Mythoughts a runnin'

The News

2007-10-05T18:32:00.000-07:00

As I traveled to Bowman-Grey Hospital, I was a proud parent; no longer an expectant father. A train of thoughts ran through my head. I didn’t even know what Ann had named our baby. We had discussed names in the past, but I thought it her privilege to name her.
What did the doctor mean when he said he had something else to tell me? I have always been able to fore”-feel ominous events, able to fore-“feel happy events, but unwilling to believe my feelings about the latter. In this case the feeling was ominous. I dismissed the feeling: I was a proud parent of a baby girl!
When I arrived on the floor where Ann’s room was, I was met by a nurse or receptionist, don’t remember which, but this person ushered me into a waiting room. “The Doctor will be in shortly,” she said. I didn’t have long to wait. I don’t remember the doctor’s name, now, but he shook my hand and bid me be seated. He congratulated me on a healthy baby girl. My heart lifted for a moment. “However there was a problem.” What could be the problem if our baby girl was healthy? Your child was born with a cleft palate and a hare-lip. I was stunned!
My mind went back to a day in Berea when I was about 5 years old. I was playing in front of my grandmother’s house when an older man, possibly in his sixties came out of the house across the street. He had a weird looking face. I could see his tongue in his nose!
His mouth and nose seemed to be in the same place. I could not make sense of what I had seen. Later, it was explained to me that he had a condition called hare-lip.
My heart went out to her immediately. I thought of Ann, how’s she taking it?
The doctor asked if I wanted to see my wife and child. He took me to Ann’s room. She smiled when she saw me, but I could see the look of concern on her face. I hugged her or made some motion of concern and the doctor, Ann, and I, talked about the blessing that had occurred in our lives and how to do the best for her. The best medical option was immediate correction, to the extent possible.
My only thoughts were do the best for Robin. I felt so bad for her, knowing what faced her, the rest of her life. Even now my heart is heavy, thinking of the hateful, cynical world we had brought her into. I began to hear questions: which family created this problem. How could this have happened? What could have caused this?
I was not concerned with what or who caused Robins problem, I was concerned about the world’s reception of this wonderful, beautiful child. Yes, beautiful. I told her many times and in as many ways as I could think of, to tell her how beautiful she was. I knew from her silent communication that she was a gentle, intelligent girl even right after birth.

I fed her, washed her diapers (her mother couldn’t get out of bed for 3-4 days), cleaned her face, made her formula, washed her bottles, and sterilized her bottles. Her nipples had to be cut a certain way, and I cut all her nipples so that she could get the milk from her bottle.
The operation happened the day after her birth. I’m sure this is why she was and probably is repelled by persons dressed to resemble doctors.

The Greatest Gift

2007-08-20T01:43:00.001-07:00

The Greatest Gift

Amidst the throes of my problems with the whiney principal, I must have needed reassurance and solace. Because one evening, Ann and I went to our favorite beer drinking place, chatted with the owner, bartender, and downed two or three beers. I remember the owner had recently bought a pink Cadillac. I guess I remember it because it was pink. (I was beginning to be jealous of guys with big cars for the first time in my life!)
We eventually left the bar-restaurant and headed home.
A month or so later, Ann told me we were pregnant! That lifted my spirits tremendously.
I was going to be a dad! Of a wonderful little girl! After 10 years, I was a man! We bought a lot of baby stuff. We didn’t know if it was a boy or girl. In those days they didn’t have all that sound and x-ray technology they have now. We just had to wait and see.
In about the 4th month Ann passed a little blood, which scared both of us. Here I must say that in those days fathers had almost nothing to do with pregnancy or delivery. So, I was ignorant of the implications of the spotting until Ann told me what she knew; that this could be the forerunner of a possible abortion or premature birth by her body. Intentional abortion was verboten and illegal in those days. I think the doctor gave her something for it and she stopped spotting. I kept on teaching and she kept on doing whatever she usually did.
Delivery time came and went. Ann went to the doctor and he finally decided to give her something that would bring the baby. We waited at home for the pains that never came. Oh, Ann would have a slight feeling but not the excruciating pain associated with birth.
Finally the doctor opined that puncturing the water sac was the only way to persuade that stubborn baby to make her entrance into the world.
To the reader: Please understand that fathers were not allowed in the birthing room.
The doctor came to the waiting room and told me that it would be an hour, maybe four, so I had might as well go home. They would call me as soon as something happened.
I now feel I have to explain that fact whenever the subject comes up because I feel I should have been there. But that’s the way the times were just 50 years ago!
I arrived at the waiting room until the doctor came in. Finally he arrived and sat beside me. He congratulated me on being a father and said he had something else to tell me.

2007-08-15T13:03:00.001-07:00

Winston Salem

2007-07-12T17:24:00.000-07:00

After a long hiatus from this blog, I’m baaaack! I was talking about Winston-Salem and the schools there. Shortly after moving to Winston-Salem, I became aware that this newspaper publishing band director taught at one of the schools in this very county! I was secretly in awe of his situation, jealous of him and his accomplishments, unwilling to admit to myself that he must have had something on the ball. I was teaching at two schools in the west side of the county, two small schools which appeared to be funded much less than Mineral Springs High, where the “high and mighty” band director taught. I gave no thought to the fact that the two of them would later be as big as the Mineral Springs High School. I did my job, enjoying seeing the students learn (or at least some of them) and improve. I was pursuing the teaching model I used in Kentucky, one that stood me in good stead in the past. Looking back I think I was on the right track. In fact I was doing well enough to generate a recommendation from the principals that I be selected to fill the vacancy created by the sudden resignation of the exalted BAND DIRECTOR! I was seen as his replacement, and was offered the job at Mineral Springs. I accepted thinking I had already had it made. I forgot that “pride goeth before a fall”!
I took over the reigns of a sputtering horse. This step cost me dearly and possibly caused me to become disenchanted with band directing. I came to the job with glowing recommendations from Mr. Mclean who was in the superintendents office as assistant superintendent as well as the principals I worked under. The former band director produced so many accomplishments, I felt I had to equal his work the first year. Of course that wasn’t possible. The better students were the older students and they had graduated! Suddenly I was faced with a monumental task! I had to produce a smart marching band, publish a newspaper, which I had no idea of how to do. I was teaching under an old principal who, unbeknownst to me was keeping his job through politics
at the local (parent) level. I was in over my head! I remember he was a whiner. One of my students was a baritone horn player, the son of one of the district overseers who approved promotions and personnel, including me, recommending to the main school board. This young man befriended me and was around me most of the time during practice, reminding me of how the former guy used to do it. His father a rough, retired businessman who used to own a lot of vending machines. He was unrelenting in his desire to have his son graduate as a member o the “world’s greatest band.” By the way he was instrumental in seeing that the band had its own bus! This was unheard of back then and it was also one of the things I heard before I ever made a move to WS. He had a lot of influence over the whinny principal.

Quonset Huts

2007-04-14T20:08:00.000-07:00

The University purchased some surplus quonset huts (a carry-over from the recent war) and housed the music department in them. The rest of my college career was spent in those darn buildings. My memory of the rest of my college education is foggy. Before Anne and I got married, I was invited and joined Pi Kappa Alpha, a fraternity on campus. I was unfit for fraternity life because I was hooked on a single girl. I felt loyalty to her and could not run around on her. I had signed on to the marriage thing which cut in on my social life. It was an honor to be asked to join.
Before graduation life was a series of band jobs usually from 9:00 to 1:00 on Friday and Saturday nights.
After graduation getting a real teaching job was foremost. I had the pick of several schools to in which to teach. The owner of a music instrument store, Fred Moore, touted me onto the school at Versailles, Ky. I applied and interviewed with the superintendent and was hired. The Superintendent, George Yates, was an All-American in basketball from the University of Kentucky. Versailles was a friendly town. Papa and Momie lived there briefly shortly after their marriage. Papa worked in Frankfort as Deputy Banking Commissioner and was well known in the area. So, I had it made.
I was not quite through sowing wild oats and surprisingly to me, neither was your mother. We made friends with the Home Ec teacher and her husband. He was a wild one and I did not quite know what to make of him. His father and mother owned a farm near Wilmore, home of Asbury College, a Methodist college. Tom was not a Methodist! Nor any other God-fearing group. Through them, I learned how to drink, carouse and party.
Your mother ate it up. I think she may have had a thing going for him, which surprised me because I thought she and I were well grounded in the church. So much for that! We partied every night at Tom’s and his wife’s (I can’t remember her name) apartment. I got onto a bad path (partying) that did not do me any good for the future. You know, up late get up with hangover go to school and try to teach when I had a football show, a basketball game, a play, or something. It was a fast life.

Big Band Dreams

2007-03-06T08:19:00.000-08:00

Bob Bleidt, the Lexington guy I spoke of earlier, had developed a pretty good band, at least we thought so. He decided to go for broke with the band and booked several high school gymnasiums. The idea was we would advertise our coming performance just as the major bands did, by putting up posters on telephone poles and in shop windows. The posters featured the band and the two star vocalists, Jeanne Le Compte and Bill Wesley. Jean Le Compte was in actuality, Jean Beard. (Le Compte was a family name). Bill Wesley was in actuality me. The band played in all the surrounding towns, sometimes to an enthusiastic audience, sometimes not. Then Bob booked us at Indian Lake, north of Cincinnati, O. We played there for a week, playing in the band at night and “partying” during the day. Indian lake was a large lake providing recreational opportunities to the citizens of Ohio. We could rent boats (with oars), which in our day, was a lot of fun. We could swim and play on its shore. Anne went along, but I don’t think she had much fun. When asked to participate in some activity, she always declined. I did not feel like declining, so I played with the crowd, which was all the guys in the band and their girls or wives. I felt guilty not staying with her, which probably made her feel good. I think she came along on the trip just to keep track of me. That was probably a good idea.
Thinking we, as a band could be another Les Brown or Kay Kaiser was heady stuff.; until we got back home and had to start working for a living!
During all this dance band activity, I had to keep up my classes, practice my trombone and work toward graduation. Anne, too, had organ practice. Anne was a year ahead of me since I got a late start due to my time in the navy. She was graduating a year ahead and had a graduation recital to practice for.
One day several of us music majors were in our “lounge”, a small cloak room just off the hall. All music studying and activity took place in a small frame building which housed the drama school and the music school. On this particular day we were chatting and smoking when someone said they smelled something burning and not our cigarettes! I went down the hall where the smell was stronger, entered the the empty theatre, and saw smoke coming from behind the curtain! I want back to the music office and told Mrs Waters to call the fire department. Folks didn’t want to believe me and had to go look for themselves. By that time the entire stage was ablaze and we started removing all the valuable instruments which included pianos, violins, and all sorts of instruments.
We pushed pianos down the street to a nearby building, Alumni Gym, where our vaunted basketball team practiced and played.
The music department was without a home!

After the honeymoon.

2007-02-15T08:54:00.000-08:00

The honeymoon was uneventful other than sight-seeing around Atlanta. After about 4 days we headed back. We had dated a lot at the Chi Omega House near the campus. It was sold to an investor who rented out rooms. The rooms were huge with 12 foot ceilings. On our return from our honeymoon, we rented one of the rooms. We cooked slept and in general lived in the one room. Remember it was campus life and neither one of us minded the quarters. We had a hotplate for a stove and a cooler with ice on the outside of the window for a fridge. Since we both had classes every day, we did not spend a lot of time in the room.
We stayed there that summer and I worked at a local lumber yard, Congleton’s Lumber. I was a yard hand, stacking lumber and cleaning up the yard. Before the end of the summer, the bosses put me to work with and old man, about 65 years of age. We built a mill house where they worked with finished lumber. Because the old man was a carpenter, I learned a lot about building from scratch. He and I did all the work. The boss told me when I left, I was the first musician he ever saw who would work.
When I was in the navy, I met a guy from Lexington by the name of Bob Bleidt. He was a clarinet player and had graduated from Henry Clay High school. I also met a guy, Vic Bloomfield from Winchester, Ky. He played piano by ear and could read chord symbols pretty well. This enabled me to try out the ear I thought I had. My ego swelled when I realized I could do what the “big” boys did when playing “jazz”. Without being hobbled by reading music, or having to have an organized musical group, “band”, I was able to play tunes that other people could recognize as long as I had a piano to play to. Vic provided the piano (when we could find one), and Bob organized a band out of the guys stationed at Berea. The one remarkable thing about the band was this. The navy has “happy hours” in which the sailors are provided entertainment of one kind or other. During the last semester we had a happy hour which featured our band. I was selected to play “ Gettin’ Sentimental”, the Tommy Dorsey theme song in front of 5-600 sailors. I was highly complemented. The next is difficult to explain. Bob wrote the arrangement we played.
He copied it off the record, using the piano to find the notes. The problem was the record player was a little slow which caused the notes to sound a half step to low. Instead of arranging in the key of “C”, a simple, easy to play key, he arranged it in the key of “B”, a most difficult key to play in. I had to practice very much to learn it in that key. It did make me learn a very strange key, which helped me later on.

After the honeymoon

2007-02-13T12:00:00.000-08:00

Courting 101

2007-01-24T20:23:00.000-08:00

I was on a roll in class. I had a smart remark about everything I heard and got a lot of laughs. All of a sudden I felt like the king of the hill! Funny, how a little support from your associates encourages ones ego and then almost makes one stumble on it. I was in a new surrounding and figured I was as good as anyone else and really shined. Most of my remarks were really directed at her, her name being Anne, and she responded with a few remarks of her own. So—it was natural for me to ask her for a date. Soon, we were inseparable. When summer came I realized we wouldn’t be seeing each other for a while so I asked her what she was planning to do for the summer. She had a summer job at the local golf course, near her home. The job was sort of like a desk clerk, except she had very few customers. The golf course was named “The Lincoln Homestead State Park” just outside of Springfield, Ky. It was so named because there was a log cabin (no doubt restored) on the property which was the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln’s father. I remember the golf course had cottonseed greens, soft and required rolling with a push roller to smooth out the way for a putt.
Anyway, I went to Springfield to visit at least twice that summer. As it turns out, I have this thing about women. I have to always be around one. I guess it’s the “mother” syndrome. In any event, I imagined I was in love with Anne and paid a lot of attention to her. By the time summer had gone and we were back in school. We were really thick!
I asked her to marry me and she said yes.I should have used better judgment. Anne wanted to be married in her home and of course I agreed. Betsy and I went to Springfield together to Anne’s parent’s house. Maybe she didn’t want me to get cold feet. Frankly my feet were cool all the way there. Anne’s Mother, Martha Joyce was a stickler for perfection and fluttered all around Anne and the crowd trying to make things just so. I believe if she hadn’t fluttered so, we would not have been married! Anne told me later that she stood at the top of the stairs getting cold feet herself, and almost didn’t come down for the ceremony. I didn’t know then that she had already lost the love of her life to the priesthood. All the way to Springfield I was wondering what was happening to me. I knew this was final, or supposed to be. I had misgivings all the way. Shelton, Anne’s father was a camera bug so he took lots of pictures.
We were going on our honeymoon. On the 21st of December! I had borrowed my parents’ car for the trip and we headed for Atlanta, Ga. Atlanta was my choice because we thought it would be warmer there.

A new career

2007-01-23T06:46:00.002-08:00

As a veteran I was entitled to a free education and a monthly income while in school. I remember the first tuition cost—35.00! Of course there were books equipment and supplies, and rent. All paid by Uncle Sam. Enrollment was held in the small basketball gym The same place where the famous Kentucky Wildcats played, smaller than most high school gyms of today.
Finally, the first day of the semester arrived and we went to our new classes. I remember one particular class, taught by Mr. Horton. .Music theory. I quickly became aware of my complete ignorance of the study of music and wondered if I belonged there. Being the hard-headed guy that I am, I stayed. And there was this pretty young girl sitting in front of me.

2007-01-23T06:46:00.001-08:00

Out of service!

2007-01-19T20:08:00.000-08:00

Well, the war was over. Since I saw no action in my two years, I felt more like a kid out of school than a tired, worn, possibly embittered veteran. We received orders to report to our service separation center in St. Louis, Mo. We all went through the motions, following orders, eager to receive our “separation papers”. We spent a wild two days before we realized we had to go home. For some reason, I did not particularly want to go home. I guess I had been making decision or having them made for me for a couple of years and I wanted to continue to do that. I did not want parents determining my future for me. So I took my time getting home not thinking of what disappointment I was putting my mother through. I don’t think my father cared one way or the other. We were given a bus ticket to our home along with our separation papers. I stuck around for a couple of nights in St. Louis and then boarded the bus for Mt. Sterling Ky.I don’t remember getting home. I was cold sober, just don’t remember getting home. I do remember my mind set. I knew I had to start living and I had no idea what I was going to do. I still had a little of the separation money I received in St. Louis. I had a place to stay, my parents house, and plenty of time to think. I did not date anyone. This was Mt Sterling, and I dared not mess up where my parents lived by going out with an "unacceptable" woman.
I hung out in places that served beer and then would drink two or three bottles of beer,
and went home. Risking the smell on my breath,. I tried getting in late enough to avoid my parents. I have no idea if they knew any or everything.
After a couple of weeks of this I was bored and I really started thinking of my future. Taking stock, I was talented on the trombone. That, I knew. My high school scholastic record was at best very average .In a class of forty-five students, I was number 22 or 23. After a couple of inquiries I found I had to be in the upper third or fourth of my class.
I realized I did not stand much of a chance being accepted at a really good college; The Cincinnati College of Music, The Julliard School of Music, among others.
I was also very interested in meteorology due to my experience in the Navy and toyed with the idea of majoring in meteorology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Time was quickly passing and either I had to make up my mind or wait another semester to enter college. I had been brought up to think college was mandatory and working in my home town was definitely not on my itinerary.
So, I elected the easy way, University of Kentucky music department.

Whose fault?

2007-01-16T21:00:00.000-08:00

Climate change: The big emitters
The future of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change is largely in the hands of the world's biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. BBC News Online looks at how much they emit, what are they doing about it and where they stand on Kyoto.
United States
Russia
European Union
Japan
China
India
US
The US emits more, absolutely and per head, than any other country - although it also produces more wealth. When Kyoto was agreed, the US signed and committed to reducing its emissions by 6%. But since then it has pulled out of the agreement and its carbon dioxide emissions have increased to more than 15% above 1990 levels.
For the agreement to become a legally binding treaty, it had to be ratified by countries which together were responsible for at least 55% of the total 1990 emissions reported by the industrialised countries and emerging economies which made commitments to reduce their emissions under the protocol.
As the US accounted for 36.1% of those emissions, this 55% target was much harder to achieve without its participation.
But 141 countries banded together and the protocol came into force in February 2005.
President George W Bush said in March 2001 that the US would not ratify Kyoto because he thought it would damage the US economy and because it did not yet require developing countries to cut their emissions.
He says he backs improvements in energy efficiency through voluntary emissions reductions - rather than imposed targets - and through the development of cleaner technologies.
Return to top
European Union
All 15 European Union states ratified the Kyoto deal in May 2002. The protocol's most enthusiastic supporter, the EU has pressured countries such as Russia, Japan and Canada to ratify Kyoto so that it could come into force without the commitment of the US.
The EU has continually argued for a rigorous application of Kyoto, wanting to limit the use of so-called "flexibility mechanisms" which allow countries to partially meet their emissions reduction targets by paying for improvements in other countries.
The EU has also opposed widespread use of forests and other carbon "sinks" to absorb pollution - but gave substantial ground on the issue at talks in Bonn in 2001.
However, despite its tough stance on Kyoto, the EU is some way off its own target. It pledged to bring total greenhouse gas emissions to 8% below 1990s levels by 2008-2012, but by 2002 they had dropped only 2.9% - and CO2 emissions had risen slightly. Only four EU countries are on track to achieve their own targets.
Return to top
China
China is the world's second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, but as a developing country is not yet required to reduce its emissions.
With China accounting for a fifth of the world's population, increases in its emissions could dwarf any cuts made by the industrialised countries.
The average Chinese person consumes only 10-15% of the energy an average US citizen uses, but with the economy developing at high speed many analysts expect China's total emissions to overtake America's by mid-century.
Fossil fuels play a major role - China is the world's biggest coal producer and oil consumption has doubled in the last 20 years. The country faced power cuts in 2004 as soaring growth outstripped electricity generation.

Important View

2007-01-16T09:29:00.000-08:00

NewsMax: Describe the thesis and main point of your book. How was the left's foreign policy a factor in 9/11?
D'Souza: It's to show how the political and cultural left in this country bears a responsibility for the 9/11 attacks and also for undermining and opposing the war on terror. Since 9/11, the left has been saying that America is responsible for all this, and that American foreign policy has produced a "blowback" of resistance from the Islamic world. But it's not America that's to blame, it's the policies and ideas of the left. Their ideas, their America, has produced the blowback. So they should be pointing the finger at themselves.
It all began with the Carter administration's help in getting radical Islam's clutches on a major state in Iran, by undermining the shah. President Clinton's inaction in responding to radical Muslim attacks emboldened Osama bin Laden to strike on 9/11. And now the left opposes the war on terror, essentially allying with the radicals. The reason is not that leftists don't understand how illiberal the Islamic radicals are – the reason is that the left is more afraid of President Bush and the conservative Christians at home than it is of bin Laden and the Islamic radicals abroad.For sure, even some conservatives may do a double-take on that charge.
But before every liberal in America blows a collective gasket, the term "cultural left" to D'Souza doesn't refer to the Democratic Party, or to all liberals. Nor is he saying that anyone on the cultural left actually attacked us on 9/11. And the book avoids much of the strident rhetoric seen in other "liberal-bashing" books.
"I am saying that the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the nonprofit sector, and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world," explains D'Souza.
These are the true "root causes" liberals are always looking for, but seem to always miss or get wrong.
What he means by this is that the secular progressive left during the past few decades, with its focus on promoting and even glorifying (at home and abroad) what most of the world's more traditional societies see as depravity and atheism, has provoked a backlash among traditional, moderate Muslims who see their religious and moral values threatened by an aggressive, immoral, anti-religious crusade.

Glenview Airbase, Chicago

2006-12-16T19:13:00.000-08:00

I was next sent to Iowa City, Iowa for Pre-flight School. Here I studied navigation, plane recognition, naval history and hard work on the morse code.
Here also was a much more stringent phys ed program. I think the institution was Iowa University, which had a very good football team made up of naval personnel, among which was an All-American tackle. We (I was not on the team) were called the Iowa Seahawks and won the championship.
I remember there was a beautiful river, the Iowa River, that flowed through the center of town. It was a shallow river. Grass grew right down to the waters edge.
We spent one hour a day on plane recognition. We sat in a darkened room with a paper with 20 answer places. We then had pictures and silhouettes of friendly and enemy planes, which we had to recognize.
We used a plastic, frosted sheet about a foot square with a circular calculator, spinnable with directions and distance measurements fastened on the underside, so that the pilot can mark on the frosted side, points of reference for navigation and finding the direction and distance of flight.
We completed our training there and received orders to report to Glenview air station north of Chicago where I was actually going to fly!
Within 3 days of arriving at Glenview Airbase just north of Chicago, I was flying! My instructor, Lt. Bleit, had me in a Stearman airplane. The Stearman was a biplane meaning it had two wings, one over the other. It was a more modern plane than the older planes of WWI, but was two or three generations behind the planes we used in WWII. It was slower, and since it had two wings, was much slower than the current fighter planes.
It could take a lot of punishment, which was good since a bunch of neophytes were trying to fly them. We all had flying mistakes, which could have resulted in our demise had we been close to combat. My error happened this way…..
We were assigned a different plane to fly on each day. We flew for about three hours a day. Some of the planes had tail wheels, situated at the back and on the underside of the tail and some did not. The purpose of this wheel was to guide the plane once it had landed. On some of the planes, the wheel could swivel and on some the wheel was fixed and could not move sideways. I hardly ever thought of the tail wheel because once you were off the ground the tail wheel was useless. On takeoff the moveable tail wheel was to be locked in position so as to keep the plane from swerving. If you failed to lock the tail wheel, on landing, the plane would swerve and be almost uncontrollable. That’s what happened to me. Too explain the incident further, the airbase had two giant concrete mats, circular in shape, with taxiways either to or from the mats and the parking area.
These mats could accommodate up to four or five plane landing at the same time.
The morning flying class took off within a 15 minute period. Each class had about 50 students, so the mat was pretty crowded on take off and when the class was over and about 50 planes were landing at the same time!
On this particular day, I was flying a plane that had a moveable tail wheel. I remember having a difficult time controlling the plane on takeoff but managed to get the plane in the air and went to my practice area. When class time was over, I headed back to get in line to land. I started the procedure and was doing great when, on landing, the plane lurched, first to one side as I over corrected and then to the other. The plane finally turned 180 degrees and the engine died! With about 50 planes landing in the same area where I was dead in the water. The base had a giant red ball which they raised in case of an accident. The red ball meant NO landing until it was lowered. Fire engines, ambulances and other emergency vehicles came speeding out on the mat! Thank goodness the students in the in the process of landing went around again until they could get me off the mat. I almost got fired!

tidbits

2006-11-20T10:30:00.000-08:00

My father had a cousin, Mary. Her maiden name was Peavyhouse. I think her married name was Castle. She lived in Berkley, California. I believe she was a teacher at Berkley. She supposedly was a friend of Earl Warren, later chief Justice of the Supreme Court. I met her on my only trip to the west coast. She reminded me in the face of dads’ sister, Mary.

About 15 years ago, Alex, Uncle Jakes son and our cousin found honey dripping from a window ledge on the second floor of his house (the same house mentioned in the Battle of Richmond story). They called a bee exterminator and found a very large hive of honey bees in the wall of the house. It had apparently been there for years. Sleeping with bees?

Battle of Richmond re-visited

2006-11-10T18:22:00.000-08:00

Robin asked about the church imentioned in a previous blog. all I know is what I wrote AND it was a small church made up of about 150 people. It was made of brick, the same brick used to build Uncle Jakes house. It had simple architecture, rectangular with length running from front near the road to back next to Uncle Jakes farm.

Recollections of the Battle of Richmond

2006-11-07T12:25:00.000-08:00

My uncle Jake Herndon and Virginia, his wife owned a large brick ante-bellum house on the road that ran from south Kentucky through Big Hill, Ky. to Richmond, Ky. This road was the main road to Richmond, and until the 1950’s was designated U S 25. A new road now parallels the old U S 25 a few miles to the west. One hundred years before, Big Hill road (the “old” U S 25) was the scene of a running battle between the north and the south. I am no historian so I’ll let a real historian tell the story. But, before he steps in, here’s what I know.
The battle ran in front of my uncles house (remember, the house was there before the battle), back and forth. So much back and forth that Uncle Jake’s house was used as shelter for the wounded, along with the Mount Zion Church, about a quarter mile north.
My cousin, Alex, once showed me a cannonball that had been found on his dad’s farm
He had found several bullets as well. If you drive by Mount Zion Church, you’ll see on the south side near the top of the outside wall, a patch made of brick, lighter in color, about a foot wide. I was told it was a hole caused by cannon fire.
On the floor in an upstairs front room is a stain, they say was blood from a wounded soldier. Now: for the historian:

Campaign: Confederate Heartland Offensive (1862)
Date(s): August 29-30, 1862
Principal Commanders: Maj. Gen. William Nelson [US]; Maj. Gen. E. Kirby Smith [CS]
Forces Engaged: 1st and 2nd Brigades, Army of Kentucky [US]; Army of Kentucky [CS]
Estimated Casualties: 5,650 total (US 4,900; CS 750)
Description: In Maj. Gen. Kirby Smith's 1862 Confederate offensive into Kentucky, Brig. Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne led the advance with Col. John S. Scott's cavalry out in front. The Rebel cavalry, while moving north from Big Hill on the road to Richmond, Kentucky, on August 29, encountered Union troopers and began skirmishing. After noon, Union artillery and infantry joined the fray, forcing the Confederate cavalry to retreat to Big Hill. At that time, Brig. Gen. Mahlon D. Manson, who commanded Union forces in the area, ordered a brigade to march to Rogersville, toward the Rebels. Fighting for the day stopped after pursuing Union forces briefly skirmished with Cleburne's men in late afternoon. That night, Manson informed his superior, Maj. Gen. William Nelson, of his situation, and he ordered another brigade to be ready to march in support, when required. Kirby Smith ordered Cleburne to attack in the morning and promised to hurry reinforcements (Churchill's division). Cleburne started early, marching north, passed through Kinston, dispersed Union skirmishers, and approached Manson's battle line near Zion Church. As the day progressed, additional troops joined both sides. Following an artillery duel, the battle began, and after a concerted Rebel attack on the Union right, the Yankees gave way. Retreating into Rogersville, the Yankees made another futile stand at their old bivouac. By now, Smith and Nelson had arrived and taken command of their respective armies. Nelson rallied some troops in the cemetery outside Richmond, but they were routed. Nelson and some men escaped but the Rebels captured approximately 4,000 Yankees. The way north was open.
Result(s): Confederate victory

Lexington revisited, Our Pets

2006-11-07T09:11:00.000-08:00

Jane asked about the pet dogs we had. I remember we had several in Lexington and I remember one was run over, which seemed to be normal in our time. Long term grief over lost pets was virtually unknown. At least I was not conscious of any sense of loss over a pet beyond the next day. When we moved to Mt. Sterling, Mrs. McNew, the wife of the neighbor who introduced dad to Western Auto, gave us a Boston Bull Terrier. We all loved that little dog whose name I don’t recall. One of the first things we did in moving was get a new refrigerator from Western Auto. It came in a cardboard box with a wooden frame to strengthen the box. This was a wonderful chance to make a playhouse in the backyard. With the wooden frame came nails. We were careful not to get stuck by them, but we were a little oblivious of the danger to the dog. Somehow in playing with us, the dog got stuck by a nail in his rear end. It was the next day before we knew about it. Its intestines showed coming out the anus. We took it to the vet immediately. I remember being told that the dog would probably not survive over the long run. The vet sewed up the opening and intestines, but being a pup, it kept tearing the stitches. In a few days it was obvious the dog would not survive. Regretfully, our parents had the poor animal put down. We were given several dogs, but they never survived very long. Dad was always at the store and poor mother had us to take care of and keep a reasonable house, so the poor dog was at the mercy of three or more kids, who guessed at everything, trying to get it right. Poor dogs!

Naval Aviation-Part 2

2006-11-01T17:39:00.000-08:00

The navy was, at that time, marking time because they felt they had too many aviation recruits and were stretching out instruction as far as possible.
At that point the entire battalion was told that there would be an attrition rate of fifty percent on graduation from the naval course at Murray College, meaning half of those enrolled would be dropped from the air training and re-assigned to other naval duty. We were told we could select our training direction, anything we were qualified to do. I felt I was not qualified to be a musician in the navy, (later, I found out differently) so I immediately thought of ways I could stay close to flying. I knew that planes other than fighter planes used such specialties as navigator, bombardier, ordnance and gunnery. I selected gunnery because I new I was qualified and I would be in an airplane. I gave no thought to the rumor that a gunners’ life was 30 seconds in combat. I signed up for ordnanceman-gunner and was sent to Norman, OK. The navy had two bases at Norman, the north base and the south base. I was sent to the south base for ordnance instruction. This consisted of developing a working knowledge of .50 caliber, 20 caliber machine guns and the 20 millimeter cannons. We learned to mount them in the wings of combat fighters and to load them with ammunition. On board ship, we would be pressed into doing just that to planes that had landed or were getting ready to take off. Here, I had the most pleasant experience of my short navy career. I practiced playing trombone in my off hours in the store-room at the barracks. I heard that there was a base band on our base. I inquired and was given an audition. I was assigned to day duty permanently so I could attend band practice. There, I met some musicians who needed a trombone player. They had a small combo; 6 pieces. They were to start playing at the chiefs club on weekends. I had tried playing jazz at home and in the barracks, so I felt I knew what I was doing. The band liked the way I played and signed me on. We played, by ear, every Friday and Saturday night.
One night, a fellow walked up to the band with a tenor sax case and asked if he could sit in. After watching several movies that included The Glenn Miller Orchestra and having seen many record album covers, I immediately recognized him. Tex Beneke! The Tenor sax player and singer for Glenn Miller.The guy who was featured in several movies featuring The Glenn Miller Orchestra! Asking to play with our band! Of course we invited him to join us! We must have had a pretty good band because Beneke kept coming back weekend after weekend. Tex was a chief bos’ns mate. He was in charge of entertainment on the base and led the bond drive band on the road. When the bond drive band was not on the road, I was asked to play in the band. I t was a big band; 5 saxes,4 trombones, 5 trumpets, piano, bass, guitar and drums. The drummer, Jack Sperling, was later to be the drummer for Les Browns’ Band.
I was in FAST company.
I graduated from ordnance school and was sent to Kingsville, Texas near Corpus Christi, on the border of Mexico. Kingsville, Texas: A town in the middle of the huge King Ranch. I spent about 5 months at the base near Brownsville. There was a navy band on the base. I heard the one and only trombone player there, I found out how much better at trombone I was than others in the navy band program. I could have chosen that instead of gunnery!

Naval aviation training, part 1

2006-10-27T19:10:00.000-07:00

There’s a lot of my military life that will be forever lost, and good riddance! However, there are a few instances worth preserving.
I have always been thrilled by the idea of flying. As a 8-9 year-old, I read a book (for kids) on “How to Build an Airplane” Somehow, I dreamed I could fly it when I got it built. Then I realized how impossible that was and discharged the idea. Our father took us out to an old grass strip called “Bluegrass Meadows” where some airplanes were on display. Admiral Byrd’s plane was one of them. I promptly realized why you don’t grab the exhaust of an airplane engine right after it has landed. That pretty much ended our visit to Bluegrass Meadows. By the time I had reached age 17, I was still in the same mind-set, now an aspiring musician but still thinking of the romance of flying.
An ad grabbed my attention concerning U S Naval Aviation. Since the war had already started, I knew I was ultimately slated to be drafted. I thought, “If you’re going to be in the armed forces, why not be in the one you dislike the least?” I spoke with Dad and Mother. They had no real objections, so I communicated with the Navy and received lots of mail.
They required a set of tests, both physical and mental to be given in St. Louis. So, off I went. I passed all but one little bit of the physical. I had a deviated nasal septum. This, of course disheartened me. Miracle of miracles! My parents agreed to have my nasal septum fixed! I’m sure it must have cost a pretty penny. I won’t go into the operation, all of which I remember, but suffice it to say, It was fixed, and I was accepted into U. S. Naval Aviation.
After my induction into the U.S. Navy I traveled back home to await orders to report for duty. That proved to be a long wait. I had no idea where I would be told to report, no idea when. After several months I received a letter from the navy. It indeed was the notification I was waiting for. Now, I would find out where I would be going! When I read the letter my heart sank. I was to report to Berea College at Berea, Ky., the place of my mother’s birth. It wasn’t an air base or a military base it was a dinky little mountain college 40 miles from home. I had looked forward to being sent to a distant place far from home for flight training. I had no idea why I was sent there but as they say, “Mine was not to reason why. Mine was but to do or die.” It turned out that the navy wanted only college educated pilots in their planes. Pretty silly but that was pre-war thinking. Some guys were fairly jealous of my being in town with relatives. The navy held a dance for the navy guys. I had the singular privilege of using my uncles Ford for taking my date to the dance.
After Berea, I was sent to yet another Kentucky school, Murray State College. The government directed the armed forces to patronize educational institutions, insofar as practicable, in order to help prop up these learning centers who had suffered the loss of nearly all their male student prospects. There we learned more naval history and naval operations. There I learned the meaning of leadership! At the beginning of training there, the commanders had us muster in the gym. They then stated they were looking for leaders. Platoon leaders, and battalion leaders. When we were in formation, the commander asked for volunteers to be platoon leaders. The audition consisted of giving commands to the battalion, such as “RIGHT FACE”!, “LEFT FACE”! As you would expect, I volunteered. I was to march to the spot in front of the battalion and give orders. I had a loud voice and I think that was what got me the job. I then, was the platoon leader. I marched the platoon of about 30 men to the various places on campus where we went to class or to some other required activity. One day, I was marching the platoon to physical education at the football field. To get there we had to march through a residential area of town. At about 10:00 in the morning the ice truck was delivering ice. I remember the ice truck from my younger days (about 3 years before), Some of the guys in the platoon were saying “let’s break rank and get some ice!” I, stupidly, gave the command “ROUT STEP” this allowed each member top walk out of step and they took it on themselves to break ranks to get some ice. When we got back to barracks, a loud voice bellowed from the second floor, “Peavyhouse, is that your platoon? Report to my office, immediately!” I did 30 days of marching in front of the barracks, one hour a day.

LEXINGTON REVISITED : THE BIG TENT

2006-10-17T10:54:00.000-07:00

One morning, the newspaper, the Lexington Herald, announced the circus was coming to town. Ringling Bros., Barnum and Bailey! The biggest, best known circus, with elephants, lions and tigers, clowns under a huge tent.
Leonard and I heard about it immediately and made plans to go. We eagerly pled with our parents to let us go to the circus grounds to see this wondrous happening. Early that morning the circuses own train, with railroad cars with cages, came to town on the L&N railroad tracks. Onlookers could actually see lions, tigers, elephants, apes, monkeys, all exotic animals from the land of Tarzan. Tarzan was the hero of a book and movie by the same name, which conjured up visions of wild jungles in Africa. The circus would make all that come to life.
Leonard and I planned our trip carefully. We were going to be let off in a strange area, far from our home (5 miles), where the circus would set up. When Leonard and I arrived, we wandered around looking at the sideshows, The Bearded Lady. The two Headed something or other and other freaks which were mainly hoaxes. We wandered up to the ticket booth along with two to three hundred people. The press of people was something I had never seen. I was looking at everything.
Somebody else, unknown to us, was also planning to attend the circus. He was my age and poor, without money. He got in line with the rest of us for tickets. When Leonard and I got to the ticket booth we put up our money for our tickets. The ticket seller handed us the tickets. I felt I was close to seeing this great show. I put my hand behind my back and that’s when he pounced. The dirty little kid grabbed the ticket out of my hand and was gone in an instant. He ran and dissolved into the crowd. Leonard looked at me, I looked at him. He still had his ticket and I was ticketless. We decided he would go into the tent and see the circus and I would stay and wait for him.
I spent an hour wandering around looking at the sideshows, listening to the sounds of the crowd, responding to daring stunts, funny clown tricks and things I could only imagine, rationalizing that they were all fakes, so people said, and comforting myself that I had not known such stealing would occur. It took a lot of rationalizing. It was a looonng hour. Finally, one by one, people started coming out of the “big tent”. I spotted Leonard and we went home. I think one of our adults came to get us.

Lexington revisited "Killing a chicken"

2006-10-09T21:35:00.000-07:00

When Mother planned to have chicken for a meal, it was quite a production. No trip to the Piggly-Wiggly. No prepared chicken. No dead chicken. Mother bought the chicken live in a cage from a farmer who usually came down the street in a ramshackled truck, loaded with chickens in cages. They had different colored feathers, Leghorns, Rhode Island Reds, some with speckled feathers, some with questionable parentage, but all would make good eating. Since Mother grew up on a farm, she knew her chickens, I guess. The farmer would reach in a cage, grab the chosen chicken, and tie the legs with a scrap of cloth and hand it to Mother. She would hand it to me to put under the back porch, which was enclosed, to await the executioner.
When Dad got home, Mother would tell him she bought a chicken for dinner. He would then go under the back porch and get the poor chicken. I can still see him in the back yard holding the chicken by the neck and swinging it vigorously round and round until the chicken flew out of his hand minus its head. The chicken would hop with its legs tied together wings flapping and blood squirting everywhere until through loss of blood the chicken would gradually slow down and then stop. At that point Mother would put the chicken in boiling water so that she could pull the feathers out more easily. She had to get all the feathers out or we would be eating them. Finally when the chicken was quite naked, she would cut the chicken open and carefully remove the innards. She saved the gizzard and liver. I remember when she cut open the gizzard, it was full of gravel. She explained that that was the chicken’s method of digesting the corn and seeds it ate. I remember that very few people cared for the gizzard.
I remember a black lady who cooked for us. I think we were in Mt Sterling at the time of this incident. Apparently she had been told how we wanted the chicken killed. She chose, or was told to either wring its neck or chop its head off. She got an old, dull hatchet, put the chicken on a stump and proceeded to half-heartedly hit the chicken on the neck. I think she was half-hearted because she was trying to end an animal’s life and she disliked the chore. Finally she was rescued by our father and he did the job quickly.
There was an open air market in Lexington, where farmers sold all kinds of produce. Lettuce, cabbage, carrots and anything else that will grow in the Lexington climate was sold there. Chickens and eggs, beef and pork products, lard and other cooking aids were also sold there.. Our sustenance came from the Piggly-Wiggly, the street vendors, or the open air markets.

Betsy and Jane

2006-10-07T14:57:00.000-07:00

My niece asked me for more information about her Mother and aunt (my sisters, Jane and Betsy). I’m afraid I have little to report. I remember my Father taking me to the car where Betsy sat in the back seat and Mother sat in the front seat. I asked him where we were going. He said we taking Mother to the hospital. I remember being a little upset. I wondered if she were sick enough to die. I sat in the back seat with Betsy at the time and looked at Mother. She didn’t look sick. I don’t remember what we did after arriving at the hospital, but I expect we just waited. We left mother at the hospital. Later, I guess a week later, I’m sure Dad went to the hospital with us and picked up mother and the newest member of the family, Jane, a cute little blond!
She was independent as a hog on ice. I remember when we (the boys) were playing, a little brunette and a smaller blond followed us around.
Betsy joined the band to play oboe, a couple of years after I did, and Jane joined a year or two later, to play clarinet. About a year later, I left for the Navy. And about a year later, Jane went to Columbia College in Missouri where she met the love of her life.
I hope this next tale won’t get me in trouble, but here goes. It seems that all we kids did was “play”. We definitely didn’t work. Oh, I would have a chore or two to do, but honestly, I can only remember “playing”. Anyway, we were playing in the front yard one day when one of the other kids said, “What’s Betsy doing, Billy?” I turned and looked and Betsy was sitting on the ground with a spoon eating dirt! I think I said something to her, but apparently she kept on eating. I thought it was totally weird! I later found that young children do that frequently.
The next day was Sunday. We usually ate on the back porch in the summer, and we were eating dinner there on this Sunday as well. Before dinner, mother had asked me to go out in the back yard and get a cereal bowl full of dirt. I thought this was a peculiar request but, of course, I did it. We ate dinner as usual with the usual chit-chat. When the main course was completed, Mother brought out ice cream in a bowl for each of us. Betsy’s was different! That’s right it, was the bowl of dirt I got from the back yard. I thought, “Mother’s not going to make her eat it!!” Betsy bawled. Father said “Why, Betty!” They bantered back and forth and finally Mother got Betsy some ice cream, which is what she planned to do all along, I’m sure. Needless to say, Betsy never ate dirt again. Mother was quite a psychologist. She confided in Lee, my last wife, that she found she could control me by crying. By the way, it worked.
Jane was the third child and she had the benefit of seeing what caused us to be rewarded and what got us in trouble. If she ever did anything out of line, she made sure she didn’t do it where our parents knew about it. And if she did anything good, she made sure they knew. She’s no dumb blonde!

Dukes Of Rhythm 1942

2006-09-24T14:48:00.000-07:00

Before leaving Lexington, about 6 months before, Dad, who at that time was a county patrolman (in name only, because he was embarrassed by how far he had fallen) found, in the stolen bicycle section of the county law enforcement, a stolen, unclaimed bike. It was an old fashioned one, to my mind. It had thin tires (which we kids considered old fashioned), an old amateur paint job, but it rode o.k. Dad paid $2.00 for it. New bikes came out with “balloon tires”, twice the size of the “old fashioned” tires like mine, and, by the way, twice the size of todays racing bike tires.
I complained bitterly about my old fashioned bike compared with the “balloon tires” the other kids had. But I developed a love for that bike and I remember jumping on the bike and riding away.And, being the new kid on the block, I was hazed pretty well. The other kids would ride my bike on the school ground. I thought they were stealing the bike and I would try to get it back, which entertained the kids and encouraged them to other acts of teasing.
On my 12th birthday, in 1937 I was presented, by my parents, the most beautiful bike I’d ever seen. I first saw it on display in the store. I would fondle it like a pretty woman. Oh, how I loved that bike! And now it was mine! Chrome fenders, chrome battery case, chrome luggage carrier, chrome headlight and horn. It sold for 39.95. Oh, yes, it had “balloon tires”! It came from the Western Auto Store a la Mom and Dad. It was my birthday, but I often have wondered and still do, what my sisters thought of that grand new bicycle, when it wasn’t their birthday. Our parents must have done a great job in explaining the gift, because I don’t remember a word of complaint.
I think of my childish attitude then to the fact that six years later I was on my own in the U S Navy.
I spent the next two years pretty much to myself working (or playing) with science and chemical experiments and making lead soldiers. I also spent a lot of time on the capturing and raising of pigeons. I even raised one from egg to adulthood, and had him trained to fly to me and sit on my shoulder.
One day it was announced that the school was going to develop a band. This announcement caught my attention and interest big time. I usually was in the house around supper time and we generally had the radio on listening to the news and a music program called “The Music of Jimmy James and his Clarinet”. After this announcement
I spent a lot of my time thinking about what instrument I would play. I kept my ear in the speaker of the radio cultivating the tone of a great clarinet player.
Finally it was announced that our parents and us would meet the new band director. His name was Mr. Day. He turned out to be 91 years old! An old man stooped and crotchety, he had been hired as a part of the W.P.A., a federal program designed to give unemployed people jobs. He held a meeting of the parents and prospective band members. The purpose of the meeting was to determine what instrument the student should learn. He even had a music dealer present to sign up the parents to buy whatever instrument was chosen. When time came for me to step up and say what instrument I wanted to play, I said I wanted to play clarinet. Mr. Day said, “Hold out your arm.” I did.
“You’ll play trombone”, he said. So I became a trombone player.
Like youngsters these days, I was taken by the music of the day. That meant Glenn Miller and his orchestra, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and many, many others. Also, like the youngsters of today,

The succeeding year saw the school board adopt a tepid band policy. They let the parents pay $2.00 a month per child in the band. This money was used to hire a band director. They hired John “Jack” Dameron. He was tall, handsome, smart and a trombone player.
He worked tirelessly and turned a bunch of disorganized, mostly uneducated, kids into an award winning group of musicians. There were about 75 of us.
By my third year of high school, the dance band idea really burned in the hearts of two Mt. Sterling boys. My buddy, Don Stone played alternately 2nd and 1st trombone with me.
We competed for 1st chair and made each other better through the competition. We talked, sometimes late into the night discussing the formation of a big dance band, in Mt. Sterling!
The first thing we needed for our dance band was a name. Like most juveniles, the name was more important than the substance. I claim the sole responsibility for the name.
Members were Trumpets, Clyde Reed, Billy Rassenfoss, Saxes- Howell, Betty Sue Scott, Bob McCarthy, Trombones Bill Peavyhouse, Don Stone,Drums-Jake Ramey, Bass-Sam Browning, Piano-? our band director.
Two years later Clyde Reed had given his life for the rest of us on Iwo Jima. A real great guy!

Last of the Lexington days

2006-09-24T13:24:00.000-07:00

But, I digressed. In my early, pre-Mt.Sterling days, at least one memorable instance occurred. At the end of Lincoln Ave. near East Main St (or, Richmond Rd.), lived a family whose oldest child, Bobby Joe Stevenson, a little younger than I, used to try to play with us. We were disdainful of his age and ran away from him at every chance. He would, nevertheless, follow. So, one day when Leonard and I were playing, doing what, I don’t know, and Bobby Joe showed up. We enticed him into my back yard, where we were probably playing, and to the back part of the yard, next to a fence (wire) and proceeded to loosen the laces of his shoes and tied them to the fence. He was stuck. We wouldn’t be bothered with him any more. We couldn’t be more mistaken! His crying alerted a local mother (mine), and he was free in an instant. Thirty years later, Robert Joseph Stevenson, LLD, PA was in business in Lexington as an attorney! I had need of an attorney and went to ask him to represent me. I should have known. He turned me over to an underling in his office. Serves me right! However the case was settled in a draw, so I guess I didn’t do to badly.
One summer rubber guns became popular. A piece of wood, usually one inch thick, which had been found around the outside of the house, maybe scrap lumber, was used to crudely cut out the shape of a gun. On the back of the gun, at the handle where your palm, or thumb would rest was attached a wooden wire spring clothespin. A rubber loop acquired by cutting the cross-section of an old used inner tube(and there were plenty of them was stretched from the front end of the barrel back to the clothespin which clamped onto the rubber loop. When the clothespin was squeezed, the loop would go sailing toward the enemy. We worked up a strong rivalry, or maybe a hatred for the kids on the next street and we would shoot at each other through the back fence. We were an unbeatable army! But we were kids.
That should do it for pre-Mt. Sterling activities. As I said, these were halcyon days. As Crocodile Dundee says “Na worries”.

2006-09-24T13:17:00.000-07:00

Grandmother Herndon...................................Grandfather Herndon.
Sallie Garner Herndon .................................Jacob Whitley Herndon

My first memory of Bama (or Buma) was her arriving in a taxi (I guess) from Central Station, an imposing structure on Main Street, Lexington. It’s architecture was like the train station in Cincinnati. I remember a souvenir she bought and brought from the station. It was a hollow glass which looked like a locomotive filled with colorful candy. I regret to say that in my younger years presents were all I thought of if we were to have guests. Every visit of Bama was special, regardless of the treats. I remember she wheezed a lot, and need help whenever she got up to do anything. She lived in Berea in a house on Jackson Street. We never visited her there.
I never saw my grandfather Herndon, since he died before I was born. There are some poignant letters from him to his daughter, our mom. Those letters are in the trunk in Betsy’s keeping.
I almost remember the story Mother used to tell about the meeting and marriage of our maternal grandparents. Jane and Betsy will have to help me out on this. I think Minor alluded to their meeting in the newspaper article I posted.
They met (prearranged?) on the steps of the museum and shortly got married. I distinctly remember mother saying that when the couple was preparing to leave Chicago, Bama said she would like to stop by Richmond Missouri to see her family. Grandfather said “Mrs. Herndon, I have two tickets to Richmond , Ky. If you want to go to Missouri, you are welcomed to go, but my tickets are for Kentucky”. Of course, she went along.
I will be adding to this section later.
The spot on his head was on the original

Humans are not the cause!

2006-09-20T11:55:00.000-07:00

Kate Martin
The Daily Reporter-Herald Global warming is happening, but humans are not the cause, one of the nation’s top experts on hurricanes said Monday morning.

Bill Gray, who has studied tropical meteorology for more than 40 years, spoke at the Larimer County Republican Club Breakfast about global warming and whether humans are to blame. About 50 people were at the talk.

Gray, who is a professor at Colorado State University, said human-induced global warming is a fear perpetuated by the media and scientists who are trying to get federal grants.

“I think we’re coming out of the little ice age, and warming is due to changes to ocean circulation patterns due to salinity variations,” Gray said. “I’m sure that’s it.”

Gray’s view has been challenged, however.

Roger Pielke Jr., director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, said in an interview later Monday that climate scientists involved with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that most of the warming is due to human activity.

“Bill Gray is a widely respected senior scientist who has a view that is out of step with a lot of his colleagues’,” Pielke said. But challenging widely held views is “good for science because it forces people to make their case and advances understanding.”

“We should always listen to the minority,” said Pielke, who spoke from his office in Boulder. “But it’s prudent to take actions that both minimize human effect on the climate and also make ourselves much more resilient.”

At the breakfast, Gray said Earth was warmer in some medieval periods than it is today. Current weather models are good at predicting weather as far as 10 days in advance, but predicting up to 100 years into the future is “a great act of faith, and I don’t believe any of it,” he said.

But even if humans cause global warming, there’s not much people can do, Gray said. China and India will continue to pump out greenhouse gases, and alternative energy sources are expensive.

“Why do it if it’s not going to make a difference anyway?” he said. “Whether I’m right or wrong, we can’t do anything about it anyway.”

But Pielke said it makes sense to reduce humans’ impact on the climate.

“There are uncertainties. It’s not like you

change your light bulbs today, you’re going to have better weather tomorrow,” he said. “It’s even better if those actions you’re taking make sense for other reasons, like getting off Middle Eastern oil or saving money.”

Finding a home and tragedy.

2006-09-18T18:18:00.000-07:00

In July, (I think), our family started a trip east to a town called Mt. Sterling. Why couldn’t my parents select a plain ol’ one word town? Like Paris, Winchester, Georgetown. Sounded like someone putting on airs. Any way we started. It was 1936 and It was hot! Our Graham-Paige was ritzy when Dad and Mother bought it in 1930. It still didn’t have air conditioning and the windows provided plenty of hot air. It was very dry that year and the farmers plowed several furrows alongside the fence to hopefully, deter any fire started by cigarette butts thrown from cars. What else would you do with them?
I guess we spent most of the day driving around the town, looking. Getting the lay of the town and locating houses for rent. I remember one particular house built below street level. Somehow it became a candidate for our first home. Jane called it the “lowdown house”. And then we knew we had a wit in our midst!.
Our first house was at the foot of a street on a hill called Vista Court. The house was on the corner of Vista Court and White Avenue. It was a modern architecture, brick, and empty! We thought it was pretty fancy until winter came and the walls began to sweat. Rivulets of condensed moisture ran down the walls, No wonder the house was empty!
1936-1937 were weather anomalies. The dust bowl storms and drought were visible in Mt. Sterling because of a deep tan sky every day from dust blown aloft in Kansas. Kansas covered everything. Every car in town was covered with Kansas. I don’t remember anyone wearing breathing masks, but we obviously should have. No wonder Dorothy said “I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more.”! Kansas had blown east!
There was a boy on the street, Henry Hardin, by name, and a year younger than I. Henry and I played together a lot. One day after an ice storm, Henry and I got some strong sticks and went across the street where there was some tall grass growing. It had a generous coating of ice from the storm, so we decided to pretend the ice-covered grass was the “enemy” and proceeded to “mow down” the enemy by using the sticks as swords and literally chopping the brittle grass down. What fun. We both probably had some subliminal person or object we wanted to get rid of. We later moved to Johnson Heights, which is where we lived during this next episode.
Tragedy
Henry always rode his bicycle to school. I guess I did, But I don’t really remember. School “let out” for lunch. One hour. The school was located on the busiest street in Mt. Sterling, Maysville Street. I suppose Henry was in a hurry to get home to his mother, who cooked very well. In fact she made cake for a little extra money. And made the best seafoam icing Henry and I would sit on his back steps and lick the bowl.
Henry left school on his bike and went to Maysville St., the only route home. Meanwhile, Dad left the store to go to lunch, too. Henry got behind a big box truck. The truck and all the traffic going the way Henry was going was very slow. Henry decided to pass the truck just as Dad was passing the truck the opposite way. Then, the unthinkable happened. Henry hit Dads truck head-on and ended on the hood of Dads truck at the windshield. I wasn’t on the scene, but I can imagine what Dad did and what went through his mind. Henry was taken to the hospital but died shortly after.
I can’t remember how long Dad was away from the store, probably less than a week. He had promised mother he would pay back the money he borrowed from her to start the store. Mother inherited $6000.00 among other things, I guess, from her father in lieu of the farmland he left his sons. (Mother used the inheritance to buy the house in Lexington). Remember that was during prosperous times, and I’m sure the newly wedded couple thought all would be rosy forever. So Mother sold the Lexington house and bet it on Dad and the Western Auto Store. Now he had to make good on his promise to repay her.
For years afterwards he had what mother called a sick headache. I have always assumed he suffered from migraine. I cannot tell you, nor do I know, what a price he had to pay, but it was almost, but not quite, insurmountable. He was not blamed for the accident and he was accepted by the community completely.

Fun on Lincoln Avenue

2006-09-12T20:12:00.000-07:00

Lexington, in 1934 was a small town of 60,000 souls. All businesses were closed on Sunday. Folks went to Woodland park, Castlewood park, both public parks with recreational facilities such as swings, walking bars*, (monkey bars?) and see-saws. Woodland Park had a softball field and we had a softball league with local commercial sponsors.
Most everybody dressed up even after church. There was virtually no traffic on Sunday afternoon. All stores and businesses were closed.
There was very little alcohol consumed even in the privacy of a home, at least on our street, Lincoln Ave. We did have one alcoholic, a Mr. Hukle who rented a basement room across from our house. As soon as he moved in, mother told us not to speak to him or go around him if we could help it. I really don’t know anything about him other than that.
In the winter we had what seems to me much more snow than we have now in Ky. When it snowed enough to cover the ground and the street, we, of course, got out our sleds and slid where ever we could. Cars would travel on the street and pack the snow and we were able to slide our sleds on the streets. Automobile traffic was infrequent and we would all wait for a car to come by and we would grab the back bumper and ride to the end of the street, pulled by the car. Some kids had long sleds which could carry up to four kids or eight if we crowded enough. Those were hooked on to the rear of a car. We didn’t lose one sledder on our street, although occasionally the paper would report a story about a kid being injured or even killed while thus traveling down the street. We had a coal furnace with “registers” located in the floor which carried the heated air to the various rooms. When we got cold we would come in the house and stand over the registers to feel the heat.
One night, in the spring, we had a horrific storm which blew down a medium size tree across from our house. The day before mother had planned to go down town to shop and said she was taking me. I was excited. I went to my room which contained a cherry four-poster bed. In my excitement, instead of dressing, I proceeded to use the bed as a trampoline! Like all trampoline users, I lost my footing or balance. I crashed into the window by the bed and broke the window with my elbow. In a moment I noticed blood coming from somewhere. I had cut my right arm with a gash about two inches long on the inside of my arm. I, of course, called to mother, which brought Betsy out of her room. When she saw the blood she screamed at the top of her lungs. I think she thought I was dying! It roused all the neighbors.
In those days, Doctors made house calls. Mother called Dr. Deweese who arrived in a very short time. Mother had wrapped a cloth around the wound and that’s about all the doctor did plus some germicide, alcohol I presume. That night the storm hit blowing rain in through the window. My! What a little excitement can do. I have no idea whether or not mother ever made that trip to town. I still have the scar. Life was exciting then with very few rules or protections. It was fun!

The Western Auto Store

2006-09-09T17:57:00.000-07:00

I believe we owned a Graham-Paige automobile (a right fashionable auto, from the days before the depression). It must have been a fairly good one since it was still running when we moved to Mt Sterling, Ky. in 1936.
If you read the previous chapter, you know dad lost his job and was persuaded to take on a franchise with The Western Auto Stores. He was called an “associate” since the store was owned by him and mother, not the corporation. Western Auto Stores became a nationwide favorite, preceding Discount Auto, Nationwide Auto Parts and many other parts stores. It was not until 1947 that we discarded hundreds of Model T, Model A Ford parts. The store started out selling tires and batteries. We undercut the major brands of tires and batteries while offering as good a guarantee as anyone. Cheap tire merchants set up shop in Mt. Sterling, but were soon gone because of our (dads) reputation for fair dealing and excellent service.
I was by then in high school, Betsy was in Junior High and Jane was in the upper grades of grade school. Since mother had majored in music (voice) at Berea College, she was always involved in music. I remember her sitting at the piano in our home in Lexington and Mt Sterling, playing and singing. She had the most beautiful, true voice I have ever heard. That, I’m sure is what lead me to love music and major in music myself.
I’m going to have to go back and write about the many things that happened between Lexington and Mt. Sterling later.
Back to the store: By the time I was a freshman, the school decided to take advantage of the WPA offer of incentive money for the development of a band. From there I was a musician not some old stodgy clerk in a store. Romance was in the air and love songs became popular. I wanted to play those songs AND play in one of those bands. You know, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Stan Kenton, et al. The store went out the window! I was desperate to play a horn. I had already picked out the instrument I wanted to play, the clarinet. The school hired an old musician (he was 90 years old), Mr. Day. When we “auditioned”, Mr. Day said to me, “Hold out your arm”. I did and he said, ”It’s long enough. You’ll play trombone”!
Back to the store again! Shortly after Dad and mother started the store, they realized they would need a fifth hand. They interviewed several and settled on David Clarke. I was stupidly disdainful of him, because he was not family. I felt he should be helpful but not a decision maker. I did not realize the strain operating the store was on both dad and mother. He was to stay until in the mid 1950’s they sold the store to him.
Through the store and his work in the First Christian Church, Dad became one of the most respected men in Montgomery County. He was the leading, and almost the only, Republican in the county.
I’ve rambled enough, I’ll close.

2006-09-02T16:47:00.000-07:00

More Memories
1933 to 1936 were my halcyon years. I had no idea of the trials and strain my parents went through. I blissfully played with Plummer Jones, digging a trench (4 inches deep and in a circle about 2 feet across), we were small then. We filled the trench (moat) with water and had toy soldiers and boats ( a lot of them make believe) and did war on the enemy. Plummer was about 2 years older than I. He had the first moving picture projector anyone on the street had seen. He also had a film he could run through the projector to show movies. The film he had was a cartoon about a farmer who had a goat. When the farmer bent over the goat would butt him. That was the entire film! Plummer charged 2 cents to let us watch the movie. I think Betsy and maybe Jane saw the “show”.
I also played with Leonard Short, (probably my best friend) Martha Short, his younger sister, whom I kissed once, and Dede Short, who later became the premier designer of the first nuclear sub, according to his father. He would leave after breakfast for his job and show up 6 months later, back from a trial run in a new sub. Betsy and Jane were in on a lot of things, though Jane was only 4 or five years old. We had a family up the street who had a son (Jack) about 3 years older than the oldest of us. We really liked him and looked up to him. We would play football in the street or in the vacant lot across the street. We only had 6 or seven kids to play. Jack would be the quarterback. I can see his hand, kind of small, and he would use his finger to draw the play on his palm. He would say, “Leonard, you go out to left field and Billy, you go out to right field. Bump Jimmy just a little to slow him down and then turn and I’ll throw the ball to you”. We thought we were the University of Kentucky Wildcats, and would play hard trying to win.
I remember that folks who had dogs let them run loose in the neighborhood. When we got tackled or got into a wrestling match, we might not get up smelling like a rose!
We wore knickers back then. I think I was living at the end of a fashion era for young boys.
I remember seeing Boy Scout books with pictures of young boys in knickers. By the time we moved to Mt. Sterling, I was not wearing knickers. I don’t remember the shift from knickers to whatever we wore next.

The Little Hurricane That Couldn't

2006-08-29T16:03:00.000-07:00

This is my last post on Hurricane Ernesto. He said" I think I can. I think I can. I think I can." wheeeeeeze. He was a big disappointment!

For Robin,Jane and Pepper from the Louisville Courier Journal of 1999

2006-08-29T12:22:00.000-07:00

Woman who taught history for decades also lived a lot of it
BYRON CRAWFORD, The Courier-Journal
STANFORD, Ky.
History has kept close company with 98-year-old Minor Herndon Cash through most of this century, much as it shadowed her ancestors through the 1800s.
Her maternal grandfather, Christopher Trigg Garner of Richmond, Mo., was one of outlaw Frank James' lawyers. Her father's people moved from Virginia to Georgia to escape violence during the Civil War.
``I thought to myself, `They got there just in time for Sherman's march,' '' Cash reflected. ``My father was really born in Georgia, but they went back to Virginia when the war ended, and he grew up as a boy in Virginia. Then, when he was in his teens, his father, John P. Herndon, and his father's brother took up land in Texas. They'd lost everything in Virginia.''
The Herndons came to Kentucky when one of Cash's uncles, Jacob, who was the overseer of a Texas ranch owned by a Kentuckian, fell in love with the Kentuckian's sister-inlaw during her visit to the ranch. Jacob Herndon later moved to Kentucky, and they married and settled near Richmond. (She died a few years later and he remarried.) Cash's father, Henry Minor Herndon, soon followed his brother to Kentucky.
Minor Cash was born in 1901 in Richmond, several miles from where Cassius Marcellus Clay was in a standoff with the Madison County sheriff, refusing to pay his taxes on grounds that he was getting no protection.
Even more exciting were tales of a ``motorized buggy'' that had been seen on the streets of Richmond.
``The first car I ever saw, I was up at Aunt Sallie's and Uncle Herndon's near Richmond,'' Cash recalled. ``We ran through the fields to watch that car go by.
``Oh, it was marvelous. The ladies had on their hats tied with the veils, like you see in pictures.''
Cash's parents had four children but lost her youngest sibling, Henry, to pneumonia in 1903 when he was a year old. They moved to a farm near Danville soon after his death.
``I think they were so grief-stricken that they just wanted to move,'' Cash explained.
Tragedy would visit the family again only a few years later when Cash's mother, Jessie, died at 40 after an emergency appendectomy performed at their home.
``There was no hospital in Danville at that time. Aunt Sallie said they washed the walls down, and father held the kerosene lamp so the doctor could see. . . . The next morning when I awakened, my older sister, Eoline, said she just knew mother had died, because she just felt like it.''
``I just had turned 7, and I can't remember my mother, and that worries me,'' Cash said. ``I just can't see her. I wish I could.''
After their mother died, the children's Uncle Jacob (they called him ``Uncle Herndon'') and Aunt Sallie Herndon looked after the girls.
The girls attended various boarding schools, sharing vacations with their aunt and uncle and with their father - a farmer, who remarried and moved to Grant County, Henry County and Clark County.
Minor's sisters - Katherine, who was four years older and who had been blind since birth, and Eoline, who was two years older - both went to Oxford College in Ohio. Minor went to Colorado State College. Then she came back to Kentucky and finished college at Kentucky Wesleyan and Berea.
In 1926, after teaching for two years in Beattyville, she moved to Stanford and began teaching history and social studies at Stanford High School. The next year she married John Cash, a local farmer.
They had one son, John Franklin Cash. He was barely 21 and was in his junior year at the University of Kentucky when he was killed in a traffic accident just before Christmas in 1952.
``His father and I were so hurt over losing John Franklin that both of us said, `Well, nothing can ever really hurt us again,' and it was true,'' Cash said.
Cash's husband died 25 years after their son was killed, leaving Minor Cash with many memories of their lives together at Forest Hill, an antebellum home on the edge of Stanford. She still drives her car around town, where she is known and loved by almost everyone she meets - but especially by those who were students of hers. She retired in 1962 but continued to substitute for 10 years.
Television newsman Peter Jennings and a colleague, Todd Brewster, devoted a full page of their book, ``The Century,'' to a firstperson narrative by Minor Cash, looking back over her early life in Kentucky.
Aside from the wars, some of her most poignant memories are of the Great Depression and the hardships that her family and many others endured. Franklin D. Roosevelt is one of her heroes.
``I'm a Democrat,'' Cash said. ``I was brought up with The CourierJournal, the Democratic Party and the Christian Church. I taught that one should vote for principle and not for the party, but I am party-bound. Now I'm ashamed of Clinton, but I think he's done a pretty good job as president. But I just declare I've decided that, if he ever ran again . . . I could never vote for him. I'd just stay home.''
Cash is saddened by the decline of morality and discipline in America, and she predicts that education will one day return to smaller schools and classrooms.
``I think discipline belongs in the home and in the school. And when you don't have the home backing you up, a teacher can't do much.''
BY BYRON CRAWFORD, THE C-J
Minor Cash, now 98, lost her son when he was only 21. ``His father and I were so hurt over losing John Franklin that both of us said, `Well, nothing can ever really hurt us again,' and it was true.''
This portrait of Minor Cash was made in 1923, three years before she began teaching at Stanford High School she retired in 1962.

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2006-08-29T05:36:00.000-07:00

The sky is blue this morning. Those thin,white wisps of clouds are the first signs of Mr. Ernesto.

Ernesto II

2006-08-28T19:06:00.000-07:00

I'd better get back to Ernesto before he's all gone. It's Monday August 28. Ernesto has become erratic. He got tangled up with the mountains of eastern Cuba. Maps look like he will skirt the eastern edge of Florida. Guess whats on the eastern edge of Florida. ME! We're now supposed to see the full force of a cat 1 hurricane Wednesday noon. I've been in a cat 1 hurricane before. It didn't impress me. We will undoubtedly have lots of water, making my house look like a castle with a moat. Today the sky was blue all day. Beautiful. It's hard to think of the difference in today and Wednesday. Tina and Sunny are supposed to come up from Key Largo to help me put up the storm shutters. They're very good people.

2006-08-27T20:48:00.000-07:00

And now, back to that ol' nasty depression, 1933 AD (after democrats. I hope you've a sense of humor).
I remember listening to the radio broadcasts of the election results with daddy and mother. We had a Majestic radio; a cabinet supported by four legs, a right handsome piece of furniture. Hoover and a strangely named man called Roosevelt were running against each other. I knew from our fathers comments, that Hoover had better win or the whole country was doomed. Our father became more dismayed every time the results from various states were read. I felt when I awakened we would be surrounded by Roosevelt soldiers and be forced to do some revolting tasks. Of course the next morning, I awoke to the same birds chirping as before. I could see no difference. It took about 3 days to see reality. Our father once held the position of Deputy Banking Comissioner. He met our mother while examining her fathers bank, The Berea Bank and Trust Company, later, The State Bank and Trust Company. Shortly thereafter he and several investors organized The Commonwealth Bank and Trust Company of Lexington Kentucky. It flourished for a few years until the election of Franklin Roosevelt. The stock market had overheated and Roosevelt called for a "Banking Holiday" wherein all banks in the country closed for about 3 days. When the holiday ended those banks who were solvent reopened. Those who were not solvent, never reopened. Our fathers bank was among the latter. So he went from Bank President to shoe cobbler. He tried everything from investing in a failed invention which was to make clotheslines to selling insurance. He finally ended up as a Fayette County Patrolman which made me extremely proud because he had a gun in a holster! (I was in the heighth of my "cowboys and indians" phase). He got out of that embarrassing job when he had an opportunity to begin a Western Auto Store. More about that later.

2006-08-27T19:27:00.000-07:00

I do love flowers. This is a Drooping Hibiscus tree blossom growing at the front corner of the house. It has copious blossoms all year long. So delicate!

2006-08-27T13:20:00.000-07:00

It's Sunday, August 27th, 2006. I think it'll be neat to sort of chronicle the events to come as the result of Ernesto. Ernesto is a hurricane sweeping up the caribbean. Folks thought it would enter the gulf and shoot on across to Texas. Texas should be grateful. It's gonna hit..........US! It looks to me as if it will hit the west coast.The west coast is about 130 miles from the the eastern coast of Florida across from Vero Beach. If you see my profile, you'll know that's where I live. We'll either take the full blow or about an 80% hit. I have a generator, fuel and I should get one of those big blue bottles for water, 10 gallons, I think I'll probably stock up on some canned goods. I should have the company of Lorraine, my tenant. She should be a big help. I also have a cell phone.Ernesto should show up about Thursday, September 1. Wouldn't ya know? When I started this post, Ernesto was cat 1 hurricane. I went to the bank and now it's a tropical storm!

Relaxing at my favorite spot

2006-08-26T15:31:00.000-07:00

2006-08-26T06:16:00.000-07:00

The first flower from my Frangipani tree. They make leis out of these in the Hiwaiian Islands. Haven't seen any leis here.

I bought a stick about 6 inches long, stuck it in the ground and it leafed out! It's in its second year.

2006-08-25T18:27:00.000-07:00

I remember the depression. I was 5-7 years old, so I don’t remember the real stuff, like the difficulty of putting food on the table, providing clothes, paying current bills and making a living. I do remember signs of that struggle. My father scratching the soles of shoes that had holes in them. He had bought the shoe repair kit and asked me for my shoes. I, of course gave them and he proceeded to use a metal scratching tool on the soles and then applied rubber cement to the soles and then a piece of rubber cut in the shape of a shoe sole. It worked! It kept the water out of my shoes and my feet stayed dry. The sole eventually wore out and had to be replaced. My parents did not have to buy shoes!
I do not remember any sudden change “on that fateful day”. That was because my parents
Did what they had to do and didn’t consider taking us aside to tell us the bad news. They just went about things day by day. We children new nothing of it because, I think, our family was close and we never felt insecure. We new that all of a sudden, some things were out of reach, but we were taught that we just had to accept the change, and we did.
When we were told we couldn’t afford it, somehow we knew and accepted it, not without some groaning.