These were red letter years in my life. We moved into our first house, I got a dog, I got a sister, we got our first TV and I started school.
My dad went to work as office manager for Bishop Electric Company. Max Bishop was my dad’s lifelong friend; they grew up together and went to school together. They only got separated when Max went into the service. Bishop Electric was located on Hull Street in South Richmond. We bought a house at 4007 Maury Street, only about 5 blocks from my dad’s work. My grandmother was upset that we were moving from the fashionable West End of Richmond to the lower class Southside. Now she would have to take a bus to visit now instead of walking so we did not see her as often once we moved.
The house was a two bedroom bungalow on a dead end street. Maury Street ended a vacant lot and two houses down and an unpaved lane continued, took a 90 degree right turn into the woods and came out on the next street behind our house. The entire block across the street was a field. A farmer planted corn there during the summer, but the rest of the year it was our playground where we fought many military battles, played cowboys and Indians and king of the hill.
About 50 yards from the end of the street were the railroad tracks. It was a single track spur line that carried several trains per day from the rail yards to the industrial area at Holly Springs Road and on down to the Petersburg Pike area. The tracks were below grade creating a steep embankment down to the tracks. During the summer we would run down to the tracks whenever we heard the train because some of the engineers tossed candy to the kids as they passed by. My new friends were Kenny Gray, Jim Wilkerson and Doug Nunnally.
We got a new(er) car. It was a 1948 Dodge sedan with fluid drive. The fluid drive concept was a precursor of the torque converter automatic transmission. It was a 3 speed manual gearbox, but instead of a flywheel clutch, there was a fluid coupling between the engine and transmission. I never saw my dad use first gear, he always started in second and made one shift into third and did not have to use the clutch to shift. The Dodge had 75,000 miles on the odometer. My dad said it had been around the world 3 times. I asked him how you drove it across the ocean.
My Uncle Rodney and Aunt Elsie lived a couple blocks away in the Holly Springs Apartments. She worked in administration at the McGuire Veterans Hospital and he was a customs inspector who worked in the Philip Morris warehouses at Deep Water Terminal. And, they had television. It was a Friday night ritual to walk down to their apartment after dinner and watch TV. The must see TV was the Gillette Friday Night Fights. Boxing was my generation’s Ultimate Fighting Championship.
My first dog was a wire hair terrier named Skippy. If you don’t know what a wire hair terrier looks like, think of Asta the dog in “The Thin Man” movie series. Skippy was my best friend and followed me everywhere. He always wanted to be with the family; I remember begging my dad to stop and pick up Skippy after he followed the car 6 blocks before giving up and going back home.
We got our own TV. It was a Westinghouse black and white console TV. It had a large speaker underneath so it actually sounded pretty good. We had one channel, WTVR “The South’s First Television Station.” There was only one children’s show in the afternoon, Ranch House Tales hosted by Dal Burnett, one of the station’s owners who dressed up in a cowboy suit, talked to a puppet and played episodes of western serials.
On Christmas Eve in 1953, I got a sister, Elizabeth Travis (Betty) Rouse. My dad wanted to name her Christy Eve after the day she was born, but he was outvoted.
In February, 1954 I started school. In Richmond at the time, if your birthday was after October 1st, you started school in February. Richmond did not have a first grade. They had two years of Junior Primary and then you went into second grade. So, I entered JP-1 at Franklin School on Midlothian Turnpike. It was a 16 block walk, partly due to the detours to get to the crossing guards to cross Broad Rock Road and Hull Street. It was a pretty strong walk for a 5 year old. On the first day of school, my mom met the other moms in my class and they devised a route for us to walk to school. I first walked to the next block to Randy Morton’s house. Then we crossed Broad Rock Road at the crossing guard and then went to Steve Bond’s house. Then, the three of us went to the next crossing guard at Hull Street, crossed and walked the remaining six blocks to school. Our moms walked with us for a few days, then followed us and watched and then I guess they stopped off for coffee somewhere because we didn’t see them anymore.
During that first semester, I had measles, mumps and chicken pox. My diabolical mind thinks that’s why Junior Primary was in a separate building, so that we could get all the childhood diseases out of our system before putting us in the general population. We also got our smallpox vaccinations. The school nurse gave them; a needle was used to scratch the skin and then a plastic shield was taped over the site so we wouldn’t be tempted to scratch off the resulting scab. Kids nowadays don’t have to go through that.
The next October, when I was in JP-2, my mother got a call from Mrs. Tiller, my teacher. She wanted to let my mom know that I had invited the whole class to my birthday party that afternoon. My mom said “OK” but don’t bring presents. She walked to the store and picked up some more ice cream. That afternoon about 20 kids and their moms, along with Mrs. Tiller and her son were in my back yard playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey and other party games in my back yard. That was one of my best birthday parties ever. Such were the days of stay at home moms and neighborhood schools.
