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My Life: Part One – Two Letters
by Silas T. Cobb

    I remember Tennessee like it was just yesterday. The sleepy town I grew up in was surrounded by fields of all kinds of grain, mostly cotton and corn. I ran around those fields all the time when I was a kid, at least until my mother called for supper. We didn't have much money because of the crash up in New York, but we still had each other.
    My dad owned a small record store that struggled, but managed to stay in business. When my older sister, Sunday, and I were very small, he brought home a victrola. We grew up singing along to that thing. “Silas,” my mother would tell me, “the good Lord blessed you with the voice of an angel.” I used to dream about making it big, singing in a big band in Nashville, and not having to see Momma cry again just because we couldn't afford next month's bills.

    Then the war started, in 1941. Sunday had gotten married the year before and had a kid of her own, but her husband was shipped off to Europe along with my dad. I was only thirteen, but I still had to support my sister and mother like any grown man, so I helped them run the store whenever I wasn't at school. We quit selling records, due to the war effort, and moved on to sheet music and postcards. The store was finally making us more than enough to get by, and I was honored in the local papers as a “rising entrepreneur”. I had no idea what that word meant at the time- I was just happy to see my mother smile again. My little niece, with her Shirley Temple looks, would have a much better childhood than I ever did.
    Since Sunday found us some hired help, I had a little more time to keep up with my pals. When they started chasing down girls, I joined them. However, I began to daydream more about my best friend Ronnie more than any of the girls we'd been after. I didn't dare tell him or anyone else, since I'd been told that loving another fellow like that would be a very sinful thing to do. It was real painful, living like that, even though my current girlfriend acted sweeter than penny candy. I didn't want to tell her the real reason my arms stiffened whenever I kissed her.

    On Christmas Eve, 1944, there was a letter. The sender was regretfully informing us that Augustus “Augie” Lee Cobb had been killed in action.
    Dad was dead.
    I was so upset that I didn't notice the second letter. I didn't notice it for another year.

     When I finally opened that letter, it was an invitation from some rich Park Avenue engineer named Andrew Ryan. He had heard about my business skills and wanted me to participate in some sort of secret underwater city he was building. The invite promised me that I was entitled to unregulated, free profits without Uncle Sam's interference, or, basically, that the sweat of my brow was mine alone. To a country boy who rarely saw much outside of town, a city like that sounded like a dream come true.
     My brother-in-law got home safely from the war, so I wasn't too worried about Sunday anymore, since I knew he'd take care of her and their little girl. It was my mother I was worried about- I didn't know how she'd manage if I left, even with my sister to help her. After seeing her get along fine for a few months without me, I packed a suitcase, then wrote a note explaining that I was going on a trip for a short while. I thought I'd be back real soon, with money to burn.

     It was the dead of the night when I left. Driving an old jalopy I had bought using some of my own savings, I passed Nashville, but continued on for several days to New York, knowing that the boat waiting there would take me to a decent future.