Growing Up Johnnie Clark

When I speak in schools, churches, radio or TV there seems to be a few consistent questions over the years. At some point I usually get asked about my childhood.

When I was a little kid we lived in a one car converted garage. When my mom married my dad she was a widow with two children. Her first husband, Howard Soper had Three Purple Hearts and was killed at the Battle of the Bulge. When I was five years old I remember very clearly a big State Trooper coming to our garage house. He told us that my dad had been in a terrible car wreck. My mom did all she could to keep me from getting upset but I was very aware of what was happening. A little while later that big State Trooper knocked on our door again and he had snow on his cap and shoulders, it was coming down hard. He had a Christmas toy for me. It was a Jack-in- the-box. Funny how some memories never fade even when you’re old.

My dad was blind and crippled for the next seven years before he died. He lost his memory for over a year and didn’t know me or my mom or my sister or anyone else. When he finally regained his memory Dad became a very strong Christian. He had an impact for Christ that I am very proud of.

Mom made $70 a month ironing clothes while taking care of my blind and crippled dad. A lot of our food came out of big Army green military cans. She couldn’t feed us all so Jimmy and Judy, my half-brother and sister got farmed out to grandparents in Wilmore, KY. My sister, Evelyn got farmed out to my mom’s parents, the McClellans. They lived on a farm in Lincoln County, West Virginia. The famous Hatfield’s lived up the holler and the famous McCoy’s lived down the holler with the McClellan’s in the middle. Sis ended up married to Kirby McCoy.

Mom kept me because I was the baby. She regretted giving up her kids for the rest of her life. Life ain’t easy sometimes and my mom had some tough times. But in spite of the poverty which was pretty severe, I was a mischievous but very happy kid. I don’t know if I wanted to be a writer as a kid but I used to climb onto the roof of my garage house and write Batman stories.

We moved to a Quonset Hut on Brown Street and I was the leader of a gang of kids who lived on Brown Street. We had wars with the kids from Blackwell Street. We had BB Gun wars and wore coal miner helmets and old Army leggings to keep from getting too hurt. I could shoot from the hip and hit anything with my Daisy. That came in real handy in Nam with the M60 machine gun.

I've wanted to be a Marine since I was five years old. There was ridge line along the railroad tracks behind my Quonset Hut house where we had some wonderful and occasionally bloody rock wars with the Blackwell Street kids. I named that ridge line, Marine Hill. That was nearly 60 years ago and my Uncle Jack Clark told me the people in town still call that area Marine Hill. I love that.

I invented a rock machine gun during those battles on Marine Hill. We would put a bunch of rocks in a handkerchief and ride past enemy positions on our bikes like strafing fighter planes. When you fling the handkerchief you hold onto one corner and it sprays an area with about fifteen projectiles. We also built a defense for enemy attacks after they stole my technology. We built a giant sling shot with an old car inner-tube and some 2x4’s. It took me and our fattest kid and my best friend,

Eddie Pritt to pull that sucker back. We blew one enemy fighter pilot right off his bike. He went home crying. He wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last. War is hell.

I started a book about those times titled The Brown Street Gang. But it still sits unfinished.