Clifton Clowers and the voice of authority

August 14^th – Was never good a maths; figures come in my door and my common sense goes out the window. I think what it is, is my inbuilt mistrust when someone tells me the answer is the answer because it is. With this as the discussion clincher, I immediately question its validity; that’s why politicians are anathema to me, and I think I can pinpoint the moment I was infused with this natural mistrust of figures of authority and preachers of unquestioning mathematical exactitudes.

There I am, six years old and walking down the corridor of my infant school, Springdale, in Wolverhampton, along with what seemed like a hundred other six year olds as we were moved on from our register class to whichever classroom and whichever teacher was waiting for us for our next lesson…whatever that was…well, six; you hardly know its Monday, do you? Now the general details leading up the incident are unclear. There must have been chatter and such (six year olds, remember) but the details appertaining to me are crystal clear; crystal. I struggled a bit at school, didn’t make friends easily and was probably considered a bit odd as I played with dolls. Make of that what you will what I do remember was that amongst all those kids, I wasn’t talking. How do I know that? Because I was on my own even in that sea of childish humanity, I wasn’t the chatty kind (think of me now, those that know me, and you’re probably going;

“What? YOU weren’t the chatty kind? Purleeese…!”)

But I really wasn’t and I certainly didn’t have the self assurance required to make a friend of sufficient familiarity by that age (6) to be chatting and giggling along the corridor with them at 09.10 that morning; but others well, yes, there was chatting and giggling going on, but not from me. So, we’re passing a classroom door en masse when it flies open and Mrs. Crossley steps into the corridor, stopping the flow immediately with her bulk and voice.

(Word to the wise here; of all the teachers, Mrs. Crossley was the one you didn’t cross, not if you were six and wanted to make seven in fact not if you were 20 and wanted to make 21. Tall, wide, horn-rimmed glasses, grey-streaked black hair scraped back into an untidy bun, some whiskers and a voice and temper that would cause the Devil to think twice about fucking with her, even children of our tender age had learnt, very quickly, to avoid annoying her.)

“What IS ALL THAT NOISE!? WEBB! Come HERE!”

I stayed where I was (probably thinking there was someone else in the corridor with my name; now there would be a coincidence…) and in a single move she seemingly stepped over the children between me and her, picked me up bodily and dragged me back into her classroom, the door slamming behind her with a noise like an industrial freezer door sschukking-to. There followed several phrases spittled into my face, the only one I can recall being;

“...how DARE you make all that noise when I’m trying to work?”

That one stuck because I thought,

‘But…I didn’t, wasn’t, I was just walking.’

Of course, I said nowt, well you don’t have the vocabulary and take things at face value at that age, do you? Her short tirade continued for a few seconds and of such volume as to be heard by the other children; now frozen in the corridor outside. Anyhow, with a move no doubt long practised, she lifted my short trousers and slapped me on the back of the thigh with the flat of her hand…and that REALLY hurt. What else is also clear is that, being the youngest of three brothers I didn’t cry; you just didn’t for fear of being taunted as a sissy, so I can remember biting my bottom lip hard, hard enough to draw blood I found out later, as she shoved me back out into the corridor and the startled gaze of the other children. What struck then is still part of me now and even though I didn’t have the words or the understanding for it then, I knew what it was; it was injustice, the fallibility of those in positions of power and what a terrible thing power was when used wrongly. All these high-minded explanations I gradually pieced together over the years that followed and I know it’s one of the pivotal moments in my life that makes me question seeming, all-seeing political and mathematical solutions that are posited solely on the words of  those in positions of power to be right ‘because they are’.

Bollocks, innit, but such are the things that go to making us the person we are; good, bad or indifferent.

So, ‘Wolverton Mountain’; anybody been there? I doubt it very much because it was guarded by a ferocious mountain man, one Clifton Clowers by name, who had a beautiful daughter but who protected her with the help of the bears and birds and his undoubted skill with a gun and a knife…

I’ve cut to the chase as far as the song, which was a massive hit for Claude King back in the 60’s, goes. The tale was one that seemed overblown in that typical C&W fashion and I saw it as a novelty piece; a load of hokum strung together to make a hit record.. It never made an impression on me when I heard it originally and still doesn’t….or at least, not until I did a bit of research.

On this day in 1994, Clifton Clowers, the real man of Woolverton Mountain who had a daughter (more later) and who really was handy with all the tools required to eke out a living in the backwoods of Tennessee, including the gun and knife, died at the age of 101…yup, he actually existed. So, proved well and truly wrong on that one. However, my questing attitude (courtesy of Ms. Crossley) needed to dig further and see where what was fiction but now was truth, fell down; didn’t take long. Thing is, you see, the real Clifton Clowers and his spouse, Esther Belle Clowers, not only had one daughter, Virginia, but two; Burlene, twin of Burl (I haven’t made this up, honest; he called one twin Burl and the other Burlene…only a man reared in the mountains would do that, huh?) as well as four other sons; Carl, Guy, Ted and Johnny…well, what do you expect? No telly, dark at 5 in the winter…what’s a mountain man and his she-bear supposed to do? Thing is it would seem he didn’t keep the men away from his daughters ‘cos when he died he left behind fifteen grandchildren, twenty-seven great grandchildren and five great-great grandchildren; that’s 47 in total. Now, even being charitable and saying that all the children except the daughters got married, that would mean each son’s wife would have given birth to 9.4 children… So, I think we can safely assume that the daughters of Clifton Clowers were poorly protected from the filthy machinations of people like Mr. King and were destined to shell at least six kids; some protection, huh?

So my confrontation with Ms. Crossley did some good; it may not have solved the problem of world peace, called genocidal governments to account or stalled third-world famine but it sorted out the hypocrisy in a 1960’s pop song…well worth the trauma of a terrified six year old, I’d say.