CHAPTER 1
Growing Up during the Depression of the Thirties
Walter was born November 9, 1922, (PERSONS born in 1922 are Betty White, Eleanor Parker, Cyd Charisse, Redd Fox, Judy Garland Kay Starr and persons born on November 9 are David Duvall, Tom Weiskopf) (on November 9th, the gates to West Berlin were opened by Russia (On November 9th, 1930 the first non stop airlines flight from New York to Panama)
1922 WORLD EVENTS: Jan 30-World Law Day lst celebrated. Feb 22 Congress authorizes Grant Memorial $1 gold coin. Feb 27 Supreme Court unanimously upheld 19th amendment giving women the right to vote. Mar 6 Babe Ruth signs 3 years at $52,000 a year with NY Yankees contract Mar 14,15,16 Radio transmissions begin. April 16 Annie Oakley sets women's record by breaking 100 Clay targets in a row. May 23 Walt Disney incorporates his 1st film company. May 19 US Supreme court rules organized baseball is a sport and not a business and not subject to antitrust laws. May 30 Lincoln Memorial dedicated Greece won independence from Turkey.
His parents who were both twenty-two years of age. The birth took place in the Ephraim McDowell Hospital in Danville, Kentucky, where Blanche Marie Phillips, his mother, had lived since 1916. Dad (David) and Viola Phillips, Blanche's father and mother, lived two blocks from the hospital. Walter's parents, Walter Sr. and Blanche, lived in Lancaster, Kentucky and had just bought a new home in Haselden Heights, where they lived until both died. Walter was told that the house was purchased for $1,800 in 1922, when Walter was born. It was a large house with four rooms on the first floor and two bedrooms and a hall on the second floor but no basement. There was no water and only electric bulbs were hanging from the ceiling. A cistern out back was the water supply and a little two-hole house out back served as the alternate to a bathroom. The lot was 50-by-150 feet, backing on to a farm.
As to Walter's mom's mother and father, Dad (David) Phillips was a master barber on Third Street, just behind the Spoonamore Drugstore at the corner of Main and Third streets in Danville, Kentucky. Dad had five barbers besides himself and his chair was the last one in the line. The shop had showers in the rear and almost every man in Danville came to get a shower, shave, shine, or haircut during the day or week.
When Walter Clay was only four or five years of age, he would visit his grandparents during the summer months and Dad would take him to the shop many days during his stay with them in Danville. He would watch the men getting a shave and watch the shoeshine man shine their shoes. Afterward, some of the men would take him to the drugstore and buy him ice cream in a cone. When the day was done, Walter and Papau would walk home and carry the day's take of coins. When they arrive home, they would dump the coins on the table for counting. When there was an Indian Head penny, it would be put aside for Walter and he still has them in storage to pass on to his loved ones. To this day, there exists a one-man barbershop at the same place on Third Street.
When Walter was not up town, he was with his grandmother, Viola. She was an industrious woman who washed all the towels, sheets and other necessities for the barbershop, using an electric washing machine that had a clothes compartment made of copper. It rocked back and forth and sloshed the sheets and towels to clean them. She also had an electric ironing machine, through which she fed the towels and sheets to dry and iron. Grandma Viola also grew a large garden consisting of every vegetable imaginable, a grape arbor, fruit trees and roses and she canned all kinds of vegetables for the winter. However, the main ingredient was wine from the purple grapes that grew in a grape arbor in the rear of their home. The wine (from sweet purple grapes) drew a large number of doctors and lawyers in the afternoon for a glass of the very potent liquor. This was in the 1920s, when prohibition was enforced and there were no cocktail hours at the restaurants.
The one thing Walter remembers about his grandmother was her arthritis. She was always stiff and hurting and as a result, she tried every remedy available to try to cure this malady. One he remembered was a kit that had electrical attachment and clear glass that housed wires that turned red and blue. She would rub those items on her legs and hips, thinking they would help. They never did any good. Every month a black man would travel to her home and cut her toenails and trim her feet. This was interesting to watch and the man told Walter that someday he may wear the winning boxing belt because his uncle Gus Myers who was his mother's half brother was a prizefighter and pretty good.
One story about Gus was in the news. It seems there was a man who accosted the girls on the street of Danville and the police could not catch the guy. Uncle Gus dressed up as a girl and walked the street where the bad guy had been doing his dirty work. When the man came up behind Uncle Gus, he was coldcocked by the dressed-up Gus and the police had their man. The newspaper carried the story and Uncle Gus became a hero.
Uncle Gus and Aunt Emma, who worked at the Hub Department Store, were living on the same street, only closer to the hospital than his grandparents. They were without children, so Walter Clay was a favorite and was given gifts at Christmas and birthdays. He remembers an outing when his parents, Gus and Emma, took him to Joyland Park in Lexington, Kentucky. He must have been only three years old then and the one thing that sticks in his mind is the little miniature train that he rode on while there. He can remember that because the train had a bell and a conductor, who rode on the engine part of the train. The other favorite gifts at Christmas that were expected every Christmas were Billy Whiskers books, which depicted the life of a pet goat and his many antics.
One man (Mr. McDonald) lived only three doors from the grandparents and was a mail carrier who carried mail from the rail station to the post office. Mr. McDonald kept his horse in a stable behind his house and had a buckboard to haul the mail. Every morning at six thirty, he would hook up the horse to the wagon and head out to the railroad station. He would ask Walter Clay if he would like to go with him and being a boy of five years of age, it was a great privilege. He would get up and run to the house at 6:00 a.m. and get on the wagon to sit with Mr. McDonald. Both would then ride the twenty blocks to the station. When they arrive at the station, there would be ten or so large bags of mail waiting to be loaded onto the wagon and Walter would help Mr. McDonald (or so it seemed) to load them. They would then take their bags of mail to the post office downtown and unload everything and then go home and unhook the horse and put him in the stable. This seemed to be the most exciting moment in Walter's life at that particular time.
Another strange part of his grandmother's home was the concrete gutter in front of the house. At his home in Lancaster, there was a dirt ditch that carried water down the street between the sidewalk and the road. This concrete gutter would be wonderful when it rained. The water would flow in large amounts and Walter would make paper boats to float with the water.
Across the street from his grandparents' home, there was an deaf oral school, which exists there to this day. The basketball gym was right on the street and when the boys played basketball, their screeches could all be heard up and down the street. It was an eerie sound and that was so often that he never forgot the sounds that the boys made each afternoon and night.
Centre College is located in Danville and many times he visited the campus and its large trees. The Whisiker family gave the land for Centre and he can remember seeing Ms. W driving a battery automobile that did not turn around. The driver would switch seats to go the opposite way. The old auto had windshields at the front and back. Danville was just cited as one of the ten best cities to live in.
He remembers his dad driving a T-model Ford automobile from Lancaster to Danville, which was about a ten-mile distance; and before the Dix Dam was built, the road ran from Lancaster to Camp Dick Robinson to Danville and crossed Dix River on a covered bridge. Walter would ride in the old open T-model Ford automobile in the rear seat and in the winter, it would be so cold that he would have to be wrapped in a blanket. This trip was taken many Sundays during the early years of Walter's life. There was very little traffic on the roads. Since the old cars had fenders that were flat, in the summer, when it was hot, Walter and Glen would ride on the fenders, holding on to the front lights. Imagine doing that today.
When the family arrived back home in Lancaster, the house would be cold, as the fires had to be restarted and rekindled. He can remember that sometimes, it was so cold that his goldfish would almost freeze completely if not for the water around it that was enough to keep it alive. The water in the kitchen was taken from a cistern out back and kept in a bucket in the kitchen, with a dipper in it. Everyone drank from the bucket with the same dipper. Walter was assigned the job of keeping the bucket full of water. He would turn the crank that made the small buckets dip into the water and carry the water until it reached the spicket, where it dumped the water into a bucket. He must have done this a million times during this phase of his life.
When the dam was built, creating Herrington Lake, the old covered bridge, which spanned Dix River, was covered over with the water from the dam as it rose, as were the many homes and all the trees on the area. The area was not cleared before the water rose after being contained by the dam, killing swimmers and fishermen. As he can remember, almost every weekend, there was a drowning in Herrington Lake. A man fell out of a boat and got his clothes caught up in the branches of the trees under the surface of the water, unable to get loose and swim to the surface. His mother would not let him go near the lake because of the fear of him drowning until they built a swimming pool in the lake. All the kids would board a truck with cattle and pay a nickel for the trip to Biggerstaffs, a restaurant with a swimming pool. However, in the rear of the restaurant, there were slot machines just like in Las Vegas. It was known by the authorities, who turned their backs, probably paid off and let it operate.
The old road to Lexington (U.S. 27) was a winding road, especially along the Kentucky River. The road wound around the hills going north and crossed an iron bridge that was very narrow. On the right side, there stood the old covered bridge, which was not used anymore. That wooden covered bridge was known as the largest span of any covered bridge in the United States. The abutments to that bridge are there to be seen to this day. Although the iron bridge is still there, it is closed to vehicle traffic. Going up the hill on the north side of the river, there was one curve that made it impossible to navigate without slowing to almost a stop. When you meet a truck or bus, your car would be in danger of being pushed off the cliff. The cut through was a real innovation for the old Highway 27 and it happened about forty years ago. There is a chimney rock on Kentucky River, just west of the bridge. It could be seen from the top of Highway 27 when Walter was a boy, but now the view is covered by trees. The teacher of Walter's Sunday school class took the boys on a trip to see the chimney rock. It was on a private farm and they left the road and went through dirt roads to get to the site. They climbed down from the top of the cliff to the rock and took pictures.
It would be a great scenic place to visit if it became available to the public.
One event on the street where Walter lived occurred about 1927. It appears that the two men involved lived across the street (haselden heights) at the top of the hill. They got into an argument over the chickens one man was raising and they were in the other man's yard. It ended with a shooting where one was killed. Walter heard the shots and ran into the house. It was a tragic incident and ended up with the shooter going to prison.
Lancaster, Kentucky, was the town in which he grew and grew. It was on a square with a beautiful center, with shrubs and trees and a walkway around it. All the kids in town at one time or another skated around the center of the square. The square's center was torn down in 1938 to make way for Highway 27 to go straight through town as it does today, ruining the look of the town, which should now be returned to its former glory by resurrecting the center.
One Thanksgiving, Walter's dad brought home a live turkey. He also had a large cardboard box and proceeded to cut a hole in the top. Walter was six years old and heavy enough to hold the top down, so his dad asked him to sit on the top of the box while the turkey's head was pulled through the hole. The intention was to cut the head off the turkey and let him stay in the big box as the turkey flopped until it died. About the time Dad started to cut the head off, Walter got panicky and jumped off the box. The turkey got out and since its head was half off, it was bleeding and staggering around. Dad had to catch the turkey and he was really mad at Walter for jumping off the box. Walter never forgot that incident.
During that time, when Walter was seven years old, he tended the garden his dad planted. He cut the weeds and pushed a plow between the rows of corn, tomatoes, beans and other vegetables. During the growing season, Walter would load up his little wagon and go to the neighbors and sell the vegetables. What he sold could be his money for tending the garden. Blanche, Walter's mother, canned vegetables during this time and the entire family benefited from them all winter long.
When fall came, it was time to gather walnuts. The entire family would travel to farms and gather the green walnuts that had fallen from the trees. The hulls had to be removed, so Walter would put them in the gravel driveway for the car to run over them to get the hulls removed. He still had to pull the leftover hulls from the nuts and as a result, the stain from the hulls remained on his hands for weeks after handling the hulls and walnuts. Nevertheless, the family cracked nuts on the fireplace all winter long. Glen Wallace Cox was born March 12, 1926, about three and a half years younger than Walter. He and Walter did not get along too well, as Glen was always following Walter and getting in his way. The age difference was just enough to keep them from being pals. Later, as the teen years came, they were friends and did more things together. Glen was sickly and at night, during a full moon, he would get out of bed and sleepwalk up and down the street in front of the house. He would get out of the house because the doors were never locked and in the early morning, he would go to the house across the street and eat with the neighbors.
From the time he was big enough to run, he was out all day playing in the fields, creeks and streets. If it was not a scooter, skates, or tricycle, it was just plain old walking and running. By the time he was six or seven years old, he had a BB gun and used to shoot at birds. Every Saturday, it was a cowboy movie at the Grand Theater, with all the kids in town. It consisted of a serial, comedy and cowboy movie. As a result of those movies, all he wanted for Christmas was a cowboy suit and cap pistols so he could look like the movie stars Tom Mix or Ken Maynard.
Christmas was always the best day of the year and before Santa could go to sleep, he and his brother, Glen, were up and downstairs, getting their gifts, which were left unwrapped just like they came out of the sleigh that Santa rode in. Before daylight, some twenty kids up and down the street were out riding their new vehicles, shooting cap pistols and displaying all their Santa toys.
Blanche, his mother, was wonderful and loved to have birthday parties for him and Glen. She loved Christmas and always made candy (fondant with a walnut on top) to give to all the friends, neighbors and relatives. She enjoyed Christmas morning as much as anyone in the world and did everything to make her family feel special. On the night before Christmas, she would take Walter and Glen to the Baptist church and after the Christmas program, all the children would receive a sack full of candy and goodies. Blanche played the piano and then the organ for the church every Sunday until she was unable to do so. She also played for the silent movies from the time she was sixteen until they started having talking movies. Walter remembers going to Lexington with his mother when he was four years old (1927) to see his first talking movie titled Danny Boy.
