I grew up in Magnolia, Mississippi and I wasn't aware as a child but I was spoiled. The third child, the baby, and the only boy. My father's father had been the only son in his family of 10 kids so the continuation of the Gardner name fell on his shoulders. My father had three brothers and two sisters but one of his brothers, Uncle Paul never had children, one of his brothers Uncle Preacher had three girls and his baby brother, Uncle Roy had two boys. We three boys now owned that burden of carrying on the name so we got special treatment and besides, we were growing up in the fifties when all males were enjoying a lot of male privileges. When I think back on my childhood a certain birthday present stands out as illustrative of my treatment in the family.
Eight years old I remember vividly riding in the middle of the front seat of our car. I was sitting on the lowered armrest between Mother and Daddy with my sisters Joy and Jinya Lea in the back seat. We were on a gravel road which means most likely headed to my grandparents' home in Liberty for Sunday dinner. Daddy was driving and Mother was hassling me about needing to decide what I wanted for my upcoming birthday. She had been asking for weeks and I hadn't come up with an answer. I wasn't trying to be difficult it was just that I had pretty much everything that I wanted. Mother was being particularly insistent that day and I began to feel panicky, I couldn't imagine that she would make good on her threat to not get me anything but I didn't want to push it too far.
I looked out the window and saw a kid climbing from under a card table. The card table was covered with a plastic tarp with logs drawn on it and a door with a sign above it reading "Davy Crockett's Log Cabin." Now I had been a Davy Crockett fan from way back. I had a coon skin hat for the Magnolia Centennial in 1957, and I wore that cap until it fell apart. The day of the Centennial parade, I actually fished the cap out of the toilet and wore it in the parade! In grade school, I had a lunch box with Crockett firing at a grizzly bear painted on one side and in the middle of a knife fight with an Apache painted on the other side. I was very proud of that lunch box - so proud that the only physical fight I ever got in was over it! So you get the picture that I loved Davy Crockett!
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| 1956 - Mother, me (in coon-skin cap pulled from toilet a couple of hours before this photo), and my sister Joy. |
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| 2017 - I loved my lunch box so much I've kept it for 57 years so far! |
I blurted out, "I'd like a log cabin for my birthday." My vision of this log cabin was the tarp over a table like the one I had seen on the road to Liberty but the next week construction started in the far back of our yard. Four men cleared a spot, built a pier and beam floor and started hauling logs cut down on our farm a few miles outside Magnolia. When it was finished it was quite a playhouse! Built out of real logs (caulked with concrete), a tin roof, electricity for a central light fixture and two wall plugs, two windows that opened with curtains, and a sign above the door that read,"Bill's Log Cabin." It was ten by ten and located about 15 feet beyond our wading pool.
We had so many adventures camping out in the Log Cabin, playing Cowboys and Indians, and starting clubs. Once when I had outgrown the playhouse stage we housed a calf from our farm that was rejected by her heifer mother in the cabin. We put hay on the floor and tried to save the calf with bottle feed but she did not survive. Later when we added a swimming pool the cabin became a changing room and storage shed for pool chemicals. After my folks died and we sold the property Auline Scott who worked for my family moved the cabin to her house. As far as I know, it's still storing stuff.
What a great childhood to be loved and spoiled but I honestly thought at the time that every other kid my age got the same treatment.
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