Even though music was such an important part of our life as a family, Daddy didn’t get into playing publicly in California like he’d done with his brother back in Oklahoma. He would play his guitar and fiddle at home, but I don’t remember him ever going out or meeting up with other musicians to play gigs. Instead, he poured his energies into working various jobs to make ends meet. I can’t remember what they all were now, but I know he had a laundry service at one time. He’d go to the movie studios to pick up laundry, and then come home and tell me about all the interesting things he’d seen on the sets. I was already somewhat of a dreamer, and I was mesmerized by his tales.
Mother was a workhorse and generally provided a steady income when Daddy hopped from one job to another. She could always find work wherever we went. She’d go around and knock on doors if she needed to, but she was going to give it her all. Mother was exceptionally honest, invariably serious, always meticulous, and a model employee for anyone who hired her. When we were living in Los Angeles, she went to work for Virture Brothers, which was a company that made the chrome and Formica dinettes that are now so popular with my retrominded rockabilly fans. Mother worked in their upholstering division, and she later got Daddy a job there, too.
After we’d been in Los Angeles for a little while, Daddy decided he needed a real trade that he could depend on. I don’t know where he got the idea, but he decided to go to barber school. His classes were down on Skid Row. The drunks would go in and get their hair cut, which is how the students learned. Mother and I would have to go pick him up in the evenings when his classes were finished. She would just hate to go down there where folks were passed out in doorways. It kind of scared me as a child, and it might have scared Mother even more. She took me with her because she was too nervous to leave me at home. We always stayed in the car with the doors locked until Daddy came out. Then we would hightail it out of there!
When he completed his barber training, Daddy searched around for a job in Los Angeles, but wasn’t able to find anything. We had relatives who lived outside Bakersfield, about a hundred miles north, and they told Daddy about an opportunity nearby. We eventually moved up there, a few miles south of Bakersfield, where he started barbering in a little town called Pumpkin Center. In fact, the barber shop was responsible for the town’s name. California’s Central Valley is a rich agricultural region known for its abundance of crops ranging from cotton to fruit to almonds. Apparently, pumpkins were plentiful in the area in the 1930s when a full-blooded Cherokee barber named Lone Bush dubbed his shop the Pumpkin Center Barber Shop. Even though the area had been called Giminiani Corners previously, the name stuck, and a Pumpkin Center post office was opened in 1942.
We lived in nearby Greenfield in a little house right across the street from the Greenfield Union Elementary School. Even though we didn’t live in the city, our address was Route 2, Box 536, Bakersfield. I started the second half of my third-grade year at the school in the beginning of 1947, and was still known to my family and classmates as Lavonne at that time. I had cousins close to my age—Raymond and Vernon Jackson—who lived out there. They were the sons of my dad’s brother, Albert, and his wife, Electa, who lived in one of the shotgun houses in the middle of one of those cotton patches. I always thought Electa was the strangest-sounding name I’d ever heard!
I loved playing outdoors with my cousins. We’d play cowboys and Indians and run wild through the fields. Mother was much more comfortable letting me roam, since we were no longer living in a big city. I guess she thought someone would have to put in some serious effort to snatch kids out of a cotton field in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes at night I’d go stretch out in the fields and look up at the millions of stars, thinking about all the adventures that might await me out in the vast universe. I would get just as lost in my own dreams flipping through magazines and looking at pictures of the other kinds of stars—Western swing singers and icons of the silver screen who populated the California of my youth. I almost felt something down deep telling me that my place in the world was going to involve entertaining others.
Learning to entertain folks was something Daddy began unconsciously teaching me early on. The house we lived in had a long hallway that ran straight through it. I had the first bedroom, and Mother and Daddy had the back bedroom. There was a series of doors that went right through the house. I remember the floor was slick, and Daddy would run from the front room in his sock feet. When he hit my door, he’d slide through my room with his arms crossed like a genie, saying “G’night, ’Vonne,” as he slid straight through, disappearing into the back bedroom. It would make me laugh every time.
When we were living in Greenfield, it was the only time in my life that Mother didn’t work outside the home. She was always there, and I think back on that period fondly. I particularly appreciated it when I needed her to nurse me back to health. I had a weak ankle, and one day Mother looked out the window and saw a couple of boys carrying me home with a sprain. I wasn’t real physical. I didn’t play sports or anything like that, and it seemed like every time I was around a ball I got hurt. Shoot, I was just standing in the school yard at one point, after we moved back to Oklahoma, and a football came out of nowhere and hit me. Another time, as a young adult, I was walking with country star Hank Thompson somewhere on a baseball field. We had finished singing and were walking back down to the dressing rooms when a baseball went flying between my legs and nearly tripped me. Let’s just say I was never at risk of going to the Olympics!
Feeling like we’d settled down in Greenfield, Mother and Daddy let me get my first pet. I wound up with this cute little black and tan hound. I don’t even remember where we got him, but I named him Jeepers. I loved that dog, and he would chase me all around those cotton fields. Those are very warm and happy memories for me.
Our house was made of knotty pine, and Mother fixed it up to be really pretty. She wanted to do things traditionally and keep everything just-so. Daddy didn’t much give a flip about those kinds of things. If we had a Christmas tree or some lights outside, that was Mother’s doing. Daddy might help her decorate, but it was all at her prompting. He didn’t mind her doing it, but he wouldn’t have spear-headed it, either. I tended to be more like Daddy and wasn’t as concerned with tradition or nostalgia. In later years, we were on the road a lot and were often gone for holidays. If it was Thanksgiving they might have turkey and dressing in the restaurant of whatever hotel we were staying in. But if they didn’t, that was fine. We’d just have soup and sandwiches.
Birthdays were the same. If it was Daddy’s big day, he’d just want to go up to the drive-in, get a burger, and go home. That would never fly with Mother. She saw to it that I had a birthday party every year. Even though she had all this other stuff to do, she made it a priority. I remember, when we were in Greenfield, she had these ribbons of crepe paper tacked up on the ceiling and then twisted each one together all the way to the table. A big birthday cake sat in the middle, and it was so festive and cute. Even when she wasn’t working outside the house, Mother always had some project going. I don’t really remember her ever sitting still.
As had always been the case wherever we lived, our home in Greenfield was filled with love. It was nothing for me to walk into a room to find Mother and Daddy hugging each other, or her sitting on his lap. They were very open and expressive. The three of us had a beautiful relationship. I didn’t have to vie for their attention. I was smothered with it, and they both loved me very much. In some ways, being an only child kept me a baby. Mother spoiled me. When I eventually married Wendell, he did the same thing. Maybe we “only-children” are just particularly lovable!
Even though my parents were very focused on loving, nurturing, and encouraging me, they didn’t let me get away with bad behavior. Not that I particularly wanted to be bad. I always hoped to please my parents—especially Daddy. The thing I was most afraid of as a child was upsetting him, because I was so close to him. Mothers, of course, are upset all the time, so I wasn’t too worried about that. But, boy, I just couldn’t stand it if there was any tension between me and Daddy. He didn’t harp on me or speak harshly to me, but I just didn’t want to disappoint him. I knew what he wanted from me, and it would just kill me to let him down or upset him. Daddy wasn’t overly verbose. Today we’d say he was “cool.” He didn’t lavish me with praise, but when he did compliment me, it meant I’d really done something special. It was never just flattery or insincere words. If he said it, he meant it!
I had boundaries and rules as a child, and I didn’t really break them, except on rare occasions. Daddy didn’t like to spank me, but he would do it if I needed it. Whenever he did, I’d have to stay in my room afterward to think about what I’d done wrong. After a while, he’d come sit and talk with me, which is exactly what you’re supposed to do after you punish a child. I don’t think there were really books about that kind of technique then, so Mother and Daddy just stumbled into good parenting by accident.
I started noticing boys early on. In fact, there was one tall, thin boy I liked at Greenfield named Wendell. Maybe that was a little foreshadowing of my future. Unfortunately, there was a lot less diversity in those days, and I didn’t encounter too many people who didn’t look like me. Out of my entire class at school, there was only one African American boy. His name was James Oliver, and he would play with us sometimes. I liked his company. We had a big picture window at our house and, in the mornings, Daddy would look out and yell to me, “Wanda? Are you ready for school yet? You better hurry up! Your boyfriend’s here! It’s James Oliver!” He was just teasing me. Daddy was never prejudiced. He had quite a few blues records in addition to the “hillbilly” fare, like Jimmie Rodgers and the Western swing stuff. He liked black music, but Mother would get on to him. “Tom! Can’t you play something else?” She never learned to appreciate the blues—or music in general—the same way Daddy and I did. She was simply too busy!
On Saturday nights we would go over to Aunt Electa and Uncle Albert’s house to gather ’round the battery-powered radio to listen to the Grand Ole Opry from Nashville. The adults would pull up chairs, while cousins Vernon and Raymond and I sat on the floor. We’d all just sit there and stare at the radio while the show was on. I wonder now why we thought we had to actually look at the radio while we heard the show, but that’s what we did!
I was still playing guitar at home most nights while Daddy accompanied me on his guitar or fiddle. We would work out different songs we knew from the radio or the 78 records Daddy bought, while Mother would write them all down in a little notebook. We kept adding to it during my growing-up years, and I still have it and treasure it. All my favorites are in there: Bob Wills, Spade Cooley, Tex Williams. There are so many great old songs, like “Silver Dew on the Blue Grass,” “Make Room in Your Heart for a Friend,” “Along the Navajo Trail,” “When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again,” “Tennessee Saturday Night,” “Born to Lose,” and on and on.
They didn’t have as many of the big dances around Bakersfield like they had in Los Angeles. There was a famous honky tonk there called The Blackboard that I used to hear about all the time, but that was just a little dive. Mother wouldn’t go in there. A few years later a young guy named Buck Owens started playing guitar in the house band at The Blackboard. A few years after that, another young guy named Merle Haggard worked there some. Obviously, those two went on to superstardom, so there was plenty of country music that came out of Bakersfield. But that all started happening later on.
Even though Daddy and I loved listening to country and Western swing, I also listened to the pop music of the day when we were in California. I heard Rosemary Clooney and Patti Page, and that kind of thing. Because of that interest, Daddy decided it would be a good idea for me to take up piano, too. He knew that would give me an overall knowledge of how music works, in terms of harmony and basic theory. Mother found a teacher who gave his lessons in a performance space of some kind. Of course, I was just a kid, but I remember it as a grand ballroom. The teacher sat me down in the midst of all this grandeur. He showed me where middle C was and showed great patience when I started banging around on the keyboard. He set some sheet music in front of me for one of the popular songs of the day and began to teach me to read. I didn’t really get it, but I was pretty good at picking up the notes he played. I mostly learned to play by ear.
I loved those piano lessons and looked forward to them each week. I probably liked the teacher because he didn’t challenge me too much. He had me playing notes with my right hand, but just octaves with the left. That’s the only way I knew to play, but I never dreaded having to practice the piano. We had an old upright in the house, which was the first time we’d ever had a piano in our home. As soon as I got out of school each day, I’d head straight for it. I would play a song up to the point when I made a mistake. Instead of picking it up from that spot, however, I would go back to the very beginning and play the entire song until I made a mistake again. Then I’d return to the top and start it another time. After doing that over and over Mother would say, “Wanda, why don’t you go play outside for just a little while?” That’s when I knew I was driving her nuts! I still tell people today that if a kid loves music, the piano will really bring it out of them. It’s easier to learn than the guitar, and it makes for a good musical foundation.
Mother and I would visit Oklahoma in the summers, but Daddy didn’t always come back with us. His family wasn’t particularly close. There were five kids in Daddy’s family, while Mother was the oldest of three. She had one younger brother and one younger sister, and it was important for her that I get to know her side of the family. She didn’t want me to grow up in total isolation out in California. I enjoyed those trips back home, but I also treasured living in the Golden State.
I look back on our time near Bakersfield as an idyllic era of my childhood, but, like all good things, it eventually came to an end. Daddy had flat feet, and they started giving him trouble. It became obvious that standing up barbering all day was not going to work for him with his feet in that condition. He would limp along and was in real pain. He’d come home and say, “Oh, I wish I had a little girl with brown hair and green eyes who would bring me a tub of water to put my feet in it.” Boy, that’s all it took. I loved bringing him that water so he could relax and soak. The reason we’d moved to Greenfield was for the barbering work, so when Daddy’s feet played out on him, and that profession proved unsustainable, we had to figure out a new plan.
Around the same time, Mother was getting real homesick for Oklahoma. Her mother had rheumatism and was crippled. I don’t remember seeing my grandmother, who I called Mama, ever actually stand. She was always in a chair. She didn’t have a wheelchair, but she would lift her chair up from side to side to scoot around the house. I remember my cousin and I—they’d gotten us some little rockers for when I’d come visit in the summers—would play “Mama.” Off we’d go, swinging those chairs from side to side across the floor.
Around the time Daddy was trying to figure out how to make a living, Mother was feeling really guilty about not being around to help with Mama. She didn’t think it was fair that her sister and brother had to take care of their mother by themselves while we were off in California. It was actually fine, but Mother put a lot of responsibility on herself, and she felt it was her duty to return to Oklahoma to help. Daddy told her, “All right, Nellie. We’ll go back, but when you have to make the gravy out of water, we’re coming home to California! He loved California and I did, too. We all did. I hold that state very dear to my heart to this day, and I still draw my most enthusiastic crowds out there.