“MY FATHER WAS A TRAVELIN’ MAN …”
(1787–1949)
My family tree includes John Dickinson, a signer of the Constitution of the United States; Almeron Dickinson, a defender of the Alamo; and Charles Dickinson, who ended up on the losing end of a duel with Andrew Jackson (a family villain). My Great Uncle Tom, a one-armed railroad lawyer who rolled cigarettes on his starched dress shirt’s empty sleeve, kept the family history. He told it to me in a cracked old voice through tobacco-yellowed snaggleteeth.
My father, Big Jim, liked things in order: columns of numbers, parallel lines, cotton rows, and stacks of cartons in a warehouse. His father was a wholesale grocer in Little Rock. Big Jim ran away from home at age fourteen to escape a cruel, controlling, schoolteaching mother. He went to the Smackover oil fields. The boom was on. He got a job in a grocery store. The store owner knew my grandfather, and contacted him about my runaway dad. My father told my grandfather that if he were taken home, he would run away again. So he was sent to military school. My father loved marching in lines. But he had already developed a problem with authority and was in trouble much of the time. He was caught bootlegging moonshine in his car’s radiator. He said he graduated. I was never sure he did.
He wanted to build bridges. He managed to get into Georgia Tech’s engineering program, which entailed one semester in class and one working on a road gang. He liked the roadwork, but was impatient with school classes. In the spring of ’29, he quit school, and went with a group of friends to get construction jobs on the Grand Coulee Dam. His friends dropped off one by one, leaving my father stranded in Oklahoma. My father liked working and having a job. As a result of seeing his father, “Jimmy Dick,” lose the family money on the Cuban sugar market, financial security was important to him. He liked for his columns of figures to add up.
He got a job as a traveling salesman selling specialty items, wholesale to retail. A career was born. The company teamed him with a crusty old salesman to break him in and show my father the territory. The first day the old man got in the driver’s seat of his Model T Ford, with a pint whiskey bottle and a Colt .44 revolver next to him. They drove dry river beds and gullies as often as roads, going from town to town, through the bleakest part of the Oklahoma territory, jobbing General Foods products to local grocery stores. The old man said nothing to my father all day. The next day my father bought a pint of whiskey and a gun, and laid them down on the seat next to the old man’s. Every time the old man took a drink, my old man took a drink. They got along fine after that. They would stop and shoot their pistols at jackrabbits in the shadows behind the telephone poles along the road.
After his first week my old man was on his own. He opened up the Oklahoma Territory for Jell-O and Sanka coffee (imagine explaining to some half-wit Okie what Jell-O was). My father carried a small test tube full of quinine, and told his customers it was “deadly caffeine, enough to wipe out Oklahoma City”; that’s what Sanka took out of coffee. My old man was a hell of a salesman. He peddled a million dollars of penny matches a year, but that comes later.
Big Jim worked his way up even as the stock market crashed. My father had a good job when most men were struggling. Businesses closed; people lost their jobs. Men who had never considered unemployment looked for work desperately. My father hired men with Master’s degrees to sell Jell-O door to door. He was “cooking with gas,” as he liked to say. He came home to Little Rock a success. He had a job, big city clothes, and a new car with the first car radio in central Arkansas.
He was driving his new car on a snowy winter afternoon by the school where his mother taught when he saw a girl with her head down, walking in the snow. He stopped and offered her a ride. She was Martha Huddleston and became his wife and my mother. A conservatory-trained accompanist, she taught and played piano in the Baptist Church most of her life and never took a nickel for it.
The Traveling Salesman and the Music Teacher were an unlikely couple: my father, a backsliding Methodist who drank and gambled; my mother, a Hard-shell Baptist. They married in Little Rock, went to Memphis for their honeymoon, and headed back to the Oklahoma dust bowl.
My mother must have felt lonely, spending days in hotel rooms while my father earned a living. She learned to put up with his drinking and his rowdy “brothers of the road” salesmen. She heard sordid stories of Big Jim’s checkered past, stories involving monkeys in hotel rooms and card games with Baby Face Nelson. But she “made the adjustment,” as she used to say.
My father went to work for the Diamond Match Company, and was transferred to Memphis, which was not quite home but good enough. I was conceived in a rooming house by the zoo and carried to term. My mother wanted to have her baby in Little Rock, where I was born on November 15, 1941. My mother was not quite five feet tall, so small I put her in danger. Like Caesar I was ripped from the womb. We went home from the Baptist Hospital on December 7, “a date that will live in infamy.”
The company transferred my father to Los Angeles. In Hollywood we lived in an apartment house down the hill from Griffith Observatory, later immortalized by James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. My maternal grandmother, Huddie, came to help my mother take care of me. No small task even then. She took me for long walks in a four-wheel walker stroller. One afternoon, so the story goes, she rolled me down Hollywood Boulevard, and we encountered Mae West, star of stage, screen, and radio, the Dolly Parton of her day. Mae West looked in my stroller and said, “My, what a handsome boy.” My grandmother asked how she knew I was a boy. Mae West replied, “Honey, I have a way with men.”
We had shiny, oilcloth blackout curtains that my parents put over the windows at night. There was talk of Japanese submarines off the California coast, speculation that years later proved to be true. My father hated L.A. He was uncomfortable in the West Coast market. His way of doing business didn’t work there. After six months we moved to Chicago and everything changed.
My parents loved Chicago. No blackouts and submarine paranoia like on the West Coast. We lived on the North Shore, just a few doors from Lake Michigan. My mother liked the stores and the conveniences of the big city. She walked me on a leash attached to a brown leather harness that strapped under my arms. My father had a job with government priority so he wasn’t drafted. We had an extra car and gas rations all through World War II. We sat in the front room of our lakeside apartment, and listened to news of WWII over the big brown radio. The war was far away.
The stories and music of the radio came from far away, but every afternoon there was a show from Chicago. Two Ton Baker, the Music Maker played piano and sang, presented news, weather, and a sort of running commentary. He never stopped playing the piano under the dialogue. He played differently from my mother. My father said he played jazz. He had a theme song—“There’s just one place for me, near you”—which he played at the beginning and end of his show. My father liked Two Ton Baker. So did my mother. It was something we shared. But the stories on the radio were mine: Bomba the Elephant Boy, The Green Hornet, Sergeant Preston of the Northwest Mounted Police, King the Wonder Dog of the Yukon, Tom Mix, and Captain Midnight. “Pluck your magic Twanger, Froggie!” said Smiling Ed McConnell with his Buster Brown gang. Midnight the Cat would mew “Nice” and Squeaky the Mouse would start the music box. Over the tinkling background, Froggy the Gremlin would sing, “Every time I go to town, the boys start kicking my dog around.” The metallic melody ground to a slow halt, like my grandfather’s record player in Little Rock. Squeaky would say, “Little music box is running down. Kerplunk!” Smilin’ Ed would segue into a commercial for Buster Brown Shoes: “That’s my dog Tige. He lives in a shoe. I’m Buster Brown. Look for me in there, too.”
Next came Captain Midnight, the most artistic and futuristic super hero. He lived in an observatory overlooking the city, and flew a rocket plane armed with high-caliber machine guns. At the end of each episode, before the last commercial break, the announcer would say, “And when we return, Captain Midnight will give you his secret coded message for the day.” In order to understand the secret message, you had to cut out the waxed paper covering your jar of chocolate-flavored Ovaltine, enclose fifty cents, and wait forever for a Captain Midnight secret decoder badge to come in the mail. The gold-colored tin badge had two rows of alphabet letters, one inside the other, on a turning disc. The initials CM (for Captain Midnight) and the current year in relief lettering were at the top. You needed a new one every year.
Gene Autry, “the Singing Cowboy,” was best of all, featuring cowboy music and comic book–style adventure stories. The show came from Melody Ranch. The cowboys were his band. Gene was the boss, and always won, no matter what villain or Nazi agent tried to do him in. He had a horse, a gun, a guitar, a cowboy suit, and a hat—everything I could want. My father—a harsh vocal critic—held his nose and sang “Back in the Saddle Again,” making fun of Gene’s song.
My mother rocked me in her brown wicker chair and sang “Froggie Went a-Courtin’ and he did ride / sword and pistol by his side.”
Big Jim had a sword in the closet in his room
He wore it when he was in military school
I would wear a sword when I went to school
My father’s sword was too big
I would be big when I went to school
My father’s office was downtown. We went there sometimes and listened to the radio driving home. A liquor store my father liked was off the outer drive that ran along the lakeshore. A larger-than-life man’s head and shoulders were in the window. The face was a concave sculptured mask with eyes that followed you as you passed. I watched it as we drove by. My mother told me God was always watching and could see all, like the eyes in the liquor store window.
Our street ran from Lake Michigan to Sheraton Road. Our area was unkindly known as Kikes’ Peak. We were one of three Protestant families on the street. There were lots of kids my age. We played war; it seemed natural with all the war talk. We divided into sides and pretended to fight. The rivalries were heated, exciting, and lingered in the air after we went inside to our families.
Bobby Zwick, the king of the kids, had a skull and crossbones finger ring. He and his redheaded sister, Brenda, ruled the neighborhood. He had a three-wheel bike, faster than anything else around. I had a red Radio Flyer wagon that I dragged up and down the sidewalk, picking up junk from the gutter: wire, bottle caps, the occasional automobile part, a five-dollar bill. Neighbors told my mother, “Little Jimmy is gonna grow up to be a junkman.”
A black man, also named Jimmy, swept at the neighborhood barbershop. My friend Billy once called him “colored boy.” He replied, “You know my name.”
My mother said the grocery store/Chinese laundry was a bookie joint. Edward’s toy store was my first conception of heaven. My father got black-market electric heaters and other appliances restricted by World War II regulations at Jack’s Fix-It Shop. I saw Snow White, Duel in the Sun, and other films projecting the myths and legends of my youth at the 400 Movie Theater. On Halloween the kids dressed in costumes, gathered under the 400’s marquee, and trick-or-treated passers-by rather than going door to door.
A seawall at the end of the street cut off the beach. Wooden steps went down to the cold, empty lake where I was not supposed to go. My mother and I stood at the wall and watched the waves. Once we saw a flying saucer. I’ve told the story so many times over the years that the pictures in my actual memory have been erased. My vision was so bad—still unaided by glasses—God only knows what I actually saw, but my mother remembered it until the day she died. The saucer was reported in the Chicago Herald-Tribune and on the radio news the next day. There had been similar sightings out west.
My mother said it was probably one of the government’s secret weapons left over from World War II. She said it looked like a garbage can lid, flying over Lake Michigan toward the Navy Pier. Truthfully, I don’t remember, but have told the story to friends and strangers alike for years. I did a report with a big picture I drew on poster board at school. It seemed normal since my own sane and sober God-fearing mother had seen it. That was the first time people thought I was crazy.
We took a family trip to Dearborn, Michigan, across the lake from Chicago. We visited Dearborn Village, which houses Thomas Edison’s laboratory, re-created as a tourist attraction. I was fascinated by the gadgetry, especially recording equipment with big horns that recorded sound and the silent movie pictures that were so different from the movies I saw at the 400.
Black and white images flickered and jerked
Moving not like people moved in life
But like cartoons
This was where these films and records were made
The magic voice inside the box
Marshall Field’s department store had a giant Christmas tree, rising high through the huge store. Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus, with real white hair, whiskers, and red velvet suits with white fur trim, marked the North Pole Village’s entrance. A first-rate operation. Each child talked to Santa and was asked to sing a song. Midget elves recorded the song onto a disc of white cardboard that looked like a smaller version of my grandmother’s old 78 records. Every child sang “Jingle Bells” or “Silent Night,” but I sang “I’m a Ramblin’ Wreck from Georgia Tech and a Heck of an Engineer.” Santa and Mrs. Santa were surprised. “Like all the jolly good fellows, I drink my whiskey clear.”
Santa laughed. My mother was embarrassed. I played the record over and over until it wore out, fascinated by my own voice coming out of the box, singing “Ramblin’ Wreck” and talking to Santa Claus. I could remember the feeling of the moment and hear it re-created on the white cardboard record.
We rode the train back and forth from Chicago to Little Rock. The Texas Eagle steam engine locomotive had shiny silver Pullman cars. We rode in a private compartment with seats that folded down into bunk beds. I took my first baby steps on that train. I had a pet box turtle with the American flag painted on its shell. My father got it for me at the circus. The turtle traveled in a white cardboard container with air holes in it. I kept the container on the windowsill so I could see it while I looked out the train’s window.
Chicago was full of big-city dangers. When we visited my maternal grandmother, Huddie, I was off the leash. My first memories of freedom are from Little Rock. I roamed the neighborhood and eventually prowled the downtown area. I still recall my first solo trip to the neighborhood drug store to buy a comic book and a cherry phosphate.
Huddie is a mystery. She was French, had studied to be a nun, and would not speak of her family or past. She provided shelter during my stormy childhood.
My only memory of Grandpa Dick is a fishing trip to his cabin at Lakewood. We fished off a wooden pier. I was catching fish and he wasn’t. He talked me into changing places with him. I continued to catch fish and he continued not to. Later that day he tried to teach me to skip flat rocks on the water’s surface. It delighted him that I couldn’t do it. His stones skipped three or four times. Mine plopped. I guess it made up for the fish. He died in the Veterans’ Hospital in Hot Springs.
I remember my maternal grandfather, Pappy, wearing a terry cloth robe and sitting in his old slingback lawn chair upstairs in his office. He would get up before dawn, go to the kitchen, scrape the thick grease off the turnip greens in the icebox, spread it on stale cornbread, and eat it. He told me stories about making “slumgullion” (hunter’s stew) with squirrels, rabbits, and wild onions. He told me, “Don’t stand around with your hands in your pockets, Jimmy. People will think there’s nothing else in them.”
Pappy was a jack of all trades. He sold cars for the local Nash dealer. He worked for a wholesale hardware warehouse, and was the timekeeper/bell ringer for wrestling matches at the old Shrine Auditorium. The promoter, Tony Cabooch, was a colorful character. Whenever I tried to wear a black shirt and a white tie or a purple shirt with a yellow tie, my mother shook her head and said, “You look like Tony Cabooch.” I took it as a compliment.
Pappy died in his sleep, sitting in that old lawn chair. They said it was a blessing; that I was too young to understand. I am sitting in that old chair as I write these words. When I remember, I take my hands out of my pockets.
Both my grandfathers died while we were still living in Chicago. They were buried in the same graveyard in Little Rock. On Sunday afternoons we went to the cemetery after church, and Huddie changed the flowers on Pappy’s grave, up the hill overlooking railroad men buried by train tracks. One tombstone had a locomotive engine carved on it. Years later in Boomer’s Story Ry Cooder sang, “Dig my grave by the railroad, so I can hear the trains go by.”
I don’t know when I first heard the music in my head. I can’t remember not hearing it. Sometimes in the morning it would be the first thing I heard, shutting out reality—traffic outside the window and people moving around:
In the apartment by the lake
My mother’s voice
My father coughing
Or running his electric razor
Before I turned on the radio
To hear Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club
I would hear music in my head:
Far away and out of focus
like a radio station not quite tuned in.
Not the sound of any particular instrument or vocal
just music,
melody and rhythm modulating behind my eyes.
A solo performance just for me,
an unseen companion,
the very sound of my living,
inside me,
my own personal broadcast
that the radio in my head played at its own will.
I had no control over it.
My mother sat at the upright piano, playing and singing song after song off old pieces of sheet music from her past. I searched those songs for meaning. Like Gene Autry and Red River Dave’s cowboy songs, each told a story of a place and time far away.
My mother gave me the gift of music. Her father played piano and his father before. Her mother played banjo and violin. My mother wanted me to take piano lessons before I started school. My mother had been a semi-pro in childhood. Not a prodigy, she was quick to explain, just a good young player. She accompanied an older girl violinist. They played classical competitions statewide. My mother’s drive and competitive spirit pushed her over the edge, causing an emotional breakdown at age fourteen. Afterward, she continued to play in church but never professionally. She wanted me to play and I wanted to play, like Two Ton Baker. My piano teacher, whose name I don’t remember, had snow white hair like my grandfather’s and “ghost fingers” with transparent, almost blue skin, like those I would see on many great piano players, including Charlie Rich and Jerry Lee Lewis. My teacher’s expression was blank and emotionless. One day one of his children ran into the room screaming and crying with a bloody nose. He looked up emotionlessly and continued the lesson as his child ran crying from the room. A cold fish.
He told me about the lines, spaces, and dots that symbolized notes on the keyboard. Due to my poor vision, I could not see dots. I saw a blur; the lines and spaces seemed to move on the music sheet as I tried to focus on them. The keyboard’s shape made more sense to me, the white keys on the bottom, the black keys divided into twos and threes on top. This pattern seemed significant. I thought he was kidding about the dots on the paper, the way adults obscure truths by telling children one thing when there’s also a “grown-up explanation.” Song lessons began with “Motor Boat,” which consisted of playing middle C in repeated eighth notes, an irony that would be revealed years later.
I started school at the National College of Education in Evanston, and did not get to wear my father’s sword to school. My art teacher was from India. She wore brightly colored robes and had a jewel on her forehead. We painted rocks. I gave the art objects to my father, who kept them all his life. I still have them.
Once lost, innocence is forever gone. The line between real and make-believe separates childhood from the grown-up world, a lesson I learned too soon.
A carelessly thrown rock changed everything one day on the playground. I put out a kid’s eye during our recess war game. He was a big, curly-haired Italian boy in my class. By chance or fate, I saw him years later when I returned to Chicago for the Playboy Jazz Festival (he was the friend of a friend). I could not tell if he recognized me. I had no trouble recognizing him. His left eye was blank, the color of milk. I don’t remember what I was thinking when I threw the rock. Clouded by guilt and regret, I remember the moment visually as if watching a bad movie. Seeing my victim years later went a long way toward making me nonviolent.
I will carry his mother’s curse to my grave.