My Brother, Your Father

It was now May and starting to get warm. All of the Cherry trees on The Heights were in full bloom. I was thinking how good they would taste on one of our “sleep out” night raids. It was in the afternoon and I started down the Height’s Hill to go to Mike’s to get a hot dog and Pepsi and then go to the Ridge Theater, when all of a sudden the Court House horn started blowing. As I walked on, all the church bells started ringing, then the steam whistle at the C&O Shops and the yard locomotives started blowing. In addition, all the people driving automobiles started blowing their horns! I thought the world was coming to an end, as I ran past the Jefferson Hotel. “Germany surrendered! Germany surrendered!” shouted the people, as they ran into Kinkey Hall’s Grocery Store to buy toilet paper. Toilet paper was streaming from all the light poles, awnings and store fronts as the streets filled with dancing, screaming people. I took my money I had for the movie and bought toilet paper and joined in the VICTORY!! I have never seen such an expression of joy in all my life. I didn’t get home until midnight and the streets were alive with people when I left. After a few days, we all realized that Japan had not surrendered.

Soon after school let out, I went to Vinton for my summer visit. Mom and Dad drove over one Sunday afternoon and dropped me off. I had a couple of friends my age and we started to dig a large fox hole and play army. We lined the hole with branches we cut from the hedges that grew by the road. We also found a large piece of plywood that we used to cover the hole. I had my BB gun and Billy had an army helmet. We were playing when Doris came to the fox hole to see what we were doing. We wanted her to play an Army nurse, but she wasn’t interested in boy games.

The next day, Aunt Mickey asked me to feed the two hogs they had in their pig pen. I went down in the basement and poured all the table left-over food in a gallon bucket. I added several scoops of hog mash and filled the bucket with water. I took the paddle and stirred the slop and carried it to the pig pen. I poured the slop in the feeder and the hogs went crazy. I wondered if they would eat anything I gave them. I walked out in front of the house and saw something long and black, lying beside the road. It was a dead black snake! I picked it up on a stick and carried it to the pig pen. I was right. They gobbled it up! The next day, I went hunting for doves with my BB gun. I saw a Black Starling in the hedges and shot at it. I heard a “Thud” and the bird fell to the ground. I was right again. The pigs gobbled up the bird, feathers and all! I never told Aunt Mickey about the bird or snake. On my last day there Billy, Jimmy and I went to the Mill to go swimming. A lady had some kittens that had died, so we told her we would take care of them. No, I didn’t feed them to the hogs, but we did throw them off the swinging bridge into Mill Creek.

Dad had bought a mandolin and it didn’t take very long before Biscuit was playing. On Saturday night, we would sit around the radio and listen to the Grand Old Opera. Roy Acuff was one of the main stays. Minnie Pearl was the comedian. There were some good comedians in the movies too. Laurel and Hardy, The Three Stooges, and Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, but our favorite movie series was The Dead End Kids. Slip Mahoney and Satch were our favorite characters. The scene was the west side of New York City. They would hang out in Louie Dumbrowski’s Soda Shop and were always having some trouble with gangsters or police. There were about five teen age kids in their gang.

Bobby and I liked cowboy movies and I would take him to the Ridge Theater where we would see Tex Ritter, Red Rider and Little Beaver, Lash Larue, Gene Autry, and of course John Wayne. John Wayne also made some good war movies. I guess The Lone Ranger and Tonto were the most famous series of  the short movies.

One of the most famous fires in Clifton happened when the City Court House burnt down. Dad put on a white Panama suit and was going to church that morning, when suddenly, the fire broke out. Shag Wheeler was the fire chief and was breaking out the court house windows while the flames leaped out of the clock on the roof. Finally, the clock came crashing down through the roof. The Ice house behind the court house also burned down. Many people said the fire started in the ice house. A mill behind the ice house also burned down. Dad fought the fire all day and when he got home his suit was black. Several years later the court house was built back and a new clock was installed on top.

One day that summer, Mom asked me to go down in the basement and start a fire in the hot water stove. During the process, I burnt my right index finger on the stove, but thought nothing about it. Several days later my finger had started to swell. Mother was worried about it, so she took me to Dr. Huff to have my finger lanced and drained. Dr. Huff was humming his usual song, as he froze my finger with a spray and lanced it. Several days passed and the infection had progressed. Dr. Huff put me in the C&O Hospital to have the bone scraped. They gave me a shot in the operating room and I was out before I could count to ten. When I awoke, I was very high off the drug. There was a pretty student nurse in the room, and I kept telling her how beautiful she was and that I wanted to date her. I fell asleep again and was sober when I woke up. I couldn’t believe I said all of those things to the nurses and they teased me until I left the next day. Penicillin was a new drug then and they were giving me a shot every 3 hours, day and night. I felt like a pin cushion. I guess I was lucky, since I only lost one-quarter inch off my finger. It could have been the whole thing.

During August, the USA dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. On September 2, 1945, the Japanese surrendered. They signed the surrender papers on a US battleship. General Macarthur was the representative for the United States. The Japanese bay was also full of American submarines. It was a great day!