No Ordinary Joes

by Larry Colton

  He glanced up and saw her descending the stairs. She was every bit as pretty as he remembered, even more so. She moved toward him, a quizzical look on her face. It wasn’t the big smile he’d hoped for.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I just thought I’d come up and see you,” he answered.

  Two girls entered the room, and Barbara didn’t introduce him.

  “This is a nice house,” he said awkwardly.

  “Yes, it is,” she responded. He’d caught her totally off guard. Her first reaction was that she wished he wasn’t there. She was in college now, taking literature and history classes, going to fraternity parties. Now that she’d met people from places such as Seattle and Portland, to her Bob seemed so unpolished. She had purposely not answered most of his letters, not wanting to encourage him. And a college girl wasn’t supposed to date a high-school boy, even if he was older than she was. She was dating guys who talked about going into business or law. In Bob’s last letter, he’d talked about enlisting in the service when and if he graduated.

  “Bob, I have other plans,” she told him.

  “I don’t suppose I could talk you out of them,” he ventured.

  She shook her head. He didn’t need her to explain any further. He turned toward the door.

  “I’m sorry I bothered you,” he apologized.

  “Maybe we can see each other this summer when I come home,” she offered weakly.

  “That’d be nice,” he replied.

  He caught the first bus back to Medford. Watching the pastoral scenery roll by, he felt a hollow pit in his stomach. By the time the bus reached Medford, he’d made up his mind: as soon as school was out, maybe sooner, he would leave town and join the Navy.

  3

  Tim McCoy

  of Dalhart, Texas

  The minute Tim McCoy walked through the front door, he knew something was wrong. He’d been playing across the street at his Aunt Bee’s house, his refuge when things at home weren’t right. In the past three years, he’d spent as much time at Aunt Bee’s as he had at home, staying there for months at a time when his mother was in the hospital.

  Maybe that was why his father, Harrell McCoy, wore a scowl. Maybe his mom needed to be sent away again for more treatment. Tim was only eight, but he’d already learned to recognize the signs: she’d mope around, not getting dressed all day, sleeping a lot, crying, barely able to take care of the house. Then Dad would bundle her into the Model T and drive the eighty-five miles from their home in Dalhart down to Amarillo, where she’d stay until she was well enough to come home. It was hard for Tim not to have his mom around and to not know for sure what was wrong with her. He’d come to rely on his dad, a salesman at Rhodes and Wilson, the local furniture store, and Aunt Bee, an ex-schoolteacher who had a great touch with kids.

  Or maybe his father was just upset at him for leaving his marbles and tops on the floor. If that was the case, he’d most likely be getting the razor strap. Not that his dad was mean; he just believed in firm discipline. At 6 feet 1 inch and 225 pounds, with broad shoulders and powerful arms, Harrell McCoy was an imposing man. But Tim was a tough little guy, and rarely flinched when punished. Besides, his father was his hero—an honest, hardworking man who had a sense of humor and could build or fix just about anything.

  He glanced at his dad. Normally a man with a positive outlook, on this day Harrell glared straight ahead, not saying a word, his suit jacket slung over the back of a chair. He nodded toward the window. Tim and his mother looked outside. The sky was an ominous black, thick with grit and dirt swirling off the prairie in every direction. Maybe they were in for another “black duster,” a powerful windstorm that whipped up such massive clouds of fine silt and soil that you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. After a black duster, sand would be piled as high as the eaves on houses and fence posts would be buried. These storms had all but denuded the land, the worst of them blowing topsoil as far away as Washington, D.C., and onto ships in the Atlantic Ocean.

  “Got the bad news today,” he announced.

  Tim’s mom, Capitola Boatwright McCoy, known to everyone as Cappy, sighed. One of ten children of Irish-German ancestry raised on a farm in Comanche, Texas, she was a small woman, 5 feet 1 inch, 115 pounds, who relied heavily on her Baptist faith.

  “Whatever it is,” she said, “the Lord will take care of us.”

  Tim studied his parents. He’d heard that farmers in the area were abandoning their property, that businesses in town were failing, and that friends of his parents had been forced to stand in breadlines. But the Depression was still a vague concept. He was an outgoing kid who spent his time playing with his friends, spinning tops, and pitching washers against the side of the house. His mom’s illness weighed on him sometimes, but other than that all seemed well.

  “They’re closing the store,” his father said.

  His mother asked when.

  “Tomorrow. I’ll be lucky if I get paid for this week. I’m out of work.”

  Tim peered out the window of Aunt Bee’s living room, hoping to see his father’s car. He hadn’t seen either of his parents in weeks. His mom had been hospitalized again, and his dad had been out of town, working for $1 a day for the WPA, helping to build a farm-to-market road from Brownfield to Lubbock. Supposedly, his mom was being released, and both his parents would be home soon.

  But Tim had learned that things didn’t always go the way he wanted.

  It was 1934 and the Depression had landed hard on Dalhart, population 4,500. For years the people in Dalhart had taken great pride in their community. Settled under the Homestead Act, which had given farmers and ranchers large tracts of marginal land that could not be irrigated, the town had experienced a long run of prosperity. But now, after years of bad agricultural practices, the farms were in trouble, worsened by the drought and the black dusters. Livestock were dead or dying and the crops withered. On the rare occasions when it rained, the runoff removed what little topsoil was left, slicing out gorges forty feet deep. Families were leaving in droves.

  Dalhart was doing its best to fight back. Wealthy local rancher Uncle Dick Coon had become legendary for his generous treatment of suffering farmers and cowboys, giving them money to survive. Some of these men had formed “The Last Man Club,” vowing to remain under any circumstances. Harrell McCoy, a staunch New Deal Democrat, had joined the club, but as the Depression deepened, his resolve weakened. He would go where he could find work.

  Tim spotted his dad’s Model T coming up the street. He raced out the door to greet it, but there was no passenger. The doctor had decreed that Tim’s mom wasn’t ready to come home yet.

  Tim’s heart sank. He didn’t know that his mother had almost died while delivering him and then fallen into a deep depression from which she’d never fully recovered, her condition compounded by his father’s desire to have more children. All Tim knew was that he wanted his mom home.

  Dr. George W. Truitt, a visiting preacher from Dallas, stood at the pulpit, pointing a finger at the congregation of Lubbock’s First Baptist Church gathered under a large tent. Tim had the feeling the preacher was pointing directly at him. He and his parents had moved to Lubbock from Dalhart after his mom was released and his father’s job with the WPA ended.

  “Alcohol is the force of evil!” thundered Truitt. “Do not succumb to its insidious temptation.”

  “Amen!” echoed the congregation.

  Sitting next to his mom and dad, Tim, now nine, nodded in agreement. Neither his mom nor his dad had ever tasted a drop of alcohol, and he was certain that he never would either.

  Today was the last day of the weeklong revival, the day Tim was to be baptized. And who better to do it than George W. Truitt, the most famous evangelical preacher in Texas, if not the whole South? To his followers, he had the power of the Holy Spirit, and he was an early-model Billy Graham, learned and charismatic. He preached that true greatness consisted not of great wealth, or shining social qualities,
or vast amounts of study, but in using all of one’s talents in unselfish ministry to others. To Tim, Truitt was more impressive than even Babe Ruth.

  As with many Lubbock families of the time, the Baptist Church was at the center of the McCoy family’s life, not only spiritually, but socially as well. At home, every meal began with a prayer, and every day ended with quotes from the Scriptures. Tim’s mother’s mental health had improved since they’d moved to Lubbock. It helped that she didn’t have to stand in breadlines; Harrell had found a new job as a salesman for Great Plains Furniture, working ten hours a day, six days a week for $18 a week.

  On their way home from Tim’s baptism, the family passed a gathering of nonbelievers. Tim would hear nothing of their cynicism. He liked going to church and living in Lubbock. He had become active in the Boy Scouts and loved the jamborees and campouts. He’d also made a best friend, Byron Varner, whose parents owned the Main Street Café downtown and lived in an apartment above it. Tim spent a lot of time there, eating hamburgers and playing with Byron in the alley behind the café. Byron was a year older, but he admired Tim’s never-back-down personality and the way he was always the first one to climb the high dive at the city pool and take the leap.

  Back home, Tim’s mom prepared Sunday dinner (always served at noon), and he retreated to his room to look at his new trombone, a birthday present his parents had purchased on the installment plan—three payments of $2 each. He loved his new instrument. His goal was to get to play in the band when he reached high school. Fingering the valves of the trombone, he heard his parents arguing. They weren’t yelling, but their voices were tense.

  “I can’t go through it again,” his mother said.

  Slowly, quietly, he began to play his trombone—nothing special, just noise to drown out the tension.

  It was early September 1939 in Texas, the temperature over 100 degrees. Walking home through the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, Tim, now a sophomore in high school, had a big decision to make—to go out for the track team at Sunset High and defend his 880 state championship, or get an after-school job. Despite all the efforts of the New Deal, 10 million Americans were still unemployed. Tim made $2 a week getting up before dawn to deliver the Dallas Morning News on foot. He couldn’t afford a bike. Tim’s parents had divorced at the end of his freshman year in Lubbock; he and his mother had moved to Dallas at the urging of her three sisters and two brothers, all of whom lived there. Her brothers were both successful insurance men and promised to look out for them. His father had remarried and moved to Austin; Tim hadn’t seen him since. Tim wasn’t happy about the move, or the divorce. Dallas seemed big and unfriendly. None of the kids at school had divorced parents, and it embarrassed him. He didn’t like leaving his friends in Lubbock, especially Byron. He didn’t like living in an apartment. But most of all, he resented his dad for deserting the family.

  Continuing home, he started to run despite the stifling heat. His new neighborhood, Oak Cliff, located on the south bank of the Trinity River two miles from downtown Dallas, had been intended to serve as a resort but had instead become a working-class neighborhood. Tim had heard that Bonnie and Clyde had used it as a place to lie low. (Later, Lee Harvey Oswald would live in a rooming house in Oak Cliff.) To Tim it seemed harder-edged than Lubbock.

  He often ran home from school, mainly just to burn off some of his considerable energy. At 5 feet 7 inches and a wiry 130 pounds, he was hardly an imposing presence, but was very athletic, and not one to back down from a fight. In his freshman year at Lubbock High, he’d won the regional championship in the 880, traveling all the way to Guymon, Oklahoma, to win the finals, a victory he dismissed as no big deal. This year he also wanted to go out for the wrestling team.

  He got good grades, too, mostly As and Bs. But the only class he really liked was band. He liked practicing his trombone, mostly playing compositions by John Philip Sousa or religious songs. But he understood the reality that earning money would most likely have to be a higher priority than sports and band practice. He knew his dad was supposed to send $8 a month in support but rarely did. Occasionally, his mom took in ironing, but she didn’t look for a steady job, partly because her brothers didn’t think women should work. To bring in money over the summer, Tim had mowed lawns, worked at an ice-skating rink, and caddied at Glen Lakes Country Club for his Uncle Ben.

  If there was anyone Tim looked up to it was Uncle Ben, the successful founder of Trinity Universal Insurance. Ben had bought stock in a little start-up beverage company in Dallas called Dr. Pepper and watched his investment grow into a fortune. Tim loved riding with him in his shiny new car to the country club and spending holidays with him at his resort house on Lake Texahoma. It made him think that someday he too could be a wealthy insurance man. That was the dream.

  Breathing hard when he arrived back at the apartment, he opened the door and stepped inside. With no air conditioner, it was hotter inside than out. His mom stood near an open window, a fan positioned to blow on her. She was ironing someone else’s clothes, sweat beading on her forehead. Tim studied her for a moment and knew what his decision had to be. The next day he found a job delivering the Dallas Evening News after school. There’d be no more track.

  * * *

  In the summer of 1941, not even Joe DiMaggio’s fifty-six-game hitting streak could distract Americans from the threat of war. German troops had occupied Paris, and Hitler had reneged on his nonaggression pact with Russia. In secret military discussions over command and strategy, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and their British counterparts concluded that Germany was the predominant member of the Axis powers, so if America entered the war, the Atlantic and Europe would be considered the decisive theaters. Any future American military effort would be concentrated there, and operations of U.S. forces in other theaters, such as the Pacific, would be secondary. Part of this reasoning was that Germany’s offensive capabilities were greater, and that its superior technology had the potential to develop a secret weapon that could destroy its enemies.

  Tim wasn’t as concerned about the threat of war as he was about getting an occasional date and making money on his new job selling soda pop at the Wednesday night wrestling matches. On a good night he could make as much as 75 cents, not to mention getting to see legendary wrestlers such as Silent Hubert, Strangler Lewis, Danny McShane, and Sailor Tex Watkins. He knew the matches were fixed (he’d seen the capsules of blood in the dressing room), and yet he liked watching anyway. But it was the money that was important; he liked being able to help out his mom with the rent. She was anxious by nature, always expecting the worst, and he was the opposite, constantly assuring her that things would be okay. He considered it his duty to keep her spirits up.

  In the fall of 1941, soon after Tim started his senior year at Sunset High, Byron came to visit from Lubbock. Despite having lived on opposite sides of the state for three years, they were still great friends. Byron liked not just Tim’s sense of humor and intrepid approach to life but also his compassion, like the way he treated Sidney Segal back in junior high. Sidney, a small, plump Jewish kid, was everyone’s favorite target, and he rarely made it down the hall without getting punched in the shoulder or being called “kike” or “Jew boy.” He attached himself to Tim, most likely because Tim was outgoing and friendly to everyone. Sidney soon became his shadow, following him everywhere. Tim accepted the role of Sidney’s protector. He had taken to heart what he’d heard Reverend Truitt preach about a person’s true calling being “to lend a helping hand.” When Tim moved to Dallas, nobody was sadder to see him leave than Sidney.

  Seeing Tim for the first time in a couple of years, Byron noticed a change. On the surface, Tim was still full of spunk, bragging about getting paddled in band class for acting out. But now he was less directed, more intense, a bit of a loose cannon. It was almost as if he’d grown a chip on his shoulder. Not that they talked about it. In Texas, circa 1941, best buddies didn’t talk about their feelings.

  Byron talked about joining the N
avy. The idea appealed to Tim, too. He was tired of working four jobs, and he reasoned that in the Navy he would make better money and could send most of it home to help his mom. If there was a war, he figured he’d be safer on a ship in the middle of the ocean than in a muddy foxhole.

  The only possible wrinkle was getting his mother’s permission, since he was only seventeen. To his surprise, she gave it, figuring he was probably going to drop out of school anyway. The next day Tim walked across town to the recruiting depot, took his physical exam, and signed up. The day after that, he marched into the office at Sunset High and dropped out. The fact that he was still several months short of graduation didn’t bother him; he could finish after he had served his time. A steady income was more important.

  On November 1, 1941, still not shaving daily, Tim kissed his tearful mother good-bye and boarded a train for boot camp in San Diego, California. On that same day, halfway across the world, six of the newest and largest Japanese aircraft carriers, carrying 423 combat planes, were assembling in Tankan Bay in the Kurile Islands, ready to set sail for Pearl Harbor.

  4

  Gordy Cox

  of Yakima, Washington

  At the age of two, Gordy Cox was playing behind his house in Wayne, Alberta, with his older brother, Larry. They started chasing one of the family’s new colts, and Gordy got too close. The colt kicked him, nailing him in the left eye, shattering the bone just below the eyebrow and knocking him cold. Larry ran to get their mother, Nellie, who scooped up Gordy, put him in the family’s buggy, and drove ten miles to the nearest doctor. But the doctor was gone, and the closest town was Drumheller, another ten miles over rough, inhospitable terrain, too treacherous for a horse and buggy and an unconscious child.

  Now frantic, Nellie found two railroad men who volunteered to help. They led her to a flat-bedded railroad platform car powered by a pump handle. With Nellie cradling Gordy in her lap, the two men pumped all the way to Drumheller, then escorted them to the doctor, who stitched the wound and applied ice to relieve the swelling. Gordy remained in a coma for the next two days.