driveway paved with asphalt and extended our driveway all the way to the far end of the back of the house. I loved our back yard because it was it was very long and forested.