Like the only time we ever went fishing...
Like the only time we ever went fishing togetherThe only time we ever went out into the woods to cut our own Christmas tree togetherThe only time our whole family took an out-of-state vacation togetherThere were so many things that meant a lot to me but were never to occur againRoger Clinton really loved me and he loved Mother, but he couldnt ever quite break free of the shadows of self-doubt, the phony security of binge drinking and adolescent partying, and the isolation from and verbal abuse of Mother that kept him from becoming the man he might have been

One night his drunken self-destructiveness came to a head in a fight with my mother I cant ever forgetMother wanted us to go to the hospital to see my great-grandmother, who didnt have long to liveDaddy said she couldnt goThey were screaming at each other in their bedroom in the back of the chanel classic bags houseFor some reason, I walked out into the hall to the doorway of the bedroomJust as I did, Daddy pulled a gun from behind his back and fired in Mothers directionThe bullet went into the wall between where she and I were standingI was stunned and so scaredI had never heard a shot fired before, much less seen oneMother grabbed me and ran across the street to the neighborsThe police were calledI can still see them leading Daddy away in handcuffs to jail, where he spent the night

Im sure Daddy didnt mean to hurt her and he would have died if the bullet had accidentally hit either of usBut something more poisonous than alcohol drove him to that level of debasementIt would be a long time before I could understand such forces in others or in myselfWhen Daddy got out of jail he had sobered up in more ways than one and was so ashamed that nothing bad happened for old omega some time

I had one more year of life and schooling in HopeI went to first grade at Brookwood School; my teacher was Miss Mary WilsonAlthough she had only one arm, she didnt believe in sparing the rod, or, in her case, the paddle, into which she had bored holes to cut down on the wind resistanceOn more than one occasion I was the recipient of her concern

In addition to my neighbors and Mack McLarty, I became friends with some other kids who stayed with me for a lifetimeOne of them, Joe Purvis, had a childhood that made mine look idyllicHe grew up to be a fine lawyer, and when I was elected attorney general, I hired Joe on my staffWhen Arkansas had an important case before the USupreme Court, I went, but I let Joe make the argumentJustice Byron Whizzer White sent me a note from the bench saying that Joe had done a good jobLater, Joe became the first omega ladies watch chairman of my Birthplace Foundation

Besides my friends and family, my life on Thirteenth Street was marked by my discovery of the moviesIn 1951 and 1952, I could go for a dime: a nickel to get in, a nickel for a CokeI went every couple of weeks or soBack then, you got a feature film, a cartoon, a serial, and a newsreelThe Korean War was on, so I learned about thatFlash Gordon and Rocket Man were the big serial heroesFor cartoons, I preferred Bugs Bunny, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and Baby Huey, with whom I probably identifiedI saw a lot of movies, and especially liked the westernsMy favorite was High NoonI probably saw it half a dozen times during its run in Hope, and have seen it more than a dozen times sinceIts still my favorite movie, because its not your typical macho westernI loved the movie because from start to finish Gary Cooper is scared to christian dior saddle bag death but does the right thing anyway

When I was elected President, I told an interviewer that my favorite movie was High NoonAt the time, Fred Zinnemann, its director, was nearly ninety, living in LondonI got a great letter from him with a copy of his annotated script and an autographed picture of himself with Cooper and Grace Kelly in street clothes on the High Noon set in 1951Over the long years since I first saw High Noon, when I faced my own showdowns, I often thought of the look in Gary Coopers eyes as he stares into the face of almost certain defeat, and how he keeps walking through his fears toward his dutyIt works pretty well in real life too

I n the summer after my first-grade year, Daddy decided he wanted to go home to Hot SpringsHe sold the Buick dealership and moved us to a four hundredacre farm out on Wildcat Road a few miles west of the tiffany knockoff cit