Family secrets.Everyone family has them.Here is one of mine.The Haynes men in my family have a hard time handling alcohol.One little drink and they go a bit wacky.
Grand Pa Haynes who I loved dearly was a bootlegger and moonshiner in his early years the story goes.I do not hold this against him because he had to do what he had to do supporting his family.Story is he would come home with croker sacks full of money.One night he came in and had been shot in the mouth.So I'm pretty sure that was a rough life.
My Dad and his brothers,JD and Fred could be a handful I've heard.Fred spent some time in a federal prison for nearly beating an officer to death when he was in the army.I remember seeing a postcard from him to Grand Ma Haynes post marked Fort Leaven Worth Kansas.The prison.Someone killed Fred when he was just a young man in Macon,Georgia.Daddy said Fred had just got out of the army and had his muster out pay and was to meet Grand Ma the next day to look for a house for them but he never made it.A few days passed and they got a call to come to the hospital and identify someone who might be Fred.It was him.And he died from the beating.He had been found laying under a railroad bridge by the police.Daddy always had a theory about that,he always said the police had beaten Fred with a rubber hose pipe,his brain was just mush but not a mark was on him.Often when in Macon Daddy would show me the spot Fred was found.
So I never had the chance to meet Uncle Fred or Uncle JD.Both died young.JD died a few weeks after I was born.He had a neruo muscular problem like me.Plus from what I have been told he had been hurt during WW2 and was in constant pain.
Daddy was the baby boy of the family.In his younger years he had been a rounder I've heard.My theory on the Haynes men and alcohol has always been that because Grand Ma was said to be Cherokee Indian that is one reason they could not handle the firewater.
So in closing I will say I broke the family tradition.No guns or drink for me.I seen enough of that as a child.I think they did me a huge favor by showing me not what to do.
