Category: Going Coal Broke

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

BB Battles

I couldn’t go home because there was a quarter inch high lump on my forehead where I had been hit with a BB. It wasn’t an accident. We shot at each other playing war, Brother Dave, me, and our new friends in town.

[After Dad was forced to sell the farm we moved to an apartment in Gadsden, AL, in December, 1951, when I was nine years old, and lived there a year and a half before moving to Charlotte.]

Sometimes we fought in the woods next to the apartments, sometimes we fought in an old barn and horse stalls across the street. That’s where we had been playing that day, pretending we were fighting house to house. I had been hit in the head at point blank range.

The Red Rider lever action gun were cooler but we thought the pumps were more powerful. This is a 1951 advertisement.
The Red Ryder lever action guns were cooler but we thought the pumps were more powerful. This is a 1951 advertisement.

Brother Dave and I had our own BB guns, bought with money from our paper routes, but we couldn’t take them home. We hid them in the barn across the street because we knew Dad wouldn’t let us have BB guns, much less let us shoot at each other.

Lucky for me he was late coming home again that night. I waited as long as I could before I went home myself, to give the swelling time to go down some. When I came in, I waved to Mother, said I didn’t feel good, went directly upstairs to my room, got in bed, and stayed there.

It worked. They never found out about the BB battles.

Postscript: We finally quit shooting at each other after a BB hit one of my friends in the soft, meaty place between his eye and nose. No real harm done, but it scared all of us.

Coming Friday: You Parked Where?!