WE MOVED into what I think is called the Oaklawn Section. I believe further that it is in or near this area that the Presidential assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was to be caught decades later... but this need not divert us from our tale. (It may be of some passing note, however, that Lee and I both matriculated from the same Junior High - Stripling, in fact - in Ft. Worth - some ways to the north here - and many decades apart.... later, good buddies, later...). Oh, well - if you can't wait - jump ahead to here: Lee Harvey.
We had a large ground floor apartment in a shady brick building. In the large lawn out back was a children's playhouse - and as there were no other children currently in the complex (I think maybe four or five units) my sister and I had use of this playhouse from the git-go. Soon it was the scene of pitched battles and discord as we duked it out over decor and accoutrements, and who was, and was not coming to tea (neighborhood pets being favorites). Perhaps playhouses are more important than they have been accorded - and prepare one for Life's later trials and so on. I personally endorse them and would like to see a chicken in every pot and a playhouse in every backyard across this great land of ours. (Perhaps I shall run for office some day: a rake's regression I have not yet savored...).
Every day the iceman came and Old Ned his horse, stood patiently outside in the alley beside his wagon while the iceman - with bulging biceps - brought a huge block of ice in on his shoulder, with protective wet, swaying, leather shield hanging down in front and back. Fireman? Pshaw! Who wants to be a fireman when he grows up where the "Iceman Cometh" daily.
It was not in our contract, but Ceily and I had "rights" to dirty, broken chunks of ice on the floor of the wagon - which we routinely filched and licked down to the nub in the Texas heat, while the Texas Iceman 'toted' the block of ice up the back walk to our icebox on the porch. (In Texas, you see, you "tote" and do not "carry.").
It wasn't until June 19, 1865 that a Union General, landing at Galveston, Texas, announced to any within earshot, that the "Slaves of Texas were free" - (though Lincoln had signed the Proclamation of Emancipation some time before). Ever after, it was the custom for White Texans to remain largely indoors and "give over" the towns, and cities and beaches and parks to "the Blacks" for a one-day-a-year celebration on this date: "Juneteenth," as it was called, was a big day down South when I grew up; I do not know if it is still celebrated or not... John Law (the "Po-lees-us" of later years) generally "looked the other way" at this time. Within stipulated limits, you are to understand.
Old Uncle Bob lived out back - beyond the backyard over a large garage there. Uncle Bob had a fringe of grey-white hair around his pate, and a kindly old black face that everyone in the neighborhood knew. Uncle Bob and some of his cronies has been preparing for Juneteenth for some time. Preparations included a large stash of homemade beer, which Uncle Bob had bottled and was keeping in readiness out back. But John Law got wind of this illegal proceedings here somehow and one time the patrol cars streamed into and over the lawn, to stop before Uncle Bob's modest lodgings - and tub after tub of bottled brew was hauled out onto the drive and smashed to smithereens with nightsticks and bats by the John Laws there present. Wasn't much anyone could do.
Later, Mom (a born again Liberal whom Pop slowly converted into the Conservative camp after many, many years: they were married believe it or not, for more than 75! - but that lies yet in the future.. let us get on with our story) gave Uncle Bob and his pals a few bucks on the side...
Uncle Bob also had an old bitch hound and the bitch gave birth some time later to a litter of puppies. But something went awry and the puppies left home (and teats!) too soon and disappeared all over the neighborhood. And so we kids helped Uncle Bob "find" the missing pups - and one by one they were restored to Uncle Bob. He tenderly cared for them and returned them to the bitch's teats, and so on. But some did not make it. They were dead. And Uncle Bob knew when they were "dead" by his opening their mouths and looking in and the dead ones had mouths all full of what looked like scrambled eggs. And Uncle Bob would scrape out the scrambled eggs with a spoon - but they would not suck the teat. And we white chilluns who followed old Uncle Bob's knowledge of the ways of this world (looking always over his shoulder) were given to understand that when you die your mouth fills up with scrambled eggs like. A not-too-unhappy-way-to-go that has stayed with me all these years. Pass the sawmill gravy, please...
But the pups that survived had yet other trials to bear (as do always the living. The survivors...). The first being, "bobbing they tails." Uncle Bob was going to sell them to hunters or bird-shooters or some such and for life-in-the-field, it was necessary that they be "bob-tailed." (i.e., their long tails had to be cut off).
Since none could run away from this pain and idignity - and all got bandaged stumps later - it was money-in-the-bank and no wastage for old Uncle Bob.
The dining room floor of our place was concrete, painted dark red. (This is yet a style in the South - including Florida and elsewhere). One night, I walked into the dining room and a mouse ran out from under Mom's sideboard - a dark little hustling shape which ran along lickety-split beside the baseboard, turned at right angles with it at the corner, and vanished somewhere into the hall beyond. I gave a shout and my Dad came running - Mom stuck her head in from the kitchen where supper was preparing.
It was then I noticed the evening paper lying on the red concrete floor - where Pop, I guess, had idly tossed it. The stark, black headlines announced: "Machine Gun Kelly Headed This Way!"
I knew who (or what) Machine Gun Kelly was. As did every other Depression Era child - and adult - of those tumultous "Midwest Crime Wave" days, as the later FBI termed them. All the real-live bandits and desperados of the later Hollywood glorification movies were back then really abroad in the land - and racing to and fro between shootouts and bank robberies all over Texas, Oklahoma and the Southwest generally. Machine Gun Kelly was one of the worst, and he had mistresses ('twas said) in every North Texas town and hamlet. (The movie, Bonnie and Clyde, caught the ambiance - the very flavor - of these times and locales so well, that I, long since an adult and slouching in my darkened movie seat once, felt when I saw it, that I could have literally stood up and walked right into those same gas stations and motels on the silver screen and that tumultous world of days gone by...)
When I raised a cry of alarm at Kelly's (I thought) imminent arrival on our doorstep, my Mom took one look at me and said, "Bernard, you are such a big crybaby!" My Dad, not always, I often felt, one of my staunchest supporters, took mild issue with her: "Berna, he said, "he is only a small boy..."
As it was, all turned out for the best: Machine Gun Kelly and his Chicago Piano stopped off elsewhere this time (he later living to a ripe old age on the taxpayers' dollars to die of a heart attack in 1954 in the Federal Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas).
The mouse never surfaced again.
I sought to restrain my crybaby tendencies.
I was not yet in school. But strangely somehow, I seem to recall that Mom enrolled me in some kind of "dancing class." I'm pretty sure there was dancing - not really cheek-to-cheek with the other gender you understand - for after all this was Bible Belt Texas and the adults didn't even do that. (To this day, line-dancing being the approved heterosexual pastime down there - and Y'all's remember: "If'n you're gonna play in Texas ya gotta' have a fiddle in th' band."....). Maybe it was "music appreciation" - something like that. Or "how to behave at (birthday) parties" - whatever. It entailed "dressing up" and wearing black shoes I seem to recall. All rather hazy - save for one crystal clear moment:
I was chasing a little girl in a clean white pinafore down the sidewalk while I held a monstrous big toad in my hand. (I early-on acquired the habit of picking up toads and lizards - 'horny toads" as the Texans call them to this day - and carrying them around in my pockets...). This particular specimen, after the fashion of his kind, was emitting a steady stream of toad-pee - some of which reached the pinafore on the screaming little wretch in front of me - all to the shouts and screams of the surrounding multitude...
Sometimes we went on picnics - place called Oak Park Creek, or something like that. It was pretty wild and unsettled and there were lots of exposed white limestone ledges, occasional waterholes and oaks it seems. Close friends of my parents were Harry and Marie Cooper -and their son, Bobby - about my age. Harry worked for GMAC, too, so that is how the two families came to know each other. Mr. Cooper was a thin, sandy, rawboned kind of guy - the epitome of the "Western cowboy" type - and this was not so odd you see, for he had grown up on a remote ranch in Montana and had always this "Gary Cooper" thank-ya maa'm aspect about him. But he was my hero in more ways than one: one being that on these picnics, Harry thought nothing of picking up cow chips (ubiquitous ground ornaments down Texas way you see - then, and I trust - still now...) and winging them with unerring accuracy at Bobby and me and my sister!
Now who would ever have thought of that! Cow chips as toys and missiles - free for the taking - did some elder but introduce you to this obvious fact soon enough! Whee-Hawwww!
"Texas was Hell on wimmin' and horses," as the oldtimers used to say... but for men and cows and kids - it was just the ticket!
And then, we moved again...
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