7. Before The Beginning

The Poe Kat's father, Nelson Poe, was a traveling preacher and musician. He appeared on the radio throughout the mid-west. Nelson wasn't the best role model for my father and often was away from his family for years at a time. My grandmother, Ruth Lucille Poe, finally divorced him. The one piece of advice he gave my dad stuck with him, "In show business, if someone can get one rung up the ladder by climbing over your back, they will do it." Of course, that goes without saying these days, but I thought that was a pretty perceptive remark to be made in the 1930's.

My dad's maternal grandfather, Daniel Bridgeman, could have given W.C. Fields a run for his money. He was always coming up with one outlandish scheme or another. One of his best was to buy watermelons and strategically lay them out in the weeds by his home. He would then make a big show of cutting the non-existent watermelon vine and bringing the produce to his customers. Many people would return to say that they were the best fresh-picked watermelons they had ever had.

But Grandpa Bridgeman was also a poet of sorts. Some of his poems are on display at a museum in his hometown of Vinita, Oklahoma. One of my favorite poems is one of his shortest: "Turn back, turn back, O time in its flight - and make me a child once more for tonight." Grandpa Bridgeman went out for a walk one night on the train tracks. Being completely deaf at the time, he didn't hear the train coming. A nice lawyer man got a big settlement from the railroad. For himself. The family got nothing...