by Ed Bethune
A man came out of a house across the intersection and said that he had called the police to report the accident. An ambulance arrived and they took Billy to a nearby hospital. Edwin Spann, fruit jar still in place, and I followed in a police car. The Chevrolet was a total loss, and Billy regained consciousness at noon the next day. He had a very serious concussion. The doctors worried about him for several days, but he recovered fully. Edwin Spann had a broken nose. He told the doctors he was catching blood in the fruit jar in case he might need it. The doctors got a kick out of that. I had a serious bruise on my left elbow and two black eyes, including a sizeable bloody area in my left eye. I apparently hit my elbow on the handle of the emergency brake and whacked my face against the dash. It took a full month for my injuries to heal.
We were lucky to survive the car crash, but for Mother the accident was the last straw. My near brush with death led to my removal to Pocahontas. Mother told me she was sending me to live with Mama Lewallen. Delta Lew, just graduated from high school, was going to take a job at Pocahontas High School as a secretary. Mother would stay in Little Rock and go to business school. All this I learned one week before Delta Lew and I caught the bus for Pocahontas. It was a total surprise and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was mad about it and told various cover stories to my friends about why I was leaving Little Rock. Anger blinded me, but the move to Pocahontas would turn out to be a lifesaving change.
9
NEW TOWN, NEW LIFE
Small boys become big men through the influence of big men who
care about small boys.
Father’s Day Quote: Unknown
In 1951, 3,700 people lived in Pocahontas. Delta Lew and I got there at the end of August and moved in with Mama Lewallen. Mother stayed in Little Rock to learn how to operate a comptometer machine. Later, she got a job in the bookkeeping department of a Little Rock business. My sister never aspired to go to college, so she stuck with me.
By the time we got to Pocahontas, Mama had long since closed the Lewallen Café and rented out the entire downstairs of her building. She was living upstairs in a small apartment adjoining her hotel, the twelve small rooms that she rented out to itinerants. Delta Lew and I moved into two hotel rooms that overlooked the town square. Austere is not the right word to describe our rooms: white painted walls, gaudy linoleum on the floor, a double bed, a chest of drawers, and a straight chair. That was it, unless you counted the little gas heat stove or the thirty-foot coil of half-inch hemp rope anchored beneath the window that served as a “fire escape.” One unisex bathroom served our two rooms and two other hotel rooms that also overlooked the square. There were four rooms in the hotel that had a private bath, but Mama saved those for paying customers. My room was near the front entrance, right next to the room where the funeral man had put Papa Lewallen’s casket after he died of stomach rot and the man with the bass voice sang “Asa’s Death.” I did not like that grim memory, but my thinking spot, the lithograph of Custer’s Last Stand, and the bobcat with a nick in the ear was just a few steps from the door to my room. My mind wandered from despair to dreams of greatness, but ultimately despair won out. I began to feel sorry for myself. My thoughts were selfish. I should have been thinking about how my sister was sacrificing to help me. She deserved better—I did not.
Delta Lew started her new job as a secretary at Pocahontas High School and she was up and gone every morning by 8:00 a.m. I, on the other hand, would wake up early, strip my wet bed, put on dry bedding and sleep until late morning. I read, I moped, and I spent time at my thinking spot. I had no interest in going out of the hotel. I did not know anyone. I just wanted to be back in Little Rock, back with my friends. I did not like the idea that Mama Lewallen was watching over us, nor did I want to go to a new school where I did not know anyone.
At the end of our first week in the hotel, I was in a deep sleep when at 9:30 a.m. I heard a terrible noise that rattled the window, ricocheted off the linoleum, and shattered a dream of greatness. I sat upright trying to figure out what was causing the noise, and then I went to the window and looked down to the sidewalk below. There a worker was busting up the sidewalk and street with a jackhammer. What a racket! I had seen jackhammers from a distance in Little Rock, but never had I been so close to one. I put on my clothes and hustled down the stairs to get a better look. I could hear the racket all the way down, and it was almost as loud in the stairwell as it was in my room. When I got outside, I saw the man sticking the point into the concrete as it hammered its way deeper and deeper. His entire body was jiggling in time to the beat of the jackhammer and he looked to be hanging on for dear life. The noise was indescribably irritating, but the sight of a man having to make his living doing such work bothered me more than the noise.
I retreated to my thinking spot and after a séance with General Custer and the bobcat, came to my senses. I would give Pocahontas a chance. I was tired of hanging around the hotel and I did not want a future as a jackhammer operator. If Delta Lew was willing to give up two years of her life to help me get through school, it was the least I could do.
A few days later, I left the hotel at 7:30 a.m., made my way through town and then walked out Thomasville Road to Pocahontas High School, a distance of two miles. People in passing cars kept looking at me, obviously a new kid in town. I hated that. Then, I suffered through the awkward business of enrolling and introducing myself to my homeroom teacher. Soon I was a full-fledged eleventh grader at PHS.
The first few days were painful, but then I began to meet the kids and find out a little about each of them. They were an interesting mix. A few, by my standard, were filthy rich but most were from ordinary, low-to-middle-class families. Some lived out in the country, but most lived in town.
The Spikes boys lived in town and they were the first kids to befriend me. We met while walking to school on Thomasville Road, because they, like me, had no money and no means of transportation. We started meeting after school to walk home, and soon we became a threesome.
It was in those first days of my junior year that I learned to shoot pool and play snooker because that is what the Spikes boys—Billy and Bob—liked to do. We played at Suler’s Pool Hall or Coconut’s Pool Hall when we could bum a ride across the river to East Pocahontas. The pool sharks swam in both places. I learned who they were and how to avoid them, but I studied them and they taught me how to make a three-in-the-side bank shot and shoot for a leave as much as trying to sink the ball that was in play. Coconut, an old man with a bum leg, used to say, “You’re playing so much pool you’ll rub blisters on your belly walking around the table.”
One of the Spikes boys, Bob, was lame and had to wear a built-up shoe. He reminded me of my father because he was always in a good mood, had an easy smile, and never let on that he felt sorry for himself. He, like my father, had learned to steel himself to the stares and comments about his foot. The other, Bill, was a cut-up who was the leader of our little clique. The Spikes boys did not play sports or do other school activities, so in time I began to enlarge my circle of friends.
After a that few weeks at the hotel, Delta Lew and I moved into a small apartment in a house owned by my uncle, Lloyd Lewallen. It had worn-out furniture and slick patches of used-up linoleum on the floor in the center of each room. There was a small bedroom just big enough for a dresser and twin beds. There was another slightly bigger room, which we used as our living room. Those two rooms were bookends to a tiny kitchen that had a sink, a small refrigerator, a two-burner gas cook stove and a small table big enough to seat three people. Delta Lew and I made our little place as comfortable as we could. It would be our home for the next two years.
We didn’t have to pay rent at Lloyd’s so we lived off Delta Lew’s modest salary and what little I could make working for fifty cents an hour doing odd jobs at Promberger’s Hardware and at Lloyd Lewallen’s second-hand furniture store. Mother would occasionally send a few dollars, and Mama Lewallen would feed us if we really got hungry. Most of the time, we a
te a lot of bologna, cheap cuts of pork, chicken, macaroni and cheese, and tuna casserole. Occasionally there would be a windfall: Lloyd Lewallen would kill a deer or catch a lot of fish, or barbeque a goat, and he and Betty, his wife, would invite us to eat with them and their kids. I fondly remember those days—living below the poverty line before there was such a thing—as the turning point in my life.
Several important things happened to me after we moved to Pocahontas. I finally started growing and filling out. In the space of my junior year at PHS, I grew five inches and gained thirty pounds. I now stood six feet tall and weighed 155 pounds, all muscle. Not surprisingly, I made the football team, the basketball team, and the track team. In summer, I played American Legion baseball.
I was fortunate to have two coaches who cared about me. In my junior year, it was Coach Aubrey “Cob” Fowler. In my senior year, Coach Howard “Choo Choo” Powers replaced Coach Fowler. Both coaches were powerful influences in my life because they were good men who came to me at the right time. Coach Fowler was lightning fast. They called him Cob because he was tough as a cob in his days as a track star and scat-back for the Arkansas Razorbacks. They called Coach Powers Choo Choo because he was a powerful running back at Arkansas State. They both saw my potential as a quarterback based on the skills and game sense I had developed as a baseball player.
I became a good passing quarterback and quite adept at working the classic T-formation. When I became the starting quarterback in my senior year, Coach Powers designed a double wing formation similar to the modern wildcat formation that we would run occasionally to confuse the opponent. It included a spinner play where I would take a direct snap from the center, turn my back to the line, fake a hand off to the right halfback and then fake a handoff to the left halfback who was going in the opposite direction; finally, I would complete a 360-degree spin and run the ball off right tackle. It was a tricky play for those days and the first time we tried it I went 84 yards, unmolested, for a touchdown. The play became a staple in our repertoire. It never failed to fool the defense and it always opened a big hole and produced a good gain—except for the night we played Augusta High School. That game found us up against Coach Curtis King, one of the best high school coaches in the state. He had been scouting us and he had a big, tough country boy named Billy Ray Smith playing defensive tackle. Billy Ray later starred for the Arkansas Razorbacks and then played several years with legendary Johnny Unit as and the Baltimore Colt teams. The first time I tried the spinner play against Augusta, I, upon completion of my fancy 360-degree spin wound up in the arms of Billy Ray Smith. He lifted me entirely off the ground and said, “Not tonight little darling,” then smashed me to the ground, hard. I tried the play two more times but got the same result. We lost the game to Augusta. Fortunately, the other teams on our schedule were not into scouting, so the spinner play worked well for the rest of the season.
It surprised no one in my family that I did well in sports. What did surprise everyone were my achievements off the athletic field. I had an important role in the Junior Play and an even bigger part in the Senior Play. I made the Honor Roll every semester and I was active in a host of intramural activities.
Jim Barden, a new PHS classmate and a prolific reader who became a writer and national editor for The New York Times, turned me on to the works of Frank Yerby. I read a number of his books, but the one that sticks in my mind is the Saracen Blade, a historical novel about the Crusades featuring a hero with indomitable willpower. Yerby, an African American, wrote movingly of the human spirit and I often stayed up overnight reading his works. Another book that touched me deeply was Captain from Castile, by Samuel Shellabarger. The hero, Pedro de Vargas, was with Cortez on his exploration of the New World. The chaplain of the army, Father Bartolomé de Olmedo preached equality for all humankind and urged Pedro to understand that the zest of life is the quest, the pursuit of dreams—the effort, not the attainment is what really matters. It is no surprise, looking back, that I was attracted to books with high-minded protagonists going against the odds, relying mainly on dreams and willpower. These and similar books shaped my thinking at a time when I was very receptive. I am convinced that the ideas I embraced then influenced the decisions I made throughout my life.
Barden also holds the distinction of catching the last touchdown pass I threw as quarterback for the Pocahontas Redskins. It was Homecoming Day and we were playing the Walnut Ridge Bobcats, our archrival. I burned a bullet to Barden from the five-yard line and that gave us the win. The play worked so well that we tried it again for the extra point. Alas, the Bobcats smeared Barden at the line and sacked me. Later in life Jim—a lucky man—married the homecoming queen, Mel Bradley, the most beautiful girl in school. In 1981, they came to see me in Washington, D. C. and we had a mini-reunion in my congressional office.
I attended First Methodist Church in Pocahontas mainly because a number of my friends were going there. It was a good thing for me to do even though I still did not see church as much more than another place to meet new people and be with my friends.
I suppose I could have found my place in Little Rock, but I did not. In Pocahontas, the townspeople opened their arms, took me in, and made me feel at home. They kidded me, complimented me, encouraged me, and criticized me. Almost overnight, I had an army of surrogate fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, and friends. The good feeling I had about the town included a hodgepodge of memories from my childhood visits—BB gun fights, River Rats, Uncle Leaf the glasses man, Papa the town drunk, Custer’s Last Stand, and the bobcat—but there was more to it than that. In a little town when you meet a stranger on the street, you just keep eye contact, raise your chin a little and they will do the same—that is all you have to do, nothing more—a simple sign of recognition, of brotherhood. In a little town, all eyes are on you, and there are few secrets. People are sharing miseries and living on a shoestring, but they are thankful for what they have. All together, it gave me a sense of belonging that I desperately needed and to top it off, a goodly number of men took a special interest in me because of my achievements on the baseball diamond and the football field. Lloyd Lewallen, Jim Burke, Charlie Promberger, and several others took the time to give me the encouragement and attention that I craved. I was finally getting the mentoring from adult men that I had missed because of my father’s absence. In Pocahontas, I was secure; I had found a place I could always come back to when I needed a rock to stand on.
Then, of course, there were my first honest-to-goodness girlfriends. On my first serious date, I did not know what to do. I had played Kick the Can, Spin the Bottle, and other kissing games at house parties in Little Rock, but I was so naive that the first girl I got serious with told me, “You will make someone a good husband, someday.” I asked her what she meant by that and she said, “Because you are so innocent.” She meant it as a compliment, but it hurt my pride.
Using the logic of a teenager, I worked hard to fix my innocence problem, as if it were a flaw. Like all teenagers, I was in a hurry to grow up and be an adult. Since my mother was elsewhere, and my father was out west, I no longer had the problem that many kids have when they try to separate from parental control. I did not need independence. I just wanted to be grown up. Pocahontas was a good place to learn such things without getting into a lot of trouble.
Current River flows from Missouri into Arkansas and connects to the Black River just north of Pocahontas. There are a number of sizeable sandbars along the Current River, but the biggest one lies immediately downstream from the Highway 67 Bridge where the sand is nearly a hundred feet in width. Everyone calls that place, “Current River Beach.” It is the best swimming hole in all of Northeast Arkansas and on any given day of any summer in the early 1950s, you would find scores of people swimming, sunning themselves, or hanging out in a big, whitewashed wooden pavilion that doubled as a snack bar and dance hall. The pavilion was on the downriver side of the sandbar and it was built-up on stilts because Current River would flood from time to time.
Small cabins, owned by “rich people” dotted the riverbank north of the bridge and south of the pavilion. It was the place to go for a good time.
Randolph County was “dry” but it was easy to find a local bootlegger and failing that, it was only twenty miles to the Missouri line where booze and beer were readily available and gasoline was only nineteen cents a gallon. Nevertheless, people who drank alcohol did their best to hide their drinking from others because Current River Beach was a fun place and there was little tolerance for troublemakers.