Life at 7

Technical explanation before I proceed with my recollections – terming each chapter “Life at 5” etc. does not mean this is the fifth year, it is the sixth year of life that is fulfilled at the next birthday when the age of 6 is reached which then signals the start of the seventh year and so on. So on July 20th 1965, I had my 7^th birthday which kicked off my 8^th year on Planet Earth. I don’t recall any specifics of it, though I’m sure there was cake to eat after candles were blown out, as would be the ritual for the years to come that I did have memories of. This was also the first time that I could remember spending a calendar year at one location without moving.

A vivid memory from that summer was seeing on TV the great Cleveland Browns running back Jim Brown play a game in what was to be his last season. Even as unschooled as I was in the intricacies of football, I could see his

greatness in the way he could both shed tacklers with his powerful body while being also too fast to catch. Now that I had caught the football bug, watching the Sunday games on TV gave a chance for my dad and me to bond as we watched either the St. Louis Cardinals or the Dallas Cowboys play. There was something intriguing about how the helmet hid the players faces yet the single protective bar of the skilled position

players at quarterback and wide receiver allowed you to see expressions that the modern cages never reveal, albeit that it is much safer for said players.

Another sport I inexplicably became attracted to, and still play in my present life, was golf. Even though the TV was black-and-white, I became entranced with the tiny white spheroid being controlled by swings of the clubs. My cajoling that summer resulted in my dad taking me to the only public golf course in Fort Smith, named incoherently “Fort Smith Country Club” (sadly, things have seemingly deteriorated there, it closed in 2014 and is now a field overgrown by weeds). It was on Midland Boulevard near the river, a nine-hole course built next to the Sky-Vue movie drive in, To me, it might as well been Augusta or Pebble Beach. We rented clubs that day, and I have two specific memories.

One was that we ran out of balls and had to borrow some from our playing partner, an older gentleman. The other was on the 9^th hole, a par 3. The older man was trying to show me what he thought was a proper grip and stance but they just seemed too awkward to me. I used my normal approach and was rewarded with my best shot of the day that flew in a straight line to the pin and stopped 3 feet away. Our playing partner turned to my dad and said, “I guess he doesn’t need lessons after all”. A quick putt and I was rewarded with the first birdie of my golfing life. There weren’t more than a few other chances to play during my younger years, but in my early 30’s my game finally blossomed.

2^nd grade year was memorable for a variety of reasons. I encountered bullying for the first time A ruffian at 7 named Mark Biggers for some reason that I either don’t remember (or most likely he had none) began following me home after school threatening to beat me up. Since I hadn’t encountered hostility before, I was unsure how to respond. Then one day it escalated to me being pushed face down by a thrust from the bully who stood over me taunting, while a group of his acolytes jeered. My response to it was to burst into tears, not from fear but from the feeling of injustice that would color each one of the many physical conflicts I had growing up. In short, I never picked on anyone or started any fight, but my red hair apparently made me a target for badasses-in-training. This time, any further action was halted by Anthony’s mother coming out and screaming at my attacker, who retreated. In a curious synchronicity, the paths of Mark Biggers and me would cross one more time, in an event I will describe in Life at 9. 

1965 was the year I discovered horror movies, and this fascination would continue into my adult years. The local TV station Channel 5 – as in the ONLY TV station we could pick up in Ft. Smith with rabbit ear antennas – began showing a feature at 11 PM on Fridays, called “Horrorama”, which began with a deformed hand poking under a curtain backed by eerie music, as a prelude to the movie of the week. It was the classic fare – “Frankenstein”, “Dracula”, “Wolfman” interspersed with 1950’s sci-fi flicks like “It Came from Outer Space” and “Godzilla”. 

I was glued every week and was entertained by subsequent dreams later those nights with monsters chasing me all over the dreamscape du jour.

This was the year that I developed a sense of place, when Fort Smith became part of my psyche and, though many of the experiences to come were not of the positive variety, it would remain to the present a wistful presence. Garrison

Avenue, our version of Main Street, was an endless source of fascination for me. I loved to tag along with my grandmother Ida Belle Miller, AKA Maw-Maw as she went to the First National Bank at the corner of 6^th and Garrison on the 3rd day of every month to deposit her Social Security Check. Afterward, I would be treated to a meal across the street at the Broadway Grill, one of those fine examples of classy downtown diners that rarely exist anymore. Their open-faced roast beef sandwich, with mashed potatoes and gravy was my crack cocaine and to this day I would drive a great distance and pay a pretty penny for just one more plate of that awesomeness. After eating we would stroll up and down Garrison, first eastward on the North side of the street, then after the five blocks to 11^th Street, we’d cross the wide avenue to the South side and go back to 6^th, then just a few blocks to the house. We’d pass FW Woolworth’s. Kress and McCrory’s, stores that

were called the “5 and dimes” and would most closely correlate to our modern Dollar General or perhaps a slimmed down Wal-Mart. Rarely, she’d consent to going in and let me buy a rubber ball or maybe some marbles, which would thrill me to no end.

Another bit of my innocence was lost that year when I began to get the first notions that my dad, alcohol, and gambling were a very bad ménage-a-trois. I had seen him drink for awhile, even have fragments of memories now as far back as 4 watching him drink the stuff that made his breath so yucky to my young nostrils. By 7, he had started to take me with him when he went to his favorite haunt, Angelo’s at the corner of 6^th and B. I know, the idea of a man taking his young son to a bar in 2013 is inconceivable, but in 1965 apparently it was allowed and tolerated, since I went there over a dozen times. My dad would, between drinks, be obsessed with cards that had print on them, and I would hear talk of “parleys” and “over/unders” which to me might as well have been exotic animals. I cared little about the gambling lingo as Angelo took a shine to me and, as he was to do for many years to come both in his bar there and his future location in the Goldman Hotel

at the crest of Garrison, kept me slogged with orange soda and cheese crackers. On the way home, Dad stumbled, often leaning on me for support and I felt important as I guided us up the steps to our rooms.

One night Dad went without me, and by the time I went to sleep he still wasn’t back. I fretted over his absence but finally passed out. When I woke up next in the middle of the night, I looked out the picture window that was butted against the side of the bed that I slept in with Maw-Maw. The moonlight shone on the grass, but I could see a figure laying on the edge of the sloped yard. A bad feeling went through me, and I woke up Maw-Maw saying “Daddy’s out there and he’s hurt”. She took a glance and said “go back to sleep he’ll be OK”. That advice proved to be true as when I woke up at the dawn the figure was gone and Dad was asleep in his bed, dealing with a doozy of a hangover no doubt. It was not a week later that I heard animated talking between my Mom and Maw-Maw. My dad had been arrested for writing a “Hot check” (I was to wonder for a long while why it was bad to put checks in the oven) to pay off gambling debts. Maw-Maw went to the jail to bail him out, and tensions ran rampart in the apartment for a long while after that. He never quit either vice almost until his death just this past October 2013 – he just became more creative about hiding them.

Despite her advancing age Maw-Maw was all about keeping her hair looking good, so she visited a small beauty shop just a stone’s throw away from our place. I would often join her and would be placated by sitting in the hair dryer chair, drinking icy-cold 8 oz. bottles of Coca-Cola and reading the Hollywood gossip magazines that were the forerunner of today’s “National Enquirer” and “People”. I absorbed the exploits of Dick and Liz and Eddie and Debbie that year every bit as much as cursive writing and arithmetic. Sometimes we’d get on the bus line that still served Fort Smith then, discontinued a few years hence, and we’d go to Rogers Avenue where her doctor’s office was. Maw-Maw was a regular customer of the doc back then, something I took for granted along with the inevitable shot she would get. Now I realize that she was in a great deal of pain during her last decade and the pain-killing injections were her only way to deal with it.

There was little about school specifically that stood out that year. My teacher’s name was Mrs. Schneider, a tall, silver haired lady. I remember having contests on the swings with classmates to see how high we could get before we bailed out and flew through the air. My first paddling came that year, though I have no memory of what prompted it or if it hurt, but I’m sure my tender psyche was affronted and there were tears aplenty. It seems archaic to speak of being spanked with a board drilled with holes for maximal stinging, but that was the primary classroom control technique both those early years, and on into junior high school. We often would be drilled as to how to respond to severe weather, and the training worked well as in the spring of ’66 a terrible storm blew through, changing the skies to pitch blackness. I remember huddling with the other kids in the expansive hallway, heads tucked between our knees as the wind howled outside, and I felt exhilarated, as I still do to this day while recognizing the monstrous impact of these forces of nature.

I don’t know whether it was coincidence or if their presence was what lead us to rent on North 6^th, but my grandmother’s younger sister Bethel and her husband Tom French lived catty-corner across the street in the ground floor of a boarding house that they managed. We would often go there, and I was always treated warmly by them. Bethel had an interesting back story that I would not be privy to until much later in life. She had previously been an itinerant tent evangelist, a sort of Oklahoma version of Aimee Semple McPherson . All I knew then was she was a sweet loving woman who would give me candy. Bethel had been diagnosed with breast cancer (the same affliction that would eventually end Maw-Maw’s life 9 years later) and I went with my family to visit her in the hospital. When told just days later that she had died, I was at first unconcerned as I had been told she would be in Heaven. But at the funeral, it was apparent to me that she wasn’t in Heaven – she was sleeping in a box in front of us. And when they went to close the box and take her away, for the first time in my life I completely lost it, becoming hysterical. I was to never again lose my composure in that way at funerals again. I suppose that the reality of death hitting home for the first time is that sort of divide crossing for most of us.

My dad began driving a truck for United Van Lines, and our fiscal situation improved considerably. For a time, we would make the several block trip to Yutterman’s market, an old-school store with wooden floors and sawdust, at least every other day since we only had a few dollars at a time to buy groceries with. By the summer of 1966 things were better and it would be me along with the female members of the Miller clan – Mom Janet, Maw-Maw Ida, and little Liz walking there and back to claim a weeks worth of goods, everyone except Liz carrying multiple paper sacks and enduring the arm fatigue on the return trip. Yutterman’s gave out Bingo cards

for a game that was played weekly on the radio. The numbers were called on the broadcast and we would use pinto beans to cover the squares since there were multiple games played. The prizes couldn’t have been more than $10 a game, but all of us poured over our respective cards as it were access to Fort Knox itself that was in the balance. Once, one of us bingoed, but by the time we dialed the number it was busy with others calling in to verify their win, and it was a “first call” basis for deciding who got the money. My nearly 8 year old tech savant self decided that the time dialing the number of the station was the killer, so when one of us would be “on” – needing just one number for Bingo – I would go to the phone (still remember our number – SU-32464,

a vestige of the days when the first two numbers were alpha to indicate the exchange, which in our case was “Sunset”) and predial the rotary numbers omitting only the last, a technique that I had discovered by trial-and-error bought me a 30-40 second window before the call would disconnect. Alas, when one of us finally Bingoed again, in my excitement I dialed the wrong last digit, and called a grumpy old man who let me know in no uncertain terms that he “didn’t give a good goddamn if I had Bingo or not."

We prepared to move near my birthday, and I have no recollection of the event itself. Now that I was no longer the youngest, the attention was mostly spent on Liz and 7 year old Bobby was an afterthought. A day that stays in my memory though is a time when my Mom was gone for most of the day and for some reason I was terribly anxious about her return. When she finally came back late, she brought me unprompted a book. That small gesture, in the face of my norm of feeling neglected, meant so much to me that it is still one of the best memories I have of Mom.