Betty's All-American

By Jerry D. Davis

About the Book
Betty’s All-American is an autobiography of Jerry D. Davis through the ups and downs of life, some happy, some sad. As in any life, there is both triumph and tragedy. Davis struggled through a family history of alcoholism to finally achieve forty-two years of sobriety that started on September 1, 1979. Another struggle has been with his faith, but he learned that no matter what you go through, there can always be redemption. If you are raised in the church, you can always go back. He made a promise forty-two years ago that when he meets God Almighty, he is damn sure going to do it sober.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Aug 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889257448

Book preview

Preface

As in any verbal history, some things can get distorted, but this is the way that I remember these stories. Where I was a participant, I can vouch for these stories. This is a story of my life - some sad, a lot happy. As in anyone’s life, there is tragedy and triumph. But in my lifetime, there seems to be a lot more. One thing that I would like for the readers to take away from this book is that there can be redemption. If you are raised in the church, no matter what happens, you can go back. Anyone who reads this book and has Davis in their ancestry needs to be aware of the alcoholism that affected many of their kinfolk. If you know that the genetics are there, you can guard against it. In my lifetime, I have accomplished some things that I am very proud of, but the single greatest accomplishment is that, at this moment in time, I have not had a drink of alcohol in forty-two years. I stopped on September 1, 1979. At that time, I made a promise to myself that one day I was going to meet God Almighty, and I was damn sure going to do it sober.

Acknowledgments

I want to thank these people for their help with this project. Ben Davis got the Dragon software, and Randy Davis came over and installed the software and taught me how to use it. I have been blessed with two wonderful daughters-in-law. Paige Reeder has helped me for years, and her help with this book is essential. I will never be able to repay Martha Davis for her help and her love.

Chapter 1

I was born in Upshur County, Texas, on July 21, 1939. My brother, Bob Davis, was born January 7, 1937. Our dad was a sharecropper for Mr. Spencer. The sharecropper shack we lived in had three rooms. It had a double fireplace and a wood cookstove. We did not have a water well, but we did have a spring about 100 yards from the house. The wash pot and the clothesline were left at the spring. The house was located in an old Caddo Indian village. They used the spring for water, and they had a burial mound about 100 yards east of the house. My brother and I looked around the land surrounding the house, and we would find arrowheads, pottery shards and other artifacts.

One fall evening, everyone was sitting outside, and we saw literally hundreds of mallard ducks. Well, the next morning my daddy and my uncle went to hunt ducks. My daddy had a single barrel twelve-gauge shotgun, and when he put a shell in, it got hung on the ejector. He had to cut a green limb and push the shell out of the shotgun. He loaded the gun and still killed three greenhead mallard ducks. I guess my love of duck hunting started at that time.

My biological mother had two brothers and two sisters. Their father was a Nazarene preacher. My father went into business with one of his brothers-in-law. They had a service station in Dallas right by the state fairgrounds. World War II was on, and tires and gasoline were rationed. They had managed to buy a lot of tires. We lived in a house two blocks from the filling station. My father was a good mechanic so that was part of the business. His brother-in-law sold all the tires and disappeared, so my father went to work at the aircraft factory in Fort Worth. A lot of these stories were told to me, so I do not know how factually true they are. I was told that my father’s other brother-in-law was involved with the Dallas mob. His specialty was car bombs.

In 1944, my parents went through a very ugly divorce. My mother had custody of me and my brother. She remarried a man named Floyd Carpenter, and they had one child - a boy named Jackie Carpenter. I have not seen him in sixty-five years.

My brother and I were neglected. We were pretty much on our own. I can remember being very hungry at times. The only thing I knew how to cook was Spam and fried potatoes. We were washing clothes one day, and we had to carry water outside to dump in the yard. Bob had a bucket of scalding water. He tripped and burned his left shoulder very badly. The burn area on his body became infected, and at that time there were no antibiotics. Our mother called our father and told him Bob was near death and for him to come and get us. My father and my stepmother (who I called Mama) - who I have always thought of as my mother - came to Dallas and picked us up. My father had my mother write out in longhand that she was releasing all custody, and that he would have full custody from now on. At that time, she told my father that he could take Bob, but I was to stay. My father said, Hell no, that he would take both boys. I remember I had no shoes and no clothes. I had one pair of pants, and that was all I had. Mama and Daddy had a rented house in Grapevine, Texas. We then moved to Bedford, Texas. I can remember the dust storms. Mama would set the table, but the glasses and plates were turned upside down to keep the dust out.

Back to Bob’s health story - we drove from Dallas back to Fort Worth with Daddy and Mama to the medical arts building. The doctors said there was nothing they could do for Bob. My daddy would not give up. He called Dr. Ragland in Gilmer. Dr. Ragland said that he had some new medication for infection. It was called sulphur drugs. World War II was going on and on, and this new medication was going to our army and navy. Dr. Ragland told my daddy to bring Bob to Gilmer, so we drove straight to Gilmer that night. Dr. Ragland started to treat Bob, and he slowly got better and better. That one phone call is what saved my brother’s life.

Bob and I went to school in Bedford. I remember my first-grade teacher was Mrs. Williams. The old Bedford schoolhouse is still there. It is a Texas historical building. In late 1946, we moved to Grice community. Daddy and Mama rented a house and forty acres of farmland from Urban Cates. The economic ladder at that time was like this - the bottom were sharecroppers, and next on the ladder were renters, and next were the property owners. My daddy was going to farm, come Hell or high water. The house was a bungalow style house - no electricity, no running water. Daddy got Mama a kerosene cookstove. It was a lot faster, but the biscuits tasted like kerosene. We planted a lot of cotton, sweet potatoes, and corn. I was eight years old at that time. I had to stand in the feed trawl to harness the mules. Then disaster came. We had a drought in ‘46 and ‘47. Mama and Daddy rented an apartment from Miss Dessie Ray at Enon. Daddy got a job at Warren Petroleum in Gladewater. Our apartment was five miles from Gilmer. In 1948, the REA ran the electrical lines to Enon. This was so much better than the kerosene lamps.

My daddy was a great athlete. His love was baseball. Country baseball was very popular at that time. In the war years, professional baseball was postponed, but companies would have their own semi-pro baseball teams. My daddy played for a team in Dallas and a team in Fort Worth.

In 1948, my daddy went to work in an aircraft factory in Arlington. He saved his money and made a down payment on a house in Handley. Mama got a job at a clothing factory. Daddy and Mama bought Bob and me a snow cone stand. We had a great location on Highway 80. The entire family worked and saved so that we could go back to farm East Texas. In 1951, Gen. Douglas MacArthur came by our small snow cone stand. I waved at him, and he waved back. By 1953, my grandfather, Z.V. Davis, had passed away. My father bought the other heirs out, and we moved back to Gilmer.

The old house was built in 1873. It was remodeled several times. We had 100 acres by the house, both sides of the road. We had seventy-one acres, one mile from Little Cypress Creek. We row cropped the east side of the road and ran cattle on the west side and north. We cut our hay in the bottomland, and in the fall of the year we would drive our cattle from the homeplace to the bottomland. Every spring, we would drive the cattle back to the old place. We planted corn and sweet potatoes, cotton, and peanuts, and we had a big garden. Mama would can everything. Bob and I helped Mama with the canning, and that is where I learned to can. Mama washed our clothes in a wash pot and number three wash tubs. That was another chore that Bob and I were required to help with. My daddy bought a John Deere Model M one row tractor We still had our mule, and we plowed our garden with the mule. I was a pretty good plow hand. I would tell a joke that I could hear a mule fart and tell you what size collar he wore. I had a 4-H club project in 1953. It was ten acres of corn. I made eighty bushels of corn to the acre, and I was named Young Farmer of the Year. At the time, that was considered a good crop. In 1954, I planted eight acres of cotton. I planted vetch for a cover crop in the spring. I turned it under and planted the cotton on top of the cover crop. It was a perfect year for cotton. Temperature and rainfall were perfect, and there were no boll weevils. My daddy paid all the expenses, and I was to repay him when I sold cotton. We had always chopped and picked our own cotton, but this year we hired pickers. My cotton made one bail to the acre. There was not a cotton gin left in Upshur County, so I had to haul all the cotton to Winnsboro, Texas, to get it ginned. I received $.32 per pound. That was a lot in my day for a fifteen-year-old boy. I told my daddy that I was going to be a farmer. He said that I had better quit a winner because this only happens once in a lifetime, and he was right. I was named Young Farmer of the Year again.

We always put the hay up by hand until 1953. The small hay balers came along, and we would have our hay put up in small bales. We would all bale hay in the bottom land, and stack it in the old log barn. Bob and I spent many a long day hauling hay, and it was very hot in the loft of the barn. Everyone had chores to do. One of my chores was to milk the cows. We had Jersey milk cows, so we had fresh milk the year round. My mama would make butter and gather eggs. She would go to the country store and trade for coffee and flour and other basics.

We never complained about our chores, but I would be playing with my friends or cousins, and I would have to leave and