LIVING THE FAITH OF OUR FATHERS. Donald E. Wilson

crises.

      In the fall of that year Jim faced the most difficult years of his life as the economy literally tanked creating massive unemployment for countless ciizens, In addition to lack of employment, on October first, Alleen, my future wife, was born. I had arrived a year earlier in a small frame house 180 miles from Louisville, in Corbin, Kentucky. Two father’s 180 miles apart and two children began lives unknown to each other.

      And so our story begins.

      Chapter 2: The Pre War Years

      In the three years following marriage, Dad continued to teach and coach in the Greenup County High School. But by 1933 Greenup, like so many other school systems in Kentucky, was hit hard by the severe economic crisis, and the school had to reduce the already low salaries, Dad had no choice but to seek employment elsewhere. He left the teaching he loved so much, and moved back to Corbin while searching for new employment. By that time his family had increased by two, I came along first in 1931 and Doris followed in 1932.

      The years 1934 through 1936 were the first years in my memory bank. My family had settled in Fullerton Kentucky on the banks of the Ohio River. With the depression at its peak and no teaching jobs available, Dad found a job across the river in Portsmouth Ohio in the Shelby Shoe Factory, not exactly the type of work he had expected as a college graduate. But with a wife and two children in a nation facing the most serious economic crises in its history he was thankful for any job he could get. As an interesting side note, Jesse Stuart left Greenup at about the same time as Dad and became Principal of Portsmouth High School across the river.

      For a four year old boy, the sight of constant Ohio river traffic in front of our home created a certain kind of interest and mystery. The sight of long barges loaded with all kinds of cargo, and legendary “river boats” with passengers waving to me as they went by, raised a great deal of interest and wonder. Who were they, where did they come from, and where were they going; special memories to lodge in the mind of a four old.

      My most vivid memory of river traffic was the weekly appearance of the “show boat” that docked not far from our home. Occasionally, it would pass in the evening, lit up with its calliope playing and passengers waving to curious onlookers like me. It docked about half mile from our home to produce a show to entertain the local populace. Observing such sights put my imagination in high gear, and I knew that beyond the mountains a world existed that I would hopefully visit-someday. I had no idea that there would come a time in some distant future that my child-hood curiosity would be surpassed many times over.

      Shelbyville and Louisville

      In 1936, as economic conditions began to improve, Dad found an insurance job as a salesman with Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in Shelbyville, Kentucky. In those days insurance was often sold from door to door as were the collections of premiums. With the depression eating into meager wages, insurance was the last thing many poor farm families had in mind. But Dad was always a good salesman, and the reality of supporting his family urged him on and helped him endure the difficulties of the insurance business.

      Along with my sister Doris, and me, my parents settled in to an old 19^th century house, along Highway 60, the major highway (two lane in those days) between Shelbyville and Louisville. There, in the rich tobacco country for which Kentucky was so famous, and in a time when tobacco was considered to be relatively safe, we enjoyed a Mayberry type of existence; a simple life where we could experience the joys of childhood. It was an uncomplicated life for 1930’s children who knew little of the economic hardships of our parents. We had no television, computers, texting, or movies laced with violence or sex. Even a radio was a luxury we could not afford until 1936. Drugs, for other than medical treatments, were virtually unknown, and our culture was richer because of it. The only shopping area, Main Street, bordered Highway 60, and stretched along a one mile assortment of buildings from the First Christian Church (our church) on the east end of town to the Shelby County fairgrounds on the west. In between was a Lutheran, Catholic and Christian Church, the A&P grocery, a drug store, the movie theater, a hardware store, a barbershop, Newberry’s Five and Ten cent store, and Nicks’ Diner, where I often stopped on the walk home from school with my friend Nicky.

      For two kids, already hungry from a long school day, the smell of Nicky’s father’s 5 cent hamburgers was almost more than we could take. On one occasion, he obviously recognized the watering lips of two little boys, and broke down and gave us one of his burgers complete with onions and pickles. He was a bit tight with his meager profits during those hard days, and I believe that was the only time he relented with a free hamburger.

      The movie theater, located on Main Street about a half mile from our house, was the source of our major entertainment. This was cheap entertainment, but in the late thirties with the depression still a reality, the 10 cents I paid from my 15 cent allowance (increased to 25 in 1940), was a high point of my weekly life. Admission for the Saturday matinee bought tickets to two black and white features, a cartoon, and news, and we had a nickel left over for candy.

      One movie was always a Western, and we knew every cowboy actor by name. Most wore white hats, to separate them from the bad guys, and had two guns slung low over their hips. And the good guys, from Tom Mix, to Roy Rodgers had the white hat, and always survived every gun fight. Each Saturday movie usually included a serial, and our favorite past time during the week that followed was to discuss whether the good guy would die or survive that near death experience under the rails of an onrushing train or the waterfalls he was about to go over. Just as it appeared that he could not possibly escape, that episode ended, and we had to wait a week to find out his fate. Of course, he always survived to the cheers and clapping of the full theater. Such was the simple life of small town children a life devoid of the many distractions that were destined to be part of every child’s existence in the later Twentieth century.

      In addition to the weekly movies, we created our own entertainment in our make-believe world. Every little boy had an arsenal of cap guns, and of course cowboy suits to act out our version of what our movie heroes did (we could play with realistic toy guns without getting in trouble). We would choose up sides taking turns at chasing down the Indians or the bad guys. We graciously allowed the girls to be the Indians and the villains, and my sister Doris who was a year younger than me was always on the losing side until she realized her role in the game, and would get back at us by leaving the game right in the middle of the war! With my two best friends Sammy and James Swanson we always outnumbered her, and try as she would, we would never succumb to her more feminine games.

      I must comment on my most memorable childhood experience that occurred in the summer of 1940: a rare vacation that is firmly embedded in my memory. One morning in July, a bus stopped in front of our house, and my 19 year old uncle Raymond alighted from the bus and headed to our house. I was told that he had completed his tour with the CCC (Civilian Conservation Core), a New Deal program that permitted struggling farm boys to find employment in a military style environment. We loaded Dad’s Plymouth, and headed for Paw Paw Lake, a picturesque recreation area on the edge of the Great Lakes. We rented a cabin for a week and truly had a wonderful vacation fishing and swimming, a rare experience in those depression years. We had a row boat assigned to our cabin, and dad, Raymond and I, spent much of every day fishing. Our luck was not that great but we did manage to catch enough fish each day to make a hearty meal. My proudest moment came when I pulled in a 13 inch catfish, the largest fish we caught that week. But all good experiences come to an end, and all to soon we headed for home from the only real vacation my family ever took.

      As I look back to that time, one other memory comes to mind. Shortly after we arrived home Raymond was drafted into the Army, and the war that was already on the horizon soon put an end to everybody’s vacation. In early 1940, just before my family moved from Shelbyville to Louisville, my fifth grade teacher, Ms. Jessie, spent part of each morning teaching us about the current events in Europe, and especially stories of the German bombing onslaught against England known as the London blitz. And every morning we listened to Kate Smith on the radio, as she in turn, acquainted us with the Edward R. Murrow broadcast from England, and his personal accounts of the nightly bombing devastating London. It wasn’t television, but certainly was the next best thing, as he made the scenes come alive. And before the program