by
Lloyd Foster
Lloyd Foster
I think we live life one decision at a time. I’m talking about major decisions. Career decisions or marriage decisions. Whether to leave your comfort zone and reach out to something unknown, uncharted and unplanned. Spontaneous decisions that just seem like the right thing to do at the time. These decisions can take you down roads you never dreamed existed. It could be a blissful, beautiful experience or the most hellish nightmare you could imagine. Maybe I have been lucky. Aside from a few stretches of rough unpaved roads, it has been a wonderful experience for me. I grew up on many farms in West Tennessee. My dad was a sharecropper. I was the son of a sharecropper and that suits me just fine. Sometimes while working in my backyard garden that I call my farm, I start to think. How on earth did I end up in this small mining town in Central Arizona?
My memory becomes pretty clear just before I started School. I was five, jumping up and down on the couch. My Sister, Theresia, was counting the days til I started School. She was singing, “Not tomorrow or the next day, or the next day, or the next day.” She must have gone on for at least five minutes. Eventually that day came. I was six. So starting at the first grade I can follow my life all the way to the here and now. I can remember all the old farm houses we lived in. Mom, Dad and my two older Sisters. The Farms were named for the owner who let us sharecrop the land. The “Ellis Place,” “Williams Place,” “Sharp Place,” and several more. I remember being happy. Was I really? Maybe I scan over old memories too quickly. Just skim over the high lights, accepting the good and glossing over the bad. Maybe over the years my brain has cleaned up some things and like an old phono record digitally remastered for sound, I now have a clean, perfect recollection of something that never really was. With that thought in mind, can I really trust what I remember to be the absolute truth? Five witnesses to the same accident have five different stories. Well, it is no accident that I am here. Dad wanted a boy. He got one. I was born at home and spanked into breathing the clean, crisp Tennessee mountain air in November of 1943. This is my story.
When the school day ended at Nebo,Tennessee Elementary School I would bolt from my seat and race down the long stairway leaving the one room school. I would seek out Alice Ann, steal a kiss and run as fast as I could. Don’t know why I had to run because she never chased me. Alice was the cutest girl I had ever seen in my whole 6 years of life. I was in the first grade and she was in the third. One teacher taught all three grades in one room. A bus would take us down the gravel road to a lane leading to our house. We lived on the Ellis Place. I was happy and excited all the time about life and my Sisters and the cows and mules and goats and everything on the farm. We also had Cats and Dogs and Chickens. It was like a large petting Zoo.There was always something fun to do. My sister, Theresia was two years older than me but we were best friends. She looked out for me and also stole my candy. She did it legally I guess by being smarter than me. I think everyone was smarter than me. If we both had three pieces of one cent candy, she would end up with her’s and two of mine. She would simply say to me, “Don’t you give me any of your candy!” Knowing I always did the opposite of hercommanding me to do anything. I would run by her and lay the candy by her hand. Then I would run off thinking I had won some little victory over her. Wow, the cost of being dumb.
After three years at Nebo, I started school at Yorkville Elementary. I needed to leave Nebo anyway. I was always getting hurt. First I got too close to someone swinging and took a hard hit to the forehead that knocked me to the ground. Later I was chasing someone and ran through a softball game I didn’t know was happening. A girl swung the bat and caught me in the back of the head knocking me out cold. The last mistake was the coal house next to the school. It was the little building they constantly told us to stay out of. Being adventurous, I found an opening on one side and jumped inside landing on a board with a protruding nail. It found it’s way through my right shoe and foot. That got me a trip to the Doctor and a tetanus shot. It was time to leave Nebo.
Yorkville School was much nicer, bigger and more modern. There were more teachers and a room for each class. The playground was nice and they even had a gymnasium but the lower grades were not allowed to go there. We used the playground. One cold winter morning however, we all watched it burn to the ground. First time I had seen a building burn and I stood fascinated while faculty and older students were crying and fainting. At the time I was quite puzzled by that reaction. We were living on the Ellis place at that time. His name was Lloyd Ellis, my Dad was Lloyd Foster and I was Lloyd Foster, Jr. because dad could not think of any other name that he liked. He did not really like his own name much either but he settled on it for me. One day Mr. Ellis came to our house, took a long look at me and removed his work gloves from his back pocket. He slapped them across my head bellowing, “There are too many Lloyd’s around here!” “From now on I am gonna call you Butch!” It stuck. I became Butch from that day on til I left Tennessee for the US Air Force in 1961. When I do make occasional trips back to Tennessee I am Butch again. My Mother’s name was Mattie Lou, Dad called her MadLou, then my Sister Theresia Rose and the older first born was Babara Ann. A family of five poor as a church mouse. We left that farm shortly after I got my new name and I am not sure why. I know there was some hard feelings between Dad and Lloyd Ellis. I never understood what it was all about and my parents never spoke of it.
I don’t recall what “Place” it was but it surely was not ours. I was nine years old that March day in 1952 and playing outside on an usually hot day. I saw the sky darken. A little whirl wind was playing with dried leaves near the tree I was under and the air quickly turned cool. It felt really refreshing after the intense heat we had suffered for the last few days. I even jumped into that little whirlwind but it was stronger than it looked and the leaves and small sticks were stinging my face and arms. This place was in a small community called “Cool Springs” and the nearest town of any size was Newburn. I liked it there though because my Uncle and Aunt lived across the gravel road on a hill and there was a place to fish close by where I could catch catfish. If I skinned them, Mom would fry them just for me. My sisters said that I was spoiled and a Moma’s boy. Well sure I was a boy and she was my Mom…I never understood that. Over supper I told the whirlwind story and how it had quickly turned cool but apparently no one was concerned and my parents didn’t respond any concern about that or the dark sky outside. We went to bed as usual and sound asleep until around midnight. I shot straight up from bed hearing my parents yelling and waving a flashlight across the faces of me and my sisters. “Get up, dress quickly and come to the front porch!” I could hear what sounded like a tractor outside. My mind was numb but I tried to hurry and get to the porch. It was a tractor and my Uncle driving it! He had backed to the front porch and was yelling for us to get on the draw-bar and hold to the seat. I could see the water lapin up over the porch which was a good two feet off the ground. It was still pouring rain and very cool. I was never scared and I thought the tractor ride was fun but my sisters were screaming and clutching me close and telling me to hold on tight while the ride took us across the road to my Uncles house. He then went back and got Mom and Dad. We only got flooded but a Tornado came within a half mile or so of us and did a great deal of damage and caused several deaths. Barely any water got into our house and we returned home late the next day. When the water was completely gone from the yard, Theresia and I found rubber balls and many other toys in our yard. It was like Christmas to us!
I finished the forth grade at Yorkville, Elementary but that would be my last year there because we moved again. I hated to leave because I was sweet on Ann Almond. I had given up on Alice because she was older and didn’t seem to be interested in me. Anyway her folks were rich and we were not. I did not know if we were rich or poor until I asked my Dad one day. He paused for a long moment and started, “Boy if it cost a dollar to go around the world, I couldn’t get outta sight.” I took that as a no. Dad always tried to use some twisted logic to answer questions and I didn’t always go away knowing what his answer was. Once he told me I didn’t know my rear end from a hole in the ground. When I insisted I did he picked up a stick and made two holes in the ground. Pointing to one he said, “This is your rear end” and to the other,”this is a hole in the ground.” He threw the stick away, stood up and asked,”Where is you rear end?” I pointed to the other hole. Dad shook his head,”Nope, it’s a hole in the ground.” See what I mean? I never knew why we left Cool Springs. Maybe Dad got a better deal from another farm owner. His name was Mr. Milligan, thus the Milligan Place. The dilapidated, run down shack where I slept in the attic. I needed my privacy but I must admit this was the worst of all the shacks we had lived in. Dad said this was temporary because Mr. Milligan was gonna build us a new house. We were near the town of Greenfield, Tennessee and that would be my school from the fifth grade until I graduated High school. One thing better than the cot in the attic happened to me here. Dad bought a Horse and ordered a beautiful saddle from Montgomery Ward. He never said the horse was mine but I was the only one who rode her so I called her my horse. I named her Dolly. When school was out for the summer and the crops laid by, I would saddle Dolly and ride from sunup to sunset. A couple of friends from Greenfield would come out and ride with me sometimes and we would explore the country side taking every dirt road or cow trail we came across. If we discovered a water hole we would undress and skinny dip. When we were hungry we would ride to some country store where old men sat and played checkers and buy a bologna between two large crackers for a dime. Life was good. Life has always been good for me. I am not pretending that it was perfect every day. I had some deep disappointments from time to time. One day after coming home from school I ran out to the pasture to see Dolly but she was gone. Mom said that Dad sold her. Dad never spoke a word about it. Never. Mr. Milligan must have forgotten about building us a house so we moved again. This time it was the Sharp Place.
The Scott Sharp farm was off the beaten path. A dirt road off of a gravel road some quarter of a mile from anyone. Wooded area and several acres of farm land. Good memory there but a bad, troubling memory also. It may have caused the good memory. I was eleven and wild as an Indian. I would often go into the deep woods and pretend to be an Indian wearing a headband with a feather and making my own bow and arrows. I remember climbing the tallest trees I had ever seen in those woods. Once while exploring deeper into the forest I discovered a large house unoccupied and looking like it had been for several years. Just a large old house about to fall down. I noted where it was and left it alone, for a time.It was a Saturday and we had company. Lots of company. The Yates brothers with sixteen kids between them and my friend Dennis Harrison from down the road. Mom had been a Yates and they all came from Lake county and were farmers also but seemed better off than us. I liked it when my Uncles, Theorn and Leslie came because of all my cousins to play with. After we had eaten fried chicken, and all the good deserts, we kids were told to go outside and play so the grownups could talk. That is when I made the fatal error. “Hey, you guys!” “Wanna go explore an ole spooky house in the woods?” They all yelled “YES!” so off we went. After a few minutes of just looking around and seeing not much of anything, someone in the group found a rock and threw it through a window. I did not cast the first stone and do not remember who did. We all froze in our tracks and just stared at each other as if trying to read each others thoughts. Suddenly all hell broke loose as mob mentality took over. We all grabbed sticks, stones and anything that would break a window and we broke them all. Well, we missed two that a shade had covered but we took out fifty two all together. Then sanity returned and we slowly walked back to my house. We were not laughing anymore or even talking.
Sunday came. I was in the yard shooting my bow at cans on a stump when Dennis came running and calling my name. “Butch”, he stopped to catch his breath. “Ole man Poston checks that house every Sunday and he is coming up the road to your house!” Dennis knew that and never said anything? He was even of like mind in the destruction we did! I had been thinking that nobody owned it, that it was just an abandoned house. “Don’t worry Butch, I’ll go talk to them.” Dennis bolted off down the dirt road to meet the two men I could see coming. Later I found out how the conversation went. “Hello Mr. Poston, how are you?” “Well Dennis, not so good.” Have you seen anyone around my old house?” “No sir Mr. Poston, why, is something broke?” Again the price we pay for being dumb. They talked to Dad. Dad talked to me. I told the whole truth including my belief that it was abandoned and belonged to no one. Dad and my Uncles and Mr. Harrison had to buy the glass and replace it and clean up the mess. None of the other kids got a whipping from their parents. I did. Mom had taken a switch to me a few times and it stung a little but didn’t make me cry. This one and only whipping Dad gave me made me want to die. “The back porch!” he called in a loud commanding voice. I braced myself thinking I was ready. I’ll take this like a man I told myself. I didn’t. Dad was welding a bridle rein doubled in his right hand. He grasped my left hand and thrashed me from my buttocks to my ankles, forever! After the third blow I could only scream and try to break free.After dozens more I though he was going to kill me. I think he only stopped because he was exhausted. I knew I deserved to be punished but I thought he went too far. Those whelps on my legs healed slowly and left faint scars. Mostly the scars were on my heart.
