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RIGHT IN THE CITY -- MORE BIZARRE TALES
RIGHT IN THE CITY
MORE BIZARRE TALES
by Douglas W. Ayres
VOLUME II
2009
AUTHOR’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY
RIGHT IN THE CITY, A DOG’S TALE - 2nd Edition
{sometimes referred to as “Volume I”}
can be reviewed and purchased at www.trafford.com/01-0588
Life is to be entered upon with courage.
Alexis de Toqueville
Democracy in America
ABOUT DOUGLAS W. AYRES
On May 27, 1995 Douglas W. Ayres passed 65 years of age. I retired fully and started writing for entertainment. Now just short of 80, five books have been written and published since retiring.
Books. The first – Right in the City – A Dog’s Tale (Volume I) con-sists of anecdotes framed as “Tales”, from my 47 year career. The second – The Municipal Joke Box -- is a compilation of jokes gathered, customized and used over 40 years in speeches by which I could illustrate governmental “difficulties and challenges” -- humorously.
Then came Volumes I and II of Undaunted Curiosity – Cruising America’s Coasts and Waterways. These tomes relate Doug & Pam Ayres’ travels by boat along all three U.S. and Canadian coasts, the Great Lakes, and the vast majority of the internal navigable rivers and waterways of North America. That hegira consumed six months per year for 15 years, was accomplished in four boats and 26,000 miles of coasts and waterways and 683 “ports”, at a cost of $1.36 million.
Each of the above books is summarized later in this brief autobiography, together with where they can be acquired.
Short Version. The following pages are an updated version of the original biographical sketch in Right in the City. This first “serious” book now becomes Volume I in a series – of two and maybe even three. I discovered sufficient material for iterations of the details of my working life. Thus this revised version was prepared for inclusion as an Appendix to Right in the City – Volume II. And will be separately available as needed.
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Rearing. Douglas W. Ayres was reared a West Virginia hillbilly, in an isolated mountain town of 1,800 in the southeast corner of that State. The product of the Roaring 20’s and a victim of the Great Depression, I am the son of a local boy who, after Labor Day weekend 1929, moved from White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia to the University of Detroit, aspiring to become an aeronautical engineer.
In late October of ‘29, days before the Great Depression started, Dorothea Madge Hern and David Warren Ayres were married. She then also moved to Detroit. Dad had hoped to go to college but eco- nomics and an impending child intervened. Times got tough. Then
things came totally unwound on “Black Thursday”. Prior to my birth, at
home on California Avenue in Highland Park on May 27, 1930, Dad had found employment hustling cigarette machine locations at a dollar a placement. Over succeeding decades that gig evolved into General Manager of the largest cigarette distributor in Michigan. And, until the day of his last heart attack and death, he could schmooze over a beer, and drink and smoke with the best of the “good old boys”, of whom he was a leading member. And not get addicted to either the atmosphere or drink. Addicted to cigarettes yes, of necessity, but booze, never!
Warren, as all knew him, was an accomplished salesman of monu-mental and gregarious personality. He had been the Big Man on Cam-pus in high school, and succeeded in everything he undertook. Per the school newspaper he was considered the “best looking boy” there.
Everybody loved Warren. Unfortunately, eventually the same could not be said of his only son, Douglas. I was and remain entirely too intense and goal-oriented to ever become one of “the good ole’ boys”. As one discerning friend once opined: “You’re just too damn principled and reliable!” However, fortunately, occasionally others apparently viewed me differently, perhaps as both reliable and “a good ‘ole boy”.
Mother. When I was one my mom returned to White Sulphur Springs and divorced my Dad. There I was reared in a remote Appalachian mountain valley, which to this day has as its only claim to fame that it contains an internationally renowned five star resort hotel and four attendant world class golf courses – The Greenbrier Hotel and Cottages, and The Greenbrier Sporting Club.
Neither my Mother nor Father ever spoke of “what went wrong” with their marriage, but one can easily surmise that the combination of the stresses of the Great Depression, coupled with the cultural shock of the move from West Virginia to urban Detroit in October of 1929, was the culprit. An instant unwanted “family” could not have aided.
My Mom became a career third grade schoolteacher but, due to her having completed only two years of college, for two decades she taught on a “provisional certificate”. She thus had to farm me out to her siblings each summer so she could attend college until, in 1953, she completed the necessary BA to achieve teaching tenured permanency.
Youthful Employments. I worked at a number of jobs and enter-prises starting when nine years old. Inescapably, while attending high school employment at The Greenbrier Hotel in various capacities was
inevitable -- as an elevator operator, construction worker, car “chaser”,
and swing shift limousine driver, as detailed in a Volume I “Tale.”
The Greenbrier with its world class golf courses was the sole local employer of any significance. The local elementary [grades 1 to 6] and high school [grades 7 to 12] had as their sole goal the training of a pool of future employees for the Hotel. Because of such educational emphases, I still am psychologically uncomfortable in up-scale resorts for, during my formative 18 years, we all were conditioned to be a Greenbrier employee, thus provide absolute deference to the wealthy Hotel guests. But eventually I escaped, taking the traditional route out of West Virginia by enlisting in the United States Army.
“Mean”. Although only 6 feet tall and 140 pounds, I was referred to as “wiry” and, while playing the two way “ironman” football of the 1940’s, reportedly gained a reputation for being “persistent, tough as nails, and just plain mean”.
Evidently the football experience was good training for what even-tually became my calling – urban administration. With a simple up-bringing, reared by a divorced mother and invalid grandma, a cut above “po’ white trash”, the world outside southeastern West Virginia was little known to me. Except in books, which I avidly read, literally de-vouring the contents of the tiny White Sulphur Springs Public Library. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and U.S. entry into World War II, occurred at age 11; V‑J Day was at age 15 while on a train returning from a summer visit to Dad and his growing second family in Detroit. I was a true product of the Great Depression and World War II.
A Nurturing Atmosphere. White Sulphur Springs may have been geographically and philosophically isolated in the 1930’s and 1940’s, but that very isolation guaranteed total inculcation of “personal values”. Everyone in town knew, instantly and intimately, what everyone else in the village was doing, thought and believed. Thus any deviation from the community’s expected and demanded fortunate high level of personal conduct would bring swift, certain and absolute corrective action. There was little money and no real wealth, thus “entertainment” was a local construct. But we all “worked”, at something, for pittances.
The tales I could tell from my 17 years in White Sulphur, as it was referred to, are many and positive. The time may have been during the Great Depression and World War II, but that tiny holler produced “good folks”. And the WSHS class of ‘48 consisted of “good folks”.
Each and every one of the 40 compatriots. I am now one of the few re-maining from that hardy group of mountain folk. And, also fortunately,
I was born into a loving and close family of mountain folk, who “raised me right” when Mom and Gramma weren’t around.
An Advantage. An additional major advantage secured by up-bringing in the isolation of a tiny mountain niche was the ability to size up someone and spot a phony instantly. In government and business that perceptive ability proved infallible. And invaluable. I eventually recognized and utilized that perceptiveness, and prospered with it.
The only real White Sulphur negative was discovered after high school graduation -- namely trying to complete forms requiring high school name and location. The ten words “White Sulphur Springs High School, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia” do not fit into spaces commonly assigned such things.
Taking advantage of the most used escape route from West Virginia’s grinding poverty, on my 18th birthday I graduated from the 400 student 7‑12 grade White Sulphur Springs High School, signed up, and left my protective small town for the U. S. Army.
The Army. “Trouble from the Wash Basin”, and “Dog Ears”, as I had been known in our Saturday movie matinee-style “Western gang” during high school, served the enlistment at each of Fort Dix, N.J.; Fort
Lewis, Washington; and Fort Ord, Californi and, later, Fort Story, VA .
At Dix, in-processing and two weeks of testing set my role in the “new” Army of post World War II as a “Truman Trooper”. At Fort Lewis the learning encompassed the usual nine week basic training, plus “Weapons School” for five more weeks. There we learned, in exquisite detail, how to disassemble, clean, re-assemble blindfolded, and fire accurately all weapons utilized by the then‑Army Infantry, up thru the 105mm recoilless rifle and 105mm artillery piece. At Fort Ord the Army created an automotive mechanic. On graduation there orders re‑assigned me back to Fort Lewis to C Company, 23rd Regimental Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, as an infantry company mechanic. I now possessed a valued “truck mechanic” certificate.
A Private Forever. I never rose above Private, even after serving in the Army Reserve two more years, not being promoted there beyond PFC either. The Reserve tour was spent learning how to be a DUKW, or “Duck” driver/mechanic, which was terrifying in the surf off Fort Story, Virginia, attempting to offload 55 gallon drums of gasoline into the galloping Duck from a heaving and rolling freighter.
On honorable discharge at Fort Lewis, another West Virginian, “Red” Street, and I set some sort of pre‑interstate highway transcontinental record, managing to hitchhike home to West Virginia in 96 hours. Two days later I was enrolled at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia, 65 miles and seven mountains southeast of White Sulphur.
To College? My active duty service hit the “window” of exclusion from GI Bill education benefits. That non-eligible gap exists for those who served after WWII and before Korea -- between January 1, 1947 and June 26, 1950, 42 months. I hit that gap smack in the middle. Although “a veteran”, the lack of the GI Bill for college left me on my own. Mom could ill afford to assist much, being the sole support of her now 80+-year-old ailing mother, grandmother Lauana Cruickshanks Hern, or “Momma”. “Mom Dot”, as the two were differentiated, still was teaching on a “conditional certificate”, not yet having completed her college degree. The latter, and the commensurate raise in salary, did not happen until summer of 1953, after receiving my first degree. I had the privilege of researching and writing the term paper for my Mom’s last college course – on money and banking, a subject to this day I still am not certain I fully understand, even though eventually teaching public finance at three university graduate schools.
College? Frugality came easily for, unavoidably, instruction by and observation of the habits of a necessarily frugal Mother and a down- right tight Grandmother, a great savings instinct had been engendered in me. Thus, starting at age nine, I engaged in a wide variety of gainful employments and hustles, including an early morning newspaper delivery route; being a carpenter’s helper; Amere Natural Gas Company WW II-era ditch digger, meter installer, plumber, and meter reader [child labor laws were suspended during WWII]; and as a printer’s “devil” for the local weekly paper. Also by working as a laborer at a near-by girl’s summer camp, and thereby learning how to drive on the island‑bound camp’s ancient truck, a high school classmate, Leon Whited, and I mastered driving. But we never saw the much-anticipated “camper” girls, being laid off prior to their late-June arrival.
But drive I did, including on occasion “hiked & hopped” ‘39 to ‘41 Ford V‑8 coupes hauling West Virginia’s ubiquitous “shine” to a distribution point in Greensboro, N.C. I even met fellow shine runners Lee Petty, “Cannonball” Roberts, Curtis Turner, and Junior Johnson there. Few locals ever knew of these “night runs” for one of the Pocahontas County ‘shine brokers, but had it been local knowledge they
would not have disapproved, for the making of moonshine was a God-given right in mountainous and rocky West Virginia of the 1940’s.
Hustling. In addition to working at The Greenbrier, during high school there was a stint as the “night manager” [meaning collecting tickets and throwing out obstreperous attendees] of the local cinema added to college tuition coffers. During daylight washing and detailing cars by utilizing a local creek, being a “stringer” for two regional daily newspapers, and in general hustling and saving added to the college tuition pot. When “on salary” the going rate was 10¢ an hour and, for writing, a penny a columnar newsprint line. This latter arrangement ultimately, unfortu- nately, set my writing style.