Chapter Six - Third to the Sixth Grade

Dig The Hair
Momma Use To
 Pin Curl It & Torture Me
Cause I Was Tender Headed

I don’t remember the third grade much cause that was about the time momma and daddy started drinking and fighting every night and I would stay awake just in case momma needed me. Many nights I would lay awake listening to hear any noise coming from them. I remember one Christmas we went to a party the company daddy worked for had it and momma dancing with a man named Hooper. It made daddy mad and on the way home he stopped the car and drug momma out and started hitting her. Hooper came up behind us and thought that we were broke down but when he found out daddy was beating momma he stopped daddy from hitting momma and told daddy he had better never see him hitting her again. Daddy was not to brave when it came to confronting men but could and did many time beat the crap out of momma. Maybe rightfully because she was a big flirt . . .

By the time I got to the forth grade I would only sleep three or four hours a night. I would go to school and fall asleep in class. Mrs. Routs was my teacher and she was not kind at all or understanding of anything more or less a sleeping kid in her class. She would walk up behind me and pop me on the head with a ruler. If that was not good enough, she would make me stand in front of the class and she would take my hand and hold my fingers and bend them back and hit my palm with the ruler about (it seemed like) twenty or thirty times, it hurt so bad. She just assumed that I was lazy and worthless. She was the meanest teacher I ever had while I went to school. Instead of seeing there were some problems in my life and find out why I slept in class she just snapped and whipped up on me. I had to grow up and move back to Hartsville to find out she was a mental case herself. She ended up in a mental hospital . . .

The fifth grade teacher was Mrs.Taylor. She had a son that was in our grade but in another room. She saw that there was something different from me and all the other kids. She must have had a talk with someone about me sleeping and they called me to the office on the intercom, that scared the crap out of me. She also helped me get caught up where I was behind in my work. They gave me a test (mental) and it showed that I needed counseling. Who Me? No, I don't, I am OK. This is the first time I had an opportunity to get help, but worked my way out of it and it was not the last time . . . 

Is That A Smile
Or
 A Smirk

The sixth grade was worse than anyone could ever dream of yet it also was a good year. No one knew that was the year that I had a major incident in my life. Momma and daddy had calmed down a bit on the fighting and drinking and I was glad because if I had to referee them, I would have not been able to deal with my own pain. I had made friends with a boy my age just because he was nice to me. He asked me one day if I wanted to see his special hiding place? Well sure I do. I trusted him as a friend and when we got to the hiding place he reached over and whispered to me; "do you like me?" Why do you ask me that? Well if you like me you will let me kiss you. I said OK and he reached over and put a big sloppy wet one on me, the first time I was kissed. Then he pushed me down! OK That's enough! I stop here! It affected my whole life because from that point on I didn't want to be Debbie Dailey anymore. He told people ( from here you have to guess what he did ) and made me a laughing stock of school.  My sister knew about it and never tried to help me. I think you have already used your mines to figure out what happened. I placed it back in the back of my soul so far that I didn't ever say anything to anyone about it. My mom passed away in 2010 and because of that, I sought therapy. I reached a point where I trusted the therapist and it just came out. Too many years to keep that locked up. I sometimes wonder, did that really happen. I know it did, its just been held in way to long . . .

This is the same year that I fell off the monkey bars and broke my right arm in seven places. They took me to the local hospital and they sent me straight to Vanderbilt. I was rushed there in the back of a long black hearse because the town was so small that they didn't have an ambulance. I spent eight months in a cast with seven pins in my arm and a mental plate as an elbow . . .

That was the year daddy's boss acted like he was interested in how I was doing and was calling momma to ask if I was all right. He followed us home one night from town and it scared momma ( it took a lot to scare momma ) The next day momma told daddy that he needed to take care of the mater or she would. Daddy went to work and confronted the boss man and he fired daddy. Momma got mad and called the home office and reported the man and asked for daddy's job back. They told her we have already heard about the incident and we find that Jacks boss did nothing wrong. Momma like I said was a flirt so it might have been true. The drinking and fighting started again with a vengeance . . .

Later in the school year all the girls were getting interested in boys and I was no different. The only difference was I had beat up almost all the boys in our school. They picked on me so bad. I was not good at taking the kidding that kids did to me all the time. There was one boy I liked and he was invited to the house with his mother for lunch one day. His mom and my mom got together and decided that we could be friends. After we had lunch momma said "Debbie, take him down to the creek and play." We went down there and we walked the length of the creek up to the lake that it feeds into and he made fun of me and told me he hated me and so I pushed him in the lake and that was the last time momma tried to set me up with a boy. Thank Goodness!

Look Close
You Can See
The Ring
Around My Neck

My social skills were far from being my strong point. I was a strange one and why not with what I had been through in my short life. One day I went to school and there was a boy I didn't know sitting in my desk and I ask him why you in my seat? Oh is this your desk? Yep, you are new? Yes, I moved here last week. I came from California. Wow that is cool. Well the teacher came in and we got into our seats. She introduced him to the class. All the little girls were google eyed over him. Not me I was gonna just be his friend. Come to find out, he began to like me. OH BOY! I have a boy that likes me. His name was Mark Humes. He was a clean cut looking boy. Before too long he ask me if I wanted to go to the movies. I have to ask my momma. She said OK. We went that Saturday afternoon. It was Old Yellow and I will never forget it. We got some popcorn and coke and sat in the balcony. It was about half way through the movie and he asked me if I wanted some gum. Yes I'll take one. He put one side in his mouth and said,"OK come get it." That was how he got his first kiss. My first real kiss because  I didn't count the one that the other boy gave me. WOW I have a boy who likes me. He gave me a ring about four weeks into our friendship. I wore it on a chain around my neck. He got a lot of guff from all the boys that hated me. He would tell them she is a queen! They laughed at him all the time. He told me," their loss, is my gain." I thought to myself what a guy. I wish sometimes I could find him and tell him what an impact he had in my life . . .

Remember me telling you about daddy being out of a job? Well, he got one! It was in Jamestown, Tenn. NO! I am not gonna go. I fought tooth and nail but they made me go. I had to leave him to all the other girls. Mark and I had only been dating about a month. Uncle Leon gave daddy the job and I hated him and daddy for taking me away from Mark. I had no choice I had to go to Jamestown. Lee Ann on the other hand went to uncle Leon’s. WHY? She isn’t even kin to him. Why did I have to go with momma and daddy? I now know that grandpa and grandma had requested them to let her stay at uncle Leon’s . . .

Lee Ann
Strawberry Festival
Queen 
Runner Up 
In Linden

Uncle Leon was well respected in the town he lived in and grandma thought that Lee Ann would be better taken care of if she went there to live. That was always a thorn in momma’s side that grandma and grandpa would tell her what to do about Lee Ann. While Lee Ann was at, uncle Leon’s She had made enough friends that she was voted Strawberry Festival Queen Runner Up. Grandma would send money to momma and say this is for Lee Ann, make sure you spend it on her. They knew momma and daddy drank a lot so I guess she thought that they were spending it on themselves and not her. Lee Ann had all she needed, all but the stable life away from a couple of drunks like momma and daddy had become . . .



I cried all day the day we left. I just knew that my life was over. You know, my young first love. But when we got to Jamestown daddy had found an apartment at some lady’s house. She just happened to have three grandsons about my age. Like I said earlier I didn’t have any social skills and was scared to death that they would make fun of me and I would have to beat the crap out of them, here we go again. They were really nice to me right off the bat. They were well like in school so they walked me to school and introduced me around, that was great. I had friends for the first time and it was like nothing that I had ever had before . . .

 Next chapter is about the heartache of young love . . .

Chapter Seven - Hartsville to Jamestown and Back Again

Sergeant Alvin C. York

Birth 13 December 1887 Pall Mall, Tennessee
Death 2 September 1964 Nashville, Tennessee

 Sergeant Alvin C. York, recipient of America's highest military award, the Medal of Honor. He was a deeply spiritual mountain boy from Tennessee who plowed fields for a dollar a day as a youth and also became a champion wild turkey shooter. Drafted into the U.S. Army, he had never heard of the Kaiser and did not understand the war--a scenario that was explained to him by Army officers after they received a letter from his pastor requesting his release as a conscientious objector. York chose to fight and was sent to France. Pinned down with his patrol unit during the Argonne Offensive on October 8, 1918, he continued on his own and single-handed took out 35 German machine-guns, killed 25 Germans, and captured 132. York was one of 78 Americans awarded the Medal of Honor in World War I.

One of my greatest memories in life was getting to meet Sergeant Alvin York. I just did get to Jamestown in time to meet him. He was on his death bed and they took me to see him. He took my hand and squeezed it and smiled at me. He could not talk but I could tell even as a child he was special. He died in 1964 right after I met him. He had the sweetest smile of anybody I have ever met. What a great honor for me to have meet him before he passed. I really didn’t know who he was till later in life when I saw the movie. Looking back on my life writing this book, I know that I have been blessed with meeting many good and very special people . . .

When we moved to Jamestown I went from a farm girl to a small town new girl in the neighborhood. I started to like one of our landladies grandsons Mike Raney.  I sort of started dating him. On Saturdays we would go to the movies. There was a small theater in this town too and a Drug Store next door and when the movie was over we would get mike shakes and then he would walk me home. He and I were in the same class in school so I got to see him every day. One day he wasn’t where he always was to watch for me and walk me to school. I was not sure why but I just walked to school by myself. There he was at school with another girl hooked to his arm. OH NO! Not my boyfriend I said. We fought and that was the end of my three-week romance. I remember that was when President Kennedy got killed and we sit all day listening to the radio on the intercom that was on Nov 22 1963 . . .

I moved on to with a boy named Timmy Stockton. His daddy owned the local garage and he was so cute. Within a week I had a new boyfriend and within two weeks he gave me a friendship ring. My mother didn’t like that at all. She made me give it back to him. I guess cause she knew we would be leaving there soon. We stayed about three months and back to Hartsville we went. The day we were to leave was a Saturday. Momma knew that and we regularly went to movies on Saturday, she told me to go down to the theater and say my good-bye. When I got there, I saw Jimmy sitting there and I started crying and he got up and came to me and we sat there for a few minutes. He just leaned over and kissed me goodbye, he got up and left me sitting there. Wow what heartache. As an adult I don’t think I felt that much pain due to loving a guy. When I left my husband, it didn’t hurt as much . . .

Back to Hartsville I go in May in 1964. I thought that I was gonna die of fear when I had to go back to school. I knew that nothing had change there and that within a week I would be fighting to save my own but. Mark Humes had moved on, as well he should have. The bulling started the very first day back to school. My sister came home too. She wanted to graduate with the class she had gone to school with all those years. She was so opposite from me. Her graduating year she was voted Miss. Congeniality and she was the girl’s basket ball team manager and she was well liked and hated that I was her sister. Once I beat this boy up before we moved to Jamestown and the principal called Lee Ann to the office. He asks her in front of me, “what do you suggest I do with your sister?” She said,” I don’t care, she is not my sister and momma and daddy doesn’t care what you do with her either.” That is when I found out that Lee Ann hated me. She was embarrassed by me. She had a right thought I brought it all on myself. She had not let momma and daddy's fighting and drinking get her to be like them. I think I was mimicking what I saw at home. That caused a lot of heart aches for me in years to come. She could have any boy in school. She was beautiful and always a lady. Her hair had to be just so and clothes just right. Till this day she is the same. I look at her and ask myself why I am so different and why is she the way she is? Just recently I ask her why mommy and daddy's fighting and drinking didn’t affect her like it did me. She said, it did affect me I just let it make me a better person and not hurt myself and others like they did . . .

When I got back from Jamestown, I also had to deal with the fact that Lula May had moved to another farm. It was about three miles from me. I would beg momma to take me over there and she would finely give in. It was a much bigger house and it had a big pond on the farm. We would go swimming and take a picnic lunch and make a day of it. I would some times ride the bus to her house and that would cause all the kids on the bus to make fun of me and that just had another thing to pester me about. I didn't care I love that family and they could make all the fun they wanted to . . .

One day while I was at Lula May’s we were in the living room watching T.V. someone knocked at the door. Mr. Sullivan was in the chair reading newspaper and he got up and answered the door, this was 1965. At the door was three black gentlemen and a white man dressed like Lawyers. They ask Mr. Sullivan could they talk to him and he said surely. The men didn’t like that I was there.  They ask could they go outside and talk to him. He said you can say what you need to here or not whichever they wanted. Remember the beginning of this book I talked about how blacks had their own schools, well the four men came to ask Mr. Sullivan if he would start sending his children to the white school. They also said that if he would they would make sure they had better clothes and the things they needed for school. They added that the reason they were asking him was, he was a preacher and well respected and that would help their cause to integrate the school in Hartsville . . .

Mr. Sullivan excused him self and told them he had to ask his wife what she thought. Lula May and I knew she was not even home so we were kind of startle that he left the room. I asume tjat he left the room to pray before he KICKED them out of his house. When entered the room he told them they were trouble makers to leave his home. They told him your children will get a better education at the white school. He said to them one more time, you need to leave.  Lula May and I thought that our prayers had been answered. We always wanted to go to school together and didn’t understand why we had separate schools. I am not lying that really did happen . . .

This was the year my sister graduated. It was in the graduating class of 1965, there were five black students at the white high school. The senior class for many years had taken a class trip to Washington, D.C. to see the sites. This year it would have been impossible for the reason that blacks were not allowed in the same hotels and restaurants. The five black students offered not to go on the trip so the rest of their classmates could go  . . . 

Lee Ann, like I said was well like in Hartsville  She could have any guy at school. My momma had and always did have a way with being understanding of other people just not her family. She would take in and help people of all ages. There were some kids that Lee Ann would date and come over to the house and they would get close to momma. She would let them drink beer and play cards. They all liked momma she became a surrogate mother to many kids Lee Ann’s age. One I remember was Hubert Ward. He was a top notch football player and he was a real redneck, He in later years told momma how much she meant to him when he was younger. Lee Ann reminded me about the senior party the year she graduated. We lived like I said earlier on the top of a large hill, at the bottom of the hill there was the creek and the creek emptied into the Second Creek landing and that emptied into the Cumberland River. The graduation party was at the Second Creek Landing. It got loud and momma and daddy called the law not knowing Lee Ann was there. They scattered every which way when the cops came. I  cant remember if anyone got arrested on not. Lee Ann reminded me of that earlier this year. Momma did that through her whole life, be nice then do something mean.  She guided and helped many people after her move to Nashville which is yet to come in my book . . .

Next Chapter is about my momma taking control of the family and finding work . . .

Chapter Eight - Governor Frank Clement

Gov. Frank Clement

Daddy had no job and he was not finding one in the small town. Momma got the bright ideal that she was gonna call the governors office for the state of Tennessee and ask for help! I think that she did it just because Uncle Leon was a main contributor and a good friend to Governor Frank Clement and she wanted to show uncle Leon that she could. Yes she did! When she got though to him, she told him, " I have lived in Tennessee for seven years and now we are broke and have no job and we need help." Governor Clement asks her if she could get to Nashville and she said yes. She asked Billy Sam Rainy took her the next day. The governor was very impressed with momma and so after he talked to her for a while he asked his sister to come into the office and that’s when momma met his sister Ann Belle Clement. The governor told momma if she could pass the civil service test he’d give her a job. Anna Belle was to take her to where they test momma and she came out with flying colors. Momma had a great mind and there was nothing that she couldn't do if she wanted. The next week momma got a job in the sales tax division of the state. If you remember we had no car so momma got up each morning about four a.m. and rode the bus to Nashville and back again in the p.m.. It was fifty-two miles one way and she rode it for almost two years and never complained . . .　

At that time the state hired anyone who could pass the test, no degree or college needed. Momma said that there were lots of, just plan lazy people that worked there. She was put to work in the sales tax division. After she had been there for a month her review was up and the super asked her why she posted more forms than anyone here. Her answer was, " the majority of the forms I post are worked up by someone else and I post those for them. " I am fast at working the forms so I have some extra time to post for other people. The super loved that. She was not trying to make points with the boss, she just liked the people she worked with, she didn't want them to get in trouble. There was Mrs. Rector, she was an older lady that lived in Gallatin and rode the bus with momma. The other she said was a drunk who reeked every day of booze. Momma always loved taking care of or helping other people, so she just fit in. She also liked it because Toby would come to Nashville and eat lunch with her. No one knew except her and I the way it should have been . . . 


Miss Anna Belle
 Clement O'Brien

 I had just been tested for psychological problems again at D.D. Wallace. While I waited to see what my diagnose was, momma and daddy were advised to go to A.A. once a week. I went with them to that meeting and I remember after the meeting that the people were played bingo. They all looked old to me. They all also looked happy. They never went back after their first meeting. You need to remember this part of my book because the subject of the Friendship House will arise again in my story . . .

Momma and daddy had such bad finances, that they were in danger of losing the trailer we lived in. That was gonna be a big factor as to whether or not I went to the children's home that D.D. Wallace said would help me with my schooling and psychological problems. The same time that D.D Wallace told momma and daddy would benefit from going to AA and gave them the address to The Friendship House which is a house where they hold AA meetings. I went with them on a Saturday night and everyone look real old to me. They were playing BINGO after the meeting. They all looked happy lots more than us. Remember The Friendship House it will come up two more times in my story. I ended up going to Monroe Harding a children's home in Nashville. Lee Ann went to beauty school at Ray Reeds and got an apartment. Grandma and grandpa paid for the school and apartment. She always was a beautiful girl and she was just right to be a beautician . . .

The next chapter is me and my new home . . .