Calvin Dirickson was born in 1938 and spent his early childhood in stark poverty. During his four year hitch in the navy he took writing courses. This is his second book to be published. He has completed writing his third and has begun on his forth.

PURPLE ROBIN

By CALVIN DIRICKSON

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2012 Calvin Dirickson
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4669-5625-4

Chapter One

It was August 1938 and the boot heel of Missouri was in its usual August weather pattern: hot and humid. In a three-room sharecropper's shack, near Charleston, Missouri, Doctor James Moore, a roving country doctor, was trying to save a woman in childbirth. Several times he tried unsuccessfully to pull the child out by using forceps, but the child had turned blue from lack of oxygen and Dr. Moore was quite sure it was already dead. This was the woman's fifth child and the good doctor feared that he was about to lose both of them.

Sweat drenched his shirt and ran down his face. After more than eight hours he was beginning to lose his strength from this long process. He couldn't keep this up much longer, so he had little choice but to make a final drastic decision to cut the child into pieces to get it out, in a last ditch attempt to save the mother. As cruel as this may seem he was without any medical equipment and this was the only thing left for him to do. Reluctantly, he picked up a scalpel, took a long, deep, troublesome breath, exhaled loudly then slowly turned back to the sweat-drenched and exhausted mother to start the cutting. At that moment the mother gathered her last ounce of strength and with an ear-splitting scream of excruciating pain made a desperate final push and her huge twelve pound son was finally born. Immediately she began hemorrhaging. Moving quickly, Dr. Moore cut the birth cord then grabbed the blue lifeless child by the arm and slung it across the room out of the way so he could get to the enormous task of trying to save the mother.

The force of the child landing on his back, on another bed, expelled the fluid from his lungs and he was able to suck in air for his first breath of life. He let out a loud scream of protest from being taken from a warm comfortable womb and tossed across a cold dark room. Dr. Moore froze with horror when the child cried out; he had been seconds away from cutting the child into pieces. He became sick to his stomach at the thought and was so upset he was having a hard time concentrating on trying to save the mother. Finally,—even with his strength gone, he managed to save this amazingly strong and resilient woman.

I know all this to be true because my mother told me this was how I was born.

Thus began my long journey down life's road. Like the rare Purple Robin, I am a rare species of man. My road has had many ups, downs, twists, turns and detours. Not really surprising, I guess, considering my extraordinary entrance into this world. To give you an idea of my unusually existence, early in life, I began having visions of disasters, death and financial gains. Arriving at midpoint a particular disaster caused me to completely change my life style. I know God has stayed with me all the way through my life no matter which forks in the road I have taken.

I am the youngest of four living children, my mother named me Calvin. When I was born my brother John was two, sister JoAnne four and oldest brother, Bill was six. Bill had a twin named Will who had been stillborn. It took Bill several days after my birth before he would come near my crib, but when he finally approached he asked Mother, "What is that thing anyway?" It was not long until he accepted me as part of the family and was carrying me around everywhere. Bill was always the man of the house when Dad was away.

My only playmate was my brother John.

As mentioned, the house I was born in was a three-room sharecropper's shack with a small front porch and a screened in back porch. There was no electricity, so we used kerosene lamps for light. The bathroom was an outhouse in the backyard. Any water we used for washing, cleaning, drinking or any other purpose, had to be pumped from a hand pump located in the far corner of the backyard and carried into the house. We didn't have much of a yard. The landowner needed all his land for growing crops. His cornfield came up within twenty feet of the house. But we did have a garden spot and a place for raising hogs and chickens to sell and/or butcher. With these bare necessities of life, Mother would still feed anyone that knocked on our door asking for food. Men still traveled the roads hitchhiking and riding the rails going anywhere they thought they could find work. I can vaguely remember playing with my nickel toy tractor that I had got for my second Christmas and helping mother gather eggs. For some reason I also remember the sweet aroma of hay in our small barn.

In the early 1930s, during the Depression, Dad worked on a farm for twenty five cents an hour. I remember many times Mother saying, "We were better off living on the farm at least we could raise our own food." Living through the Depression, they knew nothing but the hardest of times. Our house was several miles from town and a mile from the closest neighbor. Dad had an old rickety truck, but gas was in short supply he would only go to town when it was really necessary. About the only food purchased from town were sugar, coffee and flour. We butchered our own meat, which consisted of pork and chicken. We couldn't afford beef. Chickens were raised for eggs and meat, milk was bought from a neighbor. Mother always had a large garden and canned all our vegetables.

In the later 1930s when I was born the population of the United States was 129,824,939. The federal budget was $6.84 billion. The Depression was supposed to be over, but there were still eight million people out of work and unemployment was at 9 percent. The minimum wages was forty cents an hour but the wage and hourly laws did not include men working as farm hands.

My Dad came from a family of six children with Irish and German ancestors. The Irish was more dominant in Dad, Bill and me, we are redheaded, and light skinned and freckled. The German blood showed up in John and JoAnne their complexion and blond hair are typical German. Mother came from a family of twelve children and her jet black hair and high cheekbone came from her Cherokee ancestors. Her strong built and personality from her German bloodline. Both my parents had inherited the hardworking ethics passed down from their immigrant ancestors, which is certainly what they needed to raise a family during the Depression. My grandmother, on my Mother's side was married three times and had children from all of her husbands. Most of my relatives on both sides lived in the boot heal of Missouri (South East Missouri). We all lived close enough to each other that on Sunday after church there would be a large family gathering. I can remember many a Sunday visiting with all my cousins. There was so many of us, there was always the inevitable arguments or fights.

The most memorable Sunday visit was when a gang of us cousins were visiting my grandparents on my Mother's side, where they lived on a farm. Us kids were playing in the cow pasture and decided we would taste the salt block that was for the cattle. We all took a few licks off the block of salt. Our parents found out about it and were furious with us because grandfather had a sick cow that had died a few days before. Cattle need salt and surely this sick cow had been licking on this same block of salt that we had sampled. We all got our mouths washed out with soap and our backsides got a good switching

On my third birthday Mother made a chocolate cake for me. I was so excited I dived into it with both hands. There was no birthday present that year but I still had my tractor from my second Christmas.

We kids had to make our...