Knuckleball: The Uncertainties of (A) Life
By Ken Beckley
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About this ebook
It is 1955 in rural Indiana. As he stands on the pitchers mound on a hot August afternoon, fifteen-year-old Davie Miller focuses intently on the catchers mitt and grins when he sees his favorite sign --three fingers pointing toward the ground. KNUCKLEBALL<\b>. In a matter of seconds, Davie tosses his third no-hitter of the season. As he celebrates, Davie is already painfully aware of lifes uncertainties but he has no inkling of what lies ahead for him in the next thirty-five years.
Davie embarks on a journey into adulthood, not completely aware of the knuckleballs his mother has endured until she reveals the poignant details behind two tragic family events during a series of intimate conversations with her son. Never forgetting her words of wisdom, Davie lives life to the fullest, shows promise as a baseball player, discovers love and a rewarding career as a public relations professional, and swings at lifes knuckleballs with faith that is tested time and again. But an unforeseen gift for his fiftieth birthday changes everything forever.
Ken Beckley
KEN BECKLEY enjoyed a career in television news and served as executive vice president of H. H. Gregg as well as president and CEO of Indiana University’s Alumni Association. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Service Award from Indiana University and the Sagamore of the Wabash award from Governor Mitch Daniels. He is an inductee in the Indiana Broadcasters Hall of Fame. This is his first novel.
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Knuckleball - Ken Beckley
Contents
Acknowledgments
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
EPILOGUE
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to the Rev. Dr. Kent Millard for encouraging me to follow my passion to write, to authors James Alexander Thom and Scott Russell Sanders for their invaluable advice, and to my wife, Audrey, for her encouragement and support.
Others who contributed or led me to significant information also have my gratitude. They include the following:
I am thankful to my proofreaders, Jo Anne Mayer and Beva Rikkers, and to the editors and custom illustrators at AuthorHouse.
CHAPTER 1
Standing on the pitcher’s mound on a hot, humid Sunday afternoon in August 1955, I couldn’t have imagined what would happen to me over the next thirty-five years.
Focusing intently on the catcher’s mitt, I bit the inside of my right cheek to keep from grinning when I saw my favorite sign, three fingers pointing toward the dusty clay ground. Knuckleball. Digging the tips of the middle three fingers of my right hand into the hide of the baseball, I went into my windup and threw, the ball traveling with no rotation whatsoever and dipping suddenly just as it reached home plate. The batter stood frozen, the bat never even leaving his shoulder.
Strike three!
shouted the umpire. Game’s over.
With that, I, Davie Miller, had tossed my third no-hitter of the season, a summer in which I painfully learned life can be like a knuckleball—unpredictable, and sometimes the bottom drops out.
- - -
I had an incredible life. I just wish some of it hadn’t happened.
Fifteen years prior to that August afternoon, I was born David Harold Johnson—Harold being my father’s name—in the front bedroom of my parents’ small, one-story, white, wood-frame, charcoal-shingled home on a gray, rainy June afternoon in Barclay, a town in far southwest Indiana. My mother said I was withered-skinned and thin but from all appearances healthy when I was delivered only fifteen minutes after her sister, Sarah Mae Hutchison, summoned our family physician, Dr. John Clark. Mom said when he slapped my butt, my face turned beet red and I let loose with enough noise to convince him my lungs were strong and clear. Aunt Sarah Mae was visiting from Illinois when the labor pains first appeared and then suddenly intensified and was bedside to hold my mother’s hand and keep the perspiration that developed on her forehead from being a nuisance. But this wasn’t Mom’s first delivery experience, and although one should never presume there could be no problems, she told me giving birth to her third child wasn’t something she feared. The delivery was painless, thanks to an injection from Dr. Clark. I arrived a week earlier than expected. In fact, my dad was at his job at Crescent Creek Coal Mine and caught off guard when a pit boss delivered the happy news, which Aunt Sarah Mae had passed to him when she called the mine’s office.
My sister, Peggy Sue, was born in 1937. A brother, Charles, had died only eleven days after delivery in 1936. In those days, the medical term sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) was unknown; Charles just died, and the doctor could give no explanation as to why. It was a horrible time for my parents. Certainly, life’s knuckleballs can impact anyone at anytime.
The area where I grew up had a huge impact on how I developed as a person. As I look back on it, I believe the land; the simplicity of life in a rural, small-town area; and what I refer to as good ole down-to-earth people
gave me wonderful experiences and helped shape my views and philosophies as I grew to adulthood. As a result, I never considered myself pretentious; I always tried to display humility and never took anything for granted. Hard work was the way of life for the people who lived in and around Barclay, and so that was all I ever knew for myself. My best friend, Billy, and my next best friend, Bobby, grew up with the same experiences, but their lives turned out far different from mine.
When I was born in 1940, our town had a population of 1,200; it was by far not the largest in the area but not one of the smallest either. It had only two traffic lights; both had been installed three years earlier, one at the intersection where two state highways crossed on the north edge of town and the other at Main and Second Streets, the heart of the downtown. Religion was important, as evidenced by the fact that there were nearly as many churches (nine) as commercial establishments combined. The two grocery stores, a hardware store, a pool hall, two banks, three gasoline stations (Gulf, Sinclair with the green dinosaur on its tall sign on Main Street, and Texaco), two taverns, and two restaurants were all locally owned. Religion would play a key role in my life, as it did for my parents and grandparents. Education would, too. There were two elementary schools and a high school. There’s not much to say about my elementary school experiences, but high school was something else.
As with any small town, Barclay had its characters—people just outside the norm, people who make life extra interesting. Charlene Helbert was one of them, and I learned about her background from my mother when I was older. A small, red-brick building on Main Street housed the telephone exchange, a switchboard filled with small holes into which black-covered cables were plugged to connect one caller to another. Mom said everyone knew the spinster Charlene, the primary switchboard operator, listened in on conversations, because what two people thought were secrets soon became public knowledge. Charlene was said to be the instigator of more gossip than any other twelve persons put together. Charlene, you’ve got to stop eavesdropping,
the small phone company’s married president, Homer Cawley, was rumored to have admonished her, almost pleading because of all the complaints he’d received. But Charlene paid no attention to him. Further rumor was she had the upper hand, because he was making late-night visits to her boudoir.
Then there was Shorty
Hill, a never-married, thirty-eight-year-old, mostly unemployed, town character who lived alone in a run-down, spooky house near the town cemetery and who had the uncanny ability to remove the metal caps on glass soft drink bottles with his teeth. I always suspected Shorty, who got his nickname because of his physical stature—five-three at the most—had little man syndrome
and dealt with it by getting attention for his bizarre antics. He reveled in drawing a crowd outside a restaurant or tavern by announcing he was going to pop the top off a soda bottle with his teeth. Placing the neck of the bottle inside his mouth and gripping the cap between the upper and lower molars, he somehow removed it as he pulled up on the bottom of the container. The crowd would grimace, gasp, and clap, delighting Shorty and making him feel like a big man.
He’d smile from ear to ear, his yellowed, heavily decayed teeth repulsively displaying their ugliness for all to see.
Despite the characters, residents took pride in the town and how it looked. No one owned what was considered a big, expensive home; lawns were generally well-kept; the abundant trees were regularly trimmed; and seldom was trash seen lying around.
‘There’s just no future for me in farming, Mary June,’
my mother quoted Dad as saying to her when they were dating in the first half of the 1930s. The hours on a farm were long—work started before sunup and lasted to after sundown—and too much of a family’s potential for income depended on the weather. I wish he hadn’t, but my father made the decision to apply for a job in the riskier coal-mining business—risky from a personal safety standpoint.
Dad had been born and raised on his father’s farm, which was located about two miles north of Barclay. The homestead consisted of eighty acres on the day of his birth in 1913, but ever the opportunist, his father purchased more land as it became available, so that by the time Dad left the farm, went to work in the mines, and married Mary June Hutchison, it had grown to 250 acres.
Grain prices plunged in the early 1930s as the Great Depression enveloped America. But my Johnson grandparents and their sons, John and Harold, grew most of the vegetables they needed and were fortunate to have hogs and chickens for meat. I’m told that their having less money was not an extreme hardship. My miserly great-grandfather Christian, an immigrant from Wales, had originally owned the farm and left Grandpa Johnson the property and more than five thousand dollars in savings at Barclay National Bank when he died. What a gift! Using his own savings and some of his inheritance, my grandfather purchased land from nearby farmers who couldn’t cope with the Depression’s hardships and needed to raise cash just to feed their families. Our family was fortunate it hadn’t invested in the stock market and thus wasn’t financially devastated by the market’s crash in October 1929.
Your father went to work at Crescent Creek Coal Mine in July 1935, only six weeks before we were married,
my mother told me years later. He was so excited to work at the same mine as his best friend, Henry Thompson.
Dad and Hank,
as he was known, graduated together from Barclay High School in 1931. Although my father was tall, Hank was considered a giant of a man at nearly six feet six and was stoutly built with muscular arms. He had a ruddy complexion, blue eyes, and wavy blond hair. He’d always lived in Barclay. His father was a miner, and there was no doubt where Hank would be headed immediately after high school graduation.
In the mid-1930s, Indiana was one of the nation’s largest coal producers—most of the state’s black fossil fuel coming from southwestern Indiana strip mines. Several privately owned mines were located within a twenty-mile radius of Barclay. Two others were part of publicly owned conglomerates. Dad worked for one of the latter, Lakeland Corporation. Owner of Crescent Creek, Lakeland had an immense interest in bituminous coal because it provided coke necessary for steel production at the company’s huge foundry along Lake Michigan at the northwest corner of Indiana. The coal industry, like nearly every employer in America, had been hit hard by the Depression, but signs of recovery were beginning to show by the summer of 1935, a fortuitous situation, considering my father wanted desperately to leave farming.
- - -
Unfortunately, too many children don’t take time to talk with their parents about the past. For whatever reason, they let the years slip away, and then it’s too late. I’m glad I did on several occasions in 1974 when I was at a low point in my life and wanted to know more about my family and how Mother dealt with tough times of her own. She was quite willing to share the past. As she got older, she seemed to think about it a great deal more, which is a pretty typical part of the aging process, I suppose.
Our wedding day was the first ‘happiest day of my life,’
Mother related to me when we sat in her living room on a rainy Sunday afternoon in May of ’74. It was September 10, 1935. Seems like yesterday.
She and Dad were married at Ebenezer Lutheran Church, less than a mile from the farm where he grew up. My grandparents had been married there in 1909 and Dad’s brother, John, too. They were a religious family, never missing church services on Sunday morning and praying as a group at every meal and individually when they went to bed at night. They read the Bible at the supper table, and the two boys were raised to fear God but trust in his goodness and support.
Ebenezer was the white, wood-frame, hilltop church home to most of the farm families of the surrounding area and was lovingly cared for by them. It had a cross atop the tall steeple that rose above the front double doors and was surrounded by tall oaks, with a few maples in the lawn between the church and parsonage. Six concrete steps with black-painted iron handrails at each side led from the lawn to the front doors. I fell in love with it the first time your father and I attended not long after we began dating,
she said. They’d been introduced by her close cousin, Jane Frapwell, shortly after my mother graduated from high school in neighboring Southern Illinois.
Jane had urged her to come to Barclay, knowing Mom wanted to get away from her overbearing mother. That’s my description of my grandmother Hutchison based on what all I’d heard about the way she acted in those days, although I never found her particularly warm myself. I once overheard Grandpa Johnson remarking to Uncle John, She wears the pants in the family.
I knew whom he was talking about. Perhaps it was her mother’s domineering manner that caused Mom to need someone who was kind and caring. At least she admitted to me she quickly fell for that good-looking young farmer Harold Johnson after first meeting him.
Mom was born and raised in a small Illinois town, the daughter of a preacher at New Carlisle Church of Christ. She was two years younger than my father and confided to me that despite being a pastor who should be a model in forgiving, her father was so angry he and her mother didn’t attend the wedding. I pleaded with him to be there, even to participate in the ritual, but his strong feelings about me being too young, his belief of a better life if I’d attend Southern Illinois Normal College and graduate with a teacher’s degree, and the fact I dared get married in ‘a Lutheran Church of all places,’ were too much for him to handle.
The dispirited tone of her voice suggested her parents’ absence caused her pain she’d carried all these years, almost forty of them. I couldn’t help but feel so very sorry for her. I think hearing her words made me even more determined not to be hypocritical in regard to my expressions of religious beliefs.
Mom related that Sarah Mae, her only sibling, three years her senior, unmarried, shorter, and heavier, was her maid of honor. Poor Sarah Mae, she always had a weight problem.
Cousin Jane also stood with her before the altar. Uncle John was the best man, and Hank Thompson joined them. The family invited neighbors, friends, and relatives, and fifty-seven attended.
Many times prior to the inclement 1974 Sunday afternoon with my mother, I’d seen a black-and-white photo—a formal pose—taken after the wedding, and she was striking in a white dress. Dad wore a tie and dark, plain suit. He stood about a half foot taller than she. She was blond, trim, and nice-looking, with not a wrinkle in her face. They flashed smiles that spread from ear to ear. I can remember how strong and handsome my dad was. Mom described him as six-two and about 215 pounds when they got married. He had coal-black hair and dark eyes. I’ll never forget his hands, which dwarfed mine; his palms etched by a maze of lines from years of hard work, and his fingers seemingly triple the size of mine when I was four years old.
My, we didn’t have much money when we got married,
Mom related. "I’d worked as a teller at Barclay National since the summer of 1933, extremely lucky to get the job. Only a few months earlier, President Franklin Roosevelt closed all the nation’s banks because people had lost faith in the banking system. Needed confidence was restored when Congress passed emergency reforms. Meantime, our only competitor here, Hopewell County Bank, nearly collapsed as so many of its customers lost their jobs and withdrew what little savings they had, just to survive. Thousands of small banks around the country closed.
You might not be able to relate to this,
she said, looking at my face for some reaction, but initially, I earned twenty cents an hour, progressing to only twenty-four cents by the time I was married. Harold’s wage as a welder was $5.47 ½ a day for eight hours of work. Sort of funny, isn’t it, that someone would earn a half cent?
She waited for a reply. I smiled and raised my eyebrows to reflect amazement. All the miners’ wages were set by company contract with the United Mine Workers of America for each type of job, such as welders, electricians, drillers, pumpers, and shovel operators. All the workers were protected by the UMW.
Mom and Dad had $1,113 in savings at Barclay National when they married. And they had a brown 1931 Ford coupe they drove twenty-five miles to a one-night honeymoon in Moonlight Motel near the Ohio River on the southern outskirts of Evansville.
As I sat on the sofa, my mother in a light oak rocking chair near one of the living room’s two large windows, I thought she had aged a great deal; perhaps it was good she’d quit working for a living five months earlier. Her once perfectly smooth facial skin had given way to numerous lines, and her eyes were more sunken than in the past, but she still radiated a pleasantness and a positive attitude exhibited by few despite the major heartaches she’d suffered. If her qualities were the result of a life of following her faith, then she was a testament to the rewards of willful servitude to the supreme being.
She wore a simple blue, shirtwaist dress with a tie belt of the identical cotton material and gestured often with her slender, smooth-skinned hands as she spoke, especially to make points of emphasis important to her, Occasionally, she glanced out the rain-streaked windows.
Mother’s eyes lit up as she talked about most of the past, no doubt thrilled that I had any interest at all in it. Unfortunately, not all of it had been pleasant and I was about to get details.
We set up housekeeping in a small wood-framed, two-bedroom white house with an outhouse at the rear on Seventh Street here in town. It was five blocks from Barclay National, so I could walk to work on Main Street each day. Rent for the house owned by Chester Brummett, my bank’s president, was fifteen dollars a month, which was about average since we only had two other rooms, a kitchen with a small, white metal table and a living room with a coal-fired potbelly stove that was the only heat during the winter months. As a mine employee, Harold could purchase coal for less than the general public.
She chuckled. The fireplace in the living room wasn’t used, because too much heat from the room escaped up the chimney, and firewood was too expensive anyway.
She paused, looked down and then back up at me sheepishly, and said, I have to admit, the one thing I struggled with was getting accustomed to using the outhouse as the toilet. The house where I’d lived with my cousin for two years had a bathroom that consisted of a sink and toilet. Yes, I know, that was almost unheard of, but Jane had one. Now, the outhouse your father and I had was only ten steps from the back door, but going there in winter snow or howling, frigid wind and sitting over the hole in the cold wooden bench of a seat was something I quickly learned to dread when winter arrived in early December.
What was it like working at the bank?
"Well, I was a teller, one of six employees. We were open from nine to three, Monday through Friday. People around town sarcastically called our schedule ‘banker’s hours.’ But we were also open three and a half hours Saturday morning, something no other banks in the area did. Mr. Brummett reasoned that the Depression had everyone on edge regarding their money’s safety, so the thought of having easy access to it six days a week was soothing to our customers.
Harold’s day at the mine began at six thirty, so he’d arise at five fifteen, eat breakfast, pack food in a small metal lunchbox, and leave the house by six, all while I slept. The welding shop where he worked was located in a metal-framed building near the coal-processing tipple eight miles from our house.
- - -
Only four weeks after our wedding, I began experiencing nausea in the hours before going to work,
Mother revealed. It was difficult, but at the bank I did my best to hide how awful I felt. After a week of watching me suffer, your father convinced me to see Dr. Clark. Was I ever shocked when he told me I was pregnant!
Again, she chuckled. That had been the farthest thing from my mind. Harold and I’d talked about one day having a family but certainly not this soon. We wanted to save enough to buy our own house and then have children. My visit to the doctor that Saturday afternoon in October certainly changed things.
I saw her eyes drift, a look of satisfaction on her face. June 17, 1936, was the second ‘happiest day of my life.’ Your brother Charles Arnold Johnson was born in our bedroom. We chose Charles because it was your father’s middle name and your grandfather Johnson’s given name. How lucky we were that Mrs. Calhoun had offered to care for Charles while I worked at the bank each day. She was a godsend.
How I remember Winifred Calhoun! What a dear lady—although there were times when she’d take a hairbrush and use the backside of it to tan my rear end when I didn’t mind. Mrs. Calhoun was a neighbor when Charles was born. She was sixty years old, a widow, and needed something to do with her time. Her modest charge was fifty cents per day.
My mother insisted on coming from Southern Illinois to assist while I recovered in bed for a week. She returned home as soon as I was up and about,
Mom said. I can imagine that being left alone with her baby to nurse him without the stares and comments of my know-it-all grandma Edith Hutchison came none too soon.
Harold could hardly wait to return home from the mine about four each afternoon, sit in a chair in the living room, and hold his sleeping son. I’ll never forget watching him stare without saying a word for what seemed like hours, looking at the perfectly formed face, eyelids, and tiny nose and at the smallness of the hands that together didn’t fill the palm of one of his. Charles had thick black hair, just like his father.
- - -
Mother’s facial expression suddenly changed, and I knew what was coming, a life knuckleball. She ceased rocking. Everything seemed so perfect in our lives, and I remember that on the evening of June 27, Harold and I laid in bed, wrapped in one another’s embrace, and I whispered, ‘How lucky we are.’ Charles was asleep in his bassinet that rested in the cradle of wooden folding legs just past the foot of our bed. He nursed every three hours, but at one thirty, when the clock on the fireplace mantle dinged, for some reason waking me, I realized it had been four hours since Charles had nursed.
It was nearly four decades later, but tears welled in her eyes as she continued, talking in an almost trancelike state. "Sensing something was wrong, I slid from bed and rushed to the bassinet but couldn’t hear or feel any breathing sound coming from Charles. I picked him up. His skin was cool, almost cold.
"I’m certain Harold never forgot my piercing screams. ‘Charles isn’t breathing! Charles isn’t breathing!’ I was frantic. Your father flew out of bed, took our son, pressed an ear to his mouth, then began to gently shake him. All I could do was continue to scream, ‘Do something, Harold! Do something! Why isn’t our baby breathing?’
"Harold had the sense to get to the phone on the wall in the kitchen and ring the switchboard operator. He was holding Charles and yelled into the phone, ‘Call Dr. John Clark! This is an emergency!’ I admit I was still incoherent and didn’t hear what else your father said, but it wasn’t long before our back door opened and Dr. Clark rushed in.
We stood holding one another while the doctor used his stethoscope to listen for a heartbeat, gently forced open Charles’s tiny mouth to see if anything was lodged in his mouth or throat, then used his stethoscope again. Nothing. I’m not sure what else Dr. Clark did. All I can remember …
Her voice trailed off.
Then Mom looked at me, such a forlorn expression on her face. Oh, Davie, I pray you never experience the loss of a child, never hear the words ‘I’m sorry, your baby is dead.’ I began pleading with Dr. Clark, actually probably screaming, ‘Charles can’t be dead! No, no. Oh, Dr. Clark, do something! There must be something else you can do!’ I didn’t even give him a chance to answer me. ‘I fed him only a few hours ago. He was fine.’ I begged for an answer, ‘What could have happened?’ I saw the hurt showing on his face as he shook his head. He hadn’t a clue.
We both sat there, neither of us saying anything, and then our silence was interrupted when she, staring out a window, said as expressionlessly as anyone could, I can remember almost everything that was said and done in those frantic moments as though it was yesterday. I’ve recalled it nearly every day of my life for almost forty years.
There’s a small gray headstone in Barclay Community Cemetery with the inscription, Infant Charles Arnold Johnson. Born June 17, 1936. Died June 28, 1936.
With no visible signs of illness, it would never be known why my brother died.
The emotion in what my mother related had us both somewhat wrung out and in need of a break. She’d prepared iced tea earlier that day, so we walked to the kitchen to fill two glasses and then returned to the living room. Mother wanted to talk more. It was good we had a chance to be alone.
The days that followed were filled with silence in our home,
she began. The mine office had told your father to take as many days as needed to be of support to me and cope with his own emotions. We spent a lot of time in prayer, asking God for understanding and strength, and we sought comfort from family, friends, and our pastor at Ebenezer. My mom and dad called from time to time to check on us and offer what emotional support they could give from a distance.
Mother’s voice suddenly perked up a bit, but the impassive look on her face didn’t change. Did I ever shock your father when at the supper table a month after Charles died I told him I wanted to have another baby! You should have seen the look on his face. He was dumbfounded.
No doubt it felt good to share this with me, because she displayed an ever-so-slight smile. I told Harold, ‘I’ve thought a lot about it, and I want that wonderful feeling that comes from holding a baby, knowing it’s mine and yours; besides, we have the opportunity and responsibility to raise a child and prepare it for the world.’ We hadn’t planned the first pregnancy, but we could the next one. I told him that despite the horrible loss we’d just suffered, despite the Depression, despite the fact we didn’t own a home yet, despite so many challenges that likely lay ahead, it’s a wonderful world, and there was no need putting off having another child as soon as we could. In fact, I hoped we’d have at least two more.
Mom paused and then in her witty way added, Bet you’re glad we made that decision.
We both laughed.
But getting pregnant didn’t come so easily this time; just as she said friends had told her over the years, even before she was married, when you want a baby, nothing happens as quickly as you had planned, and when you don’t, an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy suddenly appears. In March 1937, nine months after Charles died, Dr. Clark informed Mother she was going to have another baby. She was already three months pregnant.
Peggy Sue was born on my parents’ second wedding anniversary, September 10, the end of fifteen months of emotional ups and downs. This was a new beginning, and they were ready for it.
CHAPTER 2
Mother’s description of the next two years was a period of happiness and growth. She and Dad were well thought of where they worked, and Peggy Sue had been a happy baby and then a joy as a child, the image of her mother, including the color of her blond, curly hair and the dimple in her right cheek. The only concern, and not anything that preyed on Mom’s mind and Dad’s, was news the first day of September 1939 that Germany had invaded Poland and thoughts were being expressed nationally that Adolph Hitler would not stop with the seizing of just one country. Poland was on the other side of the world—in fact, my parents weren’t exactly certain where it was among that jumble of countries over there—and the United States wasn’t involved, so they felt there was really nothing to worry about.
In November, Mom learned she was again pregnant. She and Dad hadn’t wanted Peggy Sue to grow up as an only child,
and without ever talking about it, each hoped they would have a boy this time.
We met that winter with Mr. Brummett, and he assured us the bank would loan us money, within reason, to purchase a house whenever we felt ready to do so. I know it doesn’t sound like much in this day and age, but we had nearly $3,300 in savings and decided we wanted a three-bedroom house, so we reduced expenses wherever possible and slowly, steadily increased our savings. On June 5, 1940—my, was it an ugly day outside, windy and rainy—you arrived in the same front bedroom as your sister and brother. How lucky we were. We had another boy. You were so thin but a little longer than most babies, with long fingers, and a full head of black hair.
In July, just past my one-month birthday, I was baptized at a Sunday morning worship service at Ebenezer Lutheran. Mom was proud to tell me I wore a white dress—a dress!—my grandmother Dorothy Johnson had worn when she was baptized in 1891. Peggy Sue also wore it in her baptism in 1937.
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War was about to envelop the United States. No one, absolutely no one, thought it would happen.
December 7, 1941, was much like any other Sunday, except it was chilly in Southern Indiana with the high temperature expected to be in the upper twenties,
Mom told me. After attending church and eating noontime dinner, she and Dad had no particular plans for the afternoon other than to play on the living room floor with Peggy Sue and me. I will never forget the Glenn Miller Orchestra’s ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’ was playing on the radio.
Mother’s specific recollection didn’t surprise me. It would be the same if someone were to ask me what I was doing the moment the news broke that President Kennedy was murdered or that Neil Armstrong had stepped on the moon. Those are things you just don’t forget.
But the tranquility of that moment in our house shortly after 1:30 p.m., as perhaps at any home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Iowa City, Iowa; Sheridan, Wyoming; or anywhere else in America, was broken by the sudden announcement that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian islands, a territory of the United States that housed a huge American naval base. It appeared there was great loss of life, airplanes, and ships in the horrendous, devastating, unexpected bombardment.
Mother’s voice was almost a whisper. "Your father and I, not fully comprehending what had happened in a place we didn’t know existed, just sat there, not knowing what to say. We were aware of fighting among other countries over the past two years in Europe and had been hearing the Japanese were a threat to American cargo ships in the Pacific, but this? Not even the government—President Roosevelt or anyone else—expected this.
"You children. You precious children. You were oblivious to all the horror, the concern, the fear. Peggy Sue played with three rag dolls made from muslin feed sacks, and at eighteen months, the spitting image of your father, you were trying to stack small wooden blocks with colored numbers and letters of the alphabet carved into the sides.
I remember exclaiming to Harold, actually whispering, ‘Oh, my God, will they attack us?’ Harold had no answer. His eyes, like mine, were glued to the small, ivory-colored Silvertone radio we’d purchased from Sears and placed on a shelf in the living room so you couldn’t reach it.
She smiled in saying those last five words.
As the afternoon wore on, news reports continued to update what reporters in Washington, London, Manila, and elsewhere could find out. I admit I was frightened, certainly from a very personal standpoint.
In September, Congress had passed the Selective Training and Service Act, the first US peacetime draft system in history. It required all men twenty-one to thirty years of age to register that fall. My dad was twenty-seven. After he registered at the Hopewell County Courthouse in Pemberton, eight miles south of Barclay, all he could do was hope and pray war would never involve the United States." But it would.
"December 8, President Roosevelt asked a joint session of Congress to approve a state of war with Japan, and the request was quickly okayed. Everyone I knew was now jittery. It’s all we talked about at the bank.
"Three days later, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. In response to a request from FDR, Congress passed a joint resolution declaring war on both of them.
Your dad could be such a grouch, but I always understood why.
Dad’s hours increased each day at the mine as the demand for coal by Lakeland Corporation grew to enormous quantities for its northwestern Indiana steel mill. Steel plants throughout the nation shifted to all-out war production for building anything that contained steel and was used by the military. Day after day, he came home physically dragging. What had been nine-hour days prior to the war became eleven and sometimes twelve. But he knew workers everywhere were sacrificing similarly, so he wouldn’t complain. As it turned out, the Hopewell County draft board didn’t call up any miners who had young children at home. But a few of Harold’s Barclay area friends and acquaintances—married and single—were either drafted or volunteered.
The latter included his brother John.
Uncle John’s career had been in farming with my grandfather. I learned he wasn’t built like my dad; he had the same dark hair and eyes but was about four inches shorter and twenty-five pounds lighter. But like Dad, he didn’t have an ounce of fat on him. He was in perfect physical condition for what lay ahead. Two years older than Dad, he and his wife, Ann, and their eight-year-old daughter, Marcy Lynn, lived on the family property in a small house about a quarter of a mile down a gravel lane from Grandpa’s. Losing Uncle John to the war effort would be a huge hardship for Grandpa, but he admired his son for feeling such an obligation to the nation.
As though I might have had any doubts, Mom made it clear that Dad really struggled with whether to enlist. She said he and his brother had long conversations about it, and while Uncle John felt a sense of duty to enlist, he was adamant he would never have any animosity toward Dad for not doing the same. Mom said Uncle John emphasized that his daughter was older than Peggy Sue and I, and if the worst should happen to him while in service, his parents were there to take care of Ann and Marcy Lynn.
Your Grandpa and Grandma Johnson had us and John and his family for a Sunday-night supper at their house, and I remember how solemn it was. Very little was said, and no one did a good job of keeping tears from showing, because John was leaving for the Armored Service School at Fort Knox, Kentucky, the next day, April 13, to train as a tank soldier. Ann told me he wrote at the end of his seventeen weeks of training that he felt somewhat prepared for what lay ahead. She was scared to death.
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I was fascinated; I wanted to learn about what had happened to the family during the war years, I could hardly wait for each of the subsequent sessions with Mom that spring of ’74. Except for one thing very grave, I had little recollection of the early to mid-1940s.
When your uncle left for overseas in 1942, Harold was working as a driller on an explosives team with his buddy Hank and earning $14.48 a day,
Mother related. She’d gotten small notebooks out of a closet where she’d kept them all those years. Income and expenses were meticulously recorded in pencil. Our family and savings had grown to the point a different house was necessary and financially possible. Peggy Sue was making it clear she didn’t want you sleeping in the same room with her.
Mother chuckled.
We were excited when we found this house we’re in now. It was the answer to our dreams for a larger home.
Like our home on Seventh Street, the green, wood-frame residence at Conley and Third wasn’t a long walk to the bank for Mom, and she and Dad felt the asking price of $5,150 was reasonable. Mr. Brummett loaned us $1,150, so on July 4—it was a Saturday—with assistance from a few friends, we moved here.
Mother looked at me with a sparkle in her eyes. Guess what was the most exciting thing of all about the house.
Without giving me a chance to answer, she said, It had an indoor toilet!
and she smacked her hands together. Good-bye, outhouse.
How she laughed, and I did too.
Our home at 309 S. Conley