Larry Keyes and Martha O’Brien

00:17 My name is Martha O'Bryan and 63 years old. Today is July 30th 2008 with the Nashville Public Library, and I'm interviewing Larry Kay's.

00:28 Hi, I'm Moe. Larry Kai's and it's

00:33 30th of July 2008. I'm 55 years old. We're at the Nashville Public Library in Nashville, Tennessee. And Martha is my new friend.

00:44 Larry it's nice to be talking to you. And I know we're going to talk a little bit about your family and especially your mom and dad and your uncle a baby. Who is your father's brother who you really loved. So why don't you begin by describing those three people who are important to you?

01:07 My dad was short little fella he was.

01:12 I'm kind of ready and and kind of stocky and he had this street look about him that made him look kind of like a tough guy, but he had a really soft interior. He was

01:24 The most loving father I could ever hope for he had little gentle ways about him that you wouldn't expect from a man.

01:32 And

01:34 It was even more apparent to me as I got older.

01:38 Because he's a young young boy. I didn't really realize that there could be two sides men to don't like that. But but he was real quiet with me real attentive, but that wasn't his normal Style with other children my brother and sister and with some of his adult friends cuz he grew up a rough-and-tumble life being kind of on his own Clinton, Missouri in the early years of his life in the 20s 30s and his two brothers going to roam the streets and I guess got into a little trouble now and then but

02:11 Anyway, he was that kind of an interesting person. He had this rough exterior and a real soft side to him and his brother the surviving one of the other two siblings in his family was the stall a steer deep-voiced sort of mysterious fellow to me when I was little

02:32 And he seemed the rough part, but he too is a real gentleman in a lot of ways and

02:41 That leads me to think of a story I'll save for later, but my mom on the other hand was just a little.

02:49 Small framed

02:52 Short woman with life and beautiful features when I look at some of her early twenties and thirties pictures and

03:01 But she had this extra Beauty but this real tough interior she was

03:08 She was so unhip in a lot of ways about things that were modern, but she wanted to be modern in the worst way. And so she constantly tried to say or do things that were cool and then she got it messed up totally uncool, but but that was

03:23 A manifestation of her trying to be real tough and self-reliant and independent what she always was everyone I've talked to so that she was that way from the time. She was a young child and when I knew her in her later years fifties and sixties, she did a lot of stuff on her own. She go walkthrough for Miles Every Morning by herself in places that really you shouldn't be walking by yourself if she was fearless and and most of the things he did.

03:51 Would entertain her or pass the time she did on her own, but she loved being around people and especially family, but it's kind of a thumbnail sketch. I guess all those three figures my life important figures in your life. I know we talked briefly about your dad and your uncle a bathing boxers. Tell me a little bit about that kind of story if you remember once you lose a funny story.

04:20 I went to visit my brother in Yellville, Arkansas. He's retired naval officer. We met about 4-5 years ago with my wife and I were blowing through town on the way from somewhere to somewhere and I thought man I got to stop and talk to Jim cuz I don't get to see him very often and so we chatted for a while and we got swapping stories about Dad and Evie and he told me the story that she had told him about Uncle EB being a boxer and I laughed and told him the story of the dad told me about him being a boxer and neither guy had told anybody in the family, except my uncle's real name is Edwin Bledsoe Kai's, but of course with a name like that again.

05:08 But many that some of his friends also calling the Deacon which I'll tell you about later for perhaps

05:17 But he'd only told Jim the story about boxing and my dad only told me so we swapped the stories and it turns out that about the same timeframe. I think probably in the early thirties when my uncle was in De Leon, Texas, which it was a place where railroad Tramp could work in make some decent money cuz there's a lot of activity going on there on the railroad.

05:38 He he was working there and every Friday night people in town would go to this big square box of a building is he described it where they had a boxing ring right in the center of the room and they had places to drink and the people playing cards and dancing and playing music and just kind of a general.

05:59 August bar atmosphere for that time frame and this ring in there was for anybody to get in and just sport box just for the heck of it and my uncle I guess was good enough that he got an errand and did pretty well most of the time whenever you decided to and I he never said that there was any money involved but I bet there was a little side bet and going on but he said that he did that and told him that well, he quit it one time after you get rid of the ring and Jimson will what he how did you get run out of the ring? And he said well there was this big huge guy.

06:31 Way over 6 feet tall and about half that wide and he got in the ring the EB did with this fella in and started the guy started chasing him around the ring and he never boxed and he just was trying to stay away from him. So he finally just said heck with this and jump the ropes and left the building and never came back and was in a weakened later that he left de Leon to and went to you my thing. And my dad on the other hand in the same time frame Now pictures of short little guy 5 foot to say but stocky he won the regimental boxing championship 2 years in a row in the 55th Coast artillery in the Hawaiian Islands. Were you stationed and nobody ever knew about this? They didn't need one bragged about it.

07:17 That's so funny to think of either of those guys doing it special my dad. What are you what did your brother fill you in on what really happened that night and why you left hand know? I think you just got tired of cuz when your railroad tramp and you you're working place for a while and then move on and EB did tell me a story once that.

07:42 I don't remember how I probed him to get this but he said he was in Oklahoma City in the I guess it was the twenties but it was during the oil boom there and I asked him how he liked and he said well it was horrible place. But I I finally got tired of having to carry a gun I left and I said what you mean carrying a pistol cuz he said a pistol and he had to carry on his hip and he said well there was a lot of Native American people coming to the money because they find oil on her property and they walked around town with cash bulging other pockets and people would walk up to him in broad daylight and shoot him in the head with a gun and take all their money in their deeds and Just Keep On Truckin. And so he be in different people that work the railroad would have to carry a sidearm and he just got tired of the atom.

08:27 So I guess that's what you face when you're

08:30 You're moving around work on the Railroad and he got to Yuma and then how much longer was it before your family? Join him there? Well, I'm not sure that anybody alive really knows when he got to Yuma but I know it was probably late 30s cuz that's when railroad was starting to pick up there because even though the war was quite a while quite a ways away at that time. I think that people knew it was coming and you know, you sort of a Crossroads even to this day for Commerce going from California to Texas and Points East Zoe be found a pretty nice home there and there were lots of bars there he could visit cuz he was

09:10 They call him the Deacon because he was anything but a church-going fellows so he love the bars there.

09:18 And

09:20 About 1941 if I remember correctly. He telegram to my dad and Clinton and my dad and mom were married at the time of my older brother and sister were little I probably just infants or Toddlers and the telegram basically said they raised higher hiring age for the SP. Get your butt out here almost verbatim because it was like this is a big deal get out here before the slots get filled up because I think about time they raised it from something like late twenties to up to 35 years old. My dad was MS-13, honey married mom. So by then he was getting almost too old to be hired and the point being it was a lot better money than working in a Flour Mill. He worked in the Laramie Farm Ln Clinton, which was

10:08 Probably Haughton and took a lot of exertion and didn't pay a lot. So so he took a bus or train came out to Yuma and after he hadn't gotten established. He brought his car and drove back and picked up Mom and the kids and and brought them out and that's why I became making my boy. I was born in 53 in the family or their other children that their parents. Will there was one other brother name is Harry Dean that died at a fairly young age. I think of it was in his twenties and he died in a car accident and we don't know why but family Laura says that he was drinking and

10:49 You know good enough asking because of that but battery Dean was in.

10:55 I think he was in the military for a while as young man and travel around a lot and he was so

11:00 Kind of mystery to me because not many people ever talked about him in the family. But so a lot of brothers don't keep in touch as adults. What was the bond between your dad your dad's name was Lymon Burton Keyes.

11:16 Some old style names in a digging through gravestones and family records. I've seen a lot of lyman's out there. It's really strange. How many of them there are in the family. I've never known really what the bond was between my dad and brother except that maybe the three of them are on the street so much when they were young, but I noticed as a young boy, even though I wasn't too hip to interpersonal stuff at that age. I'm talking about as far back as five-years-old that EB just love my dad. I don't know. What's what the what the deal was. We accept it, you know, maybe it's like buddies and War where they they just bonded an early age and it never wears off but

11:56 The EB wood dumb

11:58 Always try to do stuff to help my daddy bought a place DB did it out in the Wakulla Foothills a place outside. You know that nobody wanted to live in the early days cuz it was just some big Hundred Acre profit of Speculator bought and started putting trailers and lean Tucson and Penny be thought this was a great opportunity for a investment turns out he's right cuz now the Foothills is is Hume East so it's a big deal, but he bought my dad a little quarter acre plot of land and tried to give it to him and get him to move out there and my mom would do anything to do with it. So

12:34 That was a short-lived thing. And then when when we left Yuma cuz my dad thought his seniority was enough to keep him employed. We went to Phoenix where he had great seniority end.

12:46 They sold their house there in the bottle place of Mara Arizona, which is I think they planned it to be a retirement place cuz it's about a sixteenth of an acre plot with little one-room house on it and

13:00 BB volume up there and bottle place across the street and put a trailer on it and he come up there at Summers during our vacation and just to be with Dad and the two of us a lifelong love Saban. Let's go back to when they were surviving on the street and what conditions at home cause them to be running wild on the streets as of 9 or 10 year old life take it in the 20 before the depression Clinton was

13:39 Kind of a lower-middle-class hard-working Town Farmers had the flour mill other sort of agribusinesses like that. There wasn't much going on. So it wasn't a lot for boys or for locals for that matter for jobs.

13:56 And so times were probably pretty rough even though

14:00 The depression wasn't full on and

14:04 Besides that their mom died young the fur for the boys and probably run for her too. Cuz I don't think she was that young watching that old when she got married. So their mom was gone and their dad work what they call extra board and the railroad which is overtime and I think he drank a little too so so he was kind of an absentee dad. So the three of them just come together and watch each other's back and

14:29 An interesting story that dad told me many times.

14:34 But I've had very little luck researching because there's not much to dig for there. But their preacher Arthur and Lindsey which was the guy who married my mom and dad later on family preacher in the Presbyterian Church in Clinton.

14:52 Saw these three boys and a lot of others run the streets in those days in back then if you were in a pool hall. It was kind of like a house of ill repute. He could get a lot more trouble there then you can nowadays and he saw them there a lot. So he thought man I've got to do something to get these boys distracted. So he Lindsay cleaned out the

15:14 Attic in his house and Melo Clubhouse up there for the kids and he hung out there with him and tried to get him involved in activities and it went so well that he started getting some of the other neighborhood boys involved and because Lindsay was Mason and well-connected with some of the other

15:32 Brother masons in town. He started talkin the idea around to see if he could get sponsorship and eventually went to Kansas City, Missouri and try to talk to some of the bigwigs there to see if they would throw in with him and they would have nothing to do with it. But later on a guy named Leo land was named the father of demolay, which is the young boys Masonic organization, which Arthur Lindsay my dad's preacher really conceptualized in the early twenties and my dad and eventually join the team way when it became a generalization.

16:09 And he helped me through my days until Monday when I was young.

16:13 Florida toll anywhere else I guess. I know your dad and your uncle eBay were really Your Heroes when they talk about their death. I know tell tell who died first and what that was like for you.

16:30 Both of them were rough. I always dodged death and reality in one way or another whether I've run away from it or

16:39 Stayed in denial about it. I've always done that. Maybe it's a survival technique, but when my dad died it was a month before he was going to retire and a month before I was going to graduate high school 1971.

16:52 And

16:54 A few months before that we went to the library and I go there a lot sometimes with my mom downtown library in Phoenix, and he let me drive a lot because I had just gotten my license may be a year before that. So it was good practice and when he was getting out of the car window on the passenger side the armrest it was all torn up from being in the sun.

17:17 It's scratched his arm. He was bleeding a lot and we didn't think about the instant too much except that need to fix the armrest and it may be dads getting old cuz he skins getting frail, but it bothered him so much that he went had a checkup and found out that he had where they turned it every kind of leukemia that we knew know about.

17:40 And back, then there wasn't any treatment. So he just got sicker and finally went to the Sun Pacific Hospital in Tucson and Mom and I went and visited him.

17:50 On a Saturday

17:52 Panda

17:54 And then again on Sunday and I gave him his last shave and he was getting real frail. I got frail in to where he couldn't talk much between Saturday and Sunday.

18:07 And Monday morning, I called us and told him told us that he was dead and it was just surreal. I didn't I didn't cry. I didn't really feel like I was impacted much at it much by the in the death, but

18:26 It made my mom and I become real close.

18:30 And it's only been in a later days since I turned mid-forties that I really started missing him and wanted to kind of follow his footsteps to kind of get an idea of who he really was even though I knew him pretty well. It's a side of him a gentle side and how would you describe both sides? She said he was a mixture with a gentleman and yet he was rough at times. He was a railroad man. He was a real router and hard all they didn't really like the profession. He wasn't wistful about it at all. But he he did like it because it gave him a pride and a good steady income in and it was a place where he could really be a man because it for men in those days you had to have a place where you know, like seldat something but where you could assert what little authority you had in life and gain the respect of others and it was a good

19:31 Venue for that was a baby alive. When your dad died. EB took it the hardest he kind of withdrew from us all there for a while in the emerged on the other side of it, but

19:45 It was very very rough on him and he died in 1976 from colon cancer years later. He didn't take that while he was cuz he was a real fighter. He didn't he was ready to go, but in both cases, I just kind of

20:00 What contact did you have with EV those five years after your dad died? And you were young man. You're only seventeen and then were you around TB and those last year some your spent a lot more time around in me than I did when I was younger. Cuz when I was a little kid, he would come around at Christmas and holidays and stuff and just kind of hang out and force all of us kids would try to spend as much time as possible. But I actually buddies around with him more in those days. He spoke of and

20:35 He

20:37 He was more angry and sin all in those days than I've ever seen him. So he was he made me more afraid of him because he had a real quick temper like my dad so you can go off on you in a heartbeat. So I was a little bit standoffish cuz I didn't know how to handle people like that at that age, but I still wanted to be around him. So I toughed it out in and got to know some things I wouldn't have if I hadn't just relied on his childhood memories, but he had a rough.

21:03 Few years after dad died. There was the same and he died alone. In the hospital. I think my sister and brother-in-law were there with him and my mom. No, actually he kicked my mom out of the room and you really love her in a strange way, but they they tussled at times cuz she was a hard headed woman and so is he so they

21:25 And he was always in the family's there were conflict talk about how you are like your father your gentleness your sensitivity.

21:39 Will my dad

21:42 Was kind of disappointed about Maya.

21:46 Activities my youth because I wasn't the rough-and-tumble kid that he was I never learn to fight or stand up for myself and it really made him mad and sad to see his second born kid or third one kid be like that. But after a while he realized that that wasn't that was the way I was going to be I wasn't him and so he started turning onto my my gentleness and related to me in that way and

22:18 So

22:20 I think I'd only true that side of him out and learned about how to be that way and still be a man. But but I learned stuff that he didn't tell anybody else. You know, you told me you would listen to the odd story here and there about things that he

22:40 Ways we wish you was kind of people are animals and EB was the same way. He had this cat that weigh 25 lbs and it was a stray but you loved it like a child and I am that way to I I'm a complete softie when it comes to any stray animals dogs or cats.

22:58 But yet I've got that hard-headed tough side of me that

23:03 Dad Mom both brought to me like a lot of it comes from the depression to I think about your sadness around the memories of your father. You said now that you're in your 40s things are bubbling up.

23:17 Yeah, I I found myself crying for no reason at times and don't even know why and it's because of my dad's and I never went through those steps of

23:29 OVO

23:34 A greeting

23:36 You know, I like maybe did one or two, but I turn my phone all the way and say for my mom she died in 98 and it was a pretty rough time for her or she had to COPD and she went down real fast was real fralin.

23:50 And it was so much of a counterpoise to see her go down because she was you know, even though she was very slide and frame. She was just this real tough girl.

24:01 In the force of nature

24:05 She she was like a hurricane on the legs if you write a letter to your dad, what would you say?

24:17 Of course. I told him that I love him and I wish I had said that the last day he was alive.

24:24 Cuz we didn't really speak of things like that, but

24:28 When you shaved him, did you talk to the Motions or didn't know how to be gentle with him and said, although I was physically but I just didn't know how to

24:42 To do anything would be there. And so I wish I could

24:46 Taking my arms today in and hugging me none. Tell him.

24:53 Sabaidee had to die alone. Cuz he he died alone at night in the hospital bed down there because my mom had somebody with her but

25:02 To the memory of that really makes you sad.

25:08 It's something that's hard to resolve.

25:11 Cuz they're so fewer and fewer of us around that even knew him much less that love him.

25:18 Hello.

25:21 That's the breaks.

25:23 But I think you'd be proud to.

25:25 To see that made it this far and I'm going into some resemblance of a man and

25:31 And do you look like him people say that I do that. They say that I have my mom's mouth, but most of my facial features look like him.

25:41 And he changed so much from the time. He was in pershing's outfit when he was in. I think he was 16 or 17 years old till what time he

25:49 Got in the coast artillery when you look at the two pictures, it's hard to tell it's the same man, but you can see Braun forehead and and eyes, I guess those are pretty strong features and me too. And he was very glad that I never gotten the railroad. You didn't want me to do that.

26:07 I thought it was too tough.

26:10 Too demanding for

26:14 For anybody to

26:16 Get into in modern days to trade a little notepad his pocket need ride in it all the time when I would spend weekends at the

26:25 Yard office with him in those days you can take your kid there and

26:30 We wander around and look at stuff cuz there was a lot of downtime between using switchman so he would wait for a train to come in and they break the cars apart and reassemble them in some order that was necessary for.

26:43 Going on down the line. And so there was a lot of time to walk out there around the tracks and just going to goof around and you know, I'd look for stuff on the ground and talk to my dad and

26:55 And I asked him what time what are you writing in your notebook? And he said well show me the the train schedule that he had already train schedule, but it's a list of all the cars in what order they're supposed to be jumbled in into Ana show me other stuff.

27:12 I told me what a hot box is which is a a railroad axle journal in that gets.

27:19 Hot to the point of melting and you have to flag it so they can pull a car offline and put it back in the train cuz it'll derail a train if you don't catch it, but he said one of the things you had to do was always right now his time because if he didn't check his time the company would cheat him out of money. So they did it regularly.

27:38 So that's the kind of toughness that he had to bring to the table to be an adult in the Working World and I kind of think he didn't want us kids to have to go through that.

27:50 Why do you think there's such an age difference between you and your older brother and sister to speculation about that, but I think I was an accident.

28:01 Cuz if you look at what went on in 1953 and the preceding year, it was a really scary time for people in the world specially the United States because there was this great Elation at the end of World War II.

28:15 I thought we had been through this meat grinder and could do no wrong and it was the piece was going to rain for a thousand years. And then Here Comes This conflict it looked even worse than

28:26 Then the one we tied into Germany and Japan and I think people got a little scared and

28:33 Know when things like that happen a year later a lot of births come from that and so I think probably that's what was going on. My mom dad just

28:46 We're a little bit more Amorous and even in their later days. Could I see?

28:55 About 15 to 20 years between my brother and sister and I

28:59 They were born in the early 40s late 30s, and I was born in 53, so

29:06 Because I grew up in Clinton while eating her up there, but they spent their first formative childhood years of Clinton. They when they move to a human when they were came up in 41 is infants. What were the unique advantages of being a the last child and getting to spend time with your mom and dad at their how old were was your mom when you were born. She was born in 15, so

29:34 She would have been Folly 3837 something like that end.

29:39 I guess the downside is that I was kind of a mama's boy because not only did she really want me and I don't think Dad Nassar he did cuz man in his early forties probably isn't looking to have a little snot-nosed kid running around the house, but he never treated me like that. He never

29:56 Made any mention of being sorry that I was born but

30:03 But he was probably not the most willing participant and so my mom glommed onto me and specially after dad died. She was really my best friend and

30:16 And hung a little too tight. So those were tensions between us.

30:21 But I guess the upside was that I got a lot of attention from my parents so I could really understand who they were at a young age because you know, when you're born that old or that late in life often times, you don't really get to know your parents his friends because by the time is that you're becoming old enough to do that. There are focusing their life on retirement matters and health issues and there's just not enough time to to become that kind of friend to them.

30:52 And where the other up sides which a lot of people would consider.

30:57 A negative but I never have is I got to spend a lot of time around old folks.

31:02 People in her forties and fifties or say it sold for me right now and

31:16 If I were to tell my mom something today.

31:21 I told her that too.

31:24 Calling help me find happiness.

31:27 We met on the internet strangely enough and

31:32 Neither of us were really looking.

31:35 But it just sort of happened. It was a raisin thing. I just went with the flow and let it just sort of watch over me and

31:43 Mom was always wanting me to be happy in life when she wanted a lot of stuff for me, but the utmost in her mind was find happiness because there was so little of it I guess and their day and I guess you also figured that if you're happy, you can do other things a lot easier than if you're

32:01 Tied up

32:03 You know, it's over.

32:05 Whatever you want being an alcoholic like a lot of her family was or being poor being sad for whatever reason, so I thought I would tell her that I

32:17 I found some real happiness in life after meeting Colleen and marrying her because a lot of my life was being a tramp in my own right by just going to school for a year after year after year and not know what I'm going to do with myself when I grew up as the saying goes and

32:33 Having very little Direction

32:36 Second Life

32:38 Which breeds and happiness and

32:42 So just by someone looking out for me or by happenstance things worked out and I think she be happy about that.

32:50 That was her main goal for me. What makes you happiest today? What what are you wake up and think about day by day?

33:01 I don't know if there's one particular thing.

33:04 But the first couple years Colleen and I were together I kept looking over my right shoulder waiting for the other shoe to drop because throughout my life when something good came along next thing that happened with something bad know that I had a hard life, but

33:19 Seems like either fate or for me would.

33:24 Throw a screw into the works in Jam things up, but

33:30 I gave up looking over my shoulder here a few years ago. And I think the thing that I'm most thankful for is just peace not having to worry about what's going to happen next.

33:42 And

33:45 I guess our biggest Roi is a couple or Hora 12 cats and two dogs are like our children.

33:53 And I think that's just our karma for not having kids. You know, God said nothing of kids you can have these to take care of so.

34:01 Get used to it and Total Wine.

34:05 Do the chores. They're just like kids that never grow up. Like I can almost imagine in the way what it's like having a

34:12 Child with Down Syndrome or something like that where you having to take care of their physical in emotional needs for a lifetime. It's kind of the same way with Pat's because they're so dependent on you.

34:24 Tarp for Stevens on vacation with it

34:28 Somebody taking care of him

34:32 What other stories do you want to tell?

34:36 Oh my

34:39 My dad took me to the circus one year.

34:42 It's kind of a funny little story because it was so out of character for him.

34:48 And what I find interesting about it was has this historical value, which I've had a lot of trouble.

34:57 Resurging in Yuma

35:00 In up till about the 1950s Yuma was one of these towns on the

35:07 The rodeo circuit for a lot of little towns from Wyoming to Texas to California that have these little kind of rinky-dink.

35:17 Rodeos were Cowboys would go and make prize money and it was always in conjunction with the usually in conjunction with the county fair. So every April Lisa those days they have the county fair for a week in the rodeo was part of it so you can go enjoy that as well as just the fairground rides. And in that day there was this big huge beautiful all wooden baseball park in the middle of town which was built in the same time frame as to the rodeo grounds in the fairgrounds. And I remember as a kid driving by that soft and wondering what was then I guess my dad must have noticed my curiosity because neither of us were too caring about the circus, but I think he just took me there one day to to hang out with me and

36:04 I can still tell you where we sat.

36:08 What it smelled like what color of the wood was and my dad bought me a little flag and US flag on a piece of Grapevine like you paid $0.75 for it. I still have the flag.

36:22 Just a little cheap.

36:25 Silk flag if it was made in China.

36:29 By hand and it's beautiful soft material good quality stuff, then you can buy it those little

36:39 Venues like that in be bought that for me without saying anything and just sitting here want you to have this.

36:49 What other things you have mementos? What other things did you say from your past going way back?

36:58 There's a lot of things. I wish I had kept or

37:03 Or wish I was old enough to have been part of the decision-making to kept but still have my dad's lantern that he used when he was.

37:12 Switching on the Southern Pacific Railroad

37:15 And

37:17 Got this little collection of slag that builds up on the bottom of a wheel Carriage on a train cuz when the trains break through a lot of hot metal up off the track in some swag from that is the stuff that's in between the rails and ties some of that gets up on the track and gets hit and then throwing up through melted into it in the feathers long piece of slag and melts probably six or eight inches long at EB gave to me if you pull it off of one of the train Wheels housings one day in and kept

37:55 Little odd things like that. They have from the railroad, even though they didn't care about working for it interesting things that are the most valuable that have no monetary value in the material world yet. They hold very special memories. Thank you so much for coming and sharing your story and come into the storybooth. I enjoy talking to you really nice being with you today.