16

 

I began driving at age 14 for all things farm related.  This meant the mile from town to our farm parcel, anywhere on our farm, and in town to get gas, supplies needed on the farm, the grain elevator etc.  

Now, age 16, I could drive legally anywhere.  And I did, and I loved it.  I loved the old Dodge, no frills, 4 on the floor, flathead six, half ton pickup as much as the Beach Boys loved their little deuce coup.  Probably even more.  The engine was so simply engineered that just about any problem could be fixed with a wrench or screwdriver.  But it was not temperamental at all, and could withstand great abuse - which it got crossing farm fields and traveling muddy roads.   I could say the 49 Dodge pickup was my first love, and at age 14 that could have been true, but by age 16 I had another teenage sweetheart, later to become my wife and lifelong companion, and priorities got totally rearranged.

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‍    I still cherished my Schwinn, and my paper route business had expanded to include morning deliveries.   In addition to my Journal Gazette afternoon route, I was delivering early morning editions of the Decatur Herald, the Chicago Tribune, the Sun Times, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  I really liked the morning route.  It meant getting up at 5AM and going over to Woolen’s Drugs to pick up the newspapers from the dispatcher who came from Decatur.  I paid the dispatcher directly for the papers I needed to deliver, which was different from my afternoon route where I wrote biweekly checks to the Journal Gazette.  The doughnuts usually arrived while I was folding the papers, or at least they would be there when I finished my route.   I snagged one or two, and paid Mr. Woolen by leaving coins in the doughnut box.

‍    Dawn broke while I was making deliveries.  The pastel sky painting of the early morning sunrise, as it overwhelmed the last twinkling star, was always amazing.   And as the sun was making its dramatic appearance over the horizon, indoor house lights were being turned on, and outdoor porch lights turned off - the light show composing a Shakespearean narrative of diurnal life as I cycled my way down the streets of hamlet.  

 

‍ Teenage romance is costly.   My paper routes did not cover the expenses of weekend dates.  Barn painting, concrete mixing for Meeker’s storage bins, and farm labor baling hay, detasseling corn, and cultivating bean crops made weekend wooing possible.   Not to complain; seriously I loved the sweaty manual labor, the camaraderie that went with it, and the cooling off dip in the spring-fed pond that ensued.  These experiences were formative.  I still enjoy physical activity.   I still get up before 5 AM every morning.   Most important, my experience taught me at an early age the value of managing money and to appreciate physical labor.

 

‍     As basic as the 49 pickup was, it did have a radio, and a very good one that easily picked up WLS which had converted to all rock in 1960.  The Dodge radio produced full tones not heard on small transistor radios.  It was almost irresistible to not stomp the accelerator as  Del Shannon’s Runaway blared through the speakers.  Dion’s Runaround Sue, and Chubby Checker’s Let’s Twist Again kept the tires rapidly spinning.  But the Shirelles’ Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow and Dedicated to the One I Love mellowed the tempo.  Meanwhile, Patsy Cline was Falling to Pieces, Roy Orbison was Crying, Bobby Lewis was Tossin’ and Turnin’, and Barry Mann was wondering Who Put the Bomp in the Bomp Bomp Bomp?  Soon to be on the charts, 19 year old Bob Dylan traveled east from Minnesota to meet 48 year old Woody Guthrie who was dying with Huntington’s disease at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey. 

 

Henry Mancini also made a top twenty song with Moon River which was the theme song for the box office hit Breakfast at Tiffany’s starring Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, Buddy Ebsen, and Mickey Rooney.   With Blake Edwards as director and based on Truman Capote’s book, Breakfast at Tiffany’s was by far my favorite movie of 1961 and among my favorites ever.  Only a few other films worth noting came out of Hollywood that year.  The Misfits with Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, and Montgomery Clift in the cast didn’t live up to promise.  But West Side Story was definitely a financial success with an innovative script and memorable music composed by Leonard Bernstein.  Roger’s and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song also earned rave reviews.   Lover Come Back, The Guns of Naverrone, The Parent Trap, La Dolce Vita, were other1961 releases I saw, or least paid to see, on weekend dates.

 

The Saint Louis Cardinals finished in the middle of the National League Pack ahead of the Pirates, Cubs, and Phillies.  With a roster including Bob Gibson, Tim McCarver, Ken Boyer, Red Shoendienst, Curt Flood, and Stan Musial you would expect a better ending.  But it didn’t really matter, the Yankee’s won twice as many games as they lost during the regular season and were fated to give a drubbing to whomever they met in the World Series.  Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Roger Maris, Yogi Berra, Clete Boyer, Elston Howard, and company definitely ruled.   

 

‍   1 week after confederates opened fire on Fort Sumter and precisely 100 years before my 16th birthday the 6th Massachusetts recruits arrived by train in Baltimore.  They needed to cross Baltimore by horse drawn carriages and board another train that would take them to DC to join with troops summoned by the 16th president to put down the southern insurrection.  Maryland, a slave state, had many southern sympathizers, and they formed a mob to prevent the Massachusetts’s regiment from crossing their city.  During this initial confrontation prior to Manassas Junction, four Massachusetts' soldiers and 12 rebels lost their lives. 

‍   100 years later segregationist were again opposing interstate travel. Jim Crow laws made it illegal for Blacks to use most public transportation.  CORE organized freedom riders boarded buses in DC bound for New Orleans to challenge these racist regulations.  Their ride ended, as Martin Luther King predicted, in Alabama 100’s of miles short of its Louisiana goal.  After suffering beatings and arrests in Virginia and South Carolina, the Freedom Riders were met by over 100 Klansmen in Anniston, Alabama.  As the first bus pulled up, the driver yelled outside, “Well, boys, here they are. I brought you some niggers and nigger-lovers”  After the bus had been firebombed and its passengers beaten in multiple mob attacks,  CORE leader James Farmer called a halt to this initial Freedom Ride.
      SNCC next took up the cause beginning their freedom ride in Nashville, only to be pulled over and arrested in Birmingham for defying segregation laws. The riders were forcibly transported back to Nashville.
     A third attempt was made.  Again sponsored by SNCC and departing from Nashville, and this time, with the support of AG RFK, the riders made it all the way to Montgomery Alabama. There they were confronted by a white mob who beat them severally inflicting numerous permanent injuries.  Local police took the side of the mob and served the riders with an injunction prohibiting them from reentering the bus.
     This injustice, and the media furor it created,  prompted the Feds to get even more involved, and National Guard support was given to 27 Freedom Riders who continued on to Jackson, Mississippi.  There they were arrested and jailed.  Robert Kennedy doubled down ordering the ICC to enforce desegregation in interstate travel.  With this added support multiple freedom rides broke out across the south, and by September civil rights leaders felt they had succeeded in accomplishing their mission.  At least, enough so, the Freedom Rides were suspended and the energy it created was transferred to other operations.