About Old Mack

About OldMack

 

He was born Ronald McKinney in Marlow, Oklahoma in September, 1934.  In a couple of months he’ll be 75.  His father, Claude McKinney, and mother, Ruth Jennings made a quick trip to California in 1933, soon after their first child, Laura Mae was born.  “Mack” as Claude was known, didn’t cotton to California and couldn’t find work.  So the threesome hitch hiked and rode freight trains to North Carolina, which was Mack’s home country.  Until she became pregnant again, Ruth hiked with her sister-in-law, Virgie, to teach the fundamentals of reading and writing to adults living in those “Cabins in The Laurel” up on the shoulders of Roan Mountain.  Mack and his brother, Jim, did a brief stint with the Civilian Conservation Corps building log cabin shelters on the Appalachian Trail.

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Ruth had a falling out with her mother-in-law, Laura McKinney, and decided she’d like to be back in Marlow, OK when her time came.  So she took Laura Mae by the hand and hitch hiked back to Oklahoma, leaving Mack to fend for himself.

 

Mack turned up in Marlow shortly after his son’s birth and was offered a deal he couldn’t refuse.  A sharp trader had been out to the farms going broke buying up Model-A Fords.  He rolled into Marlow with his convoy of cars and offered families like ours a chance to drive a car and tow one out to Los Angeles, where he expected to sell them for a handsome profit.  So off we went.

 

Ruth, the youngest of 8, was the last to arrive in California.  Her two brothers, both cowboys, were working for Fox Studios as stunt riders.  Most of her sisters were located between North Hollywood and Redlands; we stayed with her sister, Sylvia Wright in Redlands until she ran Mack off.  Sylvia’s daughter, Erlene, took care of me and Sis while Ruth worked in a drug store lunch counter.  After Mack absconded, Ruth moved first to San Pedro and then to San Diego, following the Fleet, so to speak.

 

You’ll find tales about the places Mack lived, went to school prior to “Moving On.”  Some of the tales are here and others on his blog at http://oldmackstales.com.  Maybe all of that traveling while still in the womb affected  his brain; during the next fifty years he never spent more than a year in the same place.  When he thinks that he’s been planted here since 1995, and is actually buying this place, it seems like an aberration.

 

At 16 Mack enlisted in the US Marine Corps, spent a year in combat in Korea with the First Marines, and enjoyed some interesting, challenging duties and stations for a dozen years.  In his civilian life he’s been a carpenter, boat builder, Commercial Pilot, fisherman, and plumber.  He’s started a few businesses, but too late in life to learn the ethics of business; i.e. greed and dishonesty; so naturally they failed.  Sketches of those misadventures are the stuff OldMack writes about; some of it is straight, but much of it is fiction based on experiences.

 

If you enjoy the yarns please comment on them.