I was listening to "WBKR" the other day and country folk singer Tom T. Hall came on with the old song, "I remember the year that Clayton Delaney died!" Instantly my thoughts went to my old buddy Clayton Harvey who also died three years ago.
I've been very fortunate in this life because I've had a lot of "true friends." By "true friends," I'm talking friends that were as close as kinfolk, the kind of people you would share your innermost thoughts with. All of us have friends like this. Mine seemed to come in "Eras" though. My best friends in elementary school differed for the most part from those in high school. After high school I had different friends. That's not to say that the earlier ones weren't friends any longer but for some reason or another our interests would differ and another "true" friend came along. This is what created an "Era" of true friendships.
One of my more memorable "Eras" are what I call the "Clayton Harvey Era." Many of you knew Clayton, offspring of Ed by Dorothy and middle sibling to Eddie and Helen. He grew up on West 2nd Avenue, across the street from First Presbytarian Church. Clayton was a couple of years behind me in school, graduating in 1966 (actually in my younger brother's class) and even though I knew him in High School, we didn't become close friends until after he graduated. We were in the Jaycees together for years and both of us held the office of President twice.
We were both frequenters of the "Dairy Maid," and somehow we just "clicked." We seemed to have a lot in common. Clayton was also close friends of Ron McRoy, Kirby Tapp and a host of others. He grew up with these latter two and they all attended First Christian Church throughout their formative years. Clayton only had one employer that I ever knew of, that being Bell Telephone Systems (under one name or another as they were always merging or swallowing up another company). He worked for them for more than thirty years.
Clayton's Dad was an engineer and land surveyor. He spent a lot of time out in the field surveying and many times out in pretty "rough" country under less than ideal weather conditions. Because his job required so much specialized equipment, their family car was a gigantic 1965 Chevrolet station wagon. Because Ed had to go off road a lot, he had the cargo compartments (the enclosed area behind the rear wheelwells in the back of the wagon) filled with lead. This put a lot of weight over the rear tires and kept him from getting "hung up" as often. Clayton liked to brag about how it was nearly impossible to hang the car up, even in deep mud, and we enjoyed heading out to the stripper pits to test out a new area. We hung it up a couple of times but should have done it on hundreds of occasions.
For years, when the Green River would exceed it's banks in February or March, it would flood the old Gibraltar Mine Road from Gibraltar Mines all the way to Martwick. Water probably averaged about 16" over the road but it looked like Lake Superior. We would take the "War Wagon" out there and driving cautiously and slowly would make the three or four mile trek from one end to the other. Since the ditches on either side of this road were about 4 or 5 feet deep, the object was to stay on the pavement (or gravel depending where you were). Some of the way you could guide yourself by watching the tops of sagebrush on each side of the road but when this ran out you had to do it by "feel." In other words when you would "feel" the right wheel drop off the pavement, you knew to cut the wheel to the left. When the left one dropped off, you took it back to the right. We always enjoyed "cajoling" one of our friends to "tag along" in their (or usually their parent's) car and always took a chain because inevitably we'd have to pull them through our makeshift obstacle course.
I remember one particular night, Clayton, Ron and myself decided to make the trip, this time from Martwick back to Gibraltar. Not only was the road covered with water but it was still raining. We had gone about two miles and was in the middle of nowhere when Clayton's engine died.
He tried to crank it back up but when he turned the key, there was "nothing." We were sitting in the middle of a virtual lake and it was still raining pretty hard. No one knew where we were and it was nearly midnight. We knew we could walk out for help (assuming we could walk on the road which was covered with water), but to do that, we'd have to open the doors to get out of the car which would flood the interior. The water was up to about the chrome strip in the middle of the doors. We had been sitting in this predictament for about an hour when we decided it was the only way out. We asked Clayton to give it "one more try." As he reached down for the key, he noticed something we hadn't noticed earlier....the gearshift was still in "Drive." We told Clayton to put it in "Park" and when he did, the old wagon fired right up. We were able to drive it out to safety. Clayton claimed he knew the car was in "drive" all along....he was just "playing" with us......"Yeah, Right!"
Another story Ron always liked to tell was about one night the three of us were riding around on some old back roads on strip mine property.
This particular night, the outside temperature was in single digits and the ground was frozen solid. We had been doing this for a number of hours and it was getting into early morning when we decided to head back to town and the warmth of our beds. Before we turned and headed for home, one of us mentioned he had to go to the bathroom. Since we were in the middle of the wilderness (we were somewhere out in the country between Powderly and Greenville) just pull off the road....it'd only take a minute. Clayton turned on an old "one lane pig-path" that would normally be impassable except the ground was frozen hard making it navigable. We pulled up to an old deserted farmhouse and barn. Both looked like they "defied gravity," as they were barely standing. Since we were "bored," I mentioned we ought to burn down the barn for some excitement. One of the others sort of laughed and said "Hey, that'd be a fun thing!" After "banting" it back and forth for a few minutes, we decided against doing it. Wasn't anyone out there at that time of night to see it anyway. We decided to get in the car and head for home. What we hadn't realized was that while were outside the vehicle "doing our business," Clayton had left the engine on so it would still be warm inside. The heat off of the engine and tail pipes had "thawed" out the frozen ground under the car and it had "sunk" in the mud up to the frame. The "War Wagon" was completely stuck. We tried to push it out for about an hour to no avail. Luckily one of the mine foremen happened by in his pickup truck and pulled us out. We often talked about how embarrassing it would have been if we had set that old deserted barn on fire just to have the fire department show up and we'd have to explain what we were doing out there.
Clayton and I were always "checking" on the local bootleggers to see if they were still alive. We enjoyed doing this on Monday nights and then going to his house or mine to watch Monday Night Football. One particular Saturday afternoon we decided to do the same except we would go to my house (actually my parent's house) and watch Baseball's "Game of the Week." (Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese). My parents had gone to Owensboro for the day to visit Dad's sister and do some shopping so we had the house to ourselves. As the afternoon "ground on," and the game ended, we moved into the dining room just off of the kitchen and began having serious conversation. This went on for about two hours.
It went on long enough that we actually "ran out" of topics to discuss (apparently our brains had a limited capacity).
My mother had a couple of aquariums in those days (along with her "Chia Head," her "Pocket Fisherman" and her "Veg-O-Matic" slicer and dicer). One of the tanks was filled with Guppies, a tiny fish that had nothing else to do but reproduce. She probably had about two thousand of them in this one tank. Our family, being as prosperous as we were, also owned a blender. This wouldn't be so unusual today but you have to remember this was 1968 and they had only been invented a couple of years. Clayton spotted the blender and the tank of Guppies and said "I wonder how fast those little fish can really swim." I thought that was an interesting question. "Let's find out," I said..."Hand me that dip net over there!" I scooped up about fifty of the little critters. Clayton took the blender and filled about two-thirds of it with water and placed it back on it's base. Removing the top, I carefully placed the fifty guppies into the tank.
We found they could swim "Pretty well" through "whip" and "blend." It was "Puree" that seemed to be their downfall. If I remember right, we put about three hundred of them through this process and I don't believe any of them survived "Puree." This went on for about an hour and we finally got bored again so we quit. It was shortly after this time that Dad and Mom pulled into our driveway and it was about 5 p.m. We quickly cleaned off the countertop, put the dip net back into the drawer and resumed our position at the kitchen table. We didn't have time to rinse out the blender and there were several "Guppie parts" stuck to it's sides. These included miniature scales, fins and eyeballs.
Mom asked if we were getting hungry and we said we were. She took some ground beef out of the fridge and mashed them into hamburger patties and cooked hamburgers. She also cut up some potatoes into french fries (with her Veg-O-Matic) and cooked them. Finally, as if this wasn't enough of a treat, she got out some ice cream and chocolate syrup and filled up the blender for milk shakes.....the same blender with the fins and scales and eyeballs in it. When she finished, she delivered all of this to us in gourmet fashion. Clayton and I ate the food and drank the shake and after the meal we weren't sure what we were picking from our teeth....In fact we didn't want to know. Mom had only used that blender about three times in her life and I couldn't help but wonder if she knew.
Clayton Harvey was a good friend. He enjoyed life to the fullest and even though our lives later took us in different directions, we remained friends. Clayton and Mary Lynn had two beautiful children and as long as Will, his youngest is around, Clayton lives on. Will is pretty much a clone of Clayton in his high school years.
Clayton was Mayor of South Carrollton for many years. I used to call him a "Politico!" He held the office for several terms and when he got tired he turned over the reigns to someone else. He was undefeated in elections and was usually unopposed. He once told me he wanted to make South Carrollton a Riverboat Town again. Not a bad idea. He also liked to brag that South Carrollton had a college once (which they did) and Madisonville Community College simply stole their idea. I asked him if he would make that statement in a speech at the dedication of the Muhlenberg County Campus. He said he wasn't interested in doing that.
I miss ol' Clayton and apparently I'm not the only one. A group of us were eating in one of the local restaurants the other day and his name came up. We told "Clayton" stories for about an hour. Somebody in the group requested that I tell the "Guppie" story. I had forgotten it until they mentioned it. Clayton would appreciate being remembered for that!
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