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PERSONAL LIFE HISTORY
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REAL NAMES
H. Perry Davis
Bill Newbern
Elizabeth Uity
Bruce Pasterfield
Squire Wilson
NORTH CAROLINA
H. Perry Davis
Justice of the Peace
Virginia Dare Arcade, Elizabeth City, N. C.
W. 0. Saunders
July 24, 1939
CHANGED NAMES
David Perry
Bill McGhee
Pocono City
Tony Bromfield
Squire Bagley
We'll make the introduction snappy for here is a
highly articulate character who has a story to tell and
tells it without restraint or apology. The author has
a hunch that emery reader of this personal life history
of Justice of the Peace David .Verry, of Pocono City,
will want to meet and know the real man when they finish
his story. pavid Perry now speaking:
01111..111
"I was born on a farm near Pocomo Uity, N. C. Only
a swamp separated our farm from the town, and the rail
road tracks that skirted the town were just across the
swamp. I would lay awake nights and listen to the
whistle of the locomotives, and the clanging of their
bells sweetest music I thought I had ever heard,
Whether it was the passing trains with their bells and
whistles and clatter on the rails that put the wander-
lust into me, or whether it was just born in me, I can't
say. All I know is that from the time I knew anything
I wanted to go places and see things. I wanted to get
on one of those trains and go as far as it would take ma.
I thought I'd like to be an engineer at the throttle of
a locomotive, sending it thunaering through the darkness
and careening around curves. Or I would be a brakeman
walking the tops of roiling freight cars with the wind
flopping the legs of my trousers.
"I lived to realize my ambition. I railroaded
from the time I was 16 until I was 28. I worked first
and last on the Central of Vermont, the Bangor Maine,
the N.Y. Central, the Northern racific, the Union
Pacific and Santa Fe. I saw every state in the
union but one. I started as a yard man, when I had to
lie about my age to get a job. I worked up rrom brake-
man to freight conductor, and when I walked off my last
railroad job in 1919 I drew $300 for my month's pay.
I saw life in Ghicago, ot. Louis, Denver, San Francisco
and beattle. I lived for months on Frisco's famous
Barbary Coast, met Zack London there.
"As a natter of fact I left home when I was 12
years old. It was this way: I was working in the field
with my rather and he got mad with me about something
and started to lick me. I ran from him, jumped a fence,
hit the road to town and got up with my chum Tony Brom-
field, whose father had married one of my aunts, and
told him I was going to stay with him. Tony's datily
had a blacksmith and wheelwright shop and I hired out
to him. My father came to town to look for me next
day and asked me if I didn't want to go back home? I
told him no, I had hired out to Mr. Bromfield. The old
man didn't make any russ about it. I guess he thought
I'd soon tire of pumping a bellows and come back home.
"I stayed with Mr. Bromfield for a year and then
got a job as galley boy on a yacht. I didn't stick to
that job very long. Maybe I wasn't out out for a
sailor. Game back home. I had a brother in New London,
Conn. When I was fourteen going on fifteen my brother
took me up to New London where he was working on two
big ocean freighter's being built for Jim Bill's North-
ern Pacific. I was a big, husky boy for my age, had a
keen eye and a nimble way and my brother got me a job
as a fitter's helper on one of those ships at 75 cents
a day. I was quick to catch on and soon they raised me
to a dollar a day, and then to a dollar and a half.
"When I was sixteen I went Over to the Central
Vermont R.R. and asked for a job. It was a second
rate rail road, paid low wages and had to hire minors,
liquor Dicks and men who couldn't hold jobs on first
class road. From then on I was a railroad man.
"I have had some harrowing experiences and walked
close to death many a time. It never occurred to me
that it wasn't just my good luck that I wasn't killed
a dozen times, until once when I came home for Christ-
mas I happened to mention my luck to one of my sisters.
'Don't thank your luck,' said my sister; 'thank
your mother's prayers; all of her prayers have been for
you since you left home; she prays night and day, with
hardly a prayer ever ror any of the rest of us.' I
thought I noticed a tone of resentment in my sister's
voice.
"But sister was right; I know the power of prayer.
My mother was never a showy kind of Christian; just a
meek, soft-spoken woman who talked little about her
religion, but who read her Bible when the rest of us
were in bed and prayed constantly in secret.
"I married a fine woman in Utah. I led her a
dog's life; not that I was mean to her, but just irre-
sponsible. If ever a bird followed the scriptural in-
junction to give no thought to the morrow, that was me.
my first wife died, leaving a daughter by me. My second
wife was a widow and had a son by her first marriage.
But I'll come to him later. Both of the kids have been
loyal to me; they have put up with all my cussedness,,
frivolities and eccentricities and been damn good
natured about it. They're fine kids, fine as they make fem.
"I married the second time. Met my second wife on a
street corner in Oakland, Calif. There were tears in her
eyes. I stepped up to her and said:
"'Sister, can I help you?'
"'I don't know,' she said, 'I'm lost.'
"'You aint lost Sister,' I said, liou're found
and I don't mean maybe.'
I had traveled enough and rubbed elbows enough idth
life to know a genteel woman when I saw one. Turned out
that the little woman was the sister of a governor in one
of the Western States. I rushed her and we were married
in no time. She came east with me in 1919 when I quit
my job on the Santa Fe.
"Why did I quit? Well, I just couldn't stick to
any job that didn't interest me. This job bored me stiff,
sitting for hours in the cupola of a caboose on long desert
runs and nothing else much to do. The tail of my spine
ached for six months arter I left the job.
"Strange to say, I had saved up a little money when I
came back last. My idea was to take it easy 'or a while
until money ran short and I found a job that appealed to me.
"My wife and mother were anxious for me to settle down.
And the way I came to settle down was like this: I took a
job as fertilizer salesman ror a sort of farmers' cooperative.
Never had any experience in that line, but I found I could
sell goods and collect the cash for it like nobody's business.
One thing in my favor, my father had thirteen married sisters
and half the folks in my end of the county were kin to me and
glad to help me. The Perry's were always clannish.
"About the time I discovered that I had business ability,
I was with a party of friends who had stopped at a roadside
lunch room and auto accessory place on the outskirts of town
to buy a bulb for a tail lamp. The rough neck who ran the
place charged them 0 cents for a 10 cent bulb and insulted
them when they asked him to install it for them. They almost
had a fight with him. I began to check up on that baby and
it came to me as plain as daylight that some one could put a
business alongside him and treat the public right, and make a
pile of money. The trouble with that bird was, he had
such an advantageous location and business came to him
so easy, that he thought he had things sewed up and
could tell everybody to kiss his ass. When a fellow
gets that way he's already done for.
"Now I didn't want to go into business especially,
but there was my step -son just out or high school. He
didn't want to go to college; wanted to go to work He
was smart as a brier, level-headed, not afraid of work
and rarint to go. Here was a chance for him. I got an
option on a good business site next door to the cock-
sure cuss who thought he had the world by the tail;
threw up a fairly 4@cent store building with a good
front; put in a soda fountain and lunch counter and
stocked her with everything from hot dogs, cheese and
coca cola to automobile springs, tires, gas and cylinder
oil.
"We did so well that by 192d I came into town and
built a two storey brick building on a good business
street and removed the business from the outskirts to
the new downtown location. But I was already beginning
to go to hell and didn't know it.
"Now,we're coming to how I got to be a J.P. In
my business experience we did some credit business and
every now and then we had to sue some fellow for his
account, get out a claim and siezure or execute a judg-
ment. All of the cases I took to bquire Bagley, who
was a right wise ola ieliow and who got most of the
J.P. court cases in the county. In my tailts with
Squire Bagley and observing his methods, I thought I'd
like to have his job. And then, Bless God, the old
Squire dropped dead in 1929. I didn't want to be dis-
respectful to his memory, but his corpse wasn't cold
before I was circulating a petition for my appointment
as his successor. I got the appointment while a dozen
other fellows who wanted it were getting ready to pull
their wires. My policy always has been, if you want a'
thing, go after it, and no fooling.
"First thing I did after getting my commission was
to subscribe to a mail order law course. And it was a
good one. I lost no time in mastering it.
"When the better class of lawyers and business men
around town found that I took my office Seriously and
brought to it something of the judicial poise and dig-
nity that it deserved, they kept me pretty busy with
that raft of small civil litigation that is grist for
the J.P. Courts. My addiction to liquor hadn't betrayed
me then.
"But I got to drinking more heavily and my clients
began to take their cases to other magistrates. It got
so that about the only fees I could pick up were for
marrying runaway couples from Virginia. I have averaged
a marriage a day. A marriage usually turned me in a
five dollar fee. I never left it to the groom to slip
me what he pleased. I made my fee $5.00 and got it
except in the case of an occasional nig,.;er who didn't
have $5.00. But if that nigger wore spats he paid me
five dollars flat. A lot of those Virginia niggers who
come over the line to get married are dressed like a
bed of zinnias, and wear spats.
"But my liquor got me dawn. I was one of those
fellows who thought he could hold his liquor, it finally
got the double scissors on MB and I don't mean maybe.
"I didn't come from a drinking family. My father'
always kept a jug of liquor in the house. It was his
custom to take a swig out of the jug in the morning, put
the jug back in the closet and not touch it again until
next morning.
"He was the same way with tobacco. He'd light a
cigar every Saturday around noon and smoke until Sunday
night, and then forget about smoking until next Saturday.
"I always drank after I got out into the world, some-
times for the fun of it, sometimes for the pure hell of it,
but usually just to be sociable.
"But you can't play with the stuff regular without
it getting you down. It had begun to get me in 1924;
and then I got religion, joined the church and laid off the
stuff. I put my heart and soul into church work, and if
you ever show any willingness to work in a church
they'll pile it on you. Before I knew anything they had
me teaching a class, directing the choir, leading the
B.Y.P.U. and ushering. I was the chief handshaker, meet
'em at the door and give 'em the glad hand.
"Ball! I had to get drunk to get out of so much
work. I was never one to be burdened by responsibilities.
Whenever I have found my responsibilities getting burden-
some I walk out on tem. That's why I'm a failure as a
husband. It wasn't long after I took to drink again before
they eased me out of my responsibilities.
"When I got this J. P. job it seemed to me that I had
to fortify myself with a drink or two every time I had a
marriage to perform. You see, I took my job seriously and
I wanted to make a reputation. Performing a marriage ceremony
made me nervous. If i could get a couple of drinks in me I'd
get over my self-consciousness and get a grip on myself.
*When I get the idea liquor was helpful to me, there's
where I let liquor step in and lick ma. I stayed drunk for
of
five years and four months before my sisters got hold/me and
persuaded me to try to snap out of it.
“my best friends shunned me. My clients deserted me.
I had little money coming in and most of that went for
booze. I got shabbier and shabbier. About the only places
was tolerated were nip joints and pool rooms patron-
ized my bums. I was a bum myself. My wife
had deserted me, went to iteno and got a divorce and went
back to her people. Who the hell could blame her? For
two years of it I was just a Curbstone J.P., if you know
what that means. couldn't pay office rent. Every dollar
made went for liquor.
"I had got so bad off that one baturday evening, when
I found the D.T1s. coming on, I 'Phoned the police and
asked them to come and lock me up. I stayed in jail Sat-
urday night, ounday and ounday night. Monday morning my
brother came to see me and asked me if I didn't want to
go to Dix Hill and take the cure?
"I said Hell, nol Just get me a decent suit of clothes
so I can move among decent people again and hold my head up,
and I can lick this thing. My family got ms a new suit of
clothes and I moved out of the slum lodgings into which I
had drifted and got back on Main btreet. bure enough, my
old self-respect came back to me and I didn't take a drink
for 45 days. And then a friend came along and offered me a drink.
I thought I would take one just to convince myself that I
could handle it. I was going to take just one drink to show that
I could take it gnd let it alone.
"But that one drink robbed me of all my will power
and I took another qnd another until I Was stewed to the
gills. It wasn't long alter that before I went to Dix
Hill. I was in Dix Hill ror 61 days. They straightened
me out there.
-11
"The D. T's are the most realistic things a man can
have. You see snakes and monsters of all fantastic shapes;
and when you see them you will run from them and all hell
can't stop you. I had them come on me in the 41kst Club
one night and I broke out of there like a wild man and ran
for nearly three miles until I was so exhausted I flopped.
"But it isn't just snakes you see; usually it is your
own best friends who are conspiring to harm you. They may
be Alles away from you, but you can hear their voices as
plainly as if they were in this room.
"I remember one night I spent with poor old Bill MoGhee
he's dead now Bill had D. T's. and his wife had sent for
me. I laid with him on his bed with my arms looked around him to
try to keep him quiet. But in one of his deliriums he saw
the president of his company the best friend he had on
earth pointing a double -barrel shotgun at him. Be screamed,
broke my grip and it took three other men and myself to subdue
him again. That's what D. T's. do to you.
"No, I haven't taken a drink now since I got back from
Dix Hill, but once in a while I have had a strong desire for
a drink and then's when I've had to watch myself; I know if
I take another drink I'm gone. I realized some time ago that
there was where I needed God; I'm not strong enough by myself
to resist temptation, but I rely on God's help and God and
David Perry can overcome any obstacle on earth.
"Did you ever want a drink of liquor more than anything
me that my body and mind, both, were sick and that both
needed rest. They told me that I was burdened with
troubles, most of them brought on by liquor itself, and
for me to drop my troubles; they said they'd look after
them. We can't cure you, you will have to cure yourself;
but our business is to help you and we are going to make
it as pleasant for you as we know how. And they did.
"And I cooperated with them. You see, I wasn't forced
into Dix Hill; I went there of my own free will and accord
because I was sincere in wanting to be cured. No need to go
to Dix Hill if you don't want to make a sincere effort to sober
up and stay sober. No gpod forcing a fellow in there. Force
a man into Dix Hill and he's resentful when he goes in and
resentful when he comes out. Uhances are he'll get drunk
before he gets back home.
"I enjoyed my stay at Dix Hill. The doctors, nurses
and attendants are fine; the environment delightful; the
food good ana the social lire helpful and stimulating. You
meet some fine fellows there, men from the best families in
the stato, men who rate high in their own communities.
"I round something else at Dix Hill; a lot of folks are
making a racket of it. You take a tobacco rarmer; he sells
his crop in the late summer or early fall, gets a wad of
on a
money and proceeds to blow it in. Maybe he gets/drunk and
stays on it until he has made himself a nuisance to his family.
His wire packs him orf 60 Dix Hill and is rid of him for
several months. Things are so quiet around the house and
she enjoys so much freedom that she likes it. Next season,
when his crop is oft, she encourages him to gut soused so
that sne can send him off to Dix till agctin until it's time
to start tae next crop.
"This J. P. job just suits me. I have lived enough,
traveled enough, seen enough and thought enought about life
to be tolerant and sympathetic. I'm not inclined to pre-
judge people and I'm just that independent that I don't have
to truckle to anybody who would try to use my court. I
get a kick out of my work; you never know what's going to
turn up next; and, for a close up of human nature in the raw,
you can always get it in a J.P. Court.
"I always look for something worth noting when I have a
bunch of Negroes before me. You'll see a difference in the
nature of niggers and white folks in a court trial. I'll
cite you a case:
"A Negro woman who owned some property in one of the
upcounty townships had a bunch of niggers arrested for tres-
passing on her land and stealing timber. I heard the evi-
dence and rendered a verdict for the plaintiff, sentencing
the defendants to 30 days in jail, each, judgment to be
suspended upon payment of costs and good behavior for two
years. The costs amounted to ;14.60. The defendants pleaded
that they didn't have a cent.
"All right,' I says to the constable, 'take 'em over
to the county jail and maybe they can find the money.' The
plaintiff came over to me and says: 'Mr. ledge, I doan want
these men to go to jail; they's got families to feed an' it
would be hard on 'em; I'll pay their costs if you'll make
'em pay me back.'
"Well, sir, the woman paid the costs of the men she had
prosecuted and the court room scene was turned into a love
feast, plaintiff and defendants leaving the court roam as
happy as children.
"Now that sort of thing has happened in my court room as
many as twenty times. But always among Negroes. I've never
had a white prosecutor show any kindness to the person he
was prosecuting. Whites come into court with blood in their
eyes and go out the same may, often nursing their hostility
for the rest of their lives. Negroes are not that way; they
can forgive and forget; and when they think justice has been
done they'll help the one that has offended them if it is
within their means.
"I get the greatest kick out of marriage ceremonies. There
are a lot of people who don't want a church wedding; many of
them can't afford it. And then there's a touch of romance
in running over the line to another state and getting the
knot tied unbeknownst to the neighbors. I go to bed with
the telephone at my bedside, because they call me at all
hours of the night.
"One night, after midnight, I got a call from the
police headquarters that a couple was on their way to my
place to get married. A motorcycle cop led the way for
them.
"I dressed hurriedly, came downstairs, went out on the
street and there in front of my place was a sporty auto-
mobile with a stoutish woman of 30 or 35 years at the wheel.
A fat, bald-headed old boy was slumped over at her side,
his head on her shoulder.
"'Wake up, Honey!' she said to the bald -head, giving him
a shake; 'We are going to get married.'
"'Who? Me?' yawned Baldy; 'Not me!' And the old boy
meant it; he was drunk enough, but not too drunk to take care
of himself.
"I remember another couple that called me out at 11:40
the night of a December the 13th. 'We want to get married
on the 13th and we have only 20 minutes before midnight,'
said the groom. I rushed him to the home of the Registrar
of Deeds who always keeps blank marriage license forms in
his home; he wrote out the license and I married 'em right
there, pronouncing them man and wife at three minutes before
midnight.
"The very next December 13th the same couple came in
with another couple who wanted to be married on the 13th.
'How has your marriage on the 13th turned out?' I inquired
of the first couple. 'Just swell,' they replied; 'We're
still crazy about each other.'
-17
"And then there was the young fellow who applied for
a marriage license and couldn't remember his bride's name.
He had given his name, age, residence and place of birth to
the xegistrar. And then the xegistrar asked him for the
name of the young lady.
"'Danged if I know!' the young man exclaimed; 'I've
courted her for six months and the only name I've known her
by is Sis.' And then the ludicrousness of the thing flashed
on him, his face assumed a sheepish grin and then he burst
into paroxysms of laughter. It took him ten minutes to re-
compose himself and answer the Registrar's questions, after
asking the bride for her full name.
"Came one night, a couple from Norfolk who wanted to be
married. The bride, a beautiful brunette was accompanied
by her sister, also a beauty. I thought I had neVer seen
a more beautiful or more desirable pair of sisters black
hair, liquid black eyes, fine skins and figures like nobody's
business.
"Now, I never kiss the bride. I don't believe in that
sort of foolishness; but after the ceremony the groom and I
took a drink and I went out to the ear where his bride and
her sister were waiting. I crawled in on the seat with the
sister and said: 'I never kiss a bride, but I think I'd like
to kiss this bride's sister,'
"Both girls giggled and the bride said: 'Rosa, why don't
you kiss him?'
"By this time I had my arm around her, she yielded to
me and we embraced in one of those old fashioned country
kind kisses that popped my temperature up 50 degrees and
sent electric currents through my spine and every vein of
me. It was electrical. It left me limp as a rag and swim-
ming in the head. 1 had gotten the girl's name and address
and the next day I called her up by long distance. She
wasn't home, but her mother answered the 'phone and I told
the old lady that I had fallen heels over head in love with
her daughter and was going to marry her. The old lady giggled.
There followed a hot courtship of nearly two years before se
met and fell in love with another man; and the thing broke
off right then and there.
exciting
"But the most/thing that ever happened to me was just a
few weeks ago. I married a Navy man and a very attractive
young woman who had come down from Norfolk. 1 noticed the
bride was staring at me all through the ceremony, like some-
one in a trance. After the ceremony I had lunch with them
in a cafe around the corner. She continued to search me
with her eyes. After the lunch was over she asked me if I
would let her have my office key, said she wanted to arrange
her toilet. I let her have the key. She was gone about 30
minutes. When she came back she pressed the key into my hand
and it was wrapped in a piece of paper, which I immediately
pocketed.
"After the couple departed I unwrapped the key. On the
paper was written a request that 1 look in my Bible when I
got back to my office.
"In my Bible I found two notes. 'Darling, 1 love you;
I do not love the man I have just married and I am going
immediately to raorida and get a divorce. I'm coming back
and marry you.' That was the gist of both notes. Next
morning 1 got a letter and a 'phone call from her and she
said she knew what she wanted and she was going to marry
me or shoot me. 1 never was in such a pickle in my life.
"I told Mrs. Perry, my divorced wife about it (I think
she wants to come back to me); Mrs. Perry said: 'If there
is going to be any shooting I am the one who is going to do
the shooting:'
"Most couples who come to me to be married take the step
in all seriousness. Some, I suspect, rush into marriage
recklessly and impulsively and I married one couple who
afterwards admitted that they married on a wager. She was
an Earl Carroll's Vanities Beauty. After one wedding the
bride turned to me and said:
now
Mr. Perry, you have married us; tell us/how to
make a success of our marriage.' 'Young lady,' I said,
'You are on the right track right now; you are giving thought
to the serious side of matrimony; the fact that you are
taking thought is the best guarantee of making a go of it.
Many marriages go on the rocks because they are taken too
lightly. No business, no enterprise, no institution can
survive without thought being given to it.
"This J.P. business brings a fellow face to face with
some of life's tragic realities. Take the case of a socially
prominent young couple from a Virginia city who came to me
a few years ago. The girl was in the family way four months
gone. They had tried to hide it until too late. They
pleaded with me to marry them and date their marriage cer-
tificate back so they could face their relatives and friends
and spare their child the shame of having been conceived out
of wedlock.
"I told them I couldn't do anything like that; that I
was a court officer and court records must not be misleading.
"And then, moved by the distress of the young woman and
impressed by the character and sincerity of the couple, I
said: 'But sometimes when I tear a marriage certificate off
my pad a duplicate blank certificate adheres to it. There
would be nothing in the world to prevent you from having
some one forge a new certificate dated as you like.' 'And,'
I added, 'no one would ever be prosecuted for forging my
signature in such a case.'
"The groom wrung my hand and the young woman burst into
tears of relief and gratitude.
"When they left, after I had performed the ceremony, I
straightened out the crumpled five dollar bill the groom
had placed in my hand, for my fee; inside it I found another
crumpled five dollar bill. Which all goes to show that it
pays for a man to have the courage to do what his heart tells
him is morally right, even when it isn't always according to
Hoyle.
"Mrs. Perry thinks she would like to try another marriage
with me. We may get together again. I am 51 years old but
I have put this body through the works for nearly two score
years and I am mentally altho I hope not altogether
physically as old as Methusalah. Mrs. Perry is no spring
chicken. Romance is just about out with both of us. When
a man begins to age he feels the need of a home and a woman
needs companionship. But I could never make any woman happy.
Women expect a lot of a husband; nobody need ever expect of
me that I will do any other than have my own good-natured,
happy-go-lucky, don't -give -a -damn sort of way.
"What I'm thinking about now is security in my old age.
I don't want to be dependent on anybody. I've seen a lot
of ups and downs, but I never stooped to panhandling. My
one redeeming virtue is an ingrained pride.
"I've just incorporated a little business sasething new
in North Carolina for which there is a long -felt need; I'm
counting on it making life easy for me when I get it going."