Rickus. Rick Campbell

      Cason’s grocery, a quarter mile west of Belton’s town square, at the intersection of Breazeale and Cherry Streets, was a big hub of activity for years. It had groceries, meats, produce, and a delivery service, which was a bicycle with a large wire basket mounted on the front. Cason’s also had two gas pumps, kerosene oil, and a rack that people could drive their car up on to have an oil change. I was too young to remember, but my dad worked there before he went into the army.

      On August 11, 1943, my brother, Jerry, came along. I was only two and staying with my grandparents, John and Ellen Campbell. Grandpa John worked for Cox’s Lumber Co. as a house painter. I guess work got slack because he went to stay with his three sisters, who worked at the Belton Cotton Mill. Grandma Ellen took me and went to her sister’s, Jess Thompson, house. She didn’t have room for us, so we stayed in her old chicken house that had no floor. It was a big adventure for me.

      Work picked up for Grandpa John, and he rented us a house on Ellison Street. Grandma was glad to leave that “chicken coop.”

      In early 1946, Mama took me and Jerry to a house she had rented a quarter mile down the road from Cason’s. It only had a front and back room. To get to the bathroom, “outdoor plumbing,” we had to cross a creek, behind the house, on a 2×6 inch board. Mama got water from a well next door. Jerry and I wasted no time exploring the creek. There were craw fish, tadpoles, and frogs; we never saw any fish. We played in the yard until it began to get dark. Mama would yell, “Y’all come in now, or the Booger Man will get you.” We’d go and take a bath in a number two tin tub, eat our corn bread and butter milk for supper, listen to the radio for a while, and then go to bed.

      One day, it was raining cats and dogs. I was looking out the back window at the creek that had risen up to the board that goes across; the water was running very swiftly. I also saw some red tomatoes on the vines Mama had planted across the creek. When it stopped raining, I rolled up the cuffs of my overalls, got a handful of salt, and went out to get a big red tomato.

      So I started very carefully, across the creek. The farther I went, the deeper I sank into the water. Finally, I made it to the other side and sat down next to a vine with a nice red tomato. I pulled it, dipped it in the salt, and took a big juicy bite. All of a sudden, the dirt next to me began to move. Salt went one way, tomato the other. And me, I don’t remember going back across that creek.

      I ran into the house screaming, “Mama, Mama, the Booger Man is after me. He’s coming out of the ground at the mater vines.”

      She grabbed a hoe and went across the creek. When she came back, I saw for the first time a Scalopus aquaticus. Which, in little boy’s lingo, is a “mole.”

      Mama listened to country music on the radio all day. There were no TVs back then. She sang along and could yodel with the best of them. One day, some of us kids were playing “cowboys and Indians.” I ran in the house to get some water and stopped, frozen in my tracks. It was the most strange and unusual guitar playing I had ever heard. The DJ said it was a new guitar player, named Chet Atkins. Instilled in my mind right then was the fact that I was going to be a guitar player someday. I went and pulled a limb out of mama’s brush broom. Instantly, I was a guitar player. Well, not exactly, but I was the best limb player in Belton.

      The Belton Cotton Mill, better known as the Big Mill, was the largest industry in Belton. It employed hundreds of workers. It also had its own village, commonly called the Mill Hill, with over two hundred houses, its own water system, a baseball team and a ball park, Boy Scout Troop 34 and log scout cabin, a public swimming pool, a gym, a church, a company store, a school with first, second, and third grades, and a “one-man” police force. It also had a big pond that was used as some kind of cooling system for the mill. Fishing was allowed, if you got a permit from the mill office.

      The standpipe, which once was part of the Belton water system, located one block from the city square, is 155 feet tall. However, the Big Mill smoke stack is 215 feet tall.

      In September 1947, Mama walked me to the mill school on my first day. After I met my teacher, Mrs. Leda Poore, Mama left. Next, I smelled something cooking; it was a small school, but they served hot lunch. Around that time, my dad came home from the army. His name was John Greene Campbell Jr. Everybody called him June, even I and Jerry. Mama’s name was Virginia Bannister Campbell. Her nickname was Gin. They were called June and Gin. June went back to work at Cason’s. Mama opened a small diner called The Midway Cafe. Just across Breazeale Street, from the Mill Hill, next to Lester Collin’s barber shop, she had a real good business.

      Her hotdogs were a big seller. Ten cents per piece or twelve for a dollar. Belton’s policemen and doctors would eat there. After school, every day, I would go there and listen to the juke box. Someone kept it playing all the time. Often, I would lay down under the counter and take a nap, while music was filling my head. That was the normal routine for the next few years.

      One night, in 1949, June came home from work and said, “Come on, boys, the gym has a TV set, and we’re going to watch the Friday Night Fights.” There were a few men sitting around looking at this cabinet-style TV. It was the first one I ever saw. It sure didn’t impress me much. The picture was the size of a hub cap and all snowy.

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