Saved By A Chicken: The True Story of the Life of Morgan Lee Stevens-Hobo to Hero

By Dean Stevens

Bombs and artillery shells were falling all around him. Bullets were whistling within inches of his head. He is in shoulder-high water as he struggles to reach the beach ahead of him. He sees his captain step on a land mine as he reaches the sandy beaches, just yards in front of him. The sight of his captain flying straight up in the air puts a fear in him he has never experienced. He thinks, God, help me. I don't want to die here!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781648017988

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Introduction

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

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Concluding Thoughts

About the Author

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Saved By A Chicken

The True Story of the Life of Morgan Lee Stevens—Hobo to Hero

Dean Stevens

Copyright © 2020 Dean Stevens

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2020

ISBN 978-1-64801-797-1 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64801-798-8 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

In memory of our beloved father

Introduction

Webster describes the word poor as lacking in material possessions, characterized by poverty, less than adequate, and small in worth. I can say without a doubt our dad was very poor as a child, and he lacked having material possessions. But as you read his story, in his own words, our dad was never small in worth and far from being less than adequate, and I believe he never let the fact he was raised poor to dictate the remainder of his life.

Have you ever laughed so hard that you felt your insides would burst? So many times, throughout my life, I have had such outbursts of laughter. Most were silly things, but for some reason, they were funny to me. My uncle Willie, my mother's brother, had such a laugh! Willie was a big man, and when he laughed, his stomach would bounce up and down like a yoyo! The harder Willie laughed, the more his stomach bounced! I say this because I can't remember ever hearing our father, who I lovingly called Pop laugh in this way, as my uncle Willie did. Now don't get me wrong; Pop was a good-natured man, and he laughed in his own way, but not the kind of laughter I explained concerning my uncle Willie. Pop grinned more than he laughed out loud. I can still hear his laugh in my head, but I can't explain it. Pop also had his own way of joking, and I remember us brothers calling him a funny guy because of the way he laughed and joked with us.

I have so many great memories of Pop. Some were not so kind to our boy's rear ends, but most are good! As I look back to my childhood, the whopping's he gave us boys were well justified! I fondly, or maybe not so fondly, remember my first whopping at the age of six, give or take a year. Pop was working on his car and had his head stuck under the hood. I snuck up and got in the driver's seat and hit the horn! He jumped so hard that he hit his head on the inside of the car hood. I immediately knew I was in trouble, so I ran like a deer, with Pop hot on my tail. He finally caught me down below the house in the vegetable garden. I was hiding behind a tall stalk of corn! There were many tall stalks of corn in the garden, but he had no trouble finding the one I was hiding behind! My skinny little butt was sore for days!

It is an understatement that we boys were good sized! It finally got to a point in our lives that our mother could not take a switch to us anymore! One of our mother's favorite statements was Just wait till your father gets home! When we heard Mom say this, we knew the belt was coming out when Pop got home! The belt was his means of corrective behavior! As we boys got older and bigger, Pop found other ways to make sure our behavior improved! Our yard was full of dandelions! Millions, I believe! As far as I am concerned, dandelions had no purpose in life! Dad would say, Since you boys have so much dam energy, go dig up them dandelions in the yard!

Our house was also surrounded by large patches of weeds, so Pop would have us going from digging up dandelions to cutting weeds. The very worse punishment to me was picking green beans, which was one vegetable that Pop seemed to grow way more than we could ever eat! I believe he did this so he would have plenty of work for us boys! Over the years, our fighting began to become less often, and we found other activities to stay out of trouble! We hated digging dandelions, cutting weeds, and picking green beans because when we got the belt, it was over much faster!

We knew Pop was not going to hurt us with the belt, but I guess the fear he could have helped keep us in check! Come to think of it, I guess that belt did sting a lot! I don't remember him taking a belt to my sisters, so I guess they must have been his little angels! Our mother's switch always found its mark whether it was a boy or girl!

I have another experience that only involved me and Pop. He always bought the oldest, unsightly, and multicolor cars he could find. I suppose he felt thrifty in this way. I now know Pop bought the best car he could afford. Pop was mechanically handy, so he was good at doing most repairs on his cars. To say these cars were clunkers would be giving them too much credit!

One day, when I was around six, we were out for a ride in the car. I don't remember where we were headed. We were in Pop's four-door clunker. I believe it was an old Chevy. We had just passed under a railroad brige running into downtown Russell, Kentucky. I remember as we went around a big curve, the back door of that old Chevy flew open. I happened to be sitting in the back seat next to the door when it opened, and out I went! Pop had no idea why the vehicle heading toward him was hitting his horn and was trying to get him to stop. Pop stopped the car, and it was then he realized I was gone! He jumped out of the car and ran to me. I had hit the road on my left side. I was not hurt except for a road burn on my side. I don't remember much about this experience, but I do remember Pop told me to keep a secret and not tell your mother! I was too young to understand why, but I did what I was told! Once we got home, Pop broke down and told my mother about our ordeal! She dressed my burn, and I remember them both laughing. Mom could not believe Pop did not know I had fallen out of the car! He told Mom about the look on the man's face when he was pointing at me lying in the street. Both my parents got a real laugh at my expense!

Pop always found a way to make sure there was enough money to provide our family with all the necessities of life. He worked at the C&O rail yards in our hometown of Raceland, Kentucky. It seemed that at least, every couple of years, he was laid off. When Pop came home, and we heard the dreaded laid off talk, we were scared, but he always found work while he was laid off. He went around asking to tar roofs for those living in our town and neighboring towns. Pop always found someone that needed their roof tarred! When I was growing up, most homeowners did not replace their roofs simply because it was leaking, but instead, the common practice was to put tar on the leaky area. Pop was very good at tarring roofs. He also did painting and any other work he could find! Hard work was never a problem for Pop!

Another memory I have of him making extra money was when he sold soda pop at work. Pop would make a run every day to the local Pepsi bottling company and buy several cases of pop. He would take this pop to work at the railroad to sell to his buddies. Pop was always a trusting man, giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, so he loaded the pop in an old refrigerator at the shop. He then set a collection can next to the refrigerator. When someone wanted a can of pop, they would put their money in the can. Pop also allowed the men to get their change out of the collection can so they could break dollar bills. I believe he charged fifteen cents for a bottle of pop. He also offered a variety of flavors.

Pop believed that most men were honest but found out that, many days, the money he collected did not cover the number of missing bottles of pop! He once told me, I know the fellers that are cheatin' me. I don't believe Pop ever said a word to any of those cheaters! Pop would say, Well, I reckon they need that dam fifteen cents more than me! He left us kids a bottle of pop every day! I remember this being such a treat! I also remember I always looked forward to riding to the bottling company and observe him loading the cases of pop. Pop did this for many years.

I remember in his years following his retirement, he walked for miles daily to collect aluminum cans. I do not fully understand why he did this. I guess he did it for extra money or exercise, or possibly both! Once he had dried up the cans he could collect walking near our home, Pop would drive and park his car and collect cans all over neighboring towns. I supposed to say he had a stash of cans would be an understatement! He would save bags of these cans and hold them until the price went up on aluminum. The backyard and basement of our home was full of bags of cans! I remember he smashed these cans with his feet, but it wasn't long until his feet began to hurt! I remember one day, he took his shoe off and said, Look here what them dam cans did to my foot. He finally decided to buy a can smasher and found this was much easier. I can't imagine the hundreds of miles Pop walked over the years to collect these cans! He recorded his miles walked in a journal, but I have no idea what became of it. I believe he also recorded the number of cans he collected in this journal!

Pop had another couple of ways to make a little extra money. He taught himself to repair small appliances. When I was young, most folks would have their small appliances repaired rather than replaced. Today, we just go out and buy a new one! Pop could repair toasters, irons, mixers, and just about any kind of small appliance. He could also repair anything with a gasoline motor. He would charge folks very little for these repairs. Pop would always have small appliances to repair because he offered his repair services to men at his work site as well as friends and neighbors. I vividly remember seeing these things on small shelves he had built in the old wet basement under our house where he did his repairs. He even built a work bench, and he ran electricity from the fuse box to this bench. I don't believe he ever had his electrical work checked by a licensed electrician, but everything worked great!

Pop also built wooden birdhouses. He started off with single-room birdhouses and then moved on to bird mansions! These bird mansions had as many as a dozen bird rooms in them. I once asked him why he did not build furniture for the birds! He laughed and said, They can make their own furniture with sticks and stuff! Pop would sell these houses for enough to cover his expenses, but I think he mostly built them for his own pleasure. Anywhere you looked in our yard, there was a birdhouse. These birdhouses hung in our yard for many years but are pretty much rotted away now. I know there were many baby birds born in those houses due to Pop's labor of love!

As I think back to my youth and the many things Pop accomplished, I don't think I appreciated what a brilliant man our dad was! Now that I am older, I am amazed at what he was able to teach himself. Pop could teach himself to do anything he wanted to. I remember looking through some of the books he had on repairing electronics and motors. I considered myself educated, but I was lost trying to understand those books!

I must also say something about those darn Sudoku puzzle games! Pop tried to teach me how to solve those puzzles, but I was lost trying to figure the most basic game. Pop was so good at those games that he could work the one in the newspaper in minutes, and then he would have to buy the most advanced Sudoku puzzle books he could find to keep himself entertained!

I don't remember Pop sharing his childhood with me and my brothers and sisters back when we were young. I don't ever remember a time that he ever complained about his childhood, and that was why I knew so little about his life until he shared his story with me. Overall, Pop pretty much kept his childhood to himself. He never mentioned the horrors of war at any time in my life. I can understand why this is as I read about the war in his story. That was all right because I knew him and his quiet way and the fact that he had to do what he did to survive the war, and he kept those horrors from us kids. In later years, he would talk to me about the war, and we had some good conversations. These talks only happened after I returned home from my military service. I believe since I had served, I knew what a soldier is trained to do, and Pop was able to talk to me about what he had seen and done as a soldier. He seemed to be comfortable talking to me about happenings in his life when I was older, and I made those not-so-frequent trips home. These conversations are shared in his story. I wish I had asked more about his mother and father. Many of their life events are covered in his story, but I wish I had asked about the quiet time he spent with his parents. I wish I had asked if his parents were happy and what he remembered most about them. As told in his story, Pop only had a few short years with his parents.

Pop gave me his handwritten notes in 2009, for which he had started writing in 2006 at the age of eighty-three. These handwritten notes described his life in detail, and he asked me to record them so family and friends could read his story. Pop was not big on punctuation, and he wrote his sentences one after another without punctuation, so