Early Years in Savannah

June 8th, 1954 Richard Evans Lee is born in Chandler General Hospital, Savannah, GA to Gwendolyn Anderson Lee and Mack Emory Lee. Through the happy intervention of his paternal grandmother he escapes being named Montgomery Portress Lee.

Early on I was mostly raised by my father's parents and kindegardens. My parents moved around.

A few fragmentary memories remain:

A huge, say two or three stories high, globe behind a strip of stores nearby. Advertising a car lot I think. A landlady who had a tabletop brass Christmas tree lit by candles. Buying a watergun. People putting together a jigsaw puzzle that depicted a scene from the War Between the States (Civil War outside the South). Climbing up into a treehouse and being scared to get down. Using the hotwater heater insulation as itching powder.

Buying comic books which would be an important part of my life for many years.

About the time I turn six my grandparents move back to their hometown of Newington. A place with little more than a feedstore, water tower and two garages. One of the latter was owned by my Uncle William whose junk yard was an early source of entertainment. It was in one of his tow-trucks I had my first and last experience of driving. My older cousins put me behind the wheel. Not knowing what else to do I point it at a tree to stop it.

With my grandparents gone I start living with my parents every day. Back then a maid could be had for $20 a week. One tended to me after school until my mother came home to find one putting me to sleep by hoisting me over an unlit gas stove.

I have a false memory of my first day of elementary school. Everybody came into the class wearing military uniforms. Couldn't be true but is a perfect metaphor of how I'd always feel about school. Fate prankishly put Gilbert in my classroom. I'm not sure how much older he was. At least twice my age. He relived the first grade again and again. Folks in Savannah had a passive tolerance hard to believe. Gilbert wore high heels to school. After I'd learned that I loved guys I saw him on the street. Reconizable after all the years. Clearly gay, very likely transgendered.

I've never been able to learn if my memory of falling off a tall ladder at the WMCA is factual or not. My mother said she never heard about it. Maybe it did happen and they didn't bother to tell her. It was either an unconscion reflection of my terror of or the cause of my fear of heights.

While I had to have known him it was then that I first really met that great definer of who I am not, my father. My first memory of him is an angry outburst that he would not buy me the Video Village game that he promised me. I'd suggested that it would be better for me to brush my teeth after I'd eaten breakfast. His arbitrary, volcanic bursts of anger drove me away from him and every quality he seemed to embody.

Early fragments of Daddy. He brought home a 'cooter,' a large freshwater turtle that flopped about our backyard for a time. I never wondered what happened to it. I can guess, years later daddy tricked me and Victor into eating turtle by telling us it was chicken. I remember him giving me a switching because I'd said I dont' remember what to the lady who supervised the local playground. Aside from being forced to go the river on weekends I don't remember him much at all back then.

I remember my mother giving me a whipping back then. Daddy was asleep. I was so afraid he'd wake up and do something worse to me that I held my mouth shut. A couple of decades latter when he died I realized he was to be pitied almost as much as condemned.

My parents were still going to honky-tonks. I went with them. I drank something called Squirt and played the jukebox. Lots of country music I'd learn to love decades later.

For a few years we lived in downtown Savannah. Lots of 18th - 19th century buildings. We lived across from a colonial cemetary. I'd walk through it almost every day to get to the playground next to the jail. The prisoners would watch me as I flew my kit, swung and rode on the merry-go-round.

We lived in a flat, the owners occupied the three floors above us. Two brothers and the wife of one. The other brother was Henry Porter. Many years later I'd learn he had a big crush on my daddy when they were young men in Chicago. He never got over it. He was very nice to me as a kid. Gave me a silver pearl ring. When I came out he seemed to hate me for being gay, as though I'd betrayed him in some way. One of those sad old queers who equated heteroseuality with manliness.

Remants of an earlier America still existed. Quarter block away was O.G. Stahoupoulos' candy store. A tiny rectangle that sold only cheap candy and gum. As little kid I was an avid fan of Bazooka Joe's adventures.

On the other side of the playground was Tony Yatro's. A creaky soda fountain that sold comics I couldn't find elsewhere. A big part of my map of downtown Savannah was the places I could buy comics at. Most important was Llama's Brothers Newstand. Second was Elliot's drugs where they had the fat Harvey Giant Comics.

My momma was the center of my life. For a treat we'd stop in at Tanner's, a standup counter where you could buy deviled eggs and fresh squeezed orange juice. More rarely we'd go to Morrison's cafeteria on the Saturdays when my daddy was blessedly on the river fishing, boozing and whoring.

My momma was my oasis. Unconditionally loving, never blaming, never doubting my worth. Every Saturday morning we'd go grocery shopping together. My main pleasure was buying my cereal. Almost always chosen by what freebie was inside. I was delighted with the baking soda powered sub. And she always let me buy a bottle of marishino cherries that I'd upend into my mouth as soon as we got out.

Elementary school classes were often comprised of two grades in one class. The bright second graders in the same room with the third graders. Weirdly enough I was so talkative and gregarious Mrs. DeFranc, my second and third grade teacher, put my desk in a unflatteringly special place next to her desk to keep my tongue under control.

The school, housed in a large building that is now the Savannah School of the Arts, was a combined elementary and junior high school. I don't know why but I envied the tall students.

Elementary school meant nothing to me. Dim memories persist of making pot holders, playing a plastic flute and singing Frere Jacques. If I had intellectual curiousity I've forgotten it. I did want to be a scientist. But that was mostly wanting to be like Reed Richards, the leader of the Fantastic Four, Doctor Doom and Lex Luthor. (My identification with some of the villains, the eloquent ones who wanted to conquer the world would deepen in my early teens.)

That would evolve into a passion that surely molded me. An easy road to damnation, becoming just a supercilious nerd of no value to anyone, even yourself. It eventually gave me a bias towards a mathematical rationality without becoming trapped in the private lies that the search for systematic rationality often leads to.

There were three movie houses within two blocks of my house. Every Saturday I went to the movies. Sometimes with my momma to see the latest Elvis or a reissue of Gone With the Wind. I'd watch anything: westerns, war movies, romantic comedies. But the American International and Hammer horror and science fiction movies were my main delight.

When my sister was born we moved from downtown to a white trash housing project, Savannah Gardens.