Town & Country Childhood

By Randall Monroe

Town and Country Childhood begins in the early 1960s in a small town in Southwest Iowa. Growing up in the ’60s was not an easy task. My dad owned several gas stations before taking over my uncle’s bar, Town and Country Tavern, after his death. The death of my grandpa, my uncle, the Vietnam War, the assassinations of President Kennedy and Reverend Martin Luther King, and the riots made me question longevity.

If life was going to be short, live it to the fullest regardless of the cost. Breaking the rules was considered a right, and nothing was going to stop me. Growing up in the tavern allowed me to become friends with my dad’s friends who survived the forties and World War II. I thought drinking and other bad habits were a way to have fun, but I learned too late that they were coping mechanisms that eventually destroyed you. Eventually, it all caught up.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662465017

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Town and Country Childhood

Randall Monroe

Copyright © 2022 Randall Monroe

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-6500-0 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-6501-7 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Dedication

To my lifelong friend and companion, my wife, Jackie. This book would not have been possible without her endless love.

Introduction

After my first book, it became evident that I needed to tell the part of my life that led up to entering the military. Growing up in a small town in rural Iowa in the 1960s should have been easy. The country had been through two world wars and the Korean conflict. Veterans were everywhere.

My dad purchased my uncle’s tavern after his death, and it became my home. The amount of time I spent there was an education in itself. The veterans from the wars were daily customers who came to the tavern to drink alcohol and have what appeared to be a good time.

This appearance was masked from me until the Vietnam War entered the picture. As I grew older, I realized that the drinking and behaviors of the vets were just a coping mechanism for the horrors and strife they encountered during their tours of duty. They were young men who, with no choice of their own, endured what only a sick mind could conjure up.

America changed in the 1960s, and it became obvious; I could not afford to go to college, and with the draft, the military would be my fate. Knowing this, I learned to live each day as the veterans had in their young lives that life could be very short. So many of my friends decided as I did, we had to live life as if we had little time left.

I survived the Vietnam War and grew older and raised a family. After my first book, I found it cathartic to tell some of the stories of my misspent youth and growing up with these brave individuals of my father’s era. If we ignore the history that changed the world, it will creep back into our lives, and history will repeat itself.

I am not proud of many of the antics that are detailed in the book, but they cannot be relived or changed from how they happened. I didn’t want to hurt anyone when I performed many of the acts and had no intention of hurting anyone in the writing of this book. I made amends years ago with everyone that I did wrong in the story; if anyone has been hurt, I apologize.

Please try to enjoy the book as a compilation of idiotic episodes and a brotherhood of young men and women trying to cope with the struggles of growing up in a chaotic world. It is apparent that it was just as hard on the teachers and the rest of the community to raise these children and then go to funerals when they came home. I will never forget the ones that gave the ultimate sacrifice. It took many years for me to forgive myself for surviving.

Thank you very much,

Randall Monroe

Chapter 1

JUST THE BEGINNING

UNCLE LEONARD—TOWN & COUNTRY TAVERN

My grandpa Bateman passed away in September of ’61 from a massive heart attack. He was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette, and just fell over face-first on the table and hit his head on his ashtray. When you’re eleven years old, death is hard to understand. I remember looking at my parents and trying to fathom the fact that life on earth is terminal. I believe that may have been the time when I decided that since life was finite, I was going to live it to the max.

My mom took the three of us kids to see Grandma shortly after the undertaker came and got Grandpa. As we pulled up, there were several cars parked in the yard and in the street in front of her house. We jumped out of the car and ran up on the porch. I looked at the pair of chairs sitting on the porch. The memories of sitting on the porch with Grandpa and Grandma flooded my mind. I wanted to overpower the scenes in my mind of him dying. We entered the house and Grandma was lying on a studio couch just inside the door in the living room. She was weeping. When she saw us, she put out her arms and hugged each of us. She looked at me and said, Your grandpa is gone. I didn’t want to let her go. To see her in this pain was very troubling.

It’s going to be all right, Grandma. I’m going to take care of you, I promised.

As I stood there and watched her, I realized that although his death was one of the most tragic events of her life, it was also a sigh of relief. Grandpa’s drinking had caused so much pain in her life. I know she lived every day hoping that Grandpa would somehow reform and never drink again. That the man she married and loved would return to her. Time had run out.

I spent a lot of time with Grandma Bateman after the death of my grandpa Ernest. My grandma Fern had too many struggles in her life. She had survived several bouts of cancer and a life with my grandpa. A lifelong alcoholic, he was a strain on her health and sanity. But for the most part, she was always happy and confident in her faith in the Lord. Earlier in my life, her influence had led me to go to the Church of Christ in Sidney. I was the only one in my family to go to church. I attended church and Sunday school.

In the summer, I would attend vacation Bible school. The congregation accepted me, and I learned a great deal about the Lord. I enjoyed singing the hymns and listening to the sermons. But later, I separated myself from going to church at all. As I grew older, the pressure from friends and the culture of the town led me in a much different direction.

My grandpa had been a farmer all his life. The first place I remember them living was on the east edge of Sidney, in a large two-story house. The farm, if you could call it that, was only about ten or fifteen acres. Grandpa had always farmed with horses or mules. It wasn’t until just before he had to quit farming that he bought an old tractor and some used equipment. Grandma helped with the income by raising chickens and selling eggs. They heated the house with woodstoves, and Grandma cooked on a woodstove that burned corncobs. She washed all the clothes by hand and hung them out to dry. She also washed clothes for people in town for extra money. She couldn’t rely on Grandpa for income—he liked to drink it up. In those days you didn’t have time to complain and gripe because you were too busy trying to survive. You would be hard-pressed to find people today that would come even close to living like they lived.

At that time, we lived on the east side of town on Cass Street. It was a small two-bedroom house on the north side of the street. Next door to us were the Kuhns. Leroy Kuhn was my dad’s nephew that was about the same age as him. In fact, he was older than his uncle Russ. He and his wife, Martha, were raising four children. Kay was the eldest, followed by Ronnie, Sue, and Jeanne, who was my age. We were neighbors for about four years.

While we lived there, in June of 1953, my mom and I went to visit her brother Merrill Bateman on his farm over by Farragut. We pulled up in the yard just as they were finishing lunch. Merrill owned a large German shepherd. Merrill had just fed him with the table scraps as we got there. Mom followed Merrill back into the house. I had never had a problem with the dog before. I walked up to pet him, and he quickly turned and knocked me down. He started to bite me on the head as I tried to fight him off. Mom and Merrill heard the commotion and came running out the door. I heard my mother screaming as Merrill kicked the dog in the head and freed me from the onslaught. I had been bitten severely and was bleeding profusely. My mother grabbed me and headed to the car. Merrill’s eldest son jumped into the back seat and held me as my mom drove like an IndyCar driver to Sidney and Dr. Nelson’s office. He happened to be at the office located above Rubink’s candy store on the west side of the square. Bob had used some newspapers in the back seat of the 1950 Ford my mom was driving to try to stop the bleeding. My mom carried me up the stairs and into his office. Dr. Nelson took one look at me and told my mom that there was not much he could do and she needed to get me to Nebraska City to the clinic. He wrapped a bandage around my head and sent us on our way. He told my mom he would call the clinic and tell them we were on our way.

When we arrived at the clinic in Nebraska City, there were three doctors waiting for us to arrive. Immediately, they carried me into a room and onto a table. Besides the moments when the dog had me down, I remember the clinic episode. A group of people held me down as the doctors removed the bandages and surveyed the damage to my scalp. I had not sustained any damage to my facial area, but my scalp was a mess. They began by cleaning all the wounds, shot novocaine in the wounded area, and started stitching. When they had finished, I had received 115 stitches, one on the corner of my left eye. I wore a bandage around my head for weeks.

About three weeks after this incident, my mom looked out the window and I was petting a stray dog in front of our house. I know it was times like this that shortened her life. She did relent and let us get a puppy. He was a brother to Ginger, a little dog my uncle Leonard and aunt Geto had gotten. Boots was what we named him because he was black with four white feet. He only lived about two months and died of distemper. Shortly after that, Dad found a dog and brought it home. It was Christmastime, so I named him Chris.

Leroy got a job working in Denver, Colorado, in a John Deere factory. When they moved, he tried to talk my dad into going out there too. Mom didn’t want to move, and that ended that. Shortly after that, we moved to the west side of town by the rodeo grounds.

My parents worked hard too. Between all of Grandma’s chores, she still babysat the three of us, and sometimes my cousin Judy Wright. Judy’s mother was a sister to my mother. We were the same age. I have many memories of that old house. Grandma always made time to read books to all the grandkids. We would sit on either side of her in a big overstuffed chair in the living room, and she would read stories out of Little Golden Books. She always had pecan sandies cookies and butterscotch disks hard candy. There was no TV, and she listened to the radio very little, just to get the weather forecast in the morning from Frank Field on KMA in Shenandoah. Staying all night was always a treat for me.

My mom and her brother and sisters convinced Grandpa to give up farming and move into a house in town where he didn’t have all the upkeep that a farm would demand. The house they moved into had no heat, and they moved in the woodstove that they had in the other house. Grandpa kept the tractor and bought a buzz saw that mounted on the front. It was belt-driven, and a large flat belt ran from the pulley on the shaft of the saw to the pulley on the side PTO drive. Grandpa had connections with certain people to supply him with ample wood to cut up and split to heat the house in the winter. Grandma gave up the wood cookstove, and they bought a gas range for the kitchen. One of the reasons the kids wanted Grandpa to quit farming was his failing health. He was diagnosed with emphysema, which caused him to be short of breath and have coughing spells that brought up lots of phlegm. It was a huge restriction to all his activities. But he still smoked pack after pack of Camel unfiltered cigarettes. He was, for the most part, unable to perform household chores. He taught me a lot of skills, and patience was not his strongest suit. I would go to their house after school and on Saturdays to split wood for the heat stove in the living room.

By early November, there would be an impressive pile of wood in the side yard that would carry them through the winter.

Of course, Grandpa was not able to mow the yard and scoop the front walk on days of snow. I was more than happy to be the one to take on this chore. I remember the winter of ’59 and ’60 as being a very wet one. I’m not sure how much snow we received that winter, but it stayed, and before we got a melt, it was really hard to pile it up. After a snow, my mom would take me over to Grandpa and Grandma’s to let me remove the snow from the walks. It seemed impossible to stay warm and dry, and your fingers and toes would throb and turn red. Kids of today would not dream of doing anything that laborious.

The summer after my grandpa died, I was twelve, and my dad’s business success inspired me to start my own business. I had mowed a few lawns the previous summer, and it was about all a twelve-year-old could find. Vern’s Variety Store was at the end of the block to the south of the tavern owned by my uncle Leonard Monroe. Vern handled everything from hardware to toys to threads and needles. He also sold appliances and Lawn-Boy lawn mowers. I wanted to expand the number of lawns that I mowed, but I needed a more efficient method to increase the number of lawns that I could take on.

I talked with my dad about getting a new lawn mower. He went with me to the Fremont County Savings Bank to get a loan. We walked into the bank and asked to talk to James H. Pullman Sr., who was president of the bank. He welcomed us into the front office of the bank, and we took a seat.

What can I help you with? he asked.

My son Randy wants to buy a new lawn mower to mow more yards this summer, my dad explained.

Mr. Pullman turned away from my dad and looked at me with a wry grin on his face. Do you think you will be able to make the payments? he asked. I told him that I needed to know what the payment would be. Mr. Pullman chuckled and told my dad that he had raised a pretty sharp boy. For the next ninety minutes, I sat and listened to a barrage of financial litany about the importance of making the payments on time and how the loan process worked. I got the loan for $125 and have been in debt ever since.

As soon as I got the money, I went to Vern’s Variety Store and purchased my lawn mower. This mower was a rider but was different from other mowers: It had no blades. It had a seat and handlebars, and the engine was on the back. The front wheels could be removed by pulling a pin. Then on the back of my push mower, a bracket was mounted, to which the rider was mounted. The push mower handles would be removed, and you used the rider handles to steer. This process allowed me to pull a small trailer and haul the pusher and gas, then when I got to the lawn, I could convert it to the rider and mow. I paid off the loan over the next year.

One of the lawns that I mowed was that of the American Legion Country Club. My dad was a legion member and helped me get the job. They paid me $5 a week to mow and trim. Since the legion club was one of only two places in town that were air-conditioned, after mowing I could go in the club when the janitors were there and buy a Coke and get cooled off. Usually after mowing, I would take my lawn mower home and get on my bike and head for the swimming pool across the legion club.

Now, I was in the sixth grade, and adolescent boys were looking at the girls. One girl in my class that drew my attention was a young girl named Mary Light. She was the eldest of four girls that lived in with a single mom just down the hill from our house. I asked her to go to the show with me on more than one occasion. We would go to the show in Sidney on a Friday or Saturday night. After the show was over, I would walk her home and we would sit in an old ’49 Chevy in the side yard at her house and talk for hours until her mom would make her come inside. I was never brave enough to kiss her. Before long, she moved away.

Some of my friends that went swimming with me were the Starnes boys: Curt, who was my age, and his younger brothers, Jeff and Mark, would also come along. Swimming was just about the only entertainment that the town could offer. I took swimming lessons earlier in life and by then could swim across the pool, which was the requirement to get in the deep end and use the diving boards. I remember the first time I went off the high diving board. I climbed the ladder and walked slowly and cautiously to the end of the board. I looked at the water, and it seemed to be a hundred feet to the water. I looked around to see who was watching me. Finally, as I mustered up the courage to jump in the pool, I took a deep breath and walked off the end of the board. It was just another step in my life of daring stunts.

One of my friends, Tom Dyke, was a regular at the pool. One day, while I was mowing the yard, the ambulance went screaming up the hill toward the rodeo grounds. I jumped on my bike and headed up the hill. By the time I got past the water tower, I saw the ambulance backed up to the swimming pool. I pedaled as fast as I could, and when I arrived at the pool, they were loading someone in the back on a gurney. They quickly closed the rear door and sped away with lights flashing and the siren blaring. I went to the bathhouse, and they told me that Tom had fallen off the high board onto the concrete headfirst.

Tom recovered, but the injuries he incurred were believed to have affected him all his life. Years later, they removed the high diving board.

Since 1959, the American Legion Post No. 128 had hired movie and TV stars to perform at the rodeo. In 1961, it was going to be Hoss and Little Joe Cartwright from the Bonanza TV series. This was the hottest show on TV, and they were going to appear at the Saturday and Sunday rodeo performances. Marty Robbins, famous country singer, performed at the seven earlier performances. The crowds all week were as busy as anyone could remember. We parked cars in our yard, and the place was full almost every performance.

Sidney had its own Hoss. His name was Jim Hoot Gibson. He was every bit as big as Hoss and looked very much like him. This similarity was too much for the Whipple twins. They made arrangements for Hoot and Hoss to dress as the other would normally dress. Hoot put on the Western wear and the signature cowboy hat worn by Hoss, and Hoss put on a plain shirt and blue jeans. They had the two pose together, and they took a photo. I can’t tell you the number of people that could not identify them correctly. The photo hung in the tavern for years.

Chapter 2

OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER

THE STANDARD STATION

My sixth-grade teacher was a Mrs. Sugden. She was a no-nonsense teacher who was not afraid to use her skill as disciplinary queen to wreak havoc on a student who did not abide by her strict rules of order. I was a leader when it came to noncompliance with rules. I dedicated myself to the thought that rules were meant to be broken. It was twice as rewarding if she could not determine who was responsible for the broken rule. There were several in my class that followed my lead.

Occasionally, she would catch the guilty party and issue the necessary punishment. She had in her possession a weapon to bring justice to the classroom, a ping-pong paddle. You know the type I’m talking about. The paddle that had the rubber band stapled to it and the rubber ball on the other end of the band. You would hit the ball and it would come back to the paddle, and you would repeat. But she had removed the ball and the rubber band. She had used the paddle for several years in her career. It showed signs of wear, and every recipient of the fury was required to sign his or her name on the paddle. This weapon held the names of many before me who were patriots in the war on rules.

Not very long after I entered the sixth grade, I got to see the paddle firsthand. My reputation had preceded me, and Mrs. Sugden was set to make me the poster child for sixth-grade misbehavior. She never issued punishment in front of the class because she didn’t want any witnesses. She would take you out in the hall instead and wave the paddle in front of your face while listing the things she found wrong with you. Her face took on bizarre changes that could only be described as masochistic. When it was time for the paddle to meet the mark, she would tell you to bend over and accept the punishment.

As I said before, I was not one to obey even the most direct rules. I refused. She swung the paddle at me, striking me on the upper forearm. She physically tried to turn me around as I continued to resist. Then out of self-preservation, I grabbed the paddle out of her hand and broke it in half, right down the middle. I threw it on the floor and backed away. She could not have been more surprised if I had shot her in the chest. Her eyes welled up with tears, and she reacted like I had killed her favorite pet. She just stood there and stared at the fallen weapon lying on the floor. I slowly backed away, waiting for the fatal blow to come my way. She locked onto my eyes and then slowly bent down and picked up the paddle from the floor. She turned without saying a word and went back into the classroom. I looked around, not knowing what to do. As she entered the classroom, I followed her in and went to my seat. When the rest of the class saw the paddle, there was total silence.

So began the age of no paddle in the sixth grade.

When Christmas came, I had wanted a new bicycle. I got a beautiful red Schwinn. I didn’t get to ride it to school until spring, however. The first day I rode it to school, my mom told my brother, Rusty, and me to be very careful and watch out for cars. She was having one of her psychic moments and knew something was going to happen. Rusty was always slow in getting ready, and I told him to hurry up or I was going to leave him. My mom told me to wait. I got on my bike and started down the driveway. When I hit the sidewalk, I hid behind the bank at the bottom of the yard. Rusty came out and thought I had left him. I could hear my mom screaming at me to stop and wait for my brother, as she had thought I was down the block. Rusty jumped on his bike and went flying down the driveway. I could hear my mom screaming at Rusty to slow down and watch where he was going.

The situation unfolded quickly.

I saw a car coming down the street from the north, out of the view of Rusty. As Rusty hit the end of the driveway and hit the street, his bike collided with the right front fender of a ’55 Chevy. Instantly, he flew over the handlebars and over the hood to the street on the driver’s side of the car. The driver slammed on his brakes and got out to see if he was hurt. All I could hear was my mother screaming at the top of her lungs and running through the yard to the street like a college track star. Rusty got up almost immediately and looked at the watch he got for Christmas, hoping that it had not been damaged. By the time my mother got to the car, I know she aged several years. There didn’t seem to be any damage to the car, and Rusty’s bike was none the worse for wear. Needless to say, I was the one to receive the most pain.

It was quickly turning to summer in Sidney. School would soon be over, and my mowing business starting. I had easily finished my sixth-grade year. Junior high school was a challenge. One of my teachers was a young man who came to teach in Sidney in 1961. He taught history and social studies. His name was Duane Ridnour. Mr. Ridnour was a tall thin man who always wore black slacks and a short-sleeve white shirt, with a narrow tie. His hair was a crew cut, and he wore black plastic-rimmed glasses. He walked with a confident swagger and had the air of a military drill sergeant. He was no-nonsense and expected perfect behavior from his students. I was not one to follow that plan,