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Copyright November, 2010 Benny H. Pellom. All rights reserved.
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Words from a 'Run-away Boy' Page 4
Sleeping in Jack's car.
I suppose Jack made a judgement that I was going to stay a run-away boy, so he took me with him. A welcome change occurred at the skating rink in Dalton - Jack let me sleep in the front seat of his Kaiser automobile. Being a very short man, he slept in the back seat. I continued to do well as a skate boy, and kept the money I made in the head of a banjo I had with me. I bought my own meals when Jack and I would go out a couple of times a day. Since I never went anywhere else, my money accumulated pretty well.
Yahoo! Moving on to another town - and having a real bed to sleep in!
There came a day when a man by the name of Baxter Prater, came up from Calhoun, GA, a town about 20 miles south of Dalton, and made a deal with Jack Carson to go to Calhoun and run an indoor skating rink that he was building. Jack negotiated a deal that would have a bedroom for himself and one for me, as well as a shower, built into the new skating rink - and free meals. Baxter Prater sold chenille products on the side of U. S. Highway 41, which at the time was the main highway to take from the Florida Keys to upper peninsula of Michigan. Inside the Chenille business Baxter's wife and family would prepare and serve hot meals for themselves, and for Jack and me. Like the Jeffersons, I had 'really moved on up'!
The honesty test.
One day, after I had swept the floor of the rink, and carried out the trash, Jack told me that there was a small trunk in the back of his car that had some money in it. He told me to get it and count the money for him. I brought the trunk into my room, drew hundred-dollar circles on the floor all around me, and tallied the money up for him. As I remember, there was more than five thousand dollars in the trunk. For the time, that was a lot of money to carry around in the trunk of a car. A simple way to measure inflation and get today's value, would be as follows: The five-cents cost of a coke from a vending machine at that time, would equal one dollar (or more) in today's money. 20 nickels contained in one dollar then had the buying power of $20.00 today - making Jacks $5,000. = $100,000 in todays money. So, being the little guy sitting there on the box putting on skates, the quarter which skaters commonly gave to me as a tip, would equal $5.00 today - if I put skates on 20 people, that would mean that I had $100.00 in today's money to put inside the banjo head. Not a bad evening's work for a little kid.
The day I left the skating rink, never to see Jack again.
I was out tinkering with a hammer on the foundation for an expansion of the skating rink's size, when a car pulled into the driveway. It was my mother, and my oldest brother who was home on leave from the Navy. They persuaded me to go back home with them. All went well until a few days later, when my brother went back to his ship. I was excited to be around him, and the air went out of balloon when he left. There I was, right back where I didn't want to be. The family had made plans to move to Woodstock, GA, a small town north east of Marietta, GA. I went with them, but didn't stay there long until I returned to Chatsworth.
Sharing a bed for the night with a person who threatened to kill me with a shotgun earlier that same day.
A banjo song called "Git 'em up and go" I wrote several decades ago.
