Daddy Bailey told him that he’d be glad to and had Mamma Bailey get the record collection for him. She waddled across the room while suffering from arthritis. Tom would’ve helped her had he thought of it fast enough. Daddy Bailey scolded her for not wearing her slippers. He’d always been critical of her for something. “Careful! Careful!” If he could’ve gotten out of bed, he would’ve helped. Obviously she still waited on him. That hadn’t changed with aging, and she was used to it. She finally brought Tom a complete set of recordings of the Bible.
Close upon his discovery of Whitman, Tom began to read the Bible from cover to cover. No other books besides the Bible and the World Book Encyclopedia existed in the Hayes home. The World Book Encyclopedia was authoritative, and the Word, if followed, was always right and infallible…and Tom would’ve been badgered if he didn’t say he believed that.
Before he ended up in the hill country, Daddy Bailey established churches all over Oklahoma and Texas. He relied on the New Testament, though his sternness made him seem old fashion, and as a subject of debate he was often characterized as being very strict. Though loved by them, he could be rougher than hell on his children, but could he help it? Hadn’t his father also been strict? And his sons? Didn’t all of them rebel? And weren’t all of them alcoholics? But they saw him as a benevolent tyrant. Of course the depression was a rough time for all of them, and none of them set out to cross him. They simply saw it as part of who he was, in his role as head of the household: “that I’m not what they call me,” he always maintained. He didn’t think that he could be justly called a horrible tyrant, and all of his boys had their own problems.
Daddy Bailey came west in 1900, and a hundred years later that event still would be talked about. In 1900 God is Love was real, and he found the love of Christ at a tent revival, and some of the churches he founded are still going strong today.
It was a beautiful place, the river and the limestone hills deep in the heart of Texas hill country. Daddy Bailey ran a small store and a one-pump gas station in the middle of an S curve and across the highway from a summer camp, where “boys don’t wait to be great and instead are great boys.” He’d squeezed the gas station and the store between a hill and the highway and a rock stairway led up to the rock house. The store was tiny and even small after Tom’s father helped expand it the day before his wedding. There were many emergency items in the store because cars broke down more frequently back then than they do now.
In a letter to his mom, Tom wrote that he remembered her bothers. But there were some gaps. There were good reasons for that because Tom only knew them when they were adults. Albert fought in World War I, and his sister Jill (Tom’s mother) had great respect for him. When he returned home from the war, he became Superintendent of Schools and had a great command of the language. Curiously enough, he took it on himself to tutor his baby sister, Tom’s mom. Tom supposed his uncle did his best. It must’ve been frustrating for him. By jimmy! It never made sense to Tom why his mother couldn’t write a sentence when she came from a fairly educated family. Her oldest sister also taught school, while in that arena the baby of family was left far behind, or so it seemed. Imagine Albert, Tom’s uncle trying to teach his baby sister to write basic English. Don’t suppose he took it lightly. Damn! Tom thought it was pathetic that his mother couldn’t write a sentence. And she tried to pass it on to him, damn it! His mother also said that she couldn’t spell, and she couldn’t. And O what did that mean for Tom? He didn’t know whether he felt more inclined to laugh or cry, but he knew how frustrating it made him feel.
What would he be, if he couldn’t get into college? He’d have to get in. He’d have to talk his way in. It was as if he had a pistol to his head and was threatening to shoot if they didn’t let him in. None of what the dean said to him made sense because he didn’t realize that his English was substandard, and as a prolific poet, what was he to do? Here was a major barrier, or did he really need an education? His parents insisted that he did. Only did he need to go to Baylor? Again his mother said that he did.
The camp across the highway, however, promoted greatness and straddled the Guadalupe River. In the summer Daddy Bailey did a thriving business catering to people who came to the area to enjoy the hills and to camp and swim in the river, or from boys from the camp from across the highway. He had enough foresight to start building his business before he retired from the ministry. That was not surprising because he never lacked ambition, and always had projects as evident by how he made his future son-in-law work the day before his wedding. In spite of his beliefs he’d also unlock his gas pump on Sunday afternoons and thus was ready to help people in trouble.
Jim told his son about the wall that he helped build for Daddy Bailey and took him over and showed it to him, pointing out the quality of the workmanship.
“It’s good to have a trade son, something that you can fall back on. You can’t depend on anyone else but yourself. You can’t wait to be great.”
Then he took Tom into the store and took a coke out of the ice cooler and paid for the drink by putting a quarter in a jar.
Accepting the coke, Tom said, “Daddy Bailey is like you Dad!”
“Yes, we both know the meaning of quarters.”
Randy Ford
