The child grew to age three, was then passed along to family members in another state, to be “cared for” and raised in the fashion of the mother’s disciplinarian father, who, by this time was deceased.
The parents migrated from the Southern United States to a large metropolitan city on the Western Coast of Lake Michigan in the Midwestern United States. There, they worked to amass as much money as possible for their future plans.
When the woman’s father died, many debts were left unpaid, creditors were knocking at the door and banks were threatening foreclosure on the mortgaged family farm. The year was 1927.
Nine children were born into the family, five of the nine were girls, strong willed, full of grit and determination. Three daughters earned college degrees, two became schoolteachers, one a registered nurse. The remaining two married, quite successfully.
These five sisters were the makeup of, what their nephew labeled, “The Matriarchal Society”.
Anyone associated with them could sell their Britannica Encyclopedias, these ladies had been everywhere once, had done everything twice, they knew it all, and had the answers to everything. To put it bluntly, they could do no wrong, especially in their own eyes.
Somewhere along the way, I remember a few words to a line in a song that goes: “God help the mister who comes between me and my sister, Lord help the sister who comes between me and my man”. I’ve been threatened many times by a member of this society with the words, “Don’t, you dare talk about my sister”, when the sister, in all honesty needed a lot of “talking about”.
The “matriarchal society” banded together during the “paying off” of papa’s debts, thereby saving the farm; Mary Lee and Floyd, my parents, received a portion of the farm, deeded to them in return for the money they invested in the debt payoff.
I have no recollection of my mother and father while I lived with them for three years in Chicago, prior to my being transported to Tennessee. My recollections are of a crippled old grandmother, a high strung, frustrated, spinster aunt and an uncle who farmed the land. These people were my mother’s mother, sister and brother, my keepers until the eighth grade of elementary school.
My mother’s family were very cruel to animals. I oft heard stories of mistreatment, beating mules when they were pulling an overloaded wagon, giving their physical “all” and being prodded in the side by a pole or a wagon standard, or beaten over the back with a log chain. In fact, on more than one occasion, I witnessed this action with my own eyes.
A cousin of mine owned a horse that was stabled at my grandmother’s barn. My uncle tried to make the horse cross a creek that was swollen due to heavy rain; the horse balked, fearful of the high water and was beaten and beaten until it fell down into the water and drowned.
My grandmother possessed many cats which were invaluable for rodent control around the farm. Once, I remember, a cat defecated in the corn crib, my uncle got his hand in the feces, caught a cat, tied it upside down with baling wire and beat it with a bull whip until the flesh was torn from the body and the cat died. There were times I felt the lash of that bullwhip during my tenure in that horrible place, and he didn’t even know if that was the guilty cat.
I have been told, by very reliable sources that my grandfather, (the matriarchal society’s father) frequently had large neighborhood picnics in one of his “creek bottom” fields. People would come from miles around to one of Bell Adams’ events.
There was an abundance of food and entertainment; one of the sports practiced at his events was the “chicken pull”. Heavy baling wire would be stretched between two uprights poles, chickens would have their legs tied and be hung upside down on the stretched wire. The men, on horseback would ride under the hung chickens and try to grab them by the head or neck and pull their heads off. This was done for sport and I’m certain many chickens suffered prior to the head being pulled completely from the body and death relieved the suffering. (And we talk about other fundamentalist religious groups with their practice of beheading).
I can look back to my formative years in the early 1940s and feel that I was living in a barbaric society, an absolutely unbelievable environment.
The spinster aunt, Daisy Bell, held a Master’s Degree in Education from Austin Peay University in Clarksville, Tennessee; consequently she was the teacher/principal for my one room school and the principal for the other three community schools. Whenever need arose she would handle her principal duties for the other teachers in the other schools.
She was a stern teacher, a strong disciplinarian, an egotistical S.O.B. and an unbelievable controller. My mother’s twin brother referred to her as the “King Bee”. However, she had close competition from her other four female siblings, some were just a little more subtle.
The Adams family lived in the rich fertile flood plain of the Yellow Creek, while the “ridge runners” lived on farms that were less fertile, rocky and hard scrabble farming. Not all, but many of the dwellers along the creek, looked down on the poorer families in the hills, The adults in my family were inclined to look down on, and felt they were just a little bit better than, the ridge folks. They “bad mouthed” any and everybody except themselves.
Looking back to the 1940s, I realize most acquaintances paying homage to the home of Mrs. Addie Adams, were there because of the old crippled lady, not because of her offspring who were secretly abhorred, and also, because of the old lady’s benevolence toward others. She always shared, as did her deceased husband.
My first recollections in life are with Mrs. Addie Adams, her daughter, Daisy Belle and her son, Horace D. When I came to live on Yellow Creek, Mrs. Addie was sixty six years of age, Daisy Bell was thirty four and Horace D was twenty six. (I was three)
By the time I arrived, Daisy Belle had finished her college, attained her Master’s in Education and had established herself as a well known educator in Dickson County, Tennessee. There is no argument to be made concerning her ability to teach. She was very intelligent, displayed and taught her students beautiful penmanship. For those of us who applied ourselves to her teaching, we received a good basic elementary education. Only one major character defect negated the positive side of her teaching, she did not know how to relate to children without yelling, scolding, slapping and beating them.
To some extent, I was blessed to have had her in my formative years for elementary education. During the summer months, when she gathered all necessary lesson plans and curriculum for the next school year, when I was not performing my chores, which were many, she made me study and work on my lessons for the next school year. Basically, I was taking the same course of study twice in the same year; maybe I was not too intelligent, but a slow learner.?
Oft times I have reminisced about those years in the elementary one room school with her. Her harshness and threats and often physical abuses. I can not for some reason, not feel sorry for her, because she was thirty four when I was placed in the home of her mother, with her and her younger brother. She was not married, probably sexually frustrated, along with other frustrations of being responsible to raise her sister’s boy. That could not have been a quality of life for anyone.
Not only did she teach school, but maintained a large vegetable garden. She and her mother spent the summer canning and preserving food for the family’s survival the next winter. She raised chickens and early on Saturday Mornings, she would start slaughtering chickens, dress them, and prepare them for delivery to her “in town” sales route. This was a religious routine weekly. Her boyfriend, the bread man, would deliver his Hudson Automobile on Friday Evening for the Saturday chicken delivery. Sometimes I was allowed to ride into town with her while she delivered the fresh poultry to the town folk.
Horace D. was in charge of all the farming, but he never really made any money and wasn’t too honest in some of his dealings. I think he stole from others, and that is not just my opinion, other folk feel the same way.
My father and mother would come to Tennessee for a week’s vacation once a year and I didn’t really know how to relate to them. During their stay I had two mothers and two fathers. I was always confused as to which adult I must obey when told to do something. Should I listen to Mary Lee or Daisy Belle, Floyd or Horace D? I was never quite sure, when my birth parents came for a visit.
I traveled to Chicago to visit my mother and father on two occasions prior to my moving to that city for continuance in my education with the eighth grade and four years of high school. I would leave Tennessee aboard the “Dixie Flagler” on Sunday and return on the following Saturday, spending five days with them in the Windy City.
On one of these rare visits I was taken to Roseland, a suburb in South Chicago where the “Pullman Company” built railroad cars. My mother’s brother Foster worked for Pullman and had a son, Ronald Charles Adams, my cousin. It was a treat to visit “Ronnie” because he had stuff I never encountered on the farm. He had the latest cereals, Quaker Puffed Wheat, Quaker Puffed Rice, Cheerios and other neat stuff. He also listened to radio programs which were foreign to me; The Green Hornet, The Lone Ranger, Sgt Preston and Yukon King, Sky King, Terry and The Pirates and all kinds of wonderful listening.
During this particular visit, for some reason which I cannot explain, “something” came over me and I had a desire to “tell all” to my Aunt Isabelle, Ronnie’s Mother. I told her about all the things that happened to me in Tennessee. Every ugly detail came pouring out of me like a broken dam spewing forth its imprisoned waters. I felt as though I could fly with the birds after I had unleashed all my pent up hurt and anguish. I was free.
Isabelle related all I had revealed, to Mary Lee and Floyd, who in turn, communicated my revelation to Daisy Belle and Horace D. Naturally, they denied any of my word as being truth. When everyone was out of sight except the perpetrators, you can imagine what happened to me for having spoken and told. Today, as an adult, I can relate to children when they tell what happened or is happening to them, adults had better wake up and listen.
I remember very vividly being called into the presence of my mother when I was age ten. Entering the room, I found her totally naked and facing me with a reddish pink, jagged, long scar running vertically from just below her breastbone to her pubic hair. She pointed to the scar and shouted, “Look at this, you little Son Of A Bitch, if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have this”.
Wow, that was something that has stayed with me my entire life.
While in High School in Chicago, my father once said to me, “If it wasn’t for you, my wife wouldn’t have had all the sickness she has had”. I still wear, in my left wrist, the sharp graphite point of a “lead pencil” that broke off in my wrist when I put up my hand to defend myself as he tried to stab me in the face with it.
I remember once, during my late teen age years, my father coming into my room with a piece of hickory stick, intent on “whipping” me. I was almost seventeen, strong and tall, I looked down at him and said, “Don’t you dare hit me, because if you do, it will be the last thing you ever do to me”. He dropped his cowardly head and walked away. I really believe I would have knocked his head off his shoulders if he had hit me with that stick. I had all the beatings I was going to put up with, mostly from his wife.
During my five years living with Mary Lee and Floyd, I was not allowed to have any friends in their house. When I was not working, I was to clean house and have supper cooked when Mary Lee arrived home from work. I only saw Floyd on Saturday Nights and Sundays, he left for work before I awoke and returned home after I was asleep.
Those were turbulent years, me going through puberty with parents I didn’t know, with whom I had never lived; two adults who never lived with children, and now a teen aged son in their midst. What confusion!
I carried the guilt of being a problem for someone most of my life. When I graduated High School, my Aunt Isabelle came to my graduation, my father and mother didn’t attend. They were too busy making money and didn’t want to take off work.
Could I have been a good parent? How? Who teaches you how to be a parent? Where do you get training? Is it something that is passed down from parent to child? I don’t know! I was never a parent to my own children and a terrible, too tough, disciplinarian to my third wife’s two children, she asked me to adopt.
December, 1955 was the deadline for Floyd and Mary Lee to return to their roots in Tennessee. We loaded the 1951 Dodge Coronet four door sedan and headed South. Arriving on Yellow Creek, my father and I stayed one day and then returned to Chicago with lumber and tools to “build as you go” high rise sideboards on Floyd’s one ton flat bed Dodge Truck, to hold the top heavy load of household goods.
During all the years Floyd and Mary Lee lived and worked in Chicago, never once did they purchase any Real Property, nor have a telephone; two decades of their tenure were spent in furnished apartments.
We loaded the household items that were to be transported, covered everything with a tarpaulin, drove to Kroll Motors, the automobile dealer who sold Floyd his car, and got permission to let the truck be parked inside overnight. We walked back to 6740 South Emerald Avenue, slept on the floor and arose next morning long before daybreak, retrieved the truck full of goods and headed South again, this time “burning the bridges behind us”.
The temperature was well below zero, Floyd possessed an old coal oil lantern with a red globe, not unlike a railroad signalman’s lantern, he tied this source of illumination on the back of the truck, lit the wick and off we went. The “Beverly Hillbillies” were on the road. I’m certain we looked like a bunch of gypsies from Maxwell Street as we drove toward Chicago Heights, Gary and Hammond, Indiana on old National Highway 41; I do know the police pulled us over, probably thinking they had some easy pickings from a hillbilly with Tennessee Tags and a lantern on the back of his truck.
However, since Floyd had just left CTA and knew the ropes, no “pinch” was forthcoming, the cops let us go and we were, once again, on our way.
Mary Lee had another younger sister named Vella B. (She was a trip) Prior to my departure from Chicago, I had worked with the National Tea Company and was still just seventeen with no prospect of getting any worthwhile job until I became “of age”.
Arriving in Dickson County with a load of household goods, nothing would suit Mary Lee except Floyd and I unload the truck’s contents the night of our arrival. It didn’t matter how tired, the matriarchal society was in control, so we unloaded the truck. Vella B. arrived next morning, the date was December 24, 1955.
Vella B. started in on me from the time she arrived until she left, harping about my not having a job, and “why doesn’t that lazy thing go to work somewhere”. She was the crazy one of the matriarchal society. I found a job and began full time employment at age seventeen on January 9, 1956, sixteen days after arriving back in Tennessee. Her son, Billy, was a misfit and was "fired" from the only job he ever held, a floor sweeper for "Wal-Mart".
The family was in a total state of denial abut Billy’s diminished mental capacities, and woe be to me to ever bring up the subject, which I always did at every opportunity. In my family I really knew how to win friends and influence people. (That is a laugh)
I lived at the Nashville Y.M.C.A. in downtown Nashville and across the street was the Y. W. C. A. where I met my first wife, Frances. The first girl I ever kissed, and we were married on August 11, 1956, I was eighteen and she was twenty. Our marriage lasted sixteen years.
My total breakdown with Mary Lee’s siblings and the matriarchal society began in the late winter of 1955 and early spring of 1956. Constant criticism and badgering from Daisy Belle and Vella B and the controlling factor of Mary Lee was causing a schism in my family. Me, as the opposing factor against them.
Shortly after my marriage, Floyd and Mary Lee rebuilt the bridges they burned behind them on the trip South, they went back North to Chicago.
In January 1958 my wife gave birth to a daughter, stillborn. I never had the pleasure of holding little Gina Lynn, she died in her mother’s womb. Or was she murdered by an uncle?
Mary Lee’s youngest sister, Willie Gertrude was a registered nurse and had married Dr. Thomas Malone Jordan on June 26, 1942. He was my wife’s and my family doctor. (Big Mistake)
When Frances became pregnant with Gina Lynn, I was nineteen; during her ninth month, with the baby due in another week, she went to Dr. Jordan’s Clinic for one last examination prior to the big event. She had been feeling the baby move and kick and she knew it was healthy. While at the clinic she was administered an inoculation, of some sort. We were young, trusting and naive. We didn’t ask any questions, after all, this was family, the doctor was an uncle.
The next morning my wife informed me she had not felt the baby move during the night. In fact, the baby did not move again, it was dead.
Gertrude and Tom Jordan had three boys, the second son experienced some type of rare neurological seizure at school and because of its crippling affect, he was placed in a rehabilitation school in Pennsylvania. After he returned home, became established in a career and grew to maturity, he fell in love and got married.
Because he didn’t marry in the upper crust of society, which was the desire of his mother, he was basically banned by his parents, his wife was never accepted.
When Jimmy’s wife, Emily, became pregnant and was in labor, Gertrude said to Jimmy, “You know you don’t have to keep this baby, your father is a doctor and he can give Emily or the baby “a shot” and it will be all over”. Jimmy became livid, his baby was born alive and Adam is grown.
Jimmy related this story to me in the mid 1990s, and told me, “there is a great possibility that what was offered to him is what happened to my daughter“, his father killed her. I don’t want to go too deep into this because anger is not a good description as to how I feel about it, but Dr. Jordan and Gertrude are both dead now, so I cannot confront them.
Knowing the matriarchal society and how they operated, I am certain now, communication was open between Mary Lee and Gertrude with input from Daisy Belle, “Robert was too young to be starting a family”, so they made the decision to end it. They were all super controllers and I know how their thought processes worked.
I saw my parents face to face for the last time in November 1958, until they made their final exit from Chicago in 1965. During this seven year time span, I had spent three of those years in the United States Army.
After the final move, Mary Lee prided herself with hosting a gigantic July 4th “get together” for her siblings and their families. They would all of a sudden appear out of the woodwork, mole holes, ground hog holes or whatever hole was available from which they could emerge. They would love to stand or sit around and brag, boast and puff up about their achievements and the Bull S--T would get deeper and deeper.
Mary Lee’s first “get together” was July 4th , 1965, my last face to face contact with her or her husband, my father, had been in 1958, seven years prior. To my chagrin, Frances and I attended Mary Lee’s “get together”.
My attire for the day was a freshly pressed pair of blue jeans, open collar sport shirt, “spit shined” low quarter shoes and of course my person.
As my wife and I walked toward the house, my mother, who had been observing and scrutinizing me since my exit from our vehicle, burst out of the door in a rage. “What do you mean, coming to my house on the fourth of July with my family here and you be dressed in an old pair of blue jeans”? !
She went on and on and on and kept harping on my dress until I told my wife, “Let’s get out of here and go home”. We did not even stay to eat with Mary Lee’s family, my aunts, uncles, cousins and all the kinfolks. I had not seen her or my father in seven years and I suppose I was wrong to have wished for a hug and a hello. That was “A” typical of my relationship with my parents.
Every wife would tell you, when I was getting ready to go to my parent’s home, I always was nervous, knots in my stomach, upset and wishing I didn’t have to go. And this, while I was a grown man in my thirties, forties and fifties.
Anytime there was dirty work to be done, my father would call me to come and help, and like the stupid and obedient son, I would answer his beckoning call.
Every time I would go to their house alone, my mother would start in with her bad mouthing my wife. That would be all it would take for me to go off on her and arguments would start and I would leave and go home. No person was going to bad mouth my wife and me hear them, not even my parents.
I have observed a phenomena among female homo sapiens, and to some extent, some of the males. A husband chosen by a daughter is generally accepted graciously by the parents of the bride, more especially, the mother; but woe be to the woman who is chosen to be the wife of a son. The mothers of the groom come unglued and generally don’t accept the daughter in law. Sometimes the father of the groom also acts in this manner, however I’m not certain it is not a sympathetic reaction to his wife’s prodding him to cooperate with her.
My first wife, Frances and I were married for sixteen years, and I really don’t know why we stayed together that long. The only thing we had in common was our employment with Bell Telephone. I had been unhappy in the marriage for a long time, I think possibly from day one.
If there is anything in virtuosity that represents a male virgin, I could be called that when I married the first time. The only woman I had ever seen, “in the flesh“, totally naked, was my mother when she revealed her ugly scar and blamed me for her physical deformity, The next naked woman I ever saw was my first wife on the night we married.
The minister of our church counseled us and gave us a book to read, “Sex Without Fear”, which was quite instructive and pretty much introduced us to what could be expected on that “first time event”. Naivety? Yes, we both were full of it.
However, I knew on the night of our marriage, something was not right. I, who was affectionate, sensuous, passionate, loving and all the adjectives that could describe a loving man, had married a cold fish. Sex would never be something done with careless abandon, no spontaneity, an appointment had to be made, the moon and stars had to be in proper alignment, and then it might not happen. I heard once that wives had one thousand three hundred and thirty nine excuses not to make love with their husbands. Hell, I’ve heard at least two thousand myself.
Not a lot of intimacy passed between my wife and me during the sixteen years of our marriage, and not a lot in common between us either.
Weather would be beautiful, a Sunday afternoon would have arrived, I would suggest we go take on the world and drive through the countryside. Five minutes from home and my wife would ask, “Are you ready to go home yet”? Later I would go out and spend most of the day by myself, exploring the world among other things.
I belonged to the Tennessee Region SCCA, (Sports Car Club of America) and she would not go to events with me. The scenario goes on and on, but I’m certain the reader can get the picture of the situation.
Stupidity should be my name because of the stupid things I have done in my life. I could see the marriage slowly disintegrating and I wanted to do whatever I could do to hold it together, so I came up with a brilliant idea, tonight we would have sex, get pregnant and have a baby. Just what a failing marriage needed, but it happened.
The only thing I hated about divorcing her was leaving my son. I really loved him.
I announced I wanted a divorce and told her I would give her everything. I bought her a new car for transportation, even helped her move to an apartment and tried in every way to make the transition easy as possible during such an emotionally charged event. The month was May, the year was 1972, we had been married almost a full sixteen years, my son was almost two years of age.
I have only this to relate concerning my first wife, my son’s mother. She was, without a shadow of a doubt, a very devout Christian Woman. She had the morals of a saint and during my years with her, I can truly say, I never heard her utter a disparaging word about anyone. Her motto: “If you can’t say something nice about someone, then don’t say anything at all”. Words contrary to her in-laws and their family, including her husband. In our marriage, I can truly say she was the saint and I was the sinner.
When I left Frances my family, in total, disowned me and my parents disinherited me. Which was alright by me, I never wanted anything from anyone anyway, and I never got anything from anyone.
Then, on February 8, 1973, I remarried. Her name was JoAnn, and where Frances was a virtuous woman, I had married a common whore. Once in the heat of a passionate argument she blurted out that she had been intimate with fifty one different men.
JoAnn’s father was one of those who could not accept any man married to his daughter, no man was good enough.
JoAnn worked for the headquarters of Jack Daniel Distillery and on September 8, 1974 we had a daughter, Suzanne. I named her Suzanne after Neil Diamond’s Song “Suzanne”.
Suzanne,
Takes you down
To her place by the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night forever
And you know the girl’s half crazy
And that’s why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China
And just when you want to tell her
That you have no love to give her
She gets you on her wavelength
And lets the river answer
That you’ve always been her lover
And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From the lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said “All men are sailors then
Until the sea shall free them”
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone
And you want to travel with him
And you want to travel blind
And you think that you may trust him
For he’s touched your perfect body
With his mind.
Suzanne takes you down
To her place by the river
You can hear the boats that go by
You can spend the night forever
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbor
And she shows you where to look
Amid the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love (From Neil Diamond’s 1969 Album)
And they will lean that way forever
Brother Love’s Traveling SalvationShow
While Suzanne holds her mirror
The inspiration for naming a beautiful daughter
August, 1975, I arrived home from work and my wife was seated on the sofa watching the Republican National Convention from Kansas City on the T.V. When I walked in the door she announced, “Do you know what I want”? I responded, “A big hug and a kiss”. She replied, “No, I want a divorce”. And that was that. My daughter was one month away from her first birthday.
JoAnn’s father had helped her arrange everything and the divorce was filed, the deed was all but done. And soon it was completely done, the marriage was over, it lasted three years and six months. I had purchased property next door to her father, (another Big Mistake) and now he was happy. He had within his possession his darling daughter and the “sweet baby child” as he called my daughter. And yes, he had managed to convince her to get rid of me. (I was my own person and could not be controlled by him. I had spent my life living with controlling people and I was no novice).
Once again I moved out of a home and into an apartment. JoAnn had called me in January 1973 and asked, “What do you think about us getting married”? I had told her, it was the best offer I had received in recent months. She again called the shots by not asking but demanding a divorce in August 1975.
Now, not only was I hated by my own family, but also the family of my 2nd ex wife. Later, when my daughter reached her teens, I had to contact my ex father in law and warn him concerning the continual slander and bad mouthing he was doing about me to my daughter. “If it continued I definitely would press charges and take him to court for malicious slander”. Two weeks later, his anger got the best of him, he had a massive heart attack and died.
Judy Kay Whaley, out of Mobile, Alabama was in Nashville on business, we met, exchanged telephone numbers and on the evening of June 8, 1976 were married. Of all five of my wives, Judy was the only one who could cook. She made the best biscuits I ever tasted.
I had been down to my parent’s farm, arriving back at my apartment I found a note attached to my door. The note read: “Mr. McClurkan, this lady has been trying to get in touch with you for several weeks and requests you call her”. I made the call and, once again, the rest is history.
When Judy first came to Tennessee, before we married, I took her to meet my parents. (Once again, Another Big Mistake). While I was taking her children to the creek to skip stones on the water, my mother and father were telling her what a S.O.B. I was, how it would be a fateful day for her to waste her life and marry me. I had abandoned my own son by divorcing his mother, etc, etc. Was that, or was that not a case of the pot calling the kettle black? Abandoning my son?
That very evening my father called me and told me, “not to ever come to his house again and do not bring that woman and her kids into his home with expectations of his wife preparing any meals and serving us“. I acknowledged his call and told him, I would not bother him anymore with my visits. The following weekend, Judy called me and asked if I was working the next Friday, and if not, what would I think about our getting married. Again, my reply was that I had not received a better offer, so why not.
Judy had two children from a previous marriage, I adopted them. This blew the top off the tea kettle with my family, to have an adopted child in their midst was unacceptable. My mother had called a couple of weeks after my father told me not to ever come to his house again and she begged us to come to dinner. The conversation was, her trying to convince me Floyd didn’t mean what he said, etc, etc, etc.. It took a lot of convincing from her before I would allow myself to go, but then only with great reluctance. I didn’t believe her anyway, because the thought has to form in the mind before the tongue can vocalize it.
Every visit to Floyd and Mary Lee’s farm resulted in my going to visit with knots in my stomach and Judy being humiliated and insulted by the matriarchal society, especially if Daisy Belle or Vella B were there to lead the harassment.
Judy was a beautiful woman with everything in proper proportion physically, including long strawberry blond hair. The matriarchal society always had to make snide remarks about her physical attributes or her long hair. When my back was turned they would verbally work me over the coals. Once, out of my presence, Judy faced down Mary Lee and admonished her for the constant negative talk about me, her son. Mary Lee replied, according to Judy, that she “never talked bad about me”. Mary Lee was also a good liar.
Going back in time to the Chicago days, my first wife Frances, having accompanied me on a visit to Chicago was absolutely appalled when she caught my mother telling a blatant lie to a department manager in Wiebolt’s Department Store. I also know she would steal because while I was in High School, she worked in the delicatessen department of a National Tea Company Store and on many occasions I observed her taking large stacks of boiled ham wrapped in cellophane and aluminum foil out of her purse. Why would she be bringing home meat in her purse if it were not stolen?
During Judy’s college days she majored in costume design; she also spent a year in London studying at an English branch of her college.
Judy’s desire was to be a costumer, maybe for Broadway, what Edith Head had been for Hollywood. I invested in her dream, purchasing industrial sewing machines of all types along with other tools of the sewing room trade. Total monies invested ran into six figures.
I took vacation time to accompany her to textile industrial trade shows to view and see demonstrated the latest “state of the art” sewing machines, cutters, embroidery machines, etc.
The business she established was “Creative Costumes by Judimac”, During the businesses’ infancy, there were times when I would give her my salary check and let her use it to pay her employees because of the small cash flow. Maybe an order had been shipped but the money had not been received from the customer.
After having adopted Judy’s children at her behest, trouble began with this set of in-laws. Whoever said, “you were not only marrying the girl but also her family”, was absolutely correct. Had I been so incline to be less naive, I probably would never have married, because family and Robert never did seem to get along in any way.
It mattered not what I would say to the children, if Judy’s mother was around she would step in, take over and let me know in no uncertain terms, “they were her grandchildren, but they were not my children“. Then what was I doing paying tuition for a private school, feeding and clothing them if they were not mine? Another lesson learned, I personally, would never adopt anyone’s child again.
Shriners, who are an extension of the Masonic Lodge, have various clubs or corps within the makeup of each Shrine Temple. In Nashville, the Al Menah Temple hosts these various entities. The Shrine Clown Corps, the I.S.C.A. (International Shrine Clown Association) is made up of men who have “trademarks” on their name and their costume. Manufacturing a quality costume for these Shrine Clowns is a very lucrative business. Creative Costumes became a major player in costuming Shrine Clowns.
Judy began attending Shrine Conventions as a vendor, while I continued my work with Bell Telephone and also looked after the two children, (her two, I adopted). On more than one occasion she did not return home at the appointed time she had indicated prior to attending the convention.
She became a member of an International Costume Designers Organization which was having a convention in New Orleans. Judy wanted to attend. I withdrew money from my savings account and gave to her for all expenses. Arriving home after the convention, I met her at the airport and observed a one hundred eighty degree turn around in her demeanor. I took her to dinner at her favorite restaurant and there was a coldness I had never seen before. At home she advised me how she had been doing a lot of thinking and decided we didn’t need to be married anymore, and she wanted a divorce.
Prior to her convention, we discussed me taking vacation and accompanying her to a Shrine Convention in Greenville, South Carolina and another in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Since this was already planned, I decided to go even though she had asked for a divorce.
While in Greenville, I overheard one vendor remark to another, “Judy is not her same old party self at this convention, I wonder why“? The other vendor answered with, “Do you not know”? “Her husband is with her at this convention”?
The Myrtle Beach Convention was a fiasco, she was ordering me around as though I was her hired help, even when I would try to communicate with her, I was totally ignored. I finally told her I felt she was “Shriner’s Whore”.
Arriving back in Nashville, I moved out to an apartment of my own, the date was August 18, 1985, nine years and two months after we were married.
Her paramour, the captain of Al Menah Temple’s Shrine Corp, went back to his wife and left her all alone. She began to holler “foul”, even her father called me and said she was crying to him about what a terrible mistake she made in telling me she wanted a divorce. She wanted me to come back. Well, I was not recently a passenger on the turnip truck and I don’t wade through the same hog pen twice. I advised her father, the only thing I wanted out of his f------g daughter was a divorce.
Judy was the kind of gal that wouldn’t screw around with anyone who wasn’t her friend, and she didn’t have an enemy in the world. Finally she went bankrupt and lost the business in it’s entirety.
Be sure of what you wish for, because you might get it.
My mistake was, among many others I made in life, adopting her children when she begged me to do so. I’ve heard it said “Child Support is the screwing you get for the screwing you got. Well, I paid child support for someone else’s children.
Wife number four was, Elizabeth Keith Phillips, adopted daughter of Albert Harrison Phillips, founder of the Kimbro Phillips Company in Nashville, Tennessee. Elizabeth Keith Phillips, commercial pilot transporting corporate executives nationwide throughout the United States, South America and the Caribbean.
Met her, exchanged salutations, spent the night talking to each other and received a telephone call from her the following evening with an invite to go out. She called, I responded. (I was on vacation with lots of spare time)
The great Bell System, telecommunications giant of North America, was split asunder at midnight on December 31st, 1983. From that moment forward the twenty three operating companies serving under AT&T were spun off into regional operating companies. My employment was with South Central Bell, which along with Southern Bell, became BellSouth. When I was employed at age seventeen, Southern Bell encompassed the entire Southeastern United States. Nine Southeastern States were served by this giant. Kentucky, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Because of the tremendous size of the company, on July 8, 1968, Southern Bell was split into two separate companies, Southern Bell, serving the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida and South Central Bell, serving Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
I had decided in the fall of 1985 to take my retirement when my thirtieth anniversary arrived in 1986.
Alexander Graham Bell submitted his patent request just two hours ahead of Elisha Gray, who also was trying to get a patent on the telephone. Consequently Elisha Gray, the inventor, and Enos Barton, an entrepreneur, founded Gray & Barton in Cleveland in 1869. In 1872, this partnership became Western Electric Company, which supplied telegraph components to the Western Union Telegraph Company. After the invention of the telephone, Western Electric became the exclusive manufacturer of the telephone equipment for the Bell System. By the early 1900s, Western Electric had grown to be one of the largest manufacturing concerns in the world.
Western Electric also managed a thriving electrical distribution business, furnishing its customers with non-telephone products made by other manufacturers. This electrical distribution business was spun off from Western Electric by a government Anti trust Suit in 1924. They organized into a separate company, Graybar Electric Company, Inc., in 1925.
By 1986 Graybar had established a telecommunications department and I, after meeting with the Nashville Regional Director was going to work with Graybar in that department after retirement. I was not retiring to quit working, I was retiring to bail out of the stress associated with my job as a cable repair supervisor. I ate, at that time, Exedrin like it was candy, continuous headaches. Since my retirement, I have never had a headache.
Liz, as Elizabeth Keith Phillips preferred to be called, was raised in a privileged society. Having experienced a marriage to someone of this social class, I have a philosophy that I did not have before.
“East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet”, so it is with “Rich is Rich and Poor is Poor and never will they mix”.
I spent ten years and two months imprisoned, (within a marriage) and how I let myself get into that situation, I’ll never know.
Liz found me and continuously called me to go places with her. She was bound and determined to mould me into what she wanted me to be, and the fool I am, I almost let her.
I met Liz in December, 1985, in conversation, I announced my intent on retirement and my move to Graybar Electric Over the next five months, Liz courted me, I didn’t court her. She asked me to marry her and give up on going to Atlanta with Graybar. “Come live with me in my home on top the mountain, you have paid your dues, you don’t need to go to work with Graybar”.
After my retirement, I succumbed to her wishes, married her, moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains and gave up on going to work for Graybar. Not long after moving to the Blue Ridge Mountains, I let it be known I was going to look for work, I could not stand being unemployed and “kept” by my spouse.
Needless to say that was not going to work out in my marriage to Liz; after much conversation, gnashing of teeth, etc. etc. I stayed on top of the mountain, like the fool I am.
During my career with Bell Telephone, I amassed a sizeable amount of stock, both AT&T and BellSouth. Liz knew I had this stock and began her cunning rhetoric. I look back and realize I was a classic example of the poem penned by the American Author, Mary Howitt, “The Spider and the Fly”.
Liz began her constant begging for me to sell the stock, “ there was no need to keep it”, “there was enough money to take care of us for the rest of our life”, and on and on and on. I, stupidly, let her set up an appointment with her stock broker and my stock was sold. Proceeds went into Liz’s accounts, “she would handle all financial business in the marriage”. (Another Controller)
From Liz’s perch on top of the Blue Ridge, the skyscrapers of Winston Salem, North Carolina, sixty five miles away, could be seen on a clear day. Whenever we traversed the roads to Winston Salem for a dental appointment or whatever, we never returned home without Liz having spent at least six hundred dollars while in town. I could not believe the ease with which she could spend money. Oft times I would remark to her, my concern for the way she spent money with careless abandon. She would have to have two of everything she purchased. Why? I’ll never know.
During my marriage to Liz, I learned that the property she owned, the money she spent and the lifestyle she lived, all came from her family’s money, she did not work for it with the sweat of her brow. Her commercial / corporate flying was more a hobby than a necessity.
To go into the entire scenario of her spending and purchasing that which she did not need would take more space than a library would allow.
Mr. Albert Harrison Phillips, who was deceased when I married Liz, was a businessman in Nashville who befriended a former Coast Guard Academy buddy who needed financial backing to start his business. Mr. Phillips became the silent, hidden partner with the cash.
This friend had always wanted to stand over a large pot of hot cooking oil and thinly slice a potato and let in drop into the oil and come out a “Potato Chip”. The friend’s name was Herman W. Lay, founder of Lay’s Potato Chips, which later merged with Frito to become Frito Lay, then purchased by Pepsi Cola and stock becoming PepsiCo; with the operations of Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Frito Lay and Pepsi Cola under one stock offering.
The Phillips family also had a son who never worked a day in his life, but lived off the family money. I could not stand it, I felt like a caged lion, desiring to break free. I should have run as fast as I could, however I hung in to the marriage.
One trip to Key West, Florida found me wandering around town for two days while she wasted two days of my life in an Emerald Importer’s establishment, trying to decide on which of the sixteen thousand dollar emeralds she would purchase. Never give Liz a choice of two or more, she cannot make up her mind, and then, to be sure she will probably buy both when she doesn't need either one.
She owned a jewelry box that resembled a Pirate’s Treasure Chest, although smaller in dimension. She would carry this jewelry box with her at all times. In the trunk of a car or wherever, but never left behind at home. I once asked her how much the platinum, gold, pearls, diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds and other jewel encrusted watches and pendants were worth. She replied, “Probably a couple of million dollars”.
She purchased, during a four year period, four different recreational vehicles; we are talking top of the line conveyance for travel. During that four year period we visited every one of the forty eight contiguous states and most all the National Parks. Didn’t go into Alaska, Hawaii, Canada or Mexico, just the lower forty eight.
After four years of this travel I was definitely raring to get back in the harness and go to work. Retirement, to me, is a state of mind. I only left Bell Telephone to change my life from the pressure mill of the telecommunications industry in an operating company to a more laid back existence in the telecommunications supply networks, not quit working altogether.
Raychem Corporation, headquartered in Menlo Park, California was manufacturing and supplying Bell South with components for closing cable splices in a buried environment and heat shrink covering for damaged cable sheaths along with various closures for spliced fiber optic cables. I was the first to use their products on cables in the Nashville area.
Raychem had a consultant and training division called “The Pioneer Group”. This team was made up of retired Plant Supervisors from telephone companies, but mostly the Bell Companies. I went to work for Raychem as a consultant, with consulting and training in the GTE (General Telephone and Electronics) company area of Eastern Kentucky, West Virginia and Southwest Virginia.
Every time I arrived home from a trip out, Liz would accuse me of running around with women. For one thing, I was not running around with anyone and second, I didn’t have time to run around if I had wanted, too much to do each day with training and traveling from one point to another. But, the accusations kept up every time I came home.
Floyd, my father, was beginning to loose his ability to make good judgments with his finances and I suggested he appoint someone he trusted to take fiduciary responsibilities for him and have durable power of attorney. Someone like my first wife he and Mary Lee trusted and loved so dearly, or his younger brother. Floyd asked me if I would take the “durable power of attorney” for him.
Again, I told him, he needed to have someone he whole heartedly trusted; without a shadow of a doubt, trusted completely. He told me, “I trust you to do it”. I told him since I was eleven years older than my wife, I felt she should have equal durable power of attorney as well as me; then if something happened to me, she could continue to be his fiduciary in his business matters,
(Once Again, Another Big, Big Mistake).
That is what happened, Liz and I took over with equal durable power of attorney for my father.
I found he had cancelled all his hospitalization plans. In general, everything was messed up.
During the Autumn of 1990, on October 31st, Mary Lee was struck by a massive stroke, she died at 10 PM on the night of December 2, 1990. Floyd lost it. From that moment on all he wanted to do was die and be with Mary Lee. I made all funeral arrangements for my mother, my father couldn’t handle it. Mary Lee was eighty nine when she passed, Floyd was eighty four.
I knew, whether I liked it or not, the responsibility of caring for my father for the remainder of his life, was all mine, because there was nobody else except me. In my family the children always took care of the elderly parents.
Liz was not interested in “elder care” because in her family of wealth, hired nurses were always called in and the cleanup and care were left to outsiders. When her mother passed away and the condominium was to be cleaned for the purpose of listing with a realtor, neither Liz nor her brother wanted to lift a hand to clean. They contacted a cleaning service and then went out; I stayed behind and scrubbed, cleaned and disinfected the entire condo. When the cleaning people arrived, comments were made as to why they were called because the dwelling appeared immaculate to them. I advised them cleaning was already done, but if they wanted to go over the unit and clean again, be my guest. They saw no reason to do it again, I suppose the “poor little rich kids” paid for a service not rendered.
My father wanted my wife and me to come and live on the farm, he didn’t want to leave and go to the Blue Ridge Mountains to live. Liz would only come to Yellow Creek if the house could be remodeled to suit her. She couldn’t come to the farm and accept it as a working farm and live there. No, not Liz. She approached my dad about the need for remodeling. (Also she had ulterior motives which I was not aware at the time).
I was working the Tennessee Region for Raychem during this period and finally had to quit and get off the road to be certain my father was being cared for. One morning I was going to have to leave home around three thirty A.M. and I had asked her if she would prepare my father’s breakfast that morning since I was not going to be home. She said, emphatically, NO.
Liz was one controlling woman, according to her, she had overseen the building of her “mansion” on the Blue Ridge, therefore she wanted to oversee the renovation of my parent’s farm. That was like letting the fox guard the henhouse. I took Floyd to Virginia and kept him with me for three and a half months while Liz used his money to renovate the farm house.
To make a very long story short (but you will get the entire picture), Liz absconded my father’s savings (he had given her permission to use his money to remodel), sold her home on the Blue Ridge and sunk every dime of that money into outside renovations to the farm. Swimming Pool (she went in the pool only four times, but wanted no one else to go into the water), Tennis Court (she only played on the court twice, once with a neighbor’s husband, once with a fifteen hundred dollar tennis ball pitching machine), no one else was allowed on her court. The gravel road to the barn was paved with asphalt, I called it the “road to nowhere”. Eventually she spent all her money.
Liz decided to take a trip to California to visit an old girl friend, the girl friend was a Realtor, Liz came back and decided to become a Realtor. (In name only) She spent all her time trying to get organized. Finally I went to school, received my own Real Estate License for the purpose of becoming her licensed assistant, to make some money back from the enormous investment she had made into computers and all the other paraphernalia used by a Realtor.
In that last year we were married, she spent little time doing what successful Realtors do, while I was putting in about eighteen hours a day, and made for her, commissions that came to almost two hundred thousand dollars. I was only the licensed assistant.
To get finished with this long story of Liz, my father told me he wanted to give me the farm before he died, I told him no, leave it in your will. Liz, once again started in on the old whining and begging and told me I should take it while he was alive. Then she started again with the whining about, “You have been married before, you have children, you are older than I am, if something happens to you I could be without a home”, “I would only feel secure if the farm was in my name only”. This continued over and over and over for a couple of months. I should have had enough sense about me, an intelligent man, to have seen a red flag when she wanted my family’s property in her name only.
Finally we talked to my dad and she got her wish, the farm was in her name. Yes, I was a fool, yes, I would have done it to any woman with whom I was married, I am a man who loves too much.
My father fell, broke his hip, was hospitalized and then to a nursing home for skilled care. I visited him daily, took him clean clothes, snacks he would enjoy, Liz never came to see him once.
I went to visit my dad one day and was advised all the rehabilitation they could do for him was done, he would be coming home the next week. (Really, the insurance, I had finally attained for him, plus Medicare, was reaching their limit and would pay no more).
When I arrived home I told Liz, “Dad is coming home next Thursday.” She said, “Your dad is what”? Again I said, “Dad is coming home next Thursday”, “What home” ? “Your father doesn’t have a home”! “Oh yes he does”, I replied. “He has a home here, in this house and on this farm for as long as he is living”! “Oh no he doesn’t”, “I own this house and farm, big boy, and you know what I am going to do”? “I’m going to sell this farm, get a divorce from you, buy a house for me, myself and I, and I don’t give a damn what happens to you and that old man“.
And all of that is just what happened. She stole Floyd’s farm and kicked him out of his home. Floyd was now ninety years old, the year was 1996, he was born in 1906.
In hindsight we humans can look back and say, “If I had it to do all over again, I woulda, coulda, shoulda”.
I think my dad hit the nail on the head when he remarked to me one day, “You know, that Liz will skin ya”! Yep, she sure will do that.
I knew I had to do all in my power to find a home of some sort, for him and me, and a job for me to support a destitute father.
The week Liz filed for divorce, I was on “Jury Duty” and she came by the court and told me she could not buy any property without my name being on the deed unless she was divorced. She told me her attorney, “who had been my family’s attorney”, advised her, if I would sign some legal papers admitting I was “at fault”, she could get a speedy divorce, since I was not contesting anything. I had been advised by the "family attorney", should I contest the divorce and property rights, all legal proceedings would have to be handled by Nashville Attorneys and they would end up with the farm because of the exorbitant costs. I was too beat down emotionally to handle going through the hassle.
I did not want to contest a damn thing, because I had Yellow Creek, my father’s family, my mother’s family, the farm, the neighbors and Liz up to my nose and I was drowning in the soup. All I wanted was peace, just ever loving peace, and be out of Dickson County. I hated it, from childhood through my fifty eighth year, when all of this was happening.
I told Liz to have her attorney draw up my declaration, I’d read it, if it suited me, I’d sign it just to get her out of my life, if I didn’t like it, I would not sign it. The declaration read that I was admitting I was guilty of actions unbecoming a marriage. It was vague enough, the judge was in his chambers, he came back into an empty courtroom and fifteen minutes later Liz had her divorce.
I was her third husband. (She was my fourth wife)…”Can you believe that”?
There is so much more I can relate to this story. How she would get drunk, call 911 and accuse me of abusing her, while I was outside working in a field and didn’t know anything was happening, and on and on and on. Yes, she is the only woman I ever physically struck, but that was in my defense and to try to get her off me. She was the aggressive one in the marriage. She would get drunk on "demon rum" and wreak havoc. (Yes Robert, I, too, was on the boat at Center Hill that day, I know what happened). This part in parenthesis is for my son as he reads this.
God was good to me, he presented me with a job that I really needed at that time, showed me the way to find and buy my condominium to care for my dad until he passed away, and led me to wife number five, Tina.
All about Liz: What I found out about her was, she was bi-sexual, had been admitted to a mental institution as a teen, had been sent to a special home for unwed mothers in Virginia and had been an all around terror growing up in Belle Meade, Nashville’s rich, old money area. While we were married, Liz finally found her real birth parents, they had been students at Vanderbilt University when the girl became pregnant and put the baby up for adoption. They never married. Both the man and woman lived in Plant City, Florida.
Liz’s birth mother was a first cousin to a lady from Carthage, Tennessee. Her name was Pauline Gore, mother of Al Gore Jr., vice president of the United States at the time Liz found her mother. This made Liz the third cousin to Al Gore Jr. I told her as we parted company, “I know now why you are so crazy, you’re that damn Al Gore’s cousin.”
The last I heard, in 1997, crazy Liz moved to California in a small commune with four other lesbians. I wonder who is going to “odd man out” because “two is company and three is a crowd”, maybe she is just kinky enough to be a third party with two other lesbians. May she rot in hell.
So much more to say, so little time to say it, I consider this chapter closed. My favorite high school classmate, Dutch Huizinga, relates the positive side of life this way, "the runway behind you doesn't do you any good". "You can look back all you wish, that's up to you. ..... but it's only the length of runway in front of you that's available to stop in if you're landing, and only the runway in front of you that's available to develop enough speed to get airborne if you're taking off".
Life is good, I have no complaints, and I still thank God for what I have received in life. I definitely have been blessed.
Marriage five which has been since July 20, 1997, was a gift from God also. Tina and I met casually, and the following week unexpectedly met again. On the second meeting we exchanged telephone numbers and the rest is, as I’ve said numerous times in this chapter, “history”.
Without her coming into my life, my caring for Floyd while I worked would have been very stressful. Tina was a Godsend and the best helpmate a man could have asked for. Often I’ve said how I wish we had met back in our youth, but we have each other now in the golden years when we can be here for each other.
The man who always made me feel he despised me, the man who always made me feel I was “in the way", the man, who with his wife, came between my son and me, the man who never complimented me nor ever said he was proud of me, the man who cared so little neither he nor his wife came to my high school graduation, the man who joined his wife in telling lies about me, the man who disowned and disinherited me after my first divorce, was cared for and bathed and fed and nursed by the son he so much disliked. He died at age 97. I never shed a tear over his death.
I never owned any of my father’s land. He, more or less, gave a lot of it away by selling at (below market price) to husbands of my ex-wives and others. Just like my grandmother’s antique treasures, no family member asked me if I wanted any of it, the same happened to my father’s farm. I am truly thankful for that.
Robert McClurkan
January 19, 2006
Historic House on West Main Street, Franklin, TN
Historic Downtown "Town Square", Historic Franklin, TN
Town Square, Historic Franklin, TN with Confederate Soldier Statue
Front Entrance to"The Factory at Franklin" on a cold snowy night
Building 3, "The Factory at Franklin"
Building 2, "The Factory at Franklin"
Building 2, Nortwest Side, "The Factory at Franklin"
The Boiler Room Theater, "The Factory at Franklin"
Free Standing Wall on the Northeast Side of "The Factory at Franklin"
