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After we left Florida, is when I think we lived on Bayly Avenue in Louisville's Crescent Hill. I loved Bayly. We lived in a big old house with a big yard and there was a railroad track just down the street. I had a sandbox that occupied lots of my time and uncle Kenny used to balance a glass of water on a broomstick and walk around the yard with it balanced on his head to the delight of us kids, and we had one of the best toys ever, a Tinker-Liner.
The Tinker-Liner was a three wheeled, scooter like device. It was mounted on a rectangular metal frame with one wheel in front and two at the rear. A board was mounted on the frame and attached to a geared gizmo that attached to the rear axle via a bicycle chain. We stood on the board and pumped/rocked it back and forth which drove the chain to move the vehicle at some pretty good speeds. To coast, you just kept the board level. We loved that Tinker-Liner and I don't know what became of it. Hell, we moved so often back then that I can't even remember in what order we were here or there. I do know that we only lived on Bayly for one summer.
My grandmother was partially disabled and I recall one night when she slipped on a rug and fell down and couldn't get up. My Uncle George was home from the Navy on leave, but had gone for a long walk with his girlfriend and I don't know where mother was, so Sis and I sat down with Momboo, who was sprawled out on the dining room floor for two hours before uncle George came home and picked her up.
We moved from Bayly in a hurry, I remember that, because at that time I was really into Teddy bears. I had all kinds and I named them all. I can still remember them. There was Fuzzy, Etson, Shirley, Beverly, Brownie, Timmy, Charley, Blackout and Snowball. I had just gotten a new one, Blackout, and in the haste of packing, he was somewhere unknown. I apparently didn't like that and raised enough of a fuss that mother gave Sis some money to buy me another one. So Sis and I, with two neighbor kids, went up to a store on Frankfort Avenue and bought another panda. Blackout was the traditional black and white, while my newest was yellow and white and I named it Snowball. Thus appeased, we went back to packing.
That was, I think, when we moved behind the bookie joint. The year I had to enroll in school. I immediately hated it and that feeling only grew as I aged. I started in first grade, bypassing kindergarten, and several years later, following an IQ test, I was allowed to skip the third grade. I turned seventeen in March of 1956 and finally graduated high school in May. I absolutely despised going to school, as I considered it a colossal bore and waste of my time. In the early years my sister would walk with me to school and sometimes I would just stop. I would stand dead still and refuse to move. She would get very perturbed with me, but I wouldn't budge. After a while I would continue along, with no guarantee that it wouldn't happen again. I hated the regimentation of it all. I didn't like getting up so early and teachers telling me what books I could read, and that irked me as much as anything. I never had any strictness in my life and I didn't like it. I still don't like it. I still hate appointments and schedules.
I stayed in school because I knew that without at least a high school diploma, my chances of finding a decent job were nil. But I still didn't like it, as I cut classes thirty-five days in my senior year, (that's a whole grading period) but somehow managed to graduate. The truant office didn't check up on me until the last day I cut, because my absenteeism had always been accountable, prior to my senior year.
I once saw a TV show, "Walter Kronkite's Twentieth Century," and they featured some progressive school in New York where students actually got to participate in the lessons and I thought,
"Wow, now that's a school I wouldn't mind attending." No such luck in Kentucky, or probably most states. I felt vindicated when I heard "the smartest man in the world" say the same thing. I thought, "Wow," but then he proceeded to say the same about college. The guy had an IQ that was off the charts. You might think he would be a nuclear physicist or something similar, but no, he owned a small farm and was a part time bouncer in a bar. I thought he was pretty cool and then he and the TV moderator got into a discussion on Theology and left me way behind, so I quit watching. But he did say, when asked if he believed in God, "How can I not?" That stuck with me.
Then the smartest woman in the world appeared on the David Letterman Show one time and he completely blew it. He had no idea what to say to her and ended up making fun of her instead. It just made him look like an idiot.
I just naturally resisted any attempt at discipline. For my whole life, if I was told to do something, at school. at work, at home, I would automatically and immediately look for an out, or an easier way to do it than the norm, or maybe do the opposite. I am still that way. That may not be an admirable trait to admit, but it's the truth.
To illustrate what I am talking about; when I was about five or six years old, my mother had just finished ironing and put the iron on the kitchen counter.
She said to me, "Don't touch that iron Ronnie, it is really hot and you'll burn yourself."
Yeah, you're right. As soon as she walked out of the room, I went over and placed my hand flat on the iron. She was right too, it burned like Hell. I hollered of course, and she came running. I was in great pain and to make matters worse, mother and my grandmother conferred and thought the best thing to do was to put butter on it. That, as we now know, made it worse.
I was sure sorry I did that. It might have been better if she had said, "Ronnie, I'm through. You can put your hand on the iron now."
I probably wouldn't have come near the darn thing.
But here is an example of the stupidity of schools. In the twelfth grade, I was taking a class in Social Studies. The teacher was a real dick and the course was so bad that I just couldn't cope with it any more and got an F in the fourth grading period. Well, that woke me up. I didn't want to flunk the class and have to go to school another year, so I buckled down; I began to study and got an A in all of the tests in the next grading period. I raised my hand in class every day in the daily quizzes; I even handed in extra work and was an exemplary student.
I anxiously awaited my next report card. When it came I got a B. I was furious, so I approached the teacher's desk after class and demanded to know why I didn't get an A. He listened and calmly said, "It's simple. You just can't go from an F to an A."
Oh, yeah, well I did! But it's no use to even argue with that kind of logic.
The scholarship tests were another matter. They only gave scholarship tests to honor roll students, so I, of course, was ineligible for that little perk. I am sure that I could have held my own with that group, too, but they wouldn't let me in.
But in the meantime, I would read the Classic Comics for Ivanhoe or Wuthering Heights, or any of the horrible, socalled classics and write a nice report when forced to do so. They were a Godsend for students like me. One time I almost got stymied when I didn't turn in a book report. My teacher said, "I tell you what, if you read this book and write a report and turn it in on Monday, I might give you a D."
Well, that was all I wanted anyway, but I had to read the whole darn book over the weekend. So I went to the school library and pulled the book off of the shelf and what do you know. Pieces of notebook paper began falling all over the place. As luck would have it, the last reader had left copious notes on the book in the book. So I gathered them up and used them to write my report and got my D.
I mean, really. I was a typical teenage boy. I wanted to listen to Elvis and Fats Domino, drive around looking for girls, go see The Blackboard Jungle or Rebel Without A Cause and drink a few beers. I didn't want to struggle with the syntax of an ancient and irrelevant tome for days on end.
I never studied, so in several classes, we would have a little pop culture discussion before getting down to business and I was always tops in that category and would constantly raise my hand before anyone else. Then when the lesson would start, I would raise my hand even though I didn't know the answer and the teacher would say, "Put your hand down, Ronnie, you've answered enough questions today."
For one oral book report, we were supposed to talk about our favorite character from Greek mythology. Well, all of the boys naturally chose Hercules, and I, of course knew nothing about him, but I hoped I wouldn't be called upon too soon. Fortunately, about five or six guys gave their comments on Hercules and when I was finally called for my spiel, I had been listening closely to the other guys, and announced, "Well, my report is also on Hercules."
The teacher and the girls groaned and I repeated about five or six lines that had been covered several times already and asked, "Is there any need to go on?"
Teacher pleaded, "Will you take a C?"
I answered, "Yeah, I guess," and that was that.
We had a substitute teacher in English one day and he decided to hear our latest oral book reports and to my chagrin, called on me first. I hadn't even read a book, but this was not an assigned book reading, so I got up in front of the class and made up an entire book report on the spot that took up the entire class. I talked nonstop for fifty minutes, making it up as I went and as I was leaving the room, he said to me, "Daggone Ron, you must have really liked that book. I think you recited it verbatim."
I said, "Yeah, I did. It was really good."
Thus I was actually able to graduate from high school on time and not really ready for the dog eat dog world that awaited, but thrust into it anyway.