Month: January 2018

Running Wild

I didn’t go trick or treating in 1952, when I was 10 years old. I went with a gang of other boys my age, down Litchfield Avenue to Hoke Street in East Gadsden, AL, and back to the apartments where I lived by other route, looking for trouble.

Trick or Trick
Trick or Trick

We smashed a ceramic deer in someone’s front yard and ran down the street laughing.

We broke into a convenience store at the corner of Litchfield and Hoke and stole snacks and drinks.

We threatened to break a bakery owner’s plate glass window if he didn’t give us some pastries.  That didn’t work. He chased us down Hoke Street, trying to smack us with the handle of a broom.

J.K Wagner Elementary. Unlike the first school I attended It had indoor plumbing.
J.K Wagner Elementary in East Gadsden.

We stopped by our school, J.L. Wagner Elementary, and

knocked out some windows.

And then we walked back home, breaking radio antennas off cars as we went.

1020 Leigh Avenue, Charlotte
1020 Leigh Avenue, the way it looks now.

The following June my Dad finally hit bottom financially and moved his family to the edge of the mill section in North Charlotte, N.C., a two-bedroom house at 1020 Leigh Avenue, and began making Dixie Dew Syrup full time.

The move to Charlotte saved my life.

Coming Friday: Walking to New Orleans

“I Doubt That!”

My Dad, John F. Stith Sr., could multiply whole numbers and fractions in his head, like 7 1/4 times 18 7/8, almost instantaneously. But his formal education ended when he was 13 years old, in January 1909.

He told me that after he finished the 7th grade he quit school and went to work. There were seven kids in his family and his father was dead — he killed himself when Dad was 10 years old.

John F. Stith Sr. We have no photos of Dad for long period. This one was taken in 1963, when I was 22.
John F. Stith Sr. We have no photos of Dad for long periods of  time This one was taken in 1964, when I was 22.

After that, my father’s education came from the School of Hard Knocks, the local newspaper, and The World Almanac.  He kept a copy of the almanac beside his easy chair and studied it.

After supper some nights, he would play a game with us, telling stories, mixing in stuff he had read in the almanac with stuff he made up. Our job was to separate the two.

When I thought he was making it up, I would say, “I doubt that.”

[You never said, “I think you’re lying.” Are you crazy? Do you have a death wish?  No one called my Dad a liar and remained unharmed.]

The 2011 edition of my father's textbook.
The 2011 edition of my father’s textbook.

If I was right, he would change the story around, and move on. If I was wrong, he would say, “Go get the almanac. Go to page 212 [or some other page], about half way down. Start reading. No, not there. The paragraph above that one.”

What I read would be, almost word for word, what he had just said.

As it turned out, this was basic training for my life’s work.  When I grew up I became a newspaperman, an investigative reporter.

I conducted hundreds of hostile interviews where people were often untruthful. I would listen carefully to their answers, looking for deception, and when I found it I wanted to say those words out loud:  “I doubt that!”

Coming Monday: Running Wild