FAMILY – CHAPTER ONE – CLARKE
Clarke Johnson Mason
Born: February 20, 2021
Died: October 16, 1997
76 years, 7 months, 27 days
One
I have chosen to record his middle name even though he had it struck from his records in the middle years of his life. He despised the name, and perhaps that is reason enough to preserve it. No one ever knew where the name Johnson came from. His mother offered no explanation, and those who might have known have long since passed into silence. It lingers as a small mystery, a name without roots, unclaimed by either his close or distant kin.
Clarke was a man who filled a room. In his middle years he stood six feet two inches and carried himself at close to two hundred pounds. He was handsome in a hard and weathered way, often compared to the actor Lee Marvin, and the likeness was not entirely unfounded. He was something of a dandy, fond of tailored suits, sharp creases, the warm bite of Old Spice on his skin, and the constant discipline of a close cropped haircut. His presence was deliberate, as if he had studied the way a man should look and move, then made himself into that image.
You may read into my words that I carry little affection for Clarke, though that truth arrived slowly. As a child I looked at him with wonder and fear, as a young man with resistance, and only much later with the clarity of distance. It was after his death that I began to understand what he was, and how deeply his presence had shaped me. The weight of him did not fall all at once but pressed itself into me over the many years our lives ran together.
Before I can tell you who Clarke became, I must return to the beginning. To understand the man, one must first look at the boy, at the world that formed him and the choices that set his course. It is there, in those early years, that the story begins.
Two
He was born to a rural family in Northwest Florida near Pensacola, the second of five children who survived. There had been a set of twins who died shortly after birth. Of the living, there was an older brother, Curtis, a younger brother, Quinton, and two sisters, Elenor and Louise. Louise was the youngest, born at least sixteen or seventeen years after her brothers.
The family was poor, even by the standards of 1921. They eked out a living on a small dairy farm. Nat, the father, took whatever odd jobs he could find. Wilma, the mother, ran the dairy and the household. They had no car. Milk was delivered by wagon. Food was always scarce. Chickens provided eggs for sale and for the table, but were rarely eaten themselves. Most meals came from rice with gravy, garden vegetables that had not sold at market, biscuits, and whatever game could be caught or killed: rabbits, squirrels, turtles, fish, or anything else that might fill a pot. Once in a while a hog was raised and butchered for meat and lard. Beef was almost unknown.
Cooking was done on a wood stove, and each day began before sunrise. Wilma handed each child a hot biscuit as they went out the door to milk the cows, clean the barn, and prepare the milk for delivery. When the work was done, they returned to the kitchen for a breakfast of eggs, biscuits, bacon or ham, grits or rice, with perhaps a little gravy or home canned jelly. Wilma’s hands were never still. She ran the dairy, cooked, cleaned, canned vegetables, washed, gathered eggs, and managed the business of both home and farm.
Nat left early most mornings. He sometimes helped with the cows but often not. His work took him to whatever job he could find that day: pouring concrete, carpentry, or the hard labor of blasting pine stumps and harvesting the resin soaked wood called lighterd. This wood caught fire easily and was prized for starting stoves and fireplaces. Without it, a fire was slow to rise. Nat did what he could, and from the little I know of him, he was mostly hard working, though never much drawn to the work of raising a family.
Scarcity left its mark on Clarke. He learned to eat quickly, a habit that never left him. Food on the table was claimed in a rush, each child grasping for what they could. Those who hesitated often went hungry. Life in that household was a contest, not only for food but for clothing, soap, and even the smallest necessities. It was not a gentle place to grow up.
These early years shaped him more than he might ever have admitted. The hard soil of poverty and the constant contest for survival taught him to push, to seize, to endure. In time he would carry those lessons into the wider world, where they became both his strength and his burden. To see the man he became, one must first understand this boy who learned early that nothing was freely given and that everything worth having came only with effort.Three
Work began as soon as Clarke could walk and manage even the smallest of tasks. As he grew older, the demands increased, becoming more time consuming and more complex. By the age of five he was hauling buckets of milk, cleaning the barn, and feeding the cows. He had already learned to put them out to pasture and bring them back for milking twice each day.
School came irregularly, sometimes not at all. Yet Wilma, at least, believed that education might offer her children a way out of poverty and toward a better life. As Elenor grew older she took over more of the household chores, giving Wilma time to manage the dairy and the garden harvest.
Clarke was about sixteen or seventeen when Louise was born. Everyone called her Sis, and that was the only name I ever knew her by.
After finishing Tate High School in Cantonment, sometime around 1937 or 1938, Clarke married my mother, Helen Gertrude Eagerton. Not long after, their first son, John Allen, was born in December of 1939. The young family lived on the farm or close by, while my mother worked at Sears in Pensacola. Clarke stayed with the dairy until it finally closed before the war. The farm could not afford the pasteurization equipment that was becoming standard across Florida, and without it they could not compete with the larger suppliers.
When the dairy failed, Clarke turned to odd jobs in building construction around Pensacola. In 1940 he tried to join the military but was rejected as unfit because of flat feet. He carried the sting of that rejection for the rest of his life.
The firstborn, John Allen Mason, came into the world in December of 1939. He would grow to be known as Brick.
Four
Life was not easy for the young couple. With Clarke’s determination to be in charge, he often found it difficult to keep steady work. He moved from one position to another before settling as a salesman at Marston and Quina, a furniture store on old Palafox Street in downtown Pensacola.
Clarke excelled in sales. He was aggressive, persistent, and refused to accept no for an answer. At last he was becoming what he had always wanted to be: a salesman in a suit and tie, leaving behind the life of a laborer. Gertrude worked at Sears for thirty cents an hour, considered a good wage for an unskilled woman in 1940.
Brick remained on the farm with Wilma and the girls while Clarke and Gertrude worked.
Everything changed on December 7, 1941. The world shifted in a single day, and life would never be the same. The United States was suddenly at war in both the Pacific and in Europe. As men were called to fight, production turned to military needs. Consumer goods became scarce, many items were rationed, and others could no longer be found at all. Selling furniture in such a climate was difficult, but Clarke managed to hold on until 1942.
Late in 1942 or early in 1943, Clarke was drafted into the United States Navy. He was not happy about it. Just a few years earlier he had tried to enlist, only to be rejected as unfit due to having flat feet. Now, with the war widening and the military desperate for manpower, he was taken in against his will and left his young family behind to go to war.
Five
Clarke’s youth was swallowed by World War II. When the United States pushed across the Pacific in 1944 and 1945, the Navy relied not only on its mighty carriers and battleships but on the slower, plainer ships that carried the fight from the sea to the shore. Clarke served aboard one of them, a Landing Ship, Tank, designated LST.
LST’s were squat and practical, built not for speed or beauty but for purpose. With great bow doors that could open onto an enemy beach, they carried tanks, trucks, and men into the heart of battle. Without them, the island hopping campaigns at Saipan, Leyte, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa could not have been fought, much less won. While others stormed the beaches, Clarke’s ship delivered the means to make that fight possible.
Life on board was difficult. The heat was oppressive above decks and unbearable below. The air in the lower decks was thick with diesel and sweat. Bunks were stacked so close a man could feel the body heat of the sailor above him. Food came in cans or powders, the same day after day, and the ship’s flat bottom caused it to roll mercilessly in rough seas. The days stretched long with maintenance and drills, until suddenly they erupted into fire and chaos. When the bow doors ground open and the ramp slammed down, men and machines poured into smoke and shellfire, while the crew above deck watched the sky for enemy aircraft.
Clarke seldom spoke about these years. He would say he served on an LST, that the ship was at least in the vicinity of some of the fiercest battles of the Pacific. But he never gave details. Never described the noise, the fear, the sight of men being carried back broken and bleeding, or the smell of oil and blood mingled with the salt air. Those were things he kept to himself. Perhaps they were too difficult to speak, or perhaps silence was the only way to live with what he had seen. Though, once in a rare moment of candor he did share seeing hundreds of bloated bodies floating in the water, and described a Marine denied boarding with the head of a Japanese soldier as a souvenir when being picked up from some island.
When he did share something of his service it was the lighter moments, the pranks and small absurdities that broke the monotony of shipboard life. But beneath those stories was always an undercurrent of resentment, a bitterness that he had been forced to serve and to witness things no one should see. His war was not something he carried with pride, nor did he emerge stronger for it. Instead, it seemed as though he pushed it into the past with deliberate force, driven by a need to forget and move on.
He rarely spoke of combat, never described the chaos of the landings or the toll it must have taken on him and the men around him. That silence was not strength but avoidance, a way of keeping closed the doors that memory might otherwise have flung open. In his family life this silence left a distance, not the steady confidence of a man tempered by experience, but the guarded reserve of someone who wished to erase it.
The war left its mark, not as stories retold or lessons passed down, but as shadows in the past, shadows he never wanted to revisit and never allowed others to see clearly. In time, it became part of a larger pattern. His early life seemed always to remain just out of reach, defined as much by what he withheld as by what he revealed. The war was only one chapter in a story that he rarely opened, leaving blank spaces for those who came after to wonder at and try to fill.
For me, this silence left a void in my understanding of him. His war years, like much of his early life, were a closed chapter, present only in suggestion and rarely in detail. I would come to realize later that concealing his war experience was part of who he was, and that my picture of him would be forever incomplete, shaped as much by what he withheld as by what he revealed. As much by his life before my birth as his life following.
In fact, much of Clarke’s life was concealed from me, from others. I would learn much about the man much later in my life, and even long after his death.
Six
In August of 1944 a new addition to the family arrived. Her name was Mitzie, and she would become the sibling I knew best, though it would still be another eleven years before my own arrival.
Clarke returned from the war in 1946 after VJ Day on September 2 of that year. His return was bittersweet. The war had cut across his life’s path, and it left its scars not only on him but on the nation. Yet with the surrender signed and the soldiers and seamen coming home, the country turned again to the business of living.
Life after the war was urgent, almost impatient. America was swept into a manufacturing and buying boom. After nearly six years of rationing, shortages, and sacrifice, families longed for comfort, for new cars in the driveway, new refrigerators in the kitchen, new radios and furniture to make houses feel alive again. Factories that had been building planes and tanks now poured out stoves and washing machines. Clarke was ready to seize the moment. He joined Moore Handley, Inc., a Birmingham, Alabama distributor of hardware, building supplies, and household goods, selling appliances to dealers across the region.
The family moved to Albertville, Alabama, where Clarke took to the road as a traveling salesman. He was good at the work. He had the voice, the confidence, and the relentless persistence that made him a natural. He liked the rhythm of salesmanship: the independence of the open road, the easy conversation with store owners, the promise of a commission in every handshake, and perhaps the company of women he met on the road. He always carried money in his pocket and returned home on weekends to his wife and children.
In time he took a new position with the Boling Furniture Company, a manufacturer in North Carolina. His territory stretched across seven southern states, and his travel grew heavier. Weeks at a time passed with him on the road. He might be gone two or three weeks before coming home again. Gertrude, left to manage the household in his absence, pressed for a move closer to her own roots in Northwest Florida, where support and familiarity might ease the burden.
In the early 1950s Clarke relocated the family to DeFuniak Springs, Florida, a small town tucked into the Panhandle. It was a place caught between the pace of modern America and the persistence of old southern rhythms. The town was built around a perfectly round spring-fed lake, said to be one of only two such lakes in the world. White houses with broad porches faced the water, and the heart of the town pulsed slowly with the life of the courthouse square, the drugstore soda fountain, and the cluster of shops that made up its modest downtown.
At first the family rented a house just off Bay Avenue, only a few blocks from downtown. It was during these years that they grew close to my future godparents, Richard and Velma Hestler. Richard taught history at the local high school, and Velma served as a public health nurse. They became fast friends, and in time they were pillars of strength for Gertrude and the children, steady companions during Clarke’s long absences on the road.
At some point during these years the marriage broke. I know little of the details, but it seems likely that Clarke’s life on the road brought with it temptations and dalliances, while Gertrude bore the isolation of raising two children with little companionship or support. Whatever the causes, the two divorced for a time. It was a silence that stretched across the years, never spoken of in my presence, not even after I learned of it much later, after Clarke had died. When I asked my brother and sister, they barely acknowledged it, as if to revisit those years was too painful. For Brick, a teenager at the time, and for Mitzie, just entering adolescence, it must have been a season marked by confusion and loss. I can only imagine that the Hestlers carried Gertrude and the children through those days, offering the strength that Clarke did not.
What I do know is that Clarke and Gertrude eventually reconciled. Their reunion was bound up in the decision to bring another child into the family. I have no illusions about my place in this story. I was conceived as an anchor, born to cement a broken marriage, to hold together what was drifting apart. Such choices were not unusual in those days, when children were often seen as both blessing and bond, a way to repair what life had torn. The silence that surrounded that chapter of their lives was never lifted, and in its own way it shaped me as well. Secrets left unspoken have a weight of their own, one that lingers across generations.
Later, Clarke purchased land on Back Lake, a quiet spot outside of town, and built a house there. It was finished just after my birth in 1955. The house at Back Lake became the family’s anchor, a place of permanence after years of moving from town to town. It stood there, solid and unshaken, until about 1985 when, with only Clarke and Gertrude left living there it was sold.
Seven
The summer of 1955 was unbearably hot. My mother always called it “the hottest summer in history,” though perhaps it felt that way because she was pregnant with me. By the time I arrived she was three weeks overdue and with Tropical Storm Brenda threatening the Gulf Coast, she must have been miserable in the oppressive Northwest Florida heat and humidity, enduring it all without the comfort of air conditioning in most of the house.
Clarke, on the other hand, would have been in his glory. He stayed close to home in anticipation of my birth, turning the house on Back Lake into a stage for his favorite role as host. He thrived on entertaining. Guests gathered to barbecue, water ski, and eat watermelon, while Clarke presided over the day like a master of ceremonies. He directed the activities, drove the boat, manned the grill, and carved the melon, always at the center of the laughter and the noise.
Summers were for water, food, friends, and family. Swimming, skiing, fishing, and outdoor cooking filled the weekends. Relatives from Clarke’s side seemed to arrive in waves, crowding the shoreline on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Those gatherings were as much a part of him as his tailored suits or Old Spice. He lived for the moments when all eyes were drawn to him.
But that Sunday, July 31, was different. Tropical Storm Brenda was pushing heavy rains across the Gulf, from New Orleans to Panama City. My mother was in induced labor at Pensacola Maternity Hospital on East Mallory Street. The hospital was a modest two-story building in the heart of town, known to generations of Pensacolians. Its wards were not luxurious by any measure, with narrow beds and rattling fans doing little to cut the summer heat. Women labored and delivered in an atmosphere far removed from the modern hospitals of today.
At nine o’clock that morning, I arrived weighing a little over eight pounds. Healthy and alive, I was placed in a bassinet among rows of others, one more baby born into the long Gulf Coast summer.
I have no memory, of course, but I am certain Clarke was ecstatic. He surely passed out cigars and boasted of his new son to anyone within earshot. Though his real part in my arrival had ended months earlier at conception, he would have taken credit for it all the same. Support during the pregnancy was almost certainly left to others as Clarke was on the road, while Gertrude managed the long months largely on her own, caring for two adolescent children at the same time. That was his nature, to bask in the spotlight without carrying much of the load.
Within a week of my birth, Clarke was back on the road. Gertrude having returned home with an infant and two growing children to manage, as she always had. My sister Mitzie was old enough to be a real help, while John Allen, known to everyone as Brick, was nearly sixteen, in high school, and mostly independent. Still, the burden of daily care fell squarely on my mother. It always did.
Eight
As I grew, Clarke continued to work, his travels carrying him away from home for one, two, sometimes three weeks at a time. Life took on two distinct rhythms, depending on whether he was away or at home. When he was gone, things were calm and steady. Mother cared for us with quiet devotion, cooking, cleaning, washing, and keeping everything in order. When he returned, everything shifted. Clarke was in charge again, giving orders, setting the schedule, arranging our weekends as though they were his to direct.
Summers meant activity outdoors: water skiing, swimming, fish fries, and barbecues on Sunday afternoons. Winters were given to building, painting, and making endless improvements to the house, the yard, and the outbuildings. There was always a project, always work to be done under his direction.
In time I became something of a pet to Clarke. I was outgoing, articulate thanks to Mother reading to me each day, and confident enough to hold his attention. He often dressed me up and took me with him on errands into town, whether to the hardware store or elsewhere. On Sundays I wore a small suit and tie to Sunday School and church at the First Methodist Church on the Circle, the street that circled the little lake at the center of town. Clarke thrived there, ever the salesman, quick to charm the business people and their wives, convinced of his own handsomeness and desirability.
The years began to roll forward, 1956, 1957, 1958, each one arriving with its promise of fresh beginnings but always settling into the same pattern. Clarke’s world was one of constant travel, interrupted by brief weekends at home. His territory stretched across seven states: Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Furniture stores, wholesale outlets, motels, and restaurants filled his days.
Each evening on the road brought opportunity. Every restaurant meal carried the chance of new company. Clarke lived as though he were single, funded by his expense account, free to chase companionship wherever he found it. The responsibilities of family and marriage waited for him at home, but only on weekends and holidays, and not all that many of those.
For me, the shifting patterns were confusing. Life felt easier when he was gone, more predictable, more our own. When he returned, the atmosphere changed. Rules and commands replaced the quiet order Mother maintained, and the house became unsettled again. By then Brick was away at college, leaving mostly Mother, Mitzie, and me to navigate the constant changes. It was not always easy, and for both Mitzie and me, the weight of those transitions shaped how we experienced home.
Much of this early narrative rests not on my own memory but on the stories told by others. I did not have real memories until around 1960, when I was about five years old. That was the beginning of my true awareness, the point of my sentience, and the beginning of Clarke’s direct influence on me. Everything before then is a patchwork of tales, impressions, and fragments of family lore.
And so the story now turns to 1960, the moment when my own memories begin and when Clarke’s presence became real in my life.
Nine
By 1960 I was five years old, and my own memories begin here. Everything before that belongs mostly to the stories I heard from others, but from this point forward I can recall the sights, sounds, and feelings for myself. This was the beginning of Clarke’s direct influence on me, and with it came both fascination and confusion.
I remember the house most of all. The rhythm of life within those walls shifted with Clarke’s comings and goings, and at last I was old enough to feel it for myself. When he was away, the days were steady and calm under Mother’s quiet guidance. She kept the house in order and gave us a sense of peace. But when Clarke returned, the balance broke. His voice carried through every room, his presence demanded attention, and the calm gave way to command.
The first sign of his return was always the suitcase. He carried it in himself, setting it on top of the cedar chest in the hallway across from the bathroom. From that moment, the air of the house seemed to change. Clarke stood six feet one inch, around two hundred pounds, tall and slender with a build not unlike Lyndon Johnson. In his face and bearing there was more than a passing resemblance to the actor Lee Marvin, a likeness that others often remarked upon. He smoked constantly, so he and the house carried the sharp smell of cigarettes. Layered with it was the sting of Old Spice cologne and the faint scent of the ribbed cotton tees he wore beneath his shirts. In summer he favored Bermuda shorts and rubber flip flops he called cricket shoes. The slap of those soles on the floor was as much a part of his presence as his smell or his voice. That voice was low and loud, never soft, and every word was delivered with a gruffness that left no doubt it was to be obeyed. Nothing about him was gentle.
My sister and I felt his presence more keenly than ever, for my brother was away at college and seldom home. The weight of Clarke’s return fell on the three of us. For me, he was both thrilling and unsettling. At times he could be playful, even charming, and when he noticed me I felt a glow of importance. Yet his authority left little room for ease. The change from Mother’s quiet care to Clarke’s sharp direction created a tension I was only beginning to understand.
These are my first true memories of him, the start of a relationship that would shape my life in ways I could not yet imagine.Ten
I will take a chapter here to describe the house on Back Lake and the neighborhood, as it is important to the story. The house was a modest three-bedroom, one-bathroom home of about 1,200 square feet, built from concrete blocks in the Florida style. In the beginning it had a single-car garage (later enclosed) and no basement. The roof was flat, the built-up kind made from tar and gravel over plywood decking. Always confusing to me as a child was that the front of the house faced the lake rather than the street, unlike the houses in town.
Our yard was wedge shaped, about 125 feet wide at the street (actually a wide dirt road) but nearly 300 feet along the water. It sloped down to the lake, where there was a boathouse and a storage shed with a concrete floor and metal siding. Facing the lake, from right to left, were the boathouse, a Black Gum tree with a tire swing hanging over the water, a concrete dock, a concrete picnic table, two large Willow trees, “the hole” (a live well connected to the lake for keeping fish until we cleaned them for supper), and finally a smaller concrete dock near the edge of the property.
Except for the places where we swam or moved the boats in and out, the shoreline was thick with Sawgrass. It grew in clumps with narrow blades, while Pickerel Weed stood tall with broad, dark leaves and purple flower spikes in season. Together they formed a habitat for largemouth bass, bluegill bream, warmouth bream, gar, chain pickerel (which we called jack fish), turtles, minnows, and countless other small creatures common to freshwater lakes in northwest Florida.
Snakes were always present as well. Many were harmless water snakes, but there were also cottonmouth water moccasins, aggressive and highly venomous, never to be taken lightly. Copperheads, eastern diamondback rattlesnakes, pygmy rattlesnakes, and coral snakes all made their appearances, along with the less threatening black snakes and rat snakes that kept the rodent population in check.
Other wildlife was part of the daily scene: Rabbits darting across the yard, squirrels chattering from the trees, raccoons prowling for scraps, the occasional bobcat, skunks, O’Possums, field mice, and a wide variety of birds.
My own nemesis was the red paper wasp. I was allergic, and they seemed to sense it. They built large gray nests under the eaves of the house, inside the boathouse, even tucked beneath the mailbox. To me they were hateful, spiteful creatures whose only purpose was to find me and sting me. Their stings left me swollen and in agony. When I was lucky enough to find a nest, I relished sneaking up with gasoline or fire to destroy them before the wasps could strike.
Insects of all kinds filled the summers. Some were useful, crickets and grasshoppers made excellent fish bait. Others were nuisances. Fire ants, imported into the port of Mobile in the 1930s, spread across the region. Their stings were fiery and relentless, and they could strip a dead animal clean in no time. Palmetto bugs, those large Florida roaches, scuttled through the shadows and sometimes into the house, along with their smaller cousins. The world of insects, good and bad, was a constant part of life.
Back Lake itself was about sixty acres, connected to nearby Lake Stanley, which was about 110 acres, by a swampy tangle of black gums, willows, and grasses. Until I was about eight years old, there was no real passage from one lake to the other. Then “old man Shoemaker,” as Clarke called him, dredged a two-hundred-and-fifty-foot canal across his property, opening a channel that made Back Lake accessible by boat.
The homes along Back Lake were much like ours, some larger, some smaller, but the lots were mostly all wedge shaped with their fronts facing the water. Every family had at least one boat, often more, and neighbors knew one another well. People fished, water-skied, and swam. Life around the lake had the makings of a pleasant, easy-going community.
This was the backdrop of my childhood, from birth to graduation from high school: the lake, the woods, the swamp, the creatures both welcome and unwelcome. It was, and could have been, a place of good memories and happiness. At times it was. But beneath that surface, it was also a household ruled by the will of one man. Clarke’s presence filled the air as tangibly as the scent of Old Spice and cigarette smoke that clung to him like a wet blanket. The lake might have offered freedom, exploration, and joy, but within the walls of that house there was little room for independence. My memories of Back Lake are bound not only to the beauty of the place, but to the tension and disappointments that came with living under his authority. It was a home, but never a refuge. For me, it will always remain the place where joy was swallowed by submission, where possibility was crushed beneath Clarke’s shadow, and where I learned too early that a house is not always a home.
Eleven
It was typical for Clarke to arrive home early on a Friday afternoon. If the weather was good, he would take me fishing in the small boat we kept tied to the dock at the lake in front of the house. If it was not, then there were chores to be done inside, errands to run, and plans to make for the work planned on Saturday.
Saturday afternoons might include some swimming and water skiing, but Sunday afternoon was the true social time for us. Brick might arrive on Saturday with friends from college, and on Sunday, after church, guests would begin to gather. The swimming, skiing, socializing, and eating would commence. Often it was Clarke’s family, but sometimes Gertrude’s as well.
The boat came out of the boathouse, the grill or fish fryer was lit, and watermelons were pulled from the garage refrigerator. If it was a particularly special Sunday there would be homemade ice cream, hand cranked with each of the younger cousins taking their turn at the handle.
Clarke was the master of ceremonies for all of it. He directed the driving of the boat when not doing it himself, oversaw the grilling of steaks, chicken, or chops, and managed the frying of fish and the slicing of watermelons. The women were also under his direction as they worked in the kitchen and set the tables. He was the center of attention, just as he always wanted to be.
These gatherings continued every weekend until I was about six or seven years old. By that time Brick had graduated from college, married, and entered the Navy. Mitzie had finished high school and left for college. That left me, Mother, and Clarke at home.
Without the college and high school crowd, Clarke lost interest in the weekend festivities. He turned his attention instead to a new venture he called “the Store,” his attempt at selling carpet and furniture on weekends. It was an enterprise that quickly pulled me into its orbit, mostly against my will. What had once been carefree days of family and laughter became weekends of labor and obligation. I came to resent “the store,” and more than that, I came to resent Clarke for forcing it upon me.
Twelve
Our garage never sheltered a car. It was filled with tools, the washer and dryer, and the usual collection of odds and ends. That changed around 1962 when Clarke poured concrete for an addition to the boathouse. Everything from the garage was moved there, and the space was cleared for “the store.”
With Brick and Mitzie gone and only me left at home, Clarke turned his attention to this new project. Drawing on contacts he had made during his travels, he began selling carpet and furniture out of the garage on Saturdays and Sundays. In the beginning it was all word of mouth. He sold from samples and photographs, marking prices at his cost plus a modest ten percent. Overheads were low, and the profits grew as volume increased.
Clarke’s new routine made the venture possible. His territory had shrunk to Georgia, Florida, and Alabama, which meant he could leave on Monday mornings and return Friday afternoons. Only trips to Miami or the downstate Florida towns kept him away longer. Otherwise, he was rarely more than a few hours’ drive from home.
The store quickly became Clarke’s obsession and my misery. To him it was natural that I should be involved. To me it was forced labor. Nearly every Saturday I was pressed into sweeping, cleaning, cutting carpet, hauling deliveries, unboxing furniture, and every other tedious chore he could invent. I hated it.
In time he rented a building on the highway north of town where he could keep inventory and receive shipments. Brick invested, and the store was renamed from Bell Furniture to Mason and Mason. Clarke used Brick’s Navy contacts to reach young couples just starting out, and business boomed. For Clarke it was success. For me it was more drudgery in a place I despised. He never cared how I felt about it. Truth be told, he never cared much about anyone but himself.
The business did not remain small for long. Clarke and Brick soon purchased land north of town and built a building. As sales grew, he expanded the structure and added a proper furniture showroom. He even hired a secretary so that the store could remain open during the week while he traveled his territory. Mason and Mason was no longer just a weekend venture, it had become a full time operation.
Clarke poured himself into it, always pushing for more. He even built a fish pond on the property, a strange mix of business and vanity, something that seemed to symbolize both his ambition and his restless need to control every detail of his surroundings.
For me, the expansion only meant more work and less freedom. I was expected to do it all, paint the building, clean the floors, mow the grass, and even feed the fish. What had started as forced Saturdays in the garage grew into daily responsibilities that hung over every week of my boyhood. As the store grew, so too did the weight of obligation placed on me.
It was an every day burden. I hated the chores, hated the store, and hated being bound to Clarke’s obsession. The more success he found, the more I was pressed into service. It was not pride or family accomplishment that I felt, but drudgery and resentment. Mason and Mason may have been his achievement, but for me it was only a trap.
In time, my role in the store went far beyond chores. Clarke and Gertrude began taking vacations, and I was pressed into running the business in their absence. By then I was newly married, struggling financially, with no steady job and few prospects. Clarke saw my vulnerability and used it to his advantage.
He persuaded my wife and me to move into the back of the store and operate it as if it were our own. But it was never meant to help us. There was never a future in it for me, no real chance that I would inherit the business or carve out stability. It was simply Clarke doing what he always did best, using his skills as a salesman to make his obsession sound like an opportunity.
He painted visions of profit, independence, and growth, but the reality was long hours, unending responsibilities, and the knowledge that none of it belonged to me. The store was his creation, his pride, his control. For us, it was nothing more than survival dressed up in promises that were never real.
Looking back, I see that time in the store as a turning point in how I understood Clarke. To him, everything was a transaction. Even with his own son, there was always a deal to be made, always something to sell. He dangled the store in front of me like it was an opportunity, but in truth it was just another way to bind me to his work.
The promise was never real. There was no inheritance, no partnership, no path forward. There was only Clarke’s ambition and my labor. He thrived on selling dreams, but the profits and the pride were always his alone. What he left for me was resentment, exhaustion, and the bitter recognition that he would always come first.
Mason and Mason stood as a monument to his obsession, not to family, not to legacy. For Clarke, the store was proof of his determination to win at any cost. For me, it became the symbol of everything I despised in him, his relentless drive, his disregard for others, and his endless need to be in control.
In time Renee and I walked away. The burden was too great, the promises too hollow. Not long after, the store closed and the building was sold. Clarke had taken what he wanted from it, just as he always did.
The truth is that Mason and Mason was never the legitimate business it appeared to be. Clarke’s practices were far from above board. He encouraged cash sales without receipts, pocketed the money, and split it with Brick. State sales taxes were routinely sidestepped, and purchases for personal use, cars, equipment, even household goods, were run through the store as business expenses.
On paper the store showed only a meager profit, just enough to appear credible to the IRS. But in reality it functioned as a cash cow for Clarke’s schemes, a front that gave him both cover and advantage. What looked like an honest business was in truth another example of his willingness to bend rules, exploit others, and manipulate appearances to serve himself.
In the end, Mason and Mason was less a business than a mirror of Clarke himself: restless, ambitious, and dishonest beneath the surface. For me it was a prison of chores, false promises, and resentment. When the doors finally closed and the building was sold, I felt only relief. The store belonged to Clarke’s world, not mine, and its end allowed me to return to the life I had been forced to set asideThirteen
With the story of Mason and Mason behind me, let’s return to the rhythms of Clarke’s household. The store was only a sidebar, another of his restless ventures, but the real measure of him lay in the way he shaped our family life. To pick up the thread of that story, I will return to where I left off before the detour, in the years when Clarke’s presence at home pressed most heavily upon us.
By the time I arrived, Clarke had moved on from raising children. As long as I was small and cute he was happy enough to have me around, but once I grew older his interest faded. His attention turned to his own pursuits, and I became little more than a tool to be used when it suited him. There was never a time when we tossed a baseball or threw a football. There was fishing, of course, because that was what Clarke enjoyed. I learned to fish, but it never became the passion for me that it was for him. He taught me to hunt, but again it was to serve his interests. I was a tag along, not a true partner, in his activities.
Clarke had already raised his son when he was young, and I was something different. I was the child meant to save a marriage that should have failed years before. To him there was no reason to invest time or patience in my upbringing. But he did see me as an asset, someone to be used when his needs required.
Discipline in Clarke’s house came by way of corporal punishment. I received more than my share of his belt across my back side for slights both real and imagined. The pain of the strap was harsh, but the anticipation was worse. He would remove that narrow strip of leather from his belt loops slowly, always with a lecture. I stood before him as he unthreaded the belt, his words falling heavy while I waited in dread for the strike to come. In some ways the beating itself was a relief, for at least it brought an end to the waiting.
Worse than the belt was the willow switch. That punishment carried its own humiliation because I had to cut the switch myself. If the one I brought was judged unsuitable, I was sent back to fetch another, with the threat of an even harsher lashing for my failure. The willow switch is a particular southern instrument of discipline. Cut fresh from a weeping willow tree, it is long and slender, tapering to a fine point. Flexible, yet sharp, it leaves angry red welts on legs and buttocks that rise like cords of fire across the skin. The sting is immediate, like a wire heated in flame. The welts fade quickly, leaving little trace, but the pain is sharp and unforgettable. The sound alone was enough to make my stomach twist, the high whine of the switch cutting through the air just before it struck.
Looking back, I believe Clarke took a certain pleasure in inflicting pain. He was, at heart, a sadistic man. The truth of it showed not only in how he treated me, but in how he treated animals. Clarke had no empathy for them. To him they were little more than nuisances, unless they happened to be his own pets. Cats, dogs, strays that crossed his path. He showed them the same casual cruelty he showed me.
Clarke’s cruelty showed itself most vividly in the way he treated animals. When I was about eight years old I had befriended a stray cat that often came around the yard. One day Clarke announced that he was going to test his new .25 caliber pistol and that he would use the cat as his target. I was terrified to defy him, so I stood there and watched as he raised the weapon. The shot rang out, and blood splattered across the cat’s white fur as it collapsed and writhed in agony as it died. He showed no remorse. To him it was only a cat.
The task of burial fell to me. With tears stinging my eyes, I dug a hole and laid the small body to rest. My grief was swallowed in silence, for there was no comfort to be had. To Clarke it had been a demonstration of his new pistol. To me it was the brutal killing of a creature I had loved.
Dogs fared no better. Strays that wandered too close were targets for his .22 rifle. He would not kill them cleanly but gut shot them on purpose, making sure they would crawl away and die out of sight. That way he would not have to deal with their bodies. The suffering he caused did not trouble him in the least.
One cat in particular revealed the depth of his cruelty. Clarke shot its front legs with his shotgun, a low shot that left the cat crippled. The animal survived, and after a time it returned, dragging itself forward on its chest, its forelegs useless. Rather than feeling pity, Clarke gloated at its misery. Eventually he killed the poor creature and took delight in boasting about how he had finally finished it off.
These are not the stories of an impatient man disciplining a child or a farmer dealing with pests. They are the stories of someone who found pleasure in the suffering of weaker creatures. It is in these moments, more than any lecture or punishment, that the truth of Clarke’s nature was laid bare.
Clarke’s lack of empathy did not end with animals. The same coldness, the same instinct to dominate and demean, carried into how he viewed people. He reserved particular contempt for those he saw as different or beneath him, especially Black people. His cruelty to animals was only the beginning. His words and attitudes toward people revealed an even darker side.
Fourteen
Clarke’s contempt for others found its sharpest edge in the way he spoke about Black people. The word he used most often was the ugliest one in the English language, spoken without hesitation or shame. To him it was not an insult but an everyday label, as ordinary as calling a dog a dog. He would say things like, “everyone should own one or two of them,” as though people were property, as though the world had not changed since the days of slavery.
He was, in this, very much a product of his place and time. The South in which he was raised taught white men that their worth rested in their whiteness alone. Lyndon Johnson once observed that “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket.” Clarke embodied that idea. He held tight to the illusion of superiority because it gave him confidence and cover. As long as he could point to someone else as lower, he did not have to face his own failures.
What strikes me now is how selective his prejudice was. Having fought in the Pacific, one might have expected him to harbor hatred for the Japanese, but he did not. He seemed able to separate his wartime experience from his view of them as a people. Yet when it came to Black Americans, his disdain was absolute. He saw them as lesser by nature, fit only for servitude, and he repeated that belief often and with conviction.
This attitude was not hidden, nor was it tempered by any sense of shame. It was voiced at the table, in the yard, in front of children, as if it were part of the ordinary air we breathed. For me as a boy, it was another form of instruction, another lesson in how Clarke believed the world was ordered: white above Black, men above women, himself above everyone else.
I remember one day, sometime around 1966 or 1967, when I was with Clarke meeting Brick for lunch at a restaurant somewhere in Alabama. The Civil Rights Act had only recently been passed, and integration was just beginning to reach restaurants and other public spaces in the Deep South. It was a time of tension, when the presence of a Black man in a white establishment could provoke anger, threats, or worse.
That day a tall, slender man came in and sat at a table near ours. I still see him clearly in memory: a dark green suit, neatly pressed, a white shirt and tie, polished black shoes. His head was bald, his eyes dark and piercing. He carried himself with quiet dignity.
Clarke leaned toward me and told me to pretend to be ill. Obedient and afraid, I slumped in my seat as he called the staff over. He declared that his son was sickened at the sight of a “nigger” eating nearby, and threatened that we would not pay for our food unless the man was removed, or else we would leave and never return.
What makes this memory stand out so sharply is not only Clarke’s cruelty but Brick’s silence. He was in the Navy at the time, part of a service that had been officially integrated for nearly two decades.1 He should have known better, should have recognized that the man seated nearby had every right to be there. He should have spoken up, but he did not. His silence hung heavier in that moment than Clarke’s words.
Even as a boy I knew it was wrong. My shame was compounded by my compliance, pretending illness because I had been ordered to. The image of that man, sitting tall and proud in his green suit, remains vivid to me still, a reminder of both his dignity and our failure.
Two years later, in 1969, Clarke’s racism shaped my life in an even more direct and lasting way. By then integration had reached the schools of the Deep South. Courts were enforcing desegregation orders, and white families who had resisted for years were being forced to send their children to schools alongside Black students. For Clarke, this was intolerable. He declared openly that he would have no son of his sitting in a classroom “with a bunch of niggers.”
That belief became one of the driving reasons I was sent away to the Lyman Ward Military Academy in Camp Hill, Alabama. There were other factors, no doubt; my own struggles at home, Clarke’s desire to be rid of responsibility for me, but the refusal to allow me to attend an integrated public school was central. He would rather pay to send me away to a private school than see me share a desk or a cafeteria with Black classmates.
So at the age of fourteen I found myself in a world of uniforms, drills, and rigid discipline, living apart from my family not because it was the best place for me, but because Clarke could not accept a changing South. I remained at Lyman Ward for two years, absorbing the lessons of military routine, but also carrying the knowledge that my presence there was born of prejudice and selfishness, not opportunity.
Even then I sensed the contradiction. Clarke had lived through war, serving his country in the Navy, yet he refused to accept the most basic truth of equality at home. His stance was not about principle or honor but about clinging to the lie of racial superiority that had propped him up his entire life.
Clarke’s racism was not an isolated flaw but part of the pattern that defined him. Just as he showed cruelty to animals and indifference to the feelings of his family, he carried a deep need to dominate, to demean, and to place himself above others. Whether through words, punishments, or the false pride he took in believing himself superior because of the color of his skin, Clarke revealed again and again that his power came only by diminishing those around him. It was the foundation of his character, and the shadow it cast reached into every corner of our lives.
1. President Truman signed Executive Order 9981 in 1948, which desegregated the U.S. military, though integration took several years to be fully implemented. By the 1950s it was complete.
Fifteen
Clarke was one of those people who could be said to sell refrigerators to Eskimos. He would smooth talk, persuade, and push until he made a sale. At times he was overbearing, and he never believed in allowing a customer to walk away without buying something. His upbringing and prejudice showed in something he once said to me about Jewish shop owners: “A Jew will never allow the first customer of the day to walk away without buying something. That sets the tone for the entire day.” This was exactly how Clarke conducted business. He would hang up the telephone, or ignore it if it rang, if there was a customer in the store. His quip was always, “I can’t put my hand in the pocket of someone on the telephone, but if a customer is in my store I can get into his pocket.” And so he conducted business on the road and at home in the same relentless way. Selling, selling, and more selling.
Clarke lived as he worked. Always selling something, whether it was merchandise, vacations, ideas, or persuasion pushed to the point of breaking the will of the person he targeted. His selfishness came wrapped in charm, but underneath it was always about him. The following examples show how his personal preferences and desires outweighed everything else, including mine.
The first came after Brick and Mitzie were gone from the house and Clarke had opened his business. The weekends no longer held much skiing or swimming, and the ski boat with all its equipment had become a burden. Clarke announced that he would “give” it to me. I was fourteen at the time and had no money or skill to keep the boat running, but I accepted because what boy turns down such a gift. After repeated breakdowns and failures, Clarke convinced me to sell the boat and all of the equipment to a cousin and uncle who could actually maintain it. I received five hundred dollars for the sale, and Clarke was rid of everything connected with the ski boat. He presented it as generosity, but in truth it was only another way for him to offload what he no longer wanted.
The second was the Gremlin. When I came back from military school and returned to public school, I wanted a car to drive like any sixteen year old. Clarke and Helen agreed that we would go to Pensacola on a Friday afternoon to look for a suitable used car. I had my hopes set on a late model Camaro, GTO, Mustang, or some similar coupe. But when I arrived at the store that afternoon, within minutes a green 1972 AMC Gremlin pulled into the lot. Clarke had been in Panama City that morning and had already made a deal with a salesman to drive the car sixty miles to the store. He put his full salesman’s pitch on me and wore me down until I agreed to accept the car and forgo the planned trip to Pensacola. What sixteen year old refuses a car, no matter how ugly it might be. I accepted the Gremlin, but I knew even then it was not for my benefit. Clarke wanted control. He did not want to waste an afternoon shopping in Pensacola. He wanted the deal done and behind him. I was manipulated into his plan, and he walked away happy. I enjoyed the freedom the car gave me, but it was still a Gremlin, and I still resent him for it.
The third was the apartment at the store. After Renee and I were married, Clarke proposed that he would build us an apartment in the back of the store so that we could operate the business and support ourselves. At first it seemed like a wonderful idea. It had a custom kitchen, new carpet, air conditioning, and a cast iron Franklin fireplace. It was comfortable and well built. But as always with Clarke, there was a hook. He moved his motor home onto a pad behind the store and lived in it much of the time. He was always there, early in the morning, late in the evening, and nearly every weekend. He and mom were living apart for much of that period. Then when Brick was stationed in Hawaii, Clarke decided he wanted to go. He persuaded mom to join him on an eight month cross country trip that included four months in Hawaii. I was left behind to run the store and keep an eye on Wilma, his mother and my grandmother. Once again I was used to make his desires possible, not because it was good for me or for Renee, but because Clarke needed someone to keep his world intact while he chased what he wanted.
Each of these episodes reveals the same truth. Clarke’s life was about Clarke. He wrapped his schemes in charm and persuasion, but the outcome was always for his benefit. For me, it was a steady education in how selfishness can disguise itself as generosity, and how manipulation can feel like opportunity until you look back and see what was really taken from you.Sixteen
Clarke met his death on October 16, 1997. He had always predicted he would die on October 20, 1999, so he missed his mark by two years. Not a bad guess over a lifetime, I suppose. The cause of death was a massive stroke. He was outside, apparently sitting in a lawn chair, when it struck. He seized, fell to the ground, and there was never any chance he would survive.
Twenty two years earlier Clarke had been in an automobile accident. He suffered a broken jaw, several lacerations, and bruising. In the course of treatment he was found to have a serious heart condition, the result of years of cigarette smoking at two to three packs a day. Ironically, the trauma of the accident may have saved his life by revealing the problem before it ended him with an early massive heart attack.
In the years that followed, Clarke’s health and habits collided. Declared totally and permanently disabled by his physician, he began drawing Social Security Disability benefits at the age of fifty six. With those benefits and the Medicare coverage that came with them, Clarke entered a new chapter. He had income, medical care, and most of all the freedom to run the store and to insert himself into the lives of everyone around him.
He never quit smoking. He simply traded cigarettes for cigars, and then for a pipe, inhaling them as deeply as he had his cigarettes. On top of this he began drinking heavily. At first it was gradual, a drink here and there in the afternoon. But like so much else with Clarke, once it took hold it grew unchecked until it consumed him. Drinking became an everyday ritual, beginning in the early afternoon and carrying into the night.
Clarke’s death came while mother was visiting her sister and me in Pensacola. The call came from Brick, and I drove with mother back to DeFuniak Springs. We learned that Clarke had been taken to the hospital in Dothan, Alabama. When we arrived he was unconscious, stabilized only by drugs and machines. The MRI scans told the story with cruel clarity. The family agreed to discontinue life support.
Brick and Renee were present but left before the final moment. Clarke died shortly after, with only mother and me at his side.
I will return to Clarke’s death again in later chapters, told from the perspective of others whose lives he touched. Each of us experienced that moment differently, and the details, memories, and emotions cannot be captured in a single account. For now, it is enough to say that his passing marked the end of a long and complicated life, one that shaped us all in ways that we still reckon with.
Seventeen
Clarke’s selfishness reached into every corner of our lives, but no one bore the weight of it more than my mother, Helen. For me it was manipulation. For Renee it was obligation. But for Helen it was a lifetime of bending to his demands. She lived in his shadow, carrying the burden of his choices, rarely given the chance to shape her own.
To understand the true cost of Clarke’s self absorption, one must look at Helen. Her life tells the other half of the story, the quieter but no less powerful truth of what it meant to live alongside him. And so, it is to her story that I now turn.
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