The Early Years, 1941–1947

In order to set the stage for the lifestyle changes that took place in 1947, I would like to give a little history of the family. The history of any family, I believe, has a lot to do with the mind-set and environment of the children born into that family.

My dad was born in 1898 near Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and was a veteran of World War I. He was a victim of mustard gas, causing him lung problems for the rest of his life. If there is such a thing as having too much pride, he was a perfect example. Although he had a certificate of wounded in action, he would not take any assistance from the government as long as he could work and make enough to provide for his family. He fathered ten children, two of which met early deaths due to childhood diseases. The other eight, none of which had physical or mental illness or deformities, finished high school. He was a carpenter and a very religious man who raised a family under strict rules. The cold rough winters, along with health problems, caused Dad to make the decision that would make drastic changes in the lifestyles of the entire family.

Mother was born in the mountains of West Virginia, near Hinton. Mother and Dad both came from large families, and by the time I came along, they had settled in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Mom was a homemaker, and she had a good head on her shoulders about managing assets.

On June 7, 1941, I was born as the youngest of eight living children in a house on Putnam Street in Parkersburg.

As history tells us, not long after my birth, World War II broke out and changed the lives of most people in this country. Two brothers-in-law and my oldest brother Edward went to war, along with the rest of the men and women who paid the price for freedom in the United States.

My childhood from birth until about five years old is not something I remember a lot about. I do remember, however, the day Ed came home from the navy after the war.

As time has passed, I have written several songs and included the words of two of them in this book: "Dad Was the Head of Our Home" and "Mama Found a Dollar."

The Old Farmhouse

The first recollection I have of the farm was the old farmhouse. We arrived in the town of Monroe, where we stopped at the only hotel, which was in an old building in the main part of town. We had been on the road for several hours traveling from Parkersburg, West Virginia, through the mountains by the way that was before interstates or even the West Virginia Turnpike. Needless to say, everybody was beat after the two days of travel, but because none of us had seen our new home, we decided to drive out and take a quick look around.

When we arrived, the moving van was there sitting in front of the house. To the older men, it seemed the thing to do would be to unload while they were all there and not wait until morning. It would make sense that the driver would want to head back to West Virginia as soon as he could, so that is what they did. This turned out to be a rather large task with no electricity or running water in the house. The truck driver had a helper, a big black man who was apparently superstitious. He broke a mirror and went on and on about how seven years of bad luck would follow such an action. I can't recall ever seeing him after that so I can't say much about the bad luck it might have caused.

It is hard to tell you just what we saw. The driveway was not really a driveway. It was more like a yard with no grass that had washed away several times and left ditches in the dirt. The old house was a one-story farmhouse that appeared to have been abandoned for some time. It was covered with unpainted wooden German siding. The house looked more like an old sharecropper's house than anything else. Of course, most of us had never seen anything like it before.

The home we left in Parkersburg was a two-story frame house in good shape with a basement, electricity, natural gas, heat, and running water, and it was in town with paved streets and concrete curbs along the sidewalk. What had we done! At five years of age, I was just along for the ride, but Mom was rather disappointed to say the least. While the men unloaded the moving truck, we sat in the car because it was a cool, rainy night and there was nowhere else to go. It seemed like a long time, but we finally headed to the hotel, which was about five miles from the farm. We spent the night, and everybody was glad to get a bath and a night's sleep.

The next day, we returned to the farm and got our first look in the daylight. I will have to say again that it is hard to put into words what the place looked like. The house was sitting on rock pillars with no underpinning. The yard had no grass, and it was not what you could call a pretty sight. Nevertheless, we were here, and it was going to be our new home. The house was sitting there with some post oak trees around it, two well shelters, a grain building that seemed to be in better shape than the house, and a barn with a hayloft. The road in front was dirt with very little gravel on it. The well covers were there to keep the rain off when drawing water. One was a dug well about twenty-five feet deep, which was mostly surface water, and the other was a drilled well that gave a limited supply of mineral water. It wasn't the best-tasting water around, but it was wet and cold. Neither well had a pump, so all water had to be drawn by hand.

As I said, the house had no underpinning. Neither did it have insulation in the walls or overhead....