My Little Town 20111026: Bobby Gene

(9 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a redneck sort of place, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

When I was in grade school in the second through forth or so grade Bobby Gene was one of the pupils.  Hackett was so small that there was only one class for each grade, so everyone of roughly the same age were in the same room.  Bobby Gene was in my class.  I am not using his last name on the distant chance that he might still be living, but even if here were I promise you that he would not read this.

Bobby Gene was what now would be called a special needs student, and I shall explain why later.  He was not a little “slow”, he was profoundly disabled.  He also had some physical problems, such as being very slight, and poor motor coordination.  These days he would be put into a special needs program and not in a regular class.  But we are talking about early 1906s Hackett, Arkansas.

Although research of any depth had not even begun at the time, looking back I now realize the Bobby Gene most likely suffered from the worst case of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) that I have ever observed.  I still have my grade school yearbooks, and class pictures of him (which I am NOT going to post) look like the pictures that you see online when you look up FAS, but on steroids.  Every facial marker was present, and as severe as the worst pictures that I have seen doing research.

Bobby Gene could not read at all, even in the forth grade.  When it was reading time, all the students had a page in the book to read and then the teacher would call on the next student.  Regardless of what story we were reading, we would all turn to the same page in the reader when it was Bobby Gene’s turn, and after the entire term he just about had it by rote.  Even then, the teacher would have to prompt him on some words.  To be clear, regardless whether or not the current story might be on Page 251, Bobby Gene always read from, say, Page 8.

He had speech problems as well, not being able to enunciate most words very well.  He could well enough to make himself understood most of the time, but you had to be used to him to understanding him.  At the time, the term used for people like him was “retarded”, now considered to be a prejudicial term.  At the time, everyone used it.

Bobby Gene did not have enough coordination to play any sport, so he was sort of an outcast at recess.  I could not see well enough to do so (being very myopic and not diagnosed until rather late), so he and I sort of hung out together at recess some times.  I got to know him fairly well, and he was really a sweet child with no anger nor animosity towards anyone.

Of course I am doing diagnoses with only my childhood memories, but I think that I am correct.  Many years later when I became aware of FAS and saw the pictures, I immediately thought of him.  This caused me to do more research, since someone that I knew was severely afflicted.  He had every marker at near if not frankly at the most extreme level.

I think that the fact that he was so fundamentally disabled caused him to be unaware that he was disabled at all, and that is probably a good thing.  He was in many respects, other than size, very much like a two and half year old except he did not have the typical “terrible twos” disposition.  He was pretty quiet, never caused any trouble, and was really nice.

Now, Bobby Gene did do some things pretty well.  He loved music class.  At the time, music class was the teacher (or usually some high school student that could play the old upright piano) playing and the kids singing.  Oft times we sang religious songs (Arkansas is the buckle of the Bible Belt), but sometimes we sang other songs as well.  I remember from second grade that “The Black Duck” was his favorite song, and he memorized it quickly.

I rooted around the tubes and found the lyrics to a song of the same name that is very close to the version that we sang.  In our version, the “oh”s like “town-oh” were replaced by “yo”s, but otherwise it is pretty close.  Since it is an old folk song, that is not surprising.  Here are the lyrics that I found:

One moonshiney night the fox started out;

He prayed for the moon to ‘ford him light,

For he had many miles to travel that night

Before he reached the town-oh.

At last he came to the farmer’s yard

Where the ducks and geese were both a-feerd:

“The best of you will grease my beard

Before I leave the town-oh!”

He seized the old black duck by the neck,

Tore her and swung her across his back.

The old black duck went “Quack, quack, quack!

As the fox sailed through the town-oh.

Old Betty Widdlewaddle jumped out of the bed,

Out of the window she popped her old head.

Says “John, John, John! The black duck’s gone!”

And the fox sailed through the town-oh.

John jumped up and he ran to the hill;

He blew his horn both loud and shrill.

The fox he heard the music shrill

As he sailed through the town-oh.

At last he came to his den

Where the young ones – there were nine or ten –

Tore her up without knife or fork,

and the young ones picked the bones-oh.

I specifically remember the last verse in our version went:

He pulled the black duck into the den

and there were his young ones, eight, nine, ten.

He carved up the duck without a knife,

and the young ones ate the bones-yo

Also in our version we would repeat the last two lines of each stanza once.  Got you!  If you repeat something once, that means that you say it twice.  It is sort of like having two alternatives to a situation.  When that is the case, you have a choice to make.  We commonly use the inaccurate term “to have two choices”.  That is not the case, there are two alternatives, but it requires only one choice to pick which one that we pursue.  But I digress.

Oddly, most of the kids were not mean to Bobby Gene.  You know that kids that age can be very cruel, but for some reason the pretty much gave him a pass and either ignored him or were nice to him.  I have been trying to remember a single incident where kids mistreated him, and do not recall one specifically.

Bobby Gene’s eating habits were not what I would call refined.  Using the two and a half year old analogy, you know what I mean.  The teachers helped him wipe us as he ate.  He could feed himself, but had lots of spills and such.

This is how things happened in My Little Town during that time period.  These days, he would have been put into intensive training with specialists to teach him the basic life skills.  Not then, just mainstreamed with the other kids his age.  They never “flunked” him a grade and make him repeat it, because they knew that with the techniques that they had at the time repeating a grade would not help him at all.  So they just advanced him with his peers.

They also looked the other way when he did not show up for the fifth grade.  Although even Arkansas had truant laws on the books then (you had to go to school until you were at least 14, as I recall, at the time) he just did not attend school any more after the forth grade, and I am guessing that he was ten years old then.  Today we would say that he “slipped through the cracks”, but at that time the cracks were broader than the sidewalk!

Every now and then I wonder whatever happened to Bobby Gene.  Looking at the statistics, he is most likely dead now.  Because of the poor social services at the time, it is unlikely that he was ever able to get the help that he needed to learn how to live at least a bit independently.  These days, he would probably be in a group home for the severely developmentally disabled, but back then he most likely stayed at home, in front of the TeeVee.  I am sure that his parents are long dead, and with no skills for taking care of himself, he is most likely dead or institutionalized now.

It is interesting that FAS was his disability.  His family were sort of outcasts for several generations, being involved in bootlegging since Prohibition.  Most of you know that this term means to smuggle illicit items, but the origin of the term has to do with people literally putting flat bottles of alcohol (usually whiskey) into the uppers of boots and walk them to their destination.  It is usually associated with illegally produced alcohol, but my part of Arkansas was dry, and still is, even after Prohibition.  One of Bobby Gene’s ancestors, I an thinking his grandmother, was a well known bootlegger and would make deliveries in just this way.

The entire family was pretty much pickled all of the time, so it is not surprising but a bit ironic that Bobby Gene was affected physically by what they did for their livelihood.  Bobby Gene was not the only person that issues in My Little Town during this era, and I shall write about at least two more, one a schizophrenic and the other afflicted with cerebral palsy.  In those days, the former one was just “crazy” and the latter one was “spastic”.  My Little Town was not just a redneck place, it was a slice of every other village, town, city, or megalopolis that has ever existed.

Please excuse the stream of consciousness manner of this piece!  I am drawing from memories that I had as a schoolchild over 45 years ago.  These tend not be as vivid as family memories for a couple of reasons.  First, there is no reinforcement from other family members about them.  Second, all of the events happened only once, except for Bobby Gene reading and singing.  Thus, stream of consciousness seemed to be the best approach for me to remembers.

Please add you own recollections about “different” folks from your childhood in the comments!  My readers and I are always interested in learning about other folks’ experiences.

Warmest regards,

Doc, aka Dr. David W. Smith

Crossposted at

The Stars Hollow Gazette,

Daily Kos, and

firefly-dreaming