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The 40’s
Huntington, West Virginia
My parents met in the early forties and married in 1941. We
lived in Kentucky at the time and I was born several years later, in Winchester, Kentucky. In 1947 or 1948 we moved to Huntington, West Virginia.
We moved into a very small house
on 28th Street. Father, Mother, my four sisters, along with myself all cramped into two bedrooms. It was an old house with
a metal roof and small rooms consisting of a living room, a “middle room” and kitchen, all downstairs. Upstairs
were twobedrooms, about the size of a postage stamp, and a bathroom with a commode and bathtub. In
the small backyard was
a fruit cellar and storage house built into the side of a sloping hill. The storage house was converted into a laboratory
with electricity and gas where my Father made false teeth for the neighbors and others who would come looking for cheap dentures.
As I grew up over the years, there were many strange toothless characters who would trek up that hill and
sit in the makeshift
lab while Father painstakingly made their teeth from scratch. It was a time of survival and many, if not most of the clients
had no money. More often as not, Father would trade false teeth for food, or clothing, or something he deemed as equal value.
I remember our first lawnmower was payment for a partial plate, and a gas heater for the lab was another.
Canned goods
of pickles and beets, corn and green beans, pecks of tomatoes, sacks of potatoes and watermelons were a favorite trade commodity
as well.
When ever there was actual cash changing hands,
we would all celebrate. Cash meant a new comic book, fresh meat for dinner or kool-aid enough to last the whole summer.
In 1948 my brother Tony was born. Another mouth to feed, another bed to find.
Father was
unable to care for us all from the meager existence that making false teeth afforded him. He was being looked at by the local
police because he did not have a license to practice dentistry and customers were becoming scarce. It was then that he decided
to take his businesson the road.
Living in West Virginia were countless poor and deprived
scattered through out the mountains and gulleys. People who lived without gas or elelctricy. People who had no indoor plumbing
or means of support except growing their own crops for survival. Some made gin and whiskey in hidden stills and sold their
wares to locals who would drive to neighboring towns and states distributing the “white lightening” moonshine.
Father decided that he would travel those back roads and cow paths making teeth for those needy ones and trade
as before, for food, livestock, etc.
He would load up his dilapidated old LaSalle touring car with supplies and head for
the hills, staying for weeks at a time. He used to pick out a road that led through the mountains and knocked on every door
along the way, advertising himself as a Doctor of Dentistry. He took along samples that he would show perspective customers,
of which were abundant. Those pearly white porcelain teeth shining atop pink acrylic gums convinced many to buy, or trade.
Some
wanted teeth but needed some of their natural teeth removed. Since there was no dentist for miles, Father decided
he would pull teeth as well as make them.
So began the
odyssey of starting at the bottom of the mountain, pulling teeth all the way to the top of the mountain and making false teeth
for the same ones as he came down from the mountain. Father always had aneye for business.
The
Ghost of Sugar Creek
On one such journey in the fall of 1954 I took the mountain trip with him. We labored up
a steep and uninhabited mountain for many hours that first day. Twice we had to stop to put water into the radiator of Dad’s
old LaSalle as we slowly climbed towards the top of the mountain.
Just before evening, we came to an old log house
with it’s timbers weathered gray and white smoke escaping into the cool air. As we stopped in a clearing in front of
the house, steam spewed once more from the radiator and the car motor suddenly died. “ Damn it!” I heard Dad say.
I raised up
from the back seat where I had been napping to see an old house with a patchwork roof of tar and tin, a large
porch where there was a porch swing, an old washing machine, piles of wood and two skinny dogs sitting still as statues. Before
Dad could get out of the car, a tall bearded man came
out of the house, an old straw hat on his head and a cigarette hanging
from the corner of his mouth. He stood on the porch for a second when another person with long thick blonde hair
and a shotgun joined him. Neither of them spoke.
Father got out of the car. “ Hey there....how you doing?”
Father took several steps toward the couple on the porch. “ I’m Doc Pouch and that’s my son Johnny. Can
I speak with you a minute?” The man in the straw hat motioned for the yellow haired one to lower the shotgun.
“
"Shore you kin, come on up.” The man smiled and I noticed most of his front teeth were missing. Father
turned to me and winked. “ Come on son, let’s stretch a minute” he said as he inched his way through the
chickens in the clearing, all the way to the porch.
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