RAY DEAN JAMES - My Life chapter 7

In 1999, my father took to his very first home computer word processor and wrote about 30 pages of stories from his earliest memories. Before he passed in 2015, he shared a few more with me. When we left off in chapter six, it was 1949 and Dad was attending high school in downtown Cincinnati. ~rh

When I was an usher at the Albee Theater in downtown Cincinnati I worked with a guy who went on to be a Hollywood producer. Me, I used to get on stage and sing to the cleaning crew at night after closing time. I made a vow to come back and pack the place someday. I never made it. Nowadays the Westin hotel sits where the Albee once was…

I really enjoyed high school. Couldn't wait to get there each day. I took part in as many non-school programs as possible. And as many school functions as my spare time allowed. Chess club, drama, etc. Our school, Woodward High, was the oldest public high school west of the Allegheny Mountains. It was a beautiful four-story brick building with marble floors, stained glass windows, statues in the hallways, and took up an entire city block. It originally had a wrought iron fence around it but the fence was cut down and given to the scrap iron drive in World War II. The war ended almost immediately after the fence was destroyed. I guess we'll never know if it ever made any difference. I had lived only a block away from Woodward High School for years and I thought I'd never get there. But come the fall of 1949 Ray Dean James was finally enrolled in the Woodward class of 1952. William Howard Taft and Ezzard Charles were graduates of Woodward High. We didn't have our own football field so we had to walk two miles each day to Deer Creek field on Reading Road to practice, and consequently, we were never the home team. Our team, like the school itself, was 65 to 70% black and I soon made friendships with black players that have lasted a lifetime. Spending time socially with a bunch of black guys was a new experience for most of us. I had run around with Snowball a few years earlier but none of these guys was a Snowball. Each practice and game with my new teammates was a party in itself. To hear these guys cap on each other with their 'yo mammy' jokes and call each other names I won't repeat was a lesson for me in what not to say. We few white boys on the team soon learned to walk the walk and talk the talk. I not only learned the words to all the latest R&B hits, I loved them. And us Whiteys looked cool in our Tux Roll suits and Mr B shirts.

Woodward High School in the early 1900s, before the wrought iron fence was scrapped for the war effort.

The high, long collars worn by singer Billy "Mr. B" Eckstein were a popular style in the late 40s & early 50s.

Strong friendships developed between black and white kids and we mixed well in school, but we still had separate dances and proms. This was the early 50s and still too soon to mix socially away from school. By the start of our senior year we were rated number 10 in the state until everybody began kicking our ass. Several memories stand out. A 7-7 tie in the mud and rain against Western Hills at Elder High School. I must have slid 20 miles in the mud. A game against Central Vocational when our Bob Jackson was chasing his friend down the sideline and yelled "Jones, I'm gonna get your ass!" Jones looked back and saw who it was and threw the ball out of bounds. Once we put "red hot'' in Frank Hargrove's jock and watched him dance and scratch all through practice. If he had known, he would have killed us. After football season we were supposed to return to afternoon study hall but we never did. We just screwed off in the hallways. Or in the back room lab in Bob Becker's science class. Mr. Becker was only 5 years older than our senior class. He eventually married the pretty redheaded teacher next door, Beverly Cobie, and for years they came to our high school reunions.

Until I got out of school I spent three or four weeks each summer visiting my dad in Tennessee and my mom probably had to pay for the tickets because my dad never gave her any financial help. I'll never forgive him for that. The summer when I was 15 I slept on the front porch one Friday night and woke up Saturday morning with blood all over me and a bite of some kind on my thumb. On Sunday I felt a little dizzy and laid down. I woke up a week later in Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville. To this day they don't know what bit me. Mom had rushed to Tennessee because they weren't sure I would live.

In September of 1950 the Korean War started. Some of the guys I knew from school were coming back to tell us about it. Others weren't coming back. I remember Leon Johnson on crutches telling me about his wounds. He was with an all black unit at the Chosin Reservoir and he said, "We ran out of bullets so we whipped out our straight razors and started cuttin' communist throats." Most of our guys decided that we would go after graduation and win that war for them. Us and John Wayne. There were lots of glorified war movies full of young heroes with crew cuts. Us. But first we had to get through senior year, exams, and the prom. I was cool on Prom Night in my powder blue tux roll suit. Walt Alford and I double dated. He took Delores Smith and I took Betty Venable. We drove Walt's mom's car and I remember she gave us each an extra twenty dollars. When I picked up Betty I was waiting downstairs and she hung a high heel and down she came. Fortunately she wasn't hurt and we have laughed about it a million times since then. The prom was at the Music Hall ballroom and afterwards we went to the Lookout House in Northern Kentucky which was "wide open" then, like a little Las Vegas. After that, we changed clothes and went to breakfast.

A few weeks later we entered the real world. Graduation. My first experience as a high school graduate - the very first one in my branch of the James family, I might add - was as a lot boy at Bennett Brothers Cadillac. On my last day there I took off in a customer's Caddy to take all my friends for a ride. I remember coming back and seeing the whole world running up and down the street looking for me. As I recall, I just smiled to myself and said, "Air Force, here I come."

My group of friends - The Magnificent Seven - had been talking for some time about being war heroes and that decision seemed imminent. After talking with the different recruiters we decided that it would be USAF on June 26th 1952 and I was selected to go around that morning and collect everyone. One by one, all the chickenshits copped out on me with some bullshit alibi. So, when it got down to just me, I said, "Fuck it. I'm going."

So, instead of going with Cesler, Claunch, Neeley, and the others, I rode the train from Cincinnati to San Antonio with guys I met on the train: Tom Brewer, Tom Jones, Calvin Schloemer and others. As soon as we hit Lackland Air Force Base we were separated into different training groups called flights. But during the eight weeks of basic training we would see each other occasionally and it would be like a few minutes at home just being with another Cincy boy there in Texas. During the eight weeks I was visited once by Doris Mcintyre, a Woodward classmate who was going through WAF basic training and once by Joe Walker, a black classmate who was several weeks behind me. Twice during the latter part of basic training I got to go into town with Uncle Billy. He was actually my dad's uncle, a brother of my grandma, the one with the snuff juice running down her lip. Uncle Billy Ricketts was somewhat of a Statesville, Tennessee hero. He joined the army and was stationed at Fort Hood Texas when the Mexican-American fighting took place. He married a local girl and never lived in Tennessee again. He lived in San Antonio at 1910 Delgado. I'll never forget that address. I finally got to meet the Uncle Billy I had heard about my entire life. His friend and neighbor was a retired army man who had been General John Pershing's Sergeant Major during World War I.

1910 Delgado Street in 2013 from Google Street View