July 30th, 2010

Joe Everett Moore 's Story

Birth Year: 1937




Table of Contents






     



    JOE MOORE


    I was born in Florence Arkansas in 1937. My grandmother delivered me and named me. One time when she was about 80 something years old and living in a nursing home.


    And she told me, she said, "You belong to me!"


    I said, "Why do you say that grandma?"


    She replied, "they never did pay me for delivering you!"


    Now my daddy was share cropping for some man named Henry Lyle and I think I made the winter on black eyed peas. That's what they had to eat. I think there was probably a rabbit or two thrown in there with it. He told me he cleared $11 on the cotton crop that year.


    My grandma, we called her Jo. I always thought her name was probably Josephine and shortened to Jo. She had several sisters and only one brother.


    There's people all over that country, over there, that are kin to me. One bunch of them - their name was Biggs - there was about 12-13 kids in that family and the majority of them were female.  There was 2-3 of em that close enough to my age to catch my interest.


    I used to go to a little old church out there in Mcgehee and they went to it was the Nazarene. I mainly went out there to see them girls. Being cousins to the good looking girls' sucks. I think 3rd cousins is about where they ought to shut it off these were about 5th. Somehow or the other they wound up with a grandmother that was my grandmothers sister. I think that the kinship has thinned out to the point down in there that they don't have to worry about it now. But I believe third cousins are where it shuts off at. After that there ain't no legalitys or nothing agianst ya. You could probably have gotten a lot of trouble if somebody had pushed it.


    Carnell was a half brother of mine and he had a different father than I did. So the first cousin bit would stand out pretty good. Peggy was only kin to me through Carnell. His and Basils last name was Johnson. I think Basil managed to stay around until he graduated. I think Carnell had to leave there younger than that.


    I remember my daddy whipping Carnell when he was just a boy and Carnell was walking off he turned and said "that's the last time you will ever whip me." And it was. I think he went down to Alexandria and stayed with Aunt Molly awhile. When he turned 17 years old he went into the navy.


    He came home on leave and was at a party one night and they used to have these parties at the house with the kids that they worked with and they had some kind of music so they could dance. Him and the old man had some words out there and he knocked the old man off the porch. When he gave him a thrashing that time he just wasn't quite old enough or big enough to handle it. One thing 3 months in boot camp will do, is build you up some. The time period was right and he growed some. the difference in myself and Carnell is he liked to fight.  I have never been in one where I didn't get hurt, whether I won or lost.


    Basil said there was a fella around there named Charles Terry he was bigger than Carnell. Those two every time they met they would fight and it was pretty much of an equal contest. What Carnell lacked in size he made up for with ability. Basil said Neither one of them could wind up with a win. Finally they got to where they just avoided each other. There anit no profit in fighting someone you can't whip.


    I think my old man was kind of overbearing on my half brother. But I don't think he had any trouble after that from Carnell. The older Carnell got the better he got.


    I couldn't handle him because he learned some other stuff besides boxing. He learned something about Judo. I couldn't get a hold of him so I didn't stand much of a chance about whooping him. With his fists he has me out classed he.


    We were out in front of the house talking one time and he was telling me how things would have been much different out there on the ship if I was on the same ship he was on.


    I says "You  wouldn't have accomplished anything with me."


    "Why you say that?" he said.


    I said, "Hell, me and Nance would have double teamed your ass."


    Old Nance was my buddy and he stood for me with that  old Guamenian over there.


    We were in town when that joker tryed to pick a fight out of me one night. Sat down at the table with us and Nettles sat on the other side of me and Nettles said, "I am with you."


    Directly the old Guamenian said "You guys with him?"


    "Yes we are." and he got up and went to bed. We didn't need Nettles. But that's a guarantee just about.


    I knew with Nance at my side there was no way he was going to whip both of us.


    I learned that with dogs We had a little old bobtailed dog, and a little female we took her and him with us. We would knock a coon out of a tree and the dog would jump up and catch it. The coon couldn't do anything with scrappy because that little female was back there chewing on its back end. Between the two of them they would stretch that joker out there.


    That bastard (Guarmanian) was bigger than everybody else. He was not only bigger than 6 feet, he was massive in the shoulders and arms. This was around the middle of the year around September on that wreck over there sometime the middle of September and I wasn't really physically able to fight nobody. If that guy would have hit me he probably would have killed me. I was cut from around here to around there. It takes several years for it to get all back to the way it was supposed to be.


    When that guy came back to the ship drunk they would go and get the master of arms. They would have to go and wake the master of arms up. They would tell him what was going on and they would go and pick him up these two fellas. They would go and find Tom and put him in the brig down there.  And lock him up until he sobbered up. I think we were courting those Guamenians taken in them in our services and stuff. We needed that little old island for our military bases and stuff over there.


    That little old Lake Island where I almost got left, I wouldn't have minded spending a few days there.  It was a beautiful island with its sandy beaches where I was at. it wasn't about 100-200 yards wide.


    I always liked pretty shells. One of them I found was't a shell. In there with the rest of them when I got them on the plane, I looked around and he was walking off on two legs. If I could have spent a half a day there I could have filled up a half a bushel basket. That's on my trip when i went back over there. That ship had made a tour over there and stayed over there a while and then came back. Home base for it was what they called Port Shy up there above San Francisco. When I came back over here, that is the first place I went when I got liberty. I went over and visited Old Nance and Nettels and a bunch of others over there.


    They put the ship in dry docks and cleaned all the stuff that collects on the side of it and paint it, fix anything that is wrong with it. Ammunition Ship. I am glad it worked out the way it did I got to stay on Guam for a couple of months or so. It was kind of like a tropical paradise! It is an island that is about 90 miles long and about 17 miles wide.


    I learned to appreciate the Marine Corps a lot better than I did before. All you gotta do is, do like they do. I think that deal with the push-ups was out of boredom.  It's just what I needed.


    I had another exersize program that i worked on. You work your way up and down it, isometric exercises. You reach for the ceiling and you keep on reaching streching and reaching. I think I built my body up some without putting a lot of mass on. 165-175 is about all I ever weighed up to about 30 years old or around there. I quit smoking up there in Memphis for a couple of years and I went up to about 190 pounds. I aint never been far below that.


    I got problems now just doin what I need to do around here. I don't know who made that lawn mower out yonder. But I'd like to kick him right in the butt. I'll show that thing to ya. I was all set to take the motor off there and I got me a frame a nice looking frame. It was just like the motor that was on it. The one I was going to take off has got a plate underneath it. You can't take it off cause you can't get that stuff through that plate. I will get that cutting torch out when i feel like it, but I'll get it off there. It  might not be any good when I get through with it. But the parts and stuff on it I can use. Then i will have me a mower.


    Leroy had a girl -  Other than that he just about adopted that girl. I think she inherited some stuff he left her. One child for two families.  You would see Leroy's wife out there on a tractor bushhoggin or something more than you would Leroy.


    She also cooked in this little old School. It was a pretty nice little ol community and a lot of people moved in there to share crop it is what they called it. The Wallace family usually had 5 or 6 families over there share cropin.


    That old man owned all that land. But he never did marry. He was a judge out there in town. He was a friend of Mommas. About everybody in that country down there was friends of moma. People liked my daddy because he could run most of the kind of equipment. He had a natural tact for that. Bulldozer, Posting compactor doin most any job? He could work on it, loggin, caterpillars, log loaders.


    He always managed to have a job. It might be to steady but he worked. Daddy but he (2:10)


    He had a couple of faults most people didn't like- He liked to get out there in the Honky Tonks and drink beer and mess around. Every time the law enforcement saw him out there they would throw him in jail. It cost $17 dollars to get him out. He told me one time he was going to wind up in jail. Old Butch went out there and told some of those floosies that haunted them beer joints that he wanted them to leave his daddy alone. I imagine his daddy was as big into that as they were. When you get to drinking everybody is beautiful, ever notice that?


    I made a remark about a woman I seen up there in a tavern in Chicago. A bunch of guys from down were I worked. I was down there with them.


    One of them said "fella, You don't want nothing to do with her."


    I says, "why you say that?"


    He says, "you see that little ol fella over yonder sitting in that chair?"


    "Ya"


    I forget what they said. But he had an enormous amount of money. Now that girl in the back found it out that and she hooked up with him and when he ran out of money she was through with him then. They was warning me in case I had any ideas. I a setting like that or a place like that where I worked them old boys will help you stay out of trouble if you listen to em. They know the area at a place where I would eat there was a Greek that owned it and it was less than a hundred yards from my hotel see and I eat every meal I eat at that restaurant. His name was Chris


    I was over in Japan in a bar and there was another military person and the old papason took him out back where there was a guy waiting.


    He done something and I didn't see exactly how he done that. He might have used some judo or something like that. Now he flipped that fella and kicked him and it looked like one motion to me. Now that boy had that place across his head laid open up here. He wasn't a little bitty fella he was about 6 foot. That old Jap got out of that ally and motioned for me. Come On!


    I don't know what they might have done to that boy if I hadn't of stepped up. They might have messed him up pretty bad. That old "papason" was trying to tell me not your business, not your business. So I said Ya. I'm in the navy and that boy was in uniform. I said I suspect this is my business. I think your required to look after fellow sailers. 


    That's what the marines liked about me. They got down there and woke me up one night in the middle of the night. I think one thing they wanted to see what I would do. And the other, they ain't wantin to tussle with that injun and mess their uniforms, they've got to keep those things spotless. So they woke me up and said "I want you to come up here. We want you to put an indian in that padded cell there."


    I said "Ok sir."


    I got up and pulled my pants on. I didn't bother to put no shoes on. I walked up there and that indian was about the same size as me, and he looked at me and grinned turned around and walked in the cell.  If one of them marines had laid his hand on him they'd of had a fight.


    There was two mess ups in there that was marines came in drunk one night and tried to tear the flag pole down. They were in the brigg waiting on some general court martials. One of them had a skinny head. They put him in that padded cell and he could turn his head and put his head out through that little old hole and was looking around you know.


    He let one of those guards see his head out there. So the guard came over and with his gloves or something and he smacked that guy back and forth up around the head until he got his head back in there.


    Anyway I was up there waiting for the marines to let me out of the gate to do something, and he told me to freeze and don't make a sound. And he left, and he came back up there and he had that guy by the ear and he walked up there where I was at still holdin him.


    He says "I caught this guy with two cigarettes. Do you know anything about that?"


    I say's "No Sir, I don't know anything about that."


    So he took him over there and put him in that padded cell. They was my cigarettes! I just didn't bring them in there. I was out there cleaning the back yard inside the fence on day and a guy came by that I knew. 


    I said " Hey" and I motioned him over here.


    And I spoke to him.


    I said "Can you walk down to the exchange down there and get me a pack of cigarettes?"


    He said "Ya, I will get you a pack of cigarettes."


    We had been over there boozing in the Honky Tonks together. He went down there and got me a pack of cigarettes to give to me and I thanked him and he went off. There ain't no marines around nowhere that I can see. There was this Indian inside the building cleaning up there in the back his name was James. He was a blackfoot Indian.


    I said "Hey James can you get a pack of cigarettes in there?" I Knew they were going to shake me down when I went back in there.


    He said "Ya, I can get them in there."


    I pitched them over the fence to him and forgot about them. They had James in there for stealin a car on that 90 mile island and about 17 wide. He was out there enjoying driving that car around. But he got them cigarettes in there some way or another. I never did ask him how. We'd get in there at night and smoke them under a blanket. We would pull that cigarette out and smoke it.  Use our shoes as an ashtray and put the butts in our shoes. We would keep them there till the next day and when we were out somewhere on working detail we would pull them out and dump them.


    I thought about that a lot.


    Now them marines knew we were smoking they could smell it. One of them I don't know which one of them put a package of Chesterfields about 10 feet off the road. We past it every time we went to eat. I don't know the number of times that white hats went sailing out across there to cover them cigarettes.


    I even tried it. You know people will do a lot of things for amusement. Create an impossible task there and watch us try to complete it. I bet if one of had got our hat over them cigarettes and got them they would not have shook us down or anything. Even though they seen us do it.


    That one would probably knew that I bought them cigarettes too. Them boys that were waiting on the general court martial. They were always messing up. They caused that gaurd one night to cancel our last cigarette. We got 4 cigarettes a day. And I enjoyed that cigarette quite a bit. And one of those characters got a slip over there and you can write them gaurds up. You get the other prisoners involved in it and get them to sign it and turn it in. And it has to go through the chanels. There was a big guard that came around to me.


    He said, "I see you signed this list against so and so."


    I said, "Yes sir he canceled our cigarettes. The last one we were supposed to get last night."


    He said "well do me a favor, take your name off the list if you will. If you have a grudge against this fella He said, Come over to his baracks were he sleeps and stays after you get out and he will have to come out of there to meet you.


    I said, 'that would be fine sir."


    He said, "If I turn this in that may stop him from getting a promotion to another pay grade."


    He didn't want him to loose his promotion. They have to work for that stuff. They are spit and polish all the way. Actually if those jokers had behaved themselves then he wouldn't have knocked us out of our cigarette.


    Two Marine gaurds took me out the night I got out of the brig to get me drunk.


    One of them was from Arkansas and the other one was named Zimmerman. Zimmerman saw me throw a machette at a guy out there one day. Zimmerman was carrying a sawed off shotgun. He hollered hit the ground. Everybody did!


    He came over there and asked me, he said, "Moore, Why did you throw a machette at Calahan?"


    I said, "Calahan picked a thorn bush up and pitched it in my direction and said "catch Moore."


    And I said "I got a hand full of thorns." and I showed it to him.


    That's all that was ever said. Then he got us all back up and we got back to work.


    Calahan was in the brig for stabbing another guy with a pair of sissors. He was headed for Levenworth and a dishonerable discharge. He thought that shit was funny. For me to reach up and get a hand full of thorns.


    I wasn't trying to miss that sucker!


    He had to move pretty good to get out of the way of that machette. But I don't think that went against me.


    I was defending myself. One of the guys that took me out and I got drunk with was Zimmerman. The guy out on the working party that day. The other one was a small fella from Arkansas. I was suposed to take them out. I went up to get paid and they wouldn't pay me.


    I told the marines about that and they said that don't make any difference we'll buy the beer.