Tucker

  I was at home one afternoon in 1980.  At the time, I wasn't working and was taking care of my parents, as they took care of me.  My father had a heart condition, and my mother couldn't take care of him by herself.  I was watching TV in the den, when the phone rang.

 I answered it, and the voice on the other end said that he was Marshall Tucker.  Well, my first thought was the band.  When I was a student at Anderson College, the Marshall Tucker band was starting out and needed an auditorium to rehearse.  The college let them play during a free afternoon to get ready for a gig.  It was a closed rehearsal, but I did get to listen to their music, because I had the reins of the auditorium.  It was pretty good.  

 The voice on the phone said that he tuned pianos and needed help.  I then realized who the voice belonged to.  It was the man who lent his name to the band.  The real Marshall Tucker was pretty famous as a pianist and tuner.  He was blind and played by ear.  He used to live in Spartanburg where the band was from.  His reputation was one of exactness and the ultimate professional.  After my shock that he would call me, I had to tell him that I didn't play the piano.  When I was in seminary, I took a music directing course, where I learned where middle C was on the piano.  In years before that, I had played handbells in church and kind of knew the notes on the treble clef.  And, if you gave me 30 minutes, I might be able to pick out the melody of one sheet of music, but I just didn't play the piano.  Especially, to his standards.

 There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and then Mr. Tucker said that he must have been misinformed.  He told me that he was sorry that he had bothered me.  I was flattered that he had called me.  I don't know for sure who told him about me, but I have a suspicion that it was a neighbor down the street who knew Mr. Tucker.  It would have been cool to work with him.  He passed away in 2023 at the age of 99.  He touched a lot of lives with his music.  I talked to humble greatness that afternoon.

Fire

  I was kind of a juvenile delinquent, when I was in junior high.  I have already written about the shoplifting, but I also liked fire.  I really don't know why, except that it was exciting to set stuff on fire.  I watched some of my plastic army men burn and melt.  I just wanted to see what they looked like.  It wasn't a sick thing.  I was just curious.

 There were a lot of woods near my house.  The kids in the neighborhood would play in the woods.  It was fun.  There was also a creek that ran through the woods.  We didn't think about the creek being contaminated.  It was just a cool place to go on a hot day.  The creek went all the way to a larger creek called Gills which was near Forest Lake Shopping Center.  That was over a mile from my house.  We never walked the entire length of our creek, because we were scared of lions, tigers and bears.  We did walk a few blocks in the creek.

 So, what does that have anything to do with fire?  Well, I went scouting in the woods for a place to set a fire that was near the creek.  I was a Boy Scout, and I knew to set a fire near a water source.  That was the creek.  I found a place near our high school.  I cleared some brush in the woods to set a circular fire.  It was within just a few feet of the creek.  I brought along some lighter fluid and matches.  It was a dry day, and I proceeded to get the fire going.  It was kind of cool.  Then, the wind kicked up.  The fire started to spread outside of the circle and into the leaves.  I ran into the creek to get water but had forgot to bring a bucket.  I couldn't get enough water in my hands to carry to the fire.  I tried stomping it out, but that wasn't working either.  I got scared and ran home.

 A few minutes later, I had sirens heading in that direction.  Somebody had seen the smoke and called the fire department.  They put out the fire and determined that someone had set it on purpose.  They never found out who did it.  Thankfully, the fire was contained to a small area and no trees were burned.  Neither were any houses, or the high school affected.  

 It has been about 55 years since that day.  The woods were torn down much later, and a housing development went up in its place.  I never played with matches after that day.    

Gears

  My parents had cars with automatic transmissions.  Almost every car I had ridden in growing up had an automatic transmission.  The only exception was one of my mother's friends who had a VW Beetle.  We were in Stamford, CT in 1964.  She wanted to show us around her city in that car.  I got really carsick from all the stops and starts from a manual transmission.  Because of that experience, I wasn't very keen on getting into another straight shift car.   When I got my driver's license, I learned on cars with automatic transmission.  It just seemed like the right thing to do.

 During the summer of 1971, our church's youth group decided to do a car wash in a field at the church on a Saturday morning.  Most of the kids wanted to wash or dry the cars, because they could get wet in the heat of the day.  I had a driver's license, so my job was to bring the cars into the field from the street.  It was a short drive of maybe 100 feet.  Some of the drivers wanted to bring them into the field themselves, but that wasn't the plan.  It was my job.  

 A church member brought his car to me and told me the gear shift was on the steering column.  Of course, it was.  Where else would it be?  I got in to put the car into drive, but nothing happened.  I jiggled the arm, and it was very loose.  I tried again and stepped on the gas pedal.  The worst noise I had ever heard came out of the motor.  A grinding noise.  The man came running over to me and screamed that it was a straight shift.  I had stripped his gears.  He wasn't pleased.  I was taken off of driving duty.  The church had to pay for a new transmission for his car.  The other kids thought it was funny.  I was embarrassed.

 A couple of years later, I was riding with a friend who had a straight shift.  I told him that story, and he said he would teach me how to drive his car.  I was reluctant at first, but he told me how easy it was to do it.  Just to interject here, don't tell me that anything is easy to do.  That's one of the reasons I can't cook.  So, my friend and I went out onto a highway, and he taught me how to use the clutch and shift gears.  It did seem kind of easy, once I got the hang of it.  That afternoon was the first and only time I actually drove a manual transmission.  All of the cars I have owned were automatics.  I know that manuals save on gas, but I was willing to get worse gas mileage than to deal with a stick.  Easy vs. Easier.  It was a no brainer.

Governor

  It is said that somewhere in the world, everyone has a twin.  Someone who looks like another person.  I have been mistaken in the past by name, and that was because they didn't know my name, so I was called something else.  Usually, they would call me by my brother's name.  I answered to "John" about as often as to "Walter".  Especially in school, because many of my teachers had also taught my brother earlier.  Sometimes in church, because people would know my father, whose name was John.  For those who didn't know my brother but knew my father, it was assumed that my name was John.  If I corrected them, they would get embarrassed.  So, I wouldn't correct them.  Once in college, I was identified as "William" in the yearbook.  I have a cousin named William.  I've had a few people call me "William" throughout life.  My father sometimes called me "Roger", because he had an associate in the Sunday School Department that was named Roger.  I guess that was one reason why I got into acting.  My talent got be noticed as "Walter".

 Back to doubles.  From time to time, I have had people ask me if I was on a certain show or at some place that I wasn't.  They would say that they could have sworn it was me.  However, the tables turned one night as I was coming home from work.  I stopped by a Wendy's restaurant to pick up some supper and ordered my usual.  The manager of the restaurant came running over to me and told me that my food was on the house.  Had they seen one of my movies?  After all, I had some notoriety around town.  Then, he said that he was so happy to have the Governor in his restaurant.  The Governor of South Carolina at the time was Dick Riley.   He was kind of hunched over, because he had back issues, and so did I. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, and so did I.  He was also about twenty years older than me.  Maybe the manager needed glasses.  I'm glad he didn't see the car I drove up in.  I don't think the Governor would be driving a Nissan Sentra.  

 I took the free food and left.  Thankfully, the manager moved onto another restaurant.  I think I might owe Governor Riley a cheeseburger and fries.

Moose

  The school librarian was Mrs. Moose.  Yes, that was her name.  She was married to Mr. Moose.  Yes, that was his real name.  He passed away, and she remarried, but we all knew her has Mrs. Moose.  She didn't like her name much, but it was a fond reminder of her first husband.  We just thought it was funny.

 My best friend Richard and I would spend our lunch hour in the library with Mrs. Moose.  We would write funny captions on the pictures in the news magazines.  She didn't like that what we did.  We would also play chess using the New York Times Sunday newspaper's games section.  She didn't mind that as much, because we were bettering our minds.  We also spent the time writing poems and stories.  It was our creative hour.

 During our senior year, the administration said that we could go off campus to eat and not get penalized. The kids with cars did just that.  The popular kids had cars.  Most of those kids were not our friends.  We didn't get invited to go to lunch off campus, so we stayed in the library and saved up our lunch money for other stuff.  It was getting towards the end of the school year, and we wanted to go to lunch at Hardee's, which was about half of a mile away from Flora.  

 We asked Mrs. Moose if we could borrow her car to go to Hardee's.  Of course, she said no.  We told her that we would be careful with her car.  She still said no.  We told her that we would take a couple of "responsible" students with us.  She knew us too well to think we would be "responsible", so she said okay.  We could take her car to Hardee's during our lunch hour.  She gave us the keys, which was a huge mistake on her part.

 We got down to Hardee's.  As we pulled into the parking lot, a car was coming out of there.  Our driver had to swerve to miss the car, and he hit the curb inside the lot.  We didn't think anything of it, as we parked the car.  We all went inside and ate our first lunch away from school in our entire 12 years of going to school.  We finished lunch and headed back to the car.  Everybody's eyes bugged out of her heads, and our mouths dropped open.  A tire was flat.  The curb that we hit was very sharp and had ripped open the tire.  Could anyone change a flat tire?  Of course not.  We were kids, at least in our minds.

 We had to have a plan.  One of the guys said he would walk back to school and get help.  We knew he was going to go back to school and leave us there.  Another guy volunteered to go with him to make sure we got help.  We knew he was going to just leave us there, too.  There was a pay phone at the parking lot.  Why not call Mrs. Moose and get her to send help?  We didn't know the phone number of the library.  A police car came by.  He asked us if that was our car.  We said no.  It belonged to Mrs. Moose.  He thought we were lying to him, but we insisted that the school librarian's name was Mrs. Moose.  He got on his radio and checked to see if we were telling him the truth.  It was confirmed.  By now, we had gone way past the time to get back.  Mrs. Moose was frantic.  Where had we gone in her car?  The officer helped us change the tire, and we got back to school almost two hours late.  She was glad we were okay.  We pooled our money and bought her a new tire.  

 We never got to go off campus again for lunch.  Every time Richard and I went back to the library, Mrs. Moose gave us that look that was like a laser beam which would cut through steel.  We just sat at the table and wrote stuff.  We didn't dare get a magazine or a newspaper.  She forgave us, when we graduated.  She said the tire was rotted and needed to be replaced.  She just wanted to see us sweat.  We did.

Cracking

  When I was in 6th grade, it was a big deal.  Not just for me, but for all of the boys in our class.  We had arrived at a point, where we at the end of elementary school before going on to junior high.  I have already discussed the honor of being a school patrol officer in the story "The Fight", but needless to say we were macho.

 We didn't even know what "macho" meant, but we knew we were big guys on campus.  We demanded respect from the younger kids, and we got it.  If not, they were reported to the administration.  Nobody wanted to go to the principal's office.  We had the power.  One of the boys in our class discovered knuckle cracking.  It was a macho thing.  In order to pass the test, you had to crack your knuckles.  We had heard rumors from older kids that cracking your knuckles would make them bigger.  Even though our parents may not want us to have bigger knuckles, we thought that we could be better patrolmen with bigger knuckles.  The younger kids would fear us, because we had bigger knuckles.

 And so, the knuckle cracking began in earnest.  We first started learning how to maximize the cracking of our knuckles at recess.  One guy had perfected the art of cracking, and we all learned how to do it the loudest.  If you cracked your finger joints, they just made small noises.  The knuckles were the loudest.  We moved on to doing it in the classroom.  

 The girls were grossed out by the boys cracking their knuckles.  They were too lady-like to do such a thing.  One or two girls tried to crack a knuckle, but the other girls shunned them, so they stopped.  It was a boy thing.  On one occasion, the boys were cracking during class.  The girls had complained to the teacher that it was gross.  Our teacher had just about enough of the chorus of knuckle cracking, so she stopped her teaching and said in a mad voice that the next boy to crack his knuckles would have to stay after school.  I was a patrol officer.  I was macho.  I cracked my knuckle.  The teacher asked who did it.  All of the kids pointed at me.  I tried to tell the teacher that it was an accident.  I had to stay after school.

 I still crack my knuckles, although not as many as I could at the height of my ability.  I once counted up to 30 separate joints to crack.  Fingers, wrists, toes, ankles, knees, back, jaw.  They were all subject to cracking at one point or another.  My knuckles never grew bigger, although some arthritis has set into some of the areas.  It isn't so much being macho anymore.  It is kind of a stress reliever.  The Village People said it best, "Macho Macho Man.  I've got to be a Macho Man."  I was.

Ski

  I might have shared this fact about me before, but I can't water ski.  It isn't that I don't know how so much, as it is that I can't.  There are a lot of reasons why I can't water ski.  First and foremost:  I can't swim.  My father tried to teach me how to swim early on.  He would be in a motel pool and get me to jump in.  He said he would catch me.  When I did, he would move away and expect me to save myself from drowning.  I almost drowned a lot.  It got to the point that I didn't trust him, so I gave up.  Later on, I took swimming lessons.  That didn't work either.  Instead, I almost drowned.  So, I gave up.  Another reason I never learned to water ski was that I was afraid that the jerk from the boat would dislocate my shoulders.  It might not have, but I had that worry.  My brother was a great water skier.  He could do tricks on skis.  One of his tricks was skiing while having his swim trunks go down to his ankles.  He said the others laughed and cheered.  He didn't know why until he let go of the rope.  That could have been me.

 However, there is a kind of skiing that I figured I could do.  Snow skiing.  I was in high school, and the youth from Kilbourne Park Baptist Church went on a trip to the Appalachian Ski Resort in North Carolina.  We were on a bus and went through a small country town on the way.  We waved at the folks on the street by saying, "Hi, Grits".  They waved back, because they couldn't hear what we were saying.  We laughed a lot at their expense.  

 When we got to the resort, there was snow on the ground and a lot of ice.  After we got our boots and skis, we headed over to the beginner's slope.  It was kind of small with a rope to carry you up to the top.  I was glad I had on gloves, because the rope was moving upward and would have given me blisters otherwise.  They told us how to slow down and stop by pointing the skis inward.  I couldn't do that, so I just fell down to stop.  I fell down a lot.  Then, I would get to the rope and go back up the hill.  The rope took off all the leather on my gloves by constant scraping.  Not fun.

 There were two other slopes at this resort.  The intermediate and the experienced.  You had to take a chairlift up to those.  Since I had managed to "ski" down the beginner's slope, it was onto more adventure.  The intermediate slope.  It was hard to time getting onto the chairlift.  It was moving at a pace which was a bit faster than normal.  Eventually, I found that jumping onto the seat would work.  Not the safest way, but I held on.  I looked down from the top of the slope and saw obstacles that I knew I couldn't ski around.  I saw people skiing from side to side, but my goal was to get down the slope without breaking a bone.  The quickest way was a straight line, so I proceeded to ski down the mountain and almost running into people along the way.  I sat down to stop and slid on my butt to the bottom of the slope.  With one run, I had "mastered" the intermediate slope.  A friend dared me to go to the slope for experienced skiers.  It was straight down with no obstacles.  Mostly ice.  I could see my life pass before my eyes, so I declined.  It was probably a wise move.  I might have been young and stupid, but I had to draw the line somewhere.

 I went inside to dry off next to the fireplace.  Another wise decision.  We got back on the bus and headed home.  We said goodbye to the "grits" on the town's sidewalk.  They waved back.  That was my foray into skiing.  I haven't done it since then, but at least I didn't drown.