14th Post "THE PAST IS MYSELF"

Photo: FACING DOWN THE YELLOW CREEK VALLEY

TONK ROY and THE SHARED BUBBLE GUM

What I remember most about Tonk was how he would take a forked tree branch from a small sapling, cut it down to resemble handlebars for a motorcycle, and with his bare feet, churn up the hard gravel and dust in the road, holding the forked branch and verbally making the noise of hudden, hudden, RRRrrrrrrPow, Pow

Tonk‘s mentor was Wire Pliers Reynolds, who owned, rode, wrecked and held together with baling wire, an Indian Motorcycle. Wire Pliers real name was Burton, however he was known by everyone up and down the Yellow Creek Valley as “Wire Pliers”. This was because he was always cutting a piece of baling wire with his pliers to hold, attach or keep together, a component to the “Indian”.

"Pliers" as he was usually called, spent time in later life being fed, clothed, housed, and maintained, compliments of the Tennessee Taxpayer. Wire Pliers Reynolds went to prison. I think he used those pliers for more than cutting baling wire and motorcycle repair.

Tonk Roy lived in Wilson Hollow and was one of my Edgewood School classmates. He had a habit of squeezing the skin on the back of his neck between his thumb and forefinger and then snapping his finger. There was a big brown spot on the back of his neck which was the result of this nervous habit and I had to sit behind him and look at that spot every day .

Tonk’s father, Mr. Elgie, worked on the railroad and Tonk was the only student in school who had jingle in his pocket. Nobody knew how Tonk arrived at his jingle, but he knew whenever some new and different commodity was delivered to Uncle Walter and Aunt Annie’s general store.

And not only was he the messenger of a new kind of candy or the arrival of bubble gum, Tonk could make purchases from D. E. Martin’s “rolling store” that traversed the hills and hollows weekly.

D. E. Martin had an old van type truck with a front wheel drive; on the front bumper a section of steel railroad iron, (railroad track) was attached with a length of log chain for added weight over the drive wheels. Sometimes the rolling store man made sales to the housewives by bartering, and rumors circulated in the valley that payment was not always made in chickens and eggs by the ladies, while their husbands were in the fields working. I always wondered why there was a straw mattress in the back of that rolling store, evidently it was not for sale.

Tonk Roy did not always go home after school. Many time his mother, who had a high ratio of Indian Blood in her veins, would roam the valley or have another Wilson Hollow Resident roam for her, in search of Tonk Roy. Tonk would suddenly decide he was going to go home with a fellow classmate and spend the night, without his mother’s knowledge. Problem was, Tonk Roy would “wet” the bed.

Everyone in the fourteen student one room school had a “nickname”. Somewhere in the valley I had been branded with the nickname of “Stooge”. Tonk Roy had a speech impediment and he could not pronounce the letter “S”, so when addressing me Tonk would say, “Tooge, I going home and pend the night wid you tonight”. “Tonk” was also a nickname.

Tonk had an older sister who lived at home with his mother; his father was never home, but with a railroad section gang somewhere on the line, causing the cliché : “Two is company, four is a party, three is a crowd and one is a wanderer” to come into play. Tonk Roy was, indeed, a wanderer.

Once chosen as the host for Tonk’s wanderings, he did not walk home from school with you, but would “show up” at suppertime. Where he was between school and supper was known only to him and the Indian Spirits who protected him.

One night in particular, Tonk arrived at the crippled grandmother’s house to spend the night with me. The weather had deteriorated to a cold night with sleet and freezing rain. The first words out of the spinster schoolteacher’s mouth were, “Does your mother know you are here tonight”?

Of course Tonk Roy lied and the spinster school teacher knew it. She told him she “ought” to make him go home, but since the weather was bad and he would have a long way to walk, he could stay. This night, in particular was going to be great because, Tonk Roy was chewing a piece of bubble gum.

As I mentioned, Tonk always had some jingle in his pocket and he had purchased a piece of “Fleer’s” Bubble Gum at the general store.

His chewing made my mouth water and you could smell the distinct aroma of “Fleer’s” Bubble Gum. As he chewed, a small portion could be seen at the corner of his mouth in preparation of sticking his tongue through the flattened area to blow a big pink bubble.

Wow, what I would give for a piece of “Fleer’s” if only I had a little jingle to make a purchase. Each piece of “Fleer’s” had under the wrapper, a waxed paper copy of “Fleer’s Funnies”. This miniature comic strip was almost as enticing as the bubble gum.

After supper, sitting around the old sheet metal stove, Tonk and I came up with an absolutely stunning idea. Since he had only one piece of ABC (Already Been Chewed) bubble gum and there were two of us, he could chew for a while and then I would chew for a while. And that is what we did on that cold, stormy and winter’s night; Tonk Roy and Robert McClurkan share one piece of “Fleer’s” Bubble Gum and chewed until bedtime.

In the winter when the weather was cold and bedtime arrived, entering the cold room under the tin roof, temperature was equally as cold indoors as outdoors. When crawling into the cold bed, between the cold sheets, the coldness made the bed feel wet, but this was an illusion to your senses due to the tremendous cold.

No fires were kept burning in the house at night and before all adults "settled in", someone would go outside, walk around the house and look toward the barn and all out buildings to ascertain no light could be seen anywhere. The reason being, if light could be seen anywhere, then a fire was the source of the light. To be “burned out” at night would eradicate your livestock, your ability to farm, your food source and even the lives of the family.

Every farm in the valley had a dinner bell, however in my childhood, the dinner bell could not be rung except in case of emergency. Anytime a dinner bell could be heard ringing, adjoining farms would come running to assist in whatever way possible. There was one time when this rule of the dinner bell was broken. A message came over the “Atwater Kent” radio that the Second World War was over, Japan had surrendered, I was allowed to go out and pull the rope and ring the dinner bell to celebrate.

In the winter we would place a wooden stick in our water bucket in the kitchen, by performing this act, when the water froze during the night, the bucket wouldn’t burst. Next morning, fires were built in the wood cook stove and other stoves, the bucket was placed on the cook stove to melt the ice and we would go to the barn to do the morning chores. Arriving back to the house, the ice was thawed and we could wash our faces and brush our teeth and my uncle could shave. We always woke up in a super cold house in the winter and it didn’t take but mere seconds to get dressed.

Tonk Roy and I had to sleep in the cold bedroom in the big feather bed and we came up with another brilliant idea; seemed like when we got together we could invent “brilliant” ideas.

Since we knew next morning the spinster school teacher would “holler” up the stairwell for us to get up, long before daylight, we would shock her. We decided to sleep with our clothes on that night, including our shoes, then we could bound out of bed and be downstairs by the fire within a matter of seconds. Contrary to popular belief in other regions of the country at that time, we did wear brogans in the winter, had it been summer, we children would have been barefoot, except for Sunday Church Services.

Long after Tonk Roy and I had fallen asleep, the spinster schoolteacher came upstairs to check on us; our plan was foiled, she made us undress and get into bed without the additional clothing. It was a good thing though, Tonk Roy peed in the bed that night.

Tonk, I found out later, grew up, married a girl who was distant kin on the McClurkan side of the family, went to work in a manufacturing industry, became a supervisor, got religion, joined a church, sang in a gospel group and became quite successful after all.

Way to go Tonk, and thanks for sharing the bubble gum.