Combination Lock: The Life and Times of C. Wayne Parker

By C. Wayne Parker

COMBINATION LOCK is the autobiography of C. Wayne Parker. His story begins in 1962 with him as a short, skinny, shy, fatherless, high school kid with a pet dog and hope. He grew up in the small, lower-middle-class Burlington community of east Knoxville, Tennessee. He was a simple boy living in a simple time. Throughout his early life he struggled to find the right combination of qualities that would ensure for him a satisfying, meaningful life. He flunked out of engineering college, and the military draft board wanted him for duty in Vietnam, yet he still carried his dream in his heart. He did not give up; he did not quit. Along the way, his path took him on a journey of hurt, happiness, disaster and deliverance. There were times for both tears and smiles—as there are in his book. But as he matured and made some changes, his life was transformed into one of love, contentment and peace. What were the qualities that made up his combination and unlocked for him a path to secure his dream? Walk the path with him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781365814617

Book preview

Combination Lock: The Life and Times of C. Wayne Parker

COMBINATION LOCK

The Life and Times of C. Wayne Parker

C. Wayne Parker

Bluetick Bookworks

KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE

Copyright

Copyright © 2017 by C. Wayne Parker

All rights reserved. Neither this book nor any part of this book may be reproduced by any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying process or by any other process without the express written permission of the author, C. Wayne Parker. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in a book review.

Bluetick Bookworks

Knoxville, Tennessee

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C. Wayne Parker

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Marketing Image design © 2017 by C. Wayne Parker

Combination Lock: The Life and Times of C. Wayne Parker / C. Wayne Parker.

First edition, 2017

First printing, 2017

ISBN 978-1-365-81461-7 (eBook)

ISBN 978-1-365-76553-7 (Hardback)

Dedicated with love to

Martha, my amazing wife,

faithful partner, and best friend.

My love forever.

Also, dedicated with love to

Joey and Brian, my sons and my heroes;

May, my dear twin sister; and

my incredible grandchildren.

Also, dedicated in loving memory of

Mary Lou Parker, my wonderful mom; and

Beulah May Day, my precious aunt;

who both passed on to Heaven

during the dreaming and planning

of this book.

Finally, dedicated in loving memory of

Ada Parker Day, my grandma,

who was everything a grandmother should be…

and then some.

The secret of success in Life

is to get a good job, to obey God,

to have a good reputation,

and to be clean in mind, thoughts and body,

to believe and have faith in God.

—C. Wayne Parker

Buddy

Age 12

Figure 1. The author, early high school

Prologue

A GIRLFRIEND, A CAR, AND MONEY. That combination is what any teenage guy needs. Right? If it isn’t, I don’t know what is. Anyway, I’m a short, skinny, shy, fatherless, high school kid, and I don’t have much of anything. Even if I had more, I probably couldn’t handle all of it anyway. Good grades are important—I’m sure of that—but I also want to have friends and live a life that is exciting and rewarding and means something important. I have a dream of having that kind of life one day.

Sure, I am part of a warm, loving, Christian, well-respected family in the tiny, lower-middle-class Burlington community of east Knoxville, Tennessee, but I feel as if I’ve fallen behind in the race to grow up. Am I the only high schooler who has these feelings? Shouldn’t I have a greater sense of well-being and self-esteem and direction instead of just floating along day after day? I want more in life, but sometimes floating is hard enough as it is.

It’s Monday, September 17, 1962, at my high school, and I’m thinking about those feelings and questions in Ms. Million’s algebra II class. Finally, the shrill bell rings, and the brutal day is finally over. Out in the hubbub of the hallway, I zigzag through the noisy crowd and finally make it down the stairwell and to my locker on the first floor. After I swap out a couple of books and get some other stuff, I latch my locker door shut and secure it with a black-and-white-faced, chrome-plated, Master combination lock. CLICK.

Figure 2. The author’s combination lock

from high school, 1961–65

I had found that lock abandoned on the top shelf of a vacant, student locker last year—my freshman year—when our school, East High, had played a basketball game against Catholic High down on Magnolia Avenue. The lock was snapped shut at the time, but since it appeared no one wanted it, I took it. It was a rugged, masculine token of cold and hardened stainless steel and shiny chrome—and it quickly fit into my pocket. The Monday after the game, I took the lock to school.

A lock like that has sixty-four thousand possible combinations, but I had nothing better to do than to try and open it as I sat in Ms. Hickey’s English class learning about…who knows what. My first guess at a combination was a common number sequence of the day: 36-24-36. Nope. That didn’t work.

Then I said to a Dennis, Count the number of people in the class.

What for?

I’m trying to figure out the combination to this lock. Just do it.

After a few seconds, he had the answer. There’s 36.

I cranked the dial two or three revolutions to the right and stopped on 36.

OK, I said, now count the number of girls in the class.

His finger finished pecking up and down in the air, …20, 21, 22.

I quickly rotated the dial counterclockwise once, continued very slowly, and then carefully stopped on 22 without going past. Then, I slowly reversed back clockwise while using my free index finger to put a slight pressure on the U-shaped shackle trying to open it. When the dial got to 32, the lock snapped open with a loud metallic CLANK provoking an instant frown and glare from Ms. Hickey. The combination was 36-22-32. Hah! I hadn’t known English class could be this much fun. Now, a year later at age fifteen, if only I could unlock the gate to the path of maturity in my life just as easily, but there seemed to be some secret combination that others had discovered for their journeys and I had not. Furthermore, I didn’t know what to do about it.

*  *  *

Anyway, as I told you, I attend East High School, the Mountaineers. A guy that dresses up like a hillbilly and carries an empty moonshine jug and a fake flintlock rifle is our mascot. Now, in the middle of September, I am finally getting more comfortable with my sophomore class schedule. The process has taken a couple of weeks since, beyond elementary school, students change classrooms each hour throughout the day and visit their lockers as needed to get books for upcoming classes. Being practical, my locker strategy has always been to minimize both the number of books carried and the number of steps walked between classrooms; it is a delicate balance of books vs. steps. I have choreographed this daily dance to maximize efficiency and minimize exertion. (I’m not lazy or anything, but the rigors of high school can take a lot out of a teenager, you know.)

The school was built on a grassy, rolling campus of something like twenty acres, but I’d say the U-shaped footprint of the building itself occupies only about two or three acres. It is two stories high on the front, which faces McCalla Avenue. The auditorium is on the northwest corner, and the gymnasium is to the southeast.

East is a great school. Our well-respected principal, Buford Bible, stated during Chapel (or Assembly) one time that East is a million dollar school. I thought he might have been talking about the construction cost some ten or twelve years earlier, but as I’m sure you know, metaphors can flow freely in an educational setting, especially from principals and English teachers…but probably not from our football coach.

Bob Poston isn’t known to use metaphors. A couple of weeks ago Coach Poston had popped Stewart and me on our butts with a large wooden paddle as we grabbed our ankles in front of his civics class. We had been goofing off. That one lick burned like a hot poker—so there’s your metaphor…or is that a simile? Maybe Mr. Bible meant that the school environment itself was highly valued and well suited for teaching lots of important stuff to us kids, like the proper use of commas and prepositions, and what not to end a sentence with. Anyway, I’m thinking about the day’s events as I push open the building’s northeast door, and not seeing my two best friends, head out along the sidewalks that cover the mile-long trek toward home.

Walking alone, I head east on McCalla Avenue toward downtown Burlington. The cool air smells fresh after the much-needed, recent rains, but it is not raining now. The neighborhood is much quieter than the hard, locker-lined hallways at quitting time. The maple, oak, and elm trees that had shaded the houses during the hot and sweaty east Tennessee summer are beginning to take on their annual red, orange, and yellow hue. They are gradually maturing from green to golden. In addition to my blue, canvas-covered, two-inch, three-ring binder, I am lugging an armload of books because I have some homework to look forward to this evening. The damp, cloudy day and sharp breeze out of the north will make the trip a little less bearable, but at least I am wearing my navy blue and white varsity athlete jacket. (I didn’t letter in any sports my freshman year. I just bought the jacket at the Athletic House downtown. Besides, my friends Jim and Stew had varsity jackets, so I wanted one.)

On the north side of McCalla and halfway to Burlington, an open gate through a chain-link fence marks the entryway to a large, empty lot that only a week ago had hosted the annual Tennessee Valley Agricultural and Industrial (TVA&I) Fair. Specifically, this unpaved acreage had been Gooding’s Million-Dollar Midway, and it had been filled with couples holding hands, the sweet smell of pink cotton candy and tan caramel apples, carnival barkers, sideshows, loud music and machinery, thrilling adult rides, and screams of excitement. It is peaceful now. Today the only visitors are a pair of pigeons looking for old, leftover, popcorn kernels in the sawdust walkways that branch out through the trampled grass.

Prominent businesses come into view as I approach downtown Burlington’s three-block-long commercial zone. On the left at the corner of McCalla and Lakeside Street is the Burlington Branch of the Lawson McGhee Library, a branch that my grandmother, Ada Parker Day, helped organize in 1927, thirty-five years ago. It is not busy, but the population will soon grow now that school is out. Down Lakeside and on the right is the community post office. It, too, is not busy at this time of day, and it will be closing soon. Farther ahead, Kirkwood Presbyterian, the church that I attend with my family, is on the left, and McCalla Avenue Baptist is directly across the street. Both are closed and quiet during the week, however the nearby businesses are open.

Friendly neighbors are quietly going in and out of establishments named after their owners: Calloway-Farmer’s Furniture and Hardware, Greenlee Drug Store, Brown’s Drug Store, Barnes’ Barber Shop, Ruby’s Coffee Shop, Cox and Wright’s Grocery, and Emery’s 5&10, which is billed as America’s oldest 5&10. Other businesses include a dry cleaner, service stations, beauty shops, a small movie theater, a pool hall, doctor and dental offices, and a fire hall where my Uncle Dimesy Day likes to hang out when he has some spare time. Someone is making a call in the phone booth outside Dr. Burkhart’s dental office where our family goes to get cavities filled. Calls cost ten cents. As a kid, I had checked the phone’s coin return chute a million times for leftover change, and you would be surprised how many dimes I’d discovered.

I round the corner at McCalla and Fern Street to head south toward home, and I walk past the west entrance to Speedway Circle. (Speedway Circle is a paved, half-mile-long, oval street populated on both the outside and the inside of the circuit with small houses.)

Burlington United Methodist Church on the right stands silent, as expected, however my old primary school, Fair Garden Elementary, is only a block ahead on the left. Fair Garden is a small school that has grades one through six. (There is no kindergarten, at least not at this school.) In the summer, neighborhood kids can play baseball or basketball on the school’s paved ballfield out back or just knock around on the monkey bars, swings, seesaws, and hand-powered merry-go-round located in the grass. Fair Garden had been an exciting gathering spot for neighborhood kids when I was younger.

Now I am well into high school, but I feel a long, long way from being a grown up. Attending high school football and basketball games with Jim and Stew are fun, but my maturity is not advancing. I don’t date, don’t dance, am too young to drive, and don’t have a dad to mentor me along—my parents got divorced when I was about a year old. Even though I don’t socialize that much, at least I study a little bit and get pretty good grades, especially in math and science, which I like. Many of my friends, including my twin sister, May, are beginning to date, go to parties and school dances, and, well, mature. Not me.

As I told you, I’d like to have a girlfriend, be involved in activities that mean something to someone, and achieve some decent goal. All of this, at least for now, is just a kid’s dream. At about five foot seven when wearing my white, low-top Converse All Stars, I’m probably the shortest guy in the sophomore class, well, along with a couple of others. I weigh only about 120 pounds. Although small, at least I’m average looking. I try to be friendly and cleaver, but I have a lot of growing up to do.

I’d like to have a girlfriend, be involved in activities that mean something to someone, and achieve some decent goal. All of this, at least for now, is just a kid’s dream.

Past Fair Garden, I continue uphill for one block and then turn left at the stop sign and onto Lilac Avenue. My grandmother’s house is a little ways ahead on the right where my aunt Beulah May also lives. Next door to them, I live with my mom, Mary Lou Parker, and my sister. I plod up the steep, asphalt driveway that splits the two properties and glance from side to side at the grass of both front yards. My mowing season is about over, but leaf-raking season is on the horizon. We have a ton of maple and pecan tree leaves that pile up every fall. At least I will be able to rake them into the ditch beside the road and burn them in a massive, fifty-foot-long bonfire at the end of a cool November day. The heat will feel good on my tired face as I rest from the work of the day; tend the affair with our stout, metal rake; smell the sweet smoke; and watch the coals glow and the embers sparkle as they swirl into the night air above.

I give a tired, low sigh as I climb the front steps, put the key in the doorknob, and step into our tiny, two-bedroom house. It is quiet; no one else is home. (Most likely, May is still socializing with school friends, and our mom is working at TVA about three miles away in downtown Knoxville. Mom rides the city bus to and from work daily and won’t be home for over an hour.) Cutting through the early-American living room with my footsteps echoing on the bare hardwood floor, I enter the kitchen; put my load of books and my house key on the round, maple dinner table; and head toward the back door. From the concrete patio, I see my friend.

There in the back yard at the doghouse that I built for him is Champ, the three-year-old, black-and-white cocker spaniel I had raised from a four-week-old pup. (Well, my mom helped with Champ, but I got up some nights to feed him with a bottle of milk as I lay on the couch and he sat on the floor. I was so very sleepy in the middle of the night, but he was tiny and squeaked out his little cries. He needed me.) I had painted the sides of his doghouse a medium gray, and above the open doorway I had painted each letter of his name in a different color.

Champ approaches me as close as his ten-foot-long chain will allow. Hey, buddy. What’ve you been doin’ all day? He wags his stubby tail, jumps up, and licks my face as I kneel down to pat him on his shoulders and scratch around his neck. At least he seems to understand my life. Or, maybe he is just hungry and wants to be fed. Maybe that’s it.

Figure 3.  The author and his dog, Champ

I was a simple kid living in a simple time. I did not yet know what the people in my life and life’s experiences would teach me. I did not yet know how to be a companion to someone, how to be competent in anything, or how to have compassion for everyone. Even so, the list of confusing emotions and concerns that I had about being a teenager boiled down to one predominant question: what was going to happen to me? The answer seemed hidden far away in some magical lockbox. I was hopeful that everything would fall into place one day—I had always been OK. However, back then, the next year, the next month—even the next week—they all seemed so fuzzy.

I was a simple kid living in a simple time. I did not yet know how to be a companion to someone, how to be competent in anything, or how to have compassion for everyone.

Anyway, that was my life in 1962 when I was a sophomore in high school. My logbook of times gone by is still mostly legible, however, and I would like to crack open the cover and share my notes with you from the beginning if that is OK. It has been a long journey, so let’s turn the page and get started.

PART I—The Young Years

(1947­–1967)

The supreme reality of our time

is our individuality as children of God

and the common vulnerability of this planet.

—John F. Kennedy

Figure 4.  Cousins: Gary, Sunny, Glen, Sister, Buddy (me)

—(left to right), Christmas at Grandma’s, circa 1951

1.  Family Introductions

I COULD NOT HAVE ASKED for much more in a family. Unfortunately, though, I grew up without a dad and without knowing his side of the family (other than two or three names that my mom had mentioned briefly). However, a wealth of influence and instruction came from my mom’s side of the family.

My maternal grandmother was Ada Gooding Parker, and she had married Walter Winfield Day. The family called them Grandma and Poppy. She was born in 1890 in Knoxville, Tennessee, to John Francis Parker and Cynthia Louisa Lou Davis Parker, both second-generation Tennesseans. Poppy was born in 1880 in Zanesville, Ohio, to Volney Lionel Day and Mary Christina Nepp Day.

Volney’s mother was Lucy Day, born in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, on April’s Fool Day in 1833. When she was only fifteen, she gave birth to Volney in 1848 in Zanesville. As for Volney’s father, we may never know his name. Ancestral records report that he was killed in a mining accident, apparently either just prior to Volney’s birth or shortly thereafter. Nonetheless, Lucy retained her maiden name of Day for both herself and her new son.

Christina’s parents were Louie Nepp and Margaret Sternim, both born in Germany in the early 1800s. Christina, a full-blooded German, was born in Zanesville in 1851.

In 1887 Volney and Christina moved their family four hundred miles south from Zanesville to Knoxville. The following year they joined their eleven-year-old daughter, Lida Cornelia Day, in becoming three of twenty-nine charter members who established St. John’s Lutheran Church, the first English-speaking Lutheran church in Knoxville.

*  *  *

I smile every time I recall the circumstances that led to Grandma and Poppy getting married almost twenty-five years later. Downtown Knoxville’s great Market House was where the lives of public citizens and private grocers intersected. The building was a block long and three stories tall. It was the ideal location where local farmers could sell their products. If only it had not burned down under suspicious circumstances on December 6, 1959.

Inside the large brick, stone, and wooden structure there were many stalls that butchers, florists, fishmongers, farmers, and the like could rent monthly for a few dollars. Outside, where overhead was cheaper and vendors were transient, both local and regional farmers from nearby states parked their trucks (or farm wagons in the early years), lowered the tailgate at the back, and went right to work peddling their items: tomatoes; bushel baskets of corn, potatoes, or apples; poultry; or whatever else they had to offer. Although he had an important, full-time job as an American Telephone and Telegraph trouble-shooting director and test-board man, Poppy sometimes operated two stalls at the market. Old city records contain the following ad:

WALTER W. DAY

Dealer in

Poultry & Country Produce

Old Phone 3941

STALLS 40 and 41     CITY MARKET

Now, it is not clear whether Poppy was buying, selling, or just talking with friends at the Market House that day, but as the story goes, Grandma had been shopping and their paths had crossed. Afterward, she went home and advised her family, Today I met the man I’m going to marry. Coincidentally, Poppy went home and proclaimed the exact same news: he had met the woman who he was going to marry. Apparently, they didn’t know of this concurrent declaration until later.

*  *  *

Poppy and Grandma were married in March 1912. She was age twenty-one and he was thirty-one. They had six children over the next twelve years:

Volney Parker Day (1913)

Walter Winfield Day Jr. (1915)

Beulah May Day (1917)

Lloyd Albert Day (1919)

Mary Louise Day (1921)

Ada Francis Day (1924)

To help understand the family structure, a few detailed genealogy tables with names, relationships, dates, cities, cemeteries, etc., are included at the end of this chapter; however, here is what you need to know about Poppy and Grandma’s children for now.

Volney Parker Day was called Nonny by the family. His Parker middle name was the surname of his maternal grandfather, a common child-naming practice back then. As the oldest of Poppy and Grandma’s children, I saw Nonny as an uncle who had emerged as the leader of the family. He was experienced in both personal and public matters, and people listened when he stated his opinion or offered advice. Everyone respected Nonny. His character was strong, and he genuinely loved his parents, his family, and his community of friends and neighbors.

Uncle Nonny: Cousin Sunny’s dad. He was the leader of the family. His trademark: a bright red necktie.

He was an excellent golfer, shooting his age several times later in life. Proudly patriotic, he was a veteran of the US Army Air Corps, serving with honor during World War II. At the time of his enlistment as a private, he was twenty-eight years old, five foot seven inches tall, and weighed 133 pounds.

After the war, he became the superintendent of registry and window service at the Main Post Office on Main Street in downtown Knoxville. He retired in 1968 at the early age of fifty-five. He was a life-long churchgoer where he always wore a suit, a long sleeve white dress shirt, and his trademark: a bright red necktie. He and his family lived on Magazine Road in south Knoxville.

Walter Winfield Day Jr., named after his father, was called Walt. He was tall and gentle; and he spoke with wisdom, wit, and humor. Walt was an excellent bowler at the lanes in Chilhowee Park, and he loved fishing with his family and friends. Walt served with honor in the US Army Air Corps during the War. At the time of his enlistment as a private, he was twenty-six years old, six feet tall and inching taller, and 152 pounds.

Uncle Walt: Cousin Glen and Connie’s dad. He was somewhat quiet, often witty, and always caring.

After the war, Walt worked at north Knoxville’s Sears, Roebuck and Company on Central Avenue in the automotive department, where he retired. More of a sales representative and project manager than a mechanic, Walt proved his knowledge, compassion, and devotion by gladly helping family, friends, and customers keep their cars in good working order: batteries, brakes, wiper blades, tires, wheel alignments, and tune-ups.

Not surprisingly, he humbly served his church with respect, reverence, and conviction. I was more comfortable being around Walt than I was with my other uncles. Walt was somewhat quiet, often witty, and always caring. He and his family lived on Lawson Avenue in north Knoxville.

Beulah May Day was called Booie or Ootsie by her family and friends. The name May was the middle name of her Aunt Maggie, Poppy’s sister. Booie was my mom’s sister and a life-long, dedicated servant to her church, serving in the choir and the women’s organization for many years. She was a sweet, moral, saintly person. She loved her family dearly, especially the precious little ones. Booie never married. I suspect she had a few male friends along the way, but if you asked her, she politely smiled, blushed, and did not say much about the subject, keeping her secrets hidden away forever.

Aunt Booie: Mom’s sister. A sweet, moral, saintly lady who never married and took care of her mother her entire life.

She worked forty years as a clerk, as a cashier, and selling shoes at Miller’s Department Store on Gay Street and, later, in the Miller’s Annex on Market Square Mall downtown. Upon retirement, she began collecting a meager pension and took a new job welcoming and assisting clients at an optometrist’s office just down the sidewalk from where she had retired.

For general commuting and for family vacations, Booie bought our first car, an Army-tank-green, 1950 Chevrolet Deluxe Coupe and, later, our second car, an ickier-green, 1959 Chevy Biscayne. Booie taught me how to drive in the 1950 Chevy, which had a three-speed, manual transmission, and I was out on the open road as a fifteen-year-old within the hour. Scary.

She won our first color TV, a massive, twenty-three-inch, round screen, cabinet-model Zenith. At the 1964 TVA&I Fair, she had entered a drawing that had been conducted a couple of weeks later by Knoxville’s mayor, John Duncan. The new TV was valued at $795 and had an eighty-two-channel tuning system with 125 gold contacts—even though Knoxville only had the three network channels (ABC, NBC, and CBS), which the TV picked up with a rabbit ears antenna. We always watched Bonanza, a western that aired on Sunday evenings. The storyline always had a heart-felt message—and the show and its commercials were in glorious color.

Booie was loving, gentle, and happy; and she took great pride in her appearance, always wearing nice clothes that she’d sometimes made and always ironed. As for jewelry, she usually wore more than one ring on her fingers and had quite a collection of necklaces and earrings.

Faithfully and with undying love, she lived and served in the family’s Lilac Avenue home in east Knoxville where she was born and raised, taking care of her mother—my grandmother—until Grandma passed. Booie always maintained a high moral character and, to my knowledge, never spoke ill about anyone. (If she ever did put her foot down, it was so lightly that I never heard it hit the floor.) She always loved me—even with her last breath—just as she said she would.

Lloyd Albert Day was called Dimesy by his family. As a child, he would flag down the truck that sold blocks of ice for neighborhood iceboxes, calling out loudly, DIMESY, DIMESY! since the blocks sold for ten cents each. (Before electric refrigerators, families had an icebox to keep foods cool.) The nickname stuck. As a young man, and like his two older brothers before him, Dimesy served with honor during World War II. At the time of his enlistment as a private, he was twenty-three years old, five foot eight inches tall, and weighed 140 pounds.

Uncle Dimesy: Cousin Gary’s dad. He was a hard worker, a handyman who smiled often.

After the war, Dimesy worked as a machinist at Fulton Sylphon Company. It was located where a Walmart presently stands just off the University of Tennessee’s Cumberland Avenue strip. He served loyally in his church and loved his family. Dimesy came to Grandma’s house many times to trim the front hedge with his clippers—first, with his manual clippers and later with his new, electric-powered clippers—and to help take care of minor maintenance. A hard worker who smiled often, Dimesy and his family lived only a half-mile away on Speedway Circle, so I saw him more often that my other uncles. I could easily walk or ride my bicycle to his house.

Mary Louise Day was called Mary Lou or Honey by her family and friends. I called her Mama when I was young and Mom when I was older, but everyone called her Nana once she had grandkids.

At the time she got married, my mom had a rewarding job as a clerk typist at Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in downtown Knoxville. A little over a year later, in 1947, she took a leave of absence from work to give birth to and care for me and my twin sister, May. Unfortunately, Mom and our dad got a divorce about a year later, so May and I grew up without a father. After the divorce, Mom, May, and I moved from our house on McCalla Avenue and into our new home with Poppy, Grandma, and Booie on Lilac Avenue.

Even though she was going through a hard time in her own life—being a single mom with twin babies—she survived, and she still provided us with a magical childhood that was full of fun, friends, and adventure and overflowing with comfort, care, and love. Additionally, we had lots of other family in town to provide nurturing, mentoring, more love, and, yes, spoiling. Mom always made sure we had everything we needed, and when money allowed, even some things we wanted. She was a sharp dresser (favoring earth tones) and liked to have her twins dress well, too.

Mom: She was a wonderful mother who spoiled her twins, May and me. Though divorced, she raised us in a loving, wholesome, Christian family. The more I grew and matured, the more I respected my mom for the life she lived.

Holidays were special for our mom, especially Easter when May and I could dye eggs, go to church in our Easter clothes (lots of browns and yellows) and, once back home at Grandma’s house, host the annual family Easter egg hunt.

Our family made sure we knew Christmas was about the birth of Jesus, and Christmas was the grandest season of celebration and excitement. Nevertheless, Mom made sure Santa Claus didn’t forget her twins while making Christmas fun for the entire family. She always held a special drawing for surprise gifts. She put several small gifts in a cube-shaped, decorated, cardboard box; tied a ribbon to each gift; and let the ribbons dangle from the box as she held it above her head so no one could peek. Each family member then pulled on a ribbon and collected their gift. She also gave each child a box of several rolls of various flavors of Life Savers, immediately sparking lively negotiations for trading with each kid trying to acquire their personal favorites. Butter rum always seemed to be the most popular commodity. Old photo albums—and my memories—document the many, loving, special times that she brought about in our lives.

When May and I reached high school age, we moved with our mom into the house next door to Grandma’s. The more I grew and matured, the more I respected my mom for the life she lived. Mom’s life included raising twins, working a full-time job, serving her family and her church faithfully, and always caring about the many friendships that she cultivated and enjoyed along the way.

Ada Francis Day, Grandma and Poppy’s sixth and last child, was called Little Ada after her mother. The name Francis was her maternal grandfather’s given name. She lived only two years, six months, and ten days. Apparently, she was a precious little girl; Booie told me so. Booie was nine when Little Ada, her little sister, died. Perhaps it was from that event that Booie began calling all little children precious.

Sometimes there is no apparent reason why tragedy strikes; however, God always knows why, and it is up to us to trust him, to have compassion for others, to mature, and to begin to appreciate the value of life. Sometimes that is all we can do, and so we go on.

Four of Grandma and Poppy’s adult children had spouses. The couples’ names and the spouses’ birth dates are as follows:

Nonny:(1st) Ceres Castalia Gonzalez (b. 1923) and(2nd) Louella Miranda Tapp (b. 1918)

Walt: Sue Ellen Watson (b. 1916)

Dimesy: Bobbie Gertrude Clark (b. 1923)

Mary Lou: Claude Hicks Parker (b. 1911)

Here is what you need to know.

Ceres Castalia Gonzalez met Nonny when he was in the Army, stationed in Haiti, and working to install a new weather station. Our family was instrumental in getting Ceres, a citizen of the Dominican Republic, into the United States. Her parents were Carlos A. Gonzalez and Aurora Delores Batista. Nonny, age thirty-one, and Ceres, almost twenty-one, were married in Knoxville in late 1944. Their only child, a son who was called Sunny, was born almost a year later. However, Ceres and Nonny separated less than a year after the birth, and their divorce was final in early 1946. Nonny remarried later that year to Louella.

Louella Miranda Tapp and Nonny married in late 1946. She was almost age twenty-eight, and Nonny was thirty-three. Her parents were John William Tapp and Effie Eliza Huffaker. Louella, a good wife and mother, made a good home for Nonny and Sunny and worked in the fine jewelry department of Miller’s Department Store downtown.

Sue Ellen Watson and Walt were married in mid-1945. She was age twenty-nine and Walt was thirty. She was born in South Carolina to parents Isaac Benjamin Watson and Bessie Autry Watson. Sue was a true patriot, serving in the Women’s Army Corps (WACS) during World War II and having a deep love for her country. At the time of her enlistment, she was twenty-six years old and five feet four inches tall. In 1947 Walt and Sue added to their family with a son, Glen, and in 1951 they included a new daughter, Connie.

Bobbie Gertrude Clark and Dimesy were married in mid-1943. She had been born in Grainger County, northeast of Knox County, some twenty years earlier; Dimesy was twenty-four. Her parents were Omer Clyde Clark and Autie Barness Clapp Clark. To supplement the family income, Bobbie worked as a bookkeeper for many years. Their only child, a son, Gary, was born in 1946.

Claude Hicks Parker and my mom, Mary Louise Day, were married in the spring of 1946. The name Hicks was his maternal grandfather’s surname. He was age thirty-four and Mom was almost twenty-five when they were married. Claude’s sister, who my mom had known, had introduced them. Claude was born in Brewton, Alabama. His parents were George Malachi Mal Parker and Lena Pearl Mae Hicks Parker. Remember how I told you, my parents divorced when May and I were about a year old, so we never really knew our dad. We were introduced to him at an arranged meeting on the east side of 16th Street near White Avenue—outside Byerley’s Cafeteria—just prior to our high school graduation. We were age eighteen and he was fifty-three. As you can imagine, the encounter was incredibly awkward.

Like many his age, he had been a soldier in the Army during World War II. I later learned that he primarily worked as a salesman at J. C. Penny Company to earn a living, but he also had worked a few other jobs. He liked golfing, bowling, and raising plants in his greenhouse.

Many times I had put on the armor of toughness as a young man and said, I never missed him because I never had him, but somewhere deep within at a tender location, I knew growing up without a dad had put me at a big disadvantage. Not having a dad, my spirit as a young man had a private gash—unknown to others—that would never begin to heal until I had raised my own son and learned along the way—with him—what it meant to be a father.

Not having a dad, my spirit as a young man had a private gash—unknown to others—that would never begin to heal until I had raised my own son and learned along the way—with him—what it meant to be a father.

Figure 5.  Day / Parker family on steps at Grandma's,

Easter 1950

Wayne and May’s Genealogy Tables

Table 1.  MATERNAL Ancestors, detailed

Table 2.  PATERNAL Ancestors, detailed

Table 3.  MATERNAL Ancestors by Familiar Names

Table 4.  PATERNAL Ancestors by Familiar Names

Table 5.  PARENTS, UNCLES/AUNTS, and first COUSINS

Table 6.  UNCLES, AUNTS, and first COUSINS, simplified

Figure 6.  Poppy and Grandma's family, December 1947

Figure 7. Buddy and Sister, home from first day of school, 1953

2.  Before High School

POPPY, MY GRANDFATHER

,

was dead. That is my first conscious memory. It was October 10, 1950, and he was thirty-one days short of his seventieth birthday. I was three. He had risen from bed in the morning, eaten breakfast, laid back down, and had died at 9:15. Remember I told you, after our parents had divorced, my twin sister, May, and I, along with our mom had moved in with Grandma, Poppy, and my Aunt Booie. So, at three years old, I was, by default, the man of the house, and my pintsize world changed in ways I couldn’t yet measure. Poppy had been Grandma’s husband for thirty-eight years, but then he was gone.

Apparently Poppy had been quite a handyman. As a young boy, I would later find and begin using the many tools and spare hardware supplies that he had collected over the years. He stored them in an old, gray, pie safe on the far end of the back porch and in the small, right-hand drawer of the hutch in Grandma’s kitchen.

*  *  *

We visited Poppy's grave at Woodlawn Cemetery in south Knoxville many times over the next few months and years. Typically, Grandma, Mom, Mom's sister (Booie), May, and I would load up in the 1950 Chevy after Sunday lunch, and we would take cut flowers and a Mason jar of water to the cemetery. Grandma preferred real flowers instead of artificial ones. The flowers should be real, she had said. At the cemetery, one of the adults would raise Poppy’s bronze flower holder above ground level; insert and arrange the flowers, which were usually jonquils, iris, or roses from our yard; and add some water to the container. The graves of Poppy’s parents and Little Ada were nearby. In fact, the Days had twelve plots there in one grouping. At that time, four of the spaces had our family’s remains and eight stood in waiting, but only the grown-ups understood what all of it meant.

While the adults tended to the flower arrangements and quiet thought, May and I ran through the cemetery, through the leaves and the small trees, almost to the top of the hill and back. We came to know the cemetery as a peaceful place where the whole family went on a Sunday afternoon and placed beautiful flowers where our family rested. Today, the trees are much taller and more of our family is there where May and I ran some sixty-five years ago.

*  *  *

Throughout pre-school age, May and I—we were called Sister and Buddy back then—were blessed with as much happiness as twins could absorb. The summer after Poppy’s passing we started taking vacations to Leesburg, Florida, to visit relatives for a couple of days, and then we would go over to Daytona Beach for the rest of the week.

There in central Florida were the orange and grapefruit groves and the big white house of Grandma’s sister, Nina Lucille Parker Ault, who we called Aunt Nina. Since her husband, Hugh Lawson Ault, had passed away, she lived in the old house with her youngest son, Ernest, who was not married. Her oldest son, Francis, and his wife, Martha, lived in the house next door, and Aunt Nina’s middle son, Gilbert, and his wife, Norma, lived in the next house. It was like a Southern plantation to me: a dusty, red-dirt road in central Florida leading to three white houses sitting under enormous live oak trees draped gracefully with Spanish moss and bordered by rows and rows of citrus trees.

Figure 8. The author with Spanish moss hair

from a live oak tree, Leesburg, Fla.

On some vacations, we went to Panama City, St. Petersburg, and later, way down to the Miami area. In addition, sometimes we took a sidetrack to Wetumpka, Alabama, to visit Poppy’s sister and her husband before we went on to Florida. A couple of times, Grandma's sister Iva and her husband, Ernie, followed us on the trip in their car. (Iva and Ernie did not have any children, so they visited us often. They especially enjoyed Christmas mornings with us kids. Ernie put together our first bicycles and taught me how to fish. In fact, I was fishing with Ernie one time when I caught my biggest fish ever: a sixteen-inch carp and a twelve-inch bass.)

Anyway, there were no interstates back then, so trips took longer compared to today. On our travels from east Tennessee to Florida, we always spent the night in Valdosta, Georgia. Coming back, the goal was to make it through downtown Atlanta and then spend the night in Marietta. The trips were hot and tiring.

We didn't have an air conditioned car—most cars back then weren’t—so we always took a round, gallon-size, insulated container of ice water and some paper cups. In addition, we always had on hand a small, pink or blue plastic potty and some toilet paper so a kid’s bodily functions would not create an emergency on a stretch of remote highway.

Lunches on the trips were special. We had picnics, but we ate at restaurants once we stopped for the night. Interstates today have, at regular intervals, rest areas with picnic tables, vending machines, and rest rooms. Back then, travelers had to keep an eye out for a picnic table under a shade tree for lunch and, for adult rest rooms, either a gas station or a mom-and-pop grocery store. For lunch, May and I always had a peanut butter sandwich on enriched, white bread or, if we had a small