Moran

It was put to him gently. His other grandparents wanted a chance to get to know him. Carl's parents in Kansas. So he was put on a plane and off he went. He never thought that maybe one colicky baby was all Lillian could handle or that she might have needed to get a job. No. It was all Al. Al didn't want him around. However, once they were grown, Richard and his brother Noel  agreed that the only thing they had in common was that Al had treated them both like stepchildren.

His grandfather was named Cornelius and was know as Nene. His grandmother was named Grace Prettyman, and she was known as Grace Prettyman. Richard called them grandpa and grandma but he thought of them by their "known as" names. Moran was a small town of 400 souls but served a much larger rural population. Nene was the town's boss. He was mayor and moneylender. Thus he was unpopular except among his cronies. He also owned the town's little store and a group of motor cabins known as "G.'s Cabins." He had a roll top desk by his front door and a rubber mat at the doorway where all the muddy farmers had to stand while he refinanced their notes sitting at his desk.

Richard was eight and started school immediately. He was happy to meet his old friend, Jacky Harris, whom he had known in LA. Even though they hardly remembered each other they were fast friends.

It was very cold in Kansas. All the other kids wore crotch length corduroy jackets with big buttons. But Nene gave Richard an old fashioned man's sort of tweed coat. It was long and exceptionally well made, but it was nothing but embarrassing to Richard. He'd wear it until he reached the block of the school then take it off and crumple it up under his arms and run to school in the bitter cold. He reversed this pattern when he went home for lunch and again back and forth for the afternoon.

Lunch was often a couple chunks of fatback, that was kept in a large barrel of briny water on the back porch where it was cold, along with canned hominy and green beans. There was not much conversation. But when he got home from school in the afternoon, he could lie on the floor in front of the furnace and read the funny papers, legs swinging in the air behind him.