INTERVIEW OF:

CHARLES RICHMOND BOYDSTUN

BY HIS SON CHARLES R. BOYDSTUN, JR.

IN JUNE OF 1998

CRB = Charles R. Boydstun

SON = Charles R. Boydstun, Jr.

CRB: Mary Eunice Goss was the maiden name of your Grandmother. She was born in 1903 in Lost Creek, Alabama. Your Grandfather was Carrol Sebastian Boydstun. He was born in 1899 in Martin, Tennessee.

SON: What I wanted to ask you, was about James K. Polk Boydstun, and if you remember anything about your Great-grandfather, or anything at all about him?

CRB: He was just a tall thin man. A very distinguished looking man. Always wore a coat and tie, carried a walking cane.

SON: Can you tell me about what he did?

CRB: I have no idea.

SON: Do you remember your Great-grandmother?

CRB: No.

SON: Tell me then about Charles Mortimer Boydstun. What can you tell me about him, your grandfather.

CRB: He was a very tall distinguished looking gentleman. Always wore a suit and tie.

SON: Like your Great-grandfather?

CRB: Like my Great-grandfather. He was taught manners.

When he was 18 years old, he went to work in a logging camp over in the vicinity of Truman, Arkansas. I think it was back on that timber that Singer eventually bought near there. He was in this logging camp, and he had to walk in to Truman on Saturday night. It was over four or five miles and he had to walk in through the woods. He had a pistol. It was a navy Colt revolver. He carried this pistol with him, particularly when he walked from the camp into Truman and came back out. And he told me one time that he was walking through this woods to get to Truman. He saw something off to the left and then saw something off to the right and then he heard a snarl and it was a panther. He said, just where it broke out of the woods that there was a tree limb across it. He could see in the moon light that the panther was stretched out on that limb waiting for him to walk underneath it. He fired the gun at the panther and the panther took off and left.

But, that is when he started his career in the lumber business there. He later grew into prominence. He bought a farm over near Black Oak, Arkansas. He got into the cooperage business. Cooperage are staves. Now that is what they used for storage back then. They would put nuts and bolts and spoons in barrels, and they would put lard in barrels, and meat in barrels. Everything was in barrels. He used a different species .... ah, he didn’t make whiskey barrels, because we didn’t have the kind of white oak that it took to build whiskey barrels over around Nettleton and Jonesboro, Arkansas, and down on the Red River and all like that. He was wiped out in a terrible flood that they had in the year 1927. His mills were washed away.

SON: So he had his own business? It wasn’t the Keach business? That was later on?

CRB: That was later on.

SON: OK, this was his own business. How many (saw)mills did he have?

CRB: He had somewhere between three and five. I don’t remember exactly. It was three or more.

SON: all right, go on with the flood.

CRB: It just wiped him out, in 1927. 1927 was a good year economically for the country and he bounced back and he got his mills back going again and then the depression hit. He had quite a bit of money and he was advised to take his money out of the Bank of Nettleton. His son-in-law was the cashier of the Bank of Nettleton, that was Everet Hale that married his daughter Helen Hale. So he took it all out except $5000 and put it in the Bank of Jonesboro. The Bank of Jonesboro promptly went broke. Nettleton stayed alive and he had his $5000, but that was all he had and he started all over again. That is when he got tied up with the Keachs and that bunch.

SON: Where was the Keach plant located, where he worked? Was it in Jonesboro?

CRB: Either Jonesboro or Nettleton (Arkansas), one of the two of them. One of them was in Black Oak, Arkansas. I don’t know where the rest of them were. One was in Memphis, Tennessee, I know that. The big one was in Memphis.

My Grandfather, your Great-grandfather, was a great one for having his whiskey. He would go for six or eight months without having a drink, and one day he would announce to the world that he was going to be gone for a couple of weeks. He had an old wore-out carpenter friend of his that lived in Nettleton, Arkansas. My Grandfather would go to the bank and he would fill his pockets full of bills. He would get in the car and drive by his carpenter friend’s house and say, “Get in the car. We’re going to be gone for a while.” He would go on a toot for about two weeks and come back broke! Ha, he would do that on a regular basis about once or twice a year.

SON: Anybody know where he went?

CRB: No. He went all over the country. When he was 88 years old, he announced to everybody that he had never seen the Grand Canyon, he had never seen the choir in Salt Lake City, that was the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and he said, “By God I’m just going!” They said, “Well, how are you going to go?” And he said, “I’m going down to the train station and I’m getting on the train and go, that’s how.” And that is what he did, he went down and went through Texas, he went to California, went up to the Grand Canyon, went to Salt Lake City, came back down through Minneapolis, Chicago, and back to Nettleton by himself when he was 88 years old.

SON: Wow!

CRB: He was a hell of a man, Charlie. A hell of a man. He had a great friend, Mr. Kayse. Mr. Kayse was a chancellor at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, and my Grandfather was a confidant and very close friend of Senator Hattie Caraway from Arkansas. She was the only woman senator in the history of the United States at that time, the only one. There had been no (female) representative, no congressman or congress woman, or senator or anything, (until) Senator Caraway was there. He and Mr. Kayse went to Hattie Caraway’s office, and told her of the bad need of Arkansas State University. In need of a road to the university from Jonesboro. And darn if she didn’t get a road built fast, and a road was put into Arkansas State University, (thanks to) my Grandfather and Mr. Kayse. When my Grandfather died at 94, Mr. Kayse gave the ceremony for his death, talked about him, and everything else. He was quite a man.

SON: Where is he (Charles Mortimer Boydstun) buried now?

CRB: He is buried in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

SON: Do you know the name of the cemetery?

CRB: Craighead Cemetery.

SON: I heard the he was a philanthropist? He would help people?

CRB: Oh yea. Yes he did. He helped a lot of people. They would cone to him like maybe guys would come to the dons in the racketeering days. Somebody like Don Coreleony or somebody like that. They would come to see my Grandfather and he would somehow help them. He would give them money or help their children in their career, write a letter to Senator Caraway or somebody of influence to get some things done. He was a great guy.

SON: Had he always lived in Nettleton? Do you know where he was born?

CRB: I think he must have been born where my Father was (Carrol S. Boydstun), in Martin, Tennessee. I’m fairly certain that was where he was born.

SON: We will have to check and see. There are a lot of Boydstuns that are from (or once lived) around Martin, Tennessee. There is a lot of history from around there near Martin and Ripley. What can you tell me about your Dad now, Carrol Sebastian Boydstun?

CRB: Carrol Sebastian Boydstun grew up in Nettleton, Arkansas. He went to school in Nettleton. He was a Navy veteran of World War 1.

SON: Do you remember what school or schools that he went to? I know you went to Humes (High School, Memphis).

CRB: He went to the High School in Nettleton, Ark. I don’t know what the name was, Nettleton High School I think. He was in WW1 and served aboard the battleship Michigan and received an honorable discharge and came home. The he met your Grandmother (Eunice Goss) and they were married.

SON: Do you remember what he did aboard the battleship or any battles he was in?

CRB: No, he wasn’t in any battles. He just served on the battleship Michigan.

SON: Do you know what his rank was?

CRB: Seaman first class, I think. My Dad was tall, a little on the thin side rangy looking guy, a very good looking guy. He was 6’1” and weighed about 180 pounds, was straight as an arrow like his father was and his Grandfather was. When I was born in Nettleton in 1924, he was an assistant engineer for the Arkansas Highway Department. I was born in the house in Nettleton. You remember that.

SON: Yes, we just took some pictures of it.

CRB: The earliest recognition I have of being on this earth, was when my Father backed out of our driveway in Nettleton, (Arkansas) and ran over my automobile which was a Moon Eight. I still remember that. I moved to Memphis, (Tennessee) when I was 4 years old so I had to be 3 when I had that first remembrance. That is when he ran over it. When I was between 3 and 4 years old. Dad came to Memphis.

SON: Do you remember where you stayed in Memphis when you first came?

CRB: We lived in a house on Seventh Street in north Memphis.

SON: You don’t remember the address?

CRB: No. I can remember sitting on the porch when Charles Lindbergh came to Memphis after he had flown across the ocean. I don’t know what year that was. I must have been 5 or 6 years old at that time but I saw Lindbergh very much sitting in the back seat of his open roadster in a convoy going down Seventh Street heading to the airport, which was out in that area of north Memphis. There was an airport out there. Also there was a racetrack out there. We had horse racing in Memphis.

SON: What else do you remember as a child?

CRB: We moved from there over to Bellevue. I was about 5 or 6. Do you remember that picture of Marilyn and I sitting on the steps in front of this house? That was the house on Bellevue. It was just about a block north of Chelsea on the east side of Bellevue. A small house. It had two bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, a bath, and a back porch.

The first year I went to school, I went to Guthrie grade school on Chelsea. Then my Grandmother came to town from Imboden, Arkansas where she lived with my aunt and uncle, Edwin Dunn and Olive Dunn. They had a daughter, Olivia Jane Dunn who was my age. This was the start of the depression. This was 1930, 31, 32, 33 along in there. I going to Guthrie School, I had to walk. We lived on Bellevue at Chelsea, and I had to walk down Chelsea until I got to Guthrie. Anyway, about midway during the term, my Grandmother came to Memphis and she remarked as to how she would like to take me back to Arkansas and fatten me up. I was tall and skinny, it was during the depression and my parents didn’t have much money. Nobody had any money. It was a terrible time. So I went back with her and made the first and second grade in one year. Then I went back to the third and fourth grade and made that in one year. Then I came back to Memphis and went to Gordon School in the fifth and sixth grades. I kind of lost the seventh and eighth grades. I don’t know if I was in Imboden (Arkansas) or Memphis (Tennessee), but I spent my ninth year in school in Imboden at Sloan-Hendrix Academy, which was a kind of a private deal up there. My Uncle was kind of well off. He was a dentist and a great story teller.

SON: You are talking about Uncle Edwin?

CRB: Yes. He was a great story teller. At any rate, I came back to Memphis when I was in (After?) the ninth grade and Mother and Dad moved to Ayres Street.

SON: Do you remember the address?

CRB: We went first and lived with an old woman by the name of Kieh and here daughter. They had a house there and half of it was vacant. We took the other half of the house. And then we moved from there, we were there about a year, down to a house at 873 Ayres. I’ll never forget that address. I went on through and finished high school at Humes High School at that time (living) at 873 Ayres. I got a job in the summertime at the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company making beads for tires. Then I went to work building boxes in the summer, somewhere between the ninth and the twelfth grades, at Abraham Brother’s Packing Company. My father, at that time, was their shipping clerk for Abraham Brother’s Packing Company. He got me a job building boxes. I built every box for every slab of meat that came out of Abraham Brother’s Packing Company for the summer. Ha! I nailed those dudes together.

Anyhow one day, December 7th, 1941, I went rabbit hunting with a boy by the name of Roy Hardwick on Mud Island. Mud Island was just a vacant field at that time. There was an old negro down there with a boat and we gave him fifty cents to take us across to Mud Island and fifty cents to take us back. We went over there and we killed some rabbits and killed some quail, killed a few field larks and everything else. came back and that negro says, “Boss man, do y’all know where Pearl Harbor is?” I said yes, Hawaii, that is where our fleet is. He said, “Well them Japanese done attacked it!” I said, what are you talking about and he said, “Yes sir. They attacked it today and they blew it all up!” I said, good Lord! I went home and finished out my term at school which ended in may, and enlisted. On June the sixth, I was gone from Memphis, Tennessee and went to New Orleans, Louisiana and went through boot camp in New Orleans.

SON: You signed up for the United States Navy?

CRB: Coast Guard. I found out that I wasn’t in the Coast Guard though, because when I got in there I was a Coast Guardsman but was on a Navy ship which was the USS Harvison and the USS William Weigle. Two ships. First I was given a 34’ cabin cruiser in Tampa, Florida and we had a 50 caliber machine gun on the bow and one depth charge on the stern. That was our armament. We slept aboard and we ate aboard. We got paid subsistence and quarters, which suited the hell out of us. We bought our own groceries, we fished and caught king mackerel and everything, speckled trout, every damn thing. I was assigned to the captain of the port there. My job with that 34’ vessel was to take a radioman out to every ship that came into Tampa Bay and put him onboard the ship and hold onto the side of it while he sealed the radio. He sealed the radio, got back into my boat, and I would take him in. That was in Tampa, Florida.

Then I was taken off that and I was assigned to a 98 footer called the USS Coast Guard Cutter Yankee Tar. It had a 20 caliber on the bow and four depth charges on the stern. That was our armament.

SON: While you were aboard that, did you see any action at all? See anything out in the bay?

CRB: Sure didn’t. They were there though. The Germans were there. They sent us out after the Germans had surfaced and shot the boat out from under somebody. Then they would go back down and then we would get there. It would be too late.

We stopped on night in Sarasota, Florida. We had been out going up and down the west coast of Florida from Tarpon Springs all the was down to the tip of Florida. We just got tired one night, stopped in Sarasota, tied up, and went in one night to a night club. We met some lovely young girls there, had a great time, and then we came back to Tampa. The next time we went out we stopped in Sarasota again. We met those girls at the night club. One of those nights I was dancing and the waiter came over and said, “Charlie, there is an Officer out front that wants to see you.” I walked out to the front and there was my commanding base officer from Tampa! The hell of it was, I was dancing with his girlfriend! Ha! Well, they shipped us off instantly. Ray Kane was second in command of that vessel. They put him on a light ship in Alaska someplace bobbing around. Pete, was the commanding officer, a coksin. Pete, they sent him way off some place. I don’t remember where the hell it was. They sent me to the USS Harvison being built in Orange, Texas. I stayed there in Orange, Texas for about three months while the Harvison was being completed. Then we had a big commissioning ceremony, put the ship in the water. We went down the waterway to Galviston, Texas, came out and went across, went to New Orleans. In New Orleans we got ammunition, torpedoes, and food. Then we went on a shakedown cruise to Bermuda. While we were in Bermuda, the worst hurricane that had ever been in the Atlantic Ocean hit. It was in 1943 or 44, early 44. There was a big array of ships that was stretched from Nova Scotia to Cuba that was blown all over the damn ocean. There were two navy destroyers that were sunk in that hurricane and a bunch of civilian ships were sunk. Anyhow, we went back to Charleston, South Carolina from Bermuda to get ready for another convoy. Ferdy Tagle and I decided that we would hitch hike someplace where you couldn’t see anymore sailors, so we hitch hiked and got a ride to Augusta, Georgia. The guy in this big car liked us and invited us to the Augusta Country Club for dinner and a dance that night. Man, we were just like toys to those people! We were two seagoing sailors up there in Augusta in the middle of the damn country! Ha, they couldn’t do enough for us. They filled us full of rum, gin, wine and any other damn thing. Anyhow, we left and got back on time.