another one would approach me.
He would say, "I have seen you around in public with the crookedest manager in the business."
He would call the name of a manager that was waiting for me to sign a contract. He would show me a clipping from the newspaper where some boy had suffered brain damage in a fight. He would tell me that man was his manager. He was so money hungry that he matched him with someone out of the boy's class and got him hurt. Stay away from him or you will be in the same shape.
Then the next day, here came another one. He showed me all the nasty things the good one had done.
It was plain for me to see that I was the boy that would get hurt, so some guy in a pin stripe suit could get by without working for a living.
As long as it was for fun and a contest of skill and wits, I enjoyed it. The professional part involved things that I didn't care for.
I have fought several times since, but only for the benefit of others. I usually fought to raise money for crippled children or charity.
I would fight a man just to accommodate him quicker than I would over a misunderstanding.
Smokey Crabtree during his Merchant Marine career,
19 years old.
Smokey Crabtree at 20 years of age.
When I was eighteen, the government needed men in the service and was drafting them off their jobs. I volunteered and went into the Merchant Marines.
I traveled all over the world during the next two years, meeting strange people, good and bad. I observed very closely, learned well, and remembered for a long time. Two years of this and I was well educated in what the world was like and I wanted no part of traveling around.
The war ended about that time and I went back to my welding profession in California.
I soon met a very, very special girl. Her name was June McCloud. She was still in high school and only fifteen years old. She was very smart and looked a lot older than she was. She was living with her parents in Alameda, California. but they were from Oklahoma. She had lived most of per life in the country as I had. I got to know her folks and they were a fine family.
Our wedding picture, Smokey Crabtree and wife June, taken in Reno, Nevada, five minutes after we bought the marriage license.
They were like me, they had come from the poor side of the tracks but inside they were the finest.
I only got to take June to the movie a couple of times a week. Her Mother said that she was too young to date steady. This went on for several months.
I asked her to be my wife and she was willing, but there was her parents. We talked it over and we knew for sure her Mother would never consent to the marriage. We figured if she found out we. were serious about each other, she would stop us from seeing each other
We slipped off to Reno, Nevada and got married. You did not have to be of age. There we were wearing twin sweaters and blue jeans when we were married. Her Mother was very upset for awhile but soon got over it. Our plans were to save money and move back to Arkansas so our children could be raised in the country, away from the big city In the country people lived more or less off the land, instead of each other.
I wanted to protect my children from the queers, dope fiends, and crooks that had the big towns infested.
My idea on this was to go someplace in the woods. Odd people are allergic to work and in the country you usually have to work for what you need rather than kill or rob your neighbor. I very well knew where this place was, Fouke, Arkansas.
We got our family started sooner than we planned. We were married only three months when June became pregnant. We were very happy about this, but we started worrying right away about the doctor and hospital bills.
Within four months we had saved up one hundred dollars. We wanted the money to be in safe keeping. I went to the Post Office to deposit the money in postal savings. When I came back, I was carrying a .20 gauge automatic shotgun. It was a beauty, a Model II Remington, the finest gun I had ever seen, and I owned it.
June was very upset for awhile, until she saw how I felt about the gun.
I said, "Honey, they quit making these guns during the war This is the first gun like this I have seen on the market since I've been big enough to work for money It cost me one hun fred one dollars and fifty cents."
It was a dream come true.
I told her, "When we go back to Arkansas, this gun will help feed us and I will work twice as hard now that I am broke."
She soon forgave me. During the next few years, we lived upstairs, downstairs, and beside every nationality in the world, some good and some bad.
Families were all crammed together like fish in a can. Neighbors were fighting over the oddest things.
I saw a two hundred and fifty pound man hit a beautiful lady with his fist and knock her at least twenty feet. All this was over which way he was going to turn the boards on a yard fence he was building. She was his next door neighbor. He was building a fence for his yard. He was putting the unfinished side of the fence toward her house. She wanted the smooth side of the fence toward her house and the fight was on.
When you mowed your lawn, your neighbor would come after you if some of the grass from your mower flew over on his lawn.
When you watered your lawn you had to make sure none of the water got on his grass. He would have you in small claims court for drowning his grass. These things made me sick inside.
I am the type of man who wants to help the man next to me and that was usually what got me into trouble.
We got tired of paying rent and living in undesirable places. We made a down payment on a house. It was so close to our neighbor there wasn't even room enough to walk between our house and his. A few days after we moved in the house I saw him outside watering his lawn. I wanted to be neighborly, so I went outside and walked over to him. I told him I was his new neighbor, my name was Crabtree, and extended my hand in friendship. He looked me over, layed down the water hose, and went over and turned off the water He turned his back to me, walked inside his house, and left me standing there like a fool.
We lived in that house for two years and I never knew his first or his last name. This, and many more reasons, was why I was saving to get back to the country
Smokey on a deer hunt in California.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен
