Hollywood Memoirs; Who me?

Three Stages: Book One, Chapter 1

I never thought of this series as celebrity books or Hollywood memoirs even though in later chapters there are some funny celebrity stories. It’s just my life and along the way it turns out that I have met and worked with and even become friends of quite a few folks who are very well known. Future posts will have some of these that didn’t come to mind when I was writing the book.

All along I planned to post periodic updates to my readers. Lots of things float up from the depths and into memory from time to time that I realize should have been included but were not recalled before Three Stages was published. This is the first such update. No Hollywood stories while I’m still in Bristol, though.

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Telephones

When I was a kid phones didn’t have dials. In fact, we didn’t have a private line; we had a party line. Only rich people had a telephone line all to themselves. That cost a lot. Next was a two-party line then, the least expensive was a four-party line. I think ours was two-party.

Sometimes you’d pick up the phone to make a call and someone would be talking. So you’d hang up, wait a few minutes and try again. If you were lucky you had considerate folks sharing your line and, if there was an emergency you could ask them to let you make a call. Now this seems terrible but at the time no one gave it a thought. That’s just the way it was. You were lucky to have a phone at all. Phones were not widespread in the 30s. Usually there would be a phone in a location like a store, and everyone who needed to make or receive a call, used that one. Or a neighbor had one and you could be reached through them if they were nice folks. Pay phones cost a nickel for local calls and they weren’t ubiquitous in Bristol.

To make a call you’d pick up the phone and _ if the line was available – a lady (always a female) would say, “Number please.” Kings’ grocery store number was 33; not thirty-three but three three. That’s the only one I remember from Bristol. In our town before the war, when there were less than 12,000 citizens, I don’t think there were any numbers larger than nine nine nine. (Maybe Herman Cain is from Bristol?)

The High School Band

As I told you, after I “learned” the clarinet in the sixth grade, I got into the junior high band. What I left out was that when I entered seventh grade I actually got into the high school band. They must have been desperate for clarinet players. My folks had to spend a few bucks for the maroon uniform, complete with white bandolier belt and peaked cap but they were proud of Benny.

Have a look at the Band video.

The heavy wool of the uniform was great during football season but not so much for the 4th of July parade in 1948 when it was ninety degrees and raining. When Mom peeled it off me not only was my formerly white shirt red, so was my formerly white body.

My favorite thing about the band was the marching and the formations we made at half-time at the football games.

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Glade Spring

One time when I was nine or ten and spent a week or so in the country, Jimmy and Jerry Eller, my two country cousins, took me on a snipe hunt.

Shortly after sunset the instigators of the event, always country kids, invite the colleague, always a city (in my case, town) kid, to go with them out into the fields or woods to help snare the rare and elusive birds known as snipe. The word, like sheep, is both singular and plural. They explain to the initiate that snipe are small white, flightless birds – quite tame but shy – who come out in the early evening to dine on bugs and worms.

The technique for snaring these tasty fowl is simple. The newby is given either a gunny sack or a large paper bag. He is stationed at the edge of a field or woods and told that the experienced snipe hunters will go into the forest, locate the birds and drive them toward the catcher who will then herd them into the sack. He is assured that these are very dumb birds and easy to corral and will walk right into the bag.

Thus perched in eager anticipation the catcher waits and waits and waits. Of course neither snipe (which do not exist) nor his so-called friends ever show up and he is left … wait for it … holding the bag.

It took me, I was told, less time than the usual sucker to figure it out.

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