While in Knoxville, I began my formal education at McCampbell’s School. The most vivid memory is the day I learned about sexual discrimination. The teacher left the room. When she returned she caught two little girls and me talking. The teacher spanked me but didn’t touch the little girls. I wonder if it’s too late to sue. When I got home my grandmother asked if I had been spanked. How did she know?

When Mom transferred me to Highland Park Grammar School in Chattanooga, she took me to Mrs. Hargrave’s first grade room. The first person I saw (on the back row) was ‘Sonny’ Baker, later known as Lee Schulte, and then Bill Schulte. I remember thinking; this must be the 5th grade - he couldn’t be in the first grade, he was much too big.

Bill was a natural athlete. We played ball with a broom stick and a tennis ball. A long hit would be to the base of the fire hall. Bill would hit the ball over the three-story building. His dad was a major league baseball player and Bill Schulte could have been if he had not been so lazy. He could’ve been great. He did star in baseball and basketball at Central High and played Professional Baseball until he got homesick.

The first birthday I remember was my sixth. I don’t remember what presents I received, the cake, or any details. What I do remember is that my big brother Harold asked me to go with him to explore the woods, the telephone company storage fields, etc. I remember thinking “why is he being so nice to me?” I didn’t know until the surprise birthday party that he was on orders from mom to keep me busy.

I’ve often wondered if big brothers and sisters know how much us little brothers look up to them. How much we admire and try to emulate them? I would like to have been a big brother.

By now my sister, Mary Evelyn, had turned fourteen and our house had become a teen-age hangout. I enjoyed playing cards (setback) with them and the sing-a-longs. One day, Bill Ballinger (l of 7 brothers) related a story and described a woman as being middle-aged who was about my mother’s age (33). Mom never let him forget his faux paux and couldn’t wait until Bill became 33, seventeen years later. When Bill turned 33, Mom called him and asked ‘How does it feel to be middle-aged’?

Bill’s mother Mrs. Ballinger raised her seven boys by selling Avon. My mother became an Avon Lady while I was in high school and continued for many years.

Age is a state of mind and mom didn’t feel middle-aged until she was in her seventies. I have always felt younger than I was. Maybe this is because I was late maturing. At 16, I was only 5’5” and 115 pounds. As I entered the Army Air Corps at 18, I was 5’11” and 149 pounds and still growing. On discharge, two and one-half years later, I was 6’ and 188 pounds, but hardly ever needed to shave.

When I got home after the war, I ran into an old Central High buddy. We talked a while and decided to have a beer and talk some more. They wouldn’t sell me a beer in Chattanooga - too young to drink but old enough to fly combat missions.

Shyness and immaturity was a problem but late in life it’s an advantage. Most of the fun I have had since retiring, a normal person wouldn’t attempt at retirement age. I’ve already lived longer than my grandparents lived, but I can’t picture them playing tennis, softball, volleyball, etc. like I have, even when they were twenty years younger than me.

When was your first sexual experience? I was six. A close friend of our family, a nine-year old girl named Alma, took advantage of me. Her big brother almost caught us but I don’t believe it would have been a satisfying experience for us anyway. Wonder why she never tried me again?

We seldom could afford ice cream. Once my parents promised me all the ice cream I could eat (after they removed my tonsils). Unfortunately, I couldn’t eat any but I had a vivid memory of my first trip to a hospital (ether was nauseating); most people do.

Remember your first time on stage? In the first grade I was a firefly (with a flashlight) in the school’s operetta. Evelyn Stone was the star in most of the Highland Park Grammar School productions. She was a pretty little blond but I didn’t get around to telling her how much I admired her until we were 73. I always was a little slow with the girls---shy.

My first crush on a girl was in the second grade - Miss Zeigler’s room. Ava Jane Alley was a cute little brunette who sat behind me (when I wasn’t in the cloak room being punished for talking). I only waited 44 years to tell Jane Uptain how much I liked her. I told her (with fan-fare), in front of her husband and her boss. She was still a good-looking lady at 51. Do you remember your first crush?

People say ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to be young again and know what you know now?’ I don’t think so, do you? Growing up in Highland Park in the thirties provided many interesting experiences. Kids were everywhere. These were depression years and there were virtually no planned recreational programs. We didn’t need them. We improvised. A rope hanging from a tree provided many hours of free entertainment. We played Tin Can I-Spy. We built play houses from ‘Dixie’ boxes and made scooters from old skates. A pipe on a cable gave an exciting ride from a tree top.

I don’t remember ever playing baseball with a cover on the ball - they were wrapped with tar tape. We constructed and paved roads for toy cars by rubbing plaster on a screen and mixing the results with water. Rubber guns were made with wood scraps and clothespins. The ammunition was made from old intertubes. Our battles were especially fun in abandoned buildings.

One of my favorite targets in the rubber gun battles was Warren Niles. He was always in trouble. A few years ago, I learned he was in a Chicago prison for murder.

Alan Morris became Sports Editor for the News-Free Press. The only sport he excelled in as a youngster was one he invented using a wadded up paper cup. You hit it up against the side of St. Andrews Methodist Church. You may get a hit or make an out depending where the ‘ball’ hit.

My brother, Harold, and I played sand lot football for the Highland Park Ramblers for three years. We were undefeated. Harold was our seamstress. He cut out large R’s and sewed them on our sweatshirts. That was our uniform. We didn’t have helmets, shoulder pads, etc. That was for sissies. We did have one sissy on our team, Bob Myers (he had a helmet). Maybe the helmet was worthwhile because he became president of the Tennessee Medical Society.

Harold was not only our seamstress, he was also our punter. One day he kicked the ball into the face of a charging lineman. The boy cried. Both teams urged Harold to apologize. He wouldn’t! He said ‘you are supposed to kick into them’. He never gave in either.

One of my favorite Christmases was in 1934. I got my first bicycle. It had a big red ribbon on it. It was a second-hand ‘Western Flyer’ my brother Charles bought for $3.00, used it awhile, then gave it to me. The bike opened up opportunities for travel and adventure. A $3.00 bicycle may not sound like much, but it was a magic carpet for me.

One of my buddies, Robert Walker, who was even poorer than we were, didn’t have a bike - even in high school. I sometimes doubled him all over town. He was a good student and a hard worker and later became Chattanooga Mayor and a prosperous lawyer. We always said Robert would become a lawyer because he liked to argue.

When playing Monopoly, we would try to charge him extra for property just to get his goat. Many games ended in an explosion. The long-lasting games sometimes adjourned to Kay’s where a large ice cream cone cost a nickel. One of the more prosperous players would have to buy Robert’s cone.

Wouldn’t you like to know more about what happened to your childhood friends? I would. For example, I wonder about Bill McAlister. He is responsible for making me a star. Bill discovered a comedy version of Romeo and Juliet in a boy’s book. He persuaded me to be Juliet (he was Romeo) and enact it in front of our homeroom class at East Side Junior High School. I can’t believe I agreed.

The play went over so big that Mrs. Bird, our English teacher, arranged for us to present it to the whole school. I wore Mrs. Bird’s kimono and numerous strands of pearls; lipstick, the whole works. Romeo and Juliet was a big success. It was my first play - and my last. Nearly sixty years later, an audience at the Backstage Playhouse Dinner Theatre (which Bettye and I owned and she operated), asked why I didn’t appear in one of her plays. My response was that I could never surpass my debut in Romeo and Juliet. I almost didn’t tell them who played Juliet. Bill moved to Virginia and I never heard from my Romeo again.

Think about all your friends over the years. Some became huge successes, others dismal failures, but most, somewhere in between. Often you will recognize success or failure characteristics that were already evident in early childhood. One girl I envied because she always had candy was fat, got fatter, and died at an early age. Who did you envy? Would you envy them today?

Probably my best friend was Henry Howard. He seemed rich because his parents would give him 15 cents for a complete school lunch in grammar school. He liked my mother’s fried pies. Every day I had a banana sandwich and a fried pie. Henry would buy my pie for a nickel and order a bowl of soup (5 cents). Then we would go to Bell’s Sundries and each of us had a nickel to buy ‘pinkies’ and hope to win valuable prizes (a small piece of candy for a penny - if it was pink inside, you won a prize). This was about the only way I ever had spending money during those years.

I never was lucky with pinkies, but one day I felt I couldn’t lose at the Annex Drug Store. Only four pieces (chances) were left and several nice prizes hadn’t been won (e.g. A baseball glove). I ran all the way home and begged my sister (Mary Evelyn) to loan me four cents. Then I ran back to the Annex and presented four pennies. I bit into all 4 pieces of candy. There were no winners. This couldn’t be???

As I started to protest, the clerk lifted the cardboard and uncovered another entire layer of pinkies; scores of chances. There were probably several more layers too.

This experience, plus my dad’s propensity to gamble grocery money away, convinced me I was no gambler and never would be. I wouldn’t even match for a coke until after college. I’m still wary of gambling; it can easily become an obsession. The poorest people are the biggest victims of the lottery.

My market for fried pies suddenly disappeared. Henry was evasive when asked why. I wondered if it was my mother’s pies, if he had too many, if his folks had become tight-fisted, or what. Months later I learned that Henry was being ‘blackmailed’ by Billy Bradford. Billy was a little rough-neck but Henry should not have feared him; Henry was twice his size. This ‘shakedown’ continued for a long time. For months I couldn’t try anymore pinkies, but I enjoyed eating mom’s fried pies again.

Henry and I were close friends and had many experiences together, especially in the sea scouts. He became an Air Corps pilot in WWII and died in a crash in Colorado in 1945. I loved Henry and his whole family.

(This is zn excerpt from Bob Elmore's new book, "A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to the National Cemetery." The book is $10 in softback, $20 in hardback. Copies are available at the Bicentennial Library downtown, Wally's (on McCallie), Senior Neighbors, The Racket Club and the Brainerd Trophy Shop. All proceeds, not just profits, go to the Chattanooga Area Historical Association. For more information, call 629-1366.)