450 Thole Street - Part 1 | Episode #450

Right Thinking with Steve Coplon.

This week's show is called "450 Thole Street - Part 1".  Tune in and hear Steve as he invites you to travel with him back to his first neighborhood, where it all really began for him. This prequel to his autobiography "The Value of a Dollar: My Memoirs and How I Learned the Work Ethic", offers insights into understanding how Steve grew up to be the man that he is. Take a look into Steve’s life, take a look into your own. There's always more to learn.

In this episode, I delve into my childhood memories, specifically my first neighborhood, Thole Street, as a prelude to my autobiography, "The Value of a Dollar." I share personal stories that reveal how my early experiences shaped my identity and relationships. With a focus on family dynamics, I discuss the complexities of growing up amidst confusion and conflict while highlighting the importance of understanding our roots for personal growth.

Through anecdotes about neighbors and friendships, I illustrate how these formative experiences fostered resilience and community support. I emphasize the importance of reflection and forgiveness, encouraging listeners to reflect on their pasts and the lessons they have learned along the way. By the end, I hope to inspire a journey of self-discovery, urging everyone to reconnect with their memories to gain a deeper understanding of their present selves. Join me next week as we continue this exploration of identity and growth.

https://www.talknetworkradio.com/hosts/right-thinking

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
There must be lie starning brighter somewhere.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Got to be birds. Why I'm high to the sky
four of blue.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Good morning, welcome to Right Thinking with Steve Copeland. I'm
your host, Steve Copeland, and thank you for tuning in.
Let's have a great day.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Good morning, everybody. Glad to be with you. Well.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
Today's episode number four hundred and fifty Right Thinking with
Steve Copeland is very pleased to announce that this week's
show was called four fifty Full Street. Tune in and
hear Steve as he invites you to travel with him
back to his first neighborhood where it all really began
for him. This prequel to his autobiography, The Value of

(01:07):
a Dollar, My Memoirs and How I Learned the Work
Ethic offers insights into understanding how Steve grew up to
be the man that he is. Take a look into
Steve's life, take a look into your own. There's always
more to learn.

Speaker 4 (01:24):
I have to tell you that this is a long,
long awaited moment for me to be able to come
with you, be with you today and go back to
Thole Street.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
And what I want to do today is to just
share a lot with you. You know, all of us
we came from somewhere. Some of us we don't want
to look back. Others can't stop looking back. Part of
it is is that have you ever wrestled in your

(01:55):
life to kind of understand the conflict that's inside you.
Maybe you didn't come from the nicest background, maybe it
was very difficult, Maybe it was just a broken home,
a divorced family. One of the things that I that
I want to tell you, though, is that you know
your DNA, your blood is both your mama and your daddy,

(02:19):
and sometimes you're a little mixed up as you're growing up.
I mean we all are, maybe not all of us,
but most of us. I'm sure I sure did. But
you know, we're looking to find ourselves. We're looking for
our identity, we're looking to understand our lives. And so
if your parents were in great conflict and it ended

(02:39):
up in divorce and it's been like that, well maybe
you just have an issue inside yourself too because you
don't know what's right.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
You know, you got your dad, you got your mom.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
Like I just said, I went through that for a
great deal in my life, just trying to understand which
way is my life supposed to be, and I'm going
to talk about some more of that today, but I'm
just going to ask you to indulge me today is
as I go back into this trip back into my
early childhood, and I hope that maybe my own reminiscences

(03:12):
will stimulate ones for you, and that you know, some
of them may be happy, some of them may be
sad perhaps, and looking back at your earliest roots, you'll
find answers, perhaps even redemption. I was I was talking
to a buddy mine of the why today I went
to the wide pool before I got on the air

(03:33):
today just to kind of get myself worked up a
little bit here, and what I wanted to tell you
about that And when I when I talked to him
about to show that I was going to be doing today,
he was curious, of course, and I said, but what
I'm really wanting to make sure I do is is

(03:53):
I want to I don't want to just have everybody
just have to listen to my stories of my childhood.
I do so that perhaps people will be able to
kind of get something out of it themselves, to look
back and maybe see things, you know, a little a
little different now that they're they're older and looking back.

(04:15):
I was talking to, you know, my best friend Bud
also before the show, and and he he gave me
a thought, and he goes, well, you know, it's just
so important to to you realize as you get older,
to think about what your parents, that their circumstances, to
think about what their circumstances might have been, to try
to understand them.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
As you look back at your life. And I and I.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Brought up to my friend at the why that you know,
just maybe just maybe by people listening to their show,
they're going to be able to, you know, to look
back at their at.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Their own lives a little bit. Maybe it'll trigger a
lot of memories.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
And I'm hoping that if it does, and when it
when it does, they go back and they they maybe
they maybe sort out some things that they never could
sort out before, maybe through through particularly love and forgiveness.
And and so my friend the wife he said, you know,

(05:14):
don't do not judge, or you shall be judged.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
And then he said and that's not our job.

Speaker 3 (05:20):
I thought that was absolutely beautiful and I just love
the way said that. So you know, we we're not
here to judge others, you know, we're we're not blameless.
But when I when I mentioned that, perhaps you'll even
find redemption near the end of the show, you know,
I'll speak some more to some deeper things, you know,
more spiritual things, more more of those things. But what

(05:42):
I'm what I'm really meaning is maybe when you go
back and look at your life, maybe that you'll you'll
be able to see some things. Maybe some redemption in
this phrase, in this context means to correct some of
the wrongdoings that you maybe didn't take responsibility for. Me
you will now maybe you want to make amends, maybe

(06:02):
you want to change your behavior. So that's just so
important that I'm hoping that you'll get that out of this.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
Well.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
You know, if I if I had an announcer other
than myself, maybe that announcer would say, well, everybody, you know,
Steve's going to come on down and I just want
you to sit back and relax. This he shares his
life with you, and just sit back and enjoy. Well
here I am, I'm Steve. Okay, so I'm ready. Thank
you for that introduction. That announcer that's not really here.

(06:33):
I got a really good friend that I also wanted
to share some of his insights because remember I said,
some of us didn't come from the nicest neighborhoods. Maybe
some of us might have come from, you know, a
bad home life or a rough neighborhood. So a really
good friend of mine, Rodney Dangerfield, He's got some quotes
that I want to share with you about what he
says about his neighborhood. I came from a real tough neighborhood.

(06:57):
I put my hand in some cement and felt another hand,
he said, I live in a tough neighborhood. When I
plan my budget, I allow for hold up money. Another
thing he said was I came from a real tough neighborhood.
Why every time I shut the window I heard somebody's fingers.
He went on to say, my neighborhood was so tough

(07:19):
we played horseshoes with the horse still attached. Last one,
I'm going to share this one was really tough, he said,
I live in a tough neighborhood. My high school paper
had an obituary column. Why do I start off a
show where I'm trying to get deep into our lives
and the meaning of our lives with Rodney Dangerfield Is

(07:40):
because I think that one of the things we all
have to figure out is how to cope with what
we've gone through. And one thing I want to point out,
because whether it's you yourself that's gone through some hard
times or maybe your children are a lot of times,
we will when they're middle of some very tough situations
to develop some coping mechanisms that will carry us through

(08:03):
our lives. And I want to tell you right now
that humor. Humor has been good for me, but the
best it's good for me is to know the Lord
Jesus Christ. But let's continue now, so I want to
I want to tell you that my first neighborhood, four
fifty fold Street, was really the second neighborhood that I

(08:25):
lived in, but I was really too young to remember.
Uh the first neighborhood.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
We moved when I was two years old. But I
want to tell you a few things about the first
neighborhood that I know most of this from my sister Arlene,
who's who's very important in my life. I visually she
went through the same things I went through in our childhood.
She's four years older than me. But we talked in
preparation for this show and shared some memories. But we

(08:50):
we my first house that I grew up in. I
wouldn't call it my first neighborhood because I was less
than two years old, but it's where I grew up.
You know, this is who I am. We lived in
Ocean View on Bayview Boulevard, right where Fisherman's Road intersects
comes in into diagonal to Baby Boulevard, and you could

(09:13):
walk down a couple of blocks and take a left
and go down Cape View Avenue and get on down
a couple of blocks and you'd be right there at
Ocean View Beach, at the Chesapeake Bay to looters. And
one of the greatest greatest things of my life is
that my mother, she loved going to the beach, and

(09:34):
everybody in my family we just love the beach. I
think the only person in my family that loves it
as much as I do is my daughter, Lindsay. She
just loves going to the beach whenever she can. Well, so, anyway,
I was born and we lived in a house on
Baby Boulevard, and every day when the weather permitted. I

(09:54):
understand that from the time I was, you know, like born,
my mother had a big baby carriage and my sister
told me it was wicker and it had one of
those nets over it, and my mother. I was that
baby that got into that baby carriage and went to
the beach all the time. The salt water, the sand
is in my blood. Later on in my life. If

(10:15):
you ever get into the value of a dollar of
my memoirs and how I learned the work ethic, you'll
you'll understand more about about me and fishing piers and
all the things that I do because the you know,
the water's in my blood. I just told you I
started when I was a little baby. But I want
to tell you a really great story. So the house that
we lived at on Baby Boulevard, it was a duplex

(10:38):
and there was a family, the Weaver family.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
JD.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Weaver was a construction contractor and they had two sons there,
Charlie and Jean. And I've always heard this story, but
just the other day, my sister gave me a little
more details. The story I had always heard was that
when my sister, she's four years older than me, so
she was like five years old, there was this refrigerator

(11:03):
box that refrigerated delivered in and she was crawling through it.
And you know a lot of kids just love taking
a screwdriver and punching holes in these big boxes. Well,
the story is is that my sister was crawling through
the refrigerator box and she got stuck in the head
with a screwdriver by Jeane Weaver. And if you ever

(11:27):
meet my sister, you can you can put your hands
on her head and sure enough, there's there's a hole there.
There's a hole in my sister's head from the screwdriver
from when she was five years old. And so yeah,
she told me. She told them that story again the
other day. I had it right, She got stuck in
the head from a boy that was punching holes with
a screwdriver or a box. Well, hey, I hope you

(11:48):
don't relate to that story. Anybody that's still with me here, Well,
we moved from Baby Boulevard to Fole Street four fifty
Fold Street. But the beautiful part of the story is
is that JD. Weaver was the construction contractor that built
the house. I told Arlene that I was real proud
that I got that memory, that I knew that J. D.

(12:10):
Weaver was built our house on Fall Street. And Fall
Street is a street that runs between Grammy Street and
tide Water Drive and it just comes right up to
Gramby Street, I mean Granby High School, right there at
the other end of the railroad tracks. And you know,
we heard we heard trains on those railroad tracks every
single night from ten or eleven o'clock at night, all

(12:33):
through the night. You could lay there in bed and
I read all the time when I was laying in bed,
and I cut off the light. But there's always that
sound of sound of that train and they go on
for thirty minutes longer because I guess they run them
late at night, you know, just because it doesn't block
as much traffic. But I grew up with the sound
of a train just six blocks down the street, give

(12:58):
or take, and could hear those trains all the time.
And that was that was that was just a relaxing thing.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
The house that we lived in that JD we were built,
it was it was the fourth house on Fall Street
at the time. It was what they said a cow pasture.
There were no sidewalks and it was just pretty much country.
And I think the first neighbors that we had there
were were the Roberts's and Bentley Roberts. You know, he

(13:29):
became my best friend three years older. My whole life
will tell you. I'll get into more stories as I
keep figuring this stuff out. Is where I'm going to
go with this. But the first four houses were the
Davenports across the street, the Cahoons, the Musgraves. I think
we were the first four houses. And maybe that's five
that I said, let's see the Roberts's, the Davenports, the Canons,

(13:50):
the Musgraves. Well that's five, but I heard we were
number four. And so the Musgraves lived right next door
to us. And Mary Musgrave was it was a nurse.
And many times when I had an injury or you know,
got bloodied up, you know, you could always go over
the musk Graves and and this Musgrave would bring you
in and put that antiseptic whatever it was in a

(14:13):
tensure of iodine or something, and clean your what we wound,
and give you the pep talk that you're doing really good,
and put the band aid on you.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
She was wonderful.

Speaker 3 (14:21):
And her husband's name was U see, if you know
anybody that has this name, Muzzy, Muzzy. I'm not gonna
I'm not gonna make any references to that, but he
was just a wonderful man, and his thing was gardening,
and he had in our backyard the whole length had
a huge yard. It was one hundred and eighty feet.

(14:41):
It was like in a quarter of an acre, bigger,
I don't know. It was nice, big yard. And but
in between our two backyards he he had grapes. He
had grape vines, and those grapes were absolutely wonderful.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Picked them, ate them.

Speaker 3 (14:57):
You know. We were welcome to him, he told us.
But we had those grapes forever. They were absolutely delicious.
And then in our own back here though my parents,
I'll introduce them to you.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
Now. My father's name is Sydney. Did not have a
middle name.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
He was the youngest of twelve, and I heard they
ran out of names by the time they got to him.
So most of most of his brother's siblings didn't have
middle names. So you know, part of his life story, though,
is is that his father died when he was two
years old. So I always heard that that. That was
one of the things about my dad. He didn't have
a dad raised him. He's very very athletic, and you know,

(15:31):
taught me how to play tennis and when I was
little in the house, you know, he gave me all
these horsey rides, you know, sit in a chair and
cross his legs and I'd hold on as a two
three year old and he'd hold my hands and just
rock me to death. And yeha, so you know that
was good. And he'd crawl around the floor up get
on his back and riding like a horse. He could

(15:52):
do great handstands when he went to Ocean View Beach
all the time down there at Looters, he always would
go in the water and hold a really nice handstand.
He was really good like that. He loved, uh, he loved,
you know, working with his hands, working in the yard.
And so but my mom, I'll come back to my
dad more. My mom was was Rose and my mom,

(16:14):
you know, I'm very very close to my mom. I
got very close to my dad later in life, as
I've told you in my autobiography there and my storyline.
But but my mom was she was just absolutely beautiful
when she was young. Uh. She was like a lookalike
for Elizabeth Taylor. Really really beautiful woman. My mom was.
And and late later on in life, as my sister

(16:36):
Arlene grew up when she was a teenager, they looked,
they looked they wore the same sizes, they wore the
same sweaters. There's a lot of stories about that later
on in my autobiography, But they they looked that much alike.
There used to be TV commercials that showed women's hands
and you had to look at their hands to understand
who the mom and the daughter was that was. That
was my mom and my sister. My mom was beautiful

(16:58):
and so was my sister. So okay. So the house
on Tholl Street, though when when when they built it,
it was it was a ranch style house and it
had a it had a I'll never forget when when
they finally put in sidewalks. I helped my father build
the steps that went from the sidewalk up to the

(17:20):
front walk. And so we had this front walk that
came up and then there was this nice driveway, and
so there was like this rectangular area and then when
you get up to the house, there it was. It
was a screened end porch. It was a big screened
end porch. And I I remember when I was two
years old that I was riding a tricycle in the

(17:41):
porch and and I I fell into the wall, and
I had stitches in my forehead and first of many
scars that I've gone through life with. But the think
about that porch uh and the stitches, the kind of
brick that that was used. I never really understood it,
but it was good for climbing. If you had to
climb up onto the roof, you didn't need a ladder,

(18:03):
you could do it. It had those bricks, and some
of the bricks about every foot or two or three
was was kind of sticking out that you'd get a
hand hole or a foothole on it. It was like
it was just a style. But it was a beautiful house,
and so that was the beginning with a house. It
had a beautiful, big backyard. We had We had a

(18:25):
swing set that was my favorite thing. My dad worked
for somebody and my sister and we just didn't remember where,
but it was like some kind of kind of company
that had pipes, a lot of pipes. He built the
most magnificent swing set that had had a glider, a
couple of swings that had bars you could swing on there,
but you know, monkey bars, and at the very end

(18:46):
of each end it had like a little lacrous neuse
where you could you could sit up there. And so
I became incredibly athletic, because you know, I was, I
was a monkey. I got up there and hung from
my feet and I did all the time my whole life.
You know, I just worked from those monkey bars and
did it. And then my father he built a fireplace
that was absolutely magnificent. I mean, it was a real

(19:09):
cookout fireplace that that was. It was beautiful. It had
it had a chimney, and it had the big grill
that you could take in and out of, and it
had sides to it, and and and it had like
a patio kind of a brick under a cement underneath it.
And but then beyond the pat beyond the fireplace in

(19:29):
the backyard, the swing set was in front of the fireplace.
We had an orchard. In that orchard, we had fruit trees,
and I was trying to remember there were there were
we had four apple trees, and they were cooking apples.
I grew up on apple sauce. My mother made apple
sauce and a strainer where she just cooked up the
apples and put them into the thing and pushed them
down and oozed out the apples. And we always had

(19:52):
apple sauce. She around, she froze apple sauce. I mean,
I I love apple sauce, not like my mother's so
homemade apple sauce. We had two pear trees, made pair pies,
different things, apple pies too. Of course, we had a
plum tree peach tree. And so when I'm cutting the grass,
you had you had to pick up all the fruit
that was on the ground because the bees, the bees

(20:14):
that got all over, especially there's peaches. Oh my gosh,
the bees were everywhere, you know, you hey, you had
to wear gloves. You had to make sure you didn't
step on them barefoot, and you had pick them up
thrown in the trash can. I hope you didn't get stung.
And so that was that was part of part of
my life. There did a lot of grass cutting, a
lot of yardwork. And so then there was what they

(20:36):
call a hot bed over on the other side, toward
the muskrache side of the yard. And it was a
hot bed flower bed. It was about ten feet long,
about four feet back and you could plant, you could plant,
you know, cuttings of flowers and things in there, and
it had glass that came down over it so that

(20:56):
it was a hothouse kind of thing. And so just
imagine that as the years go on and all this
gets old and the upkeeps not as good as it
could be. The spiders and the snakes were kind of
there from time to time. But so that's that's part
of the backyard. Another thing though, from the swing set
to the back of the house, there was a big area.

(21:18):
It was probably I give it about forty or fifty
feet and we we would do a lot of croquet,
a lot of croquet. My dad would would measure off
a regulation croque corps. He was an engineer, so you
know you're gonna get it. Get in his personality. He
was an engineer, and so had we had a croquete

(21:40):
court corp regulation with stakes in the ground that had
strings so that it was all nice, and wrote off
volleyball to the same same kind of measurements for volleyball.
We played a lot of volleyball out there, and we
played a lot of croquet. And like I say, my
father was very talented. And I had an uncle Loo
that lived up not too far down the street near

(22:00):
Deepaul Hospital, and I think he had all of the
leaves and all that kind of woodwork and equipment. My
father made the most beautiful beautiful croquet set, balls and everything.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
It was.

Speaker 3 (22:12):
It was just the finest croquet set ever. I mean,
it was custom made handband. And so I'll tell you
a little more about the crocse set a little while later.
So that's that's the backyard, the trees, the fruit, you know,
big yard to cut the grass, big yard. And so
then on the inside of the house, you know, I
had my own room. My parents had the room in
the front, and they had their own little little powder

(22:33):
room bathroom, but we only had one shower in the house.
And then my sister had her room on the other
side of the bathroom, and then I was kind of
in the middle. And so my room that I want
to talk about my room for a minute. I'll tell
you that I want to get y'all know, you know
a little bit about how I grew up, what I did.
And you already know I read every night type thing.

(22:54):
I had a lot of books. So back then in
the fifties. I was born in nineteen fifties.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
One.

Speaker 3 (23:00):
By the way, these memories i'm giving you go back
seventy two years. So I I'm real pleased to keep
going back to these memories and have such vivid memories
and relive them with you now. But okay, so my bedroom,
the paint on the walls was brown, dark brown, and
the plaster was nubby kind of stuff, you know, you

(23:22):
rub your hand on and it's all kind of bumpy.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
That was.

Speaker 3 (23:25):
That was a style back then. And it was dark brown.
And so at night when the lights are off, the
shadows I had the We didn't have air conditioning, so
i'd have I'd have my one window open and get
a little breeze in. But it was hot, you know,
just laying there on top of the sheet, the cover

(23:46):
whatever it was, and it was hot, just kick off
the covers and just be sweating. But the shadows there,
they were they were nightmare kind of forming shadows, that's
for sure, but would really form the nightmares. Is the
story that I'll go ahead and give you out. There's
no sense to wait. So my parents got divorced when
I was seven years old, and I was in this

(24:07):
house from you know, when I was two years old,
and my parents just you know, they were married nineteen
years when they got divorced, so they were they they
it was a it was a rough marriage. And so
the bathroom when my bedroom door was cracked part open.
I could see through the hallway and we had a

(24:28):
green that that house color was predominantly like green. It
was just a not real dark, but it was green,
same kind of plaster, you know, Noby, And what I
could see directly into the bathroom, and the door would
be opened the bathroom and the light would be on.
Usually the tile in the bathroom was brown and had

(24:50):
like a little bit of a yellow yellow trim, and
the walls were yellow, deep yellow. And so I got
a brown room. It's dark in the house. The bathroom
light or the hall light might be on, and I'm
looking into this real deep brown yellowish color there. But

(25:13):
the memory that I want to tell you now is
that there was so much fighting and so much screaming, yelling,
hysterical screaming. And you know, one night, midnights or so,
I'm laying in bed and I'm probably either not asleep
or it woke me up. My mother had a butcher
knife in her hand and was just screaming hysterical, and

(25:37):
my father was My father was just trying to calm
her down. But I see that very vivid. My sister
remembers it really well too. That was that was one real,
really bad memory. And then then another night, my mother
she she got slapped in the ear with a washcloth

(25:57):
that my dad slapped with that I don't I don't know,
I don't know the whole story. I think she says
it's intentional. I think he never really addressed it. But
she she had a loss of hearing in that ear
for the rest of her life. Just didn't have full
hearing in that ear. That was just an early piece
of it there. But so, you know, we had the
we had just the yard to go back to that,

(26:18):
you know, the nice house. The we had a septic
tank back then. I don't know if people no, unless
you live in the country with a septic tank is
but it's where all the sewage goes out of your toilets.
And tell you what, the grass over top of the
septic tank has to be cleaned out of every four, five, six, seven,
eight years whatever, depending on the size of it. The
grass is really green because it's just got like its

(26:39):
own source underneath it of just you know, like good manure.
And so that was a septic tank around the outside
of the house. We had we later had a hedge
that went all the way around the side of the house,
the sides on either side, and we had these two
beautiful trees that were like evergreen trees in the yard

(26:59):
you could climb, and they weren't those kind of trees.
And you know, we had some bushes all around the house,
but two of the bushes that we had in the
front yard and either pointers on the front for landscaping,
were pirate canton bushes. For those of you that don't
know what a pirate canton bush is, para canton bushes
are ornamentals that are incredibly h thorny. They got a

(27:21):
really hard kind of a trunk, stems, but they're they're
they're brutal trees. They they have these thorns that get
to be like, you know, like quarter to three eighths
of an inch, that are really strong. Pointis they got
they got red berries or orange berries, and they stayed
berries colored all year round and they grow to a
nice size if you don't pune them down. The reason

(27:44):
I want to tell you a memory about that is
is that later on, Perry Long was one of my
best friends. I'm going to try to keep most of
my stories to early childhood, because my book starts at
second grade, when I first chapter of the book starts
off when I'm when my father was was leaving the
name of the chapter of my first of the book,
first chapter is Phoebe you're the man who house now,

(28:05):
And the book starts off with this my father was leaving.
I didn't have any advance warning at all. I was
shocked when it was happening. So I will have to
tell you a couple of things though, that go beyond
just second grade, seven years old when that happened, because
that's where my book starts off. But how are you
gonna tell all the stories of your life? You could
probably write volumes and volumes and tell different stories if

(28:26):
you've got a memory. But I'm gonna do my best
for you right now. So Perry Long was one of
my best friends, one of my best friends in you know,
junior high school, high school. And my mother was a baker.
That's important thing about my mother. She was a master baker,
cakes and things, and oh my gosh, he loved her
apple cake, He loved her carr cake, especially she made

(28:48):
chocolate chip cake. You know, I mean she she did
great things. But I could always get Perry to help
me with yard work. Tom Sorry, kind of thing. He'd
come over and and you know, so that Parry, I
can't go to hang out with your right and I
got to work in the yard, you know, And Perry
just want to end up helping me. But my mother
always want to take a cake for him. But me
and Perry, we wrestled and fought all the time. You know,

(29:11):
we're at a normal childhood, you know, very very fun athletic,
a lot of rustling, a lot of horse play. Well
Perry though, so when I'm in like junior high school,
high school, you know, I weighed like at that time
about one hundred and about one hundred and thirty five
hundred and forty pounds. A little aside right now, and
I shouldn't go there, but right now because of my health,

(29:32):
my cancer issues. Last week I weighed one hundred and
thirty four pounds, which is less than I weighed when
I finished junior high school. But going back to Perry though,
putting a little weight back on though, by the way,
I'm doing okay. So but Perry, Perry in high school
weigh two fifty five or two sixty was sixty four.
I was just a normal, average kind of guy. But

(29:53):
me and Perry got it on, and we had a
lot of a lot of really good, good tussles. And
so one day we're out in there, out in the yard,
and I just remember me and Perry were wrestling, and
I jumped on his back and I put him in
a headlock and I hit him in the head. He
could un like a crab, he couldn't. He couldn't shake

(30:14):
me off, he couldn't pry me off. I was wrapped
around him, and I had him in a good headlock.
I mean, he's huge and I'm not. And I hit
him in the head at least twenty times, and they
weren't like, you know, like noogies, and Perry just couldn't
get me off. He walked backwards into the power Canthon
bush and they were big. These bushes were like, you know,

(30:35):
they were like five feet round the you know, around
the side of the garage there and on the other
side of the house. So he took the one on
the right side of the house, going toward the toward
the backyard, and he got down and he bent his
knees and he just slowly, methodically started walking backwards with
me on his back, into the power Canthon bush and

(30:55):
then when he got pretty far in there and kept,
you know, like pushing it and pushing me deeper and deeper,
he leaned back really far, put all his weight so
that we were falling into the power Canton Bush. He
had his balance, but we were starting to kind of
like fall, and that's when I finally had to release
him and I got stuck in that power Cantha bush.

(31:17):
And by the time I got out, I had over
a hundred of those thorns that I was telling you
about just impaled in my body everywhere. Perry was hysterical.
My mother came out of the house and no, simply
from my mother, I'll tell you that she didn't blame
Perry for anything. Well, there was no reason blaming period
on this one. But I had blood had I had

(31:40):
a T shirt on it. It was cut all up,
blood all through it. That's just part of my personality.
I guess that I want to share it with you.
So okay, So that's Perry long story. I'll just keep
moving along here. So that's power Canthon Bush. The other
parts about the house and the yard and things like
that that I want to tell you is inside that
house though in my bedroom, not just in the bedroom.

(32:03):
But we had these things called millipeds thousand legers. They're
not centipedes yor millipedes, but they were light green in
color and they were about two inches long, and they
had a thousand legs millipede, and so they'd be on
the wall. I got to be expert at taking a
tissue and just grabbing one off the wall and not

(32:25):
leaving a spot on the wall. That's one of my
greatest things I can do now. And I can pick
up I can pick a bug off the wall with
you know, as I got further than karate, I could
do it with the backfist and just just daze it
while I grabbed it. Or I could just grab it
real quick and it never knew. But this is a
really bad story that I'm going to tell you, so
I'm trying to share it with you. I'm coming clean.

(32:46):
I remember laying laying in my in my in my
bed one night and on my pillow. I guess it
was one of those millipedes. It crawled in my right
ear and came out my left here. Now that's not true,
but I had nightmares that it could happen.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
You know.

Speaker 3 (33:05):
There there's a book, there's a book I think, well,
I think it's Metamorphous is by Front's Kafka that that
sort of has a thing like that where somebody got
a spider that laid eggs in their head or something.
I don't know, but no, I just want to throw
that act because it's a little a little different today.
And but the big other thing though was we had
hedges all all from the house and everything got big

(33:26):
and we had the biggest, biggest spider webs, imaginable big
spider webs. And they had they had what you call
the name writers, some kind of big garden spider. They're
probably about inch and a half to two inches and
you know in diameter, and when they spread their their
their their their legs out, they they're they're real big.

(33:47):
And but when you look at their web real carefully,
it all fans out like a spider web does. But
but close to the center there was always a part
that looked like there was a lot of extra webbing
that was just roll world world road road tight. And
we just tell everybody that you know, they're name writers
and if they write your name, you're gonna die. That's
what it said, I mean, not die sometime in your

(34:08):
left Dyke soon. So they were there, but in between
our front yard and the must Graves front yard on
the they were on the left side facing the house
four fifty Fall Street.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
There.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
We were in the block right up towards Subirding Park School.
I'll talk about suburb of Park School and neighbors in
a second, but the in between the Musgraves house and
our house and I always ride a bicycle. I had
a wonderful bicycle, like I inherited from my cousin Alfred,
who also got all my Mad magazines from it.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
Eight years old.

Speaker 3 (34:37):
But it was a brown bike and you know I
painted it, cleaned it all up and it was a
good bike. You know, we did stuff bike then, but
we weren't like extream like all the kids are in
today's world. And we could ride the bike and stand
up on the seat just for a second or two.
Of course we could ride the bike backwards and you know,
do that kind of stuff. But our big thing was
letting somebody ride on the handlebars and ride them around.

(35:00):
The must Graves had between the two front yards. There
was a break in the hedge. And you know, I
was a paper boy and I got my route was
a little further up the end of Full Street. But
I also had all the neighbors on our block because
they wanted me to have more customers and make a
little more money, which was very appreciative. But I would
be riding my bike between the hedge and I would write,
I would write, ride right through a spiderweb on my

(35:22):
paper boy bike. And let me tell you, it happened
on my route a lot of times, right riding through
a Riding through a spider web in the dark is
one of the worst things that you can do because
it's all over you and all you can do is
either stop the bike or hold on and take the
other hand and just start slapping to make sure there's
not a spider that landed with that web on you.

(35:44):
So that that was part of growing up. So so
the must graves, I'll stay on them first. So Jicky
and Jimmy were the were the two sons. And so
Bentley Roberts I mentioned in Once the Benley Roberts. You
know they lived at five four fifth, They lived at
five hundred Fall Street. And I could write a whole

(36:06):
book with my escapage with Bentley, and I'm going to
there'll be more episodes of this as I live longer
and want to come back to pacifics here that it
might be worth telling deeper stories. But Bentley had an
older sister named Kathy, and I think the most remarkable
thing about Kathy that I remember, other than she was
just beautiful. She had legs that were like nine feet long.

(36:27):
And I will never forget a bunch of kids in
the neighborhood. You know, Kathy's about five years six. Bentley's
three years older. I think Kathy was two years three
years older than him, so it's just five six years
older than me. So when I was a little kid,
you know, she was just that older girl in the
neighborhood that was so pretty. Yeah, But Dicky Muskray got
her on his bicycle and put her in the front,
you know, like over the seat on you know, she

(36:49):
sat on the handlebars, put her legs in the basket
or something, and we just couldn't stop, you know, giving
Dickie a hard time. He didn't mind us though, you know,
he was riding her around. Jim Jimmy though he was
a great guy. He grew up to be uh here's
the controller deep All Hospital for a number of years
and a great great, great family. Directly behind me was

(37:11):
the Barneses, and our backyard had an alleyway behind it,
and it was like a ten foot alley between our
backyard and the other backyard. There was a huge hedge
back there that you didn't you say, couldn't see, but
you could. You could walk through back there and get
through it. And so Larry was my best friend in
early out like that. We started first grade together, went

(37:32):
Spurn Park Elementary School on Full Street, but never never went.
We didn't have kindergarten back there, and so Larry was
in the first grade with me. And Larry was just
a great kid, just a great kid. Parents were wonderful.
He had an older brother, Jerry was his older brother.
That's what his brother's name was. But Larry's Larry's life

(37:57):
in it really really short. He died I think it
was the third grade, with cancer. It was just a
brutal tragedy to have, you know, I have one of
my best friends, just eight or nine years old, be
taken with cancer.

Speaker 2 (38:12):
It was just so sad.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
Larry was great, great memories with Larry, just a wonderful person.
So on the other side of our house was the Bollingers,
I remember the mother's name was Edith. I don't remember
the dad's name, but Bobby Bollinger he was two years older.
He was a pretty rough kid. I mean, Bobby was
a rough kid. And he had a best friend named

(38:36):
Ronnie Coleman. And I just want everybody to know if
I use your name in this and you want to
call me up, these are just childhood stories. And I
love you, I forgive you. None of these stories, you know,
have any malice intended anyway. Ronnie Coleman, though, was always
coming over there. I think there were I said cousins,
but that beautiful crew que set that I told you

(38:56):
that my father made some really bad situation and Jimmy
Musgrave he broke one of the mallets, the the the
the handle of the mallet, he broke it over Ronnie
Coleman's head. That was a heck of a neighborhood squirmish
that day. I remember there were parents involved. But I

(39:19):
told you that that Bobby Bollinger. Bentley really got along
with Bobby in the early days because Bentley had a
little streak in him too. But Bobby Boldinger and Ronnie
in our garage from our house, we have a nice
big garage. There was this little chair like they use

(39:40):
an elementary school desk, and they tied me up with
the rope and knocked it over. That caused a lot
of a lot of problems between my family and the
Bollinger family. It was some really bad blood there for
a long long time. So that that was the Bolingers,
and then later they sold and moved, and then the
Divnports lived directly across the street, two houses down on

(40:02):
the corner the Davenport's.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
Uh uh.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
While Rad Davenport was my age, my other best friend,
and he got he got hit and killed by a
car when he was six years old. That was a
real tragedy right there on Fall Street. It was just awful.
Let's see a child get killed with the car. I
mean I didn't see it, but but my friend got
hit by a car and died.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
So so their father had died.

Speaker 3 (40:26):
I never really knew their father much handed The gas
station down at Montecello Avenue called Davenport's, I think it
was a Texaco, and there was there was a let's
say there were four kids. There was Chris the oldest,
and then and then and then Barry, and then Rad
had died and then phil it was a year younger
than me, and then Ruth was a year younger sister.
And then Phyllis was the mom, and then uh the husband,

(40:50):
Uh big Chris he died, and then she later got
married to a guy named Bill Bill Bostick. And I
spent lots and lots of nights over there. They were
absolutely wonderful, good time spend the night. There was always fun. Now,
Barry Dawnport was four years older than me. He graduated
in nineteen sixty five at Gramby with my sister Arlen,
and so whenever I got to spend the night of

(41:11):
Damport's there was going to be an experience for me.
I'll tell you that when Barry had his driver's license,
he was a little nuts back then. He's an amazing
missionary kind of guy. Now you know Julie Davenport, his wife,
They were influential in me becoming a Christian. I mean
they just prayed on me all the time and just whatever.
But bottom line is, Barry had this old Valiant white Valiant.

(41:33):
I don't remember what year it was, but it was
one of those things that you could change gears with
your thumb on the dashboard there and So the thrill
was we'd asked Barry take us for the ride.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
Take us for the ride.

Speaker 3 (41:45):
So we'd go up to Galveston, which was the end
of our block on Fall Street, up there right where
the school is. And so Galveston went down toward Suburban Parkway,
and then it crossed Galveleston Avenue obviously, and let me
see Virginian Drive rather, so we're on Galbuls and it crosses, well,

(42:09):
Barry would get right there and he would just starting it,
reving it up, and we'd have to fight over who
got the rudd shot and gun or we had to
be in the back seat. This is the dumbest thing
that ever done. So look, I understand how stupid kids
are and why parents can't sleep at night. In this story,
I'm going to tell you. Thank God, I'm here to

(42:29):
be able to tell you the story. I praise the
Lord for the store to be here to tell you.
So Barry would rab that thing up and then he
would go one hundred and ten to twenty miles an
hour from the beginning at Tholl Street, all the way
till we got to Virginian Drive crossing over Suburban Parkway.
And the danger was if another car was coming. We

(42:51):
could have had it and we could add it accident.
We all could have been killed, could have killed somebody else.
We must have done that ride, you know, twenty five
times in our youth, and there were two or three
times where it came so close to an accident. So
that's what happened there. So, but on that corner right
there at Suburban Parkway where the school is, was a family,

(43:15):
the Cahoons and the Cahouns. They were the finest family
in the neighborhood. Pauline the wife, Joshua the husband, Michael
and Richard, and they were just we had a lot
of Christian families at the time. You know, I wasn't Christian,

(43:35):
you know, I was my dad was in the home
and we went to Bethel Temple. And then when my
mother's brother founded Temple Israel and my father left, we
switched over to Temple Israel and has founded in nineteen
fifty one, the year I was born. But when my
dad left, we switched over to Temple Israel.

Speaker 2 (43:53):
And but so the Cahuns, though they were in my life.

Speaker 3 (44:01):
You know, you're around people sometimes and and you just
know they're good. You just you know that they're good.
You know, they got something about you know, I knew
that about my wife Donald. You know, she just has this,
you know, there's a presence about him. And I know
that presence is now a lot of other people have
things similar, but I know what that presence is. It's
it's the Holy Spirit, It's the it's the it's the

(44:23):
Lord in them. Well, I grew up being over there
a lot, and I had a chance to read Bible
stories and and and just the Bible and New Testament stuff.
And I learned an awful lot of Bible stories. I
mean they had Richard was two years younger than me.
I mean he had comic books of you know, Bible
stories and things. And I'm a comic book guy all

(44:45):
the way back.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (44:47):
But but there was a beautiful, beautiful Christian home, and
I spent a lot of time there. I spent a
lot of nights there, and uh, they were just a
they were just a beautiful I never heard I never
heard a crossword spoken in that house. And Richard and
Mike were two of the finest, finest young men. And

(45:08):
Michael grew up to be the president of the Chamber
of Commerce. And I think it was a city in Louisiana.
It might have been New Orleans, I'm not sure. But
he was just a fine god. I'll tell you another
little story here, and I'm not down at Bentley right now.
Bentley was like my childhood mentor, you know, he was
like my he was it. His parents gave me a

(45:28):
room in the house when I went to college, I
had a key to their house. So I could, you know,
just settle myself down and do well. And I did,
and I thank them for that. I loved his parents.
And okay, so I love Bentley too. Okay, So Suburbon
Park Elementary School. One year, their whole backfield, I mean huge,
before they put in all the kind of fields they

(45:48):
do in elementary schools, it had probably two hundred truckloads
of piled dirt. We called them the dirt piles. And
so we would get up there in the neighborhood and
have dirt clog fights as much as we could after school.
And Bentley and I were were on the same side

(46:09):
most of the time. Michael and whoever else you know
was on the other. Now, if you've never had a
dirt clog fight, it's not a smart thing to do.
If you're not wearing goggles or a helmet or something,
because you're throwing hard dirt clogs and there's a lot
of rocks in there. Well, Bentley hit Michael Cahun knowingly,

(46:30):
I believe, with a rock in his eye. He had
to go to the hospital. And Michael's a really good
looking guy, you know, one of those movies started looking
kind of guys. You know everything about him. But he
wore glasses for the rest of his life because he
got hit in the eye with the dirt clog that day.
All right, that's a story that I just passed on

(46:50):
to you. Other things about our neighborhood. Let me see,
I've given you a little bit about the Davenports, the Cahoons,
a little bit about the Roberts. A big thing about
the Robertss is that Bentley's dad was a a chief
retired in the Navy, and then he became an inspector
for the city and offered for the sanitation department or something.
And he was an amazing guy. I got to know

(47:12):
him really well later. He was he was a reader,
I mean he read, and he got into James Mitchener
and he wanted me to read the source. You know,
he kept saying, that's story of your people, Steve, you
ought to read it's your history of the Jewish people. Yeah,
but he was always reading and he always had a pipe.
But I helped Bentley to do all of his yard work.
Don't think Perry took taken advantage of. I worked my

(47:34):
tail off over there in the Roberts yard because Bentley
could never go off because they were serious until he
did all the guardian and all the yard works. So
I always helped him. And the next door in Aber
became the Selis. But when it was a vacant lot,
me and Bentley over there, we got in a lot
of trouble because we made a little fire and the
smoke came up, got a little out of hand, and
Bentley got punished real bad, and I got punished too

(47:56):
by the Roberts for being part of it. It was
dangerous little, you know, a little powra maniac kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
So uh.

Speaker 3 (48:04):
Anyway, Bentley's father was the handiest man there ever was.
I mean, he built things unbelievable and he actually built
a an arc that I used when I later became
a youth rabbi at Temple Israel. He built me this
this wonderful art for my for my youth services that
I led that you could put a torah in and
it was my gift to the to the temple. But

(48:26):
that was that was such an honor to have Bentley's
father build a mini art for me to take up
the Temple Israel. It was it was just absolutely beautiful.
Oh yeah, yeah. He one one of the subtitles, it's
not written to the value of a dolloment memoirs, and
I learned the work. I think it's really the story
how still he became the man he is, and this
is like the prequel telling me about some of my

(48:46):
early childhood that led into you know, the rest that
I share the rest of my life. There my real
life story is how I came closer to know the Lord.
That's really who I am. That's what I want to
pass on. So I just throw that at you right now.
And despite the fact that I'm telling you Rodney Dangerfield,
you know, jokes and just trying to trying to get

(49:08):
you to look back at your own lives and see, see,
you know, think about your own childhood.

Speaker 2 (49:13):
It's fun.

Speaker 3 (49:14):
But actually said, hey, you tell them today that what
you did when you were young, or is going to
be the memories that you have when you're old. Now,
you might not be able to think about planting it
out that way, but it's true.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (49:27):
So but Bentley's father, we helped him dig. We worked
our tails off. He built the most beautiful fish pond
with a fountain in the middle, and we kept begging
him saying, hey, you already got us working, we will dig.
Make it a full size swimming pool. They had a
backyard big enough. And he wouldn't do it though, but

(49:48):
he made this most beautiful, beautiful fish pond and he
stocked it with I don't know if you're you know,
I mean he's giant fish. Maybe they were koy whatever
you call him, but I mean he were some of
the most beautiful goldfish that he put in there, and
some of them were like eight ten inches long.

Speaker 2 (50:05):
And so we had a big hummus.

Speaker 3 (50:07):
Whatever you call it, like where you put you put
a lot of garbage and stuff underneath, dirt and stuff,
and it gets real good for gardening. Well, there were
like a trillion crickets there, and what we did for
fun was we would catch bucket loads of crickets and
we would we would put them in the water to

(50:31):
feed the fish.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
And if a cricket could make.

Speaker 3 (50:34):
It all the way to get out of the water
up onto the center of the fountain, they would be
able to be saved. And we would we would use
a net and we would put them back into the
into the pile. That's that's the Roberts a little bit. Uh,
I went to the boon and rouse it later got
sold to the Davenport's grandmother and the grandfather too, but

(50:57):
he passed and but but that was all my and
everybody in the neighborhood loved being around old mama, and
that was that was Phil ended up. When old Mama passed.
Over the years, Phil raised his family there and Phil
turned out to be just a wonderful person's wife Barbara
and most beautiful family. And yeah, they're just beautiful. So

(51:18):
across the street on the other corner with the Sprools,
I always called them my adopted grandparents. Mister Sproul, his wife, uh,
I can't think of her first name. I called it
the Sprools. His name, his name was Winfred, and they
were they're from Windsor, North Carolina. They ran a sawmill.

(51:38):
But when they moved to uh Full Street. She was
a seamstress and he filed saws and they made a
little income off of that. But he was like the
neighborhood handyman, and and I spent a lot of time
over there. I remember they had a pomegranate tree in
their backyard, and he liked to tell the story they
were looking out their back window in their yard's huge

(51:59):
and uh they say, all they saw was a pair
of shoes up in the air coming toward their house.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
I used to walk on my hands all the way
from the far backyard all the way up to their
to their house, and we pomegrounds were unbelievable. But I
ate over there a whole lot. Good country cook and
that's for sure. But that's when I really started getting
into some beautiful stuff there. We watched Pat robertson the
seven hundred Club back in the early days all the time,
and did puzzles of religious Christian puzzles, and I gave

(52:28):
them from the Stuckies one time, coming home from Richmond
for a Christmas time. A triffet, the way you could
put a hot plate on of the Last Supper and
praying hands are one of my favorite symbols in my life.
And I gave them a night light that you could
plug in, and the praying hands were lit up for
you to see. But now that was just absolutely the

(52:49):
Sprouls were wonderful. She lived to be about one hundred
and two. And when I was teenager, I used to go,
you had at your gum all the time. I used
to always get their gum. Speaking of the gum, always
at the other into Fole Street was was the seven
to eleven that came one little convenience store. And so
that brings me to directly across the street was the Gabriels.

(53:10):
And the Gabriels house was exactly the same house as ours,
it was just opposite. And so the Gabriels, I grew
up with them. I can't remember the father's name, but
they owned a they owned a hot dog restaurant up
at Ward's corner. And then the mother's name though her
first name was Lula, and so Nick was my age.

(53:30):
He was in first grade with me. And then Chris
was the next son, and then there was.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
Louis, Mary and Helen.

Speaker 3 (53:41):
I can't I'm not sure the right order, but what
a beautiful family, and so what I want to say
about Fole Street though, was over the years, whenever we
can all be together, everybody in this neighborhood is your gathering.
You know, it's like Camelot, you know, returning to Camelot.
We all, you know, it's a neighborhood that goes back
seventy some years here and so we still see each

(54:01):
other and you know, we sing songs, we tell stories
about Fall Street. It's just in our blood. Some of
the some of the big parties that we had there.
I have to be a part two to this show
because I've I've got I'm gonna rune out of time.

Speaker 2 (54:13):
I don't want to.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
I don't want to make you go, you know, too
too long today. So I'll sum up some things that
I can. But so the Gabriels were so wonderful. But boy,
there was a kitchen fire in their house. And I
can't remember which one of the children it might have
It might have been the youngest at the time, which
would have been which would have been, Oh, let's see, Chris. No,

(54:39):
I'm sorry, I'm getting a little mixed up here, so
laps in my memory or so you had Mary, oh, Helen.
I think it might have been Helen when she was
really young. But missus Gabriel, she had some very severe
burns and we were very concerned about her. She lived
and and and the and the burns were not this
figure and she had a beautiful recovery. But but Louis,
Louis and I were really really close, uh Nick's younger brother.

(55:04):
And Louis was just what a spirit. He became like
a did a lot of stuff. He had a record job,
but he also did professional photography on the side. But
I want to tell you about a love story here.
So right up the street at the block down on
Full Street near the railroad tracks where the tiny giant
is Christine. Christine was probably one of the most beautiful

(55:28):
girls on Full Street. She had just the most beautiful,
flowing red hair, just beautiful hair, long hair past the release,
and Louis and Christine started started being real close, you know,
like holding hands kind of stuff, probably like twelve years old,

(55:48):
I don't know. And then so they were they were
always in love. And they got married and they had
some beautiful children, beautiful children in their their their their
kids got married to some wonderful people and gosh, one
of their daughters is a doctor.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
There. Uh.

Speaker 3 (56:09):
And by the way, Chris one of the one of
the ones in my age group. He became a doctor
for King's Daughter Hospital. And yeah, and so anyway, Louis
and Christine got married and one of their daughters was
on the school board, you know, just very very beautiful,
beautiful family. Christina became a school teacher and she taught

(56:30):
at at Lafayete Wine on them. And when my own
kids got into middle school, Lafayette Wine owner there, Lindsey
had Christine as her teacher. As I think she thought
two subjects math and English. And and I'm really sorry
to say that this wonderful, wonderful, full spirit, life, wonderful person, Christine,

(56:56):
she got cancer and they thought she was going to
get it well, and she didn't and she died. And
it was probably one of the single saddest things that
I can can tell you, because Louie and Christine I've
never seen, you know, love like theirs. And it took
it took literally years for for Louie to just be

(57:19):
able to even even just hardly say his name. He
was just devastated. But but Louie and I when we
see each other and we hug, it's like Full Street. Yeah,
so there are songs and stories all about Full Street
that we all share. So let me let me see
if there's a few other things that I want to
throw at you real quick here. So going going back

(57:41):
to uh to my father. Two things that stand out
in my early childhood. And my father made a lot
of friends with people, and I get I get that
from my mother and my father. My mother is the
one never met a stranger, but my father had a
lot of friends. So up at Southern Shopping Center there
was a shoe repair store and I don't know how
he got into this, but Johnny was the shoemaker there,

(58:02):
and I remember going up there a lot. And Johnny
trained my father and had to do the work on
those machines where you you know, you grind the sole
down and make it fit perfectly, and you buff the
shoes and stuff. And my father got pretty good at that.
He had a lot of talent, like I said, and
he was he used his hands and Johnny Johnny had

(58:23):
had a stroke and so I only knew him, but
the left side of his face had been a stroke
and it was very, very disfigured from being a stroke.
And so that as a kid that was something for me.
While we're talking about Southern Shopping Center, there was also
Hose restaurant up there that we go too. That's how

(58:44):
we started in there, our Chinese food. And they used
to have concerts in the parking lot there, and I
remember they put up the stage in the parking lot
and I went with my mother and I can't remember
who else we went with to see Ray Charles Ray
Charles back in probably nineteen fifty six, fifty seven. That
was a good thing. So that that was good, but

(59:05):
one of my best memories. And you know, I might
get struck by lightning for remembering it and sharing it.
But my father had a mechanic and he his name
was Red, and Red was the.

Speaker 2 (59:19):
Red was the head.

Speaker 3 (59:20):
Mechanic for the I guess it might have been seeing
Pete Telephone Company back then. And he lived down an
Ocean View and he had about a six car garage,
just like a whole lot that was a garage, and
my dad used him for all of his auto maintenance.
And I'd go down there with my dad, you know,
and he'd be down there with Red, and you know,
I developed that kind of relationship with my buddy Dave digmant.

(59:42):
That's a mechanic over in Portsmouth. You know for all
those years, Me and Dave been friends for going on
fifty years. Now, well I'm a Dave just turned it
in sixty something, So yeah, me and Dave manach other
going forty five years maybe. But you know, when you're
not a mechanic and you can hang out with a
mechanic and they're working on your already observe, you learn
a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
You enjoy it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:01):
But anyway, the thing that I remember, and again, please,
you know, apologize for I say this. Back then it
was the age of Playboy, pin up bunnies, and Red
had this massive six car garage and it must have
had two hundred and fifty pin ups all around the
rafters if you look up. So nobody said anything to

(01:00:24):
me about it, and I knew not to talk. I
never I never made a single comment to my father
or came home and talked about it. But boy, that
was amazing to go over there in nineteen fifty six.
You know, I was six seven years old and just
see the decorps and Red's garage.

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
It was really good.

Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
So I don't want to go too far in too
that in early days Virgina's at orts corner of the Pizza.
A lot of Virginia's stories later in my in my book,
because my mother just was just just a freak for
Virgina's Greek salad. I got heard that many many late nights.
So I think I'm trying to tell you, uh, tell
you about the thousand leggers and that. But mice were

(01:01:04):
a problem in our house, so because it was kind
of country back in the early days, and I was
the guy that had to get the mice. So, especially
after my father left, my mother was hysterical. She was
a stand on a chair screaming until Stevie got a
broom and tracked down the mouse and got the mouse.

Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
So I learned. I learned to be the warrior for
the mice.

Speaker 3 (01:01:23):
So you know, that's that's a lot of my stories
there about the yard of the house, the neighborhoods I see.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
Let me let me make sure to lean by out well.
The egg dolls lived on.

Speaker 3 (01:01:32):
The corner across from the from from Old Mama, and
the other corner from the next to the gabrils, I
see to say it from the cross from the spruls,
and there they were just incredible family and and mister
miss eig Doll were refugees from concentration camps. And uh,

(01:01:52):
and I love them. They have a daughter that turned
out really good too, she became a pharmacist. But but uh,
you know, their their life story was just something else.
How they survived concentration camps. And I remember when I
was in my teen years and mister Igdahll, he came
over one day and he brought a pair of his
own shoes that were, you know, like a little older
they were born. And he came over and I was there,

(01:02:15):
and he told my mother, He says, I want to
give Stevie a pair of shoes because I know he
needs a pair of shoes. That they weren't stylish by
any means, but the boy, the love was there.

Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
I wore those shoes.

Speaker 3 (01:02:26):
Another house that's very prominent on the street was the
was the Winslow house that was next door to the
Cahoons and the Winslow's Carlton Winslow. He was amazing. He
built his own airplane and he had a meteorite that
landed in his backyard and he built up he built
a building around that. We always could see the media,
right he was the most amazing guy in the world.

(01:02:49):
But his wife, Virginia Betty Sue, was the daughter that
was my sister's age. Virginia later in life had really
brutal cancer, and I remember my mother went up there
every day in Carlton.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
He made a bed that had.

Speaker 3 (01:03:03):
A like a removable section so that she could just
go to the bathroom. And but my mother went up
there and was a nurse to her and was beautiful,
just beautiful. So my mother's story is much more into
my autobiography. But my mother is just so so wonderful.
I want to talk about Spurn Park for men, and
well I'm talking about my mother. So back then we

(01:03:24):
didn't have we didn't have internet or anything. Back in
nineteen fifty seven when I started first grade, and and
so my mother was a room member, a room mother,
I mean to say, a room mother. And that meant
she'd come to school many many days and be in
the school. And and I did really well. Me and
Jody Freeman that that Jody lived around the corner. The

(01:03:45):
Freedoman's lived down down Kirby Crescent, and we grew up
and her parents I got real close to them in
later temple life. Uh, Uh, they were just there was
just beautiful people. And she had an older sister, Laurie,
and so but Jody, you know, she was like one
of my early crushes. And Stuart Siegel that lived a
couple of blocks up the street. Going to first grade,
we used to wear cowboy boots all the time with

(01:04:07):
our shorts. That was the style. And I remember we
had a kicking fight where you could just kick each
other's legs all you wanted to, because we were both
kind of like really like you know, like Judy like
like Jody that much, you know. And across the street
from the Freedman's on Kirby Crescent was my cousin Bernie
and Judy and Debbie and and aunt Jimmy and uncle Sidney,

(01:04:27):
and I was over there a great deal and they
were really wonderful to me.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
And there was a vacant lot there that that later the.

Speaker 3 (01:04:34):
The Wong Dens moved in and they were cousins to
Wilkie that lived around the corner. That was my best friend,
you know, through junior high school, high school. There was
there were Chinese family and there was Will It was
the three the three brothers. Uh uh, well there are
four brothers, Peter and he was he didn't get a

(01:04:55):
chance to get educated, but he ran the restaurant so
I Guy at Wart's Corner. And and then he went
with his mother to Uh to uh Formosa, Taiwan to
meet his wife. It was arranged marriage. And she came
back and being the nice kid that I was, I'd say,
I hope she's ugly. She wasn't ugly. She was she
was just amazing. And she later divorced him and went

(01:05:16):
to San Francisco, got americanized and Uh. But they had
a big garden and she was out there barefoot in
the garden, you know, picking vegetables all the time. They
had a couple of kids, and so so the next
brothers though, Uh Michael, he was a genius. I mean
he was a genius. He was great at everything he did.
And then William and then Wilkie. They all went to

(01:05:36):
Virginia Tech and became chemical engineers. And then Christina Uh,
the sister that was between William and Uh and Uh
and Michael, she became an airline steward. It was just
a wonderful thing. And they played a lot of Mars
on there. I was over there all the time, but
their cousins moved into the Bacon life who always played baseball.
We were kind of resentful when they moved in. But

(01:05:57):
they're a wonderful family and uh I was friends with them.
There was two two brothers there, the brothers, the brothers
that were living there were gosh, we uh let me,
let me, let me, let me get this first time
I've consulted a note all day in this, I've just
been going from memory here, but I I'll come up

(01:06:18):
with their name before it's over with. I got it
somewhere in here. Too many, too many notes, but it
was now I'm gonna I'm gonna have to I can't.
I can't do that. I got no. I had to
consult my note on that one with me there. So yeah,
it was it was Tommy and Edward and they ended
up owning a nice little fish store. But great family.
But it took away our baseball field. But the baseball

(01:06:41):
field was we were always at in the summertime, you know,
and popsicles, reading comic books, and we cut the grass
from my aunt Jimmy. It wasn't her a lot that
we took care of it, and she'd give us watermelon
and treat us really good for cutting the grass, and
that that was a good experience for us. We played
baseball there for five or six years. There was a
start field, but there was a brick wall all the

(01:07:02):
way in the back, and if you hit the hit
the ball over the brick wall, you know it's a
home run. And so every one of us got got
so it was so easy to hit a home run
that we all had to play switch hit and left
we had we had to reverse and place switch hit,
and then we got where we could hit home runs
either way. We couldn't really play there anymore. But you know,

(01:07:23):
I got I got some other things that I'd really
like to share with you, and I think I'm going
to try to bring it to an end down it's
a choice of either doing another run on show or stopping.
But I just want to go through this little list here.
I've covered the Davenports, the Cahoons, the most Graves, Catherine
and Robert Sawyer. They lived next door through the Winslows

(01:07:45):
and and they're the most beautiful people in my life.
Uh there's great stories about them. How they helped me
out when I was a wayward person. Came back to
get me a fresh start, and and they they prayed
for me, and they just they just helped me so much.
And they just asked me just to just to pass
it on the others. And and and that's that's that's

(01:08:06):
all in some of my other places. But just to
just to tell you that I can't talk about the
neighborhood without Katherine and Roberts Lawyer. They they helped me
out when I was in some really low place and
they put some they paid money so I could get
a surgery. And when they when they came over and
gave me that money, they said, we know you need

(01:08:27):
a surgery. We want you to have a surgeon and
get your life going. And here's an extra hundred dollars
just to kind of kind of kind of get moving.
And we don't want you to ever pass back. All
we want you to do is to pass pass it
on to other people. And then Robert and Katherine, my
mother and I we prayed. And so I just want
to tell you the love of Jesus is so strong
in my heart. And Katherine and Roberts, what I just

(01:08:48):
want to tell you right now that it was so
beautiful and the Cahouns, the Cahouns were my role models.
And and I grew up wanting to have a family
like the Cahun family, just a beautiful family. And and
and so you know, when I had to announce to
read by a pen it's one of my best friends.
When I was used red by a temple Israel that
that I had, you know, converted and got baptized, and

(01:09:09):
it was a Christian now, and you know, it broke
his heart.

Speaker 2 (01:09:12):
But we took we walked all the time.

Speaker 3 (01:09:14):
I stood on the corner right there in front of
the coon's house, and I said, you see that house
right there, that's a huge reason why I'm a Christian,
why I'm why I'm trying to tell you who I
am and what I'm doing. And he didn't he didn't
really understand at the time. But I know he loves me,
and I love him too, and and you know, so
we're a lot of love. But there was so much
more in the neighborhood. Let me just gosh, you know what,

(01:09:38):
it's probably it's probably an hour, so I don't know
at the exact time.

Speaker 2 (01:09:41):
I got so much more to cover.

Speaker 3 (01:09:42):
So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to make
this a two parter and uh and what I'm gonna
do right now though, is is I'm gonna I'm gonna
end the show for today. I gave you the background.
I want to make sure that I didn't leave out
too many neighbors. I started the sperm part. My mother
was a room room mother. Well she's coming to the
cafe too and help at lunchtime. But I'll never forget

(01:10:03):
when they had these classes that they were doing this
experiment in all of public school system where they had
these TVs that they would roll in on a roller
and sometimes they couldn't get reception. It was just a
regular TV with about a fourteen inch eighteen inch screen
and we would do science in there with three classes

(01:10:23):
at one time. Just that was our first introduction to
being able to see any kind of auto visual teaching.

Speaker 2 (01:10:30):
I remember that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:31):
But so you know, i'd like to just just I'll
come back. I'll review my materials because I got so
much that I want to share that I haven't shared yet.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
But that's a lot on my background.

Speaker 3 (01:10:43):
But please tune in again next week and then we
will continue with things. But I think that one of
the things that I would would like to tell you
about right now as I end the show today is
I just want to I'll talk more about this next
week as it comes into the end of the show.

(01:11:05):
But I've been trying to talk to each one of
you today not as just an audience I'm talking to
an audience type thing. Now. I see each one of
you as an individual, an individual child of God, because
that's how I see you. And I've been very fortunate
when I do these radio shows to be able to
just feel that I'm talking to you as an individual,

(01:11:27):
one on one person. And you know, God loves you,
Jesus loves you.

Speaker 2 (01:11:32):
I love you.

Speaker 3 (01:11:33):
I always want you to know that, and it's because
of that love that I know that I can get through.
That's ultimately, that's all that we're here for. And so
in talking to Saumus Chad today, that's just just such
a blessing in my life. I just I just want
to tell you that he passed something on to me
today and I said, so, what do you think about

(01:11:54):
what I'm getting ready to do? So he went to
he went to John one eleven thirteen. He came to
his own, and his own did not receive him, but
as many as received them to them He gave the
right to become children of God to those who believe
in His name, who were born not of blood, nor

(01:12:17):
of the will of the flesh, nor of the will
of man, but of God. Next week, I'm going to
go way, way deeper. I hope you want to tune in,
but I'm going to talk about where I went, my
sister and I and reading and influences and reading and
other memories that I have. But right now, I just

(01:12:38):
want to end this telling you that I hope that
going back through my childhood today will trigger many, many
memories for you, and I want to tell you right now.
If they're good memories, then I'm glad I helped to
revive them. If they're difficult memories, call me Right Think
God or Exteve get in touch with me, because all

(01:12:59):
that takes is just opening your heart, receiving the Lord
the Holy Spirit, and forgiving all those that did you wrong,
asking forgiveness for all the wrongs that you did. So
with that said, hey, I had a good time today.
I knew it would get over time. But I love
you all. God bless you. I'll see you next week.

Speaker 1 (01:13:22):
Thanks for listening to Right Thinking with Steve.

Speaker 2 (01:13:24):
Copland.

Speaker 1 (01:13:25):
I'll look forward to being with you again next week
and remember it, don't quit, plan ahead, It will get better.
God bless you and have a great week.