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Smiley!

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Chapter One

My mother described the day of my birth, Nov. 20, 1937, as a terrible day, weather-wise. (I think that's all she meant by "terrible.")

She said, "It was sleeting something awful, and your daddy had to borrow his brother John's car to get me to the hospital, because we didn't have a car at that time."

Of course, we didn't really need one at that time, because we lived close to downtown Natchez, Miss., and we could walk everywhere.

My mom continued, "We were in John's new Plymouth. It was early in the morning; the sun wasn't even up yet. The streets were slick with ice and we were so afraid we were going to wreck it, and it was a borrowed car, you know. We lived with my mother on Washington Street; we had an apartment in the back of her house. She told me to dress warm and not to slip down on the ice ..." (My mom is inclined to wander a bit while telling a story ...)

She always stressed to me how much trouble I caused by being born on such a miserable day, and I felt a certain resentment towards me for being such a thoughtless son.

The only memories I have of my earliest years come from photos of me—a chubby, cherubic kid with curly hair, stomping around a downtown park in my snowsuit, and later in a sailor suit, looking at goldfish in the big brick fountain or grinning at the camera with an "ain't I adorable?" grin.

We shared my grandmother's house with her and my mother's brother and sister, who were in high school.

My grandfather had split and married a red-haired employee known in our household as "Hag." At that time any divorce was a big scandal, and Natchez was so small that the divorced parties and their families couldn't help running into each other. This made for a terribly sticky situation, as I discovered later.

Once I got old enough to talk, my uncle, a teenager, delighted in teaching me words that would get me in trouble.

My parents told me that after one of his coaching sessions, they took me to the park in my stroller. An elderly gentleman sitting on a bench offered me a cookie, and as I munched on it my mother said to me, "Now what do you say?"

I told the old gent, "Damn good—got another one?"

I must have been very young indeed, and I'm not sure that story is true, but it's one I've heard all my life.

School Days

When I turned 5, I could walk up the hill on Washington Street to kindergarten at Carpenter School No. 2 (No. 1 was on the other side of town).

I have only a few memories of those early school days:

When we talked about ourselves in kindergarten, I meant to inform my classmates that my birthday was three days after my parents' first anniversary. But it came out, "I was born three days after my mama and daddy got married." My teacher called my mama to tell her of the gaffe, and I recall them both laughing over it.

The school must have at one time been heated by coal (or maybe still was),because the playground was covered with tiny black cinders. Falling down on your knees was a painful and dirty business, and I used to come home covered in black grime. This was back when clothes were washed by hand. So much for "good ole days."

The school building was two stories high, and our fire escape was a huge black metal tube in which we were supposed to slide down to safety. I seem to remember that the round door of the tube, which came out on the playground, was kept locked to keep kids out of it. This would have defeated the purpose of the thing in an actual emergency. The entrance to the tube on the second floor was just outside the window of one of the classrooms, and bullies would threaten to put little kids in it. Although that door was probably locked too ...

There was also an unheated swimming pool in the building. There were small windows around the room it was in, but precious little light or warmth got in. I never saw anyone swim in it; that water much have been icy cold. It was a scary place, and figured in more than a few nightmares.

When I got to fourth grade, my teacher was a formidable lady who had also taught my mama. She was a stickler for "penmanship," and hated the fact that I was left-handed. Back then it was common for teachers to make left-handers write with their right hand. This is said to cause stuttering, but since I already stuttered and was never required to change hands it didn't apply to me.

I didn't have to change hands because my teacher had tried to make my left-handed mother write right-handed. My mom cried about it to my grandfather, who was still living with her and my grandmother at that time.

My grandfather, Prospero DeMarco, was a dignified, imposing man who owned a downtown drug store with his optometrist's office over it.

As my mom tells the story, he marched to the school and confronted the teacher.

Whatever he threatened her with, it worked. My mom remained a lefty, and the teacher, while expressing her distaste for southpaws, left me alone. My penmanship grades suffered, but this was probably because I had (and still have) a lousy handwriting, not because I used the wrong hand.

By the time I left the Natchez school in the middle of the fourth grade to move to Baton Rouge, I had suffered two defeats.

I could not for the life of me master the multiplication tables, and realized even at that early age that the life of a mathematician was not for me.

And I came within one word, salamander, of winning the school's fourth-grade spelling championship.

I spelled it "salamandar." To this day I hate those little lizards. Slimy bastards ...

In addition to living in the same house with a doting grandmother, I was fortunate to have a passel of great-aunts and great-uncles in Natchez.

The members of my grandmother's large Italian family had all stayed there, and many of them didn't have children of their own. So they took turns having me over, taking me out to such attractions as Natchez possessed for a child, showering me with gifts and feeding me royally. I was indeed treated like a prince.

I must have been an insufferable little twit ...

Not having any children of their own, my aunts and uncles (I didn't realize the "great" part until much later) had no idea what constituted a children's book.

So at the age of 5 or 6, I owned not only "Tom Sawyer" but the even more adult "Huckleberry Finn" and, most significantly, an illustrated version of "TheArabian Nights" by Sir Richard Burton. The illustrations were lush, exotic and very graphic. They taught me that women are constructed in a different manner from men. It was some time, however, before this knowledge was of any practical use to me ...

More Natchez Memories

I still find this hard to believe, but all the evidence I can gather points to the fact that around the time I entered kindergarten at 5 years of age I was walking a block up the hill on Washington Street to the library at Carpenter No. 2 School and checking out books. Having a good library so close to the house was a wonderful way for a child to learn to love and devour books.

The first book I remember reading was "Winnie the Pooh" by A.A. Milne. I was fascinated by the adventures of Pooh, Tigger, Christopher Robin, and the rest, and didn't realize until later that I had learned to read with a truly classic children's story.

And I also remember this from my Natchez childhood—from age 6 to age 8, when we left Natchez, I read "Huckleberry Finn" six...