Meeting Eric (The Doctor) and the Start of His Story

It’s time in my story to tell the story of “The Doctor.”  He isn’t around to tell his story anymore and so it is up to me to tell it for him.

One afternoon I got a call from one of the Hollywood gang of friends named John asking me if I could help a man named Eric get back into the music scene.  He had been the lead guitarist and band leader for the Mama’s and the Papa’s in the late sixties but had been up in Portland for quite awhile since the famous group had broken up.

I had heard about Eric from a friend who had referred to him as an “old salt.”  I said that I would help and arranged for Eric (otherwise known professionally as “the Doctor” or Doc) to perform at the Hollywood Canteen and I invited many people that I thought would like to know he is back in town.

On the night of the concert the venue was filled to capacity.  I was wearing a long southwestern type of hippy dress with long hair and put burning incense here and there.  The concert was well received and Eric decided he should move in with me.

I was not sure about that but he showed up with a mattress and what could I do? 

He continued to play at the Hollywood Canteen weekly.  The usual following act was Charlie Daniels.

Eric was born a little before his time being that there was no internet and there are very little Youtube videos to remember him by. 

We eventually got married and raised a wonderful son, Alan, together.  Eric switched between hard labor types of jobs and the music business, back and forth but did not make any major breakthroughs.  Much later, a song he co-wrote did make the charts in Europe and initially earned him some money before the song was downloaded for free on the internet.    He was extremely talented.  He entertained thousands of people, making them so happy.

But let’s go back to the beginning as he told me about his life.

Eric Glen Hord had been born in 1935 at Mercy Hospital in San Diego.  His father was in the Navy and his mother was a one-time teacher, but now a stay-at-home mother.  Eric was the third child with an older brother, Ned, and older sister, Mary Jane.   He went to Catholic school until he reached high school.  Then he went to San Diego High.

Eric loved San Diego.  He loved to fish, he loved the mild climate and how it was next to the Mexican border.  The zoo was world famous.  There were cliffs and coves and beaches.  You could watch trains, planes and boats.

Back then there weren’t so many freeways.  Pacific Coast Highway was a four lane road … two lanes on each side.  Mission Valley was a large river bed with cows and the Town and Country gold course.  Driving south and catching “the strand” up or a ferryboat took you to Coronado Island.  “BB” … before the bridge.  The Cabrillo Highway went through Balboa Park and there was no Padre Stadium, which is now called Petco Park.

Eric was a skilled tennis player who was just this short of going professional for lack of a sponsor.  He had an extreme intensity that he applied to whatever he was doing, even ping-pong, and including guitar and banjo playing.  He learned the banjo from his father, who was brought up in the South.

Eric was close to his mother as his father had been deployed quite a bit.  He was also close with a neighbor lady who was half English and half Mesquite Indian, Mrs. Harbottle.  She told him of her affairs with Billy the Kid and Black Jack Pershing.  She would name chiefs and show him pictures of her in Silver City, New Mexico on a military outpost.  She knew every dance for that period and could sing in Indian dialect. 

She went with his mother to Saint John’s Catholic church at five o’clock every morning.  Eric had been an altar boy there.  He liked the mysticism of Mrs. Harbottle’s stories and the Catholic ceremonies with incense and robes.

Eric was seven years old when his father got off a gray colored ship coming home from World War II, which ended in 1945.  His dad, Cliff, was dressed in Navy blue with medals and stripes and it seemed like he was seeing a God. 

Eric remembers his father screaming in his sleep for awhile after the war.  He had been transferred to San Diego from Guantanamo where he was serving on the Rueben James destroyer.   Three months later the destroyer was sunk by a torpedo and it sank with almost all on board.  He also had good friends on the Arizona ship that was destroyed in Pearl Harbor.

Eric’s dad only had a sixth grade education.  He went to work at the Lee Cotton Mill and Pencil Factory.  He sang country songs and played real good harp.  Sometimes he would start talking about cotton mill girls being raped or murdered by company bosses then putting the blame on some poor black laborers.  His dad would start singing a ballad about an incident but his mom didn’t want him telling the kids these stories.  She had been a school teacher from Vermont and was very strict about his dad’s drinking and storytelling.

There were many parties at Eric’s house.  Anybody with a fiddle, banjo or guitar was there.  His father’s buddies from the Navy sang and played old time music.  There was liquor and cigars and stories about buddies they would never see again.  The men let out lots of emotions.

Eric’s Dad had taken the family to North Carolina to visit his kin where he grew up.  They went to Kings Mountain, Gastonia Junction, just outside Charlotte.  Cliff was the fourteenth child born to Richard M. Hord and by his third wife, Mary Jane Towery Wilson.  The other wives had died.  It was customary for families to have a lot of children begot by different mothers.  A man needed a woman to raise the children and a woman needed a man to have a place to live.

On the trip, Eric and his family first stayed with Aunt Mary.  Eric helped her be a lookout for whoever was stealing her hogs.  He saw here take out her shotgun and yell at two figures in the moonlit distance, “get out of my field!” and then she shot two big blasts toward them.  But it was her brother, Uncle Leroy.  She told them not to use the field anymore and to warn everybody else.  Aunt Mary had a black cook named Sarah who would sing while she cooked.  Eric was very impressed with the music he heard there.

After they left Aunt Mary’s they went through Rock Hill to Carpenter’s Knob.  When they arrived at the cabin where his dad was born, he saw lots of multi-colored children running around.  There were grave markers nearby.  Some of them had dates going back a long time ago.

Uncle Luther and Aunt Kathy lived at the cabin.  Uncle Luther was out in the hills when the family arrived so Aunt Kathy fired off a couple of shots from a gun saying, “he’s on his way now.”

There were four small rooms with no lights.  A banjo was on the wall and a bible on the desk.  Uncle Luther was everything on Carpenter Knob; minister, policeman, and moonshiner.  He was a big family man. 

Aunt Sarah lived there also.  All the people there had on worn down handmade clothes.  The men wore old boots and the women and children didn’t seem to wear any shoes at all.  The children were a blend of white, Indian and Black, being a result of intermingling since early times when the white man came from Europe a came to the Piney Wood Mountains.

Later on Eric’s dad and uncle climbed up the knob to the still.  Luther took his shotgun and big knife saying, “You get fifty cents a piece for a good cottonmouth and you’ve picked the right time of year to come for that.”

Uncle Luther would be in the stream below the rocks where the snakes were sunning themselves and Cliff would scare them into the water.  Luther would slice their heads off as they glided by.  Eric saw about twenty skins frying in the sun in the back of the shack.

Uncle Luther told Eric about a young boy who jumped into a pond that had a whole family of cottonmouth moccasin snakes and when the boy came out he had snakes sticking all over him.  He’s up in the cemetery behind the shack now.

When the group got to the still, Eric saw barrels and tubes and a small stream of smoke coming from on the stacks.  Luther came out of the lean to and offered Dad and him a sip of his finest whiskey corn liquor.  Luther told Eric, “Boy, don’t drink it like pop.  Just a little bitty sip.”  After he sipped it, a burning sensation happened in his throat.  After a few sips Eric began to watch the world go round.  His dad had to get him up off the ground.  The men thought it was pretty funny.

Luther decided they could go coon hunting later that night.  On the way down the hill there were two crosses off in the trees about fifty feet from where they were at.  Luther says, “Them’s the police, son.  They said they were going to take my still and land away.  Ain’t right for the government to take away a man’s lively hood and land just because they ain’t getting rich off us folks.”  Dad said, “Ain’t gonna change none.  Never has, never will.”

The dogs were kept behind the shack.  Coon dogs waited for the night when they would be off with their masters in search of possum or coons.  On the night Eric went hunting the moon was full and hanging high up over the Knob, illuminating the forest.  Eric carried the sacks and they lit out with the dogs leading the way.  You could hear their barking far off in the misty moonlight. 

Luther said, “Ole Saul’s got something over in Indian Gully.”  Everyone spotted their flashlight up into the trees and caught a glimpse of something moving up there.  Before dawn they had gotten six possums but two of the dogs had gotten hurt, but not too bad.  Uncle Luther asked Eric if he wanted to come live with him and go coon hunting all the time.   Eric said, “I don’t know,” and Luther laughed.

Back at Aunt Mary’s again, the evening was filled with gospel singing and instrument playing including a song by Blind Willy Johnson.  Aunt Mary, cook Sarah and Eric’s dad must have sung “over a thousand” soulful songs.

The next day Aunt Mary sent the family on their way back home with three cooked chickens, potato salad, corn, biscuits and gravy, watermelon and pickles.

Eric got to see the richness of the poor and the beauty of the country on his trip to see where some of his roots came from.