YOUR CHILDHOOD

Excerpt from The Last of the South Town Rinky Dinks, by E. Don Harpe

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In every small town in the rural South, and I suspect in most other parts of the country as well, there is a dividing line, a distinct geographical something that serves to determine the social structure of the town. A boundary line, if you will, that the people of the town use to judge who's who. Which side of the line you live on makes a very big difference in how you are perceived by the people of the town. Not only in the present but also for the rest of your life. Regardless of how many years pass, or how successful or how desperate you may become, you're still known in your hometown by which side of the line you grew up on.

In some towns, the dividing line is the river.

I don't know, but I guess maybe they call the people who live on the wrong bank River Rats.

In other towns it may be a mountain.

I can't even guess at what they'd call those people. Hillbilly's, or perhaps Mountain Goats, or some other equally mean and petty little homegrown name. But in the long run, it doesn't really matter what name is used, they all mean the same thing. The names are badges, and while they aren’t visible outside your clothing, they serve the same purpose. They are a means whereby the more fortunate people can describe the less fortunate ones, without resorting to actual bigotry. With that in mind, it will come as no surprise to learn that the names are almost always used in a negative sense.

In Springfield, Tennessee, the small country town where I grew up, the dividing line was the railroad tracks. There was the wrong side of the tracks and the right side, the North Side and the South Side. In this case, the wrong side of the tracks was known as South Town, and you can bet the folks who lived on the North side of the tracks had a name for those who lived on the South.

The "wrong side of the tracks" is a catch phrase, an all encompassing term that has come to mean a place where nothing good comes from, where criminals are born, bred, and harbored, and where everyone is poor and either uneducated or undereducated. But most importantly, it means that the people who live there are somehow inferior to those who, through an accident of birth, are fortunate enough to have been born a few miles, or even a few feet, on the other side of the line.

This book is about the people, mostly the kid’s that came from the wrong side of the tracks in this run of the mill, quite ordinary small country town where I grew up.

Most of the stories take place in the late forties and throughout the fifties with maybe one or two in the early sixties. A few of them may have happened in the thirties, but regardless of the time frame, the common thread lies in the almost childlike innocence of the times. Innocent, at least, when compared to today.

Springfield is in Northern middle Tennessee, at the top of the famous highland rim, almost directly in the middle of the state, some fifteen miles from the Kentucky state line, and about thirty miles to the north of Nashville.

It was mostly a farming town back then, claiming to be the home of the world’s finest dark fired tobacco, a tradition that some folks would like to see carried on today. It's a fact that the dark black dirt in and around Robertson County is some of the richest dirt in the world. You can grow anything there, and over the years, almost everything has been grown there.

There wasn't a lot of industry nor a lot of factory jobs in Springfield back in those days, and a lot of Springfield people drove the twenty-five or thirty miles South into Nashville every day to work. There were only a few jobs in Springfield, outside of farming, and none of them paid very much in the way of wages.

Undoubtedly, it will come as no surprise that most of the people who lived in South Town didn't earn much money. Nor will you be surprised to learn that the kids who lived there were never handed anything on a silver platter. Unless, or course, you count heartaches and hard times, for their legacy was filled with these. Had there even been a platter, however, it would more than likely been made of cheap pink depression glass rather than silver.

But we got by.

In fact, we got pretty good at getting by back then, and it was a habit that some never managed to lose. It wasn't easy then, and for those who couldn't or wouldn't make a change, it still isn't.

Anyway, this book is about those times, and those people, and mostly about the kids that lived there. Some of the stories take place in the years during and following what was called The Great Depression, when times were the hardest our county has ever seen them. Life was different back then, much different.

Some of the stories happened during the Great War. That's World War II, of course, for those of you who have never heard that phrase before.

But most of the stories take place in the Fifties, when I and the other kids of South Town were first beginning to learn about the world and about ourselves. For the most part they're stories about the kids of Springfield. The kids from the wrong side of the tracks. The kids everyone on the other side of town looked down on, the kids who had a special name.

Exactly what did they call those kids, you might ask.

Are you ready for this?

They called those kids the South Town Rinky Dinks.

Kids like me.

I was one of the Rinky Dinks, and if you want the truth, I still am.

You know what? I'm pretty proud of it.

One thing's for sure. You won't read any apologies in these pages about where I came from, or how I grew up. And if I know the rest of the kids that grew up there, you won't get very many apologies from them either. There wasn't a single one of the Rinky Dinks that wasn't tough as a hickory nut when we were kids, and most grew up the same way. They used to say that we didn't have a pot to pee in, or a window to throw it out of, and maybe that's right, but the key is, we didn't know it. We were tough, we were proud, and we still are.

It’s a fact that almost every one of us turned out to be pretty good adults. We don't rob people, we don't cheat on business deals, and we don't take advantage of our friends. Add to that the fact that most of us haven't spent any time in jail, and you'll see that being a Rinky Dink might have not been so bad after all. Sure, of course I'm aware that there were a few exceptions, there always are, but there weren't that many.

I think the single most important thing about those kids is that we're all still friends. That’s saying a lot. After fifty plus years of knowing each other, we’re still friends.

We don't see each other as much as we'd like, in fact, mostly now when we meet it's at a funeral, but at those times, you can count on one thing. When a Rinky Dink meets another Rinky Dink on the street or anywhere else, we don't avoid one another, and we sure as hell don't pretend we're from somewhere we're not. We're more than happy to talk about the old days, back when it was always summer, the sky was a hell of a lot bluer than it is now, we had the field to play in, and we had each other.

So here then is my Rinky Dink book.

A collection of stories about a lifestyle very much unlike our life is today, yet hauntingly familiar to many of us. The stories will be familiar to anyone who was born and raised during that period in time, and especially familiar to those of you who grew up poor, on the wrong side of the tracks, and had to put up with other people who thought they were better than you. These are the stories of the Last of the South Town Rinky Dinks. The last kids who grew up on 21st. Avenue, before they tore down all the old houses and built the projects there.

Sometime, I guess it was 1957 or '58, they came in with bulldozers and trucks and pushed and rammed down all of the small, red brick sided houses on 21st Avenue and Carter Street and Cherry Street, and even a lot of those on Park Street, and they brought in progress.

Progress they called the Projects.

Of course, looking back, we all know the many wonderful and strange happenings that life in the Projects brought, and how much better off everyone became because of that progress. Not only in my hometown, but in hometown's all across the country. Sure.

So yes, we were the last of the South Town Rinky Dinks. The original ones. And this book is dedicated to those of us still living who will read these words and remember, and to those of us who have passed on, who will look down, or up, as the case may be, and laugh when they see the looks on the faces of the Rinky Dinks as they’re taken back in time.[/size]

Thank you E. Don,

I am so glad you posted that. See why I want you here--all of the time.

And, for your enjoyment, one more from the same book.
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Daisy and Stanley were two very special people to many of the Rinky Dinks, and at times I think both of them, particularly Stanley, probably had quite a lot of influence over the way my mind finally learned to think (now there's a scary thought). Of course, no one ever influenced me the way Mama did, but in many ways, Stanley ran her a pretty close second.

Daisy’s first marriage had been to a much older man in Coopertown, which is about 6 miles from Springfield. They had one child, a son named Charles, who was a good friend of mine back then, and still is.

For whatever reason, Daisy divorced her first husband and then married my Uncle Paul, one of my mother’s younger brothers. A few years later Paul was killed in WWII, and after a period of time Daisy married again. This time, married she Stanley Evans, and that is a whole nuther story.

Stanley was a big, good-looking man, who dearly loved three things. He loved Daisy, he loved a good cold beer, and he loved kids. To tell the truth, I always thought Stanley loved me a little more than he did most anyone else, except for Daisy of course. There seemed to be a special place in his big heart for me, and to the day he died he was one of my favorite people.

When Stanley went into the service, maybe in nineteen forty three or forty four, he sent me a little blue tee shirt, a souvenir shirt, not a real one, that had the inscription, Keep your shirt on Honey, will see you soon. I still have it. I didn't see him a lot in his later years, but every time I did he was still the same ol’ Stanley I grew up loving.

You see, Stanley read comic books. Funny books. The only grown person I ever knew that really read funny books. Not only that, when he was finished with them, he gave them to me. Stacks and stacks of them. He introduced me to Superman and Batman, to the Doll Man and to Green Lantern. I’m sure Stanley knew that my young mind would be opened by the books, and he also knew that imagination was the only way to get away from the reality that was South Town. Although I didn't understand everything he said, Stanley always tried to tell me that books were the key. Any kind of books. The funny books were the best way he knew to keep me interested in a world that existed outside my own, and to make sure that I knew the difference between real dreams and daydreams.

He once told me that real dreams are wonderful things. They give you something to work for, and offer a chance at being somebody.

You have to have dreams, Donald, he'd say. Don't ever believe anyone that tells you dreams are silly. Dreams turn a person into whatever he wants to be, and that's a good thing.

Yeah, well I want to be Superman, Stanley, is that too big a dream?

Naw, Donald, it's not too big, it's just that wanting to be Superman ain't a dream at all, it's a daydream. Now, don't get me wrong, daydreams ain't bad things either. Daydreams do for your soul what real dreams do for your mind. They lift it up and show it things it might not see anywhere else. So you see, daydreams are good, but Son, they just ain't real. You can daydream about being Superman, and that daydream will give you pleasure and make you feel good and all, but the fact is, you ain't never gonna be Superman. Not today, and not ever. That's what a daydream is all about.

But a real dream, that's something else. You can dream that someday you'll be a millionaire, or go to the moon, or be a movie star, and if you really work at it, that dream might come true. That's the difference between a dream and a daydream. Here, read another one of these funny books while I go see how Daisy is gettin' along.

Guess you can see why I thought so much of Stanley.

Daisy was a pretty woman, not very big, but she could make old Stanley walk the line. Looking back, I think she used to say things to me for no other reason than just to see what I'd say. Or do.

My favorite two tales about Daisy involve dinner time, or actually supper time. I was grown before I ever heard anyone call the evening meal "dinner". Everyone I ever knew called the noonday meal "dinner" and the evening meal "supper". Beats the hell out of me why that is, but it's true. Most of the time, I still call them that. Except when I'm around some of my Yankee friends. They wouldn't know what I was talking about. I have no idea when they'd show up if I invited one of them to have "supper" at my house. I know one thing for sure though. If I invited them over for "Sunday dinner" and they showed up around six or six-thirty that afternoon, they'd think I was a hell of a host when they found out we'd been through eating for three or four hours.

Anyway, the story goes that when I was three or four years old, I went to Daisy's house almost every afternoon to eat supper with her and Stanley. In fact, I was over there so much that it became quite a joke. One afternoon, after several days in a row of feeding me, Daisy told me that I couldn't eat with them that day because she'd broken my plate. I went home and told Mama what Daisy had said, and explained what I needed. Mama stood on the front porch and I expect she was laughing her head off as I purposefully headed back to Daisy's house with a small saucer. Daisy never mentioned breaking my plate again.

Like I said, Stanley loved a cold beer, or a hot drink of whiskey for that matter, and now and then he'd get into a little hot water with Daisy about drinking. Mama got another big laugh late one afternoon when I told her that I was for sure eating supper with Daisy tonight.

“Well, Honey,” Mama said, “you ate dinner with Daisy today, didn't you? Are you sure you want to go back over there for supper?”

“Yeah, Mama,” I replied, “I'm really sure I want to eat there tonight. Stanley's been out drinking today, and Daisy told me just as soon as he gets home, she's gonna cook his goose. I know I don't want to miss that kind of supper!”

My memory is finally sifting out and throwing away the difficult days and only remembering the wonderful ones. How lucky! What good is a sad memory, a lonely one? It's the happy ones that make me smile, remembering a young friend with whom I played cowboys and Indians or others with whom I jumped off of bridges into cold lakes in our underwear. Yes, as I remember it now, my youth was charmed and worth repeating.

Don, I think your boyhood days were a lot like mine. DK's too, except it was rivers rather than lakes and underwear was optional.

Dick and E.Don,

I like your childhoods. That is why you are so interesting, says I.

Permission? What's that?

The idiot who put together Army K-Rations must have been from the country because they were labeled Breakfast, Dinner and Supper.
Dinner was a can of cheese, a packet of lemonade and a few little things plus a small pack of cigarettes. Has anyone ever had a taste for lemonade when the thermometer reads zero and you haven't been inside a building in three months? You could have followed the course of the war by the full cans of cheese left lying on the ground. When prisoners waiting to be transported to the rear were given a "Dinner" K-Ration at lunchtime they cited the Geneva Convention. They couldn't believe we were fed such stuff. All because of some guy from the country!

I'd have been right beside him as he left.
Brings to mind Roald Dahl's great short mystery story in which the detectives ate the murder weapon.

I had a good childhood, a city/suburban life. We lived in my grandparents' house just outside Chicago with many relatives that lived in the city. (I am amazed at how many people here lived in the country.) My maiden aunt lived there also. The upstairs was a quiet clean orderly place. My family's bedrooms were on the second floor of this tudor house, a not quite so orderly place as the main floor. The best part of the house was my grandfather's workshop in the basement, a place that was never cleaned. He was a hands-on inventor with many machines.

My grandmother was very possessive and never "let" her daughters leave home. I was "hands off." She was not possessive with me. I avoided the kitchen because there were three women there already. I would still prefer to avoid the kitchen.

This was a religious Episcopalian family and the family's social life circled around church activities.

I loved to ride my bike, climb trees. I was kind of a loner.

I walked everywhere since my father didn't have a car until 1950.

I never thought my childhood was anything out of ordinary, but somehow I've written two books about the people that were part of those times.

Carol

Carol wrote:

Quote :

I avoided the kitchen because there were three women there already. I would still prefer to avoid the kitchen.

It's funny how our early memories affect our attitudes to places. The kitchen I most enjoyed being in as a child was my Aunt Myrtle's. She was married to my dad's older brother, Lawrence, and became the matriarch of that family after my grandmother died, when I was about five. Nearly every holiday for some years, that kitchen was alive with the aromas and sounds of a Southern woman's domain. Aunt Myrtle ruled. All of the women gathered there, and the men never came closer than an occasional head-poke through the door. Everyone, including me (the youngest) had tasks to perform. In that kitchen, I felt I belonged to, and was an important part of, a powerful community. It was so different at home. Mom never allowed anyone including me and her sisters-in-law to intrude. My own kitchen, while the children were at home, was more like Aunt Myrtle's.

I remember one year, in my kitchen, having a giblet gravy cook-off with my mother. We were feeding a huge crowd, and there was never enough of that gravy, so the cook-off was a fun way to make sure there was enough. The voters insisted it was a draw, though. No one was dumb enough to declare a winner.

Those were some of the sunshine days.

Ann

Sort of off topic, but I was noticing the names from the past. Myrtle, for one. I had an aunt Myrtle, an aunt Mable and an aunt Minnielee. I wonder where those names came from? I compare that with my friend's daughters: Faith, Dawn, and if she'd had a third it would have been Hope (70's children).

The kitchen was my least favorite place in our house.

My mother was a very good cook and a messy cook.

Every pot, pan and utensil was used. We had no running water and of course my job was to do the dishes.

By the time I heated water on a stove, dumped it in a sink and washed, then rinsed the dishes, I felt as though several thousand years had passed.

We had no dining room, so ate in the kitchen. We had an ugly formica table where I sat for hours gagging down peas and sneaking outside to spit them under the house.

The walls were turquoise the curtains-- BRIGHT RED. The dog house was a much better place.

Our living room was painted pink with a white mantel around the fireplace. The dining room walls had big flowered wallpaper and the kitchen was white. We ate in what we called "The Breakfast Room," although we also ate 'lunch" and "supper" there. It had been my mother's and great-grandmother's bedroom and where my great-grandmother died. It looked out on the backyard. My mother sewed in there, so her sewing machine was always set up and she could cut out patterns on the table. There was a haphazard closet, a mangel for ironing sheets, and a big old china cabinet painted blue. Since my grandfather invented telephones, there was always some strange telephone he was trying out.

Ah, memories, how they linger on our souls.

Carol

Carol,

We had a mangle too. How funny! It amazes me what a way to waste time--iron sheets?

Not me.

Boiling the water for the dishes, I remember putting on a second so you had enough hot water to finish the pots. By the time you go the cups, cutlery and then the plates the water was always cold. The second kettleful would warm it up to scalding, just right for the greasy pans. Now you just turn a tap and more hot water pours forth; boiling kettle are only for tea.

thehairymob wrote:

Boiling the water for the dishes, I remember putting on a second so you had enough hot water to finish the pots. By the time you go the cups, cutlery and then the plates the water was always cold. The second kettleful would warm it up to scalding, just right for the greasy pans. Now you just turn a tap and more hot water pours forth; boiling kettle are only for tea.

And you are 20 years my junior. So sorry!

It taught me the importance of central heating, hehehe.

There's a positive outlook.

Oh I remember those winter days Hairy. Scraping frost off the inside of my bedroom window. Hot water bottles that go cold and get kicked out of bed in the middle of the night and fall to the floor with a enormous thump. Tartan slippers, duffle coats,climbing trees and building dens in the woods.
Fun times yep!

Is this a contest?

It reminds me of the skit where the kids rooms got smaller and smaller, the work got harder and they got up before they went to bed.

No contest Alice, Hairy lives in Scotland, his winters were far colder than any I could have experienced.

Aw Phooey!

My house was always warm, we never ran out of food. Our folks kept track of us and my mother worried about my health and eternal salvation.

Food nah, we struggled to get every meal. We had to scrape mildew off the bathroom door just so we could have some sort of vegitation with our solitary crumb of cheese.
Dad used to have to beg on the streets on his hands and knees just so we could afford a bread roll.
Mum used to gather discarded tooth picks so's we'd have some firewood to burn, to heat the small single room we all lived in.
When dad was not begging he would be taking us kids out pidgeon hunting so he could sell the meat to local resturants.
Mum would carve wooden clothes pegs out of stolen walking sticks and sell them to Gypsy travellers.
Life was hard in them days school was harder. Me and my brother used to share the solitary uniform we possessed ( mum never explained why it was a girls uniform) each of us attending school on alternate days pretending we were the same kid. No one noticed we were different kids.

David,

I love the way your mind works. You win the award for funniest
post on this thread so far.

If you could change one thing about your childhood, what would you change?