A Flawed Legacy - 27

I spent a week with Blake and Eleanor, the first and last times we would ever be that close.  Of course, I was raised with my grandparents and Blake was like a big brother to me, although we were never too close.  I will never forget the first day I met Eleanor.  They were about to get married (January 10),one of the coldest nights I will ever remember) and they dropped by on Sunday, December 7, 1941 - the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

Blake offered to get me back on the road, but first he wanted to show me what Yale - our previous home) looked like.  It had hardly changed, we did stop and see a friend and then, Mina Armstrong, my grade school teacher).  Of course, we went by the farm which had really changed and down some side roads I could recall.  Finally, we wound up near Capac where the highway headed for Inlay City, and a main highway headed for Detroit.  Blake seemed to think I had a lot of courage, hiking around America as he saw it.

My first ride suggested a highway that I did not know about, one that went around Detroit rather than through it and took me far enough to get on his recommended route.  Only thing, it passed by a prison and when a guy stopped, he made sure I wasn't an escaped convict he had just heard about.  He was headed for a town in Ohio that I forget its name for good reason.  He drove into the heart of the city and as I was trying catch a ride, the police stopped and made me show my identification, before telling me I could not hitch hike in the city.  I said OK, walked a dozen or so blocks and stuck out my thumb.  That was a poor decision as the cop came back and told me - at first, he was going to take me to jail for breaking the law.  Instead, he took me to the outskirts of town - far away from any traffic, and let me out.  I'll bet I was there for an hour before I saw one car and that was a local., who turned off a block from where I was standing.  The sun went down and I began to wonder what I could do.  Fortunately, a big Lincoln pulled up, asking where I was headed and told him Columbus - as that was the only city I could think of in that direction.

Turns out he was a nice guy, an ex-USAF pilot and when I told him I had used to "boy-sit" (not baby sit) for Colonel Paul Tibbets at Eglin AFB, he told me that they were friends.  (Tibbets was the pilot on the Enola Gay that dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima in Japan.  Now he was in business at the airport in Columbus)  With that info, he suggested I stay at his house that night and he would rake me to see the Colonel the next day.  He had a small mansion and had me sleep in their pool house for the night.  I had just got into bed and I heard someone dive into the pool.  I peeked out and saw a woman - in the nude, in the water.  Good idea, I made sure the door was locked, the curtains pulled and I got into bed and went to sleep.

He called me about 7AM and had me come to the house where he had prepared breakfast and we left a few minutes later.  He dropped me off at Tibbets' office, wished me luck and drove off.  I discovered the Colonel was flying in later, learned the boys I knew were all in school and I found some magazines to read while I waited.  A hour or so later my "benefactor" came back, we learned that Tibbetts was going to be much later and said he would take me to the bus stop where I could get a bus going to Charlotte, NC, which had been my original goal.  With that, he gave me a ticket envelope with a bus ticket for Charlotte and a $50 bill - the second one I had received along the way.  We parted ways as he told me, the next time I was coming through Columbus to call him and gave me his business card.  I discovered he was an official in the local city government.

I was in Charlotte by 4PM and found the YMCA where I got a room and went downstairs to get a cold drink and met a moving van driver looking for a "lumper" to help him the next day.  I was his man and he met me at 6:30 the next morning.  It was an easy job and he asked if I would like to ride with him on future jobs.  Yes, sir.  The next day, I discovered a Labor office and was sent to Coca Cola for the day and wound up lifting cases of 32 ounce filled bottles off the line and onto a pallet and I began to think I could not do that for eight hours.  I started to ask the supervisor when he told me they were shutting down that line and sent me over to a "testing" area where they were testing drinks.  All I had to do was start up a line as directed and stack cases of 12 ounce product on special pallets.  That would be my job for the next six weeks.

My moving van driver came by to pick me up for a couple of weekend jobs where we loaded up on Saturday mornings until we were done and I got two days pay.  I opened a bank account to take care of the money I was earning.

Meanwhile, I was studying my Bible on the evenings and was getting used to talking about what I was learning from my studies, all the while going to church, whichever was the closest one, wherever I happened to be.

I had no work scheduled one week, so I got a bus ticket and went to Charleston, SC, where I had always wanted to visit and found it to be expensive until a Police office told me about a Mission just outside of the city.  I found it and discovered some new friends, a couple who had started it in an old house with a half dozen potential bedrooms, so I stayed with them and spent my days looking for people who could help us fill the bedrooms with cots and places to hang clothes.  By the end of the week, we had discovered a lot of help.  Charleston has many significant families, wealthy people willing to help us get the Mission underway.  I had a call from my van driver and would spend the next two weeks travelling with him.  

A Flawed Legacy - 1

To start with, we have to go back to the turn of the century, the last century,  We are going to the State of Michigan, in particular, Brockway Township, in St. Clair county and to the farm country West of Yale, MI.  There were two farms, about a mile a half apart from each other.  On one was the widow lady, Mrs. Cheeseman - excuse me, I can never remember her first name and her two children, William, the son and a younger daughter, Cora.  On the other farm, we find the Ensley Brown family with their seven girls and one son, the runt of the litter as Bill used to call himself.   In between those girls was Lillian.

This is all about those two, William and Lillian and the fact they were married on the "longest night of the year" in 1903 or 1904 and would have the first of their three girls on April 11, 1906, one week before the infamous earthquake that almost destroyed San Francisco, CA.  There would be two more girls, Bernice and Noreen, and two sons, Blake and Keith.  Sadly, Keith was still born.  Somewhere in the years to follow, they would leave the farm while William tried his hand at gas and oil marketing in Yale.  It didn't last long.  The children either went to school in Yale or to the one room country school house, a mile and half down the road from the farm - where I would also attend while on the farm.  We all attended and graduated from Yale High School.

Blanche immediately went to Port Huron, MI, to attend a business school.  Bernice would go to Detroit and eventually married Frank Bowden, an investment banker from Arkansas.  Noreen chose to go to Flint, MI, where she graduated from Hurley Nursing school as a registered nurse and would later marry Hayward Welch, who worked with his father at Welch Sash and Door Company in Port Huron.

It gets a little vague here as Blanche, my mother - unknown to us for several years, married a young man named Harvey Klemmer, who she described as a sailor on the Great Lakes ore ships and "given to drink."  The marriage was annulled.    As children, we never knew about this Harvey Klemmer, but he was obviously more  than a sailor.  We now know of him as the Harvey Klemmer who would eventually write a book (Harbor Lights) talking about his experiences as an aide to Joseph Kennedy while he was the Ambassador appointed by FDR to the British government at the outset of World War II.  Yes, the Joseph Kennedy who was father to John F. Kennedy, the 42nd President of the U.S.

Mother would move i=on to St. Claire Shores, MI, where she began working for a sales executive with the Diamond Crystal Salt Company.  His name was William J. MacRae, known either as "Bill" or "Mac".   He was divorced and had two sons, Donald and Edward.

Straight out of a Hollywood movie script, the young beautiful secretary married the handsome, older man and they lived happily ever after - well, not quite.  There was a stop at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit where their son was born on August 28, 1929.  He was supposed to have been a girl as they had already named "her" - Shirley Lou.  And so it was the boy's name became Sherwood.  For a middle name, they chose Brown, my grand mother's maiden name - which you already knew if you are following this.  Jobs seemed to be plentiful so having left Diamond Crystal, they headed Southward to Ohio and a sales territory assigned to "Mac" by a friend, the President of the Ohio Blue Tip Match Company.   Apparently, they had chosen Toledo, OH for a home base, but then tragedy struck.  Their furniture had been shipped by the Ivory Truck Lines and stored in a warehouse in Toledo which was destroyed by fire causing them the loss of all the beautiful furniture "Mac" had bought for his bride.

Next stop, Cleveland, OH, more accurately, Lakewood.   It was now 1932 and mother was pregnant. Lillian - who I will start referring to her as "Nan" as that was what I would call her for the rest of my life, came down to be with Mother for the birth and then, suggested she take me home to the farm with her after Shirley Lou was finally here and everyone, apparently, was happy.  I will always believe that Nan thought of Sherwood would become the other son (Keith) who did not survive his birth.  I was apparently happy as I heard that I stood up all the way to Michigan.  One thing for sure, I sure did like the farm better than the city.

Now, it gets rather vague.  I was not keeping account nor do I recall ever seeing my father and mother until sometime in 1936 when they moved back to Detroit and somehow, I joined them.  I recall attending school there and it seems as though I made a couple of trips with my Father as he was calling on customers.  What I do vividly recall is the fact Mother would make fried eggs and I hated  the yolks, so I would eat the white and my Dad would eat the yolks.   Then my sister and I went to live with a lady who lived off of a canal in East Detroit and I used to love sitting on their dock, pretending I was fishing.  I remember it being 1936 as I saw all of the Landon for President signs in the school yard, apparently it was the latter part of 1936.   Somewhere in this time span, my Father lost his memory caused by a car accident he was involved in a couple of years earlier.  I did not know it until years later, but he was placed in a State hospital in Pontiac where his death certificate said that he died.

What I do know is that I was back on the farm and would stay there until I was 17 and immediately joined what was then, the U.S. Army Air Corps. 

And I plan to be back, tomorrow.