Kings of the Corn

While working most of his life as a professional house painter our dad, Footsie Watkins, had been serving as a volunteer fireman while we lived on 12^th Street in Wood River, Illinois.  Sometime in 1951 he learned of a full-time job opening for a fireman with the Village Fire Department in Roxana, Illinois.  Footsie immediately applied for and was offered the job.  He gladly accepted and started training as a full-time fireman…no more painting for him!  However, there was an Ordinance requiring all Village employees to live within the Roxana Village limits so dad had to find a house within the Roxana Village limits!

Somehow, with no apparent financial funds and with very little real estate knowledge, Footsie concocted a business deal with the Roxana Chief of Police, Roscoe Duncan, and bought from him a little block house the corner of Maple and Thomas Streets in Roxana.  At that time, the house was a small run-down concrete block structure with three small bedrooms, kitchen and living room with no hint of living grass or landscape! However, it did have an indoor toilet that leaked and never worked right as long as we lived there…still, we thought the cotton was getting higher for our family!”

          At that time, Roxana was a small Village of approximately 1,500 souls situated inland, east of the Mississippi River on the Illinois side.  Many people from Roxana boasted that they lived on the Mississippi River, but they did not…the river did not belong to them!  The River belonged to those who suffered from the ravaging floods that caused losses in the millions of dollars on an annual basis!  The River belonged to the poor people who fished and depended upon its kindness for their survival!  It also belonged to the unfortunate people of Alton who lived on Mud Street in Dog Town, whose shanties were flooded each spring as the muddy waters of the mighty Mississippi over run its banks and showed them no mercy!  The only claim to fame the people of Roxana may have had was the stink emitted from the local refineries of which they tried to ignore, believing it was not there!

There were many good people who lived in Roxana.  However, there also was a narcissistic group of individuals who, unfortunately, held Village leadership positions and gave the impression they were above everyone else!  They acted as though they were a special gift to all from God on high!  When, in fact, they had become a very judgmental, self-serving and an unforgiving snobbish group of hypocrites!

 This pompous group of “Roxana people” felt they were the elite and subsequently treated those from South Roxana and Wood River with some disdain!  As the school district encompassed Roxana, South Roxana, Rosewood Heights, Wanda, Kendall Hill and part of Wood River, cliques were formed with many students left out and ignored in various degrees.

Due to the influence of numerous Churches found within the confines of Roxana, the “City Fathers” never allowed taverns or package liquor stores to be located within the Village limits.  This being the case, alcoholic drinks consumed or bought by those living in Roxana were purchased in neighboring South Roxana or Wood River liquor establishments.   If urine in the Roxana sewers could have been measured for alcoholic content, the whole town would have been arrested for urinating while under the influence.

In 1952, the tenth and final child of our family, John Ray, was born in the little block house on the corner.  While our living accommodations were now above ground and appeared to be better, our life was still not good!  We now had ten children along with a mother, father and Grandmother living together in this small and crowded dwelling.  Nobody had the luxury of sleeping in a single bed by themselves, much less having a private bedroom!  

Even though dad had a steady income as a fireman, a usage of alcohol and gambling still kept our financial resources depleted!  It appeared that we had made the all-time Catholic Charities Christmas permanent needy list, with no escape in sight! It seemed that our family’s lowly social status was now etched in stone within the Roxana community!  However, our mom always did her best to make things better for us!  Many mornings there would not be anything to eat for breakfast when we awoke.  With a quivering voice and tears in her eyes, she would simply say in her Arkansas drawl,

 

  “Y’all kids go on to school now and don’t worry, I promise to have    something here to eat for y’all after school!”  She never failed us!

Grady and I had always treated our family’s condition of poverty with comical retorts and jokes, making fun of our lack of social standing and acceptance.  This approach seemed to help us not feel sorry for our position in life and the community.  It also gave us a sense of humor that would be with us for the rest of our lives!

Grady and I took drivers education training in high school under the tight tutorship and direction of Mr. John Geninatti.  It was quite apparent that our actions or inactions behind the wheel caused him much anxiety and discomfort!  Regardless of our superior driver education and certifications of safety, Footsie still would never let us drive his 1939 green Chrysler as he thought the driving skills that he had honed as a Bootlegger was still much greater than ours! 

Eventually, Grady and I raised enough money through various efforts and bought a 1926 Chevrolet with questionable mechanical brakes!  Most of the time the brakes wouldn’t perform and we had to gear down or bump into a front yard tree to stop the car! When dad traded the Chrysler for a newer car, Grady and I visited Gloss Motors in Wood River and traded our car for his old 1939 green Chrysler with promises of future payment!  The salesman for Gloss Motors, Mr. Gerald Shaver, lived up the block from us and handled the transaction.  We think he was mostly interested in getting our 1926 Chevrolet with a dubious braking system off the street for public safety!

While we lived in the little block house in Roxana, Dewey “Dude” Howell had a serious crush on our sister Alice and subsequently become one of our best friends.  It was not like him at all, but Footsie really took a liking to Dewey and would even include him in his cussing tirades!  This was very rare as dad’s outbursts of temper usually terrified and scared away most of her boy friends!  Subsequently, Dewey become like one of the family…our mother took him under her wing and treated him like one of her own!  Dewey’s dad, Wilbur Howell, also liked Grady and I in return…Dewey had our parents fooled and we had Dewey’s dad fooled! 

We loved to play baseball and whenever we could, the three of us would attend Cardinal Baseball games at Sportsman’s Park, located on Grand and Dodier Streets in St. Louis.  We never had money but would somehow gain entry to the ballgame through ruse and ingenuity!  After a night game we were always hungry and would come back to Alton across the old Clark Bridge to pay an early morning visit to our favorite Bakery located on Front Street!  Each evening, Noll’s Bakery would bake fresh bread, doughnuts and sweet rolls which were to be delivered the following day throughout the area to various outlets!   The aroma of delicious baked goods usually proved too great of a temptation for three hungry young men at such an early morning hour!  To make things even more tempting, the bakery employees would put the bakery goods in bread racks, just inside their overhead doors, ready for their delivery trucks to load!

As Dewey was the youngest and quickest, it usually meant that he would approach the target, reconnoiter and if all clear would then become the designated runner! With the strength and agility of a panther, he would leap upon the loading dock, assess the situation, and with the timing of a Swiss clock seize whatever “goodies” accessible and speedily depart for a well earned feast!  We justified our actions by feeling it was our patriotic duty as good citizens to act as official tasters before any of the bakery goods were sold and delivered to the local stores for public consumption!  Therefore, we relished that our unselfish heroic roles protected the health of our fellow citizens from any food endangerment due to a possible unfortunate recipe mistake by the bakery personnel! 

During the summer of 1953, the “Three Amigos” saw an ad in the paper wanting people to de-tassel corn in Jerseyville for a period of three to four weeks!  We had no idea what de-tasseling corn meant, but for some reason thought this might be a good opportunity to make some legitimate money before school reconvened in the fall!  We telephoned the company who had placed the ad and told them we were interested in working!  They agreed to our proposal and said our pay would be based solely on piece-work and production!  Also, that we would need to furnish our own groceries along with sleeping bags and tents!  They also gave us a starting date which was about three weeks away!  At the time, we didn’t have any money and was so broke we couldn’t even put fifty cents worth of gas in the car let alone enough money for the provisions required for our employment in waiting!

However, a welcome upgrade by the City of Wood River come to our rescue as they had just installed new sewers on East Acton, just off Central Avenue where Dewey lived!  Dewey’s dad worked at the Shell Refinery and bowled in the evenings leaving him little time to dig a long sloped trench from the rear of the house out to the street for a tie-in to the main sewer trunk line!  Dewey convinced his dad that the three of us could do the job quickly and in a workmanlike manner sparing him much sweat while giving him more time to bowl!  As Wilbur was an avid bowler that suggestion may have sealed the deal!  It was the hottest part of the summer when we started digging!  After about ten days of sweat and many blisters, we completed the job to Wilbur’s satisfaction!  With the money he paid us, we bought food and packed up some old blankets to improvise as sleeping bags!  We figured to sleep in the car and not have a tent, thus saving some of our hard earned money for more important social events!

On the morning that we were to report for work, we awoke very early and drove before sun-up to Jerseyville!  It was still dark when we arrived west of town on Route 16.  We parked the car under a tree, joked, talked and imagined how much money we were going to earn before finally dozing off while waiting for the day to break!  At last, the morning’s first rays of sunlight broke the stillness of the night!  The hot sun started rising quickly as if it were an express elevator hurrying to the zenith of its destination whereas to personally punish us with its extreme heat during our first day of work! 

The passenger door of the green Chrysler would not close and had to be secured shut with a piece of tied rope!  With all of the windows of the car rolled down and hoping for a cool breeze of any kind, we started the car and proceeded west on Route 16 for our designated rendezvous to become Kings of the Corn! 

The further we drove and the nearer we got to our destination, all we could see for miles and miles was rows of corn that needed to be de-tasseled on what was going to be a very, very hot and humid day…there was not a leaf moving or a breeze to be felt!  At this early hour, it had already become so hot that the buzzards circling high above would not even consider landing on the blistering concrete for a fresh meal of road-kill!

As we continued to drive, Dewey asked me to stop along the road where he could examine some of the corn stalks more closely to become more familiar with what had to be de-tasseled!  While Dewey was outside the car examining the corn and acting like he had suddenly become an expert of the corn de-tasseling process, Grady looked at me, shook his head in a negative manner and said,

“Bill, there’s no way I’m going to work in the heat of this day or any other day like it…let’s go home!” 

I looked at him and nodded in agreement, turned the car around and yelled for Dewey to get in the car and come with us!  Dewey started yelling that we had come too far and should at least give corn de-tasseling a try!?

I kept driving at a slow speed waiting for Dewey to catch up!  ‘Ole Dude’ jumped on the running board yelling for me to stop—instead, I sped up!  Dewey wrapped his arms around the roped car post and kept yelling to slow down!  Grady and I laughed all the way back to Jerseyville where Dewey furiously got back into the car!  We drove back home to Roxana!  Dewey was mad as a hornet, but come to understand that in a democracy, the majority rules!

As a good friend, Dewey forgave us for our impulsive actions!  We then fabricated a tale that explained our early return home from Corn County which seemed to protect our reputations as entrepreneurs to everyone!

Dewey remembered and continued to visit with our mother in Hemet until her death at 90 plus years!  When the three of us see or speak to one another, we still recall that special day when we could have been crowned Kings of the Corn…58 years ago!  

A Christmas Journey

The young Soldier was the eldest of ten children and according to southern tradition, the older children were expected to help support their family and raise their younger siblings!  With the Korean War winding down, jobs were very hard to get…many breadwinners were looking for meaningful work with not much success!  The young Soldier was the first person in his family to graduate from High School and had wanted to attend College but with his family’s financial condition, that was not an option at this time!  

The young Soldier had turned eighteen in April of 1954 and graduated from high school in June of that same year. In July, with no job in sight, he decided to enlist in the U.S. Army and volunteered his Service for Korea…he had never been any further from home than St. Louis and really had no idea where Korea was!  With the family still in dire financial straits, he had hoped to create a supplemental income allotment in their behalf from his monthly paycheck!

In August, the young Soldier passed the army physical and was sent to Camp Chaffee, Arkansas for his basic Infantry training, lasting eight weeks!  From there, he was sent to Aberdeen Proving Grounds, located just outside of Baltimore, Maryland on the Chesapeake Bay for another eight weeks of advanced training. 

The young Soldier’s assignment at Aberdeen Proving Grounds had proved to be quite uneventful until the holiday season of 1954 approached…he, along with his buddies, became very homesick as the Christmas day neared!  He was still only eighteen years old and this would be his first Christmas away from home and his family!  Even with the alcoholism and verbal abuse which usually displaced any form of Christmas spirit in their home, the young Soldier still missed being with his family!  He had accepted the fact that he would have to spend this Christmas day in the barracks with some of his buddies!  On weekends, he would take the base shuttle bus to downtown Baltimore just to walk and look in the department store windows and mentally Christmas shop presents for his family while listening to the Christmas music!

However, on the Friday evening of the Christmas weekend, the First Sergeant come to the barracks and stated that if anyone wanted a three day pass for Christmas weekend, they could receive one if their bunk and floor area could pass his stringent inspection!  The young Soldier’s heart leaped for joy and skipped a beat with high anticipation of the possibility of being able to be home for Christmas!  

The young Soldier wasted no time getting his floor area mopped and waxed along with his bunk being made ready for immediate inspection!  His bunk area passed inspection and he was given a three day weekend pass for Christmas!  As the Army only paid on the first of every month, the young Soldier found himself to be financially strapped and had only twenty cents to fund his round trip of two thousand miles or more!? Also, heavy snow had already covered the ground with much more snow expected over the weekend! The weather had turned very cold with the forecast calling for near zero temperatures!  He had never hitch-hiked any great distance before, but figured if he wanted to go home, there was no other choice!

The young Soldier estimated that if he was to reach home before Christmas, he would have to travel all night and all day of Christmas Eve to hopefully arrive in time for Christmas day!  As he had no money, he felt a regret for his younger brothers and sisters as he knew there would be no Christmas gifts for them this year but was still concerned for their physical well being!  He very much wanted to be with his family once again before having to return to Maryland for his overseas assignment!

That night before leaving, the young Soldier dressed as warm as he could! He put on long wool underwear and dressed in his ‘Class A’ uniform with his G.I. lined overcoat for the long trip that lay ahead! He took the Shuttle Bus to downtown Baltimore and asked for directions for which route he should take for his journey!  With directions firmly planted in his mind he threw his duffle bag over his shoulder and walked to the outskirts of Baltimore to find Route 40 that would take him home!

With the snow continuing to fall, the young Soldier commenced walking west on Route 40 with his thumb out hoping for a quick offer of a ride!   Shortly, he got a ride with a male individual in a convertible with a big tear in the canvas top---and as luck would have it, the car heater did not work either!  The young Soldier thought he had dressed warm enough for the trip, but had apparently underestimated the weather and nearly froze when they drove through the mountains…it was so cold he could hardly move his feet and toes!

The young Soldier’s first ride ended during the night at an isolated intersection somewhere in eastern Ohio, just past the Pennsylvania border!  It had continued to snow very hard with a cold and frigid wind blowing with a gale like force! He was shivering and had become very hungry as it had turned much colder than he had anticipated! The young Soldier estimated that he was probably at the point of “no return” and may as well ‘freeze to death’ going home rather than ‘freeze to death’ going back to his Army base!  He decided to continue homeward! 

He felt very discouraged, alone and forsaken! In a frozen stupor he visualized the face of his mother wearing her little head scarf with her unlined thin raggedly tweed winter coat held together by safety pins waving as to beckon her oldest child homeward!  He thought of the many times she had overcome adversity with prayer, so he decided to say a prayer for comfort and deliverance from the misery he had seemingly put himself in!  After he finished his silent prayer, a warm feeling of comfort enveloped him and he knew immediately that he would be looked after by a higher being!

Shortly thereafter, a car seemed to arrive out of nowhere and stopped to offer him a ride!  The driver was a U.S. Army Sergeant First Class, with his wife, on the way to St. Louis for the holidays!  They said they would take the young Soldier as far as they could before crossing over the Mississippi River into St. Louis!  He told them that if they would drop him off at that point, he would be very grateful!  Their car heater worked and he drifted off to sleep for some much needed rest and thawing out!  They traveled the rest of the night and on into the next day.  The Sergeant and his wife stopped to eat breakfast where the young Soldier would spend one of his two dimes for a hot drink that would last until he arrived home.

As they left the restaurant and continued their journey west, the young Soldier closed his eyes and thought of his mother and the many sacrifices and difficult times that she had endured and made in behalf of her children!  He loved his mother dearly and remembered the heartbreak and tears that she had shown when he had left for basic training in August…he wondered what his mother’s reaction would be when he arrived home unannounced and then would have to leave once more…her farewell tears would be hard for the young Soldier to bear again!

Later that day, the kind Sergeant and his wife dropped the young Soldier off at the Junctions of 111 and 40 before they crossed over the Mississippi River into St. Louis.  As the young Soldier got out of the car, he again thanked them profusely for their hospitality and wished them a very Merry Christmas! He was completely exhausted and was in dire need of a hot shower and shave!  However, he kept reminding himself that he would soon be home with his family!

The young Soldier started walking toward his home on highway 111 and almost immediately got a ride with a man in a pick-up truck for the final portion of his trip…the man was going to pass right through his hometown!  While feeling a deep sense of relief that he was finally on the last leg of an arduous journey, his pulse again quickened with excitement of being so near home! 

Soon, the familiar sight of the Cahokia Mounds appeared on his far right! He knew that before long he would be counting down the ‘three humps’ on Route 111 before experiencing the acrid smell of the Oil Refinery and then entering the Village limits of his hometown! 

The driver dropped the young Soldier off at the corner just two blocks from where he lived!  With his duffle bag thrown over his shoulder and as he had done many times before, he hurriedly walked the last few blocks to the little block house on the corner…HOME AT LAST!

As the young Soldier had not the time or money to call ahead, his family was not expecting to see him this Christmas!  Needless to say, his mother cried with pure joy and happiness upon his arrival! The rest of the family, and even his father, were very happy to see him---even if it would only be for an abbreviated Christmas weekend!

The young Soldier’s weekend pass would expire as he was scheduled to be back at Aberdeen Proving Grounds by midnight, the day after Christmas!  He had no idea how that was going to happen as he had no money for train fare and did not have the time to hitch-hike back to the East Coast!  He contacted Scott Air Force Base in Belleville, Illinois and told them of his dilemma and asked for their help! Fortunately, the Air Force had a Military Air Transport Service (MATS) Cargo Plane that was scheduled for a flight to Maguire Air Force Base on the day after Christmas!  If the young Soldier would pay a dollar for a parachute, in the event of an emergency, he would be allowed on that flight!  Between his family and friends, they were able to raise the dollar for his passage! 

The young Soldier arrived at Maguire Air Force Base late in the afternoon of December 26, 1954!  He was then directed to the Military Land Transportation Service and rode a shuttle bus back to Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland and reported to his Command…and on time!

Shortly thereafter, the young Soldier was sent to Fort Dix, New Jersey for an overseas assignment to Europe.  He would be gone for the next two and one-half years with no chance of furlough back to the States!  And yes, while away, he missed and was homesick for his family each Christmas thereafter!

Fifty-seven years have since passed and the young Soldier has now become an old man!  Nevertheless, when the soft restrains of Christmas music is heard by him, he thinks of those lonely homesick nights spent in downtown Baltimore and the long Christmas journey home because of the love and concern he had and still has for his younger brothers and sisters…and now, his own family!

W.W. Watkins,