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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781449027414 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 09/22/2009 |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Sales rank: | 693,182 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.65(d) |
Read an Excerpt
Bluestocking
By Bud Willis
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2009 Bud WillisAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4490-2741-4
Chapter One
Part I - The Depression EraAll great things are accomplished under adverse circumstances. Nick Saban
Number One Son, Horace
If the oldest child in the family is supposed to be the leader, Mama's fist-born did not disappoint. He carried our banner high and turned out to be our go-to-guy in almost every emergency situation. He was the closest thing we had to 911. If one of the little ones cut themselves on a broken milk bottle, Horace knew how to make a butterfly bandage so that it wouldn't need stitches or leave a scar. In the absence of a responsible father who normally would have done that sort of thing, Horace was exemplary. Where he learned it, I have no clue.
As a young boy, and the first child, he would have had the greatest exposure to both sides of our family tree in those early years. Horace was probably the only one of Margaret's children that might have actually remembered very much about the Dryden home in Bluestocking, or would have spent any meaningful time with Pete's family in Marshall County. He would also be the most likely one to know the names of some of the places where Pete had to move his family in order to find work during those Depression-era years, because he would have been dragged along to every one of them.But Pete finally settled his family in Tullahoma, Tennessee, a little town full of remarkable people who eventually would help raise his family in his absence. Tullahoma is smack dab in the middle of the 600-mile-long state of Tennessee, 72 miles southeast of Nashville and 60 miles north of Huntsville, Alabama. It is still, today, one of the friendliest places you will ever find.
Tullahoma was a sleepy little railroad town until WWII, when it received a huge economic boost as an indirect result of a letter that Albert Einstein wrote to President Roosevelt in 1939. American scientists had information that the Germans were attempting to build an extremely destructive bomb out of Uranium 235. FDR created the Manhattan Project in an attempt to beat them to the punch. The secret plan involved using small rural areas that weren't obvious military targets. Tennessee had plenty of small rural towns as well as strong Congressional clout, and Oak Ridge was selected as the cornerstone of this well-funded, government science project, the Atom Bomb.
A couple of years later, rural Tullahoma was selected as the site for a massive Army training camp called Camp Forrest. A large wooded area was quickly converted into an 85,000 acre military fortress that would train hundreds of thousands of troops. The recently completed Tennessee Valley Authority provided plenty of water and electricity and all the ingredients came together. The population of Tullahoma exploded from 6,500 to over 75,000 during this war-time period and it was considered somewhat of a boom- town as well as a vacation destination. More than 25,000 POW's were also housed there during WWII.
After 1945, Tullahoma changed dramatically. The buildings at Camp Forrest were auctioned off, and dismantled right down to the foundations of the buildings. The only things left were the concrete foundation slabs and a few stone chimneys. When all the soldiers moved out, the town returned to normal ... no more boom-town. Camp Forrest became nothing more than a huge parking place for teenagers, and the deserted, paved roads turned into late-night drag racing strips. But, during its heyday, sometime in 1943, Daddy found work in Tullahoma as a butcher in Bill Jones's grocery store.
Pete was a hard working man, but by the time his oldest son was a teenager, Pete had cultivated quite a few drinking buddies. Tullahoma had a reputation as a party town, because of all those soldiers in the area, and this was not necessarily a good thing for a man with Pete's gregarious personality.
Horace was old enough to help his daddy at the store occasionally, and could see the changes in his father's behavior. Pete was becoming a classic Jekyll and Hyde. He had apparently inherited the gene that steered his value system toward alcohol, and he was developing a chemical addiction to it. This was not an uncommon trait in the Willis family, but that was not the worst of it. When he drank he took on an abusive disposition.
In his prime, Pete had a sharp mind, and as a butcher, he had the uncanny ability to hold a piece of meat in his hand and estimate its weight and the price of it in his head, almost to the penny, before placing it on the scales. But weighing his grocery skills against his growing annoying behavior was no contest. The entire family was tiptoeing on eggshells around this weak-minded bully. Horace could only watch, as his father would turn on the charm for a customer and suddenly switch to show contempt for a family member, almost as if he resented having a wife and children. He had also been abusive to our sweet mother for some time, and this was tearing Horace into little pieces. One didn't have to have a psychology degree to know that this was far from normal behavior. When Pete did come home, late, and worn out from working all day and drinking afterwards, he ordered everyone to go to bed no matter what time it was. He insisted on Mother lying with him. The older girls would literally have to hide under their bed with a flashlight to get their homework done.
In sharp contrast, Horace, now 17, was beginning to shape his own adult values, and had set some very high standards for himself. He had an active social life with plenty of friends. He played football, and was a popular dance partner on the high school party circuit. This post war period was an era of high ideals for all Americans, and Pete didn't seem to be getting with the program. Horace must have been anguished and disgusted from watching his 40 year old father being diminished into the tormenting bully that he had become. Alcoholism was prevalent in those days, but it was not recognized as a disease like it is today. It was just considered voluntary insanity, and unacceptable.
There was no way for the rest of us to know how long all the resentment had been festering inside Horace, but he was not about to allow his abusive, foulmouthed father, to ruin his life, or to bully his mother and younger sisters. This would not do. He had seen enough. Pete was about to find out that he was not the only person in the family who could cop an attitude, and that he certainly didn't have a monopoly on anger.
The Intervention
Bravery is the ability to perform properly even when you are scared half to death. Omar Bradley
The exact day is not certain, but I know that Horace was 17, and Mother had just brought home her ninth bundle of joy to our ram-shackled rental house at 701 Jefferson Street in Tullahoma. Linda Gail Willis was about two weeks old, having been born on Feb. 20, 1947. It was in the dead of winter, and there was a frozen base of snow on the ground. It was bitter cold, both outside and inside our house. Darkness came early that night, and with it, a tension settled in the house, as though the barometric pressure was dropping sharply. It felt like a tornado was brewing. Even as a toddler, I could tell that things were far from normal that night. It seemed like hours passed, while we all waited stressfully for Daddy to come home. It didn't have to be said, and it wasn't, but something far from ordinary was about to happen.
Horace and Mama waited and talked in the back bedroom of the house while the rest of us huddled in the front of the house, the door closed between us. There was a coal stove in the room which provided adequate heat when we had coal and someone to tend it, but I don't remember much heat coming from it that night. Finally, Daddy came home, and entered through the back door of the house, where Horace was waiting.
The fact that we did not own a gun was a good thing for all of us, especially Daddy. Instead, Horace tried to explain to this inebriated man that if he could not come home sober, and treat his wife and children with more respect, then he would not be welcome there any longer. The child had become father of the man. The bully, of course, became furious, which must have been terrifying to his young son. But, as with most bullies, he was no match for a determined, well prepared champion of justice, especially when the bully was drunk. Our young hero was indeed prepared and fit, both mentally and physically. Newsreels from the recent war victory had bolstered the fighting spirit of all young American "warriors," and right now, Horace was on the front line for his family. He was fighting for freedom from our own brand of tyranny.
We could hear the sounds of a struggle; the scuffling of feet and furniture. The ass- kicking could not have taken more than a couple of minutes, but they were the longest two minutes in history. It seemed like forever. The scene on our side of the door could mostly be described as big eyes and brown shorts. The youngsters in the room eyed the older sisters for clues as to what was going on in there, until we realized that they didn't know any more than two week old Linda did. The loud thumping and scuffling noises would stop, and start again. Martha was armed with a piece of stove wood, just in case she might be pressed into service. Suddenly it was quiet. We heard a screen door slam shut. We all looked around the room at each other as though this might honestly be the last time we would ever see each other. We stared back at the door, not knowing when it would open or who would walk through.
Finally, it happened. The door opened and there stood Horace. It was like a cowboy movie where the good guy wins but nobody gets killed. He wasn't even bloody. Horace stood 10 feet tall that night.
The relief in that room was so great, that I swear it must have sucked oxygen through the stove flue and rekindled the fire. The house got warmer. Horace got some coal from somewhere, and made us a big fire with Martha's weapon. Things got nice and toasty warm. The little ones had to go to bed. The girls did their homework without having to crawl under the bed. Nobody said very much of anything for the rest of the evening. This was all just another night in Mama's helter-skelter world, but I could have sworn that I heard giggling that night between Martha and Ann. Everybody in that house knew, that, for better or for worse, our lives would never be the same after that night.
The next morning we awoke to a quiet house. Apparently, lying out there face down in the snow, Daddy didn't feel like going back in the house and strapping on any more of Horace. Pete was strong and physical, but Horace ... well, he was fighting for a higher purpose. Daddy probably sought whatever it was that got him in that position to begin with, because he didn't come back home that night. He probably had a warm place to go since there was plenty of evidence that he had his share of lady friends, according to stories we would hear later. I do know this: nobody felt sorry for him.
He didn't come back the next night either, or the next, or the next week. Some nights we could hear crunching footsteps in the snow, and our antennae would tingle, "Daddy?"
A change came over all of us during those next couple of weeks. Even in my pre-kindergarten brain I could tell that we were all growing closer. We weren't just a lump entity of Willis kids anymore. Each one of us was a real, individual person, and somehow I knew that we would all be better off because of what had happened. The biggest problem was that we didn't have a penny to our names.
After a few more weeks, the fear went away, and that was the last I ever saw of that brutal man. He never came back. Some say he went to Toledo, Ohio to live with some relatives. There were sightings from time to time. The curious thing to me was that he never even came back for any of his things. Years later, we would hear from Pete's brothers and sisters that we "ran him off," which is a ridiculous notion, of course. We would have loved to have had a caring, sober father. But no family needs what he was bringing home. Pete failed to tell his siblings that he had become an abusive, womanizing alcoholic, and they, of course, wanted to believe the best about him.
We didn't see as much of Horace after that either, but not for the same reason. It seems that Horace had made a decision, and now he had to back it up. Those damned choices again! Within a few days he had dropped out of high school to take a job. Our brave 17 year old was the bread winner now.
Our landlord on Jefferson Street was a notorious bootlegger, and one of our father's drinking buddies. Whatever arrangement he had made for us to live in that house on Jefferson Street terminated with Daddy's departure. It was only a month or so before we were sent packing. Understandably, I suppose, since we had no means to pay the rent. Even a five year old knew that much about economics. Trying to imagine what that must have been like for Mama is almost impossible. Horace was barely 17 years old, with two years of high school left. My oldest sister Martha was 15, Ann was close behind her at 14. Then there was Tommy, 11, Sara, 9, and I was almost 6, Tykie 4, Jimmy was 2 and Linda was 2 months.
Just about everybody in town knew part of our story by now. News travels fast in a small town, especially through the Tullahoma school system. I'm sure it touched many of them. But they didn't know the whole story. In fact, none of us knew the whole story. It would not have been in Mama's nature to tell anyone of the constant abuse that took place under our roof for so many years, and no one was more ashamed of it than her. Nor did the older children share their sad experiences about Daddy. All those things became dark secrets, and ultimately part of the code. The "Code of Silence," as it has come to be known, the holy grail of the alcoholic family.
In the future we would not be allowed to discuss that incident, our father's behavior, or any negative issues of the past in great detail if we ever mentioned them at all. Instead, we were advised to keep our eyes planted firmly onto our future. Therefore, any attempt on my part to tell any of these stories, is to tell only a child's version. The only one who really knew everything was Mama. And she never told anyone anything.
She is also the only person who would know where the support came from to get us through the months ahead. We still woke up every day to a cold house and a full agenda that needed to be managed, and Mama still had hungry mouths to feed. Perhaps Daddy's old grocer boss realized that Pete had left his family bereft, and he was the one who helped find us a small house in town. We don't know. We do know that Mama paid a visit to the Red Cross office to seek advice. What they told her is anybody's guess. Her three brothers in Shelbyville may have helped. At any rate, within six weeks, we moved, or I should say, we walked to our new home.
Early Memories
Memory is a way of holding on to the things you love. Who you are, And the things you never want to lose. The Wonder Years
Horace's dramatic intervention with our father took place at 701 Jefferson Street in Tullahoma. My two older sisters, Martha and Ann, were far more emotionally involved in that episode than the six clueless adolescents in the room. Things might have taken a much different turn if Daddy had come through that door and Martha had been called into action with her trusty piece of stove-wood. The thought of that makes me shutter and chuckle at the same time. Thank God it didn't come to that. My memories of that humble residence are few and far between, but since they are some of my most vivid early memories, I am including some of them for my own simple amusement. As I said, Mama had three sets of children, and some of us were too young at that time to be living in the real world, but we still had memories.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Bluestocking by Bud Willis Copyright © 2009 by Bud Willis. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
AUTHOR'S NOTE....................XIWHO IS I....................XI
Introduction Of The Main Characters....................XXIII
THE WILLIS CLAN....................XXVI
Love In Bluestocking Hollow....................XXXIII
PART I - THE DEPRESSION ERA....................1
NUMBER ONE SON, HORACE....................3
THE INTERVENTION....................7
EARLY MEMORIES....................12
FINDING OUR WAY....................21
MARTHA....................23
THE PAN AM....................25
THE MARSHALL THEATER....................34
TURNING POINTS....................43
EAST LINCOLN STREET....................49
ANN....................53
HANK WILLIAMS....................57
TODAY SHOW GREEN ROOM....................60
PART II - THE FIFTIES ERA....................63
THE HAPPY DAYS....................65
GROWING UP ON A SHOESTRING....................67
DONKEY SOFTBALL GAMES....................74
TOMMY....................76
THE DAIRY DIP....................80
AEDC, THE SPACE AGE....................84
NEED FOR ENGINEERS....................85
MAMA MEETS THE PRESIDENT....................86
TRUMAN AND MACARTHUR....................87
HORACE GETS MARRIED....................96
SELLING PAPERS....................103
SNOW....................106
SARA GOES TO NURSING SCHOOL....................109
TRIAL AND ERROR....................112
BUDDY TAKES HIS TURN AT BAT....................121
INFLATION....................125
GRUNDY STREET....................131
TYKIE....................153
MORRIS KING....................157
GROWTH OF AEDC....................164
HORSESENSE....................166
CHRISTMAS FIRE....................169
BEAU....................172
PIONEERING THE WORLD'S FIRST TURBINE POWERED HELICOPTER....................177
BOO RADLEY....................180
LINDA....................182
DALE ROBERTSON'S SECRETS OF PUBLIC SPEAKING....................187
FINAL CHAPTER....................191
THANKS FOR THE RIDE....................194
MAMA GETS SICK....................204
THE PROPER THING....................207
Epilogue....................223
HISTORICAL OUTTAKES....................223
Acknowlegements....................233
FIFTY YEAR REUNION SPEECH....................235