by Ed Bethune
For a budding young dreamer my secret place and the Johnson Smith & Co. Catalog provided unsurpassable moments of reverie. This well-honed talent for escaping reality would serve me well in the next chapter of my family unhappiness.
5
SEPARATION, THEN DIVORCE
We cannot destroy kindred: our chains stretch
a little sometimes, but they never break.
Marquise de Sévigné
I had no idea of the rift between my parents. The serenity of my first years was not to last. Daddy and Mother agreed to separate. I wish I could remember how the trouble developed, when it started and how it fit into my life. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), I cannot remember the order of events, nor can I explain precisely how it affected my life. I just know that it did affect me. I suppose it is natural and a blessing that I cannot remember such details. Mother and Daddy never wanted to talk about it and neither did I, but I have a slew of recollections stuck in my mind, some in order and some not.
I remember the day the trouble began, at least when it began for me. It was a Sunday afternoon and Daddy was getting ready to leave our house on 14th Street for the long trip back to his job at the War Relocation Center in Rohwer. He had spent the weekend with us and he was waiting for a friend to pick him up.
I was going on eight, sitting on his lap in an easy chair in the small living room of our rental house. Daddy told me his “going away” was different from the other times he had left to go back to Rohwer. He told me he was “not going to be living with us anymore.” At first, I did not get it, but then it hit me. I knew something odd was happening because Daddy was crying. He tried to keep me from seeing his tears but I saw them. He kept pointing out the window of our living room trying to get me interested in some pigeons that were roosting under the eve of our neighbor’s house. He wanted to deflect my attention but it did not work. I climbed down from his lap and ran to Mother to ask her why Daddy was leaving and why he was not going to be living with us anymore. I cannot remember her answer. I can only remember that it did not make sense to me and that I started crying. My life was changing. I did not understand why my life had to change but I could see there was nothing I could do about it.
Mother downplayed the separation. She said Daddy’s job in Rohwer was so far away that we would not see him very often. I could tell there was more to it than that, but Daddy was leaving and Mother would not talk about it.
I did not know the difference between an informal separation, a legal separation, and a final divorce. For kids it does not matter, the practical effect is the same: Daddy is gone. Family life will be different.
After that day, Daddy showed up now and then but he never stayed long. I always hoped they were trying to fix whatever was wrong, and I believe they tried.
This awkward period in my life lasted until the end of World War II and the end of Daddy’s job at the Japanese War Relocation Center. I was nearly ten years old. After that, Daddy had to go back to selling insurance because thousands of men were coming home from the war and the good jobs were going to veterans. Daddy was struggling to earn a living. Most of the time he lived with his sister, my Aunt Jeffie, in Little Rock and gave us whatever money he could spare, but it was not enough.
Mother appealed to Mama Lewallen for help. They concocted a plan for Mama to buy a house that was big enough for us to live in, but one that had at least four rooms that Mother could rent. The rental income would cover the cost of taxes and utilities and we would live on the money we got from Daddy. It was a good plan because housing prices were low, particularly for buyers who intended to pay cash. Mama paid $7500 for a two story brick house at 2309 State Street in Little Rock. It had four good-sized bedrooms upstairs that were suitable for renting. It was a blessing for our little family. We moved there when I was in the fourth grade at Rightsell Grammar School. Delta Lew was in the sixth grade and soon she would be going to East Side Junior High School. Things were looking up. We were in a better neighborhood and we had a house of our own.
Daddy’s attempts to reconcile after the war, when he had gone back to selling insurance, always included what Mother called “a screwball idea for making money.” Daddy, “The Dreamer,” was forever determined to find a way to “Easy Street,” according to Mother.
Once he persuaded Mother that he was on the verge of writing the great American novel so she let him come back home. For two weeks, Daddy spent every waking hour perched in front of a typewriter that he had borrowed from a friend. He was vague about the story he was writing, but I do know that it was supposed to be about the war and the relocation of the Japanese. Soon the typewriter noise stopped and shortly thereafter Daddy was gone from the house. I never heard anymore about Daddy’s book.
Getting a car was the basis for another reconciliation attempt. According to Daddy, a car would enable him to get around the state and that would lead to more insurance sales. It was big news at our house because it would be our first family car and on the day he parked it in front of our house we could barely contain ourselves. There it was, a blue-grey 1939 Ford, two-door sedan. There was one small problem: The Ford did not have an automatic transmission. How could he, with only one good leg, manipulate the clutch, gas pedal, and brake? Daddy’s solution was to rig a receptacle on the gas pedal into which he could put the tip of his cane. That enabled him to push the gas pedal down or lift it up. He used his good left leg to operate the clutch and brake, but that required him to put the car in neutral whenever he wanted to stop. Watching Daddy drive the Ford was an unforgettable experience. Every time I hear someone use the expression that an overly busy person looks like a “one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest,” I think of Daddy driving that 1939 Ford.
Getting the car was a good move on Daddy’s part. It got him back into the house again, this time for a couple of months, but soon Mother decided the car was more trouble and expense than it was worth. It had not produced the windfall in insurance sales that Daddy had predicted. Once again, Daddy left and that was the last time he lived with us. He got rid of the car shortly after that.
Daddy’s final attempt to reconcile was initially promising, at least Mother thought so. Daddy had lined up a job managing a newfangled Time of Day service. It did not get him back in the house, but it did put us together as a family at least for a few weeks because Daddy’s plan was for our family, grownups and kids, to operate the telephones at the Time of Day office. The service was dependent on advertising that we would read before telling a caller the correct time. It was a cutting-edge idea but it failed for lack of advertisers shortly after Daddy got involved.
In time, Daddy might have succeeded in the job market and that might have improved the chance for reconciliation. Mother cut him some slack because he had just turned fifty, and it was hard for a disabled, nonveteran in the postwar years to find work. Daddy finally gave up trying to find “Easy Street” and went back to selling insurance.
Eventually, Mother gave up on Daddy. The sporadic attempts to reconcile failed. The separation turned into divorce proceedings. In hindsight, I realize that Daddy was effectively gone from my life when he left for Rohwer that day in 1943 when I sat on his knee and he told me he was not going to be living with us anymore. After that, Mother was the dominant influence in my life. She was there; Daddy was not. It was that simple.
In 1948, the divorce was final and Daddy moved to Clovis, New Mexico. There he got an administrative job in the main office of a New Mexico insurance company. He was physically unable to peddle insurance door-to-door as he had done when he was younger. I was twelve and in the seventh grade at East Side Junior High School.
Daddy may have been gone, but he was not out of my mind. He would send cards, letters, and an occasional photograph. I remember one photo that showed Daddy in a pinochle game with three other men seated around a corner table in the lobby of the fleabag hotel where he lived along with other men who were living on meager incomes. Daddy was obviously playing a card of importance because
he was in the act of slamming it down on the table and he had a big smile on his face. The smile reminded me of the satisfied smile he had on his face when he exterminated the big rat in the pantry of our rent house on 14th Street. I kept that photograph near my bed and it always made me feel good to see that Daddy was happy even though he was far away.
Daddy would come back to Little Rock once a year, and once he came twice. I would see him when he came home, but it was parent visitation in the purest sense of the word. Mother would not let him stay at our house, so he stayed in an old hotel on Markham Street, near Main Street. The hotel, like the place where Daddy stayed in New Mexico, had seen better days. The clientele was predictable: Old men and a few couples who had negotiated a cheap monthly rate, transients who could not afford to stay in a better place, and a few painted ladies. The desk clerk was picturesque, old and wrinkled, with a shirt collar that was three sizes too big. He had dandruff all over the shoulders of his coat and his hair was shiny, slicked down with Rose Hair Oil, the stinky treatment of choice for most old men in those days. The old man was always there—year in and year out—and once I got by his front desk I took a rickety elevator up to Daddy’s floor. I hated the place, but it was all that Daddy could afford. In bad weather, we visited in his room but in nice weather we would find a nearby café or park bench. Mother always limited my visitation to a couple of hours, and I did not argue with her. It was good to see my father, and I treasured the small amount of time I had with him, but the old hotel on Markham Street was not a fun venue.
6
LIFE WITHOUT DADDY
My mother had a great deal of trouble
with me, but I think she enjoyed it.
Mark Twain
The separation and eventual divorce of my parents was a big problem. It plagued me. It would not go away, but life goes on so my sister and I did what we could to make the best of it.
School days at Rightsell Grammar School were easier after we moved to 2309 State Street. With no family car, we walked to and from school. Our new house was only five blocks from Rightsell, much closer than the mile each way we had to walk when we lived at 216 West 14th Street.
Delta Lew and I did well at Rightsell, a public school, because we were alumni of Miss Mary Dodge Hodge’s preschool and kindergarten. I am thankful that Mother and Daddy sent us there. It was unique. There were other private preschools in Little Rock but Miss Mary Dodge Hodge had the best one. She gave us a head start on reading, writing, and arithmetic, and we met some of the best kids in Little Rock.
At Rightsell, we used to start each day of school with a prayer. I did not have much experience with religion but I had no trouble with the idea of saying a prayer in school. At least, I had no trouble until Shirley Jo Cudd tattled on me for not having my eyes closed during the prayer. The teacher immediately put her in her place with one of the best lines I have ever heard. She said, “How could Shirley Jo Cudd know that Edwin Bethune did not have his eyes closed during the prayer if Shirley Jo Cudd had her eyes closed?” Touché, the teacher’s perfect squelch immediately purged my embarrassment. The perfect squelch technique I learned that day served me well later on in my work as a lawyer and congressman.
I learned another technique on the playground at Rightsell. My nemesis was L. W. Clements. He was not a bully but he was bigger and stronger than I was. For that reason, he liked to get me into wrestling matches. After he had pinned me in several fights I learned that even though I was small I had super-strong arms. If I could get an arm-lock around L. W.’s head and not let go, I could at least get a draw because my technique would incapacitate him and someone would eventually come along and break up the fight. My strong arms, which I am convinced I inherited from Daddy, saved me a whipping on many occasions later on when my smart mouth got me into trouble.
Modern child protection advocates would freak out if today’s schools had playground equipment like that we had at Rightsell. My favorite was a steel and chain version of the classic Maypole. We referred to our device as the “Johnnies.” It had chains hanging from a round revolving cap positioned on top of a huge ten-foot steel pole. On the lower end of each chain was a steel ring, just like the rings used by gymnasts. If you caught one of the rings and ran around the center post, you could get up enough speed to make several revolutions without touching your feet to the ground. There were six rings, so six students could ride the Johnnies at one time. With a minimum of coordination, you could really get the thing going. It was a lot of fun so long as the participants took care when letting go because a free-flying ring without a student attached to it was a lethal weapon. The rings were heavy and if they hit you in the head, the stars would fly and you would bleed like a stuck pig. If the rings had ever hit you in the mouth, you would have lost a bunch of teeth. It is a wonder the Johnnies did not produce a class action lawsuit but I do not remember anyone complaining. We just learned how to ride the Johnnies, and how to duck the free-flying rings.
My years at Rightsell coincided with World War II. Almost all of our programs, even Christmas and Easter, had patriotic themes. There were patriotic songs, patriotic plays, patriotic posters, and patriotic poems. Toward the end of the war I almost got the lead in a patriotic extravaganza about General Douglas MacArthur featuring a new patriotic song entitled, “December 7th, Nineteen Hundred and Forty One,” but I lost out to Arthur McAnich. I am convinced to this day that Arthur beat me out of the lead role simply because his surname sounded like MacArthur.
In 1945, the war in Europe finally ended. In May, The Third Reich of Nazi Germany was defeated and one of the monsters I feared, Adolf Hitler, committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin. The official surrender of all German forces came on May 8, V-E Day (Victory in Europe) but the fighting in the Pacific continued.
Three months later, on August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, over the city of Hiroshima. The blast obliterated hundreds of thousands of Japanese and started talk that soon the war would be over in the Pacific.
All through my days at Rightsell, I and other little boys drew pictures of our military fighter planes—Thunderbolts, Hellcats, Corsairs and my personal favorite the P-38 Lockheed Lightning—in dogfights with hostile German Messerschmitts and Japanese Zeros. Our B-17 and B-29 bombers were sketched dropping big payloads on “bad Japs” and “bad Germans.” We were getting back at the enemy. They had started the war but we were going to finish it. That was our thinking. I never felt bad pretending to kill the enemy when my friends and I played “war” or when I drew pictures dropping imaginary bombs. Lashing out as we did was probably a defense mechanism. We were scared of the enemy and it was better to be on offense than defense, but the idea that one bomb could destroy an entire city as big as Hiroshima never occurred to us. We knew from newsreels and newspaper photographs that it took thousands of bombs to level Berlin and other German cities. Those were the rules of engagement for our pretend wars and that is what we depicted in our drawings, but the reports of this new atomic bomb were unworldly, almost unbelievable. If true, how could the Japanese keep fighting in the face of such devastation? We were still talking about Hiroshima and stories of a great mushroom cloud when, three days later, news came that the Air Force had dropped a second atomic bomb, Fat Man, on the city of Nagasaki.
Soon thereafter, we began to hear gruesome details. Japanese men, women and children who survived the blast were dying from radiation exposure or extensive burns. There was talk that the few who survived would produce horribly mutated children.
I was nine, going on ten. The mix of information I received all during the four years of World War II made me mad, made me proud, and made me hate, but it also scared the beejeebers out of me. It was a relief, when we heard about the atomic bomb, to know that Hitler and Tojo, the Japanese leader who was responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor, would not be conquering America as they did in my nightmares. That was good, but now I had to factor in the devastation we had caused with the atomic bomb and wha
t it might mean in the years to come. It was too much for a kid. I reduced the deluge of information and my mix of emotions about the atomic bomb to the practical: Thank God, we had the bomb and our enemies did not.
Mother took Delta Lew and me to the Roxy Theatre on Main Street in Little Rock on August 16, 1945. I do not remember the movie that was playing, but I do remember that I was engrossed in the story and not thinking of the war or anything else. Suddenly, the movie stopped and the usher turned on all the lights and shouted: “The war is over! The war is over! The war is over!”
The theatre was about half full and we all got up and headed for the exit, cheering and jumping up and down until we poured out into the street where we mingled with hundreds who were rushing into the street from other buildings. Soon we were all shouting, “The war is over, the war is over, the war is over!” It was daylight, and I know from today’s records that it was around 6:00 o’clock on a hot summer night. But there is one memory in my mind that takes no record to refresh. It is the sense of relief I felt and a wonder of what things would be like without the war.
When I got to the fifth grade in the month after the war ended, most of the cool kids at Rightsell were wearing Levi blue jeans, Converse white tennis shoes, and pullover knit shirts. It was the latest clothing fad. Delta Lew and I salivated for Levi blue jeans and other parts of the outfit. We begged and begged and after about two months, Mother broke down and bought us some blue jeans that were on sale at Woolworths. She also got us some tennis shoes. The only problem was that the blue jeans bore no resemblance to the popular Levi jeans that all our friends were wearing. My sister dubbed them, “Farmer Jones Jeans.” They had big, baggy legs, pockets stitched on the outside, and they were made of dark iridescent blue denim. They matched perfectly with the all black, Army surplus tennis shoes that Mother got for us. To make matters worse I had to wear the obviously homemade shirts Mother had sewn for me out of the cheapest material she could find on sale. I looked weird.