Behind the Mask: The Autobiography of Ron Jeffers

By Ronald Jeffers

The autobiography of Ron Jeffers is the long-awaited book of his life, starting in the ghettos of Cincinnati to becoming a name well-known in the sports field. For over fifty years, he has written newspaper and magazine articles and several how-to and rule books for baseball and softball. Jeffers has travelled the world as a public speaker, including speaking for National Olympics Committee. Staying true to his roots, he still lives in the Cincinnati area with his wife, Vera.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984566331

Ronald Jeffers

The autobiography of Ron Jeffers is the long-awaited book of his life, starting in the ghettos of Cincinnati to becoming a name well known in the sports field. For over 50 years, he has written newspaper and magazine articles and several How-To and Rule books for baseball and softball. Jeffers has travelled the world as a public speaker, including speaking for National Olympics Committee. Staying true to his roots, he still lives in the Cincinnati area with his wife, Vera.

Book preview

BEHIND THE MASK

The Autobiography of Ron Jeffers

Ronald Jeffers

Copyright © 2018 by Ronald Jeffers.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 11/13/2018

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

Chapter One: My Roots

Chapter Two: Life During World War II

Chapter Three: Our First House

Chapter Four: The First To Graduate

Chapter Five: My Life In The Navy

Chapter Six: Starting Work And A Family

Chapter Seven: Misty

Chapter Eight: Butch

Chapter Nine: The Unraveling Of My Marriage

Chapter Ten: Single Again

Chapter Eleven: Journalst And Professional Writer?

Chapter Twelve: Speaking Professionaly

Chapter Thirteen: Umpiring And My Umpire Business

My Roots

Chapter One

(THE JEFFERS)

Most people I know can reflect back on their roots, and tell you about their heritage, but since I have never been especially interested in genealogy, I can only tell you what I was told by my parents. In my teens, I can remember asking my mother and father where their parents were from. All they could tell me was Tennessee and Kentucky. I said, you mean, you don’t have any knowledge of what country your grandparents were from? They said, no one has ever told us. I asked did we originate from England, Italy or Germany, or some other country? Our ancestors had to come from somewhere, other than America, but my mother and father truly didn’t know. They were never told, and I assume I am the only one who ever asked them these questions.

My father Willard Jeffers was a mountain man who told me "I was from an area they called Sock town and Stump town. The closest real town to where he lived was Oneida, Tennessee, located in northern Tennessee near the Tennessee/Kentucky border. He told me there was a saw mill in Stump town, and when all the trees were cut down, the people just started calling it Stump town." I guess that only made since to the folks that lived there. There was a sock factory in the other location, so I am certain you have caught on, and can follow the gist of this. They called this area Sock town."

My paternal grandfather had eighteen children with three different wives. I am told my grandfather outlived each of them, and his last wife was pregnant with number eighteen, when he died of what they just called old age. The Kiss system could have originated right there in that holler.

They all lived in a one room log cabin, on a rundown farm, off a dirt road on a mountain top south of Oneida. When I visited them as a child, I was shocked to see they had cardboard tacked up to the walls, to keep the cold air and bugs out, but the floor had cracks large enough to see the chickens running around under the cabin, and there was no running water or electric. To my dismay and disgust they also had a nasty old out house between the cabin and the barn, that I refused to use. I couldn’t bring myself to sit in that stinky, fly infested little shack of an outhouse to relieve myself. I learned self control in this precarious of times.

My grandfather, or Paw, as we all called him, always wore a pair of dirty bib overalls, and work boots. He never ever seemed to be very clean about himself, and when he wore underwear it was the long underwear variety. I was afraid of him, but for no real reason. I had never met or spent any time around anyone quite like him. He was a real mountain man, and unlike any man I had ever known. Each time I would see him, which wasn’t very often, those around him would always have to tell him my name, and who I was. Being reminded I was his grandson he would then reply Come here, and hug my neck. That was pretty much the extent of our conversation. I always wondered what was with this Hug My Neck stuff, but I politely did as I was told

Dad told me, as a young boy, he was kicked by a mule, resulting in the loss of one of his testicles. He was told by a doctor this would prohibit him from being able to father a child, but he was pleasantly surprised to find out later this was not true.

If that were not enough, he was also legally blind in one eye, and I never found out how that came about. Perhaps he didn’t even know himself. Although he tried to enlist in the Army several times, because of his eye, he was not able to. Strange as it seems, I never knew either one of my grandmothers birth name or maiden name. The lady my grandfather was married to at the time of his death was his third wife, and not my biological grandmother. She never seemed to be too attached to me, and I was never told her name.

Everyone, I knew in Tennessee, called my grandfather what I believed to be Paw, and I didn’t really know if it was Paul or Paw, as in grandpa, but I never asked. I was probably in my 40’s when one of my cousins told me his real name was Mount Jeffers. I thought with eighteen children, his name certainly was appropriate. I also remember thinking that he needed a hobby.

I remember telling my cousin I can’t remember our grandfather ever working. She quickly replied, No one else can ever remember him working either. He obviously was too busy producing free farm help.

The oldest son of Mount, was Jay, and he owned a general store in Oneida. Every Saturday Jay would have a worker drive a truck of groceries out to Paws farm. I later found out that my uncle Jay owned the farm too.

It became quite obvious Mount had all his children to do the work on the farm, and education was certainly not a priority. My father only went to the third grade, and his older brother Jay was his teacher in that one room school house. Jay only had some high school education, but he was the best qualified in those parts to teach the younger children.

My cousins living in this one room shack log cabin, they called home, loved to see me come visit them. I was this naive city boy who knew absolutely nothing about their life style. They loved to share their simple daily life with me, while they laughed at my way of talking and ignorance of their culture. I was the only big city kid they ever came in contact with. I was their Big City cousin.

I learned a new language while on my visits to Tennessee. Words and phrases like down yonder, or down the road a piece, in the holler, and I also found out a poke was a paper bag. I was just a poor funny boy from the inner city of Cincinnati, who they thought talked funny.

Once they excitedly put me on their horse, without a saddle, or bridle, I might add, and the horse slowly walked down the dirt road to the fence. Once there, the horse turned and ran back toward the barn as if his tail was on fire. Hard as I tried to stay right side up, I quickly slid upside down and was hanging from the horse’s neck. We were looking eye to eye or mouth to mouth for a few seconds. When I couldn’t hold on any longer I fell hard to the rocky dirt path. I don’t know what hurt me the most, but my pride was destroyed, and of course, they thought this was hilarious. My cousins were all dying with laughter at my inability to stay on the top of their family work horse.

I never stayed overnight with them, for Lord knows they didn’t have a place for me to sleep, and I would never be comfortable there. An afternoon visit was plenty for me every year or two. They all drank from a well out of one sulphur smelling metal cup, and then let’s not forget about that horrendous out house. As interesting as it was to me, I was always happy when our visit to the family farm was over. I certainly was no better than them, nor did I feel that way, but I never felt like I fit in. Did you see the movie Deliverance? That is as close as I could possibly come to describing the characters in this episode of my life.

My father told me very little about his childhood. Maybe he didn’t think there was anything interesting to tell. I wish now, he had shared more with me I can remember him crying as he told me one story. When he was a little boy a Negro family moved into the area, and after a few days some men paid them a visit, and told them be out of town by night fall or we will dynamite your house, with everyone in it. They evidently didn’t have any Negroes in that part of the country, and didn’t want any. That night they did as they were told, and blew up the house, and killed the mother, father and their children. As ashamed as my father was, for what these neighbor men did, he thought it important to tell me this story, and how wrong it was. He had tears in his eyes as he told me of this horrific event. I know by father never had a racist thought in his life. He was a kind loving Christian man who was honest to a fault.

When my father was a teenager, he and another boy, rode a horse into town where they were playing in a railroad yard. While there, my father released the air brake on one of the rail cars, and it started rolling down this slight slope, and it hit a man, and knocked him to the ground. The man wasn’t seriously hurt, but this childish prank scared him to death. This train yard will later play a big part in my dad’s future, as chronicled in the next chapter.

In his late teens he was dating a girl from the neighboring mountain, and after a innocent visit with her, on her porch one evening, her parents told him he best be going home. As he was walking in the holler, between the two mountains, some boys started throwing rocks at him. I guess you were not supposed to court a girl from their mountain. After a few rocks sailed past his head, he pulled out his .38 revolver and fired a shot or two back in the area from which the rocks came. He heard a loud scream, before he headed on home. The next day he went to work at the saw mill, where he saw a co-worker with a bandage on the side of his head. The boy replied Jeff, you shot part of my ear off. My dad told me I thank God, to this day, that I never killed that boy. A different time, era, and mentality. I doubt that my dad had a conceal and carry license either. Mountain life in living color.

When my father tried to join the army in World War I and World War II he was turned down, because of his vision. They obviously didn’t want any soldiers legally blind in one eye. He was always sad and somewhat embarrassed he was not allowed to serve his country in the military.

With no work to be found in the mountains of Tennessee, my father decided he would hop on a freight train headed for the north, with plans to get off the train in Detroit. He was told They have work up there, and they pay good too. So hop on the train he did, and when it stopped in a freight yard, he got off the train, only to be told he was in Cincinnati. This was as far north as he ever traveled, and Oneida, Tennessee was as far south as he ever went. I have always regretted that he never got to see the ocean, or other parts of this great country. His life was always so simple and to me, mundane.

Looking for work in Cincinnati he got his first job at the stock yards, adjoining the train yard. His job was to skin the hide off sheep, and evidently it must have been a pretty smelly job, because everyone on the streetcar got up and moved away from him that day. The next day he went back and told them he wanted pay for his one day’s work. They told him don’t quit, you don’t have to load sheep hide today. We have cow hides for you to load today. That obviously didn’t appeal to him, so he went to a local lumber yard, and got a job doing something he was skilled and experienced with. He was now a wood stacker. I know because that is what it says on my birth certificate. My father is listed as a Wood Stacker, and my mother was considered a Homemaker.

My uncle Jay was my only family member with indoor plumbing, and he lived in town in a comfortable house in Oneida. His general store was across the street from his home, and his two daughters had houses on the properties adjoining his. He owned all the farm land behind his house and across the street. He kept a farm wagon and horse there. As a young boy he allowed me to drive the horse and wagon around the town. I thought this was great fun and a totally new experience for me.

Jay’s son-in-law James had a general store in town too, as did his brother Tommy. James was a Holiness preacher in a little country church, but I never went there. We went to church at the First Baptist Church of Oneida, and it is still a thriving church today.

Uncle Lonnie was another of my dad’s brothers, and he was uneducated, dirty and grumpy. At least that is how I remember him. He lived in town as well and drove a truck for Jelico Grocery. I can still remember his out house, his well with a tin dipper, and how his wife cooked on the coal stove they also used to heat the house.

Bib overalls were Lonnie’s dress of choice, while his brother Jay wore a navy blue suit, white dress shirt, navy blue tie, and well shined high top dress shoes. Jay wore this same outfit every day of his life, including when he and my dad would go fishing and hunting.

I have lost track of all my other relatives on the Jeffers side of the family, but recently drove down to visit my roots and see what had changed or I could still remember. The log cabin has since burned down, but my Uncle Jay’s house and his two daughter’s houses are there along with the general store. My cousin, and her son Dr. Coffee, are still alive and well living in Oneida. Since we didn’t own a car until I was a sophomore in high school, the only place I ever went on vacation was to visit my relatives in Tennessee. We would either go by train or by Greyhound bus, and stay about one week each summer.

My Aunt Ruth, Jay’s wife, was a wonderful southern cook. For breakfast she fried big slabs of country ham in a cast iron skillet, and then made her red eye gravy, with coffee, in that same skillet. This all came with a platter of eggs, and if an egg should break, she would scoop it out and throw it away. When I asked her why, she told me that egg must have been bad. This was accompanied with another platter of cat head biscuits, honey, fresh preserves, apple butter, cow butter, cold milk and coffee for the adults. No wonder I loved going to her house for breakfast, and to this date that is still my favorite meal.

I did inherit one unusual thing from my father’s side of the family, and that was a claw. Yes a claw, just like you would find on a dog. Instead of a toe nail, I was born with a dog type claw on the toe next to my big toe on my right foot. My father had a claw, I have a claw, my children have it, and I know my oldest granddaughter has it. She recently had a beautiful baby boy, and she was so proud to tell me Gunner doesn’t have The Claw."

I had a cousin, Oliver Jeffers, the son of my uncle Lonnie, and he moved to Cincinnati in his early twenties, and worked on the railroad. He married his childhood sweetheart, and had a family before going through a horrible continuous battle fighting cancer. The horrible pain and suffering his cancer caused him and his family was devastating, and with bankruptcy closing in on them, he went in the bedroom and took his life. His daughter, a licensed mortician, prepared her father for his final resting place that week.

My father’s family, with the exception of my grandfather, all had a great work ethic, and treated me with love and respect. My vocabulary was somewhat different than theirs, and my clothes were not the same, but they always treated me as family, and seemed to enjoy my visits.

(THE HOWSON’S)

I guess this is a good place to pause, and tell you what little I know about my mother’s early life, and her parents. My mother was born and raised in Eubank, Kentucky, which is the first town north of Somerset, and south of Science Hill. This area is best known for the large man-made Cumberland Lake, which will have a big impact to this story in a future chapter.

I never heard anyone mention my grandfather’s first name. We never met, as he died in a car accident on route 27 in Science Hill, just before I was born. His last name was Howson, and when they referred to him, they called him Pop.

My maternal grandparents had three sons and one daughter, that being my mother. The boys were named Frank, Eb and Arch, and my mother Eva Lee. I got my middle name after my mother.

My maternal grandmother, was called Mom, and to this day I still do not know her first name. She never would tell me, as confusing as that was for me. She said Just call me Mom. She was married to a short chubby man she called Mr. Bentley, as did everyone else. She was married to him for a number of years, until he died of the proverbial Old Age. Seems no one dies of that cause of death anymore.

Eb married, became a chiropractor, and had a medical practice in Somerset for many years. After a divorce he moved to Louisville, Kentucky, and worked in the sporting goods department at Walmart. He married a girl about thirty years his junior, and they had a baby boy, shortly before I lost track of him.

Frank married, moved to Cincinnati, became a roofer, and had two children. The oldest was Betty and the youngest was Johnny. Frank later left his family, in the middle of the night, leaving them unaware if he was alive or dead, and ever wondering what happened to him. Many years later he showed up at my mother’s door with another wife and children. He had moved to Indiana, and didn’t think to divorce his first wife, before marrying this lady. I assume they were married, but with this lowlife character, you never know. He tried to meet and reconnect with his oldest daughter Betty, but she would have nothing to do with him. In fact she was so angry with my mother, for bringing Frank to her home, she never spoke to my mother again.

Later in my life I found out my mother never divorced her first husband, before marrying my father. That makes my mother a bigamist, and legally I must be a bastard, since I was conceived out of wedlock. What a messed up family history this is. Later in my life, when I became a professional umpire, I was called a Bastard a time or two, and I subsequently threw the individual out of the game for this. I didn’t know, at the time, they technically were correct, and I will go to my grave believing my father never knew he was illegally married to my mother.

Arch was the closest sibling to my mother. He brought her to Cincinnati, and lived with her on at least two separate occasions. As a boy himself, he joined the Army and served in Africa in World War II. As a result of this, he suffered with horrible nightmares about the experiences of the war. Mother said he would cry out in his sleep when dreaming about a time he was ordered to shoot a young teenage German soldier. Supposedly this frightened, pleading soldier was kneeling before Arch, begging for his life. Seems the commanding officer didn’t want his soldiers taking their valuable time watching the prisoners, or sharing their limited food and water with the enemy so he ordered Arch to kill him.

Arch, post war, got a job at the Wright Plant, which is where the huge General Electric Jet Engine plant is now located in Evendale, and he worked there for years. The entire time he worked there he lived with my mother in a separate two room apartment. He eventually moved back to a farm in Somerset, and married late in life, to a lady with a mentally challenged son. He remained there until his death.

The youngest child of grandmother Mom Howson was my mother Eva Lee. She told me, her father was crazy about her, and she worshiped him, but her mother neither loved or liked her. She said her mother would say I didn’t want no split tailed girl. As vulgar as that sounds, that is what my mother claims her mother would say. She supposedly preferred boys, and didn’t mind telling you as much.

When my mother was a young teenager she left home, and married an older man, many years her senior, named Bent Caudill. They lived in Eubank, and had three children. Her oldest was a son named Lewis, and then another boy named Lloyd, and a girl named Lois Jean. Strangely my mother followed after her mother, with this weirdness for females, and abused her daughter Lois too. I always thought my mother would have gone to the extreme to be especially good to her daughter, after what she told me about her mother, but to the contrary she was never fair or good to Lois.

According to my mother her husband Bent Caudill would get drunk and beat her, so in the middle of the night, she and her brother Arch, took my sister Lois, and left for a better life in Cincinnati. She left the boys behind, with her husband, with none of them knowing where their mother and sister had gone. They never saw or heard from her again until after they were discharged from the Army and Navy after the Korean War.

Mother never divorced Bent, and some years later she married my father in Cincinnati. That makes her a bigamist, and her marriage to my father was illegitimate and illegal. Maybe I should have left this paragraph out of the book, but if you are going to write a biography, it should be as truthful as possible.

After arriving in Ohio my mother moved into a boarding house on Towne St. in the village of Elmwood. This is a low income bedroom community on the outskirts of Cincinnati, where a lot of Appalachian people had come north and settled.

Mom (my grandmother) and Mr. Bentley lived in an old wooden two story house next to their little Mom and Pop grocery store. They had a small produce farm behind to help with a source of income, and when the store went out of business, they moved into the store. They lived in the converted store until Mr. Bentley’s death. After that Mom moved in with her son Arch, until her death. I am certain the certificate of death said Old Age again.

The things I remember about going to Eubank was Mom not allowing anyone to rinse the dishes, after they were washed. She said Just dry them off with that dish rag. The little bit of soap left on those dishes will prevent you from ever being constipated. She also kept the leftover food from breakfast on the kitchen table until lunch. She covered it with a sheet of plastic, to keep the flies off, and this breakfast food could be tenderloin, pork products, eggs, etc. Today this would not be acceptable, but no one ever got sick. I can’t confirm her constipation guarantee, though.

I always found it funny that Mom and Mr. Bentley would sleep together on a twin bed, in the kitchen, and they did this until he died. They had me sleep in a big tall feather bed in the upstairs bedroom, which was covered with layers of homemade quilts, and a sheet of plastic.

If I wanted to use the bathroom, I had to visit the outhouse, out yonder behind the house. The Sears Roebuck catalog is not comfortable to wipe with either. Did I tell you how much I hate those outhouses?

My life and family history could well serve as the definition of a conundrum. It is difficult, confusing and different, but this is my life, and herein lie my roots. I am neither proud nor ashamed of them. They are what they are. I had two parents who loved me with all their heart, and tried their best to raise me as best they knew how. It isn’t where we start that matters, but where we end up.

We were dirt poor my entire childhood, but it wasn’t a problem for me, since everyone around us, was just as poor as were we. I would much rather be loved and poor than wealthy and not loved.

Roots, according to Ron Jeffers, is where we start the race, but it is how we finish the race that truly matters. The most important training I received as a child and throughout my adolescence was about my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ and He is still the most important thing in my life. This value system came from my roots.

My mother had her own vocabulary, and we best not deviate from it. When I think about it now, I find it amusing, but growing up in her household I knew better than to question it. I was told we Do Do from our hinny, we urinate from our We We, but urine was always called We We. Darn was never to be used, because it was just a substitute for Damn, and we certainly never used that word. Hell was a bad word so Heck was unacceptable too, and Son of a Gun was never to be used since it was surely a terrible substitute for Son of a B ___. I always thought this was silly, but strangely I have never cursed in my life, and still find the use of profanity to be repulsive. I detest the F bomb that is used so often today, and when I hear it come from the mouth of a woman I want to regurgitate.

I have been both poor and not so poor in my life, and none of that really matters. My roots and training in Christian values is what has really mattered in my life behind the mask.

When I hear people talking about attending their family reunions I am jealous. I have never heard of a family reunion on either side of my family, but I would love to know more about my family and swap war stories with my long lost relatives.

I sometimes find it hard to believe I only know the first name of one of my four biological grandparents, and I wouldn’t know where to start in doing a serious genealogy of my roots. My family genealogy doesn’t seem important to me anymore, but I would like to know where that dog claw came from.

Life During World War II

Chapter Two

Arriving in Cincinnati Mother got a job doing sewing and alterations for Progress Laundry in Hartwell, while her brother Arch got a job at the Wright Defense Plant in the suburb of Evendale. There was plenty of work in Cincinnati at the time as we were in the onset of World War II.

My father and uncle Arch somehow became friends, perhaps in a bar as drinking buddies, and through this connection, my father and mother met.

My mother and father were married, without my mother ever getting a divorce from Bent, and some three years later they had me on 1 October 1939. Whatever happened to the incorrect medical diagnosis that my dad couldn’t father a child, after his run in with the mule? Well, I guess I digress, but strangely I too had to have one testicle removed later in my life. Surgery for me though, and no mule was involved.

Another story I have always found so unusual is when my mother and father went to the Justice of the Peace to get married, they asked my father for his date of birth. He told them I don’t know. No one ever told me. They asked, You mean you don’t know the year you were born either? No, he replied, but I think it was around 1902. He then said make my birthday December 25, that way I will remember it. They did, and that was recorded on his driver’s license, and all other employment records he had. That is until His father died. When his father died they found the family Bible, in the cabin, and inside the front cover was a list of all the children’s names with their date of birth. My dad was actually born on the fifteenth of September 1903. He now had a new birth date, and was even a year younger. I find this amazing, sad and humorous.

At the time of my birth, my parents were living in a distressed rented shotgun style house on Baymiller Street, in the poorest area of the inner city of Cincinnati. They then moved next to a large brewery, in another old red brick shotgun style house, on Mohawk Street. Again in the poorest section of the inner city. This area is now called Over the Rhine, referring to the historical German heritage and history of Cincinnati. This area of Cincinnati had a vast assortment of German breweries at this time, and a large Italian and German Catholic population. Greater Cincinnati still has this culture still to this day. I go back and visit this area on occasion, and both of these houses are still standing, and used by indigent people like we were. The neighborhood was mostly white at that time, but is now predominantly African American.

I was born in the early stages of World War II, while my parents lived on Baymiller Street. I was the second largest baby ever born at Cincinnati General Hospital, at that time. I weighed in at ten pounds and fourteen ounces, and my mother tells me I was her second smallest baby. Her other children were all born at home so who knows how accurate their weights were. I guess they weighed her other children on a feed scale.

My birth certificate lists my mother’s occupation as a Home Maker, and my father as a Wood Stacker. I guess she wasn’t working, outside the home, at the time of her pregnancy. This hospital is now the University Hospital which is an outstanding training hospital for the University of Cincinnati.

Mother had another son a few years later who died at birth, and my father adopted my sister Lois, at that time. They changed her last name from Caudill to Jeffers, and I am told Bent never signed off on any of this? Since my mother never divorced her first husband, Bent, I can’t help but wonder how legal this adoption or her marriage to my father was. Who knows?

I have very little memory of my early childhood, And I fear I am now in the early stages of the deplorable Alzheimer’s disease, so I had better write fast, before I forget everything. I can remember going to kindergarten, but little else from this time in my life. My mother told me my first Christmas present was a stuffed bear, and when I saw it I quickly ran to it, only to say Hi Bear. We also got a stocking each Christmas morning with a candy cane, fresh fruit and some nuts. Not a lot, but I certainly loved it.

From here my parents moved to a government housing project for the working poor, called Winton Terrace. We moved into the Top Ridge section, and they allowed my dad to use a plot of ground, about a mile from our apartment, where we raised a vegetable garden. I can remember us hauling water and our garden tools back and forth in my wagon. My dad also found a good place nearby to harvest wild black berries too, and I enjoyed mother’s blackberry cobbler.

When our small crop would come in, it was my job to take the little red wagon full of vegetables, and go door to door selling anything we could spare. I didn’t get paid for this so I am not certain if this qualifies as my first job.

Even though this was a four room rental apartment, we still had to maintain the grass area outside it. There was a community building where my father would have to walk a half mile, each way, to get the lawn mower every week, and cut our section of the grass. Try getting a resident of this same government housing apartment to do this today. This would be called cruel and unusual punishment. When we lived in Winton Terrace it was new and had a totally white population. Only one family in the projects had a car, and there was no public transportation available there. The tenants living there now are almost all African American, and when I go back, to visit, and show people where I once lived, everyone in the neighborhood comes out of their units, and watches me in wonderment. The apartment I lived in is still being used by some family today, but it is widely recognized as one of the most dangerous area in Greater Cincinnati.

My hard working father was no longer working as a wood stacker, and got a new job working the night shift at a machine shop. Mother asked him to take her butcher knife to work to sharpen it for her, and after doing this, he wrapped it in newspaper in preparation for his five mile walk home. For some unknown reason I waited up for my dad that night, which was definitely out of the ordinary. I wanted to surprise him, and hid at the top of the stairs. He quietly walked up the stairs, forgetting to remove the knife from his back pocket, and I leaped on to his back for a piggy back ride. As I slid down his back the knife cut my right eye out of the socket. My father was in a panic, as he loudly screamed for help. My mother, at this time was holding my eye against my head, in her hand with a clean rag. My father went outside screaming for help. With no car, no public transportation, and no telephone they were in a panic. Fortunately there was a deaf mute couple who lived across the courtyard, and they had a car. They drove us to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital where the doctors worked all night to sew my eye back in place. By the grace of God and a great surgeon my eyesight was 20/20 until I was in my late sixties, and I thank God, for the couple that owned the car.

School for me, at this time, was at the Winton Place public school, about a three mile walk through the woods, and yes, it was both up hill and downhill each way. I will bet no kids walk to this school anymore. I remember, on two separate occasions, while walking on the path through the woods I saw someone’s pet dog hanging from a tree. Nice neighborhood.

There was a sand pit at the bottom of the hill, near where our garden was located, and I was forbidden to go there, but being the adventurous soul I am, I sneaked down there a time or two. I thought it was such fun to float around the lake in a large old rusty cement pan. The problem was my mother found out about my trip to the sand pit, and her punishment for me was to tie me to the front porch for the day. Kids would walk by and ask me why are you all tied up, and I don’t know what I told them, but I am certain I lied. Who ties their child to a porch post for the day? I never went back to the sand pit any more though.

I remember, during this time period, my mother purchasing some camouflage fabric to make me a shirt and pants, just like the soldiers were wearing. I proudly wore it, and hid in our back hedges, truly believing no one could see me. Now I see adults wearing these camo outfits as leisure attire, and have no intention of joining the Army or Marines, or hiding in the bushes behind their house. I guess I was a style setter, before my time.

My dad was drinking at this time in his life, and one evening he walked out of Ollie’s Tavern drunk, only to get hit by a truck. It tossed him all the way across Spring Grove Avenue, and while in the hospital a Baptist pastor, named Brother Hillard, came to visit, to witness to him. My father accepted the Lord as his Savior that day, and when he came home, he threw all his beer away. He never drank again. He joined Lockland Baptist Church, and the pastor told him it was a sin to smoke and drink any alcohol, so he gave up smoking too, but he never did give up chewing his Mail Pouch tobacco, much to my mother’s chagrin. He continued taking a chew, as he called it, right up to the end of his life.

He is buried in Landmark Baptist cemetery today, although his only request was to be buried in the family cemetery plot in Tennessee. Mother said I don’t care what you want. You are going to be buried right here in Cincinnati. And, she did exactly as she said.

I started attending Winton Place Public School in 1944, and this big old red brick building is still standing, and open for business today. Not the greatest school or school system, but they have a tough audience to work with. I attended school in a wooden Army style barracks, my last two years there, away from the main building, and attended this school from kindergarten through sixth grade.

It was about a three mile walk each way if you took the short cut on the path through the woods. I am certain I wasn’t a great student, but all my mother ever asked was Did you pass? They meant well, and never challenged me to be a good student. Simply passing to the next appointed grade was good enough, and a success in their eyes.

Mother’s brother Frank had moved to Cincinnati at this time, and he was proud to show off his newly purchased automobile. Frank took us all out for one of my first car rides, when he stopped suddenly, I tumbled out of the back seat and landed on a open oil can in the floor. There were no seat belts at that time, and his sudden stop resulted in me getting a two inch V shaped cut and scar between my upper lip and my nose. I was so ashamed of this scar, and tried to hide it with my hand for many years. Especially when my first and only girlfriend called me Scar Face on our first date, but as fate would have it she became my wife.

One of my last memories of this school occurred when someone told the principal I had jay walked, at some location, on my way home from school. So they called me into the school office where I was sentenced to go see the gym teacher for a vicious paddling or beating, I didn’t soon forget. Corporal punishment was not frowned upon in that era, so he took a big wooden paddle to my rear end. I could barely sit in my chair for a week, and if you flinched you got hit a second time. I still don’t believe the punishment fit the crime.

The school was overcrowded, so some of us were assigned away from the main building in the wooden barracks. One boy in the class thought it would be fun to bring a huge six foot python snake to class one day, knowing the teacher was extremely frightened of snakes. My opinion of snakes is the same as Jesus and this teacher. When he saw