RAY DEAN JAMES - My Life chapter 1

MY LIFE written May-November 1999 by Ray Dean James

With italicized contributions in RED by Ric Hickey in Sept-Oct 2021

When my Dad got his first home computer and a printer in the late ‘90s he set about putting his life story down on paper. In his lifetime he had done a lot of things but the only real writing he had ever done was songwriting. So I was quite surprised when he handed me not one but two autobiographical manuscripts, totaling over 45 pages single spaced. (The second volume in fact was printed in a teeny tiny font. So in total this may run well over 60 pages.) For a man who had no practical experience as a writer, there are surprisingly few grammatical errors. Lots of run-on sentences and broken fragments strung together, but it's remarkably expressive stuff that conveys a lot about my father’s personality and the world he grew up in. A wide-eyed eccentric hillbilly in the city for all of his days, my father was a great storyteller. The details he did set down here in writing are just the tip of the iceberg. I’ll try to interject as little as possible - maybe a few contextual clarifications here and there. For the most part we’ll just let the writings stand as they were written.

MY LIFE was the first of two binders he gave me and it ran about 30 pages. The second installment, WHATTA DIFF’RENCE A DAY MAKES, is a fictionalized account of real events that my Dad felt was only for mature audiences. He even went so far as to stick a post-it on my copy that says, “Rated R”. There’s also a few tales included from Dad’s days of working in a lot of mafia run clubs in Newport, KY back in the 50s. Even forty years later he felt it was best to change some of the names, including his own.

-rh

I GUESS I’LL JUST CALL THIS “MY STORY”

By Ray Dean James

It would be nice if my memory was good enough to remember everything but I guess I’ll just have to list what I do remember in some order and hope it makes sense as you read it. Middle Tennessee, Statesville, late ‘30s, 5 or 6 years old, born in ‘34… In the largest of two general stores, Lee’s, there was one of the few radios in town. A typical evening had most of the families sitting around listening to the comedy shows of Fred Allen, Burns & Allen, Jack Benny, etc. while the children ran between and around the display cases and ignored the pleas of “y’all hush up now, ya heah”. The General Store was the center of the town’s life… piece goods and thread… horse shoes and collars… nails and saws (not the power kind)... flour in patterned sacks that would later be repurposed as shirts and dresses… All this stuff was sold outright or traded for eggs, a ham, or other farm produce. Lee’s was a fixture on Main Street, the only street, and was the gathering place for generations of whittlers, tobacco juice spitters, and coon dog traders. You could get an RC Cola and a Moon Pie, a nickel’s worth of cheese and crackers, a Barlow pocket knife, or a plow point… It stood the test of time from the late 1800s until the flash flood of 1974 which washed away Lee’s and half the town. I remember a low rock/concrete wall outside of Lee’s where all the old timers would gather and swap stories and gossip… What I wouldn’t give for a tape recording of some of those sessions. I remember once when Tommy Hutchinson and I were playing on an old A Model Ford in front of Lee’s and some teenagers talked Tommy into striking a match to see if there was any gas in the tank… Fortunately a passing farmer stopped him… It was Tommy and I who were caught hitting .22 bullets with a hammer on a flat rock in the backyard...We lived dangerously.

The people of this small community were predominantly hard-working, God-fearing farmers whose livelihood was at the mercy of the elements from year to year… My ancestors were all farmers. My great grandfather Quint had met a young girl named Ann Wilson in Virginia while fighting in the Civil War. After the war her father brought her to Tennessee by horse and wagon so that she and Quint could be married… They had a house full of kids. Aubrey, Byrd, Stratton, Lon, my grandfather Enoch, Myrtle and Alice. All the boys and their male offspring were farmers. As time went by, some of them were lucky enough to have other jobs like my Mom who carpooled it to Watertown’s Stevens Shirt Factory. One day on the 6 mile ride home some kind of accident happened. Not a serious one with injuries, but Mom was riding in the middle in the front seat and carrying a small cardboard suitcase she had bought for me and the gear shift went right through the case. As I recall I was thrilled with it as it was. Toys were few and far between then. I remember a yellow Coca Cola truck with battery operated headlights. I spent a lot of time under the bed playing with that one. And I don’t remember the exact year but one Christmas I got a Gene Autry gun and holster set...