Daddy said he was born April 26, 1927, about a mile up Old Slab, a tributary of Slab Fork Creek, near the Wyoming-Raleigh County border in West Virginia. My Grandpa Keaton was Herbert Keaton and my Grandma Keaton was Lula McKinney Keaton. They lived in a small cabin until Daddy was about six years old. Several neighbors helped Herbert build a larger log cabin. I think it was first built as two rooms with a connecting enclosed space. By the time I came along, a kitchen, a dining room, and a bedroom had been added. I believe electric power was extended to Grandpa’s house after WW II. Grandpa’s house burned in the mid- 1950s while no one was home. My grandparents lost all they had but the clothes they had on and the truck Grandpa was driving.
Daddy said he was born in a small log cabin. When he was about six, his dad and some other men built a larger log cabin, and the family moved into it. He and his family attended Birchfield Grade School, which is located about half a mile up Old Slab. Some of the school’s standard lunches were buttermilk and bread, beans and cornbread, and the whole family ate out of a communal bucket.
While Daddy was hunting, he fell and broke the front site on the rifle he had, which was his brother Henry’s .22 rifle. He didn’t want anyone to find out so he quietly took the rifle back into the house and ordered a new site for it from Sears and Roebuck for under a dollar. When it came, he took a hammer and a nail and drove the front site sideways out of its dovetail mount. He then inserted the new site into the old mount and tapped it until it appeared to be centered. He shot it two or three times to check for accuracy and it was as good as it ever had been. He was relieved to be able to do that without being found out.
When Daddy was about twelve-years-old, Grandma’s brother, Okla was visiting the family. Grandma had a miscarriage while Grandpa was at work. Uncle Okla handed Daddy the keys to his car and told him to drive while Uncle Okla was in the back seat trying to care for Grandma. Daddy liked to drive, but protested that he didn’t have a driver’s license. Daddy drove to Slab Fork and waited for an ambulance from Beckley. That was the closest an ambulance could get to their house, which was about four miles from Slab Fork. Grandma recovered.
Daddy’s brother, Henry, was killed in August after the D-Day invasion of France. Daddy’s Daddy’s sister Edna’s husband was killed about the same time as Henry. Daddy’s oldest brother, Basil, was killed in February, 1945. As soon as Daddy turned seventeen, he quit school in the 11th grade and enlisted in the US Navy. He told me he felt like it was his duty to represent his family in the war.
He went to Great Lakes Naval Station for boot camp. He finished shortly after Japan surrendered and the war ended. He was assigned to the USS Pine Island, which was a Sea-Plane tender. He went to Saipan, Shanghai, China and Tokyo, Japan. Daddy accumulated quite a few souvenirs. One day at his barracks, they all had to stand inspection. There was an outbreak of uveitis, inflammation of the middle layer of the eye. He was rushed to an airplane and flown to the island of Guam.
He stayed in a hospital on Guam for a few days and boarded a hospital ship bound for San Francisco. As he was leaving the ship, he took his baggage claim ticket to the baggage department. The man working there brought one bag to the counter. Daddy asked where his other bag was. The man said he should have one ticket for each bag he brought onto the ship. Daddy realized he was the victim of a robbery, but there was nothing he could do about it. The bag he received contained his clothing. The bag he did not get held his souvenirs.
One day, Daddy was lighting firecrackers and throwing them onto a passing coal train from the top of a rock at Wise Bailey’s Cliff. The cliffs were named because Wise Bailey (my Aunt Cora Cook’s husband) was reputed to have made moonshine there. Daddy had one firecracker left and as he lit it, he saw the caboose coming. He wanted to scare the men in the caboose, so he held the firecracker a little bit too long. Just as he was preparing to throw it, the firecracker went off in his hand. Daddy told me that it really, really hurt.
When he was about six, Daddy and his mother were returning home one evening. Daddy was ahead of Grandma on the road when he was shot with a shotgun. A man was hunting in the woods above the road and Daddy had apparently flushed a grouse, which the hunter shot. By coincidence, Daddy was on the other side of the grouse. He was shot with two pellets, one in his forehead and the other in his upper arm. Grandma was hysterical. Grandpa loaded him on a horse and took him to a doctor. As he passed his Uncle Virgil’s house, everybody came out to see what was going on. Daddy said he just smiled real big and said, almost proudly, “I got shot.” The doctor removed the shotgun pellet from his forehead but left the one in his arm, saying it would never cause him any problem.
My great grandfather Henry J. Keaton played the fiddle. My grandfather Herbert Keaton played the banjo. Everybody in Herbert’s family played at least one stringed instrument, except Grandma and Daddy’s oldest brother, Basil. Henry was the leader of the family’s musicians.
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