ALLEN'S CHILDHOOD & MEMORIES
Looking Back...
It's a very painful thing to get old and be able to look back and see all the mistakes you've made in your life and have a clear picture of how you would change things if only you had the power to go back and do everything over. I'm guessing many people have that wish for a do over. But I don't think most people have the ability to recall things from their past like I do when they reach my age. I suspect my ability to recall a memory at will from as far back as two years of age may have something to do with my having spent most of my life in a prison cell with only my memories to keep me company. It gave me the ability to recall just about every event that ever happened in my whole life with a clear visual picture of each memory. So i have decided to put all those
memories in writing.
My name is Allen Ward Cox, I was born September 20th 1962 in a small town in central Kentucky. My parents were Ray Allen Cox and Barbara Jean Sallee. Who happened to be closely related which I suspect has a good deal to do with how I turned out. Three of my grandparents were cousins from the Garrett side of the family. Add that with all the head traumas I received in my early years and you have a reason to explain many of the mistakes I have made throughout my life. My worst brain injury came from being violently shaken by my 11 year old aunt when I was only 4 years old which left me unable to stand up or walk for several days afterwards. I was grandpa Sallee's first grandchild. I had 2 aunts who were twins and were only about 7 years old when I was born. Aunt Josephine was extremely jealous of all the attention given to me by Grandpa Sallee which resulted in her shaking me like a rag doll when I was only 4 years old. If aunt Carlean had not stepped in and stopped her that may have been the end for me. I can still remember aunt Carlean telling aunt Josephine if she ever did that again she would tell on her and I think she did tell my Grandmother about it because aunt Josephine was never allowed to baby sit me after that.
FAMILY
My parents married way too young, they were only 17 years old. My Dad was a spoiled rich kid who never grew up, it was always about him. Instead of taking care of his kids and family he would spend all his money on hot rod cars and other things for him self while his kids wore rags and went hungry. He even put my mother to work at Fruit of the Loom underwear factory and would take her pay check and spend it on new tires or other items for his many hot rod cars instead of things the family needed.
My dad was the youngest of three sons born late after his brothers. His parents were well off compared to most of the people in their area. Grandma Hazel Cox ran a country store during the depression area for 40 years and Grandpa Herschel Cox got it all started from the moonshine trade going back to the 1930's. He invested wisely, buying up small farms just a few acres here and a few there, he was a jack of all trades and well liked by everyone who knew him. He used to haul spring water from rock bluff spring in a 1000 gallon tank on the back of a 2 ton truck and got paid $10 for each tank. He used to take me with him often when I was a small boy and those memories are some of my favorites.
There were small minnows that had colorful red spotted bodies that lived in the cold spring water and I would catch a few and put them in a old rusty tin can to bring home to put in Granny Cox's fish tank but they would always die before I got them home. I didn't know it then but they could only live in cold spring water.
My grandpa Cox had a sister named Elizabeth, she was married to a man named Emory Hunt and they ran a small country store next to Eco valley, I suspect that Emory did the selling of Grandpa's moonshine. One of my earliest memories is of Grandpa Herschel taking me to see his sister Elizabeth when she was sick and putting me on the counter top next to the cash register and playing a song on the jukebox and having me dance for her to cheer her up :-) I was only 2 or 3 year's old but I can still remember it clearly. I was too young to understand that she was on her death bed. And she did die shortly after I danced for her.
The years that followed I often went with Grandpa Cox on his water hauls or working on his small farms. Another favorite was getting up early to check the jugs in one of the small lakes for cat fish. He had this small boat that we would use to go out to check the jugs and as he was about to reach for one it went all the way under and stayed under for about 3 or 4 minutes, when it came up Grandpa pulled it in but there was nothing on the hook which was bent straight. It had to have been a big one to hold that gallon jug under that long and bend that big hook straight like that. Every time we went early to check those jugs it was my job to walk around the water's edge and collect all the duck eggs and feed the ducks then we would go to the barn and Grandpa would feed the hogs and I would feed the chickens and collect the eggs. After that, Grandpa had this old John deer tractor that he used to power a small saw mill and most days he would cut tobacco sticks from scrap lumber to sell for 5 cents each. What was left over I would load on the truck to be used for fire wood later on. One day I was messing around in this junk pile inside a old bus and stepped on a board that had a big wasp nest under it and 5 or 6 of them went up my pants leg and I'm dancing around like a crazy person then jumped into the water barrel next to the chicken coop. When I looked up Grandpa was laughing his head off. I was terrified of all bees after that. The times spent with Grandpa Cox were the best memories that I have. Only a few years later he would die of lung cancer which left me devastated and Granny Cox would end up having to sell everything they owned to pay for Grandpa's hospital bills . A lifetime of work gone.
MY MOM & DAD
I remember coming home from school and my Dad telling me Grandpa Cox was dead, it was the only time I can remember Dad ever giving me a hug. My Dad and Mom split up a few years prior to Grandpa's death. Dad got remarried and built a new home and pretty much turned his back on my 2 sisters and brother and me. My Mom took her anger out on me and would beat me for the slightest reason. One day I had enough and took the broom stick she was beating me with away from her and ran about 2 miles down a gravel road to Granny Cox's house and hid under a old bridge when Mom came looking for me. After that I would bounce between living with Granny Cox and Dad and his new wife.
My Dad would get behind in his child support and Mom would try to have him arrested and many times we would be visiting with Granny Cox in the evening and Dad would run out in a cornfield and hide from the cops when they came to arrest him. I thought this was the coolest thing. And not long after that I would start to get into trouble and would copy what I saw my Dad do. I even had a rope fixed up behind my Dad's house where I could climb down the 20 foot drop to the creek bed below and disappear in the big corn field across the creek. I even had an escape hatch cut in the basement wall at the back of Dad's house just in case they had the basement door covered.
I was around 14 or 15 and they would chase me every time I went to the country store that was 4 miles from where we lived. It was like a game, I would have just enough time to buy a Mountain Dew, and here came the cop who lived up the street from the store, so I would take off for one of the corn fields behind the store and disappear. This went on until I was about to turn 18 and Dad got it worked out for me to turn myself in and my record would be cleared. After I first started running from the cops I would spend most nights in the trunk of a big green Buick Electra 225 so I could get a good night's sleep and not worry about the cops sneaking up on me asleep in Dad's basement. This is a prime example of a Dad teaching his son to run from the law instead of facing his mistakes. And if my Dad had not turned his back on me when I was a young man and stopped me from being allowed to hang out with some of the bad people that got me into trouble and had taught me right from wrong like a Dad should, maybe I would not have ended up spending most of my life in prison and ending up on Death Row.
I have so many memories of Dad cheating me out of money. The first was when I was about 5 years old. My sister Beth and me had these huge clay piggy banks that were about 2 foot tall, mine was a horse and Beth's was a pig. Grandpa Cox would always give us a hand full of coins to put in these piggy banks every time we saw him and they were full. And my Dad busted them open and spent all our piggy bank money on some part he needed to fix up for his hot rod car that he took to the drag strip every Sunday.
Next was a 6 month old black and tan coon dog named Pluto that Grandpa Sallee gave me when I was 6 years old. Dad traded it off for a old logging truck and told me someone had stolen him . When I was about 16, Dad and his friend Harold Pittman gave me a job were I used a mule to pull logs out of the woods. The deal was I would get $15 for each truck load of logs they hauled out to the saw mill. I had pulled out about 10 truck loads and piled them all in a big pile next to the barn and then told they didn't need me any more and never got paid for those 10 loads of logs.
Dad was always having me help on welding jobs and would pay me hardly nothing. One time I made these mufflers for a 2 ton truck and did all the work and we took them to a auto parts store and sold all 5 for $300. Dad gave me $20. Another time I was in jail and ask Dad to sell some pot that I had grown that year. He said he only got $900 for it but I never got a penny of it. When I first came to Death Row I had this wealthy pen pal who gave me $5000 to buy 4 Belgian work horses for the purpose of breeding them to a jack ass, that's how you get a mule and the Amish use them to farm with and will pay a good price for when they're only 6 month's old. Dad told me he bought them and they were being kept on one of his friends farm. After 2 years go by I find out he lied about buying the horses and it took another year to get $1500 out of the $5000. We went years after that without speaking.
Now he has gotten old and has poor health. And he can't even talk about me without breaking down in tears over how he treated me throughout my lifetime. No point in rehashing all the beatings he gave me when I was young. You get the picture, I had a Dad who set a bad example for me when I was young which started me down the wrong road.
Now to my Mom, she was a religious fanatic, always making us go with her to one Pentecostal church after the next. One of her favorites was on Stills Knob and one night a guy who just robbed a bank came inside the church with a gun drawn and pointing at the preacher. He had so much money stuffed in his pockets it was falling out onto the floor. He made the preacher give him his car keys and he left only to be caught at a road block just down the road.
I hated being forced to go to those church meetings, especially the tent revivals that were scattered all over Kentucky and Indiana. My Dad blamed all the church meetings for him leaving Mom. One day I came home to find him beating Mom and came close to shooting him with a shot gun that day. And like I said before Mom used to beat me for no reason. Granny said it was because I looked like my Dad. Later Mom bought a new home 20 miles away and took my 2 sisters and brother to live there with her. I stayed out in the country with Granny Cox mostly but sometimes with Dad and his new wife. After paying off Grandpa's medical bills, Granny would sell off everything she had left to pay off Dad's child support in order to keep him out of jail.
HUNTING
My Grandpa Cox was a tall slim man who I resemble. Before he got sick he taught me a lot about how to live off the land; fishing, hunting and where to find the wild morale mushrooms that us hillbillies called a dry land fish. When battered and fried they did have a fish meat texture but they didn't taste like fish at all and they only came up in early spring for a short period of time and only grew where there were certain types of trees. There was the fish called a sucker that spawned in early spring for a short period sort of like the salmon do in the northwest part of the U.S. We would go out at night with lights and a type of spear called a gig and stand on the gravel bar and wait for them to come lay their eggs and spear them with the gig. They always came in large schools and you could gig a coffee sack full in no time. Next came the frog gigging where you walked around the small lakes and ponds with a light and the same gig/spear used on the suckers and we spear the frogs sitting along the bank's edge. We also went to those same ponds and set jug line's to catch the big snapping turtles. All you do is tie a short line to a gallon jug, put a big hook on the line and bait it with a small fish and throw it in the pond and come back the next day. We normally set 3 or 4 jugs in each pond and there were many small pond's scattered all around where we lived. Grandpa Cox taught me how to find ginseng and what it looked like. This was a plant that grew in certain spots throughout the forest all around where we lived and you would dig up the root when you found a plant. There was lots of money to be made if you weren't afraid of all the big rattlesnakes that lived in the places where the ginseng grew.
Then there were all the many types of hunting. But my Grandpa Sallee taught me most about hunting.
He was a short fat man but very strong. He had rabbit dogs, coon dogs and a squirrel dog. Hunting deer was my passion but for some reason it took me many years before I ever killed my first deer even though they were everywhere in the hills where I grew up. As a young boy I spent many hours trying to kill one, I think I was 16 before I finely got lucky.
After my first one I became a pro and killed many. Deer meat was one of my favorites, I always kept the big deep freezer full of deer meat. But it had to be cleaned and cooked a certain way before it was good to eat. I even made money selling deer meat mostly to family members. My aunt Anna lived close to Grandpa Sallee's house she had these 2 mixed breed dogs that would fight with Grandpa Sallee's rabbit dogs every time he went rabbit hunting. So Grandpa Sallee paid me $20 to kill them and hang them in a tree close to the gravel road and he wanted their throats cut and for her to see them when she came home. My aunt Anna never forgave me for that. Some local boys put a bit of LSD in Grandpa Sallee's beer and he went off the deep end and was placed in a mental hospital shortly after I killed those dogs for him. When he came home he was never the same and they kept him heavily drugged and was laying on the couch most of the time. He died a few years later while I was serving my first 20 year sentence. He had his land deed fixed so only a close blood relative could ever buy/own his land. But when I was in prison Granny Sallee and her 5 daughters signed a waiver agreeing to sell it to a outsider without telling me for fear I would stop them and I would have. They split the money between all 5 of Grandpa Sallee's daughters.
My Grandpa Cox was a tall slim man who I resemble. Before he got sick he taught me a lot about how to live off the land; fishing, hunting and where to find the wild morale mushrooms that us hillbillies called a dry land fish. When battered and fried they did have a fish meat texture but they didn't taste like fish at all and they only came up in early spring for a short period of time and only grew where there were certain types of trees. There was the fish called a sucker that spawned in early spring for a short period sort of like the salmon do in the northwest part of the U.S. We would go out at night with lights and a type of spear called a gig and stand on the gravel bar and wait for them to come lay their eggs and spear them with the gig. They always came in large schools and you could gig a coffee sack full in no time. Next came the frog gigging where you walked around the small lakes and ponds with a light and the same gig/spear used on the suckers and we spear the frogs sitting along the bank's edge. We also went to those same ponds and set jug line's to catch the big snapping turtles. All you do is tie a short line to a gallon jug, put a big hook on the line and bait it with a small fish and throw it in the pond and come back the next day. We normally set 3 or 4 jugs in each pond and there were many small pond's scattered all around where we lived. Grandpa Cox taught me how to find ginseng and what it looked like. This was a plant that grew in certain spots throughout the forest all around where we lived and you would dig up the root when you found a plant. There was lots of money to be made if you weren't afraid of all the big rattlesnakes that lived in the places where the ginseng grew.
Then there were all the many types of hunting. But my Grandpa Sallee taught me most about hunting.
He was a short fat man but very strong. He had rabbit dogs, coon dogs and a squirrel dog. Hunting deer was my passion but for some reason it took me many years before I ever killed my first deer even though they were everywhere in the hills where I grew up. As a young boy I spent many hours trying to kill one, I think I was 16 before I finely got lucky.
After my first one I became a pro and killed many. Deer meat was one of my favorites, I always kept the big deep freezer full of deer meat. But it had to be cleaned and cooked a certain way before it was good to eat. I even made money selling deer meat mostly to family members. My aunt Anna lived close to Grandpa Sallee's house she had these 2 mixed breed dogs that would fight with Grandpa Sallee's rabbit dogs every time he went rabbit hunting. So Grandpa Sallee paid me $20 to kill them and hang them in a tree close to the gravel road and he wanted their throats cut and for her to see them when she came home. My aunt Anna never forgave me for that. Some local boys put a bit of LSD in Grandpa Sallee's beer and he went off the deep end and was placed in a mental hospital shortly after I killed those dogs for him. When he came home he was never the same and they kept him heavily drugged and was laying on the couch most of the time. He died a few years later while I was serving my first 20 year sentence. He had his land deed fixed so only a close blood relative could ever buy/own his land. But when I was in prison Granny Sallee and her 5 daughters signed a waiver agreeing to sell it to a outsider without telling me for fear I would stop them and I would have. They split the money between all 5 of Grandpa Sallee's daughters.
GRANNY COX
Granny sold the store that she ran for over 40 years and the little white house next to it to my cousin Granville Gribbons. There were 4 homes and the store and several smaller buildings scattered around the location of the crossroads which was called Tallow Creek and a church a quarter mile up the road. This crossroad was at a good location, lots of traffic meaning lots of customers for the store. From Tallow Creek the closest store was 5 miles away. It was called Mansville and another 15 miles further on was our main city and county seat called Campbellsville. I had to ride the school bus for 20 mile's each way everyday. Other than that I enjoyed living with Granny Cox. I didn't realize what a extra financial burden it was on Granny to take care of me. I remember when she tried to talk my Mom into letting her adopt me so she could get a social security check for me through Grandpa's benefits. But my Mom was not going to do that and I still think it was a hateful thing to do to Granny after all the money Granny had given her to pay Dad's child support.
The hippies bought 2 small plots of land from Grandpa before he died and built homes on them. They are the ones who taught us locals all about growing pot plants. They moved here from the big cities just so they could grow their pot plants way back in those hills, hoping to be out of sight. For the first few years it worked but soon the cops caught on and started busting their crops.
Some of us local boys would hear about a crop being found and we would ride our bikes there the next day and look around to see if we could find a few plants they missed and a few times we hit the jack pot and found a lot. One time I ended up with 6 large garbage bags full of buds, I converted a old chicken coop into a party shack, had carpet on the floor, one of those disco strobe lights hooked up and a good stereo system. I had them city boys coming from 20 miles away lining up every night buying $5 bags. Then one night a cop was making his rounds and from the crossroads he could see that blinking strobe light through a crack in the wall and decided to take a closer look. He smelled pot smoke and ended up knocking on the door to the chicken coop and when I opened the door a cloud of pot smoke came rolling out and hit him right in the face. He took me to the police station along with all my pot and drug paraphernalia. I had to let Granny Cox come get me because I was under age. The Judge dismissed the charges due to the cop not having a search warrant. I asked the judge does that mean I get all my pot back and he laughed at me. Well I found lots more pot plants they missed and found me a better party shack a few weeks later.
Granny decided to move to a new apartment building they built for old people in town and I ended up moving in with uncle Joe's widow after uncle Joe died. She lived in a nice big home at the crossroads just across the road from where Granny Cox's house was. She was my first sexual encounter, I was about 14 and she was in her late 40's and ugly as a mud fence.
Around the same time Grandpa Cox died I started having nightmares and walking in my sleep. Once in the dead of winter I went outside around 2 in the morning in nothing but my under shorts and no shoes and walked about a quarter mile down a gravel road to my aunt Virginia's house and started knocking on her door and as soon as she turned on the porch light I woke up and took off running back home. After that they put a special lock on the basement door so I couldn't open it. One time me and my cousin Anthony stayed all night with Granny Cox and Granny said I was up walking around the living room and talking in a strange language when Anthony asked Granny what I was saying she told him it was the Devil in me talking. After that my cousin Anthony never stayed all night with Granny and me again. I continued to walk and talk in my sleep for years after that. Even today I'm certain I still do it because several times when I wake up in the morning I find things that have been moved around in my cell during the night that I know were not there when I went to sleep.
Granny sold the store that she ran for over 40 years and the little white house next to it to my cousin Granville Gribbons. There were 4 homes and the store and several smaller buildings scattered around the location of the crossroads which was called Tallow Creek and a church a quarter mile up the road. This crossroad was at a good location, lots of traffic meaning lots of customers for the store. From Tallow Creek the closest store was 5 miles away. It was called Mansville and another 15 miles further on was our main city and county seat called Campbellsville. I had to ride the school bus for 20 mile's each way everyday. Other than that I enjoyed living with Granny Cox. I didn't realize what a extra financial burden it was on Granny to take care of me. I remember when she tried to talk my Mom into letting her adopt me so she could get a social security check for me through Grandpa's benefits. But my Mom was not going to do that and I still think it was a hateful thing to do to Granny after all the money Granny had given her to pay Dad's child support.
The hippies bought 2 small plots of land from Grandpa before he died and built homes on them. They are the ones who taught us locals all about growing pot plants. They moved here from the big cities just so they could grow their pot plants way back in those hills, hoping to be out of sight. For the first few years it worked but soon the cops caught on and started busting their crops.
Some of us local boys would hear about a crop being found and we would ride our bikes there the next day and look around to see if we could find a few plants they missed and a few times we hit the jack pot and found a lot. One time I ended up with 6 large garbage bags full of buds, I converted a old chicken coop into a party shack, had carpet on the floor, one of those disco strobe lights hooked up and a good stereo system. I had them city boys coming from 20 miles away lining up every night buying $5 bags. Then one night a cop was making his rounds and from the crossroads he could see that blinking strobe light through a crack in the wall and decided to take a closer look. He smelled pot smoke and ended up knocking on the door to the chicken coop and when I opened the door a cloud of pot smoke came rolling out and hit him right in the face. He took me to the police station along with all my pot and drug paraphernalia. I had to let Granny Cox come get me because I was under age. The Judge dismissed the charges due to the cop not having a search warrant. I asked the judge does that mean I get all my pot back and he laughed at me. Well I found lots more pot plants they missed and found me a better party shack a few weeks later.
Granny decided to move to a new apartment building they built for old people in town and I ended up moving in with uncle Joe's widow after uncle Joe died. She lived in a nice big home at the crossroads just across the road from where Granny Cox's house was. She was my first sexual encounter, I was about 14 and she was in her late 40's and ugly as a mud fence.
Around the same time Grandpa Cox died I started having nightmares and walking in my sleep. Once in the dead of winter I went outside around 2 in the morning in nothing but my under shorts and no shoes and walked about a quarter mile down a gravel road to my aunt Virginia's house and started knocking on her door and as soon as she turned on the porch light I woke up and took off running back home. After that they put a special lock on the basement door so I couldn't open it. One time me and my cousin Anthony stayed all night with Granny Cox and Granny said I was up walking around the living room and talking in a strange language when Anthony asked Granny what I was saying she told him it was the Devil in me talking. After that my cousin Anthony never stayed all night with Granny and me again. I continued to walk and talk in my sleep for years after that. Even today I'm certain I still do it because several times when I wake up in the morning I find things that have been moved around in my cell during the night that I know were not there when I went to sleep.
IN AND OUT OF JAIL
Back to when I moved in with uncle Joe's widow, that's when I started hanging out with the wrong people doing home invasions and armed robberies. I was put in jail and escaped, which would be my first of 2 times of escaping from that same jail. I ended up going to prison in Kentucky for 20 years which would be my first of many prison terms. I did 5 years on that first 20 and got paroled only to be sent back a second time a year later. I would do another year, get released on parole once again.
While I had been away my friends had all gotten wealthy growing pot. They built a night club called Whispering Pines to launder their money. It was a popular spot. One Saturday night I was there and one of my cousins cut a guy with a broken beer bottle and I had just walked to the parking lot to tell another cousin to get out of there because the cops were on there way. So when I tried to go back inside, the new bouncer told me I couldn't come back in and hit me in the ear. I hit him on the nose and knocked him on his butt. It was like a automatic reflex. Then another bouncer puts me in a bear hug and the one I hit was getting up saying "hold him and let me hit him" but he could not hold me still. By this time the owner's wife who saw what happened had gone to get Jackie the part owner and he got there just as this new bouncer was pulling a small 25 caliber gun from his pocket to try and shoot me. Jackie grabbed his hand and took the gun away from him. I was told to leave which I did because I knew the cops would be there any second. The next day Jackie asked me if I wanted the new bouncer's job who had been fired. Of course I took the job and for the next 9 months I worked there as a bouncer and had the best times of my life, until I was put back in jail and escaped again. Which would place me on my path to Death Row
EARLY MEMORIES
My very first memory is when I was less than 2 years old and Granny Cox baby sitting me while she worked in her country store and me petting her watch dog that she would leave in the store at night to keep the thieves away. His name was Butch and he was a bull mastiff mix. When I was 2 years old my sister Elizabeth Ann was born and I was waiting for Mom and Dad to bring her home from the hospital. Most of the family is there waiting. When they got home everyone was getting a chance to hold the new baby and I was sitting on the couch waiting my turn and getting mad because they wouldn't let me.
Back to when I moved in with uncle Joe's widow, that's when I started hanging out with the wrong people doing home invasions and armed robberies. I was put in jail and escaped, which would be my first of 2 times of escaping from that same jail. I ended up going to prison in Kentucky for 20 years which would be my first of many prison terms. I did 5 years on that first 20 and got paroled only to be sent back a second time a year later. I would do another year, get released on parole once again.
While I had been away my friends had all gotten wealthy growing pot. They built a night club called Whispering Pines to launder their money. It was a popular spot. One Saturday night I was there and one of my cousins cut a guy with a broken beer bottle and I had just walked to the parking lot to tell another cousin to get out of there because the cops were on there way. So when I tried to go back inside, the new bouncer told me I couldn't come back in and hit me in the ear. I hit him on the nose and knocked him on his butt. It was like a automatic reflex. Then another bouncer puts me in a bear hug and the one I hit was getting up saying "hold him and let me hit him" but he could not hold me still. By this time the owner's wife who saw what happened had gone to get Jackie the part owner and he got there just as this new bouncer was pulling a small 25 caliber gun from his pocket to try and shoot me. Jackie grabbed his hand and took the gun away from him. I was told to leave which I did because I knew the cops would be there any second. The next day Jackie asked me if I wanted the new bouncer's job who had been fired. Of course I took the job and for the next 9 months I worked there as a bouncer and had the best times of my life, until I was put back in jail and escaped again. Which would place me on my path to Death Row
EARLY MEMORIES
My very first memory is when I was less than 2 years old and Granny Cox baby sitting me while she worked in her country store and me petting her watch dog that she would leave in the store at night to keep the thieves away. His name was Butch and he was a bull mastiff mix. When I was 2 years old my sister Elizabeth Ann was born and I was waiting for Mom and Dad to bring her home from the hospital. Most of the family is there waiting. When they got home everyone was getting a chance to hold the new baby and I was sitting on the couch waiting my turn and getting mad because they wouldn't let me.
Another memory is me riding the school bus going to kindergarten when I was about 5 years old and sitting on the front seat with Tammy Joe Gaddis. She was also 5 and going to kindergarten. Some of the older boy's would ask me if Tammy Joe was my girlfriend and tell me to kiss her and I did, but she didn't like it very much and would push me away when they told me to do it again. We would become friends until she moved to Florida when we were in the 2nd grade. I was heart broken.
Another early memory is of Grandpa Cox putting me in this old 2 wheeled wagon that he pulled with his John Deer tractor. The same one he used to power that small saw mill that I mentioned earlier. He loaded a propane gas tank and a big bag of corn meal and some jugs on the wagon and off we went down an old dirt road that took us way back in the hills. The tree branches almost covered the road. He stopped next to this little tiny shack that was about the same size as a outhouse and took the propane tank inside and brought another empty one out and put it on the wagon. Then he unloaded the cornmeal and jugs. There was a small stream close by and Grandpa told me to go catch some crawdads so we could go fishing later. I think he just wanted to give me something to do while he did what he needed to do and sort of get me out of the way because I was curious to see what it was he was doing. I was to young to understand he was making moonshine and the propane tanks were used to cook off the moonshine and the little tiny shack was there to keep the rain and wind from putting out the fire that heated up the corn mash in the moonshine still. When he had everything running we left and came back the next day and did it all over again. Years later that same tiny shack that was about the size of an outhouse would show up in the back yard of Granny's house at the cross roads of Tallow Creek. Now it was converted into a chicken coop for Granny's chickens. I don't think many people knew about Grandpa Cox's moonshine business, Granny Cox never knew I think. She was a very religious person.
When I wrote about Grandpa taking me with him to his moonshine still when I was very young, riding in that 2 wheeled wagon pulled behind Grandpa Cox's old John Deer tractor, I should have described the unique sound those types of old John Deer's made. A deep chuga chuga chug like it was a live animal of some sort. I always loved the sound of a heavy rain storm on the tin roof of Grandpa's barn and many years after he died I would run to the barn when I saw a thunderstorm coming up the valley. There is no sound to compare it too, I would sit for hours listening to it, and after I started smoking pot, it was an even better experience.
Grandpa Cox was a jack of all trades and had built most of the houses, buildings, barns in our neck of the woods, including the Baptist Church that Granny Cox went to. Most of what he built is still standing today. When he died it was a hard blow to me and I can't help but feel my life would have been much different if Grandpa Cox had been there to teach me right from wrong when my Dad was off chasing women and playing with his hot rod cars at the drag strip.
I said Granny Cox never knew about Grandpa's Moonshine business, but looking back I can see that's not true. Because in a way she played a big part. That country store she ran for over 40 years was really a front to launder all the money Grandpa made from his moonshine. There is no way she could have had such a profitable income from such a small store, and especially with her giving everyone a line of credit like she did. I heard many stories about how during the depression, had it not been for Granny's having given credit to almost everyone around Tallow Creek, many would have starved. She kept a big black ledger with the names and amounts of everyone that owed her. Also of the many cash loans made to family and friends. I saw it many times. Once I totaled it all up, it was over $79,000.
Many of those names in that ledger dated back to the 1930's who were now wealthy land owners, none of them ever repaid the money they owed to Granny and Grandpa Cox.
TURNING POINT
Looking back I can clearly see the downhill turning point in my life. Which was at age 9 and being allowed to run around our little community with a older boy named Roger Spurling and get in all sorts of trouble. The very first was when we vandalized Vance Pennington's tractor that he kept in one of his barns and we were seen. From that point on, in the following years anything that happened in our community I would get the blame for it whether I did it or not. And other people would do crimes knowing I would be blamed.
Prime example: the cousin that bought Granny's store would lock up the store and go on a 2 or 3 day drinking spree. He would spend all his money and come back and break out a window in the store, making it look like someone had broken in and stolen all the money from the cash register, knowing I would be blamed for it. This happened a few times.
Another example: one of my neighbors had his pot plants stolen and blamed me. So when the Gas station at Mannsville was burglarized they had someone lie and say they saw me do it as payback for those stolen pot plants my neighbor blamed me for. They testified in court saying they saw me breaking into the gas station at Mannsville and I was found guilty and was sent away and placed in a foster home way back in the hills in Casey Co. with a family named Fowler who were only looking for someone to work on their farm while the state also sent them a nice check each month for taking me in. They treated me ok but I ended up running away back to Tallow Creek and starting my career of running from the cops and sleeping in the trunk of that Big Buick Electra 225.
So I said if I'm to get blamed I may as well do the crimes and I started to do them anytime I saw a opening for a good one. This was the point where I really was on my way down the wrong road that would one day land me on Florida's Death Row.
My point is after that first crime I would get blamed for a very long list of things I didn't do, ending with my wrongful conviction of raping that lady at the 7 - 11 and given a sentence of life without parole for another crime I did not do. This lead to my having to protect myself from another inmate who was trying to rob me at knife point and him getting killed instead of me. A clear case of justifiable homicide and would end in my going to Death Row. Only this time it would lead me down a road that would possibly end in me paying the ultimate price and it all was set in motion from being wrongly convicted for another crime that I did NOT do.
COON HUNTING
I have always been slow to catch on at times and being in a prison cell for so many years with nothing to do has given me time to use my ability to replay memories from the past sort of like watching a old movie over and over and seeing things I missed that went right over my head. I'm truly amazed at how gullible I was back then.
For example Harold Pittman and his son Junior and me went coon hunting one night in late summer. The dogs treed a coon in a big oak tree on the other side of a corn field. While we are making our way across it Junior disappeared for a while but showed up at the oak tree a few minutes later saying he had stopped to take a crap. After shooting the coon out of the tree and making it back to the truck and loading up the dogs we are driving down the gravel road heading home for the night and my cousin JR Cox has his car parked in the middle of the road, blocking our way which is a strange thing for him to be doing. We just sat there for a few minutes then Harold pulls the truck off the side of the road in the brush and goes around JR's car. We go home. They drop me and my coon dogs off and they head for their home, which is just up the road about a mile. After feeding my dogs I was sitting on the porch taking off my muddy boots before going inside and notice Harold's truck headed back up the road in the direction of where we had just came from, which was sort of odd.
The next day my cousin JR Cox and 2 of his friends stop at Dads wielding shop when I'm out front working on some type of wielding job. JR is pissed about something and tells me he should kick my ass, which might have been more than he could handle if he had tried, but he never says why he wants to kick my ass and they leave. At that time i had no idea what it was about. A few nights later I'm hunting up the hollow from where Grandpa Sallee lives and a big wind storm comes up and I can't hear the dogs when they tree a coon over the ridge line down in another hollow. So I leave the dogs, knowing they would be waiting at Grandpa Sallee's house the next morning.
So early the next morning as I'm driving down the gravel road heading to Grandpa's house to look for my dogs the one called ole Joe is limping down the road coming towards my truck. As I get close he just lays down in the middle of the road, I stop the truck and get out and see he has blood all over him and I can see he is hurt pretty bad. I gently pick him up in my arms and put him in the truck and take off for home in a hurry. I didn't even take time to look for my other dog named Slick. When i get home Dad tells me to take ole Joe to the veterinary hospital over in Marion Co. 20 mile's away and off I go and driving faster than the speed limits. Ole Joe was a really good coon dog and worth a lot of money, I'm really worried he might die. They do an X-ray and see he has some double ought buck shoot inside him and they need to do surgery on him. I leave him there and head back home.
Now I'm worried that whoever shot ole Joe may have shot my other dog Slick. When I get home I tell Dad everything the veterinary told me, so Dad , Harvey Garrett one of Dad's friends and me head back to Grandpa Sallee's house to see if we can find the other dog named Slick and also try to find out if anyone knows who shot ole Joe. Where we live it's a very serious offense to shoot anyone's coon dog. We find Slick hiding in the bushes close to where I found ole Joe laying in the middle of the road. He is not hurt but is scared to death. We take him home and ole Joe comes home from the veterinary hospital a few days later and heals up ok.
Not long after that someone tells my Dad it was my cousin JR Cox who shot ole Joe and that my cousin Steve gave him the shotgun and double ought buck shot used to shoot ole Joe. This is a serious thing in our part of the country and cousin Steve would move away due to everyone turning against him for that. But the reason why cousin JR Cox shot ole Joe never came to realization until many years later while sitting in this cell on Death Row, replaying those memories from way back then. It should have been obvious to me back then. Remember when Junior Pittman disappeared while we were crossing that big corn field and JR Cox trying to block the gravel road when we were heading home ? And the next morning JR threatening to beat my ass ? It was all because Junior Pittman found JR Cox's pot plants when we were crossing that big corn field and him and his Dad Harold going back after they took me home and stealing them, and me being unaware of any of it but getting the blame anyway and my coon dog ole Joe getting shot for it.
After replaying those old memories it all came to me how it all fit together and it makes me mad that they were too greedy to share those pot plants they found when we were crossing that big corn field and me being to slow to realize what it was all about back then. Another example of my getting blamed for something I didn't do, but don't get me wrong if they had told me they found those pot plants I would have had no problem going along with stealing JR Cox's plants and taking my share of them.
When all this became clear to me I wrote JR a letter and explained to him I had nothing to do with stealing his plants and how Harold Pittman and his son Junior were the ones who stole them and had kept me in the dark about the whole thing. It's doubtful he believed me and I can't say I would have either. So many similar events have been replayed from my memories and reasons why this or that happened have come to light that should have been obvious to me back then and I'm truly amazed at how gullible and slow I was to catch on. This has been a major flaw with me for many years now. I'm guessing it may come from my parents being closely related, plus all the many head injuries I have had when i was young. They did a MRI and PET scam of my brain and it showed I have abnormalities and the Doctor said I'm likely to have an early onset of Dementia or other problems.
Ole Joe and Slick the coon dogs that my cousins Steve and J. R. Cox shot over the stolen pot plants,
And the riding mules used to coon hunt at night, they were especially trained to jump over any barbed wire fence that you might want to cross, all you had to do was lay your coat on the top strand of any barbed wire fence and they would jump over with ease.
Where I'm from coon hunting has always been a big deal from way back and still is today and there's lot's of money to be made from the sales of a good dog and his or her offspring. They have hunts all over the US for prize money in the tens of thousands of dollars for 1st, 2nd, 3rd place winners and the offspring of those top prize winners go for hundreds of thousands if they turn out like their parents.
Back in the hills in my neck of the woods there's not really a lot to do as far as things like entertainment, so coon hunting fills up a great deal of boredom during a cold winter night when there isn't anything else to do for a ole country boy way back in the hills. It's a sort of social event where 3 or 4 guys get together and bring their young dogs along for some training. We swap stories and shot the shit with each other, mostly telling wild stories that may or may not be true and someone always brings a bottle of fire water and a joint or 2 for those who are into that sort of thing. I bring along a Colman lantern that we all huddle around to try and keep warm while the dogs are out chasing the coon up a tree.
Just recalling those memories I can smell that odd smell that comes from a hot Colman lantern burning at night. The story about ole Joe being shot because the Pittman's stole JR Cox's pot plants was a good one. Here are a few more: My Dad and me are hunting one summer night and we have climbed up the mountain and are walking along the ridge line, which if you know anything about the way the hills of central Kentucky are made up it's the easiest way to navigate the hilly landscape, making the walking easier and you're able to hear your dogs better if your up on the ridge line. So the dogs go straight to a treed barking, no barking showing they were on the coon's trail which normally comes before they tree the coon.
We get there in about 5 minutes and lucky for us they are treed up on the ridge line and not down in one of the valleys below which would make our walking to get to them much harder. When we get there and shine our lights up in the tree, we see they have 2 coons treed up the same tree and it's a big tree that can be easily climbed. Anytime you can climb a tree and shake the coon out while it's still alive it's a better training exercise for your young dogs. It's better than shooting them out of the tree, at least it is for the dogs, not so much for the coon, who gets torn apart alive.
So I easily climbed up the tree. It's at the very edge of the ridge line and a straight drop down the side of the mountain to the valley below. When i shake the branch there both sitting on I also give a wild yell to help make them jump. Dad thought they had attacked me when I made that loud yell! They fall straight down that steep drop off the side of the mountain which gives them a slight head start on the dogs who have to find their way down that steep drop.
So I sit in the top of that big tree that's high up on the ridge line and listen to our 4 coon dogs chase those coons across the valley below. They are hot on their trail and close to catching up to them. But those coons were smart or got lucky. They ran in a big hole down in that valley below which was probably their din/home. There is a special feeling you get while listening to the far off sound of a pack of hounds hot on the trail of a coon at night. For those of you who are not coon hunters when a coon runs into a hole in the ground he gets away, the dog's can't get him after he reaches his hole and will return back to looking for another coon somewhere else or at least the well trained ones will.
So while I had been sitting way up in the top of that big tree listening to the dogs chase those coons I rolled up a joint and smoked half of it before noticing there were some big grapes growing up in the top of that tree. They were not the same type of wild grapes you normally see which are tiny in size compared to these. I told Dad about them and he teased me saying I had smoked too much of that joint. So I tried to reach them and get a hand full to show him I wasn't seeing things. But gave up when I almost fell out of the tree. On my way down Dad said there was a huge grapevine just below where I was at. That would make climbing back down the tree much easier and sure enough it did, I just slid right down. Dad didn't believe how big I said those grapes were. I Wish I had been able to reach them and get a few to have shown him. And that's probably what those coons were doing up in the top of that big tree, eating those big grapes. So we called it a night and headed home.
Another good story was when I was out hunting alone, which I often did. Ole Joe and Slick chased a big male coon up a tree and the coon came climbing back down the tree and sat there about 10 feet up just taunting them. So I tied ole Joe back a little from the tree to give Slick a chance to kill him on his own if the the coon came all the way down the tree to the ground. This was a huge male coon and he must have thought he could whip Slick because he came right down that tree and attacked him. Slick was a young dog in training that's why I tied old Joe back like I did. Well they went round and round for about 10 minutes and Slick was not doing very good so I turned ole Joe lose to show him how it's supposed to be done. Ole Joe was a real pro when it came to killing coons. He knew his stuff. As always he walked over there grabbed that big male coon by the back bone and shook him like a rag doll and you could hear the sound of bones cracking. That was ole Joe's famous killing act that he used on all the coons he was trying to kill. He learned this technique at a young age, which didn't give the coon a chance to bite him and get injured. So he showed Slick how it was done, who got some really good training when that big male coon can right down that tree and attacked him. I had heard stories of coons doing that but I had never seen it happen before that night or again since then.
Back in the hills in my neck of the woods there's not really a lot to do as far as things like entertainment, so coon hunting fills up a great deal of boredom during a cold winter night when there isn't anything else to do for a ole country boy way back in the hills. It's a sort of social event where 3 or 4 guys get together and bring their young dogs along for some training. We swap stories and shot the shit with each other, mostly telling wild stories that may or may not be true and someone always brings a bottle of fire water and a joint or 2 for those who are into that sort of thing. I bring along a Colman lantern that we all huddle around to try and keep warm while the dogs are out chasing the coon up a tree.
Just recalling those memories I can smell that odd smell that comes from a hot Colman lantern burning at night. The story about ole Joe being shot because the Pittman's stole JR Cox's pot plants was a good one. Here are a few more: My Dad and me are hunting one summer night and we have climbed up the mountain and are walking along the ridge line, which if you know anything about the way the hills of central Kentucky are made up it's the easiest way to navigate the hilly landscape, making the walking easier and you're able to hear your dogs better if your up on the ridge line. So the dogs go straight to a treed barking, no barking showing they were on the coon's trail which normally comes before they tree the coon.
We get there in about 5 minutes and lucky for us they are treed up on the ridge line and not down in one of the valleys below which would make our walking to get to them much harder. When we get there and shine our lights up in the tree, we see they have 2 coons treed up the same tree and it's a big tree that can be easily climbed. Anytime you can climb a tree and shake the coon out while it's still alive it's a better training exercise for your young dogs. It's better than shooting them out of the tree, at least it is for the dogs, not so much for the coon, who gets torn apart alive.
So I easily climbed up the tree. It's at the very edge of the ridge line and a straight drop down the side of the mountain to the valley below. When i shake the branch there both sitting on I also give a wild yell to help make them jump. Dad thought they had attacked me when I made that loud yell! They fall straight down that steep drop off the side of the mountain which gives them a slight head start on the dogs who have to find their way down that steep drop.
So I sit in the top of that big tree that's high up on the ridge line and listen to our 4 coon dogs chase those coons across the valley below. They are hot on their trail and close to catching up to them. But those coons were smart or got lucky. They ran in a big hole down in that valley below which was probably their din/home. There is a special feeling you get while listening to the far off sound of a pack of hounds hot on the trail of a coon at night. For those of you who are not coon hunters when a coon runs into a hole in the ground he gets away, the dog's can't get him after he reaches his hole and will return back to looking for another coon somewhere else or at least the well trained ones will.
So while I had been sitting way up in the top of that big tree listening to the dogs chase those coons I rolled up a joint and smoked half of it before noticing there were some big grapes growing up in the top of that tree. They were not the same type of wild grapes you normally see which are tiny in size compared to these. I told Dad about them and he teased me saying I had smoked too much of that joint. So I tried to reach them and get a hand full to show him I wasn't seeing things. But gave up when I almost fell out of the tree. On my way down Dad said there was a huge grapevine just below where I was at. That would make climbing back down the tree much easier and sure enough it did, I just slid right down. Dad didn't believe how big I said those grapes were. I Wish I had been able to reach them and get a few to have shown him. And that's probably what those coons were doing up in the top of that big tree, eating those big grapes. So we called it a night and headed home.
Another good story was when I was out hunting alone, which I often did. Ole Joe and Slick chased a big male coon up a tree and the coon came climbing back down the tree and sat there about 10 feet up just taunting them. So I tied ole Joe back a little from the tree to give Slick a chance to kill him on his own if the the coon came all the way down the tree to the ground. This was a huge male coon and he must have thought he could whip Slick because he came right down that tree and attacked him. Slick was a young dog in training that's why I tied old Joe back like I did. Well they went round and round for about 10 minutes and Slick was not doing very good so I turned ole Joe lose to show him how it's supposed to be done. Ole Joe was a real pro when it came to killing coons. He knew his stuff. As always he walked over there grabbed that big male coon by the back bone and shook him like a rag doll and you could hear the sound of bones cracking. That was ole Joe's famous killing act that he used on all the coons he was trying to kill. He learned this technique at a young age, which didn't give the coon a chance to bite him and get injured. So he showed Slick how it was done, who got some really good training when that big male coon can right down that tree and attacked him. I had heard stories of coons doing that but I had never seen it happen before that night or again since then.
MY GRANDPARENTS SALLEE
My mother's parents were Lucian and Margarit Sallee. Grandpa Sallee was a short fat man with wide shoulders and strong as a bull. He always smelled of chewing tobacco, sweat and beer. He had dark black hair and always wore bib overalls as did most men his age who lived in our area. He was a jolly ole soul until someone riled him. He made his living from a small farm way back in the hills. He grew tobacco as his main cash crop and also a little corn to feed his mules and horses that he used to farm with.
In the late afternoon before it got dark he would call them in from their hillside pasture and put them in the barn overnight. I can still hear his special whistle he used to call them in and the sound of low thunder that came from their feet running down from the hills on their way to the barn. These were huge work animals, not your average sized riding animal. When they ran inside the barn and into their stalls i would close the stall door behind them and lock it. Each animal had his own stall and would always run into the same one. Each night I would climb up in the hay loft and toss each some hay and Grandpa would put a little corn in each of their bins and we would head to the house where Granny would have a big supper waiting.
Grandpa was a big eater and Granny was a great cook. There seemed to always be fried potatoes, pinto beans and fried corn bread the way you would fry a pancake and always some sort of meat, mostly deer or rabbit or squirrel plus fresh onions, pickles and tomatoes from their garden and normally there would be ice cream or some type of desert later. Their house was a wooden framed house that had been built over the frame of a very old log home. They had no running water but had a well inside the floor of the kitchen. The only house I ever knew to have that. Granny would remove a cover from the well and drop a bucket down into it on a rope and pull it up and sit it next to the sink and a dipper hung next to it that was used to get a drink from the bucket. This was some of the best drinking water around and was always cold.
For many years Granny cooked their meals on a wood stove. I remember it was a big deal when they got a electric stove to cook on. But they never gave up the wood stove used to heat that old house with. In fact they had 2, one in the living room and one in the kitchen. Granny Sallee seemed to always be in the kitchen cooking something. I can still hear her softly singing as she worked. She had a nice voice.
Her and Grandpa were cousins from the Garrett side of the family and both were cousins with Granny Cox through the Garrett side also. This was a common thing for lots of hillbillies in our part of the country. Grandpa Sallee had 5 girls no boys so when I came along and me being his very first grandchild I was his pride and joy. As I mentioned earlier my twin aunts Josephine and Carlene were only around 6 or 7 when I was born and Josephine was really jealous of all the attention Grandpa gave me. This resulted in her mistreating me from early on especially when she was left to babysit me, which was often.
When she was about 13 I remember her playing with my little winny and attempting to give me a blow job and aunt Carlene telling her I was too young. And later on I remember her sleeping in bed with me, which was normal, but she put me on top of her and had her legs spread part and was whispering to me to push harder and I remember she was pushing my butt down hard causing our bodies to grind together hard and it hurting my little winnie. She was whispering in my ear to keep quiet and that was because Grandpa and Granny and Carlene were just in the next room watching TV before bedtime. A few weeks after she gave me the blow job. I repeated what she taught me and had my younger cousin Relina give me one when we were in the outhouse and she tells my aunt Anna what she did to me and I catch a whipping. I was only around 5 and Relina 4. We didn't know what we were doing and I was only repeating what aunt Josephine showed me, who was terrified I was going to tell what she had been doing to me but I never told anyone about that until now. Shortly after that is when aunt Josephine shook me like a rag doll. Looking back I'm sure it gave me some type of brain injury because I couldn't walk or even stand on my feet for many days after she shook me. She told my Mom I had falling from the swing set and hurt myself that day but I'm sure aunt Carlene told Granny Sallee what really happened and that's why aunt Josephine lost her baby sitting job and was never allowed to baby sit me again.
THE CAVES
Back to more pleasant memories. After a huge breakfast of fried eggs, bacon, biscuits and gravy, fried potatoes and one of Granny Sallee's famous biscuit and black berry jams I would go to the barn with Grandpa Sallee to feed the animals. My job was to hook a long rope to their halter and lead them one at a time to the creek to be watered. Don't know how much you know about work horses and mules but after being in a little stall all night long their muscles are in knots so when you're leading them to the creek they always kick up their heels and buck a little to work out their kinks. This would sort of scare me a little because these are really big animals to a little boy. After that Grandpa would brush them down before putting their harness on them, then off to the fields we would go. Grandpa would do plowing or other field work and most times I would end up catching crawdads in the small creek.
There was this huge cave on the top of the mountain behind Grandpa's house and as a boy I spent many hours exploring it. Don't know how I kept from being bitten by one of the large rattlesnakes that lived around there but I never seen one. This cave was big enough you could fit half a normal sized house in the opening. There was a tiny trail that lead you down and around the side of the mountain and into the opening you had to be really careful not to slip or you would fall straight down a huge drop onto some very large rocks a long distance straight down. No doubt it would kill or hurt you very bad.
Following this trail into the cave opening there was one spot where you had to jump across a section of the trail that had broken away and you came around a sharp corner and there you found yourself in a huge cave opening. You could feel the temperature change as you walked inside. There was always a stream of ice cold water running from inside the cave. The Indians had used this cave for many years as a water source in times of drought and they had carved out a hole into the solid rock floor the size of a large kitchen bowl, water would run into it when the stream ran low from the drought and started to dry up. I never knew it to run completely dry and there was always enough to keep that stone bowl in the rock floor full enough to get a good cold drink.
I once tried to see how far back in the cave I could go. I had to lay down on my belly in that cold water and crawl. The opening was hardly wide enough to fit my body through so that's as far as I went. Others had told me after you went a little farther on it opened up into a big room. Like I already said I spent many days prowling around that cave when I was young and even as I got older it was probably my favorite spot and that cold spring water that ran from it was positively the best drinking water around. Anytime in the hot summer months you climbed the mountain behind Grandpa Sallee's house and followed the old Indian trail along the ridge that lead you to the cave you would be chased all the way by biting deer flies and hungry mosquitos until you reached the entrance where the temperature was changed from the cool air inside the cave and those hungry biting pest would not come inside the cave after you. It was like there was a protective shield that kept them back and you could actually stand just inside the entrance and look out and see them flying around at that very spot where the cold cave air meet the hot humid air on the outside of the cave.
I wish I had a big cold drink of that spring water that ran from it right now. Lots of times I would go to the cave in the summer months just to cool off. We didn't have any air-conditioning back then. When i was 16 Grandpa Sallee got indoor plumbing and no longer had to take a bath in the creek, which brings back more memories of him taking me with him in the summer months down to the creek to take a bath after a long day of hard work behind 2 mules and a plow. Grandpa swam kicking his legs like a big frog does and buck naked. Yea's after he died they named that long gravel road that came to a dead end at his house after him Lucian Sallee road And I heard they now have paved it.
The Ghost of old Lonnzie Gribbons
My Grandpa Sallee lived at the very end of a long gravel road. As a kid I spent a great deal of time roaming the forest and hills of his small Kentucky farm. I had 2 aunts who were only a few years older than I was and they did lots of babysitting when I was small. They told me scary ghost stories which resulted in me being scared to death of the darkness and I lived with that fear until I was 15 and overcame it.
About a half mile past Grandpa's farm there was a old wooden shack where once lived an old hermit named Lonnzie Gribbons. He lived all alone there until he died. My aunt Josephine and Carlene would take me there in early spring to pick the March lillies that grew in the yard of that spooky old shack. Even in daylight I was terrified of that place from the many scary stories they told me of how his headless dead body was found up on the ridge above that old shack so you see why I had a fear of the dark.
As a young man I did lots of coon hunting at night and would often go out all alone just me and my dogs. One very dark summer night I take the dogs up what we call the Lonnzie Gribbons hollow and walk right passed that spooky old shack from my childhood. I take the trail that leads up the side of the mountain to the ridge. It's pitch black, not a star can be seen anywhere and the grasshopper type bugs, that we hillbillies call a katydid, were singing their song and if you listen closely it sounds sort of like there all saying "Gettcha" over and over in one voice and it sounded like there were thousands out that night singing "Gettcha, Gettcha". All of a sudden my dogs come running down the ridge as fast as they could with their tails tucked between their legs like the hounds of hell were chasing them. They curl up at my feet making this low whimpering sound. Then all at once like someone hit the off switch all those thousands of katydids stop singing at the exact same second, and not only had the katydids stopped their song but all the tree frogs and other night creatures had also gone silent.
Goose bumps ran up my spine. All the hair on the back of my neck and my arms stood straight on ends. It was a strange quietness. The dogs were actually shivering. Then my light flickers a few times and goes out, it's pitch black and I can't see anything at all. I just stand there frozen for a few minutes, which at the time seemed it was forever. Then my light flickers again and comes back on. Well there is no way in hell that I'm going back the same way that I had came and have to walk past that spooky old shack from my childhood. So I take the long way back to Grandpa Sallee's house.
The next morning I tell him about the strange events from the night before. He lets out his big deep laugh and says it was only old Lonzzie Gribbons's ghost and that his headless body was found on that very same ridge many years back.
So for any of you who happen to be out in those woods on a dark summer night and all the katydids stop singing their song of "Gettcha Gettcha" like someone hit the off switch and goose bumps run up your spine, don't fear its only the Ghost of old Lonnzie Gribbons passing by. But if those katydids keep quite run for your life and don't look back or you may actually see the Ghost of old Lonnzie Gribbons!
THANKSGIVING
Thanksgiving at Grandpa Sallee's house where all my 4 aunts, their husbands and my many cousins would get together for a huge noon feast. There was enough food to feed a army. I can still smell the many mouth watering aromas and hear the sounds of laughter and many voices talking at the same time. It's pure chaos until Granny tells everyone to find a seat and it's silent as she says the prayer. Then all you hear is the clink of spoons and forks on plates.
All my aunts would bring a different dessert, but my favorite was the one Aunt Virginia May brought which was a strawberry cheesecake. One year Uncle Doyle gave me and cousin Thurman a chew of tobacco which made us too sick to enjoy the big meal and most of all that strawberry cheesecake that I had been looking forward to. This time of year is special. The tobacco crops and other cash crops have all been sold and bills paid off leaving everyone in a good mood.
Later Mom and Dad and my 3 younger siblings would go to Grandpa and Granny Cox's house for the supper meal and it's almost a repeat of the earlier meal only a different set of aunts and uncles and cousins. My Dad never had any sisters, only 2 older brothers who were grown by the time my Dad came along. As you can see I have a large family but you have no idea just how big. My Granny Cox had 8 brothers and sisters who each had lots of kids of their own. Grandpa Cox also had lots of brothers and sisters who each had lots of kids of their own. Then its a repeat with both my Mom's parents ending in me having enough cousins to build a huge army.
On most Sundays in the winter Grandpa Sallee would take me with him when he went rabbit hunting. He had 3 or 4 beagles AKA rabbit dogs. We would load them on Grandpa's old truck and take off for the corn fields on Walter Shofner's farm a few miles away. We would turn the dogs out and wait for them to chase the rabbits close enough so we could shoot them. Grandpa was a beer lover and Sundays were also his beer drinking day as well as rabbit hunting day, this way he got to do 2 things he loved at the same time. But not all Sundays did we go rabbit hunting, sometimes we would drive over the mountain to what the locals called Sallee Town. Its just a very small community of about 10 families most of which are Sallees and that's how the name Sallee Town came about and yes a few are related to Grandpa Sallee.
This place is very secluded and that's why we are headed there, to join a crap game that's held there every Sunday and many come from all around each week to that same secret spot. Someone, many years ago, started this little get together and had built this metal table up on this flat area right next to the old dirt road that came down the side of the mountain. There was a good deal of drinking and socializing that took place as the game went on and it was not unheard of for someone to get in a fight or cut with a knife or even shot. This place had a reputation as a bad place, Grandpa always parked his old truck close to the action so he could keep a eye on me. I was never allowed to get out of the truck, Grandpa went there mostly to drink and socialize but a few times he did roll the dice and came out with his pockets stuffed full of dollar bills. He made me promise not to tell ANYONE that we had been there.
I had heard stories that my best friend from childhood Kent Bland's dad was in a big fight over a card game and someone was about to shoot him, But Grandpa Sallee pulled his old single barreled shotgun out of his truck and told the guy if he did it he would die also and the guy backed away because he knew Grandpa meant what he said and that he would have shot him if he pulled the trigger on my friends dad.
Many years later, during the first escape from my hometown jail at age 18, Granny Sallee would have to wrestle that very same single barreled shotgun away from Grandpa Sallee to prevent him from shooting a state trooper who had driven up to Grandpa's house looking for me to take me back to jail and had shot at me or up in the air when I took off running for the hills. And I'm sure if Granny had not taken that shotgun away from him he would have shot that cop right there in his front yard. After hearing that story I deeply regretted having put him in that situation.
Around Thanksgiving deer season starts, which is a big event state wide. I had a deer stand up on that ridge behind Grandpa's house not far from the cave I spent many long cold hours sitting in that tree. It seemed there was always a cold wind blowing that high up I would be half frozen when I came down just before dark. As I'm at the point of the ridge where you can look directly down onto Grandpa's house below it was a welcome sight to see that porch light on and to smell the smoke of a hickory fire from his wood stove. As you looked down from high up on that ridge you could see a blanket of wood smoke floating over the valley down below. Just knowing there was a hot fire and some good food waiting down there was a good feeling.
Now I'll tell you about Grandpa's squirrel dog named Stupid. He was some sort of border collie mix, a reddish brown color with long fur that covered his eyes. He was an ugly dog, but a great squirrel dog. Me and him did lots of hunting. I remember when I first started hunting and Grandpa had to show me that when a dog treed a squirrel in a tree, the squirrel would hide behind the tree and would move as you did, always keeping the tree in between himself and you so the tree always blocked you from being able to see him. But there was a trick to get him to show himself. You would take a long branch and shake it on the other side of the tree. This would make the squirrel come around to your side and allow you a shot at him. But if you had another person with you you, only had to have the other guy walk around the back side of the tree and the squirrel would come around to your side giving you a clean shot at him.
I would later teach this trick to my younger brother David.
FOOD AT GRANNY SALLEE'S HOUSE
The cold winter months i would help Grandpa Sallee cut fire wood and load it on his old truck, then unload it at the wood pile next to the house. This was very hard work spent outside in the freezing cold, so coming inside and backing my butt up to the hot wood stove is a feeling like no other. Then after a good meal of Granny's great cooking and sitting in the old easy chair close to the warm crackling wood stove and hearing the voice of Walter Cronkite on TV in the back ground reporting the evening news. There is a feeling that comes over you just before you doze off that can't be described in words. If only they had a pill you could take to give you that same feeling it would be a # 1 best seller worth millions. After dozing for a little while Granny would bring a bowl of vanilla ice cream to top off a one of a kind feeling. Then off to the big feather bed up stairs and curling up under one of Granny's thick home made quilted blankets. There is nothing like sleeping in a soft warm feather bed on a cold night.
Just a few days before Christmas a few neighboring families would all help each other butcher their hogs for the year. This meant fresh hot cracklings which is a type of hillbilly pork skins. These are what's left over when you cook the hog fat in order to get lard to be used for cooking through out the following year. Each family would take home a metal 5 gallon container which would last a family for a whole year. Lard is what gives most food it's great taste, especially the fried cornbread. Now we know it's probably what lead to many dying at a early age from heart disease. Two reasons why the hogs were slaughtered just before Christmas: 1 - is its normally pretty cold out during that time, which prevents the meat from spoiling during the long process. 2 - Its so there will be fresh meat for the big Christmas feast. Nothing like fresh tenderloin fried with a flour batter.
In the fall, after all the leaves have fallen off, we would gather hickory nuts and black walnuts. There are several types of hickory trees but only a few produce a nut that has a lot of nut inside the shell. Many are not worth the time and effort it takes to crack them open. The best one is about the same size and shape of a pecan and has a thin shell that's easy to crack open and a great taste. There are not many trees that produce this type of nut but we hillbillies know exactly where all those trees are located through out our mountains. These locations are kept secret and their locations passed down from one generation to the next. If you have never had a brownie with this special type of hickory nut in it you have no idea what your missing. There is one type of hickory tree that produces a large nut as big as a black walnut called a bull nut but it takes a sledge hammer to crack it open and hardly has any nut inside the shell.
During late summer and early fall Granny Sallee would be busy canning all types of vegetables from her big garden or freezing them in bags to be stored in her huge deep freezer in preparation for winter. The smells would hit you in the face as soon as you walked in the door. I never liked that smell of cooked cabbage or beets but loved eating those canned pickled beets. I would often help her shuck the sweet corn and clean the strands of corn silk from each ear. Another smell I didn't like was when she cooked the okra. She made sour kraut in a big stone container before putting it in canning jars. She canned tomatoes, green beans, and sweet pickles plus salty pickles. She made also strawberry preserves and early each summer I helped pick blackberries to be made into blackberry jam to be eaten on Granny's famous biscuits later on.
There is a type of blackberry called a dewberry that grows on a brier vine down close to the ground. It only produces a few berries on each vine but they are much sweeter and juicier with a better flavor than the regular blackberry has. There was one thing I didn't like about staying with Grandpa and Granny Sallee and that was because they had a wasp infestation. If you remember my story of having stepped on that board with a wasp nest under it while playing in that old bus and 4 or 5 wasp going up my plants leg and then jumping in the water barrel next to the chicken coop at Grandpa Cox's barn? That incident left me traumatized and afraid of all bees after that so the wasp infestation at the Sallee house made me nervous during warm weather. As a small boy in the summer I would often sit on the front porch of the Sallee home and kill flies with a fly swatter. One day I noticed that a big black and white hornet would zoom in and catch a fly and take him away. He repeated this several times every few minutes I was amazed that the hornets were feeding on the flies and glad they were helping me kill all of them.
Grandpa's house was exactly 2 miles from the crossroads at Tallow Creek. 1 of those miles was the long winding gravel road that ended at Grandpa's front porch. There were 4 other homes on that same gravel road before you got to Grandpa's house and there was a small spring feed creek that had to be crossed before getting there. At times of heavy rain you could not get across and had to park your vehicle and walk across a hillbilly bridge, which was a tree that had been cut so when it fell across the creek you could carefully walk across the fallen tree to the other side.
Just above that hillbilly bridge was the swimming hole where me and Grandpa often bathed. And that was where I would lead the mules and horses from the barn for their morning drink. The barn sat up on a bank just above that swimming hole. The water in this creek was always ice cold due to the many springs that ran into it from the mountains above. Even in July and August it was still ice cold but always crystal clear and great drinking water due to the fact that no people lived further up to pollute it. I wish I had a big glass right now! And I can still hear the sound of those little frogs called a spring peeper that lived in that creek in early spring each year.
Thanksgiving at Grandpa Sallee's house where all my 4 aunts, their husbands and my many cousins would get together for a huge noon feast. There was enough food to feed a army. I can still smell the many mouth watering aromas and hear the sounds of laughter and many voices talking at the same time. It's pure chaos until Granny tells everyone to find a seat and it's silent as she says the prayer. Then all you hear is the clink of spoons and forks on plates.
All my aunts would bring a different dessert, but my favorite was the one Aunt Virginia May brought which was a strawberry cheesecake. One year Uncle Doyle gave me and cousin Thurman a chew of tobacco which made us too sick to enjoy the big meal and most of all that strawberry cheesecake that I had been looking forward to. This time of year is special. The tobacco crops and other cash crops have all been sold and bills paid off leaving everyone in a good mood.
Later Mom and Dad and my 3 younger siblings would go to Grandpa and Granny Cox's house for the supper meal and it's almost a repeat of the earlier meal only a different set of aunts and uncles and cousins. My Dad never had any sisters, only 2 older brothers who were grown by the time my Dad came along. As you can see I have a large family but you have no idea just how big. My Granny Cox had 8 brothers and sisters who each had lots of kids of their own. Grandpa Cox also had lots of brothers and sisters who each had lots of kids of their own. Then its a repeat with both my Mom's parents ending in me having enough cousins to build a huge army.
On most Sundays in the winter Grandpa Sallee would take me with him when he went rabbit hunting. He had 3 or 4 beagles AKA rabbit dogs. We would load them on Grandpa's old truck and take off for the corn fields on Walter Shofner's farm a few miles away. We would turn the dogs out and wait for them to chase the rabbits close enough so we could shoot them. Grandpa was a beer lover and Sundays were also his beer drinking day as well as rabbit hunting day, this way he got to do 2 things he loved at the same time. But not all Sundays did we go rabbit hunting, sometimes we would drive over the mountain to what the locals called Sallee Town. Its just a very small community of about 10 families most of which are Sallees and that's how the name Sallee Town came about and yes a few are related to Grandpa Sallee.
This place is very secluded and that's why we are headed there, to join a crap game that's held there every Sunday and many come from all around each week to that same secret spot. Someone, many years ago, started this little get together and had built this metal table up on this flat area right next to the old dirt road that came down the side of the mountain. There was a good deal of drinking and socializing that took place as the game went on and it was not unheard of for someone to get in a fight or cut with a knife or even shot. This place had a reputation as a bad place, Grandpa always parked his old truck close to the action so he could keep a eye on me. I was never allowed to get out of the truck, Grandpa went there mostly to drink and socialize but a few times he did roll the dice and came out with his pockets stuffed full of dollar bills. He made me promise not to tell ANYONE that we had been there.
I had heard stories that my best friend from childhood Kent Bland's dad was in a big fight over a card game and someone was about to shoot him, But Grandpa Sallee pulled his old single barreled shotgun out of his truck and told the guy if he did it he would die also and the guy backed away because he knew Grandpa meant what he said and that he would have shot him if he pulled the trigger on my friends dad.
Many years later, during the first escape from my hometown jail at age 18, Granny Sallee would have to wrestle that very same single barreled shotgun away from Grandpa Sallee to prevent him from shooting a state trooper who had driven up to Grandpa's house looking for me to take me back to jail and had shot at me or up in the air when I took off running for the hills. And I'm sure if Granny had not taken that shotgun away from him he would have shot that cop right there in his front yard. After hearing that story I deeply regretted having put him in that situation.
Around Thanksgiving deer season starts, which is a big event state wide. I had a deer stand up on that ridge behind Grandpa's house not far from the cave I spent many long cold hours sitting in that tree. It seemed there was always a cold wind blowing that high up I would be half frozen when I came down just before dark. As I'm at the point of the ridge where you can look directly down onto Grandpa's house below it was a welcome sight to see that porch light on and to smell the smoke of a hickory fire from his wood stove. As you looked down from high up on that ridge you could see a blanket of wood smoke floating over the valley down below. Just knowing there was a hot fire and some good food waiting down there was a good feeling.
Now I'll tell you about Grandpa's squirrel dog named Stupid. He was some sort of border collie mix, a reddish brown color with long fur that covered his eyes. He was an ugly dog, but a great squirrel dog. Me and him did lots of hunting. I remember when I first started hunting and Grandpa had to show me that when a dog treed a squirrel in a tree, the squirrel would hide behind the tree and would move as you did, always keeping the tree in between himself and you so the tree always blocked you from being able to see him. But there was a trick to get him to show himself. You would take a long branch and shake it on the other side of the tree. This would make the squirrel come around to your side and allow you a shot at him. But if you had another person with you you, only had to have the other guy walk around the back side of the tree and the squirrel would come around to your side giving you a clean shot at him.
I would later teach this trick to my younger brother David.
FOOD AT GRANNY SALLEE'S HOUSE
The cold winter months i would help Grandpa Sallee cut fire wood and load it on his old truck, then unload it at the wood pile next to the house. This was very hard work spent outside in the freezing cold, so coming inside and backing my butt up to the hot wood stove is a feeling like no other. Then after a good meal of Granny's great cooking and sitting in the old easy chair close to the warm crackling wood stove and hearing the voice of Walter Cronkite on TV in the back ground reporting the evening news. There is a feeling that comes over you just before you doze off that can't be described in words. If only they had a pill you could take to give you that same feeling it would be a # 1 best seller worth millions. After dozing for a little while Granny would bring a bowl of vanilla ice cream to top off a one of a kind feeling. Then off to the big feather bed up stairs and curling up under one of Granny's thick home made quilted blankets. There is nothing like sleeping in a soft warm feather bed on a cold night.
Just a few days before Christmas a few neighboring families would all help each other butcher their hogs for the year. This meant fresh hot cracklings which is a type of hillbilly pork skins. These are what's left over when you cook the hog fat in order to get lard to be used for cooking through out the following year. Each family would take home a metal 5 gallon container which would last a family for a whole year. Lard is what gives most food it's great taste, especially the fried cornbread. Now we know it's probably what lead to many dying at a early age from heart disease. Two reasons why the hogs were slaughtered just before Christmas: 1 - is its normally pretty cold out during that time, which prevents the meat from spoiling during the long process. 2 - Its so there will be fresh meat for the big Christmas feast. Nothing like fresh tenderloin fried with a flour batter.
In the fall, after all the leaves have fallen off, we would gather hickory nuts and black walnuts. There are several types of hickory trees but only a few produce a nut that has a lot of nut inside the shell. Many are not worth the time and effort it takes to crack them open. The best one is about the same size and shape of a pecan and has a thin shell that's easy to crack open and a great taste. There are not many trees that produce this type of nut but we hillbillies know exactly where all those trees are located through out our mountains. These locations are kept secret and their locations passed down from one generation to the next. If you have never had a brownie with this special type of hickory nut in it you have no idea what your missing. There is one type of hickory tree that produces a large nut as big as a black walnut called a bull nut but it takes a sledge hammer to crack it open and hardly has any nut inside the shell.
During late summer and early fall Granny Sallee would be busy canning all types of vegetables from her big garden or freezing them in bags to be stored in her huge deep freezer in preparation for winter. The smells would hit you in the face as soon as you walked in the door. I never liked that smell of cooked cabbage or beets but loved eating those canned pickled beets. I would often help her shuck the sweet corn and clean the strands of corn silk from each ear. Another smell I didn't like was when she cooked the okra. She made sour kraut in a big stone container before putting it in canning jars. She canned tomatoes, green beans, and sweet pickles plus salty pickles. She made also strawberry preserves and early each summer I helped pick blackberries to be made into blackberry jam to be eaten on Granny's famous biscuits later on.
There is a type of blackberry called a dewberry that grows on a brier vine down close to the ground. It only produces a few berries on each vine but they are much sweeter and juicier with a better flavor than the regular blackberry has. There was one thing I didn't like about staying with Grandpa and Granny Sallee and that was because they had a wasp infestation. If you remember my story of having stepped on that board with a wasp nest under it while playing in that old bus and 4 or 5 wasp going up my plants leg and then jumping in the water barrel next to the chicken coop at Grandpa Cox's barn? That incident left me traumatized and afraid of all bees after that so the wasp infestation at the Sallee house made me nervous during warm weather. As a small boy in the summer I would often sit on the front porch of the Sallee home and kill flies with a fly swatter. One day I noticed that a big black and white hornet would zoom in and catch a fly and take him away. He repeated this several times every few minutes I was amazed that the hornets were feeding on the flies and glad they were helping me kill all of them.
Grandpa's house was exactly 2 miles from the crossroads at Tallow Creek. 1 of those miles was the long winding gravel road that ended at Grandpa's front porch. There were 4 other homes on that same gravel road before you got to Grandpa's house and there was a small spring feed creek that had to be crossed before getting there. At times of heavy rain you could not get across and had to park your vehicle and walk across a hillbilly bridge, which was a tree that had been cut so when it fell across the creek you could carefully walk across the fallen tree to the other side.
Just above that hillbilly bridge was the swimming hole where me and Grandpa often bathed. And that was where I would lead the mules and horses from the barn for their morning drink. The barn sat up on a bank just above that swimming hole. The water in this creek was always ice cold due to the many springs that ran into it from the mountains above. Even in July and August it was still ice cold but always crystal clear and great drinking water due to the fact that no people lived further up to pollute it. I wish I had a big glass right now! And I can still hear the sound of those little frogs called a spring peeper that lived in that creek in early spring each year.
THE CROSSROADS AT TALLOW CREEK
The crossroads at Tallow Creek was the center of my world. From there you could go in 4 different directions and was also where Grandpa and Granny Cox's home was located. If you take the road heading south in 4 miles you hit Mannsville. If you take the road heading North in about 6 miles you hit Bradfordsville. If you take the road heading East you hit Merrimack in about 5 miles. If you take the road heading West it will also take you to Campbellsville in about 20 miles or also to a famous beer joint called Big John's in about 6 miles. They have a big sign out front claiming to have the coldest beer in Kentucky. There always seems to be a lot of car traffic passing through the Crossroads of Tallow Creek heading in one direction or the other.
If you took the road to the south it would take you to Mannsville 4 miles away. That's where the elementary school was located, grade 1 through 6. After 6th grade you had to ride the school bus another 15 miles to Campbellsville where grades 7 through 12 went.
So besides the elementary school at Mannsville you had a gas station/garage, a feed mill, a post office, a barber shop, a lumber supply/home building supplies office, 2 country stores and 2 churches.
Back at the crossroads at Tallow Creek if you take the road heading North in about 6 miles you will come to Bradfordsville which is a repeat of Mannsville except it has 2 rivers that come together and form 1 larger river and in summer months its a popular swimming hole. Bradfordsville is in a wet county where beer and whisky can be bought unlike the county where Tallow Creek , Mannsville, Merrimack, Campbellsville are located. No alcohol can legally be bought or sold in the county of those places. Bradfordsville also has a roller skating rink open only on weekends and 2 beer joints, Three Pines and Riverside tavern and grill. Years later when I'm serving time in Kentucky prison my childhood friends would all get rich growing pot and build a night club right next to Three Pines called Whispering Pines for the purpose of laundering all their money. So you can see why Bradfordsville is such a popular place. If you take that road heading east after 5 miles you will find yourself in Merrimack. It's a smaller community than Mannsville or Bradfordsville.
So, as you can see from the crossroads at Tallow Creek you could be at 4 different small communities in only a few minutes ether way. When I was about 10 or 11 I started going to the roller skating rink at Bradfordsville each weeken.d That's where I meet the boy who I would later start doing the armed robberies with at age 17 and 18 that would send me to prison in Kentucky for 20 years, Paul Donald Clarkston AKA Paul D. The skating rink was also where I became interested in girls and my first girl friend was this beautiful blonde named Cristy Gribbons who broke my heart a year later.
As I mentioned in a earlier part, my Dad was really into the hot rod cars and the quarter mile drag strip scene from an early age. He always had the fastest car around and was always working on them and doing a test run on the highway that would take you to Bradfordsville. He had a quarter mile marked off starting at Grandpa Cox's mail box at the crossroads and ending a quarter mile up the straight stretch towards the church. There would be guys coming from all around to race my Dad and many times for money or pink slips. Dad always won and I would stand in the middle of the road a few feet in front of their cars and drop the handkerchief giving them the green light to go. There would be so much smoke from their burning tires you could not see them after they passed by me.
Dad had so many 1st place trophies he won at the drag strip he had no place to keep all of them. I loved going to the drag strip on Sunday and stopping at the Brown Jersey hamburger place on the way home. Dad's childhood friend Big George Gribbons would always come with us. He just lived about a quarter mile from the crossroads at Tallow Creek. Looking back I can see this was an obsession with my Dad to always have the fastest car around, however his kids and wife did without in order for him to be able to afford to play with his toys.
When I was about 16 I would get a neighbor Carl Greybeal to take me to that famous beer joint called Big John's to buy a case of Budweiser beer. This was when the law was always chasing me and on our way back, a State topper passed by and recognized me in the truck with Carl. We see he has turned around and headed back after us and I'm telling Carl to pull over so I can get away in the cornfields. But Carl would not stop because he knows he will get a DUI ticket if he does so he floors it. Carl is a really good mechanic and has that old truck souped up. We take a side road down a gravel road and are running close to 100 miles per hour down that gravel road and leaving a big cloud of dust behind. The State Trooper has to slow down because he can't see where the road is and this gives us a big enough head start to out run him when we hit the black top road. I had no idea that old truck of Carl's could run that fast. When we hit the crossroads we don't even slow down at all for the stop sign and are airborne for a few seconds as we cross over the crossroads and down that small hill on the other side and practically jump the whole bridge on the road heading towards Merrimack. We hide the truck behind Walter Shofner's barn so the State Trooper can't see us. That is if he saw which way we went at the crossroads. We just hang out drinking beer and feeling the adrenaline high that comes from running from the law and getting away. We wait until it gets dark and only then do we head back to Tallow Creek. I have often replayed this memory in my mind over the years and recently wrote Dad a letter telling him this story and ask him to ask Carl if he still remembers this. He still lives just up the road from my Dad and the crossroads at Tallow Creek and I'm told still drinks a case of beer everyday.
In a secluded town in Marion Co. about 15 miles west from Tallow Creek is a town named Raywick. It had a reputation of being a dangerous place, especially for strangers. It was the hang out for all the underworld criminals from the 3 adjoining counties Taylor, Casey, and Marion. The unofficial title holder of the Godfather of Raywick was a man named Charlie Styles. He controlled it all and had his finger in every pie. For a price you could arrange to have anything done through him. 95 % of all stolen items were fenced through him. He had a crooked State Trooper on his payroll named Merrill Thornton that gave him tips on when his place was about to be raided as well as other services.
Then late one cold rainy November night around 2 AM in the morning they had a disagreement over a large amount of money from the illegal sale of a warehouse full of stolen tobacco. The crooked State Trooper shot Charlie Styles in the head and took all the money for himself. He made it seem it was a justifiable killing and got away with it.
A few years later on, after I had made some powerful enemies of a few of the wealthy citizens and been labeled public enemy # 1, they hire this very same crooked State Trooper to get rid of me. They set up a situation to make it look like I was attempting to escape from jail again to justify his shooting me down similar to how he gunned down Charlie Styles years before. But I smelled a trap and didn't fall for the set up. A local cop named Bobby Harding pulled me down from the county jail in Campbellsville and took me to the basement of the courthouse with the pretense of questioning me about some unsolved crimes. Bobby Harding was one of the cops that always tried to catch me ending in my making him look like a fool. What tipped me off that this was some sort of trap was the fact they didn't handcuff me. On the way back upstairs to the jail he opened the outer door that lead out onto the street and held it wide open, giving me a chance to make a run for it and I was tempted. But I only stood there and after a few minutes Bobby Harding saw I wasn't falling for the trap and spoke up saying: "come on in Merrill he is not going for it". And that crooked State Trooper, who had gunned down Charlie Styles years before, came walking from around behind that big door and was putting his gun back inside his holster. I saw it on their faces they had planned to kill me.
Many years later a old friend told me they had been paid to kill me by one of the wealthy citizens who blamed me for breaking into his home and stealing his gun collection. Which I admit I did do. And this was the very same State Trooper that took a shot at me at Grandpa Sallee's house and Granny had to wrestle that old single barreled shotgun away to prevent Grandpa Sallee from shooting him.
Over several years there were a few mysterious shootings in our neck of the woods that went unsolved. Also a few skeletal remains found in cornfields in the springtime when a farmer would be plowing his fields and bones would come to the surface. I always suspected that crooked State Trooper was behind those and especially the shooting of another State Trooper that was never solved. I guess I got lucky they sent me to prison otherwise he may have collected that price they put on me. Hey I may have spent most of my life in prison and now sit on Florida's Death Row but I'm still alive and kicking, unlike those 2 crooked cops who have been underground for many years now.
We had another crooked cop, that held the title constable, who's main job was catching anyone transporting alcohol from Marion Co. to all the surrounding dry counties where the sale of alcohol was against the law. He was a distant cousin named Kushshaw Cox. He would catch lots of people transporting truck loads of alcohol but would keep 75% of it for him self or sell it. Those loads of alcohol were headed to the many bootleggers in the surrounding dry counties and would be sold at a marked up price. All those bootleggers had to transport their alcohol through Tallow Creek, which was located in the corner of 3 counties. Tallow Creek was in Taylor Co, a dry county. Casey Co. was also a dry county only a few miles east and there was a old gravel back road you could use to sneak past the known road blocks at the county line. All the alcohol was bought in Marion Co. just a few miles north or west from Tallow Creek so you can see why Tallow Creek was such a popular spot. It truly was the center of most of the action in my little world. Too bad I didn't have enough sense to have never left there.
I have already given you the names of the closest communities and also the county seat of Taylor Co. Campbellsville. The county seat for Casey Co. was Liberty. The county seat for Marion Co. is a town called Lebanon and it being the only wet county around for miles, where it's legal to buy and sell alcohol and that made it a very popular town. They had a long list of nightclubs that were always jammed packed on Friday and Saturday nights. My favorite was one called O'le Hickey's. They would have ladies night on Thursday night were all the ladies got in for free and drinks for half price. Thursday was also payday for all those thousands of women who worked at Fruit of the loom underwear factory in Campbellsville, so you can see why it was my favorite nightclub: lot's of very drunk ladies looking for a man to take home. And there were 2 reasons why I would always catch a ride with a friend or hitchhike from the crossroads, #1 was to keep from going to jail if stopped at one of the many road blocks every weekend #2 I was not a bad looking man and always ended up going home for the night with one of those drunken ladies. In my short time being a free man I can recall the face of every woman that I ever had sex with and remember most of their names but not all. A total of 36 women. I often wonder if I have any kids somewhere out there?
GROWING POT
Those 4 roads that start at the Tallow Creek crossroads branch off into many gravel back roads and even a few old Indian trails that the cops and outsiders know nothing of. It would look like a giant spiderweb if it was seen from up high in a airplane. All those many back roads lead to the hundreds of small farms scattered throughout the hills and mountains with names like Chicken gizzard ridge, Bass ridge, Speck ridge, Feather ridge, Rakes hill, Stoner creek. Most are small dairy farms or grow tobacco and corn. Some grow a few pot plants to help with the bottom line of their other cash crops. Kentucky is known for its high quality pot which is caused from the high humidity that gets trapped in our mountains in the hot summer months.
In the early 70's when the hippies came to our mountains and bought small sections of land as far back in the mountains as they could get and built homes and moved their families in. Not many of the locals even knew what a pot plant looked like until they came and taught us. I was taught all about growing pot from a man named Randy Rabbath who was the father of 7 kids from age 20 to 4. Randy was a highly educated man who once taught at a college in Louisville before moving to our mountains. He taught me the most important thing about growing pot and that was how to tell a male plant from a female and to remove the male as soon as it starts to flower before it has the chance to pollinate the female plant which prevents the female plant from having any seeds when it buds out later and increases the THC levels making it worth much more money when selling it. In return for him showing me this important fact I would show him some of the many small clearings scattered through out our mountains that no one else knew of. He would later plant many many pot plants in those hidden clearings.
Everything went great for a few years until others learned about all the money there was to be made from growing pot plants and started planting it in with the corn crops in huge amounts and the cops catching on and using helicopters to spot those big cornfields mixed with pot plants and then destroying all of it. Those were some of the same fields where my friends and me would go and search the following day after the cops did their thing. And we always found a few plants the cops had missed and a few times whole cornfields of half pot half corn were missed. We would come away with large garbage bags full of buds for each of us. A few years later they said Randy died of a heart attack while visiting friends in Louisville. A closed casket was buried in a wooded section of that small plot of land he bought from my Grandpa Cox. Nobody saw his body and rumors spread that he was involved in some sort of drug deal that went bad when he was visiting friends in Louisville and was given a overdose of something to make it look like a heart attack. Another rumor was he faked his own death so he could collect a big life insurance policy. My theory is his wife had him killed making it look like a heart attack so she could collect that life insurance policy and remarry Randy's friend which she did only a few months after he was buried. She moved to the city of Campbellville, leaving that big house Randy built empty for over a year. It mysteriously burned to the ground late one night And his wife collected a big insurance policy on that also.
ALL THE HOMES I LIVED
I lived in several different houses scattered around Tallow Creek and a few other places. My first memory is living in a tiny shack so small you couldn't have parked a car inside it. No indoor plumbing or water or electricity. It was on that gravel road leading to Grandpa Sallee's house. Next we lived on the 2nd floor of Grandpa Cox's house at Tallow Creek. Then in a tiny trailer that was parked at the edge of Grandpa Cox's house. That's where we were living when my sister Elizabeth Ann was born. Next we moved to a nice house in Louisville when Dad got a good job at Ford motor Co. Then to a house 2 miles past Mannsville. Next Dad built a new house on the Lucian Sallee gravel road. That's where we were living when my sister Cathy Elaine was born. Next to a really nice house a half mile from the Cross Roads at Tallow Creek that my uncle Robert Cox built and sold to my Dad when he moved his family to Alaska. It was the nicest place we had ever lived at. Then Mom had a big fight with Dad and she secretly moved us late one night to Indianapolis Indiana and I hated living there and called Granny Cox and told her where we were and ask her to tell Dad to come get us, and he did. We left Mom there with aunt Anna Lee and Mom came back to Kentucky about a week later and got us back and moved us in a rundown house a quarter mile up the road from the cross roads. This is where Mom almost shoots Dad and misses his head by inches and Dad throws rocks and breaks out every glass window which scares the hell out of me and starts my sleepwalking. They got back together. We move into a log house about a half mile from the cross roads That was built by Herbert Gribbons. I loved that place because it had 5 ponds full of fish and a nice creek close by to swim in. This is the point where my brother David Samuel was born and the point where my Dad and Mom start to have trouble that leads to them splitting up.
Then late one cold rainy November night around 2 AM in the morning they had a disagreement over a large amount of money from the illegal sale of a warehouse full of stolen tobacco. The crooked State Trooper shot Charlie Styles in the head and took all the money for himself. He made it seem it was a justifiable killing and got away with it.
A few years later on, after I had made some powerful enemies of a few of the wealthy citizens and been labeled public enemy # 1, they hire this very same crooked State Trooper to get rid of me. They set up a situation to make it look like I was attempting to escape from jail again to justify his shooting me down similar to how he gunned down Charlie Styles years before. But I smelled a trap and didn't fall for the set up. A local cop named Bobby Harding pulled me down from the county jail in Campbellsville and took me to the basement of the courthouse with the pretense of questioning me about some unsolved crimes. Bobby Harding was one of the cops that always tried to catch me ending in my making him look like a fool. What tipped me off that this was some sort of trap was the fact they didn't handcuff me. On the way back upstairs to the jail he opened the outer door that lead out onto the street and held it wide open, giving me a chance to make a run for it and I was tempted. But I only stood there and after a few minutes Bobby Harding saw I wasn't falling for the trap and spoke up saying: "come on in Merrill he is not going for it". And that crooked State Trooper, who had gunned down Charlie Styles years before, came walking from around behind that big door and was putting his gun back inside his holster. I saw it on their faces they had planned to kill me.
Many years later a old friend told me they had been paid to kill me by one of the wealthy citizens who blamed me for breaking into his home and stealing his gun collection. Which I admit I did do. And this was the very same State Trooper that took a shot at me at Grandpa Sallee's house and Granny had to wrestle that old single barreled shotgun away to prevent Grandpa Sallee from shooting him.
Over several years there were a few mysterious shootings in our neck of the woods that went unsolved. Also a few skeletal remains found in cornfields in the springtime when a farmer would be plowing his fields and bones would come to the surface. I always suspected that crooked State Trooper was behind those and especially the shooting of another State Trooper that was never solved. I guess I got lucky they sent me to prison otherwise he may have collected that price they put on me. Hey I may have spent most of my life in prison and now sit on Florida's Death Row but I'm still alive and kicking, unlike those 2 crooked cops who have been underground for many years now.
We had another crooked cop, that held the title constable, who's main job was catching anyone transporting alcohol from Marion Co. to all the surrounding dry counties where the sale of alcohol was against the law. He was a distant cousin named Kushshaw Cox. He would catch lots of people transporting truck loads of alcohol but would keep 75% of it for him self or sell it. Those loads of alcohol were headed to the many bootleggers in the surrounding dry counties and would be sold at a marked up price. All those bootleggers had to transport their alcohol through Tallow Creek, which was located in the corner of 3 counties. Tallow Creek was in Taylor Co, a dry county. Casey Co. was also a dry county only a few miles east and there was a old gravel back road you could use to sneak past the known road blocks at the county line. All the alcohol was bought in Marion Co. just a few miles north or west from Tallow Creek so you can see why Tallow Creek was such a popular spot. It truly was the center of most of the action in my little world. Too bad I didn't have enough sense to have never left there.
I have already given you the names of the closest communities and also the county seat of Taylor Co. Campbellsville. The county seat for Casey Co. was Liberty. The county seat for Marion Co. is a town called Lebanon and it being the only wet county around for miles, where it's legal to buy and sell alcohol and that made it a very popular town. They had a long list of nightclubs that were always jammed packed on Friday and Saturday nights. My favorite was one called O'le Hickey's. They would have ladies night on Thursday night were all the ladies got in for free and drinks for half price. Thursday was also payday for all those thousands of women who worked at Fruit of the loom underwear factory in Campbellsville, so you can see why it was my favorite nightclub: lot's of very drunk ladies looking for a man to take home. And there were 2 reasons why I would always catch a ride with a friend or hitchhike from the crossroads, #1 was to keep from going to jail if stopped at one of the many road blocks every weekend #2 I was not a bad looking man and always ended up going home for the night with one of those drunken ladies. In my short time being a free man I can recall the face of every woman that I ever had sex with and remember most of their names but not all. A total of 36 women. I often wonder if I have any kids somewhere out there?
GROWING POT
Those 4 roads that start at the Tallow Creek crossroads branch off into many gravel back roads and even a few old Indian trails that the cops and outsiders know nothing of. It would look like a giant spiderweb if it was seen from up high in a airplane. All those many back roads lead to the hundreds of small farms scattered throughout the hills and mountains with names like Chicken gizzard ridge, Bass ridge, Speck ridge, Feather ridge, Rakes hill, Stoner creek. Most are small dairy farms or grow tobacco and corn. Some grow a few pot plants to help with the bottom line of their other cash crops. Kentucky is known for its high quality pot which is caused from the high humidity that gets trapped in our mountains in the hot summer months.
In the early 70's when the hippies came to our mountains and bought small sections of land as far back in the mountains as they could get and built homes and moved their families in. Not many of the locals even knew what a pot plant looked like until they came and taught us. I was taught all about growing pot from a man named Randy Rabbath who was the father of 7 kids from age 20 to 4. Randy was a highly educated man who once taught at a college in Louisville before moving to our mountains. He taught me the most important thing about growing pot and that was how to tell a male plant from a female and to remove the male as soon as it starts to flower before it has the chance to pollinate the female plant which prevents the female plant from having any seeds when it buds out later and increases the THC levels making it worth much more money when selling it. In return for him showing me this important fact I would show him some of the many small clearings scattered through out our mountains that no one else knew of. He would later plant many many pot plants in those hidden clearings.
Everything went great for a few years until others learned about all the money there was to be made from growing pot plants and started planting it in with the corn crops in huge amounts and the cops catching on and using helicopters to spot those big cornfields mixed with pot plants and then destroying all of it. Those were some of the same fields where my friends and me would go and search the following day after the cops did their thing. And we always found a few plants the cops had missed and a few times whole cornfields of half pot half corn were missed. We would come away with large garbage bags full of buds for each of us. A few years later they said Randy died of a heart attack while visiting friends in Louisville. A closed casket was buried in a wooded section of that small plot of land he bought from my Grandpa Cox. Nobody saw his body and rumors spread that he was involved in some sort of drug deal that went bad when he was visiting friends in Louisville and was given a overdose of something to make it look like a heart attack. Another rumor was he faked his own death so he could collect a big life insurance policy. My theory is his wife had him killed making it look like a heart attack so she could collect that life insurance policy and remarry Randy's friend which she did only a few months after he was buried. She moved to the city of Campbellville, leaving that big house Randy built empty for over a year. It mysteriously burned to the ground late one night And his wife collected a big insurance policy on that also.
ALL THE HOMES I LIVED
I lived in several different houses scattered around Tallow Creek and a few other places. My first memory is living in a tiny shack so small you couldn't have parked a car inside it. No indoor plumbing or water or electricity. It was on that gravel road leading to Grandpa Sallee's house. Next we lived on the 2nd floor of Grandpa Cox's house at Tallow Creek. Then in a tiny trailer that was parked at the edge of Grandpa Cox's house. That's where we were living when my sister Elizabeth Ann was born. Next we moved to a nice house in Louisville when Dad got a good job at Ford motor Co. Then to a house 2 miles past Mannsville. Next Dad built a new house on the Lucian Sallee gravel road. That's where we were living when my sister Cathy Elaine was born. Next to a really nice house a half mile from the Cross Roads at Tallow Creek that my uncle Robert Cox built and sold to my Dad when he moved his family to Alaska. It was the nicest place we had ever lived at. Then Mom had a big fight with Dad and she secretly moved us late one night to Indianapolis Indiana and I hated living there and called Granny Cox and told her where we were and ask her to tell Dad to come get us, and he did. We left Mom there with aunt Anna Lee and Mom came back to Kentucky about a week later and got us back and moved us in a rundown house a quarter mile up the road from the cross roads. This is where Mom almost shoots Dad and misses his head by inches and Dad throws rocks and breaks out every glass window which scares the hell out of me and starts my sleepwalking. They got back together. We move into a log house about a half mile from the cross roads That was built by Herbert Gribbons. I loved that place because it had 5 ponds full of fish and a nice creek close by to swim in. This is the point where my brother David Samuel was born and the point where my Dad and Mom start to have trouble that leads to them splitting up.
Next Mom moves us to the Government housing project in Campbellville. Then we move into a even worse house about a mile further up from the old log house. This is the point where Mom starts to beat me for no reason ending in my taking that broomstick away from her and running to Granny Cox's house. Dad remarries to Betty and builds another nice home and I bounce from Granny Cox to living with Dad off and on for a few years. Then Dad marries Dottie and I move in the basement of their house at Tallow Creek and is the point where I'm running from the law and sleeping in the trunk of that Big Green Buick Electra 225. Its a really nice car in mint condition a huge trunk with carpet and no dirt and very clean.
MY BIG GREEN BUICK
That big green Buick was a top of the line car when it was made in the early 70's. Power windows, power seat controls, soft plush fabric covered all the seats and most of the interior, carpet on the floors, and not a rip or stain anywhere and as clean as the day it came from the factory. It also had cruise control, and a good AM, FM radio that got great reception. It was a really big car with lots of room in front and back seats and that trunk was huge with carpet and not a dirty stain anywhere.
It had enough room so I could put my sleeping bag and pillow inside and stretch out all the way and have extra room left over. It had a small latch on the inside so I was able to lock myself inside and open it whenever I wanted to come out, giving me a safe place to sleep without fearing the cops would sneak up on me while I was sleeping. Dad had parked it because the motor kept overheating. It sat on a narrow strip of land facing the highway only a few feet away about a 100 yards down from the house where Dad and his new wife Dottie lived.
I lived in the basement of their house but Dottie hated me and tried her best to drive me away so the big green Buick would be my home at times for many years. When all the power windows were rolled up it was air tight, this made it great for smoking pot. I would get high in it while listening to the radio and sit in it for hours at a time. In late fall, early winter when it was chilly outside the sun shone through those big windows keeping it nice and warm on the inside and I would spend a great deal of time sitting in that car stoned to the bone. Because it was airtight, when smoking pot the smoke would build up inside allowing you to get a lung full with each breath while sitting in there with the windows and doors closed.
When my new step mom started hiding the food from me I would steal money from her purse when she went to visit her mom just down the road. Then I would hitch a ride to Mannsville and buy a big ham sandwich and chips. Then when she intentionally poured bleach on my best pair of jeans while she did the laundry I stole her whole purse including about $200 and the extra car keys to her brand new car. A few weeks later Dad came home from work early and busted me driving her car when I was on my way back from buying whisky at Three Pines and he beat me black and blue and took me to the police station in Campbellsville. They had already been trying to catch me for some minor offense so Dad had them arrest me charging me as a juvenile delinquent. They kept me in jail for 6 months until they found a foster family for me over in Casey Co.
The Fowler family, they treated me OK but only wanted the big check the state paid them for taking me in, plus they got free help on their farm. I ran away after only a few weeks and moved the big green Buick up to Grandpa Cox's barn located on Lucian Sallee gravel road, the same place where I jumped in the rain barrel after those wasp went up my pants leg. I parked it inside the barn so I could close the big barn doors and no one would know it was in there. So I lived in that car for about a year and nearly froze to death that winter. It was the loneliest time of my life that I can remember.
My cousin Gary Brown would come pick me up most days around noon and take me over to Bradfordsville and feed me. But he mainly did this because I had a big bag of some really high quality seedless purple haired buds that I had grown that I shared with him. Granny Cox would drive out from Campbellville to bring me a bag of food every few days and sometimes when I got hungry I would walk the short distance up the gravel road to the Sallee house and get a good meal. But living in that car parked inside Grandpa Cox's barn was a very lonely life and at one point it got so bad I decided to end my life and took a handful of sleeping pills stolen from uncle Albert Lee Garrett and topped it off with some rat poison wrapped up in paper to make it easy to swallow. Then went to sleep in the Green Buick hoping that would be the end but Granny Cox showed up about 24 hours later and found me walking naked down the highway towards Tallow Creek and I was taken to the Campbellsville hospital by ambulance.
They pumped my stomach and put me in a room and posted a cop sitting in a chair outside to prevent me from running away again. There was a group of young nurses who spent much time hanging out in my room trying to cheer me up. After a few days they told me I was being sent away to a reform school the next day and they offered to help me get away and to give me a ride back to my hills around Tallow Creek. They told me to open the window of my room at 11 PM and climb out and walk to the 7-11 store just down the street and wait for them to pick me up. They all got off work at 11:30 And sure enough a whole car load of young nurses pulled up after they got off work and gave me a ride to the Lucian Sallee gravel road 20 miles away. I gave them a bag full of that high quality seedless purple haired pot buds for taking such a big risk helping me get away before they could send me to that state reform school.
For the next few years I would bounce around from one hiding spot to the next always looking over my shoulder for the cops and the only place I could ever get a restful good nights sleep was when I would lock myself inside the trunk of that Big Green Buick.
Dad eventually let me move back into his basement but I think Granny Cox pressured him into doing that. I was around 16 at that point and moved my girlfriend Teresa Morgan in the basement with me. Her Mom lived up the road 3 miles. Teresa was the local tramp and had already screwed half the men in 3 counties. Me being the only person that didn't know this. This is the point in my life where I'm about to start hanging out with Paul Donald Clarkston AKA Paul D. Doing many crimes that first sent me to prison.
That big green Buick was a top of the line car when it was made in the early 70's. Power windows, power seat controls, soft plush fabric covered all the seats and most of the interior, carpet on the floors, and not a rip or stain anywhere and as clean as the day it came from the factory. It also had cruise control, and a good AM, FM radio that got great reception. It was a really big car with lots of room in front and back seats and that trunk was huge with carpet and not a dirty stain anywhere.
It had enough room so I could put my sleeping bag and pillow inside and stretch out all the way and have extra room left over. It had a small latch on the inside so I was able to lock myself inside and open it whenever I wanted to come out, giving me a safe place to sleep without fearing the cops would sneak up on me while I was sleeping. Dad had parked it because the motor kept overheating. It sat on a narrow strip of land facing the highway only a few feet away about a 100 yards down from the house where Dad and his new wife Dottie lived.
I lived in the basement of their house but Dottie hated me and tried her best to drive me away so the big green Buick would be my home at times for many years. When all the power windows were rolled up it was air tight, this made it great for smoking pot. I would get high in it while listening to the radio and sit in it for hours at a time. In late fall, early winter when it was chilly outside the sun shone through those big windows keeping it nice and warm on the inside and I would spend a great deal of time sitting in that car stoned to the bone. Because it was airtight, when smoking pot the smoke would build up inside allowing you to get a lung full with each breath while sitting in there with the windows and doors closed.
When my new step mom started hiding the food from me I would steal money from her purse when she went to visit her mom just down the road. Then I would hitch a ride to Mannsville and buy a big ham sandwich and chips. Then when she intentionally poured bleach on my best pair of jeans while she did the laundry I stole her whole purse including about $200 and the extra car keys to her brand new car. A few weeks later Dad came home from work early and busted me driving her car when I was on my way back from buying whisky at Three Pines and he beat me black and blue and took me to the police station in Campbellsville. They had already been trying to catch me for some minor offense so Dad had them arrest me charging me as a juvenile delinquent. They kept me in jail for 6 months until they found a foster family for me over in Casey Co.
The Fowler family, they treated me OK but only wanted the big check the state paid them for taking me in, plus they got free help on their farm. I ran away after only a few weeks and moved the big green Buick up to Grandpa Cox's barn located on Lucian Sallee gravel road, the same place where I jumped in the rain barrel after those wasp went up my pants leg. I parked it inside the barn so I could close the big barn doors and no one would know it was in there. So I lived in that car for about a year and nearly froze to death that winter. It was the loneliest time of my life that I can remember.
My cousin Gary Brown would come pick me up most days around noon and take me over to Bradfordsville and feed me. But he mainly did this because I had a big bag of some really high quality seedless purple haired buds that I had grown that I shared with him. Granny Cox would drive out from Campbellville to bring me a bag of food every few days and sometimes when I got hungry I would walk the short distance up the gravel road to the Sallee house and get a good meal. But living in that car parked inside Grandpa Cox's barn was a very lonely life and at one point it got so bad I decided to end my life and took a handful of sleeping pills stolen from uncle Albert Lee Garrett and topped it off with some rat poison wrapped up in paper to make it easy to swallow. Then went to sleep in the Green Buick hoping that would be the end but Granny Cox showed up about 24 hours later and found me walking naked down the highway towards Tallow Creek and I was taken to the Campbellsville hospital by ambulance.
They pumped my stomach and put me in a room and posted a cop sitting in a chair outside to prevent me from running away again. There was a group of young nurses who spent much time hanging out in my room trying to cheer me up. After a few days they told me I was being sent away to a reform school the next day and they offered to help me get away and to give me a ride back to my hills around Tallow Creek. They told me to open the window of my room at 11 PM and climb out and walk to the 7-11 store just down the street and wait for them to pick me up. They all got off work at 11:30 And sure enough a whole car load of young nurses pulled up after they got off work and gave me a ride to the Lucian Sallee gravel road 20 miles away. I gave them a bag full of that high quality seedless purple haired pot buds for taking such a big risk helping me get away before they could send me to that state reform school.
For the next few years I would bounce around from one hiding spot to the next always looking over my shoulder for the cops and the only place I could ever get a restful good nights sleep was when I would lock myself inside the trunk of that Big Green Buick.
Dad eventually let me move back into his basement but I think Granny Cox pressured him into doing that. I was around 16 at that point and moved my girlfriend Teresa Morgan in the basement with me. Her Mom lived up the road 3 miles. Teresa was the local tramp and had already screwed half the men in 3 counties. Me being the only person that didn't know this. This is the point in my life where I'm about to start hanging out with Paul Donald Clarkston AKA Paul D. Doing many crimes that first sent me to prison.
ROBBERIES WITH PAUL D.
I first meet Paul D. at the roller skating rink at Bradfordsville when we were only 10 or 11 years old. Now, many years later at age 16 he has a car and driver's license. We start doing burglaries, armed robberies, and home invasions. Our very first crime starts late one week night. We are drinking whisky and smoking pot while parked in front of the Baptist Church that my Grandpa Cox built, called Fairview Baptist Church.
We notice a few milk cows have broken down their electric fence and are out on the main highway. This is a big financial liability for the owner of those milk cows because IF a car were to hit them that farmer would have to pay for any damages to the car and also any hospital bill if the driver gets hurt. So we decided to let the dairy farmer know his cows were out on the highway and try to wake him up but we don't manage to get anyone to wake up.
Paul D. spots several guns in a corner of the farmers garage and we take them. One was a double barrelled shotgun, the other a pump action 22 rifle. Can't remember what the other 2 were. From there we drive over close to Bradfordsville and steal Hubert Marlowe's car and use it to transport 15 or 20 cases of beer after we break into Riverside Tavern and Grill. We stash all the stolen beer in a old abandoned farm house owned by Shelly Bob Gribbons, located down a dirt road a few miles from Tallow Creek. I drive Paul D's car and followed him in the stolen car. He parks it on a gravel road 3 miles north of Bradfordsville and we set it on fire. Then head back to Tallow Creek. We park his car at Dad's house and walk the mile or so down the creek to the old abandoned farm house where we stashed the stolen beer and began to getting drunk.
Normally the owner of that old abandoned farm house would never be anywhere around, he lived 10 miles away. But here we are drunker than a skunk and he walks right in without us even hearing his big farm truck driving down that long dirt road. He had heard the news of River Side getting broken into and sees all that beer stacked in the corner of that old abandoned farm house and realizes we are the ones responsible and tells us to get up that he is taking us in.
Paul D. grabs that stolen double barrelled shotgun and points it at him and tells him we're not going nowhere. Paul D. tells me to tie him up. I'm looking for some string or rope and Shelly Bob takes off running. Paul D. fires both barrels at the same time up in the air. Poor ole Shelly Bob probably shit his overalls. He jumps in his big farm truck and takes off like the hounds of hell are after him, leaving a big cloud of dust behind.
I know the cops will be back with him soon so I pick up 2 cases of stolen beer and tell Paul D to do the same and come with me to a spot further down the creek that I knew of where they wouldn't find us. He says he is going back to my Dad's house and get his car and going home, which is only about 4 miles from Tallow Creek. I tried to tell him they would be coming to his house looking for him as soon as Shelly Bob told them about this and they found all that stolen beer we had to leave behind. But he wouldn't come with me and sure enough they arrested him 30 minutes later. I took my 2 cases of stolen beer and went way down the creek to a hidden spot and kicked back and enjoyed my beer. I was never charged for any of that. Paul D's Dad paid for that stolen car we burned and all that beer that we drank. He was grounded for a few months and his car keys taken away.
Our next crime was when we burglarized the vacation home of a wealthy Florida man named Wayne Weaver, who many years later owned the Jacksonville Jaguars. He had bought a section of land that had the best deer hunting of anywhere in our Mountains and built one of those prefabricated log cabins on it. He only used it during the deer season. It was a nice home and he had a big gun collection hidden in a closet wall plus lots of other goodies. Even though he had someone who lived close by that was supposed to keep a eye on it, we knew a back way in that would prevent the neighbor from seeing us and we took all his valuables. We were never charged with this crime.
A few months later we do a home invasion of a old man named Fred Gribbons and his wife just a few miles from Tallow Creek. He was rumored to have large amounts of cash hidden in his house. Looking back, this is the one of many things I'm ashamed to have been part of.
It's around 1 am in the morning, we put pantyhose over our head because we know he can't see well and won't notice it when we knock on the door pretending to need to use his phone. It works, he lets us in and his wife sees we have a gun and a stocking covering our face. We have them sit down at the kitchen table and I search for the money while Paul D. holds his pistol on them. I can't find anything at all. Then I look under the bed and spot her purse. It has about $2500 in cash, we take it and leave after cutting the phone line first. This just happened to be a Friday night and The Kentucky Derby is to be held the next day on Saturday. We head for Louisville 70 miles away where my girlfriend Teresa is staying a week or 2 with her older sister. We pick her up and get a room at the Howard Johnson Hotel. It being Derby day they charge us $100 per night for a room that only cost $30 on any other day but money is not a problem at the moment. We stay 3 days having a big party. If i had looked closely at that purse before tossing it in the river I would have found a check for $12000 from the sale of part of their farm. Later when we heard that we were sick. We were never charged for this but I was questioned by the police about it. Luckily I had a decent alibi showing I was in Louisville during the time.
Next we do a armed robbery of the 7-11/store 20 miles away in Lebanon and take the back roads getting back to Paul D's Grandmother's house which was our secret hide out for us. She is sort of off in the head. We get away clean with about $700 and stuck to the plan to stay put at his Grannies and get drunk.
MORE ROBBERIES
My next crime I decided to do all alone. Can't remember where Paul D. was at that time.
Bradfordsville has a small bank and the bank owners name is Manual Marlow, brother of the man who's car we stole and burned after using it to transport the stolen beer from Riverside Tavern and Grill. He lived next to the roller skating rink.
My plan was to go to his home on a Friday night and tie him and his family up and leave a fake time bomb there and make him take me with him to the bank while he opens the safe and gives me all the money. I'm wearing a ski mask and walk in the back door of his home, gun drawn and heart beating 90 miles an hour. His wife and 15 year old daughter and the old grandma are watching TV. They are startled when they see me and I instruct the daughter to tie up the others, then I tie her up and retie the others again. Then I ask where Manual the bank president was. I figured he was somewhere asleep in the house. They told me he was out of town for the weekend on a Turkey hunting trip.
I place the fake time bomb so they can see it and then search the whole house. Its true he is not there, all their cars are still there. So it must be true that he left with friends for the weekend. I take a few really nice pistols and a few other goodies, load them in one of their car's, cut the phone line and disable all the other cars.
I take off and I drive it way back this old log road about 3 miles from Tallow Creek and walk home. It take's them a week to find their car. If I had taken time to think on it I would have kidnapped the daughter and made them drop the money at a good spot. I was never charged with this crime. Next I broke into the home of Carl Rakes and stole his massive gun collection worth many thousands and was never charged for that but I did have a problem from selling one of his guns to Donnie Pittman, who later sold it to someone else who got caught with it and told who he bought it from. Donnie Pittman points the finger at me and I was arrested. When I went in front of the Judge he dismissed it because it had passed through too many hands.
Later Carl Rakes and 2 of his friends caught my Dad working on a foot bridge over next to Bradfordsville and jumped on him. But my Dad was a powerful man with huge hands from all the mechanic and other manual labor he did all his life and was able to handle all 3 of them. OK I felt bad I had gotten him involved and had always planned to make all 3 of them pay for jumping on my Dad for something that I did. But I only got 1 of them. One of those pistols I stole from the Banker I sold to Ronnie Pittman, the brother of Donnie Pittman, and he got jammed up with the law on something and cut a deal and told them he bought that pistol from me. They tried to charge me with robbery and kidnapping and grand theft auto for tying that Banker's family up but his word alone was not enough to charge me with that crime. That Banker would offer to pay that crooked State trooper to kill me later on.
My next crime was when Paul D. and me take my girlfriend Teresa along when we rob that very same 7-11 in Lebanon a year after that first time. She stays in the car we get away and used the back roads getting back to Paul D's grandmother's house, just like the first time. We had a fifth of Maker's Mark Whiskey already there waiting and the plan was to stay put like we did the first time, getting drunk and leaving the next morning. But no Paul D. had to break the plan and go get some beer from Riverside Tavern and Grill, then we don't stop at his Grandmother's house on the way back and drive right on past our little hideout. As we are passing through the Cross Roads at Tallow Creek there is a State Trooper sitting there looking for a White Trans AM that was spotted at the 7-11 hold up.
We are in a yellow Firebird which is a close enough match for him to take a look. He follows for several miles. We play it cool and drive slowly we do hand all the cash from the robbery to Teresa and she stuff's it in her pants. I hide the pistols up under the seat we pull onto a dirt lane that leads to Eric Fords house and turn around and just sit there and wait. The State Trooper has parked his car at the end of the driveway so we can't get by and if Teresa had not been in the car I would have hit the cornfields and gotten away. I was tempted to take off and just leave her there with Paul D. But no, my dumb ass just sits there waiting for the State Troopers backup to get there which didn't take very long. When they did you would have thought we were Bonnie and Clyde the way they stormed us with guns drawn screaming "let me see your hands!". They pull all 3 of us out of the car. They only cuff Paul D and me while they search the car and only find the pistols but no money. Teresa gets them to let her go behind a small shed to take a pee and she hides all the money from the robbery under a plank.
We are all transported all the way back to Lebanon and questioned. Paul D. admitted him and me did the robbery and I spoke up before he said Teresa sat in the car and said we had only picked her up after we did the robbery. That she didn't know we had done it. We were locked in the Marion Co. jail and she was allowed to call her Mom to come pick her up. It took Granny Cox a few days to get me bonded out of jail and Teresa and me go get the hidden robbery money and split it 3 ways. We use ours to repay Granny Cox for the bond money. Don't know what Paul D. did with his cut of the $900 we got from the robbery. I try to stay out of trouble but get caught burglarizing my friend from childhood's home late one night while I'm too drunk to walk a straight line and get arrested and put in Taylor Co. jail in Campbellsville with no bond. The childhood friend's home I was burglarizing was Kent Bland and he used some loaded dice on me in a crap game when I was 14 and won over a thousand dollars that I had gotten from selling some pot. After learning he had cheated me I would burglarize his house every chance I got for many years.
I first meet Paul D. at the roller skating rink at Bradfordsville when we were only 10 or 11 years old. Now, many years later at age 16 he has a car and driver's license. We start doing burglaries, armed robberies, and home invasions. Our very first crime starts late one week night. We are drinking whisky and smoking pot while parked in front of the Baptist Church that my Grandpa Cox built, called Fairview Baptist Church.
We notice a few milk cows have broken down their electric fence and are out on the main highway. This is a big financial liability for the owner of those milk cows because IF a car were to hit them that farmer would have to pay for any damages to the car and also any hospital bill if the driver gets hurt. So we decided to let the dairy farmer know his cows were out on the highway and try to wake him up but we don't manage to get anyone to wake up.
Paul D. spots several guns in a corner of the farmers garage and we take them. One was a double barrelled shotgun, the other a pump action 22 rifle. Can't remember what the other 2 were. From there we drive over close to Bradfordsville and steal Hubert Marlowe's car and use it to transport 15 or 20 cases of beer after we break into Riverside Tavern and Grill. We stash all the stolen beer in a old abandoned farm house owned by Shelly Bob Gribbons, located down a dirt road a few miles from Tallow Creek. I drive Paul D's car and followed him in the stolen car. He parks it on a gravel road 3 miles north of Bradfordsville and we set it on fire. Then head back to Tallow Creek. We park his car at Dad's house and walk the mile or so down the creek to the old abandoned farm house where we stashed the stolen beer and began to getting drunk.
Normally the owner of that old abandoned farm house would never be anywhere around, he lived 10 miles away. But here we are drunker than a skunk and he walks right in without us even hearing his big farm truck driving down that long dirt road. He had heard the news of River Side getting broken into and sees all that beer stacked in the corner of that old abandoned farm house and realizes we are the ones responsible and tells us to get up that he is taking us in.
Paul D. grabs that stolen double barrelled shotgun and points it at him and tells him we're not going nowhere. Paul D. tells me to tie him up. I'm looking for some string or rope and Shelly Bob takes off running. Paul D. fires both barrels at the same time up in the air. Poor ole Shelly Bob probably shit his overalls. He jumps in his big farm truck and takes off like the hounds of hell are after him, leaving a big cloud of dust behind.
I know the cops will be back with him soon so I pick up 2 cases of stolen beer and tell Paul D to do the same and come with me to a spot further down the creek that I knew of where they wouldn't find us. He says he is going back to my Dad's house and get his car and going home, which is only about 4 miles from Tallow Creek. I tried to tell him they would be coming to his house looking for him as soon as Shelly Bob told them about this and they found all that stolen beer we had to leave behind. But he wouldn't come with me and sure enough they arrested him 30 minutes later. I took my 2 cases of stolen beer and went way down the creek to a hidden spot and kicked back and enjoyed my beer. I was never charged for any of that. Paul D's Dad paid for that stolen car we burned and all that beer that we drank. He was grounded for a few months and his car keys taken away.
Our next crime was when we burglarized the vacation home of a wealthy Florida man named Wayne Weaver, who many years later owned the Jacksonville Jaguars. He had bought a section of land that had the best deer hunting of anywhere in our Mountains and built one of those prefabricated log cabins on it. He only used it during the deer season. It was a nice home and he had a big gun collection hidden in a closet wall plus lots of other goodies. Even though he had someone who lived close by that was supposed to keep a eye on it, we knew a back way in that would prevent the neighbor from seeing us and we took all his valuables. We were never charged with this crime.
A few months later we do a home invasion of a old man named Fred Gribbons and his wife just a few miles from Tallow Creek. He was rumored to have large amounts of cash hidden in his house. Looking back, this is the one of many things I'm ashamed to have been part of.
It's around 1 am in the morning, we put pantyhose over our head because we know he can't see well and won't notice it when we knock on the door pretending to need to use his phone. It works, he lets us in and his wife sees we have a gun and a stocking covering our face. We have them sit down at the kitchen table and I search for the money while Paul D. holds his pistol on them. I can't find anything at all. Then I look under the bed and spot her purse. It has about $2500 in cash, we take it and leave after cutting the phone line first. This just happened to be a Friday night and The Kentucky Derby is to be held the next day on Saturday. We head for Louisville 70 miles away where my girlfriend Teresa is staying a week or 2 with her older sister. We pick her up and get a room at the Howard Johnson Hotel. It being Derby day they charge us $100 per night for a room that only cost $30 on any other day but money is not a problem at the moment. We stay 3 days having a big party. If i had looked closely at that purse before tossing it in the river I would have found a check for $12000 from the sale of part of their farm. Later when we heard that we were sick. We were never charged for this but I was questioned by the police about it. Luckily I had a decent alibi showing I was in Louisville during the time.
Next we do a armed robbery of the 7-11/store 20 miles away in Lebanon and take the back roads getting back to Paul D's Grandmother's house which was our secret hide out for us. She is sort of off in the head. We get away clean with about $700 and stuck to the plan to stay put at his Grannies and get drunk.
MORE ROBBERIES
My next crime I decided to do all alone. Can't remember where Paul D. was at that time.
Bradfordsville has a small bank and the bank owners name is Manual Marlow, brother of the man who's car we stole and burned after using it to transport the stolen beer from Riverside Tavern and Grill. He lived next to the roller skating rink.
My plan was to go to his home on a Friday night and tie him and his family up and leave a fake time bomb there and make him take me with him to the bank while he opens the safe and gives me all the money. I'm wearing a ski mask and walk in the back door of his home, gun drawn and heart beating 90 miles an hour. His wife and 15 year old daughter and the old grandma are watching TV. They are startled when they see me and I instruct the daughter to tie up the others, then I tie her up and retie the others again. Then I ask where Manual the bank president was. I figured he was somewhere asleep in the house. They told me he was out of town for the weekend on a Turkey hunting trip.
I place the fake time bomb so they can see it and then search the whole house. Its true he is not there, all their cars are still there. So it must be true that he left with friends for the weekend. I take a few really nice pistols and a few other goodies, load them in one of their car's, cut the phone line and disable all the other cars.
I take off and I drive it way back this old log road about 3 miles from Tallow Creek and walk home. It take's them a week to find their car. If I had taken time to think on it I would have kidnapped the daughter and made them drop the money at a good spot. I was never charged with this crime. Next I broke into the home of Carl Rakes and stole his massive gun collection worth many thousands and was never charged for that but I did have a problem from selling one of his guns to Donnie Pittman, who later sold it to someone else who got caught with it and told who he bought it from. Donnie Pittman points the finger at me and I was arrested. When I went in front of the Judge he dismissed it because it had passed through too many hands.
Later Carl Rakes and 2 of his friends caught my Dad working on a foot bridge over next to Bradfordsville and jumped on him. But my Dad was a powerful man with huge hands from all the mechanic and other manual labor he did all his life and was able to handle all 3 of them. OK I felt bad I had gotten him involved and had always planned to make all 3 of them pay for jumping on my Dad for something that I did. But I only got 1 of them. One of those pistols I stole from the Banker I sold to Ronnie Pittman, the brother of Donnie Pittman, and he got jammed up with the law on something and cut a deal and told them he bought that pistol from me. They tried to charge me with robbery and kidnapping and grand theft auto for tying that Banker's family up but his word alone was not enough to charge me with that crime. That Banker would offer to pay that crooked State trooper to kill me later on.
My next crime was when Paul D. and me take my girlfriend Teresa along when we rob that very same 7-11 in Lebanon a year after that first time. She stays in the car we get away and used the back roads getting back to Paul D's grandmother's house, just like the first time. We had a fifth of Maker's Mark Whiskey already there waiting and the plan was to stay put like we did the first time, getting drunk and leaving the next morning. But no Paul D. had to break the plan and go get some beer from Riverside Tavern and Grill, then we don't stop at his Grandmother's house on the way back and drive right on past our little hideout. As we are passing through the Cross Roads at Tallow Creek there is a State Trooper sitting there looking for a White Trans AM that was spotted at the 7-11 hold up.
We are in a yellow Firebird which is a close enough match for him to take a look. He follows for several miles. We play it cool and drive slowly we do hand all the cash from the robbery to Teresa and she stuff's it in her pants. I hide the pistols up under the seat we pull onto a dirt lane that leads to Eric Fords house and turn around and just sit there and wait. The State Trooper has parked his car at the end of the driveway so we can't get by and if Teresa had not been in the car I would have hit the cornfields and gotten away. I was tempted to take off and just leave her there with Paul D. But no, my dumb ass just sits there waiting for the State Troopers backup to get there which didn't take very long. When they did you would have thought we were Bonnie and Clyde the way they stormed us with guns drawn screaming "let me see your hands!". They pull all 3 of us out of the car. They only cuff Paul D and me while they search the car and only find the pistols but no money. Teresa gets them to let her go behind a small shed to take a pee and she hides all the money from the robbery under a plank.
We are all transported all the way back to Lebanon and questioned. Paul D. admitted him and me did the robbery and I spoke up before he said Teresa sat in the car and said we had only picked her up after we did the robbery. That she didn't know we had done it. We were locked in the Marion Co. jail and she was allowed to call her Mom to come pick her up. It took Granny Cox a few days to get me bonded out of jail and Teresa and me go get the hidden robbery money and split it 3 ways. We use ours to repay Granny Cox for the bond money. Don't know what Paul D. did with his cut of the $900 we got from the robbery. I try to stay out of trouble but get caught burglarizing my friend from childhood's home late one night while I'm too drunk to walk a straight line and get arrested and put in Taylor Co. jail in Campbellsville with no bond. The childhood friend's home I was burglarizing was Kent Bland and he used some loaded dice on me in a crap game when I was 14 and won over a thousand dollars that I had gotten from selling some pot. After learning he had cheated me I would burglarize his house every chance I got for many years.
ESCAPE FROM TAYLOR COUNTY JAIL AND MANHUNT
So now I'm sitting in Taylor Co. jail with a armed robbery and burglary charge hanging over my head and looking at several years in prison. After a few weeks they bring Paul D. in on a armed robbery charge.
He tried to rob a convenience store by himself using a big kitchen knife and got caught down the street minutes later. So its July and extremely hot on the 2nd floor of that jail. They had no air-conditioning and it was poorly ventilated so Paul D. and me plan an escape.
Anytime late at night when they would lock up someone for public intoxication they would lock him up in our cell block until early the next morning and let him out then. So early the next morning the jailer Junior Sprowles who lives under the jail on the 1st floor came up the stairs in only his underwear, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He opens the cell block door and yells for that drunk to come on out. But Paul D. and me are hiding around behind the door and as soon as he opens it we run by him and down the steps and out the back door of the court house. We are running like the hounds from hell are at our hills and know the cops will be swarming the area in minutes. We make it to a small creek on the outskirts of town and use it as cover to hide. We follow that creek for several miles leading us further out of town and into the country where we hide out in some heavy stands of big trees so that the helicopters can't spot us.
They had a major man hunt trying to catch us. The plan is when it gets dark we go to where my Mom had bought a brand new home at a new housing projects on the outskirts of town Called Shawlawn village which is close to where we were hiding in those trees. We head in that directions as it gets dark and watch closely to make sure no cops are hiding close by. After about a hour we see it's clear and slowly approach the house. I see that my younger brother David is playing in the yard so I call for him to come over behind the house next door and he does.
He said the cops had been there a few times earlier looking for me I ask him to go inside and tell my sister Elizabeth to come outside so I could talk to her. He goes inside and tells her and he also makes some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for us. Beth comes out to talk to me and I try to persuaded her to let us hide in the trunk of her car and to take us out to Tallow Creek and drop us off but she is scared she will get in trouble and says no.
Mom goes to sleep before it gets dark so she has no idea we were there. So we duck and dodge all the cop cars patrolling around Campbellsville and make it safely to where my cousin Gary Brown lives and talk him into giving us a ride to Tallow Creek. He agrees and as we are just leaving the city limits a cop pulls up behind us. Lucky we had been laying on the floor in the back seat or that cop would have pulled us over. They recognized Gary and didn't stop us. Man my heart was about to jump out of my chest! So he drops us off on a back road not far from the cave behind Grandpa Sallee's house. We wait until daylight and climb up over the mountain and down into the hollow behind Grandpa's farm. Remember that spring feed creek where Grandpa and me took baths? That's where we are headed. We can keep a eye on everything that drives up that long gravel road leading up to Grandpa's house from there.
We relax and cool off in the cold spring feed creek. My feet are covered in blisters from doing all that running in a pair of wet tennis shoes and it feels great to soak my sore feet in that cold spring water. I sneak up to Grandpa's house and call from the edge of his yard and ask him if he can let my uncle Curtis Cox, who lives a half mile past Grandpa's know I need to see him. He says ok.
A few hours later we hear someone walking in the trees behind us and my heart starts racing again. But its only uncle Curtis and he is carrying a big bag. He had put together all the important items we were going to need; camouflage clothing, sleeping bags, food, and the most important item a big box of red and black pepper for the tracking dogs, which would save me twice!
My feet are so sore I can't wear any shoes so I go bare foot. Not a big deal for a hillbilly. I hear Grandpa using his whistle that he uses to call in his mules and horses and know he wants to see me. I hobble my way up to the back door and can smell the fried rabbit before I walk inside. He tells me to sit down and fill my belly. Granny has a plate already made up of fried rabbit, fried potatoes, and the works. Grandpa says he will go out on the front porch and keep watch while I eat. Granny puts some food in a bag for Paul D. and a few of her famous biscuits and blackberry jam for later. Just as I'm finishing Grandpa yells: "they're coming over the hill!" and I could hear the sound of a car driving very fast on a gravel road. My heart is thumping, I grab the bag of food Granny fixed for Paul D. and the items uncle Curtis had given me and head out the back door at a full run and without any shoes on.
I hear a cop say "halt" but I keep running for the trees and mountains behind Grandpa's house and hear a loud gun shot but I never slowed down. I hear one of the cops close behind saying he couldn't have gotten very far. I had made a left turn and was hiding behind a big tree on a small rise just above them looking down on their heads as they walk right past me. And hear one say "bring the dogs". So I quietly ease farther up the steep mountain side and stop in a bunch of waist high weeds with big wide flat leaves and sprinkled red pepper all around behind me. The top of those big wide flat leaves were all covered in red pepper. I had chosen my spot wisely knowing when those tracking dogs followed my scent through those waist high weeds it would cause all that red pepper to hit them right in the face and fill their noses full of that red pepper.
I'm at the top of the mountain side when I hear the sound of that blood hound on my trail and only a minute or so later I hear the blood hound make a yelling scream of pain when he hits that red pepper I left waiting for him.
Later I hear the story about Granny Sallee having to wrestle that old single barreled shotgun away from Grandpa when that State Trooper shot at me. There is no doubt Grandpa would have shot that State Trooper if she had not taken that shotgun away from him. And also about when that blood hound and German Shepherd hit my red pepper trap and came back and was rolling in the grass of Grandpa's yard and sneezing and whimpering and how Grandpa got such a big laugh from that.
I made it to the ridge of the mountain behind Grandpa's house and followed a old Indian trail past the cave and went far back in those mountains to a high point where I could look down the valley and see the main highway where it intersects with the gravel road leading up to Grandpa's house. I sat there for a few hours watching those cops as they all left. Then I followed the ridge a few miles where I'm overlooking Randy Rabbiths house and farm. My girlfriend Teresa's Mom lived just up the road from the Rabbith's place. That's where I was headed after it got dark.
Just before the sun went down I hear someone coming up the creek making lots of noise. It turns out to be Paul D. I scare the crap out of him. We talk awhile and I give him the blackberry jam and biscuit and other food Granny Sallee had put in that paper bag for him. He wolfs it down like a starving man. I ask where he got that 410 shotgun. He said he broke into someone's trailer which was a really bad thing to have done. That would turn the locals against us, making then call the cops if anyone spotted us, but that's Paul D. for you. He says he is on his way to his Dads house which is about 3 miles from where we sat in that creek bed talking. He already knows I'm on my way to see Teresa just about a quarter mile from where we sat, so we part ways.
I heard he was caught the next day in Bradfordsville walking down the street in broad daylight still carrying that stolen 410 shotgun. After we part ways in that creek bed I wait until dark and sneak up to the trailer where Teresa lives with her Mom and stepdad James Rakes. Its pretty dark but they have a porch light on and I see someone come out the back door with a shotgun and it looks like Paul D. So I softly call out to him. But its not Paul D. It's Teresa's stepdad and he fires over my head. Teresa comes out to see what's going on. Her step dad goes inside for more bullets and me and Teresa take off for the trees high up the mountainside. Her step dad called the cops and we can hear the low sound of a blood hound on our trail so I lay down more red pepper like the last time and go farther on around the ridge. We listen but don't hear the blood hound any more.
I find a good spot to spread out my sleeping bag and I make up for those many nights in jail. We part early the next morning and agreed to meet back in this same spot every night. She heads down the dirt path that would take her home and I head for Grandpa Sallee's hollow and the cave where I hideout during daylight. The cops have gotten the local national guard to help look for me. They had helicopters and 100's of weekends warriors out searching my hills trying to catch me. I spend about 2 weeks ducking and dodging all of them and several times I could have spit on some of them.
This is a big worry for my Granny Cox. She has Teresa give me a message to meet her at a certain spot at a certain time. I do and can't help from seeing the pain in her face from worrying that they are going to gun me down. I can't say no to her with those tears in her eyes when she begs me to turn myself in so I do. Uncle Curtis takes me in to the courthouse wearing a big pistol just in case someone tried to gun me down. He must have heard about that Banker I robbed offering to pay that crooked State Trooper to kill me.
I'm placed back in that smothering hot jail But they have 2 high security cells that are apart from the cell block. Paul D. is already in one of those cells and I'm put in the other. At age 18 I'm 6 foot 1 but only weighed 150 pounds. They try to starve us as punishment for escaping and making them look bad. Granny Cox comes every visiting day and hides cheeseburgers in her bra to sneak to me. They keep us there until September. Paul D. pleads to 25 years and I get 20 because he had several more charges than I did.
I do 4 years on my 20 before my first Parole hearing. They give me another 10 months and Parole me the next time. Granny Cox sent money every month without my having to even ask her for any. She visited often and sent a TV , fan, clothing packages, even an electric blanket to make sure I stayed warm in the winter. At first Teresa would always come with Granny Cox when she came but soon stopped and when I called Teresa early one morning Jodie answered the phone. That was a painful learning experience for me. When I got out I repaid her by sleeping with her best friend Cheryl Davis.
My Mom helped me out when I got out the first time. Cosigned a car loan for $2500 and gave me a place to live before they would approve my parole. Dad gave me a job working in his wielding shop. I used that $2500 to buy a pickup truck from Dad. Those were the best times of my life. I had many girlfriends during my brief 12 months of freedom. Mom ended up repossessing my truck after missing one payment. She got $2000 off from trading it in on a brand new truck for her husband Robert, one of many she would buy for him.
I'm eventually charged with a DUI and sent back to prison for my second time and do another year before being paroled once again. This time Mom refused to give me a place to live for the parole board hearing but my Dad's second wife Betty gave me a place to live. She was now my ex-stepmom. I lived in her basement on Lucian Sallee road. It was a really nice place, my Dad had built it from the ground up. When Betty and Dad were living in Indianapolis Indiana for awhile she divorced him. She was awarded the whole house and section of land Grandpa Cox gave them. That was the Indiana Law.
FREE AGAIN, BACK IN PRISON AND HOW I ENDED UP ON DEATH ROW
Living in Betty's basement was great. I had my own backdoor entrance and was able to come and go without disturbing her late at night. I had a huge waterbed with a full length mirror overhead. I brought home lots of women to spend the night and that overhead mirror was like watching a porn movie. Betty had 2 sons Kyle and Ryder and a new born baby girl named Savannah. Kyle was married with a family of his own and Ryder still lived there. He was around 18 and we became good friends, got drunk together and smoked lots of pot.
I was given the bouncer job at Whispering Pines shortly after getting out of prison my second time. Those were great times, I took a different woman home for the night every night. It was only open on Friday and Saturday nights. My aunt Josephine and her husband Ernie were regulars there. One night someone had stolen her purse when they were dancing and because I had been sitting at their table when they got up she accused me. Lucky for me one of the waitresses saw Charlie Bagby walk out the front door carrying a purse or it would have been blamed on me.
Whispering Pines was a very popular spot with live bands most weekends but it had a violent reputation, and for good cause. Due to all the fights, cuttings and a few shootings. That's why it had 6 bouncers working each night. I only got paid $60 each weekend plus drank and ate for free but would have worked there for free. It was a status thing to work there. I would drink about 18 long neck Budweiser beers each night. When Jackie Wicker hired me he said I could drink all the beer I wanted for free but absolutely no whiskey while working. He knew how I got at times when I drank Wild Turkey. Whispering Pines would close its doors a few years after I first came to the Florida prison system in 1990. Many years it sat empty. Now I hear its a church of some sorts.
Those were some great times but they came to a sudden end when late one night I'm riding with a friend on my way home after work. He gets pulled over and I'm taken to jail for public intoxication and for carrying a slapjack that Jackie had given me to use if ever needed at work. But I had never used it on anyone. So I'm put in jail. My parole is revoked and I'm waiting to be sent back to prison for my 3rd time.
I have already told you what takes place after that I escaped, hid out on the river, got betrayed by a friend, my $100,000 worth of pot stolen. Came to Florida, get life without parole for a crime I didn't do. Spent 10 years appealing it. Then 2 inmates attempt to rob me at knife point and I defend myself, stab and kill one of those inmates and get sent to Death Row for it. And that gives you the whole story from start to finish.
So I'll try to fill in a few blank spots. At a crucial time during my appeals process when I'm fighting to overturn the wrongful conviction of that rape charge I desperately needed a few hundred dollars to pay a prison law clerk to keep working on my appeal. My Mom, and her 4 sisters had just sold Grandpa Sallee's farm and split all the money between them so I ask my Mom to help me out. She turned me down and used that money from Grandpa's farm to buy her husband a brand new truck, and spent $9000 on a piano that's only purpose was as a show piece item sitting in her living room, she didn't even know how to play it. Years later she would give it away to a church. That's the type of Mom I had.
My Granny Cox only had her social security check to live off of each month. But while she was alive she always sent me $50 every month without my ever having to ask. She came to visit me 2 times while I was in prison in Florida. My sister Cathy brought her once and a cousin the other time. When I was sent to Death Row her health was really bad so I was able to get everyone to keep quite about it and she never knew I was sent to Death Row. When she died she left what little she had all to me. My sister Beth would never tell me how much it was but sent me $25 each month for about 3 years. Granny Hazel Cox is the only person in my life who really loved me. All her many other Grandchildren were very jealous of the special treatment she gave me all my life.
DEATH ROW VISITS
After I had been on Death Row a few years my sister Cathy brought her family to visit me. She had 3 girls who I had never met. Jessica was about 10, Elisabeth was 5 and Rebecca was only about 3. They were adorable little girls,especially the youngest one with those huge blue eyes. But she was very shy of strangers and when I attempted to give her a hug she hid behind her Mom's skirt tails. After a little while she started to let me get a little closer. She was eating a bag of M and M candies while sitting in her Dad's lap and she shyly slid one across the table to me. I ate it and she smiled and ate one herself, then slid me another one across the table and smiled again but when she looked in the bag it was empty so she started to cry. And I felt so bad seeing those tears in her big blue eyes. Her Dad knew how to fix things, he took her to the candy machine and bought her a big bag of cookies.
The 5 year old was curious about me. She came close and was standing next to my leg and I could tell she wanted me to pick her up and set her on my knee like her little sister was sitting on her Dad's knee. And I wanted to hold her so very bad, but they had very strict rules regarding holding small children that are not your own. I wanted to so bad and was tempted to do it anyway. Looking back I wish I had picked her up and sat her on my knee, rules be dammed. I have never seen them since then and they are all grown now with families of their own. My Dad came to visit a year ago and told me shortly after I came to Florida one of my old girlfriends Tonya Dennison from Casey Co. stopped by his house to inform him I had gotten her pregnant. Don't know why Dad never told me before then and it angered me that he kept it from me and that he had no desire to know my child or to be a part of their life like most Grandfathers would want. So many things you miss out on when your in here; hearing a rooster's early morning crow, a raven's call, a meadowlark's song, the bark of a hound hot on the trial of a coon..
So now I'm sitting in Taylor Co. jail with a armed robbery and burglary charge hanging over my head and looking at several years in prison. After a few weeks they bring Paul D. in on a armed robbery charge.
He tried to rob a convenience store by himself using a big kitchen knife and got caught down the street minutes later. So its July and extremely hot on the 2nd floor of that jail. They had no air-conditioning and it was poorly ventilated so Paul D. and me plan an escape.
Anytime late at night when they would lock up someone for public intoxication they would lock him up in our cell block until early the next morning and let him out then. So early the next morning the jailer Junior Sprowles who lives under the jail on the 1st floor came up the stairs in only his underwear, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He opens the cell block door and yells for that drunk to come on out. But Paul D. and me are hiding around behind the door and as soon as he opens it we run by him and down the steps and out the back door of the court house. We are running like the hounds from hell are at our hills and know the cops will be swarming the area in minutes. We make it to a small creek on the outskirts of town and use it as cover to hide. We follow that creek for several miles leading us further out of town and into the country where we hide out in some heavy stands of big trees so that the helicopters can't spot us.
They had a major man hunt trying to catch us. The plan is when it gets dark we go to where my Mom had bought a brand new home at a new housing projects on the outskirts of town Called Shawlawn village which is close to where we were hiding in those trees. We head in that directions as it gets dark and watch closely to make sure no cops are hiding close by. After about a hour we see it's clear and slowly approach the house. I see that my younger brother David is playing in the yard so I call for him to come over behind the house next door and he does.
He said the cops had been there a few times earlier looking for me I ask him to go inside and tell my sister Elizabeth to come outside so I could talk to her. He goes inside and tells her and he also makes some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for us. Beth comes out to talk to me and I try to persuaded her to let us hide in the trunk of her car and to take us out to Tallow Creek and drop us off but she is scared she will get in trouble and says no.
Mom goes to sleep before it gets dark so she has no idea we were there. So we duck and dodge all the cop cars patrolling around Campbellsville and make it safely to where my cousin Gary Brown lives and talk him into giving us a ride to Tallow Creek. He agrees and as we are just leaving the city limits a cop pulls up behind us. Lucky we had been laying on the floor in the back seat or that cop would have pulled us over. They recognized Gary and didn't stop us. Man my heart was about to jump out of my chest! So he drops us off on a back road not far from the cave behind Grandpa Sallee's house. We wait until daylight and climb up over the mountain and down into the hollow behind Grandpa's farm. Remember that spring feed creek where Grandpa and me took baths? That's where we are headed. We can keep a eye on everything that drives up that long gravel road leading up to Grandpa's house from there.
We relax and cool off in the cold spring feed creek. My feet are covered in blisters from doing all that running in a pair of wet tennis shoes and it feels great to soak my sore feet in that cold spring water. I sneak up to Grandpa's house and call from the edge of his yard and ask him if he can let my uncle Curtis Cox, who lives a half mile past Grandpa's know I need to see him. He says ok.
A few hours later we hear someone walking in the trees behind us and my heart starts racing again. But its only uncle Curtis and he is carrying a big bag. He had put together all the important items we were going to need; camouflage clothing, sleeping bags, food, and the most important item a big box of red and black pepper for the tracking dogs, which would save me twice!
My feet are so sore I can't wear any shoes so I go bare foot. Not a big deal for a hillbilly. I hear Grandpa using his whistle that he uses to call in his mules and horses and know he wants to see me. I hobble my way up to the back door and can smell the fried rabbit before I walk inside. He tells me to sit down and fill my belly. Granny has a plate already made up of fried rabbit, fried potatoes, and the works. Grandpa says he will go out on the front porch and keep watch while I eat. Granny puts some food in a bag for Paul D. and a few of her famous biscuits and blackberry jam for later. Just as I'm finishing Grandpa yells: "they're coming over the hill!" and I could hear the sound of a car driving very fast on a gravel road. My heart is thumping, I grab the bag of food Granny fixed for Paul D. and the items uncle Curtis had given me and head out the back door at a full run and without any shoes on.
I hear a cop say "halt" but I keep running for the trees and mountains behind Grandpa's house and hear a loud gun shot but I never slowed down. I hear one of the cops close behind saying he couldn't have gotten very far. I had made a left turn and was hiding behind a big tree on a small rise just above them looking down on their heads as they walk right past me. And hear one say "bring the dogs". So I quietly ease farther up the steep mountain side and stop in a bunch of waist high weeds with big wide flat leaves and sprinkled red pepper all around behind me. The top of those big wide flat leaves were all covered in red pepper. I had chosen my spot wisely knowing when those tracking dogs followed my scent through those waist high weeds it would cause all that red pepper to hit them right in the face and fill their noses full of that red pepper.
I'm at the top of the mountain side when I hear the sound of that blood hound on my trail and only a minute or so later I hear the blood hound make a yelling scream of pain when he hits that red pepper I left waiting for him.
Later I hear the story about Granny Sallee having to wrestle that old single barreled shotgun away from Grandpa when that State Trooper shot at me. There is no doubt Grandpa would have shot that State Trooper if she had not taken that shotgun away from him. And also about when that blood hound and German Shepherd hit my red pepper trap and came back and was rolling in the grass of Grandpa's yard and sneezing and whimpering and how Grandpa got such a big laugh from that.
I made it to the ridge of the mountain behind Grandpa's house and followed a old Indian trail past the cave and went far back in those mountains to a high point where I could look down the valley and see the main highway where it intersects with the gravel road leading up to Grandpa's house. I sat there for a few hours watching those cops as they all left. Then I followed the ridge a few miles where I'm overlooking Randy Rabbiths house and farm. My girlfriend Teresa's Mom lived just up the road from the Rabbith's place. That's where I was headed after it got dark.
Just before the sun went down I hear someone coming up the creek making lots of noise. It turns out to be Paul D. I scare the crap out of him. We talk awhile and I give him the blackberry jam and biscuit and other food Granny Sallee had put in that paper bag for him. He wolfs it down like a starving man. I ask where he got that 410 shotgun. He said he broke into someone's trailer which was a really bad thing to have done. That would turn the locals against us, making then call the cops if anyone spotted us, but that's Paul D. for you. He says he is on his way to his Dads house which is about 3 miles from where we sat in that creek bed talking. He already knows I'm on my way to see Teresa just about a quarter mile from where we sat, so we part ways.
I heard he was caught the next day in Bradfordsville walking down the street in broad daylight still carrying that stolen 410 shotgun. After we part ways in that creek bed I wait until dark and sneak up to the trailer where Teresa lives with her Mom and stepdad James Rakes. Its pretty dark but they have a porch light on and I see someone come out the back door with a shotgun and it looks like Paul D. So I softly call out to him. But its not Paul D. It's Teresa's stepdad and he fires over my head. Teresa comes out to see what's going on. Her step dad goes inside for more bullets and me and Teresa take off for the trees high up the mountainside. Her step dad called the cops and we can hear the low sound of a blood hound on our trail so I lay down more red pepper like the last time and go farther on around the ridge. We listen but don't hear the blood hound any more.
I find a good spot to spread out my sleeping bag and I make up for those many nights in jail. We part early the next morning and agreed to meet back in this same spot every night. She heads down the dirt path that would take her home and I head for Grandpa Sallee's hollow and the cave where I hideout during daylight. The cops have gotten the local national guard to help look for me. They had helicopters and 100's of weekends warriors out searching my hills trying to catch me. I spend about 2 weeks ducking and dodging all of them and several times I could have spit on some of them.
This is a big worry for my Granny Cox. She has Teresa give me a message to meet her at a certain spot at a certain time. I do and can't help from seeing the pain in her face from worrying that they are going to gun me down. I can't say no to her with those tears in her eyes when she begs me to turn myself in so I do. Uncle Curtis takes me in to the courthouse wearing a big pistol just in case someone tried to gun me down. He must have heard about that Banker I robbed offering to pay that crooked State Trooper to kill me.
I'm placed back in that smothering hot jail But they have 2 high security cells that are apart from the cell block. Paul D. is already in one of those cells and I'm put in the other. At age 18 I'm 6 foot 1 but only weighed 150 pounds. They try to starve us as punishment for escaping and making them look bad. Granny Cox comes every visiting day and hides cheeseburgers in her bra to sneak to me. They keep us there until September. Paul D. pleads to 25 years and I get 20 because he had several more charges than I did.
I do 4 years on my 20 before my first Parole hearing. They give me another 10 months and Parole me the next time. Granny Cox sent money every month without my having to even ask her for any. She visited often and sent a TV , fan, clothing packages, even an electric blanket to make sure I stayed warm in the winter. At first Teresa would always come with Granny Cox when she came but soon stopped and when I called Teresa early one morning Jodie answered the phone. That was a painful learning experience for me. When I got out I repaid her by sleeping with her best friend Cheryl Davis.
My Mom helped me out when I got out the first time. Cosigned a car loan for $2500 and gave me a place to live before they would approve my parole. Dad gave me a job working in his wielding shop. I used that $2500 to buy a pickup truck from Dad. Those were the best times of my life. I had many girlfriends during my brief 12 months of freedom. Mom ended up repossessing my truck after missing one payment. She got $2000 off from trading it in on a brand new truck for her husband Robert, one of many she would buy for him.
I'm eventually charged with a DUI and sent back to prison for my second time and do another year before being paroled once again. This time Mom refused to give me a place to live for the parole board hearing but my Dad's second wife Betty gave me a place to live. She was now my ex-stepmom. I lived in her basement on Lucian Sallee road. It was a really nice place, my Dad had built it from the ground up. When Betty and Dad were living in Indianapolis Indiana for awhile she divorced him. She was awarded the whole house and section of land Grandpa Cox gave them. That was the Indiana Law.
FREE AGAIN, BACK IN PRISON AND HOW I ENDED UP ON DEATH ROW
Living in Betty's basement was great. I had my own backdoor entrance and was able to come and go without disturbing her late at night. I had a huge waterbed with a full length mirror overhead. I brought home lots of women to spend the night and that overhead mirror was like watching a porn movie. Betty had 2 sons Kyle and Ryder and a new born baby girl named Savannah. Kyle was married with a family of his own and Ryder still lived there. He was around 18 and we became good friends, got drunk together and smoked lots of pot.
I was given the bouncer job at Whispering Pines shortly after getting out of prison my second time. Those were great times, I took a different woman home for the night every night. It was only open on Friday and Saturday nights. My aunt Josephine and her husband Ernie were regulars there. One night someone had stolen her purse when they were dancing and because I had been sitting at their table when they got up she accused me. Lucky for me one of the waitresses saw Charlie Bagby walk out the front door carrying a purse or it would have been blamed on me.
Whispering Pines was a very popular spot with live bands most weekends but it had a violent reputation, and for good cause. Due to all the fights, cuttings and a few shootings. That's why it had 6 bouncers working each night. I only got paid $60 each weekend plus drank and ate for free but would have worked there for free. It was a status thing to work there. I would drink about 18 long neck Budweiser beers each night. When Jackie Wicker hired me he said I could drink all the beer I wanted for free but absolutely no whiskey while working. He knew how I got at times when I drank Wild Turkey. Whispering Pines would close its doors a few years after I first came to the Florida prison system in 1990. Many years it sat empty. Now I hear its a church of some sorts.
Those were some great times but they came to a sudden end when late one night I'm riding with a friend on my way home after work. He gets pulled over and I'm taken to jail for public intoxication and for carrying a slapjack that Jackie had given me to use if ever needed at work. But I had never used it on anyone. So I'm put in jail. My parole is revoked and I'm waiting to be sent back to prison for my 3rd time.
I have already told you what takes place after that I escaped, hid out on the river, got betrayed by a friend, my $100,000 worth of pot stolen. Came to Florida, get life without parole for a crime I didn't do. Spent 10 years appealing it. Then 2 inmates attempt to rob me at knife point and I defend myself, stab and kill one of those inmates and get sent to Death Row for it. And that gives you the whole story from start to finish.
So I'll try to fill in a few blank spots. At a crucial time during my appeals process when I'm fighting to overturn the wrongful conviction of that rape charge I desperately needed a few hundred dollars to pay a prison law clerk to keep working on my appeal. My Mom, and her 4 sisters had just sold Grandpa Sallee's farm and split all the money between them so I ask my Mom to help me out. She turned me down and used that money from Grandpa's farm to buy her husband a brand new truck, and spent $9000 on a piano that's only purpose was as a show piece item sitting in her living room, she didn't even know how to play it. Years later she would give it away to a church. That's the type of Mom I had.
My Granny Cox only had her social security check to live off of each month. But while she was alive she always sent me $50 every month without my ever having to ask. She came to visit me 2 times while I was in prison in Florida. My sister Cathy brought her once and a cousin the other time. When I was sent to Death Row her health was really bad so I was able to get everyone to keep quite about it and she never knew I was sent to Death Row. When she died she left what little she had all to me. My sister Beth would never tell me how much it was but sent me $25 each month for about 3 years. Granny Hazel Cox is the only person in my life who really loved me. All her many other Grandchildren were very jealous of the special treatment she gave me all my life.
DEATH ROW VISITS
After I had been on Death Row a few years my sister Cathy brought her family to visit me. She had 3 girls who I had never met. Jessica was about 10, Elisabeth was 5 and Rebecca was only about 3. They were adorable little girls,especially the youngest one with those huge blue eyes. But she was very shy of strangers and when I attempted to give her a hug she hid behind her Mom's skirt tails. After a little while she started to let me get a little closer. She was eating a bag of M and M candies while sitting in her Dad's lap and she shyly slid one across the table to me. I ate it and she smiled and ate one herself, then slid me another one across the table and smiled again but when she looked in the bag it was empty so she started to cry. And I felt so bad seeing those tears in her big blue eyes. Her Dad knew how to fix things, he took her to the candy machine and bought her a big bag of cookies.
The 5 year old was curious about me. She came close and was standing next to my leg and I could tell she wanted me to pick her up and set her on my knee like her little sister was sitting on her Dad's knee. And I wanted to hold her so very bad, but they had very strict rules regarding holding small children that are not your own. I wanted to so bad and was tempted to do it anyway. Looking back I wish I had picked her up and sat her on my knee, rules be dammed. I have never seen them since then and they are all grown now with families of their own. My Dad came to visit a year ago and told me shortly after I came to Florida one of my old girlfriends Tonya Dennison from Casey Co. stopped by his house to inform him I had gotten her pregnant. Don't know why Dad never told me before then and it angered me that he kept it from me and that he had no desire to know my child or to be a part of their life like most Grandfathers would want. So many things you miss out on when your in here; hearing a rooster's early morning crow, a raven's call, a meadowlark's song, the bark of a hound hot on the trial of a coon..
MY CHILDHOOD FRIENDS
I'm going to list the names of all the local boys who lived around Tallow Creek that were my age and rode the school bus with me. My best friend from 5 years old was Kent Bland. At age 16 he would get his first car. Made new friends in Campbellsville where all the popular kids cruised main street. He was in the in-crowd now and I was left behind in Tallow Creek until he needed to buy some pot or had a use for my help. Then he used those loaded dice to win the money I had made selling pot that I had planned to buy my first car with. Later when some of the other boys told me he had been bragging to his city friends about how he cheated me out of all my car money I would break into his home every chance I got after finding out what he had done.
There was Thurman and Larry Bagby, my 2nd cousins. As little boys we did a lot of fishing together and would quietly sneak into a few places that didn't allow any fishing. Thurman and me were always fighting with each other and friends a few minutes later. There was the Routen boys; Red, Paul, Jimmy and Stamp, Tim Graham and Howell Gordon and Tom Tungate and Donald Weathington and the Rabbith boys Bow, John, David, Tim and Carl, Wayne, Joe and David Rakes. Most of us had motorcycles and would get together and ride the old logging roads.
Now I'll list some of the colorful names of my friends from Bradfordsville and the roller skating rink.
Sherman Clarkston was a Vietnam vet who I met at the popular swimming hole under the first iron bridge at Bradfordsville and offered me a beer at age 13 and I rolled up a fat joint and shared with him. We would become life long friends after that. Next was Kevin Glasscocks AKA Cocky. He was the fighter, Slick Clarkston was Sherman's younger brother, Coy Wayne Glasscocks was Kevin's older brother the bow hunter. There was the Wiser boys Willy, Johnny, Head. There was Bugger Ann Wiser, Nub something, sister to Minnesota Fats, Shelia Mattingly, the beautiful Glenda May Larries who always bought pot from me every time I went to Bradfordsville. Her brother was James Harold There was Chubby, Pup, Bengie Bluetick Bright, Cletus and Fat Rabbit. And my old girlfriend Teresa Morgan, the local slut. And the list goes on and on.
MY MANY FIGHTS
The unofficial Mayor of Bradfordsville was Dawton Rakes AKA The Bird. He owned the corner gas station and store. It was the local hang out with pool table and pinball machines and of course a juke box. It was always buzzing with customers.
Now I'll list my many fights. First one was with Jeff Jones in the first grade. I bloodied his nose and he ran home. He lived right next to the Elementary School at Mannsville. Next was with Keith Cox that same year. His older brother told me to call him by his nickname and he punched me in the face, I took off up the road for Tallow Creek and the principal came in his car and picked me up and made me go back.
2nd grade David Rakes beat me up at the seesaw during recess 3rd grade. I gave a older boy, George Gribbons, a bloody nose and had to run when Roger Spurling jumped in. The 7th grade we had to ride the bus 15 miles to the new junior high in Campbellsville, the city boys wanted to pick on us until I gave several a beating. Then I made a big mistake when a boy much bigger than me jumped on me, I put him on his butt 2 times and let him get up. When I should have finished him off while he was down. On the 3rd round he was able to bite my nose half way off, no joke! And he had no front teeth. His name was Lawrence Dotson, I beat him severely for biting my nose and on occasion years later whenever I saw him.
When I hit 7th grade all the other boys my age were a foot taller than me. But that made me faster and I regularly gave them a whipping anytime they tried me. I have what's called heavy hands. In the 9th grade Jeff Jones put it on me. I felt it was due to my not having eaten anything all day so I tried him again the next day and gave him a beating. Around 16, Scott Wilson attempts to whip me because Paul D. said I had stolen a $100 bill from him. Scott was older and 40 pounds heavier. He thought he was some sort of Karate expert so when he went into his kick stance I hit him right in the nose. Blood starts pouring. That was the end of it, he didn't want anymore.
Later I found out Teresa had taken Paul D's $100 bill one night when we were out drinking. Next was when I had gotten out of prison that first time and was drinking beer in the parking lot in front of Sam's Dinner and my cousin Angel Gibbons was getting slapped around by her boyfriend Troy. So I stepped in and told him to stop. He was another one who thought he knew Karate and went into his kick stance and I laid him on his butt and was standing over him ready to put his lights out but uncle Doyle Gribbons grabbed my arm and held it.
Next my friends Biggin Burris and Darrell Gribbons. We are at ole Hickey's. I had a disagreement with someone over a girl named Tina Bryant and he had 2 of his friends try to beat me up. I saw them coming and dropped both of them in the blink of a eye. They made all of us leave and we went to the parking lot and I gave the one named Jeff Sprowles a beating. Biggin had to hold the 2nd one back. After I finished with his friend he didn't want any part of me.
Next was when that brand new bouncer Doodle Turner at Whispering Pines hit me in the ear when I wasn't looking while I was explaining to Ole May that Charlie Bagby just cut someone with a beer bottle. I had walked out to the parking lot to wake up my cousin Roy Garrett who was passed out in his car to let him know what had happened and to get out of there before the cops came but now this new bouncer wouldn't let me come back inside. Just then out of nowhere he hits me in the ear and my automatic reflex hit him in the nose breaking it. Blood pouring he tries to shoot me I end up with his job.
INJURIES AND MEDICAL ISSUES
In my lifetime I have had many injuries and several close calls with death. My first injury was when aunt Josephine shook me like a rag doll. I was born with a S-shaped spine none as scoliosis. When I was in the 3rd grade Tom Tungate did one of those wrestling moves he saw on the wrestling matches on TV called a bear hug. He was older than I was and very stocky and strong. He put that bear hug on me, wrapping his arms around the middle of my body and picked me off the ground. Then squeezed as hard as he could and I heard a cracking sound and felt a sharp pain in my spine. When he put me down I could hardly stand. I have had lots of back pain all my life from that.
In the 7th grade I got on the football team. All the other boys were taller and heavier than I was. My very first practice they broke my leg. When I was 14 I had a bad motorcycle wreck on a Suzuki 250 dirt bike. The road was wet from rain. I was running about 60 and came around a sharp curve. There was a big Buick Station wagon stopped in the middle of the road, dropping off a factory worker. All I could do was lay it down. It slid under the back end catching my foot in between the bikes motor and that big bumper of that station wagon, crushing it in several places. Luckily I was wearing a helmet, or it would have killed me. I was slammed up against the rear end of that station wagon with so much force, it split my helmet in half. I was taken by ambulance to the Hospital in Campbellsville.After they saw how bad my foot was damaged, they transported me to the University Hospital in Louisville. They thought I would lose my foot. I spent 2 weeks in Intensive care.
Next was the taking of the sleeping pills with the rat poison, next was age 19 in prison in Kentucky and a homemade gun called a zip gun explodes when I'm loading it. The explosion is so powerful it blows me backward 10 feet and a piece of shrapnel goes all the way through my right lung, collapsing it, and lodged next to the sack around my heart. And it is still there today. At age 25 I have a truck wreck and hit a huge oak tree head on at 60 miles per hour. The front end is wrapped all the way around that tree. I only received a broken arm and leg.
At age 27 in Florida prison, I get in a fight, I break my hand so bad the bone comes through the skin. I had to go to a outside hospital for surgery and get pins put in to fix the broken bones. I walked around 2 weeks trying to get medical help, but the nurse said it was only bruised.
At age 47 I attempt suicide by a Narcotics overdose. Medical had to restart my heart. I'm sent to Jacksonville memorial hospital, was put in a medically induced coma for 14 days to get the swelling of my brain to go down. I catch double pneumonia, then blood clots form in both lungs.
Age 49 appendix ruptured, medical staff ignored my calls for help. Got lucky when the top Medical director happened to show up for a visit to the prison. He had me on my way to Jacksonville memorial hospital by ambulance 5 minutes after examining me. I spent 4 hours in emergency surgery due to gangrene setting in and spreading to many organs.
Age 51 another suicide attempt from cutting my wrist and came very close to bleeding out.
Age 52 I started having chest pains but was ignored by medical staff for several weeks. Finally I got seen by nurse Tucker who saw I was not faking it like the other nurses said I was. She sent me by ambulance to Jacksonville memorial hospital where they said I have congestive heart failure. They put me on medications and the chest pains have slowed.
For the past 2 years I have had severe abdominal pain and intestinal trouble. Once again Medical staff has ignored my plea for help. When they were treating me for the heart failure, they were giving me Potassium Chloride by IV and the drip was set too fast, making it feel like battery acid was dripping into my vein. This is the very same drug they inject in your arm when they execute you by lethal injection, only it's more concentrated and a larger dose. So the first drug paralyzes you so you can't scream from the burning pain of the potassium Chloride and the final drug stops your breathing. They have to know the Potassium Chloride creates a very painful burning effect, but I guess that's the plan. Hopefully one of my health problems prevents this ending.
I'm going to list the names of all the local boys who lived around Tallow Creek that were my age and rode the school bus with me. My best friend from 5 years old was Kent Bland. At age 16 he would get his first car. Made new friends in Campbellsville where all the popular kids cruised main street. He was in the in-crowd now and I was left behind in Tallow Creek until he needed to buy some pot or had a use for my help. Then he used those loaded dice to win the money I had made selling pot that I had planned to buy my first car with. Later when some of the other boys told me he had been bragging to his city friends about how he cheated me out of all my car money I would break into his home every chance I got after finding out what he had done.
There was Thurman and Larry Bagby, my 2nd cousins. As little boys we did a lot of fishing together and would quietly sneak into a few places that didn't allow any fishing. Thurman and me were always fighting with each other and friends a few minutes later. There was the Routen boys; Red, Paul, Jimmy and Stamp, Tim Graham and Howell Gordon and Tom Tungate and Donald Weathington and the Rabbith boys Bow, John, David, Tim and Carl, Wayne, Joe and David Rakes. Most of us had motorcycles and would get together and ride the old logging roads.
Now I'll list some of the colorful names of my friends from Bradfordsville and the roller skating rink.
Sherman Clarkston was a Vietnam vet who I met at the popular swimming hole under the first iron bridge at Bradfordsville and offered me a beer at age 13 and I rolled up a fat joint and shared with him. We would become life long friends after that. Next was Kevin Glasscocks AKA Cocky. He was the fighter, Slick Clarkston was Sherman's younger brother, Coy Wayne Glasscocks was Kevin's older brother the bow hunter. There was the Wiser boys Willy, Johnny, Head. There was Bugger Ann Wiser, Nub something, sister to Minnesota Fats, Shelia Mattingly, the beautiful Glenda May Larries who always bought pot from me every time I went to Bradfordsville. Her brother was James Harold There was Chubby, Pup, Bengie Bluetick Bright, Cletus and Fat Rabbit. And my old girlfriend Teresa Morgan, the local slut. And the list goes on and on.
MY MANY FIGHTS
The unofficial Mayor of Bradfordsville was Dawton Rakes AKA The Bird. He owned the corner gas station and store. It was the local hang out with pool table and pinball machines and of course a juke box. It was always buzzing with customers.
Now I'll list my many fights. First one was with Jeff Jones in the first grade. I bloodied his nose and he ran home. He lived right next to the Elementary School at Mannsville. Next was with Keith Cox that same year. His older brother told me to call him by his nickname and he punched me in the face, I took off up the road for Tallow Creek and the principal came in his car and picked me up and made me go back.
2nd grade David Rakes beat me up at the seesaw during recess 3rd grade. I gave a older boy, George Gribbons, a bloody nose and had to run when Roger Spurling jumped in. The 7th grade we had to ride the bus 15 miles to the new junior high in Campbellsville, the city boys wanted to pick on us until I gave several a beating. Then I made a big mistake when a boy much bigger than me jumped on me, I put him on his butt 2 times and let him get up. When I should have finished him off while he was down. On the 3rd round he was able to bite my nose half way off, no joke! And he had no front teeth. His name was Lawrence Dotson, I beat him severely for biting my nose and on occasion years later whenever I saw him.
When I hit 7th grade all the other boys my age were a foot taller than me. But that made me faster and I regularly gave them a whipping anytime they tried me. I have what's called heavy hands. In the 9th grade Jeff Jones put it on me. I felt it was due to my not having eaten anything all day so I tried him again the next day and gave him a beating. Around 16, Scott Wilson attempts to whip me because Paul D. said I had stolen a $100 bill from him. Scott was older and 40 pounds heavier. He thought he was some sort of Karate expert so when he went into his kick stance I hit him right in the nose. Blood starts pouring. That was the end of it, he didn't want anymore.
Later I found out Teresa had taken Paul D's $100 bill one night when we were out drinking. Next was when I had gotten out of prison that first time and was drinking beer in the parking lot in front of Sam's Dinner and my cousin Angel Gibbons was getting slapped around by her boyfriend Troy. So I stepped in and told him to stop. He was another one who thought he knew Karate and went into his kick stance and I laid him on his butt and was standing over him ready to put his lights out but uncle Doyle Gribbons grabbed my arm and held it.
Next my friends Biggin Burris and Darrell Gribbons. We are at ole Hickey's. I had a disagreement with someone over a girl named Tina Bryant and he had 2 of his friends try to beat me up. I saw them coming and dropped both of them in the blink of a eye. They made all of us leave and we went to the parking lot and I gave the one named Jeff Sprowles a beating. Biggin had to hold the 2nd one back. After I finished with his friend he didn't want any part of me.
Next was when that brand new bouncer Doodle Turner at Whispering Pines hit me in the ear when I wasn't looking while I was explaining to Ole May that Charlie Bagby just cut someone with a beer bottle. I had walked out to the parking lot to wake up my cousin Roy Garrett who was passed out in his car to let him know what had happened and to get out of there before the cops came but now this new bouncer wouldn't let me come back inside. Just then out of nowhere he hits me in the ear and my automatic reflex hit him in the nose breaking it. Blood pouring he tries to shoot me I end up with his job.
INJURIES AND MEDICAL ISSUES
In my lifetime I have had many injuries and several close calls with death. My first injury was when aunt Josephine shook me like a rag doll. I was born with a S-shaped spine none as scoliosis. When I was in the 3rd grade Tom Tungate did one of those wrestling moves he saw on the wrestling matches on TV called a bear hug. He was older than I was and very stocky and strong. He put that bear hug on me, wrapping his arms around the middle of my body and picked me off the ground. Then squeezed as hard as he could and I heard a cracking sound and felt a sharp pain in my spine. When he put me down I could hardly stand. I have had lots of back pain all my life from that.
In the 7th grade I got on the football team. All the other boys were taller and heavier than I was. My very first practice they broke my leg. When I was 14 I had a bad motorcycle wreck on a Suzuki 250 dirt bike. The road was wet from rain. I was running about 60 and came around a sharp curve. There was a big Buick Station wagon stopped in the middle of the road, dropping off a factory worker. All I could do was lay it down. It slid under the back end catching my foot in between the bikes motor and that big bumper of that station wagon, crushing it in several places. Luckily I was wearing a helmet, or it would have killed me. I was slammed up against the rear end of that station wagon with so much force, it split my helmet in half. I was taken by ambulance to the Hospital in Campbellsville.After they saw how bad my foot was damaged, they transported me to the University Hospital in Louisville. They thought I would lose my foot. I spent 2 weeks in Intensive care.
Next was the taking of the sleeping pills with the rat poison, next was age 19 in prison in Kentucky and a homemade gun called a zip gun explodes when I'm loading it. The explosion is so powerful it blows me backward 10 feet and a piece of shrapnel goes all the way through my right lung, collapsing it, and lodged next to the sack around my heart. And it is still there today. At age 25 I have a truck wreck and hit a huge oak tree head on at 60 miles per hour. The front end is wrapped all the way around that tree. I only received a broken arm and leg.
At age 27 in Florida prison, I get in a fight, I break my hand so bad the bone comes through the skin. I had to go to a outside hospital for surgery and get pins put in to fix the broken bones. I walked around 2 weeks trying to get medical help, but the nurse said it was only bruised.
At age 47 I attempt suicide by a Narcotics overdose. Medical had to restart my heart. I'm sent to Jacksonville memorial hospital, was put in a medically induced coma for 14 days to get the swelling of my brain to go down. I catch double pneumonia, then blood clots form in both lungs.
Age 49 appendix ruptured, medical staff ignored my calls for help. Got lucky when the top Medical director happened to show up for a visit to the prison. He had me on my way to Jacksonville memorial hospital by ambulance 5 minutes after examining me. I spent 4 hours in emergency surgery due to gangrene setting in and spreading to many organs.
Age 51 another suicide attempt from cutting my wrist and came very close to bleeding out.
Age 52 I started having chest pains but was ignored by medical staff for several weeks. Finally I got seen by nurse Tucker who saw I was not faking it like the other nurses said I was. She sent me by ambulance to Jacksonville memorial hospital where they said I have congestive heart failure. They put me on medications and the chest pains have slowed.
For the past 2 years I have had severe abdominal pain and intestinal trouble. Once again Medical staff has ignored my plea for help. When they were treating me for the heart failure, they were giving me Potassium Chloride by IV and the drip was set too fast, making it feel like battery acid was dripping into my vein. This is the very same drug they inject in your arm when they execute you by lethal injection, only it's more concentrated and a larger dose. So the first drug paralyzes you so you can't scream from the burning pain of the potassium Chloride and the final drug stops your breathing. They have to know the Potassium Chloride creates a very painful burning effect, but I guess that's the plan. Hopefully one of my health problems prevents this ending.