My First Twenty Years
Life begins in Selma, Alabama, on November 21, 1932. I don't remember that, but that's what the records show and that is the date that is celebrated each year, whether I like it or not. I was named Arthur La Velle Day, after my father, but my mother, Wilma, nicknamed me Happy and that stuck and has been with me all my life. Of course it was shortened to "Hap" as I grew older, but I still respond to Happy.
It wasn't a very happy day for me on August 25, 1935 when my Dad was killed in an automobile accident. I know I was too young to really know what happened, but I was told that at the time I said to my mother, "Don't worry Mother, I will take care of you." I was told it wasn't possible for me to remember anything at that age, and yet, inexplicably, in my mind I see a red brick garage and I'm looking through the dirty windows and see a car covered with a dirty white cloth, and I know it was my Dad's car. No, I do not claim to have ESP, and there is nothing supernatural here, only a little memory in the mind of a two year old.
I do not know the time line of the events that followed, but I do know that Mother married a Charles Langdon. I was left with my Aunt Hallie and Uncle Jack in New Orleans, Louisiana while they went on their honeymoon. It was there that I had my first fight. In the days of 1934 it was quite safe for a toddler to be outside all alone. There wasn't much traffic and what few cars that did drive by did so quite slowly. My aunt needed a loaf of bread and it was an opportune time for me to run an errand for her. On the corner, across the street, there was a small grocery store. I was asked to go there for the loaf of bread, and since it was raining, my aunt gave me an umbrella. I never made it with the bread because when I got outside an older boy called me a sissy for carrying an umbrella, and I chased him beating him across the head and ruining the umbrella. My aunt wasn't far behind, but I had my first fight.
Mother's marriage to Charles did not last long because while on the honeymoon, Charles informed her he didn't want me and wanted to make arrangements for someone else to care for me. Mother wouldn't have anything to do with that, and somehow we ended up in Mexico City. There was another man in our lives then. His name was Jose Garibay Centeno and we called him Pepe which is the nickname for Jose. He liked me and I liked him because he would "swing me like a sissy," which meant take me by the arms and swing me round and round. He would also buy me toys. Mother and I lived in a small two story bungalow in a fenced and secure place called Quinta Sofia. It was Christmas morning and I woke up because I heard voices downstairs. I came down the stairs asking if Santa had come when Charles back handed me and told me to get back upstairs. I didn't see what happened next, but I was told that Pepe nearly killed Charles, and I never heard of or saw him again. Mother and Pepe were married and we moved into an apartment that had a small balcony. I was given a little pedal car but could only ride it on the balcony, pedaling it back and forth about three feet. While we lived in that apartment I met my first friend, a little Mexican boy with a striped baseball cap. Pepe's birthday was on August 25th which made it biter-sweet for my mother since that was the day my father had died.
Now I am about five years old and we live in a two story house and my bedroom is at the top of the stairs. If I lean over the foot of my bed, I can see down the stairs. Mother and Pepe have gone out for the evening and our maid, Margarita, has gone downstairs to fetch me a glass of milk, and I look down the stairs and see an unknown man come in the front door. I jumped out of bed yelling and as I came down the stairs he grabbed Pepe's hat from the foyer table and ran out of the house with me, in my underwear, chasing him down the street. That must have been quite a sight for a little tow headed boy to be chasing a grown man. No, I didn't catch him. Lucky, huh?
When I was in the first grade at the American School in Mexico City we moved to a new house in the suburb of San Angel Inn. Because of the distance from our house to the American School, mother enrolled me in the second grade in a Mexican school nearer our house. This school at one time had been a form of a military academy and it had jail cells in the dungeon. I didn't know anyone at the school and didn't make friends there. In the second week, during recess, I was standing watching a marbles game when a boy bumped into me causing me to stumble backward. As I stumbled, I knocked into another boy, causing him to fall forward and crack his head on the sidewalk. I was blamed for the incident and was put in a cell in the dungeon for the rest of the day. The next day our chauffeur dropped me off at the school, but I played hooky and went straight home. Mother punished me, but I was afraid to tell her why I had played hooky. The next day I played hooky again. This time I didn't go home, instead I climbed a big tree in the dry wash behind our house. At that age I didn't have a watch or a sense of time. All I knew was I didn't want to be in a dungeon again. Late in the afternoon our chauffer looked over the fence and spotted me in the tree. Of course I was in trouble again. What I didn't know was Mexico City had suffered a tremendous earthquake, and my worried mother had sent the chauffer to pick me up from school and I wasn't there. They had the police looking for me and everyone in our neighborhood was asked if they had seen me. Mother was so relieved to get me back she didn't punish me and I told her what had happened at school. I was immediately put back into the American School and finished all twelve years there.
World War II started and Mother and Pepe built a big house in the same neighbor hood. My brother, Ricky, was born on August 22, 1941 (before Pearl Harbor), shortly before we moved into the new house. I remember the "fiesta" that was had when the house was finished. The workers dug a big pit in the back yard and lit a huge bonfire. They kept the fire going for two days then covered it with sand. They built a second fire on top of the sand which burned another full day. Another layer of sand was placed over the second fire. A whole hind quarter of beef, a pig, and a goat were wrapped in leaves (I can't remember what kind), then tightly wrapped in burlap. These were all placed in the pit, covered with yet another layer of sand, and a third fire was lit and kept burning for a day and a half. The day had come to christen the house and have a big bash. The pine tree was already placed on a corner of the roof, and all the workers, and our family watched as the meat was pulled out from the sand, unwrapped, and placed on the serving tables. That meat was so good, and with the fresh, hand made tortillas, beans and rice, it was a feast to remember, and as I said above, I do!
Many other things (too many to write about here) occurred while I was in School in Mexico. My sister, Priscilla, was born on November 28, 1942, and as a 10 year old I started picking up a lot of responsibility for my siblings. Once they started school I was like a second father to both. Almost always I fixed their breakfast and took them to school. They were both enrolled in the American School and elementary through senior grades were on the same campus. Consequently, they would ride with me in the city buses we used to get to school. During the football season either mother or the chauffer would pick them up after school.
During the war years I joined a group dedicated to helping the war effort and we stuffed propaganda leaflets to be dropped over enemy territory. Everyone I knew hated the Germans and Japanese, and some very innocent people suffered quite a bit because of their nationality. That was true in the United States as well, especially for the Japanese.
I suppose during my years in school my life wasn't much different than all the "Tom Sawyers" in the United States. Oh, a couple of things, for one, in Mexico, our school vacation was in the winter versus the summer in the USA. Because of that, I would go to Mobile, Alabama every year and work for my Uncle Jack in an A&P grocery store. I started as an "egg candler" and years later finished as a stock boy and sacker. I also had a stint behind the coffee bar, grinding 8 O'clock coffee. That job ended quickly because I said "Ma'am" to a black woman and a white customer complained. In those days segregation was very much enforced, especially in the South, but not in Mexico. These work visits to the USA gave me the opportunity to earn money for numerous activities.
One year, when I was fifteen, money was scarce at home because Pepe was in Mexican politics. He had backed his immediate boss, the governor of the state of Mexico for president, breaking party lines. Prior to the election the governor realized he couldn't win and folded back into the party of the PRI. The spoils system took effect and even though Pepe was a close friend of Miguel Aleman, the president, his cash flow became practically non-existent. Mother told us she and my brother and sister would forgo Christmas and Santa Claus and use the money they had to come to Mobile for Christmas. I took the money I had earned and bought Christmas for everyone, but hid all of it in the attic. My brother and my sister had been told that by coming on this trip Santa wouldn't be able to find them on such short notice. After everyone was asleep on Christmas Eve, I snuck all the presents down from the attic where I had hid them, and placed them as I thought Santa would. The memory of the amazed faces, especially my mother's, stays with me to this day. Needless to say, my brother and sister were overjoyed. Merry Christmas!
My high school years were as good as they could be. My junior year was especially exciting. I joined the Gamma Gamma Gamma Fraternity and kissed my first girl, or rather she kissed me. I was standing on a corner with a fellow Gamma after my initiation, when a car came screeching up to the curb, the back door opened and my friend shoved me in the car. I went in head first across the laps of three girls and Leila Winstead kissed me. Wow, I was in heaven. I enjoyed sports and was on the boxing team. However, my real interest was football, and I was starting to like girls too. I made the varsity team and started dating Connie Carmona. Picture Gallery.
In 1950 a beauty pageant was held in Mexico City. The Mexican queen was a beauty named Tita Grey. At that time Miguel Aleman was president of Mexico and his son Miguelito was trying to date Tita. The afternoon of the pageant two of my friends and I posed as press photographers and were allowed into her house to photograph her, while Miguelito sat outside in his car fuming. All these years I believed the pageant was the Miss Universe Pageant. However, in searching the web for dates as I write this, I cannot find any reference to 1950 or Tita Grey. As a matter of fact it is stated the Miss Universe Pageant was started in 1952. I remember seeing Piper Laurie there and I actually danced with Margaret O'Brien.
Mexico had (and still has) an acrobatic motorcycle brigade. They were chosen to escort the beauty queens travelling in tour buses to a show in the town of Puebla. My friend, Cecilio Martinez owned a 1940 yellow Buick convertible and we had put a siren under the hood. The chief of the brigade was a good friend of Pepe and he placed our car number one after the buses. We were out on the highway doing 60 MPH when the chief dropped back to our car and asked if we had anything to eat. Of course we didn't, and to our amazed disbelief he motored up beside one of the buses, set his throttle, stood up on the seat, knocked on the window and obtained a box lunch for us. It was an amazing feat, and we did get to eat.
I graduated from high school in June of 1951 with a football scholarship to Mexico City College. My grandparents gave me the money to buy my first car. It was a 1937 Ford club coupe, painted green and black with purple seat covers and it cost $500.00 US Dollars. Cars were not cheap in Mexico. When the football season was over, Cecilio Martinez and I lied about our age and joined the jalopy racing circuit. We converted my car into a racer. We built a bucket seat and used the risers from a parachute to create the web to sit on, and one of the harness buckles became our seat belt. We found a sponsor for our car, but all they provided was the paint job to advertise Hastings spark plugs.
In order to increase interest in jalopy racing, the circuit brought down a few drivers and cars from the US. One of my lifelong ambitions, at that time, was to become a pilot. I knew there was a requirement to have a college degree to become an Air Force pilot and that was a long way away. One of the American drivers heard of my desire and told me the Air Force needed pilots as the Korean War was going strong. He said that if I joined the Air Force and applied for aviation cadets and could pass the equivalency tests I would qualify for pilot training.
I heard him, loud and clear, and I informed my mother and Pepe of my intentions, kissed Connie goodbye, and in the latter part of April, 1952 I boarded the bus for Brownsville, Texas.
This pretty well wraps up my first twenty years. My Military Career follows and it is quite lengthy. You can access it by clicking here or through the menu above.