My brother Jackie and I were born at King’s Daughters Hospital September 27, 1953 in a building located on West 9th Street in Columbia. We were among the last babies born at King’s Daughters, established in 1913, as the present Maury County Hospital opened less than two months later.
The first house in which I lived was located on Scribner Avenue, a hotbed for blossoming Baby Boomers such as my brother and me. We literally were surrounded by an army of kids near our own age.
For instance, Ray and Randy Garrett lived across the street. Billy Parchman and his sister Therese lived on one side of us and George, Carol, and Martha Sue Bailey lived on the other side. There were at least twenty crew-cut boys and curly-headed girls who lived on and played in the middle of our short street – yelling, laughing, crying, riding bicycles, tossing footballs, hurling baseballs, jumping ropes, roller skating, popping cap pistols…
It was marvelous, joyful bedlam.
Everybody knew each other and attended each other’s birthday parties – which were glorious affairs with balloons, party hats and party horns (blow-outs), decorated cakes and frosty cupcakes, and shiny packages with big red ribbons.
Once, at our 4th birthday party (which was staged outside around a table in our front yard), my mother called all celebrants inside to watch a very popular kid show, Romper Room. Romper Room featured a typical first grade classroom of nicely-dressed kids, all sitting straight, prim and proper, yet fidgety, at their work tables. School supplies such as pencils and notebooks and rulers were positioned in front of each one, as well as, their very own plate of cookies and an individual glass of delicious Sealtest Chocolate Milk.
“Miss Nancy” was the school teacher and host of the show who always started each program with a prayer and a sincere appeal to the kids:
“Now, children, please be a good Do Bee and keep your eyes closed and don’t drink your chocolate milk during the prayer.”
Do Bee and Don’t Bee were code for saint and sinner.
Of course, her entreaty was a highlight of the show as the cameraman would pan around during the prayer capturing them Kid Don’t Bees opening their eyes, nervously looking around, and furtively stealing a creamy swig of that Sealtest from their milk glasses.
Yet, the BIGGEST highlight of the show, was after the amen when Miss Nancy pulled from her desk drawer the “Magic Mirror,” and stared through it into the camera and, presumably, into our very homes!
She’d let out with kind of a magic spell recitation:
“Romper bomper stomper boo! Tell me, tell me, tell me, do! Magic Mirror, tell me today, have all my friends had fun at play?”
Then, she would call out names of kids she “saw” through the mirror, such as, “I see Alice and Eddie in their den in Hendersonville…” or “I see Billy and Neeta in Theta…”
Every kid who watched Romper Room lived for the day that Miss Nancy would see them – especially the boys (because Miss Nancy was a pretty hot-looking chick).
Anyhow, unbeknownst to us, our mother had arranged through Eva Green who lived down the street, to contact Miss Nancy. It seems she was some way related to Eva.
So, my brother, me, and all our Scribner Avenue friends were huddled around the TV and Miss Nancy brought out her mirror. She pulled it to her face and her giant, magnified eyeball started rolling around looking for some lucky kid who was tuned into the show. Then, much to our great surprise, she announced, “Oh, I see Jackie and Johnny! I want to wish you a very happy birthday and a big hello to you and all your friends gathered ‘round your television on Scribner Avenue!”
Oh, you never heard such squealing and carrying-on and blowing of those party horns in all your life! Everybody was thoroughly astonished and elated!
Although, from that day forward, I made sure I never watched Romper Room in my skivvies.
Of all the kids on the block, our steadiest playmate was our across-the-street neighbor Ray Garrett. He was a year younger — a short, little blond, fuzzy-headed kid who nearly always wore a red felt cowboy hat with a candy-stripe chin string.
We especially loved playing in Ray’s backyard because of two architectural wonders — a brick outdoor grill and a cement block preserve cellar.
Our attraction to the brick grill pertains to Ray’s dad, Robert, who was somewhat careless with his wooden matches when he was cooking.
Naturally, this was a young boy’s dream. We feverishly would inspect the ground around the grill every morning for discarded “live” matches, for there is no greater instantaneous high for a four-year-old kid than striking matches. You can trace it back to the cave man.
Unfortunately, our thrilling pastime came to an end the day my momma caught us boys striking some of those very matches beside our house. Afterwards, Ray was sent home and my brother and I were ordered to wait in our room a couple of hours until my hard-working dad could get home from the express agency.
My dad was a great big bull of a man, sun-brown, with a thick full head of coal black hair. I had never seen him mad before but the thought of that made me a little queasy.
When he finally arrived, he came through our door, stared down at us for a moment, as we sat solemnly on our Army footlocker toy box. He looked really disappointed in us before he began carefully and calmly explaining how our new hobby could easily have burned the house down. This presentation was followed by him taking off his leather belt and and explaining the consequences of our serious misdeed.
When it came my time, I’m not ashamed to say I squalled like a baby housecat – because I was hurt. I was hurt that I had committed a crime, had been found guilty and punished; I was hurt for killing any kind of faith and confidence my momma and daddy might have had in me; I was hurt for letting down the crowd at Vacation Bible School; I was hurt about losing my status as a Good Do Bee; and, I was hurt because he could sure swing that belt pretty dang hard.
Yet, I didn’t begrudge him. I knew I had done wrong. Furthermore, I guess it was a good thing I received this early life lesson. I got such an excitement out of striking cooking matches, I’m pretty sure a life of pyromania awaited me if I hadn’t been redirected.
Besides the grill, another striking feature of the Garrett yard was the concrete block preserve cellar built into their house’s foundation. It had a wooden door you could open from the outside and it served as a perfect dirt-floor jail for playing cowboys and Indians or Highway Patrol or State Trooper.
We were especially into Roy Rogers and Gene Autry in those days, and the bad guys in those TV shows were always being slapped into jail. Therefore, it was pretty cool to be able to replicate that kind of thing, unless the ice cream truck rolled by with it’s ever-enticing jingly-jangly circus music blaring, or some other distraction came along to win the attention of your jailers.
If you were in that dark, dank cellar very long, you would become aware of a fetid odor which I now attribute to green mold, then a spider or two would scamper by dragging their ragged webs across that dirt floor, and after about thirty minutes of that action, you might become uneasy and try to squeeze yourself through the one very small wood-frame window in the place…
And, it’s a real embarrasing thing when you’re stuck in a little nasty wood window and your friend has to go hunt his momma to pull you out.
When Rachel Garrett finally got around to rescuing me, I looked up at her, with half my body hanging out that little orifice, and I could see the very same kind of expression that had dwelled on my own dad’s face when he had to confront us for our recent match crime.
At that very moment, I knew, and I think she knew, I was destined to become a hopeless Don’t Bee.
