My Journey

My Journey

by

Jim Woods

All rights reserved

Copyright © March 13, 2004, Jackie Woods

Cover Art Copyright © 2014, Charlotte Holley

Gypsy Shadow Publishing, LLC.

Lockhart, TX

www.gypsyshadow.com

No part of this book may be reproduced or shared by any electronic or mechanical means, including but not limited to printing, file sharing, and email, without prior written permission from Gypsy Shadow Publishing, LLC.

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ISBN: 978-1-61950-214-7

Published in the United States of America

First eBook Edition: May 1, 2014

Dedication

For Jackie, the love of my life and travel partner and hunting companion, who is totally supportive of my long hours at the computer keyboard because in the typewriter days she was my word processor.

Author’s Note

I’ve been a part of some facet of the publishing industry for half a century, writing truthfully about things and people and travels and hunting, and eventually fiction. And toward these closing years of my life and career I’m now moved to write about myself. Some of my literary friends have encouraged me to do so, but generally I have resisted. Who would want to read about me? I’m not a celebrity or a hero, although I admit that some of my life experiences are sufficiently unique to have served as basis for some of my fiction treatments.

I’ve lost all the friends and family who can authenticate what I say here, and any commercial editor worthy of the office would want to fact-check my accounts. The truth is that this cannot be proven, but I write the truth. That’s what I have been trained to do, although much of my factual writing has been styled to be entertaining as well as informative. I will try to continue in that informative but entertaining approach.

A Long Walk Home

This account of my birth is enhanced family verbal history—enhanced because I don’t know precisely what dialogue was spoken, although the gist of it is faithful to what I’ve been told. I’m not certain that my mother remembered exactly either, and quite likely recalled and told it a bit differently each time I heard it from her. However, the story is as I remember it being told to me, and of course I have no personal memory of the events.

Virgull! [My father, Virgil Neff Woods] Ah kain’t go no futher!

Already some fifteen steps ahead of her, he deliberately took two more as though he didn’t hear, and then disgustedly set down the two battered and mismatched suitcases. He unslung the water jug hanging by the rope loop from his shoulder, and turned to face her.

Her streaked, blonde, straight, sweat-matted hair clung to her colorless features. She hadn’t put on lipstick in four days. Even her normally blue eyes were dusky gray.

The tattered sweater, once blue like her eyes, now faded by the years and grayed by the dust filtering upward from her every step, hung limply on her shoulders. The stretched sleeves covered half of her hands so that only her fingers were exposed below the frayed cuffs. She had needed the wrap in the coolness of the morning when they started out just after first light. Now at midday in mid-September, the Arkansas weather was steamy. Still, it was easier to wear the sweater than to carry it and the sniffling boy too.

Her dress once had been a bright flowered print. She traded and coaxed cloth from neighbors until she had enough of the multicolored flour sacks in the same pattern to make the only maternity dress she had ever owned. She had worn it while pregnant with the boy, now in her arms, two years ago. Threadbare and almost bleached out, once again it stretched taut across her swollen stomach. The soles of her flimsy sandals gave way to the piercing of every pebble in the road, and her feet were bruised and dirty.

We can make six more miles today, he objected gruffly, then relented to the persuasion of her silent tears.

Under the refuge of a hickory tree just turning to yellow alongside the grassy roadside ditch, he fished cigarette makings from the bib pocket of his overalls. To conserve tobacco, he packed the paper loosely from the Prince Albert can, twisted the ends to keep the cherished narcotic in place, and then popped a wooden match into flame under his grimy thumbnail. When the paper flared and the tobacco glowed, he stuck the half-burned match to the grass and twigs she had gathered for a cook-fire.

He appreciated the tree that sheltered them, but cursed the forest around Hardy [Arkansas] that finally had run out, causing the mill to shut down. It had been degrading for him to go hat-in-hand to her sister’s family in Fort Smith, and beg to stay on with them until he found another job. There should be jobs. It was 1934; the Depression was turning around, the nation’s economy on the way to recovery—Mister Roosevelt said so. Then came the letter from his own sister Catherine [Pierce] in Paducah [Kentucky] telling him that the Illinois Central Shop was hiring—and paying forty cents an hour!

Paducah was three hundred miles away. Train fare was impossible for them, so they set out afoot, and had been lucky with rides while they walked along the main roads. They crossed the Ozark Plateau in three days, sometimes hitching a ride on a wagon or truck. They even slept under a roof every night; on the ground huddled in their coats in abandoned or dilapidated barns, but at least not out in the open. Now at Marked Tree, they turned northeast through the Mississippi Valley to cut across the corner of Missouri into western Kentucky. The main flow of commerce moved in the tug-towed barges on the river, so the surface roads through the region were lightly traveled. The single car going in their direction passed with a blaring horn and a flurry of dust. They had walked nine miles.

She untied the rope from around the heavier suitcase, and removed the cast iron skillet and the battered aluminum pan that long ago had lost its handle. Then she dug out the bag of flour and measured a couple of handfuls into the pan. From the Clabber Girl can, she added a pinch of baking powder, and lastly, a sprinkle from the saltbox. She twirled the ingredients briefly with her single tablespoon, and formed a depression in the center of the mixture.

He pulled the cork from the jug of tepid, cloudy water reclaimed from a farm pond back down the road, washed the dust from his mouth with a swig, and handed her the bottle. She poured some into a tin cup to give the fretful boy a drink, and then clucked soothing endearments to quiet him, while she splashed more water into the flour mixture. When it was stirred into a thin batter, she used the same spoon to measure lard from the tin to the hot skillet where it sizzled and smoked, and spooned three pools of the batter into the skillet. She then retrieved the spatula he had shaped and thinned from a broken board with his clasp knife on their first night’s stopover.

After the batter was covered in bubbles over the entire top surface, and the bubbles broke, she flipped the hoecakes over to cook them through. The edges of the bread were burnt and crisp, while the centers were plump and soft. When the first one was done, she passed it to her husband. She turned her attention to the boy, crumbling the next hoecake in a tin plate and pouring syrup over the pieces from the almost empty Log Cabin can. Then she mashed the bread into a gooey mixture and spoon-fed the boy.

She was snatching a bite of her own bread in between feeding the boy when He demanded, Don’t we have some of that baloney left? Setting her lunch aside, she probed once again into the kitchen suitcase and produced a greasy paper package, and remembered the meager feast of last night.

They agonized over the decision, but had spent a precious dime for their first meat in three days. It was hard to wait as the butcher sliced a few pieces from the cloth-wrapped sandwich loaf. When the man realized how desperate was their hunger, he rolled another sheet of butcher paper into a cone and filled it with crackers from the barrel out in front of the counter. They protested that they didn’t have money for crackers, too, but he insisted that crackers were free with the purchase of bologna. They carefully divided the meat and crackers into two portions and put half away for the next day, even though what they acquired was barely enough for one meal.

She unwrapped the package and gagged at the odor, and her eyes brimmed at seeing the formerly fresh pink bologna now slimy and tinged with green. The crackers, also closed up in the hot and airless suitcase, had gone stale and soft. Her weeping turned to near hysterics at the waste, and he stoically resolved not to add to her misery. He wouldn’t voice the deserved accusation that she should have known this would happen when he insisted they not eat it all at one time. Besides, she cried at everything these days.

She separated the crackers on the butcher paper in the forlorn hope that they would dry in the air and perhaps serve as an acceptable snack to pacify Bobby [My brother, Bobby Gordon Woods] before the next meal, then solemnly fried the last of the batter.

After another sip all around of the just barely drinkable water, she started to repack the suitcase, because she knew that he wouldn’t allow them to rest here for very long. As she twisted around in her sitting position to stretch for the fry pan, she felt a sharp, penetrating pain and screamed him out of his musings of the good life to come. Virgil! The baby’s coming!

Don’t be silly, Ethel Marie! [My mother, Ethel Marie (Burns)Woods] You’re just upset over that damned baloney. You’re not due for two weeks and we’ll be at Cat’s way ’fore then.

No! It’s coming. I know it is and it hurts! You’ve got to help me! Her panic was real and contagious.

What can I do? Now, scared at his inadequacy, he was yelling at her. She had no right to involve him in this business that was her doing.

Get the coats… and the boy’s diapers!

Numbly, he complied. From the other suitcase he pulled his own worn, plaid mackinaw and bunched it into a pillow. Over it he laid open her sateen-lined camel’s-hair coat with real fur collar that had been hand-me-down charity from her sister. The boy’s diapers were dingy squares of old bed sheet washed at the side of the road these past few nights and dried over bushes. He dumped them from the suitcase in a pile beside her. Don’t we need hot water?

There’s no time. The fire’s out and the pan’s dirty. She stopped to scream again. You better find some help, she gasped. That farm we passed.

The farm was at least a mile back, maybe more. Relieved at being released, he turned to run.

Virgil! My water!

He raced back to her and snatched up the jug and offered it to her.

No! My water! It broke! Hurry!

Her panicked cries finally stirred the boy, napping after the heavy lunch, and he sat up, confused and bawling. Virgil, she moaned, You’d better take him with you.

He snatched up the boy, who was now wide awake, screaming for his mama with arms outstretched and squirming to be freed of his daddy’s rough grasp. It was more than the man could handle. He spanked the boy into paralyzed silence and dumped him on the ground beside her. I can make better time without him, he yelled at the contorted, whimpering figure lying on the coat. He ran until he could no longer hear the cries of either of them before he slowed to catch his breath.

With the farmhouse in sight he started running again, and thankful to find the lady at home, wheezed out the predicament that his wife had put him in. Offering him but little sympathy, the farm lady ordered, Hitch the horse to that buggy out back if you’re capable, and do it quick. My man’s in the field and too far away to help. I’ll gather what I need. Minutes later, throwing her bundle into the buggy, the farm wife grabbed the reins from him and snapped, Show me the way! as she urged the horse off at the gallop. They finished second in the race.

The baby was wrapped in the diaper rags, lying across its mother’s stomach. The afterbirth had spread under her, all over the coat, and she had ripped off the flour sack dress and wrapped it about her loins like a diaper itself. She was quiet from exhaustion and the two-year-old boy was shocked into a sobbing stupor. The umbilical still connected the mother to her new son. The farm wife cinched the cord with yarn in two places, and then snipped it between the ties with her sewing shears. She stripped away the dingy bloodied rags from the baby and swaddled it in clean cloth.

Back at the farmhouse, after both the baby and mother had been cleaned up and fed, and both were resting, the farm wife declared to the woman’s husband, Virgil, I’m a lawful midwife around here, and I usually get paid, in money or goods. He told her that he had no money, but would mail whatever she demanded from Kentucky after he found work, but she relented. No, not this time, she did most of the work anyhow. I’ll notify the doctor in Weona and he’ll register the birth. What time did the baby come? Everyone agreed that it was about two o’clock.

That evening Virgil burned the bloody-sheet diapers, the flour-sack dress and the sateen-lined camel’s-hair coat with real fur collar. In the morning, they wrapped me in new sheet squares given to them by the farm wife, and bundled me in an apple box that was the farmer’s contribution. He slung the water jug rope over his shoulder, and took the kitchen suitcase in one hand and the apple box crib under the other arm. She picked up the two-year-old and draped him on one hip and took the other suitcase. By sun-up, they had trudged up the road toward the Promised Land far enough that they could no longer see the farmer and his wife waving their encouragement.

The Rest of the Clan

The preceding was my introduction to the family. Both my parents, Virgil and Marie, have passed on. I never knew my mother’s mother nor my father’s father, but the latter’s own story is interesting in its own right, and directly affects my own existence. It’s more family verbal history, but my grandfather as an infant was abandoned on a doorstep, presumably somewhere in Illinois. We don’t know his real name or who his natural parents were, and the assumption logically is that his mother was unwed. His adoptive family surname was Wood. This much we know, and all who might add to or confirm this are unknown or gone now, so I have to relate it as it was told to me.

Around sometime in his life, we think as an older teenager, my grandfather had an argument with the only father he had ever known, Mister/Doctor Somebody Wood. We don’t know the name and have been stonewalled in trying to trace him. There is simply nothing to go on. Years ago my father’s mother might have had the information, but I was too young when she lived to talk with her about such serious family business. Anyhow, grandfather left home in his big fight with his adoptive father, possibly upon finally learning that he was adopted. His rebellion was complete when he arbitrarily added the S to his name, becoming Woods instead of Wood.

He married Bertie Virginia and they had three offspring. Lena [James], the Catherine [Pierce] noted in the previous segment, and my father, Virgil Neff Woods, the surname becoming legal through general and generational use. In due time, Virgil married my mother, Ethel Marie Burns, of Arkansas. Virgil’s two sisters, Lena and Catherine, and his mother, Bertie, all wound up living in Paducah, Kentucky, where my immediate family wound up, too.

As a youngster I never found it necessary to trace my grandfather’s family movements, so I do not know how they came to congregate in Paducah. All my uncles were related only by marriage. Virgil’s two sisters married; Marie had no brothers, but did have four sisters, all of them married as well. I really knew only two of my aunts on my mother’s side, Merry Sunshine (Yes!) [Shamlin] and Nina [Ramsey]. Aunt Sunny, as we called her, had one son, Larry, who was around the age of my brother and me; and Nina had two girls—Fern and Joanne—and three boys—Tom, Bill and Roy. Joanne and Roy were about my age, and the others were an earlier and almost a separate generational part of the family.

Of the aunts, I was closest to Nina Ramsey, having lived in her house in California when I left home in Kentucky on my own. My own family had lived with her family for a short time, on their Indiana farm, during some hard economic times. Later on here is the account of my leaving home at age seventeen, and heading for California where I did live for a while in Nina Ramsey’s home, but first, I did have a life of sorts while growing up in Paducah.

A Close Call

One of my many jobs as a youngster and later as a teenager was that of usher at the local movie houses. There were four theaters in town, all part of the same conglomeration, and the employees were moved about, one to the other, as management found necessary. We ushered, but also changed the marquee when the movie bill changed. On the nights that I had to change the marquee at the theatre where I mostly was assigned, three times a week, I usually was kept on the job late enough that I missed the last bus home. Actually, the bus took me only to within a mile-and-a-half of home, so on those late nights at work I just had a longer walk home than normal.

When the last movie let out and I had time to run for the bus, I would do so, but when I was too late for the city bus, my walking route home took me by the Greyhound bus station. The Greyhound station had a coffee shop, called The Post House, which never closed. Anyone out late around town and in need of a cup of coffee or a sandwich took it at The Post House. The restaurant entrance was just inside the main doors of the waiting room—the white waiting room. The main waiting room, the restrooms and the water fountains were labeled White but the only passengers to read the signs were, in fact, white, because the blacks had their own waiting room and facilities. But they did not have a coffee shop.

The black-man janitorial attendant in the Colored waiting room was permitted in the white space only to pick up food and drink orders that had been telephoned in from the back room. But… I digress.

Because of the lateness of the hour those three nights a week, I became a regular at the Post House, for coffee and a doughnut, sometimes a late meal. The rest of the regulars, all of whom had their own reasons for roaming at night, would greet me as I entered, usually asking me about the new movie that would play the next day. The restaurant accommodated twenty customers on pedestal seats around the L-shaped counter, but seldom more than six or seven seats were taken at my time of night.

All loners, but somehow drawn to the lights and casual friendliness of the late-night oasis, no one sat side-by-side with another. I always went to the same seat, as the other night owls did. No one would have taken my seat on Saturday, Monday or Thursday nights. If a stranger made a move to fill my stool, he would be warned off. I had witnessed such care-taking at times when other regulars were absent. A stranger about to occupy the seat of a club member would be informed, That’s Charlie’s seat. He’s late, but he’ll be right along.

The Post House double glass doors cut diagonally across a corner of the all-glass enclosure that defined the coffee shop and separated it from the waiting room. The stools were on a platform one step above floor level, I think so that others in the waiting room would have a view of people eating, and perhaps excite them to patronize the restaurant, too. The diners within had their backs to the waiting room.

The usual sparse crowd that Saturday night was interrupted by a commotion just outside the coffee shop doors, which were blocked open to catch a little fresh outside air from the main doors to the building, which likewise were blocked open. It sounded like a good Saturday-night scuffle. Pretty soon, we heard a gunshot outside, and then a man came running through the open main doors, headed down the length of the waiting room, presumably to find safety from his attacker in the restroom. The attacker, whom we recognized as one of the cabbies who parked out front, was in hot pursuit though, punctuating his chase with more shots from his revolver.

The pursued individual, thinking better of trapping himself in the closed restroom, circled through the waiting room with his pursuer close behind. Another shot rang out and very quickly the man being chased found his way into the Post House. The cabbie was right on his heels and when the man he chased had no further avenue of escape, the cabbie fired one more time. The man went down halfway onto the stool platform and I pulled my feet off the rail under my own stool and swiveled away to prevent his falling into me. The cabbie disappeared—we were to find out later—to drive himself to the hospital for tending his knife wounds.

Much later, it came out that the cabbie was the victim of an attempted robbery, this at the well-lighted bus station, possibly the brightest, or most illuminated anyway, place in town that time of night. The cabbie was convicted of manslaughter and served six months.

But, back to the Post house on that fateful night.… We all realized quickly that we had witnessed a killing. There was no doubt that the man at my feet was dead. The black man who was in the restaurant on one of his rare errands into the white facilities asked the waitress for a towel which he laid over the dead man’s face—almost as though this was just part of the routine of his life. Perhaps it was. The police took our statements and sent us all home. The Post House was closed for the first time anyone could recall.

It was operating as usual by Monday night when I put in my appearance. Instead of the welcoming camaraderie that I had come to expect, my associates were noticeably subdued. I wondered what was going on… sure, our last meeting had been disrupted, but I assumed that, at most, the previous Saturday night might be the subject of conversation, but not a wake.

My thoughts were interrupted by, Jim, you gotta see this.

The speaker led me out the coffee shop doors, followed by the entire midnight entourage, around the corner of the glass wall where we shuffled to a stop in front of the cigarette machine. The machine had been damaged in the shooting. A bullet, from the shot just preceding the cabbie’s final and fatal shot, had pierced the chrome framework of the machine near the top. My eyes were drawn to the glass wall above the machine, to The Post House beyond, to my empty stool.

I turned to face the cluster of my colleagues, they nodding in silent affirmation that had the errant bullet ranged just an inch higher in the wild spree, it would have cleared the cigarette machine and proceeded, undeterred by the plate glass, directly to the space above my now empty stool, space that I had occupied at that crucial time. The waitress poured somber coffee for all her regulars and didn’t ring a charge up on her cash register. I sipped in silence and once in a while glanced around to see the others similarly engaged. Someone coughed and drew the attention of those seated around him, but he was just clearing his throat and had nothing to say. I finished my coffee, pushed back the cup and saucer, walked out and stopped at the cigarette machine, touched the bullet hole, waved to my comrades-in-coffee, and walked on home, thankful that I had been spared to live another day.

Incidentally, my literary career began while living and working in Paducah. The job was with a magazine distributor and one of my specific chores was to gather and package new magazine issues for the route men to deliver to the retail stores and newsstands around town. The secondary chore was stripping covers from unsold and returned past issues to be shipped back to the publishers for credit. Of course, at that time I had no way of knowing that one day I would work as an editor for a couple of international magazines.

Iron Road to Paradise

This is the story of my transition from Kentuckian to Californian.

The graduation ceremony was over well before noon; my walk home from the high school took its usual three-quarters of an hour. The train didn’t leave until six-thirty.

It promised to be the longest six hours of my life.

My clothes were already packed in a string-tied cardboard box; my food for the three-day trip, in a paper box—a mismatched set of luggage. The suitcase box was from Finkel’s store. The heavy corrugated box had held bib overalls before the store discarded it, and was too large for my meager wardrobe. My plaid mackinaw filled most of the space in the now cut-down carton, and eight wraps of twine in two directions had been necessary to hold the re-cut flaps in place and to provide a handle. I was able to pry open a flap to insert the hardbound folder that held my diploma and mortarboard tassel after I had shown them to my mother. My new gray cotton trousers and burgundy knit shirt that I had worn for graduation under the gown would be my traveling clothes.

Grease stains and a few remaining crystals of sugar testified that the smaller, flimsy box now holding a dozen potted ham and scrambled egg sandwiches once had held glazed donuts. The box had been salvaged from the trashcan out back of Trevathan’s market down at the corner. It, too, was tied with string, but not with the security of the suitcase box; just a couple of wraps to hold the lid in place, tied with a bow so that the contents could be accessed.

I avoided my mother. Every time she made eye contact with me, she cried. She understood that I had to go, but I was her oldest child at home. My brother in prison was older. Of the other six—four boys and two girls—only my sister, who was next oldest to me, and the brother next after her, seemed like part of my family. My youngest brother was an infant in diapers, a stranger to me, as was the next-to-youngest, also a brother. My middle brother and younger sister allied together for familial security, their order falling in the middle of the sibling range, and generally were callously left out of the accounting of family members.

Working at the theater after school every evening of the week, and required to be at work early on weekends too, for both matinee and evening showings, I seldom saw my younger brothers and sisters. The little ones slept in a different room than the one I shared with the two older of my brothers, and I was off to school before the two youngest brothers and my youngest sister were up and about. By the time I got home from the theater, always late at night, the little ones were in bed.

Sometimes I didn’t make it to bed at all. At the Arcade Theater where I worked, the better films played on Sunday and Monday; the routine ones Tuesday through Thursday; and the kids’ shows,