Or by Any Electronic Or Mechanical Means Including Information Storage and Retrieval

SMILE FOR ME, I’M CRYING

MARK RANEY

Copyright 2000 Mark Raney. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form

or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval

systems without permission in writing from Mark Raney.

TO DONNA

CHAPTER ONE

During the years that Keith was away from his hometown, and traveling from one construction job site to another, whenever anyone asked where he was from, he would say, 'Jacksonville, North Carolina.' The other person would say, 'Never heard of it.' So Keith would say, 'It's a small town on the coast, the Camp Lejeune Marine Base is there.' But the other person would only say, 'Oh.', and that would be the end of that conversation. And somewhere inside, Keith would wish that he were from a town with an uncommon name like Paducah or Okarche or Staunton. But Andrew Jackson was our Seventh President, and he was very popular with the people when strong leadership was exactly what our young democracy needed to bring itself even closer together, so all of the first States had a town named Jacksonville. But only the one in Florida achieved real prominence, and the others would forever live in its shadow. But the Postal Sorters there must stay fed up with having to redirect every other Jacksonvilles' mail.

Jacksonville, North Carolina would have remained only a County Seat and an agricultural crossroads had it not been for World War Two. Camp Pendleton, California had long been a Marine Corps Base on the West Coast. But soon after December 7, 1941, it was decided that the nation must have a Marine Corps Base on the East Coast. But War or no War, the Politicians knew better than confiscate commercially or politically important land. And there simply was not any more from every respect unimportant land than that in Onslow County, North Carolina. So the Bureaucrats were sent in to take Federal ownership of all the land from Jacksonville to the sea in one direction, and from the fishing village of Swansboro to the wide place in the road of Dixon in the other direction. Two hundred square miles in all. A vast new Marine Base to match a vast new War. The several score of farm families whose forefathers had settled that land beginning in the seventeen hundreds were bluntly told, 'You have thirty days to vacate, voluntarily or involuntarily, but thirty days hence, you will be gone.' And they were.

During the early nineteen thirties, though, Keith's Dad was married and running a small town gas station in his hometown in south Georgia. Keith's Mom had just married and she and her soon to be wanderer husband were living off her family in Wilson, North Carolina. When Keith's Dad came home early one night from the station, he found his wife in bed with another man. He would later say that his choices were to kill them or to leave, he chose to leave. He filed for divorce, sold the station, sold his share in the family farm, and began to work his way west. While this was going on, the wanderings of Keith's Mom's husband landed them in San Diego, California, where with still more money borrowed from her family they put a down payment on a string of three gas stations. But even though the effects of the Depression had begun to ease, people still were not traveling and buying gas very much yet, so the venture soon went broke. So Keith's Mom's husband decided to go wandering alone the way a true wanderer should wander. So Keith's Mom filed for divorce, sold two of the stations to pay off the third, plus her family's down payment, then stayed and ran it rather than face 'I told you sos' back home. While this was going on Keith's Dad had worked his way to San Diego by helping to erect the Western Union high lines across Texas and New Mexico and Arizona. Once in San Diego, he got a job with the Sun Oil Company driving a tanker truck that delivered gas to stations. Slow down, you're getting ahead of me. Keith's Mom and Dad were married in Tijuana, then his two sisters were born, then he was born. And Keith would never lose the feeling of how romantically predestined it all was.

By the time World War Two started, Keith's Mom and Dad had been out of the gas station and gas delivery business for more than a year, they figuring that it already had played enough of a role in their lives, and Keith's Dad was working as an Electrician at Camp Pendleton. When his Dad heard about the new Base of Camp Lejeune, he applied for and received a transfer there. Because California had never seemed like home. And now they would be much closer to their families. So Keith was raised on the stories of the Tent City that Camp Lejeune was when it began. As fast as construction workers could clear land and build facilities, Marines moved into these facilities and continued their accelerated training, while Civil Service Employees began to maintain and to expand these facilities. It was a massive human effort indeed. And with it Jacksonville became the overnight boomtown that it is even today. But the original residents did not like it then, and they still do not, but no one has ever thought to ask them their preference. They were the Kellums, who continued to be the school teachers and the clerks of court. And the Johnsons, who continued to be the morticians and the druggists. And the Sabistons, who continued to have their hardware store. And the Starlings, who continued to have their feed and seed store. And the Mortons, who continued to be the handy men. But it was the outsiders who put the small ‘b' in boomtown, that within several years would become a capital 'B.' It was the Margolis, who came and started a Men's Shop. And the Hartsfields, who came and started a Jewelry Store. And the Leders, who came and started a Department Store. And the Carbones, who came and started an Italian Restaurant. And the Popkins who came and started a Furniture Store. The Boom had started, the sprawl had begun, and whatever purpose that Jacksonville had served before, its new purpose was to separate the Marines from their money as quickly and efficiently as possible. But the original residents did not like it then, and they still do not even today.

Then, as more and more facilities at Camp Lejeune were built, and more and more Civil Service Employees were hired to maintain and to expand them, it soon became necessary to build also a big housing project for the families of these employees. It was called Midway Park after the terrible price that the Marines paid at Midway Island in the Pacific. It was a very large oval of five hundred well spaced houses, with each house neat and compact and having a lawn. And in time all of these separate families who had gathered here from all over the country, became a distinct family of families of their own. Because they were the families whose fathers and husbands had come during World War Two to maintain and to expand the new Base that Camp Lejeune had become. And this was what they shared that bound them together. They were the Kirks, and the Blakes, and the Peeles, and the Roysters, and the Hendersons, and the Peedins, and the Heckles, and the Propsts, and the Barringers, and the Vanns, and the Barkers, and Keith's Mom and Dad, the Stephensons, and so many other families. And the lives of their hundreds of children, as well as the lives of their children also, would be always linked to the closeness of those years at Midway Park, and to the vastness of Camp Lejeune, and to the sprawl of Jacksonville.

Having its economy tied so directly to Camp Lejeune was great for Jacksonville during the feast years of a national emergency. Because War of whatever size meant more Marines, which meant prosperity for the local businessmen. But after the feast years came the famine years, when there was not an emergency of any size or even the prospect of one. Dreaded Peace had come. So the sprawl that had serged would slow, then stop, then begin to wither. And the local businessmen, who had so recently been the very best of friends, or at least outwardly so, would begin to withdraw within themselves. Because another financial shake-out was coming, and only the most cunning would survive, and it would be dog eat dog, and they could not allow the bankruptcy of anyone else to bankrupt them. And it was during these famine years that the smell of personal greed in Jacksonville became as strong and wide spread as the stench of a southern paper mill. But always there was another national emergency, War again!, just in time and welcomed and blessed and even cheered by the local businessmen, to serge the sprawl yet farther and even bigger and better and gaudier then before.

It was during these years of extremes that Keith's Dad was promoted from Electrician to Lineman to Head Electrician. On weekends and days off, he wired for lights many of the old farm houses of Onslow County that had never before known the miracle of electricity, for the extra income that this provided the family. And since Keith frequently went along as his helper, then Keith was raised knowing how to drive ground rods and to run wires and to wire main panels. Just as Keith was raised hearing the harsh shop talk of the steam fitter fathers and the painter fathers and the brick mason fathers and the maintenance men fathers who lived all around him there in Midway Park. The summer after he turned sixteen, Keith got his first real job as a gofor at the sawyard at the job site of a huge new helicopter hanger on Base. And he was relaxed with the organized confusion that is construction. And the methodical, day by day, step by step, building, pouring, shaping and completing excited Keith. Because he was raised understanding sweat and dirt and labor, and men who swear hard and wear heavy work boots.

Keith went to State College in Raleigh to study Civil Engineering after graduating from high school. But the theories were just too far from the actual. The study halls just too far from the blueprints. The books just too far from the workers. So after his second year he quit State, and took a job as carpenter foreman with Starr Construction Company out of Charlotte. Bobby Starr had started the Company after serving with the Sea Bees in the Pacific, to take advantage of the post war construction that was still continuing at Camp Lejeune and Fort Bragg and Parris Island and Quantico. He got big enough, fast enough to weather the slow down before Korea, then he became solidly placed with Korea’s construction boom. So he diversified into private construction, to balance the feast or famine of military construction. Keith's first job with Starr was on a textile plant expansion in Monroe, North Carolina. After that, there was a fifteen year blur of job sites for Keith. A power plant expansion in Augusta, Georgia. A newspaper building in Roanoke, Virginia. A technical college in Sanford, North Carolina. A dock facilities expansion in Mayport, Florida. A garment plant in Greenville, South Carolina. As well as others. And the promotions came regularly. When his Mom and Dad were killed in a car accident in 1970, Keith was Superintendent on a high rise office building in Greensboro, North Carolina.

CHAPTER TWO

It isn't that it is more difficult to make good friends after our teens and early twenties, it's just that by then we have become so preoccupied with ourselves that we really don't want to spend our valuable time on anyone else.

And part of a Bank Officer's job is to be outgoing and to appear friendly, while never forgetting that their first loyalty is always and ever to the Bank. But Keith and Richard Hansen right away became good friends anyway. Keith had already been to Sunday dinner with Richard's family. Richard had already been spot and croaker fishing with Keith at Swansboro. Richard started as Teller at Bank of North Carolina’s Branch in Boone. Much later he became Branch Manager in Winston-Salem. Recently he had come to Jacksonville as Vice President and Commercial Loan Officer. The other part of a Bank Officer's job is to be solemn and to frequently say 'no.' But Richard Hansen smiled easily, and he said 'yes' as often as he could. So now Keith stopped by the Bank at least once a week, and he and Richard would go back to the break area for coffee.

"So the year after my folks were killed, I told Bobby Starr that I was tired of the traveling and wanted to come home and start my own company. He was all for it, and most of my tools and equipment were bought as surplus from Starr Construction. Even my two trucks are old Starr trucks. Working for Bobby, though, all I had to do was build the buildings. Now I have to do everything, hiring, building, payroll, buying, contracts, collecting, everything. I'm on the run from early until late. We still talk by phone every couple of months. But he still doesn't think that my concentrating on speculative homes is wise. Just too risky like musical chairs, he says, when the music stops I'll get stuck with the unsold homes. But when he started he didn't have to put up the large bonds to do military construction that are required now. He offered to let me do work at Camp Lejeune under his bond, as a safer way for me to get started. But then I'd still be just working for him. If the spec homes continue selling for another year or so, I'll be able to afford myown bond."

"If they don't?"

"I'm gambling they will."

"But if they don't, Keith, you lose everything. We will wind up owning the homes. But we're Bankers, not Realtors, and we'll dump them for whatever we can get to cut our losses."

"Well, the economy continues to look good. And the homes are selling about as fast as I can finish them. Jerry never hesitated on the other loans, now the two new ones I got from you. Oh yeah, the lumber for one of the homes was delivered yesterday. The block men will finish the foundation today. The carpenters will start the joists and floor tomorrow, then come up with the walls. It will be dried in within a week. The lumber for the other home should be delivered by Friday."

"Fine. Keith, you're the best organized builder I've ever dealt with. No delays, no lost time, very efficient. And we will give you as many loans as you want. But that is based on the present outlook. You have built, sold and paid the loans on twelve homes in the past two years. Right now your credit is unlimited. All I'm saying is be very, very careful. The Review Board upstairs reviews all spec home loans every sixty days. Just a hint of a slowdown in the economy, and they will call in your loans. And there won't be anything I can do to stop them."

"Sure it's a gamble, Richard, and I stay half scared all the time. But in building you have to get big enough fast enough during the booms to weather the slowdowns. The gamble is whether you will have enough time. Oh yeah, something else, I'm talking with a man about buying twenty acres of land from him off Highway 17 south of town. It's high land, well wooded, fronted by State Road 1152. After roads and easements and remaining woods, I should get twelve half acre home sites out of it. I'll build four homes at a time, at three month intervals. This will be my .first real development. I'll call it White Oak."

"Cecil Jenkins. I've already heard, people talk. My first thought is that it's too far from town."

"There's quite a bit of building in that direction. Beacham's building those thirty apartments out passed the old Highway Department Garage. And I can get the land at a good price now, but in another year or so I couldn't.

"All right. Let me know how much you need, and when you need it."

"Richard, I do stay half scared all the time."

"In your position, I would too."

CHAPTER THREE

Keith did home repair jobs for the first several months he was back in Jacksonville. These kept him busy while he settled into being home again, and provided some income while he decided the proper direction for his company. It wasn't long before Issac Kellum was calling Keith at least once a week to come do small jobs at his huge apartment house on Ward Street in the old section of Jacksonville. Issac was well passed seventy five at the time, but still active and fit. And he still wore the dark blue suits and dark blue ties that he had worn for all the years that he had been a school teacher. He was short and very erect, and still always all business about everything. Keith had never known him to joke or to laugh openly, and only rarely did an almost smile happen.