Against All Odds: My Story

by Norris, Chuck

  My parents were a handsome couple. Dad was about six feet, one inch, well built and strong, with coal black hair and black eyes. In early photos he resembles John Wayne as a young man. Dad was nineteen and Mom sixteen when they married in Marietta, Oklahoma. Mom was a petite young woman, with long, flowing red hair and a pretty face full of freckles.

  We soon moved from Ryan to Lawton, Oklahoma, where Dad got a job as a mechanic with the Greyhound Bus Company. It was the first of at least a dozen moves our family made before I reached the age of twelve. Had it not been for Mom's spiritual and practical stability, we'd have established no roots at all. Her love was the glue that kept us together and provided us with a sense of security, no matter where we moved or how often we packed up and moved again.

  In November 1942, Dad took Mom and me to Wilson, Oklahoma, to stay with Granny Scarberry while he went to Richmond, California, hoping to get a job in the shipyards. The war was raging, and Dad felt that if he could contribute to the effort by working in the shipyard, he could serve his country and still avoid being drafted and leaving his young family. He was wrong, but his ploy provided him a few extra months to find a place for us to live.

  Mom was five months pregnant at the time. We stayed with Granny another month and then took a train to California to be with Dad. Traveling on the same train was a group of young Navy sailors who took me under their wing. They recognized that Mom was pregnant, so they helped take care of me. It took several days to make the trip from Oklahoma to California, so when the train stopped in small towns along the way, the sailors disembarked long enough to run into the station or into town to get Mom and me something to eat. They were good guys, and I was in awe of them. My respect for the US military had its beginnings right there on that train.

  Two months later my brother, Wieland, was born. Mom planned to name him Jimmy, but Dad named him Wieland—after his favorite beer. Mom was upset, but there was nothing she could do. The name was already on the birth certificate.

  Three months later Dad was drafted into the army and was soon fighting the Nazis in Germany. While Dad was away in the service, Mom, Wieland, and I moved back to live with Granny Scarberry in her tiny home in Wilson, Oklahoma. Wilson was a small prairie town, flat, arid, and dusty, with a population of about one thousand people. It was an impoverished and desolate area, just a few miles east of the Texas-Oklahoma border. That's where I spent most of my early, formative years.

  Granny Scarberry's home was a small clapboard house on the outskirts of Wilson. All four of us—Mom, Granny, Wieland, and I—slept in one room. Granny slept in the bed, while Mom, Wieland, and I took the couch that folded out into a bed. My brother and I were bathed together in a big galvanized tin washtub. Our toilet was an outhouse, and it reeked so horribly, I hated going in there! Many times I'd walk to my aunt's home over a mile away to use the bathroom because she had indoor plumbing. It was worth the walk!

  Although Granny Scarberry possessed little as far as material goods, she was a saint. A tiny woman with bright blue dancing eyes, Granny's heart overflowed with a love for God and for her family. She showered Wieland and me with attention and affection. Granny's love filled that shack in which we lived and made it a home.

  Dad had been overseas for more than two years when a young boy, riding a bicycle, came to our house delivering a telegram from the War Department. Mom signed for the telegram and, with her hands shaking, hurried to open it. Suddenly she began screaming! Granny raced across the room and pulled Mom close to her. “What's wrong, Wilma? What's wrong?”

  “Ray is missing in action,” I heard Mom sob, holding the telegram out for Granny to see. I was too young to know what “missing in action” meant, but by the way Mom and Granny were acting, it sounded as though Dad might not be coming home for a long time or maybe not at all.

  I was concerned for my dad, but I wasn't worried about our family surviving. As long as my mother and Granny Scarberry were around, I felt safe. Every night before we went to bed, we all knelt together in our living room and prayed, asking God to find my dad and to send him home to us.

  For three long months we heard nothing at all. Then at last we received good news. Dad was alive! He had been shot in the leg and nearly buried alive in a German foxhole, causing him to be separated from his unit. When the debris was cleared, his comrades found him. He was transferred home to Texas and was recovering in a military hospital. The doctors estimated that within two months Dad would be returning home to us.

  For the next two months I'd sit out on the porch every day, waiting for the bus to pull up. Each day I'd watch as men and women got off the bus, my eyes peeled for any sign of Dad. Disappointed, I'd go back inside and say, “Not today, Mom. Dad didn't come home.”

  After two months passed, I was becoming discouraged. One day I watched and waited for the bus to unload its passengers, only to be disappointed again. I started back inside the house and said, “Mom, I don't think Dad is ever coming home.”

  “Oh, really?” Mom said just then with a twinkle in her eye. “Well, guess who that is!” She pointed to a soldier slowly easing himself off the bus. It was Dad!

  The good news was that Dad was back in the USA. The bad news was that his drinking problem, already serious before he'd gone off to war, was now even worse.

  CHAPTER 3

  LIFE IN A BOTTLE

  Growing up, my most difficult and confusing relationship was with my father. One of the few positive memories I have of him is the day he picked me up and let me straddle his broad shoulders while he carried me to the banks of the Red River, looking across the water toward Texas. We spent the entire day fishing and talking, just the two of us. When I flash back on that scene now, it seems like an image I saw in a movie: father and son on a riverbank with fishing lines stabbed out over shining water—a perfect image of togetherness. But as soon as we got home with the few fish we had caught, Dad left for the local beer joint. He didn't return until much later that night, drunk again.

  One night, Dad and my Uncle Buck wanted to go out drinking and they needed some money. Mom had only five dollars left with which to buy food for Wieland and me, and she refused to give it to Dad. “Just take that money from Wilma,” Uncle Buck urged.

  “That's right. Give me that money!” Dad bellowed.

  “No, Ray,” Mom replied calmly. “You're not going to get this money. I'm saving it to buy food for the children.”

  Uncle Buck cajoled my dad, “Ray, punch her in the mouth and get that money.” Buck punched his hand with his fist, menacingly. Dad formed a fist and shook it in Mom's face.

  Standing tall at five foot, two inches, Mom didn't flinch. She looked my dad right in the eyes and said, “You go ahead and hit me, but you're going to have to sleep sometime. And when you do, I'm going to get a frying pan and beat you to death!”

  Dad unclenched his fist, and he and Buck stormed out of the house—without Mom's five dollars.

  Dad was generally a good man when he was sober, but those sober days were becoming fewer and further between. When he was drunk, little things often sent him into a rage. If he heard the water running while he was suffering from a hangover, he would explode in an abusive tirade, roaring threats and expletives against everyone in the house. While Mom tried to calm him down, Wieland and I hid in the bedroom.

  Despite Dad's bombast Mom was the disciplinarian in our family. When Wieland and I got into fights, Mom would make us sit down in chairs, across from each other. We'd be huffing and puffing, our cheeks red, our necks wet with perspiration, and Mom would say, “Now sit there and look at each other, and don't say a word until I tell you to move.” Wieland and I would sit there and glare at each other. Before long one of us would start to giggle, and then we'd bust up laughing. In a matter of minutes, we couldn't even remember what we had been fighting about.

  When I seriously misbehaved, Mom would send me out to get a switch to swat me. Dad would say, “If you're going to spank him, I'm leaving.” Dad's threats didn't deter Mom fro
m disciplining me one bit. I received a good thrashing with the switch, and Dad went off on another drinking binge. I now realize that Dad could never stand confrontation. It was easier for him simply to run away. Sadly, he spent most of his life running.

  When I was six years old, we moved to Napa, California, where we had family. Dad went to work at a Navy shipyard, and I started school. In school I was shy and inhibited. If the teacher asked me to recite something aloud in front of the class, I would just shake my head no. I would rather get a poor grade than embarrass myself in front of the class. People who know me today from television and movies may have a hard time imagining me as shy, but believe me, as a boy, I was as bashful as could be!

  Wieland was the outgoing Norris brother. But Wieland had such bad asthma that we were forced to move again, this time to Miami, Arizona, near Mom's sisters and their families. The climate was drier in Arizona, and Mom hoped that Wieland could breathe more easily there. We lived in a small cottage next to a gas station, and Mom enrolled me in the third grade. Most of the students were Native Americans. I was the new kid there and the only one with blond hair and blue eyes.

  An Indian boy named Bobby was the class bully, and for some reason he had it in for me. He chased me home from school every day. He was my age but a lot larger, so I did the smart thing—I ran!

  One day Bobby broke a desk during recess. The teacher accused me of being the culprit. In those days corporal punishment was common in public schools, and teachers paddled students regularly. My teacher threatened that she was going to swat me if I didn't fess up to breaking the desk. I knew that Bobby had done it, but I was not about to tell. I stood up and dutifully followed her into the hallway to endure my swats, when one of the other kids spoke up and said, “Teacher, Carlos didn't break the desk; Bobby did!” The teacher took one look at Bobby's face and quickly figured out who deserved the punishment for the broken desk. I was off the hook with her but was even more odious to Bobby. He still chased me home after school every day.

  Jack, the man who owned the gas station and our cottage, got tired of watching me being chased. One day, when Jack saw Bobby chasing me again, he stopped us and said, “Son, it's time that you fought this boy.”

  “He's too big,” I said.

  “It doesn't matter,” Jack said. “You can't run from your fears forever. It's time to stand up for yourself.”

  While Jack was talking to me, Bobby was standing nearby, ready to resume the chase. I looked over at him and then back at Jack. I knew Jack was right. I turned around and faced Bobby. I grabbed him and wrestled him to the ground. We grappled with each other and rolled back and forth in the dirt. I was getting the worst of it until I grabbed Bobby's finger and began bending it backward. Bobby burst into tears.

  “Do you give up?” I shouted at him.

  He nodded his head and cried, “Yes!”

  I let go of his finger. And he jumped me again! I grabbed his finger once more and bent it back even farther than I had before. He started crying again and screamed, “Let go, Carlos! Let go. I give up! I really mean it this time!” I let go. Bobby never chased me again, and before long we even became friends.

  Confronting Bobby the bully taught me an important lesson about fear. It can often be overcome simply by facing it.

  The move to Arizona didn't help Wieland's asthma; in fact, he got worse. Mom and Dad decided that we should return to Granny's home in Wilson, but we didn't have a car and couldn't afford bus tickets for all of us. One night Dad met a man and woman in a bar and talked them into driving us to Wilson. We gathered what little clothes and possessions we had and piled into the couple's car. On the way a snowstorm stranded us in New Mexico, and we had to hole up in a small, empty room for the night. It was freezing in that room, so Mom wrapped our lone blanket around Wieland and me and pulled us close to her, trying to keep us warm.

  When the storm finally cleared, we took off for Wilson again, with Wieland, Mom, and me in the back seat, and Dad and the couple in the front. Once, while Dad was driving, the other man reached back and tried to caress Mom's leg. I saw what the lecher was doing, so I reared back and kicked the man's arm as hard as I could!

  “Owww!” the man cried out.

  “What's going on?” Dad yelled. Mom told him what the guy had tried to do and that Carlos kicked him. Dad glared over at the owner of the car and growled, “You better stop it and keep your hands where they belong if you know what's good for you.” It was a tense ride the remainder of the trip, but we eventually made it to Wilson.

  Although we were happy to arrive safely at Granny's, we stayed there for only a couple of months before we were off again. Dad had managed to get a car, so we moved to Cyril, Oklahoma, where he had found a job as a truck driver. We lived in a small boarding room above a restaurant where Mom worked as a waitress.

  About eight months after we settled in Cyril, Dad came home drunk late one night and announced, “Get packed. We're leaving.” Mom didn't know how to drive, and she begged Dad to wait until morning, but he insisted on driving to Wilson that night. Mom made a bed for Wieland and me on top of the clothes stacked in the back seat of the car. In his inebriated condition, Dad weaved all over the road as he tried to drive. Mom was crying hysterically, begging him to stop before he killed us all or someone else.

  “Keep quiet, woman!” my dad roared, “or I'll leave all of you right here in the desert!” Mom pleaded with him to take us back to Granny Scarberry's, which he finally did.

  That was the regular tenor of our lives—Dad coming home drunk, acting verbally abusive and belligerent, and Mom pleading for him to stop. The tirade would continue until Dad passed out. When Dad sobered up, he would tell Mom he was sorry and would try to do better. But he never did.

  Dad left again soon after that, this time for Hawthorne, California, where he had gotten another job working for Bethlehem Steel. He said he would send for us later. In the meantime to support us, Mom found a menial job in Wilson, working in a laundry.

  She never gave up praying for Dad, and she never tired of telling Wieland and me that we could make something better of our lives, that God had good things in store for us.

  At the time that was tough to believe.

  CHAPTER 4

  A MOTHER'S LOVE

  Iscoured the streets and highways of Wilson every day after school, searching for pop bottles on the side of the road that I returned to the grocery store. The grocer paid me two cents a bottle for regular-sized bottles and a nickel each for thirty-two-ounce bottles. I also picked up scrap iron that I sold for a penny a pound. I gave all the money I earned to Mom to help put food on the table.

  One thing I looked forward to more than anything was to go to the movie theater in Wilson. When Mom could afford to give me a dime, I spent all Saturday afternoon watching the double feature and the serials, the documentaries and cartoons that ran prior to the main movies. I loved those Saturdays when I escaped into another world. The Westerns, starring men like John Wayne, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers, provided me with positive examples of proper and moral behavior. Truth is, apart from my mother and Granny, my only role models were the cowboy heroes I saw on the screen.

  Each time I walked out of the theater, I felt encouraged by the belief that there were such men. I determined that I would grow up one day to be like them. Those cowboy heroes offered a lot to a young boy longing for a male role model to emulate. Their behavior in their films was governed by the “Code of the West”—loyalty, friendship, and integrity. They were unselfish and did what was right even when the risk was great. Years later I would recall those Western heroes when I developed the kind of character I wanted to play as an actor. As a boy, however, I was only a spectator involved in a vicarious adventure.

  My father was a negative role model, the kind of person I didn't want to be, a bad example to be avoided. My mother, on the other hand, had such a loving and caring nature that she more than made up for his shortcomings. She never let herself get down or depressed. Even thoug
h we had a hard life, Mom maintained a strong faith in God. She instilled that faith in her sons and kept us in church.

  I still remember Mom coming home exhausted from her job at the laundry and saying that we were blessed. “As bad as things seem to be,” she'd say, “many people are far worse off than we are.” Mom was the most positive influence in my life, and she taught Wieland and me always to look for the good in people and in circumstances, never to dwell on the bad. She believed in determination and patience: the determination to succeed in whatever you choose to do in your life and the patience to stick with it until the goal is reached. Her belief system shaped my character and became an integral part of my life. Mom's faith became my own, and although I didn't know it at the time, I now realize that my faith in God provided the core of my inner strength.

  We were so poor, I didn't have real toys to play with, so I used clothespins and an active imagination. The clothespins served as toy soldiers or cowboys. In my stash I had large pins and small ones. I made the big ones the bad guys and the little ones the good guys. When I played in the dirt in our front yard, I would set up my cast of characters and prepare for battle. I hid the big pins behind a rock or tree stump and then had the little pins jump in. I visualized the fight in my mind and decided what each pin was going to do once the battle ensued. Before the fight even started, the victory had already been won in my mind! Many years later, when I became a karate competitor, I used the same technique of visualization before each bout.