A Country Boy Can Survive

My early youth was the best of times—and the darkest of times. Survival in my tiny world required grit and guts. When I was an eight-year-old boy, I could skin a rabbit and whup anyone my age who lived near about. I was fit as a fiddle and slicker than snot. But the innocence of my childhood was crumpled like a sack of potatoes. Skirmishes with my daddy caused emotional scars that have lasted a lifetime. The plain and simple truth could not be hidden. My daddy was a chronic alcoholic and a physically abusive monster. He was the boogieman! He was the devil—and he lived inside my house!

I grew up in Dunklin County near the Missouri-Arkansas border in an area known as the “bootheel.” We lived in small hick towns called Hornersville, Marmaduke, Cardwell, and Paragould. There were eleven young’uns in the Bradford clan. When I was a young hillbilly child growing up in the hills and hollers, everyone in my family worked daily to eke out a simple but muddled lifestyle. When I was knee-high to a grasshopper, I picked cotton in the fields. Daddy made every kid in the Bradford clan work hard. Life wasn’t easy. Like most cotton pickers, my entire family was usually in the fields from sun-up ’til sun-down. Growin’ up in this part of the South meant we talked with a deep southern drawl—and that we were uneducated, barefooted, chewed tobacco, dipped snuff, and wore overalls. The high and mighty folks in town called us “local yokels,” “poor white trash,” or simply “hillbillies.” But my family didn’t pay any heed to the city slickers. Being called a hillbilly was a badge of honor. The Bradford clan had an independent spirit. We had good horse sense that helped us survive our gritty lifestyle.

The Bradford clan had a total disregard for the trappings of modern society. We lived in rickety old shacks big enough for a family of three or four but not a humongous family like my clan. We experienced hardships but learned how to hunker down through the good times and the bad times. Mama had already brought ten young’uns into the world, and number eleven would soon be poppin’ out. We weren’t churchgoers, but Mama was still right-down God-fearing. She said the sunrise each morning was God’s way of tellin’ folks that He was awake.

Arkansas and Missouri had state laws that required every kid to attend school. Even in the 1950s, when I was growin’ up, parents were expected to ensure their children got an education. But I hardly ever went to school— some first grade, a little bit in the second grade, and no third grade. Mama told us our eyes and ears were our windows to learnin’ everything we needed to know. Our education was about knowing how to care for a vegetable garden or how to skin a rabbit—and learnin’ to spell didn’t help the tomatoes grow. I wasn’t an eejit – knowin' how to build a rabbit trap was more important than knowing how to decipher arithmetic. I was just a young whippersnapper, but I could wring a chicken’s neck, gig the biggest bullfrog, and find the best crawdad holes. My toilet was a two-holer outhouse. I used a hand pump to get my drinkin’ water. Our homes never had electricity. I reckon I could say the first eight years of my life were steeped in poverty. But it was the only world I had ever seen. I didn’t know how other folks lived. I had never been more than a few miles from my home. Daddy didn’t care a hill of beans about sending his brood of hillbillies to school. The Bradford kids were important to him for only one reason: work in the fields and earn a few dollars that he used to buy more wine and moonshine.

My folks moved from house to house a lot when I was a young’un. I never could figure out why we moved so darn much. Daddy was always getting locked up in the hoosegow for his shenanigans. When Daddy got riled up and beat Mama, he sometimes got arrested. All of us kids would walk with Mama to see the town sheriff and ask for permission to give Daddy some vittles. The town constable would usually let him out of jail after he got sober. I reckon we moved a lot because Daddy was always trying to outrun the law.

After we picked all the cotton at one farm, Daddy would talk to a different boss-man. He’d let us move into another run-down shack he owned if Daddy agreed our family would work for him. Moving to a different house was simple. Daddy borrowed a Massey Ferguson tractor and hooked it to a cotton trailer. We loaded our household furniture, clothing, and other meager items we owned into the trailer. Daddy drove the old tractor along the dusty roads to our new home, which was always near about. I remember one time I rode in the trailer when we moved. As we came around a corner in the road, the trailer’s side rail broke and several pieces of furniture fell onto the dirt road. I got a few scrapes, but nothin’ serious. The accident was terrifying for Mama because some of her essential housekeeping objects and furniture had been damaged.

It seemed like every home we lived in had a leaky roof. In the late afternoon as a storm gathered, I’d sometimes stand on our front porch and watch the roiling clouds turn to shades of gray. The swirling Missouri winds were followed by towering bolts of lightning and the roar of thunder that caused me to run to Mama for protection. When the howling storm eventually came, torrents of rain crashed through our roof. We had to quickly place several buckets and cans throughout the house to catch the rainwater that gushed through our shoddy tin roof.

Mama’s most daunting task was protecting her children from Daddy. When Daddy was drunk—or walkin’ at a slant, as we would say—he was an absolute savage. He’d break everything in the house that wasn’t nailed to the floor. Even when he wasn’t on a bender, he ruled over the Bradford clan with such power that his anger and rage could never be questioned. None of us kids dared to go crossways with him. When he spoke, I paid heed to what he said. If I sassed him, he’d slap me across my face with the back of his hand or whip me with a strip of leather.

Even though I had two older brothers, I was the oldest boy at home by the time I was eight. One older brother, Billy, was already married. Another older brother, Jerry, had polio and was usually in a hospital or sanitarium. Being the eldest boy in a hillbilly family should have given me the freedom to be carefree and resourceful. A caring father would have been my role model and mentor—but not in my world. I may have been a callow boy, but I was wise beyond my years.

I grew up being afraid that Daddy would kill Mama someday during one of his drinkin’ spells. I watched as he took a bottle of wine or moonshine and guzzled it down in one long gulp. Brutal visions of him beating and cursing Mama will be in my mind ’til the day I die. He was especially dangerous and unpredictable when he was sobering up from a drinkin’ binge. All of us young’uns knew when we better skedaddle. We cried! We screamed! We ran! I didn’t want to be anywhere near his anger or unrelenting wrath when Daddy got drunk and started looking for me. I was a young boy—I never knew what might happen next. I had secret places where I hid. My favorite hideaway was way back yonder underneath the house. I knew Daddy was too big to follow me there. When he started cussin’ at me, I’d hot foot it to the front of the house and squeeze under the wood porch. I scooched in the dirt through a tight passageway under the house without making a sound. Sometimes, one or two siblings joined me in my safe place. We lay together on the ground and listened as Daddy destroyed furniture and dishes in the room above us. I cried when I heard him cursing and beating Mama. In the darkness under our house, I could hear Mama begging him to stop hitting her. Some nightmares are real and there is no escape! My siblings and I tightly snuggled with each other as we waited for the tempest in the room above us to pass. We remained completely silent until Daddy left the house or passed out from his drunken stupor. When the horror above us finally ceased, we cautiously left our refuge to see if Mama was all right and to survey the wreckage Daddy had caused— glass fragments, pieces of furniture on the floor, and Mama crying! When I saw Mama attempting to hide the blood, cuts, and bruises all over her frail body, deep-seated hate festered in my tiny heart toward my daddy. How does an eight-year-old make sense of why his daddy is hurting his mama? How does a young boy grasp what he can’t understand? I didn’t know how to reckon with such chaos and disorder. Daddy was the enemy. He was evil — a no ’count bastard. But a country boy can survive!

Daddy got paid at the end of each day, so he always had a few dollars in his pocket. When we got home from working in the fields, sometimes Daddy yelled at me, “Put on your shoes, boy, we’re going to town.” I didn’t want to go with him, but I knew what would happen if I refused. Daddy reckoned that he needed me to come along so I could guide him back home after he got soused to the eyeballs. Daddy made me sit in a nearby corner after we got to the tavern. I watched for hours as he and his wino friends got liquored up. They’d cuss a blue streak when they talked to each other. I was happily surprised occasionally when one of Daddy’s friends bought me a soda pop or gave me a few pennies so I could go to the five-and-dime store and get some candy. When we finally returned home, Mama was always waiting for me. Daddy began cursing at her as soon as we walked into the house. I wanted to protect her, but I was just a boy. I wished with all my might that Daddy would just go away and disappear. I knew there was nothing good about my daddy. He thrashed me during his drunken rages even more after Mama died. I ran every time he got drunk so he couldn’t knock the snot bubbles out of me. The only thing more memorable in my youth than Daddy always being drunk was his constantly beating Mama and his callous disregard for me. 

We usually had lots of chickens. A large chicken coop behind our house gave the hens plenty of space to lay a bountiful supply of fresh eggs that Mama used to prepare sumptuous breakfasts for her hungry brood. I loved her homemade flakey buttermilk biscuits that I used to sop up the delicious white thickened gravy she made every morning. When the chickens weren’t in the coop, they roamed freely around the dirt yard where they pooped and pooped—and pooped some more. Trying to walk barefoot around all those little piles of poop in the yard left me fit to be tied. Chicken poop constantly squished up between my tiny toes. In addition to the egg-laying hens, we always had lots of roosters. An eight-year-old boy living in the Arkansas hills ain’t afraid of nothin’. When a couple of hillbilly boys had a disagreement, a scuffle usually ended up with someone gettin’ a black eye. But, as fearless as I was, those rascally roosters scared me because they attacked me for no reason. Mama was continually nursing the scratches inflicted on me from the spurs and beaks of those darn birds. Now and then, Mama told us boys to fetch her a rooster that she would fry for supper. Fresh meat and revenge! I reckoned every rooster heard Mama when she told me to fetch one for her. Roosters began running every which way all over the yard. Catching a grown rooster ain’t easy when you’re only seven or eight. Eventually, I’d toss a handful of table scraps to the rooster I was trying to corner. After I finally caught the contrary rascal, it was payback time. I was taught two ways to kill a rooster: use a hatchet and cut off its head or hold the rooster by its neck and twist its body ’round and round’ until its head separated from its body. I always preferred the second method – I’ll admit watching the rooster’s headless body flailing about on the blood-stained ground sometimes made me snicker. I figured the rooster may have won a battle or two— but I won the war. 

I still recollect the day when Mama went to heaven. It was the saddest day of my life. I had just turned nine a few days earlier. We lived outside of Cardwell, Missouri. The day began just like most other days, except Mama stayed in bed because she said she was “under the weather.” We knew she was fixin’ to have another baby, but we saw no cause to be concerned. I was pickin’ cotton with Daddy, my younger brother Donnie, and my older sister Judy. My three younger sisters were playing outside the house as they waited for the arrival of our new brother or sister. Having a new kid around the house was routine. There was nothing to worry about. After bringing ten other babies into the world, Mama was an expert in childbirth. Doctors were as scarce as hens’ teeth, so the wife of the man who owned our house was helping Mama deliver child number eleven. Debbie, my four-year-old sister, had fallen while playing outside the previous day and her face was severely swollen. Daddy, as usual, was walkin’ at a slant. The midwife yelled outside and told the younger kids to come into the house. She asked someone to go to the cotton field and fetch me, my brother, sister, and Daddy. We ran to the house. Everyone gathered around Mama’s bed. Near the corner of the room, I heard my new baby sister crying loudly as she protested the first few minutes of life in her new world. Mama was quiet. We were told she was sleeping in heaven… and would never wake up. The older kids began to cry. The younger kids didn’t understand: Sandy was three, Debby was four, and Charlotte was five. Each youngster was allowed to climb onto Mama’s bed and kiss her one last time. Mama’s funeral was held at The Curve Baptist Church near Hornersville, Missouri on November 3, 1956. Relatives helped each Bradford kid take a bath and get dressed in our best Sunday clothes. My sisters had pretty, flowery dresses that local folks had given them for the occasion. Donnie and I wore our best overalls. Jerry came home from the hospital for the funeral. Billy pushed his wheelchair to the front of the church so he could see Mama in her casket. Daddy was smartly dressed in a white shirt and his best britches. I reckon my relatives must have told Daddy he couldn’t drink the day of the funeral. He was sober! Mama looked like she was sleeping when I saw her in the casket. The preacher told us she was going to a better place—but all I could think about was how lonely our world would be without her. I silently wondered why God took her. Why did He take the only good thing in our lives? Why didn’t He take Daddy? Several relatives I had never seen came to Mama’s funeral. Inside the tiny country church, everyone sang “Precious Memories,” “In the Sweet By and By,” and “Never Grow Old.” After the service, a small caravan of vehicles followed the car that carried Mama’s casket to a small, picturesque local cemetery. A light rain drizzled as family and friends made their way to Mama’s grave site. It was cold and damp. I wanted to run away. “Mama! Please come back!” I saw a squirrel flittering near the hole where Mama’s casket would soon be laid. I picked up a small stone and threw it toward the critter. My aunt yanked my arm and told me to behave. I ignored her. The preacher said Mama’s soul was with God, but I didn’t know what a soul was. I wanted to ask the preacher—but I was afraid. The rain was coming down harder by the time the preacher said his final prayer. Everyone returned to their cars and drove to our battered home by the cotton field. I had never seen so many people together in one house. Local folks brought lots of good vittles that we ate the next few days. Relatives kept smothering me with hugs and kisses. I told my brother Billy that it was wrong that they put Mama in a hole and covered her with dirt. I asked him, “How could she get out of the ground and go to heaven?” Billy told me angels were magic — they would take Mama up to heaven after everyone left the cemetery. He said it was their job to take her to be with God. Billy said angels never make mistakes. He said Mama would soon be looking down at us from heaven. 

But I have miles to go and many roads to travel before my journey is complete. This is only the beginning!