Stuff That I’ve Noticed 6 – My Very First Blog Post

My First Celebrity Book Blog Post Edited, Updated & Expanded

When I finished the first book of my memoir trilogy, Three Stages, I was absolutely clueless about on-line book marketing but at least I knew I had to create a blog. I had not yet learned how to do it properly but fortunately it wasn’t long before I met my mentor, Don McCauley.

I didn’t think of it as a celebrity book or an entertainment  book or even a Hollywood memoir even though in later chapters (after I departed Tennessee) there are some funny celebrity stories. Don is the one who pointed out to me – for marketing purposes – that I had written a “celebrity book”. In fact when this piece was originally posted in April of 2013 the title was “CHAPTER ONE: Bristol – 1935-1948” later posted on my new blog I changed the title to “Hollywood Memoirs; Who Me?”.

Three Stages is simply about the first thirty-seven years of my life and along the way it turns out that I met and worked with and even became friends with quite a few people who are very well known. That didn’t come to mind when I was writing the book. I was just telling stories.

Three Stages – My Journey Cover

From the beginning of that blog 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. So here are three little stories that didn’t make it into that first book.

Telephones

When I was a kid phones didn’t have dials. 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.” You see 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 of money. There were two-party lines and the least expensive, four-party lines. 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 unbelievable 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. For most people there was 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.

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. I may be wrong so if there’s anyone as old as me with a differing memory, let me know.

ADDENDUM: My friend from childhood, Jeannie Graves Stringer did let me know. This is her response. “Our home number was 1861 and Daddy’s office number was 1393. This was after 1943.”

The High School Band

After I “learned” the clarinet in the sixth grade, I got into the junior high band. (Learned is in quotes because I never actually practiced or really learned to read music. I just noodled.) When I entered seventh grade I actually got into the high school band. They must have been desperate for clarinetists. 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 during half-time at the football games.

Glade Spring, Virginia (Hardly even a town)

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.

Author Ben Bryant at 10

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 avians 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 (another both singular and plural word) 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 diminutive creatures 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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