The Silver Dollar Kid

By John Houston Batchelor

This is not another saga of the Old West or a who-done-it, nor is it a children's book, but simply the true story of my unusual life.

It is as accurate, honest, and true as far as my memory permits.

I will be judged harshly for some for my actions, but it is not about right or wrong or good or bad; it is only about what happened and led me to develop into the person that I have become through my many adventures and what I did about them.

I have no intention of trying to flower it up, to be more appealing. It is not a fictional story.

I have included situations that stick out the most in my mind and just omitted many other experiences that were interesting to me but probably not to others.

I have also just omitted some names of those who do not wish to be identified.

My intention was not to embarrass anybody else, but just maybe myself.

It is all now just water under the bridge, and I couldn't go back and change anything, even if I wanted to, which I don't think I would, except for some very minor things that I regret.

Since it is a true story, it is R-rated and not suitable for children to read. No, its not porn either!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781503579224

John Houston Batchelor

I have always been interested in my health but had no clear idea of what that was. I would hear a little something from whomever and just accept that as fact. —John Batchelor

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

The Early Years

Born John Houston Scott, my story starts on 6 December 1942, the day of my birth even though I don’t remember anything about it and only what I was told, whether true or not.

Most likely who I am started long before I was born, influenced by who my parents became and therefore having an effect on what I became.

World war two ended in August 1945 after the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Japan and since I was only 2-1/2 years old, I was not aware of it.

My first recollections of life was in a tiny, maybe 15 foot long trailer in a very barren trailer park outside the fence of the Miami international airport.

My mother worked as a stock clerk for Pan American airlines and when she was working, a neighbor was supposed to keep an eye out for me.

I must have been about 4 yrs old and already had a lot of freedom.

Our tiny trailer contained a bed at one end where my mother and I slept together and a tiny kitchen/dining room.

We had a real ice box, where a block of ice was delivered once in a while and my mother just put some meager groceries on top of the ice until it melted and then she would order another block.

I don’t remember anything that we ate, except one occasion that she tried to entice me to eat liver and I was having no part of it, even though I had never even tasted it.

She tried to entice me with a tiny carton of ice cream. She told me that I could only have it after I ate the liver and with that she went to bed for a nap.

I took a few pieces and threw it under the table and ran to her and told her that I had eaten some.

I went back and threw the rest under the table and told her that I had eaten the rest, so she got up and gave me the ice cream.

My conscience was bothering me though and I just sat and ran my finger around in the frost on the top of the carton.

She realized that something was amiss and confronted me and I broke down in tears and confessed.

Strangely, my first real recollection of life consisted of a lie coupled with the tears of my bruised conscience and of course, liver.

My next recollection was a visit from a girl friend of hers. She had a daughter, younger than me and they put us together for a nap in our under wear.

It was the furthest thing from my mind, but the girl was intent on us, examining each others private parts.

My second recollection of life had to do with the opposite sex and it certainly would be far from the last.

A bus picked me up daily and I am not sure where it took me and strangely enough, I only remember getting on and off of the bus.

I was told that the neighbor was supposed to be keeping an eye on me when it brought me back, since my mother was working, but I seldom saw her and just went home by myself.

One day when I arrived, she told me that they were having a birthday party for her son………. I was frustrated.

Somehow I knew that I was supposed to supply a present and I had none, but I had a children’s book that had been given to me and I went and fetched it and wrapped it in newspaper. (Not my best effort, I am sure) and I took it and gave it to the neighbors boy.

When my mother got home, she told me that she had bought a present for the boy and went and exchanged it.

I remember taking a couple of trips to downtown Miami, a famous city but, actually a very small town.

I was impressed with Burdines department store. They were far ahead of everybody else in providing an upscale store.

They had the only escalator that I would see for many years and in the shoe department they had the only ex ray machine where you could stick your foot in and see how it fit into the shoe.

Of course, I didn’t tire very easily of seeing the bones in my foot, but soon, it was banned by the government as they had decided that it might be detrimental to our health.

Burdines actually consisted of two buildings across the street from each other and connected with an overhead bridge/walkway that had walls of glass, so you could see the street and people walking and driving below us.

It was also the first time that I had even heard of air conditioning and all the departments were clean and inviting.

This was most likely about 1946 or 1947 and strangely enough, it was as nice or nicer than anything you would see today.

It was only a short walk to the Atlantic ocean where there was a small park with bushes and flowers, enclosed with a chain link fence.

Between that and the street there was a small barren section of park with hundreds of pigeons and a vendor selling peanuts that you could feed to them and that was my favorite thing to do. I would rather go hungry than not feed the pigeons.

We would always get a sandwich at Woolworths, which only sported a counter and if it was full, you had to pick out somebody and just stand in line behind him/her until they left.

I don’t remember what I ate, but my mother always had a BLT, which I remember cost 20 cents and I was aware, even at that young age that that was very expensive. (I was never offered one) I remembered wondering what the big deal was about it.

My next recollections was about my soon to be, step father. He also worked at Pan American airlines as a mechanics helper and lived in the same trailer park.

He took my mother on a date into the everglades to hunt for frog legs and I distinctly remember them jumping around in the frying pan.

This was my third recollection of food after the liver and the BLT’s episodes.

After a short time, he moved in with us and added on a tiny screened porch, which was now my room and a small living area. We had no bathroom and had to walk to the public facility.

I was given a small water paint set for Christmas and with this, started my first business.

I gathered and painted rocks and sold them to the neighbors for a penny apiece.

I am sure it was not my idea, but I have always been susceptible to the power of suggestion, not to say that I always did what I was told.

Yes, my fourth recollection was about money.

I don’t remember ever being cold and so believe that we soon moved to another trailer in Miami springs, across the street from the Pan American airlines aircraft hangers on S.W. 36th St. where obviously both of them worked and met.

There were many men that had been drafted into the armed services during WW-2 and many never returned and there was a lot of opportunities for women to fill the jobs normally held by men.

Hugh told me he had not been drafted due to his flat feet.

It wasn’t too long after that, that we were flooded out by a hurricane and had to move into the Pan Am hangar where they stored the carpets for the aircraft.

We lived there for about 4 days and I had a great time chasing around with some other kids that were staying there as well.

We even had access to a restroom and didn’t have to go out in bad weather or in the dark to get to it, another new experience for me.

My step father (I assumed that they had gotten married) was very frugal and saved his money and so, he bought one of the first new houses in Hialeah,…a 3/1 (for $1800. cash).

An impressive feat that I have never been able or willing to do my whole life.

Looking back, I think he may have gotten some help from the credit union, but I only know what I was told.

It was just a mile down the road from a Catholic school and there I went to school until I graduated from the 4th grade in the summer of 1953.

We no longer had ice delivered, but milk was delivered early every morning in glass bottles and unpasteurized, leaving the fat to accumulate at the top of the bottle. It was left on our doorstep.

If everybody overslept, it was in danger of spoiling and this delivery system stayed in place until the early 1970s.

The difference now was pasteurization and they would try to increase their income by selling fresh donuts, etc.

During that period, I had a great life, but nothing to compare it with.

I was aware that other people had bigger houses and other things that we didn’t have, but I have never been envious of what others had and was always thankful for what I had, unlike many other people that I have come in contact with for the rest of my life.

We had a birthday cake for my 7th birthday. We didn’t exactly have a birthday party and I don’t remember ever having one for the last 71 years or more.

We did have a cake though and mom sang happy birthday to me and my sister Roseann was born 3 days later on December 9 1949.

I remember nothing of the birth of my brother David, who was born in 1950, just about the beginning of our involvement in the war in Korea.

I received an Uncle Wiggily game as a present. (one of those games where you threw dice to see how far down a trail you moved)

It was something new to me, but I don’t think I ever played with it and don’t remember any children ever visiting and I had no one to play with, at least not in my house.

I always liked to play outside with Jimmy Baker, the boy next door, who was a couple of years younger than me, who lived with his single mother.

We would invent things to do and he had a log cabin set and I would go to his house to play.

Somehow, pop found a way to bring home large shipping boxes and put them in the back yard, which was nothing, but dirt and we could use them to make a play fort and with a couple of old blankets, would manage to make some tunnels and a comfy little play area inside.

The front yard was also dirt when we moved in and I helped pop to spread some black soil and sod on it and it came out quite nice.

The house was slightly elevated, so we never had a problem of standing water, even during a hurricane.

The neighbors on the other side were the Paquins and their daughter Gloria, a couple of years older than me, taught me the proper way to color a page in her book.

I distinctly remembered my mother telling me she was pregnant with my sister who is seven years younger than me, in the first trailer park, so I had to have been six at that time and a lot happened in that year.

My mother had already determined that it would be a girl and that I could give her a name.

She said it could be anything that I liked, so I wanted to name her light bulb and thought it was the funniest thing ever.

We argued about it and I just kept giggling and would not give up, so my mother reneged. (lucky for my sister, huh?)

We used to visit my mother’s aunt Lee and uncle Mac, often and we went there for my 6th birthday when my biological father showed up for the first time and brought me a little pedal car and took me out for the day.

I begged him to buy me an ice cream cone, but he wouldn’t as he said that they had found roaches in the bottoms of the cones that were stacked together and I also wanted a comic book, which he said was no good for me either. I don’t remember the reason.

He did buy me a pocket knife though, which was soon taken away from me.

The toy car was transported back to the trailer park and I played with it for one day and then it disappeared.

My mother was one to carry a grudge and told me that it was not his idea to bring me a present, but his mothers who I never met and that she probably paid for it as well and badgered him into delivering it to me.

Mom told me that he was a drunken bum. I didn’t see him again until we were moved into the house in Hialeah and I must have been about 7- ½.

My 7th year was kind of a milestone, as well. I discovered that the adults had lied to me and there was no Santa Claus,….. big Whoop!

I don’t remember getting anything for Christmas, except clothes and a stocking filled with fruit, nuts, junk toys and maybe a couple of hard boiled eggs but, we kept on celebrating anyway.

I was never sure what we were celebrating, but I think it had a lot to do with (Monkey see - monkey do), but it was fun and I liked to help trim the tree that I also had a chance to participate in the selection.

My mother had decided that I was a Catholic and now it was time for my first holy communion…Yuk! and my confirmation.

The church had decided that 7 was the year when I would be old enough to make up my own mind about being a Catholic.

More lies, I was starting to not belief in all the nonsense that they were brainwashing me with, but no one gave me any choice.

I was expected to do as I was told and go through the silly rituals. I didn’t say anything, because I knew I wasn’t going to win and just went along with them.

This idea of others deciding who I should be and how I should act would haunt me for the rest of my days.

I had already decided that the tooth fairy was not real, but daren’t mention it for fear of losing the nickel that I found under my pillow every time I shed a baby tooth.

My mother had gotten married and wanted my step father to legally adopt me and change my name.

My biological father showed up shortly after a caseworker, who was assigned the chore of deciding if I should be adopted or not.

She asked me what I thought about it and I told her that I thought it was a good idea and my father ranted and raved that they had brain washed me.

Of course they did, but I still thought it was a good idea for us all to have the same name.

I didn’t know what he was upset about, I had only seen him one time so far, in my life.

I didn’t even know my biological father’s name, everybody called him Bud, but I later found out that his name was Leonard Houston Scott.

Even though I had been adopted, I was still his biological son and I still lived in the same house until I was 10 1/2 years old, but he never contacted me again for another 13 years and after I was married.

It was about this time that I found out that I was a sleepwalker and my mother told me that I used to get up in the middle of the night and play with some toys. I don’t remember having any, but probably my memory fails me.

Around this time, my uncle Mac decided to take me fishing and we went to fish on a long pier at Bakers Haulover, just north of Miami Beach.

He handed me a rod and reel and explained to me that I had to hold my thumb on the reel, while casting it out, so that the line would not become entangled.

Of course I didn’t do it right and it tangled the line beyond an easy repair.

Uncle Mac was furious and that was the end of my first and last fishing trip with him.

He was some kind of air conditioning supervisor and had to go to Key West to check on some apartment buildings and decided to take me with him.

Somewhere along the way, we encountered a man standing by the side of the road and had a long piece of plywood leaning against his truck with a rattlesnake skin tacked to it.

Uncle Mac stopped to inquire about it, since we were on a narrow piece of road with water on both sides and very little plant life and the man told us that he was going to go spear fishing and came across the snake and shot it through the head with his spear gun.

I didn’t know anything about this, but even so, it sounded like a fish story to me.

I looked at his spear gun and it didn’t look too accurate to me, but what did I know? I wondered how the snake got there anyway, was it a swimmer?

Much later, I recalled the incident and wondered if he had brought that big piece of plywood and equipment to skin the snake with him.

We continued on our interesting trip, passing through several tiny islands, connected by bridges, until we got to Key West and my uncle went to check on some apartments and that took him about 15 minutes and I wondered what he did to them. He didn’t have any tools with him. It looked suspicious to me.

It was time for lunch and he told me that he had a favorite restaurant that he always went to when on the island and it was on a wharf right on the water and they had a bunch of large sea turtles penned up in the water and that was their speciality and uncle Mac ordered a turtle steak for us and I told him I didn’t want to eat any.

He was once again pissed off at me and told me to order whatever I wanted, so I ordered a hamburger.

I don’t really remember having one before, but now it was my turn to be pissed off, since they had mixed up chopped onions with the beef and somehow I knew I didn’t like that either and wouldn’t touch it and now we were both pissed off and this was the last time he ever invited me to go anywhere.

My recollections of food went from liver to frog legs to turtle steaks to a hamburger with chopped onions. They were the first additions to my I don’t like it list……Well, actually I don’t mind frog legs, except for the skimpy amount of meat that they contain.

They actually do taste like chicken, unlike many other unusual animals that are reputed to taste the same, like alligator.

I do know of another animal that tastes like chicken, its…………chicken! I always thought that if you wanted something that tasted like chicken, why not just eat chicken?

I don’t remember ever eating a turtle steak.

In later years, I made many trips to key west and often wondered where it got its name from.

It seemed more appropriate to be named Key South or Key East or even Key South East. The Keys resembled a key chain of sorts, hence the name.

I found out later that the name originated from the fact that the keys curved towards the West and Key West, a 4 square mile island only 90 miles from Cuba is the last one. A little further West is the uninhabited island of Dry Tortugas.

For my 7th Christmas I received a bunch of toys from my grandfather who I had never met and lived in Chicago.

After playing with them for a day, my mother decided that she didn’t want anything to do with him and packaged them back up and sent them back to him.

She had deep rooted grudges against him and as far as I know never spoke to him for the rest of her life.

It reminded me of the toy car incident. I wondered what had really happened to it.

Anyway, I walked to school and back, about a mile or so from our house.

The nuns had brain washed me and I used to say Hail Marys and Our Fathers all the way to school and back.

I remember very little about the school, except learning to write the alphabet in the second grade and was pissed off, because they wanted us to use crayons to draw the alphabet and I didn’t have any and had to use a pencil, so in protest, I drew crooked lines, because of course, you can’t draw well with a pencil.

I do remember one day when a Bishop came to visit the school and all the kids were expected to kiss his ring and I wondered how sanitary that was and what was the purpose?

I believe I had attended 1st grade someplace else and vaguely remember having to go to summer school, someplace else, due to my poor reading ability.

My step father was supposedly a Baptist, because all his family were, but he never went to church and never spoke about it, at least not to me.

My mother claimed to be a Catholic, but only went to church on Ash Wednesdays and Christmas eve and otherwise always had an excuse.

I was expected to go to church by myself and if I missed a Sunday, I would go straight to hell if I didn’t manage to confess it, before dying and being forgiven and I was expected to go to confession and report my sins.

I didn’t know if I had any, so I would just make up some nonsense to satisfy the priest and was told to say X amount of Hail Marys and Our Fathers to somehow wipe my slate clean.

I always said some extra ones just in case. (what a good little sheep I was!)

I was quickly learning to lie with a straight face, born out of necessity.

I joined the Cub Scouts when I turned 8 and my mother soon became a Den Mother and I think she was a very good one and we always had some interesting projects and field trips.

We had a radio and I listened to all the stories on it like the lone ranger, Amos and Andy and Johnny Dollar.

In those days, the Saturday newspaper section had a few pages of colored cartoons and I would lay on the floor on Saturday mornings and somebody on the radio would read them along with me.

Television was still in its infancy and everybody we knew had one, but us.

Still I enjoyed the stories on the radio as much as people enjoy TV today.

We would occasionally visit my great aunt who had probably the biggest TV on the market….most likely a 21" round screen, black and white set.

Motorola had not yet developed the square screen and color TV had not yet been invented either and I would get to watch the Lone Ranger and a few other programs after mental arm wrestling with my great uncle who wanted to watch the news and had little patience with me.

Somewhere along the line, I was sent for a finger painting class and the teacher told my mother that I was very gifted and my mother decided that I would probably become a famous painter.

I thought they were both nuts and looking back, I think it was something that had to be paid for and the teacher probably told all the mothers the same thing.

After I turned 9 in 1952, one of the other den mothers told my mother that she had a friend that worked for a TV variety/talk type show and had invited her to bring her Den for some kind of activity and one of her kids couldn’t go and asked if I wanted to take his place.

I was always ready for a new adventure and jumped at the chance. It turned out to be a watermelon eating contest.

Big whoop, but I do like watermelon, so…….(I was the quiet, polite one in the group and didn’t win, but ate just as much watermelon as I wanted.)

No one had even heard of Andy Griffith or Lucille Ball at that time.

I was never competitive, until many years later when I started playing games for money.

We never bought a watermelon to take home, but there were places back then with picnic tables where we could go in the summer and get big, cold slices of watermelon in our bathing suits and afterwards they would hose down the tables and us too if we wanted.

My step father had a small outboard motor and once in a while he would rent a small row boat and we would go fishing.

He had a canvas mail bag and he would stop and get a block of ice to put in it and in those days, you could catch fish one after another in short time and when the bag was full, we would go home.

He would pick out a few select fish for us and lay out the rest on the front lawn and tell the neighbors to come and get whatever they wanted.

Once I caught a blowfish that would blow up like a balloon if you tickled his belly and pop told me that it was not good eating, but I wanted to anyway, so my mother pretended to cook it and gave me some other fish and told me that it was the blowfish.

If I had the chance to do it over again, I would have released it back to enjoy the rest of its life.

We usually went to Biscayne Bay to fish, but a couple of times, we went to the Everglades, where the mosquitos could carry you off, so we had to secure our clothing so that the mosquitos couldn’t get in and wear a hat with a screen mesh hung around it.

Nowadays they fog the area to keep down the mosquito population.

Traveling down the dirt road to get there, we came upon a small Crocodile standing in the middle of the road on his hind legs, balancing on his tail and we just stopped and out waited him.

I had seen crocodiles in the tiny zoo on Key Biscayne, but had no idea that they could stand up.

One year grandpa came to visit us and we took him fishing, but sitting in the boat, I slung my line out and the hook caught his straw hat and whisked it off to the water and we had to pull it back in and I slung my line out again and caught grandpa by the thumb and pop had to cut