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“Dad, who was six-foot-two, was leading his drum and bugle corps, but looked ten feet tall to me as he swung that baton in his blue and gold American Legion uniform.” |
REBECCA and I were sweethearts in our sixth grade class. I had been in love with her since the third grade. I would dream about her in class and after school as I trudged around my paper route. Her soft wavy chestnut hair and big brown eyes were a lot like my mother's had been, except that Rebecca's nose was long like her Aunt Della's, who was our teacher and principal.
One day during literature class, I was dreaming about taking her to the circus and how nice it would be to watch it with her. My reverie was broken by Miss Leech yelling, "Robert! Are you with us? Who was the composer of "My Old Kentucky Home?" While my mind reluctantly returned to that boring class, she said, "We're waiting, Robert!"
Just then, my pal, Ted, whispered behind me, "Francis Scott Key."
I then stood up and confidently pronounced, "Francis Scott Key" to the hilarious jeering of the entire class.
I finally got up my nerve to ask Rebecca to go the the circus with me. We were riding on the "Ocean Wave," a dangerous contraption in the school playground that was suspended from a long pole that violently swung a dozen or more kids up and down and around the pole. It was a real body cruncher if you fell off, and Rebecca wasn't allowed to ride it, and would really "catch it" if Miss Leach saw her. With all the noise and excitement of that ride, I was sure that no one would hear me as I asked her for a date. When she nodded "yes," my heart flew higher than that "Ocean Wave"!"
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But, someone heard, and it was all over the sixth grade that I was taking Rebecca to the circus! Even my brother and sister teased me that night, and the next day at school was awful. My face felt like one continuous blush until I finally retreated into the foliage of a big oak tree during recess. After lunch, Rebecca informed me that her mother wouldn't let her walk with me across town to the circus, but that I could go in their car along with a bunch of classmates. The thought of all that teasing,"Robert has a gi-rl!" was too much, and I retreated once more into my tree, and didn't come down until everyone was gone. I got to the circus just in time to slip under the flap with the rest of the stragglers. During the performance, I was too embarrassed to look at Rebecca, and instead, concentrated on the trumpet player in the band. (More about Merle Evans, the great circus trumpeter later.) Dad had just given me his trumpet and was beginning my lessons. I was thinking about getting good enough to run away and join the circus band.
On Memorial Day, the last day of school, I finally got up the nerve to tell Rebecca that I wanted to be her beau, and asked her to watch the parade with me. We walked hand-in-hand to her house where I waited out on the porch while she explained to her mom. Then we picked a big bouquet of irises to take to the parade.
Dad, who was six-foot-two, was leading his drum and bugle corps, but looked ten feet tall to me as he swung that baton in his blue and gold American Legion uniform. He led the whole parade up Main street and down Sixth to the steep hill that led down to Southlawn Cemetery. There were rows and rows of long shiny bugles and brightly lacquered drums. The sound was deafening as they passed, yet, thrilling as they led the whole town behind them. As the parade passed, we strewed flowers onto the many cars carrying smiling veterans of the three great wars--The Civil War, The Spanish American War and the World War. Then, we wildly waved our American flags as a score of floats and marching units passed by. An extra big cheer went up for the third grade teacher, Miss Wolf, as she rode smartly by with her equestrian unit.
Nearly everyone followed the parade as it entered the cemetery to the painfully slow and muffled beat of the drums. I didn't hear much of the mayor's speech--something about "the war to end all wars."
The dance pavilion on the levy was a stop on the tour of the famous dance bands of the "thirties", and we would sit on the opposite levy and listen to the wonderful swing music that was sweeping the land. Once, we peeked into the pavilion and saw Dad dancing with Mamma. That is a vivid memory to this day, partly because he was fourteen inches taller!
When, I became an eighth grader, I joined the high school band where I had some of the happiest times of my life. Our band director, Kenneth Dustman, always came up with a great idea for our halftme show at the Redskins football games. We would march down Main Street behind our dancing "Redskin" chief and always put on a great show at the stadium. One halftime show was inspired by the news that the famous "Flying Tigers" mercenary pilots in their P-40's were defeating the Japanese Zeros at the beginning of World War II. We formed two fighter planes, and with blazing torches on our shoulders, converged from opposite corners of the field into a "dogfight" in the darkened stadium. The only real casualties however, were two uniforms ruined by sparks from the torches. After the game, bandsmen from our archrival, Zanesville, charged through our ranks and someone snatched off my band hat. We found it later at ZHS in their trophy case!
Since most of my time was taken up by band, orchestra, drum corps practice, my paper route and scouting activities, Rebecca and I drifted apart. Later, in the eighth grade, my new love was band member Ruth Bucklew. After the games, the gang would meet at Triplett's drugstore where my buddy, Bill Parrish, and I would buy our sweethearts frozen fudge sundaes with crushed Brazil nuts and cherries on top. Then, we would slowly walk them home. Bill would carry Mary Ann's trombone, but all I had to carry was Ruth's little piccolo. Love and music at that age was so sweet!
One of my proudest moments was when my high school orchestra played for the commencement program in which our sister, Mary Margaret, gave the valedictory address. She had made it all the way on straight A's, and then continued with the same until she received her PhD.
Then my life took a drastic change when Dad and Jack came home from Florida and took me back with them to complete my freshman year at Sarasota. Dad felt that I was being mistreated at the foster home and asked me if I would like to go back with them. Then came a violent protest by my foster mother, Mrs Thresh, who said she loved me as her own son.
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When we arrived in Florida, the three of us roomed with the Summers, a wonderful retired Scottish couple who had a nice home in Sarasota. I found the town to be very beautiful. It was built around a sparkling bay, where the smell of the sea and the warm tropical air just had to raise our spirits. The town was only half built. The booming construction stopped after the stock market crash of '29. There were miles of completed streets and sidewalks with no houses. A big hotel, only half completed had fallen into disrepair as well as the long causeway leading to its island location. The wide white beaches were undeveloped, and you could drive on the sand at the edge of the water all the way south to Ft Myers. Beyond that beautiful town, were more miles of white sand until you came to the village of Naples. A few very wealthy families and their servants made up this picturesque village of huge houses and beautiful yachts. I still preferred Sarasota, though, which to me seemed to be a tropical paradise.
Music continued to be the focus of my life. Sarasota High School was huge. Every morning Jack and I helped raise the colors to start the school day. This was an honor accorded the first trumpets and the drummers in the school band. Our color guard would march to the tall flagpole in front of the school, and then Jack's drum roll would bring two thousand students to attention inside the school while the trumpets played "To the Colors."
But, that was about the only discipline they had in that school. Nobody studied! Most of the students left their books on the shelves in a back hallway and never bothered with assignments. I finally began skipping classes and spent my day in the band building. We would practice individually, and then have impromptu Dixieland jazz sessions until time for band practice. Jack's percussion and my trumpet sections would try to drown each other out when we rattled the rafters playing "Semper Fidelis," "King Cotton" and "The Thunderer" marches.
Then I joined the jazz band that Jack had organized to play for school dances. If we weren't practicing at school, we were driving everyone crazy at home. Mrs. Summers finally suggested that we hold our sessions over in the next block where all the houses were empty. We had impromptu sessions constantly, with other musicians sitting in whenever they had time to drop by.
Jack and I earned our room and board money by getting up at three in the morning and delivering The Tampa Tribune around our big routes. Mine was partly on the offshore keys called The Ringling Isles. It was tough pedaling across that mile-long causeway with a full load of papers against the offshore breeze. But, on my return over the bridge, the breeze blew me across. I fell asleep one morning and would have awakened in the bay, except for a small island that the bridge crossed where I woke up in the hedges.
Without our music, the school would have been a drag. But the extracurricular activities were great. Students played hooky frequently to attend the Chicago White Sox training camp or to visit the winter training at the headquarters of the Ringling Brothers Circus. I was thrilled to discover that the famous trumpeter, Merle Evans, was still in the circus Band. When I told Mr. Summers about him, he invited Mr. and Mrs. Evans for dinner and let me take a trumpet lesson from him. It seems they were old World War army buddies.
Also, there were beach parties on the shore and cruises on the bay. One warm evening, our gang took a sunset cruise on the Gulf. We cruised into the sunset while dangling our feet in the spray with a coke in one hand and a girl on the other. Swing music carried across the water from a big band playing in the Lido Beach Casino on the keys. Couples would steal up to the roof of the boat to lie under the stars. This was a most romantic atmosphere that few could resist.
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One Sunday afternoon, we were having jazz band practice when someone stuck his head in the door and said, "The Japs are bombing Pearl Harbor! We're at war!" Thus ended our wonderful peacetime life, and we had to leave everything and everyone that we had grown to love in that beautiful city by the bay. Jack joined the Marines and Dad joined the civil service and took me with him to his assignment at Shaw Field, near Sumpter, South Carolina.
In Sumpter, I sensed a lot of hostility toward us "Damn Yankees." But there were a lot of us there when the thousands of Air Corps cadets went on liberty and crowded the streets of the city. The locals also seemed to hate black folks, who also seemed to outnumber the whites. Black people worked in all the restaurants, many of the homes, and even reared and nursed the white babies. So I didn't see the point of all the segregation. They had their own schools, water fountains, bus stations and sat in the back of the busses. But I joined the band and orchestra and the scout troop where I made good friends and enjoyed good times.
Then tragedy struck once more when Dad's health failed again and he had to go to a Veterans Administration hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina. Thus ended my freshman year that I spent in three different states. Dad asked me to return to Ohio, so I hitchhiked to Coshocton. But on the way I was picked up by the police and held as a runaway. I then remembered my bugle and a letter that I had received from the Boy Scout executive inviting me to return as bugler and used that to gain my release. It took me all day to reach the Virginia line, but then fate smiled on me when a man picked me up, bought my supper, and took me all the way to Columbus.
I spent the next night with my old foster parents in Coshocton, but found them to be rather hostile when they weren't being paid to keep me. I was the first one up the next morning, slipped quietly out and hitched a ride to Camp Frederickson. After all those travels, the camp seemed like home sweet home to me.
This time I was not only the bugler, but also was the lifeguard and ran the trading post. Since I was always the first one up they also asked me to start the fire each morning in the brick oven that heated water for the cooks. One morning, I overslept and in their haste to get things going, the cooks sent a scout up to help me with the fire. When I ran down to get matches, unbeknownst to me, he had poured kerosene on the wood. As I struck the match, an explosion knocked me backwards twenty feet down the hill. All the hair and some of the skin not covered by my summer uniform was burned off. I was in terrible pain when they carried me into the mess hall and buttered me like a piece of toast. After that, they took me to town and got me bandaged up like a mummy. Since I had no other home, I just stayed in camp and served as an example of poor fire safety procedures.
When the camp closed for the summer I hitchhiked to Newcomerstown and went to live with Grandma and Grandad and uncle George on their homestead farm.
When school started in the fall, I asked Grandad where and when to catch the school bus. He said to meet it at seven o'clock at the old Taylor farm a mile down the road. He didn't tell me that all the clocks except his had changed to war time. He felt that his livestock were used to a certain schedule and wouldn't change just because the official time did. So I missed the bus on that first day, and learned not to talk about "war time" with Grandad.
Then the winter got bitter cold and Grandad gave me his greatcoat, a huge sheepskin that weighed a ton. It felt good though, as I trudged that long mile down the road and across a meadow to the Taylor barn where I hung it until my return trip. I did that so that I wouldn't look like a hick -- the same reason that the girl who sat beside me took off her heavy black stockings as soon as she got on the bus.
Newcomerstown High School was small compared to the three big schools where I attended my freshman year. The eighty-seven classmates in my sophomore class seemed very friendly with no social strata. Social activities were fewer because most of us lived on farms and had to go home on the bus to do our chores. Most of the guys were shy like me at school dances. We liked roller skating parties better. At least there was something to do while you worked up the courage to approach a girl. I had four cousins in that school, three in my class, so they helped me get acquainted with my new classmates.
When I got home from school each evening, I would help with the evening chores, and except on the short winter days, Grandad would have a work project waiting for me. One day when I got home, Grandad was nowhere in sight, so I just played around the barnyard with the dogs, waiting to see what he had planned. After an hour, Grandma yelled from the kitchen door, "Weren't you supposed to meet Grandad at the locust grove?"
"Oh, my God," I thought, as I remembered Grandad telling me at breakfast, "Meet me at the locust grove when you get home. I'll have the team and the cross-cut saw waiting for you." I sprinted across the barnyard towards the gate, but before I even got there, I saw Grandad coming down the hollow. He looked madder than a wet hen! He had walked all that way for nothing and waited an hour in vain with a two-man saw!
He always worked from dawn to dark, year round. If the weather was bad, we would mend harness and machinery, or work with the animals in the barns. Getting up with Grandad ruined me because even sixty years later, I still wake up at five-thirty, and sometimes I even seem to hear him chopping wood for the three fires he kept going all winter.
I never asked him for money, and I really had little use for it, but he did give me the lead "war" pennies out of his change, because with his poor eyesight, he couldn't tell them from nickels. I'm sure I set a record for the most work for the least pay in the county! But, I loved it there in that most remote place in Ohio. I enjoyed the peace and quiet and the unspoiled nature, but most of all, the feeling of being loved.
But, sometimes it was like working on two farms -- George's mechanized one and Grandad's horse-drawn one. George's homemade tractor and buckrake eliminated several steps in making hay. Grandad would have none of that and found something else to do when George made hay the newfangled way.
They both wanted my help, so I would help Grandad with the team one day and drive George's tractor the next.
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The truth is, I wasn't very good at either. Our work team consisted of "Byrd", a big chestnut horse and his mother, "Bess." Byrd was contrary and stubborn, just like Grandad, and he had me completely intimidated. That horse taught me never to say "Haw". When we turned left, he had to pull slightly more than his share during the turn, and he didn't like that. Once, to teach me a lesson, he backed me and the mowing machine all the way across the hayfield and almost into the creek. Another time, while harrowing on top of the high ridge, Byrd became angry when I harrowed us into a corner and had to say "Haw!" As if to say, "I'll show you Haw", he turned around and around to the left until both horses were down and hopelessly tangled in the harness! I was afraid the whole mess was going to roll down the steep slope! But Uncle George came sailing over on his tractor to rescue me and the team! Byrd had definitely taught me never to say "Haw!"
That fall, when I started my junior year, I moved in with Aunt Helen and Uncle Pug in Newcomerstown so that I could do my part for the war effort by working the swing shift at the war plant. More about that later.
During my senior year, my life became "green"--Marine Corps forest green!
All about that in the next installment of my "Journey From Goschachquenk."
