Life at 10

Ensconced in what until then was the nicest place I had ever lived in Arkansas (the California mansion of my grandparents was too high of a bar to even use as comparison), my 10^th year began on a positive note. I had begged for a record player, the mono phonographs that played 33, 45 and 78 rpm vinyl records, for at least a year, and my wish came true for my birthday. I would like to pretend that I was an auteur of great musical taste, but instead my companion first LP was …drum roll please “More of the Monkees”, a presentation of that faux TV

show rip-off of the Beatles. Ok, even I am embarrassed at this admission, but for posterity’s sake it must be noted. As this year crept forward though, my ears became increasingly entranced by the sounds of what was collectively being labeled as “rock” music, and my choices evolved to the Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and the bright driving tunes of the British group called “Cream”. The Monkees thankfully became a relic of my relatively immature past, and other elements of my life also followed the pattern.

This was the year I became interested in more adult TV series, having grown dissatisfied with the fare which for most of my young life had been mainly westerns and sitcoms. Luckily, 1968 was sort of a watershed year as television networks began producing entertainment that was both more relevant to the changing times, ala the dissatisfaction with the Vietnam conflict and the generalized rebellion of young people collectively called the “hippie movement”. My burgeoning political consciousness had new input to chew on: “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In and “The Smothers Brothers” brought a trove of fresh perspective to my fertile mind, ideas that impressed me that perhaps the world wasn’t as well put-together as it had before seemed, or that at the very least there was an agitation beneath the surface. This was also when I became intrigued with watching TV news, and I especially loved the delivery and gravitas of the man who had broken the news of JFK's murder, Walter Cronkite - a respect that I was to later learn was shared with millions of others. It was natural then that the political conventions and election of 1968 was great theater for me. My middle-aged cynicism was nowhere to be found in my 10 year old psyche, and the machinations of the democratic process became my new “must-see TV”.

Dad was still unemployed that fall, and was involved in his usual mix of hustling, gambling and alcohol. In one of his forays to the bars, he had met a man who worked for the local glass company. The scenario was, the plant allowed him to purchase the scrap cuttings of mirrored glass for very little, which he then took home where in his garage he had a cutting machine that allowed him to produce hand mirrors with scalloped designs on the frame part, and a handled extension sans protective covering. A ¼” piece of glass with edges that were borderline sharp enough to use as a weapon.

This is an EXACT replica of the mirrors I sold door-to-door

After a few, or probably many drinks, Dad struck a deal where the guy would give him the mirror on consignment and he would attempt to sell them, and then bring back what was left and split the proceeds. Without a store front to sell these from, Dad relied upon the method that until our recent era was time-honored AND accepted path of commerce – door-to-door sales. Apparently there were a few Fort Smithian females who couldn’t get enough of their visage and/or who were mirror-deficient such that he was able to eke out a few dollars profit each day selling these potential weapons of mass destruction. But his motivation to knock doors and be rebuffed eventually got to him - at least that is my theory- because he soon enlisted me to be his front man, using the guilt of possible familial starvation as my buy-in to the process. So my reluctant self, in complete juxtaposition to my innate shy, self-conscious Cancerian vibe, was thrust out of the vehicle which Dad would park at the end of the block, carrying several of the scary pieces of glass, expected to make the oval circuit of both sides until I returned with the proceeds, which usually would be at best just a few dollars. I was blissfully unaware at the time that Dad kept small bottles of Scotch under the seat that he would nip on as I made the rounds. In retrospect, what really torques me about this is that given the circumstances, the liquor should have been flowing down MY gullet – I was the one in need of liquid courage.

So my September mornings proceeded, knocking hundreds of doors, perhaps selling 3 or 4, on a good day 6-8 hand mirrors, which only meant a few dollars profit that doubtless was absorbed and more by Papa’s Delicate Condition. All such enterprises come to their eventual close, and this one was met one sunny morning a few weeks into the process. I had just been rejected by an older woman and was walking the sidewalk toward the next house when I ran into a large group of black teens, 5 or more of them, who blocked the path. The verbal taunts began, and then one of them grabbed the mirrors away from me and threw them to the concrete, shattering them. I looked back at where the car SHOULD have been parked but, no car, no Dad. Then the shoving ensued as the pack of animals (Yes, this is exactly what low-vibrational human beings are in every respect, ESPECIALLY when empowered by numbers and fueled by racial hatred. You want faux political correctness? Run as far from me as you can.) amped up their aggression. I was crying because I had never been in a situation of this kind, and could not understand the obvious hatred that was projected against me by them. My fate that day, as with so many other events in life, hinged on a chance occurrence. The old lady whose house I had just been at had lingered on her porch just long enough to see the trouble I was in. She now charged down the sidewalk screaming at my tormentors that she had called the police, which acted as a magic repellent to the vermin who turned and ran en masse. Seconds later, Dad’s car, ostensibly having been released from the pernicious tractor beam that teleported it to a nearby liquor store, reappeared and braked to a stop, with the sight of an old woman comforting his shaken son, pieces of broken mirror strewn all over the sidewalk. Thus ended my not-so-excellent career as child door-to-door salesman.

Perhaps a week after this, Mom’s latest pregnancy was at an end. My newest sister came into the world with urgency, Mom having to be transported by ambulance since her labor began when Dad and I were at a high school football game. The ambulance was just leaving the house when we returned and we followed it to the hospital. I remember seeing Mom in agony on a cart just outside the ER when she screamed “IT’S COMING” and she was whisked away, and it was only moments later that my second Libra sister,

Nancy Elaine, arrived. So now our crew had 3 adults and 4 kids, none of the adults with a job and the inheritance money dissipated. Enter the latest “strike it rich” scheme for Dad – “YES Stamps”.

Back in the day (oh I know how I date myself with this sort of language, but sometimes one who IS old school has to represent), merchants subscribed to programs that rewarded customer loyalty by giving them lickable stamps they could collect in books then

take to local redemption centers to trade a certain number of these books for gifts, ranging from cheesy to utilitarian to quite cool, ala cameras and telescopes. S&H Green Stamps was the 800 pound gorilla in this space during that era. YES Stamps was created as a competitor to these programs, with a twist – the stamps collected would be deposited at banks and instead of redeemed for merchandise would accrue in a Christmas savings account that could only be tapped post-Thanksgiving. Sort of a rebate program with delayed gratification. The startup had attracted investment and active management from an actor who was very familiar to our family since he starred on Maw-Maw’s favorite show “Bonanza”. Dan Blocker, who played the character

“Hoss Cartwright” was advertised as appearing at our newly-built Municipal Auditorium in what turned out to be a thinly disguised rah-rah event for YES Stamps. Our whole family attended, and at some point while watching Blocker speak Dad disappeared and didn’t return to us until long after proceedings had tied up. He was ebullient – he had somehow charmed his way backstage and, due to his silvery tongue and advanced capabilities of handling large amounts of Scotch, Dan Blocker had personally hired him to be part of their sales team, members of whom were about to take off in a matter of days to Texarkana on the state’s southern border to begin ground work on the pilot project there.

This had a two-fold effect that in the main was positive – Dad being gone the majority of the time so no fighting - and a steady income for us for the first time in years. I have no inkling of how hard it was for Mom to have four kids, two of whom were both babies, but the lack of parenting that came my direction was a hint that she was certainly overwhelmed. This new-found lack of supervision I found intoxicating and addictive. I suppose it was just the default position of women that when a male child exceeds both their statures as I had, you gave up worrying about their physical security. I roamed near and far, all of it by foot since I did not have a bicycle as yet. The public library became my home away from home, and I steered clear of the kids section in favor of adult books. There, ensconced for hours in comfortable seating, a world previously hidden from me opened up, both in fiction and fact-based writing. In particular, I fell in love with a writing of Jules Verne titled

“Mysterious Island” a tale of how some ingenious escapees from a Confederate prison camp flew across the world in a hot air balloon, became stranded on a desert island, and through miraculous application of “can-do” spirit recreated all the comforts of then-modern society in just a few years. My more mainstream tastes were fulfilled with stories by Harold Robbins and Jacqueline Susann, which may explain why many of my idea’s about human amour were initially a bit stilted.

A more hands-on approach to human sexuality also emerged from my sudden invisibility. Dad would come home most weekends, driving a company van painted in garish purple and yellow colors. I would often climb in and pretend to be behind the wheel driving down the highway. A girl down the street who was a year behind me in 4^th grade by the name of Darlene began to walk past and ask what I was doing in there. Part of what I was also doing was I had discovered a stash of soft-core porn, mostly topless women in garter

type stuff, but intriguing enough to mental sensibilities, albeit that certain physical structures had yet to petition to join the fray. Once inside our private cave, where we luckily were never discovered, Darlene became equally intrigued with the images of sensuality and decided to strike similar poses, with the exception of having nothing as visually captivating to match the mags. Though younger, Darlene was much faster than I, and by the next year she was reputed to have gone all the way with boys from middle school. Whatever titillation was gained from these escapades did not equal my growing sense of the power imbalance in male-female relations, as in we males simply were powerless until a given female decided to turn on her charms toward us. And that, I did not like. In many ways, still don’t until this day.

In March ’69, Dad brought all of us to Texarkana for the kick-off weekend of YES Stamps. Dan Blocker was there doing photo-ops with people as they put the full-court press to get people enthused and have more merchants sign on to the program. Dad took Liz and me to Blocker’s hotel room to meet him. He was a giant bear of a man, with a deep resonant voice that filled the room. I of course was in awe having never been so close to a celebrity before, but to Dad it was by now old hat, having spent dozens of evenings with the huge actor draining bottles of Scotch. I remember him looking extremely tired as he spoke with us, and as he posed with us and so many others for photos. YES Stamps would hold on until the fall of ‘69 before the money ran out, returning Dad to unemployment, and Blocker was sadly to die just a few years later from a blood clot post-surgery. But that brief fling with fame, fanned by other Hollywood types he met through the actor, fueled Dad’s desire to produce movies and a few years after it would nearly become a flame.

My 5^th grade year was equivocal in that while the academic part was smooth, the social part was less so. I developed a tormentor, one of those kids who for some reason took a dislike to me based on nothing more than how I looked. Frank Holloway was what we called in those days a “momma’s boy”, or “sissy”, because there was no information we could have used to understand that Frank was then, and would later in high school flamingly present himself as, homosexual. Frank was very tall and would use his stature over me to intimidate when were in lunch line. At first I was confused when it happened, then as others began to laugh at the obvious gauntlet that was being thrown down, I began to meet his hostility. Multiple times we ended up in the principal’s office, a place I had rarely seen since I never caused trouble, and it always seemed that somehow the blame ended up placed on me, probably due in no small measure to Mrs. Holloway being a fixture in the PTA.

One rainy afternoon the tension exploded. Like some other male homosexuals I have known, underneath Frank’s superficial charm he projected to teachers and authority figures laid a nasty, revengeful streak, and he pushed the envelope too far that day. I had a habit, noticeable to Frank’s eye at least, of sliding into my desk with one knee. The teacher had left the room for a minute, and I had gotten up to sharpen my pencil. When I returned to my desk and put my knee down a lightning bolt of pain shot up. When I looked down I saw a thumbtack sticking through my jeans and a growing red spot from my blood. There was no doubt as to who did it because Frank started laughing uproariously. There have been just a handful of times in my life when I have snapped, and this was my earliest recollection. I jumped over the row of desks separating us, people in them and he just as quickly backpedaled, slapping at me in the girlish way that effeminate men do. But I weathered the pain of his slaps this day, and we began a pier 6 brawl that went all over the room, even after my teacher and her colleague from across the hall pulled us apart. This time Frank couldn’t play innocent, other kids had seen him place the tack and although we both were suspended for 2 days I at least had the satisfaction of him finally getting the blame and afterwards he never said a word to me or looked in my direction for the many years afterward that we attended the same schools.

Part of my traipsing about town was spent at the downtown Boy’s Club which offered an indoor pool which I utilized in teaching myself to passably swim. I saw a signup for Pony League baseball and added my name to the list though I had never played the sport before. But there was a genetic impetus behind it also – Toby had been an athlete, played every sport in high school, but was most renowned for his pitching ability, in specific his 90+ mph fastball. When he came home and I told him about playing, he for the first time worked with me on the mechanics of pitching and this few month swath was one of the best I ever spent with him. He was able to attend a few practices and suggested to my coach that I was less suited to play right field where he had me installed, and I would be far better at pitching. My coach resisted the idea and the season neared the end without me taking the mound.

Our last game was against a team that had beaten us badly earlier in the year, and this game started out no better. Sometime in the middle of the game, Dad showed up for the first time and I saw him approach Coach and speak for a minute. That’s when I heard the words I had longed for “Miller, warm up”. Things were no better on the field, and when the bases were loaded I was motioned to take the mound. It was scary and exhilarating at the same time. It became even more so when the very first pitch I threw was crushed toward left field. I felt the agony of the impeding grand slam, but was saved by an unbelievable catch by the outfielder of the ball by his jumping high above the fence line and improbably catching it cleanly to end the inning. The next inning, we somehow strung hits together to climb within 2 runs. When my spot came up, the bases were full, and after several pitches I saw the perfect blob of white come into my hitting zone and drove the ball into the gap, scoring three to put us ahead by one. By the time I went back to the mound, my nerves had calmed and I struck out the side to win the game, It is perhaps my best athletic memory and I was happy that my Dad was able to see that small bit of success I had.

As Year 10 reached its end, the whole world was captivated by the Apollo 11 mission that was to culminate with the first manned

landing on the Moon on July 20^th, my birthday. My dreams of possible futures were inflamed by the celestial event, in stark contrast to the deepening poverty that my family was descending into.