Nicer Then?
Maybe I was just a very naive youngster
but there seemed to be less mean and crude behavior back
then than today. I only knew a few curse words that I’d
heard at the filling station and several vulgarities I’d
seen on the restroom walls at the courthouse. I thought
drugs were medicines that the doctor gave you to make you
well. Free love was not a topic of concern. I loved my
friends, family, and dog and it was absolutely free.
War and the tragedies of war were well known at that time.
I lived through those awful years of World War II with my
father overseas in the army and heard each day the bad news
of someone I’d known not coming back. But everyone was
completely committed to supporting the national cause and
to be otherwise was not an option. To be a Boy Scout was
the dream of most boys including me and my hero was the
Lone Ranger.
Even as a young adult I was inexperienced in the art of
worldliness. At an early age I was principal of an
elementary school in Fayetteville. One day I came back from
another school to find a small boy sitting in my office.
The teacher had sent him from the playground for me to deal
with his misbehavior.
“What did you do, son?” I asked.
“I shot a bird,” he said, hanging his head down avoiding my
eyes.
“You did what!” I exclaimed.
Still looking at the floor and almost in tears, he
repeated, “ I shot a bird.”
I asked in a disturbed tone, “Well, did you kill it?”
The young boy looked up at me in disbelief and said, “Ahhh,
Mr. Brown!”
With this, I hurried out and asked the school secretary
what the child had done. She laughed and explained to me
that this was a hand gesture that had a vulgar meaning. I
came back to my office and handled the problem as though I
had always understood the situation.
Some people probably were not as innocent in those early
days as maybe just unworldly. I recall that some
bootleggers bombed Baynard Stinchcomb’s house while he was
county sheriff and then tried to set fire to his deputy’s
house. I heard about several Ku Klux Klan demonstrations
against black citizens who had taken liberties that the
Klan considered belonged only to white people. Illegal
drugs were not heard of, but moonshine whiskey was
prevalent and drunkenness was not uncommon, resulting in
frequent street fights in town, especially on Saturdays. I
also was told of a couple of murders that were never
solved. It was whispered that influential people were
involved.