Same here, zigs! Except in our case, Mom and Sis and I were the only Jews in a small Texas town and we lived only a short distance from the regional Ku Klux Klan headquarters. Sis and I maintained a low profile as we were told to do. I had my Dad's Irish surname and Sis had Step-dad's French surname, but after a while, they figured it out anyway. If I had a nickle for every time 3 or 4 older, larger kids jumped me on the way to or from school, I'd have my car finished already.
My Step-dad was from an old Creole French family in Louisiana and had a lot of Caddo Indian in him. Olive complexion. The Ku Kluxers weren't very happy about him, either.
One day when I was 11 or 12, the Ku Kluxers brought a wooden cross and a can of gas onto our front lawn. I was standing in our driveway at the corner of our house and could see that there were 3 or 4 truckloads of them standing out in the road. Maybe 15 in all. Their leader was a large man with a pistol in his hand and he was standing in our yard. Fired a shot into the air and yelled that we should get out of town.
My Step-dad worked construction and had just got home from work. He was the spitting image of Bogart and had the physique of Charles Bronson. He was 5'6" and wiry. Nothing but muscle and bone. I should also add that after he served in the Navy in the late 1920s, he had made his living as a longshoreman on the docks in New Orleans and at times, made some money as a bare knucks prize fighter during the depression years. Following that, he was hired as one of Huey Long's bodyguards and did that until Huey was shot in '35.
From then until the end of WWII, he went to sea with the Merchant Marine on the Atlantic run supplying England. Had one ship torpedoed by a U-boat off the coast of Ireland and made it ashore hanging onto a makeshift wooden raft. Not long after, the Luftwaffe bombed them and sank their ship in the channel as they were leaving Portsmouth, England to return to the States. Following the war, he worked construction as a carpenter. In short, he was a quiet man of few words and never started trouble but he was also a tough old bird and didn't take any crap off anyone, either.
With that in mind...... From my vantage point at the side of our house, I saw my Step-dad walk out the front door and down the walk. He didn't say a word to the man with the gun in his hand who stood a head taller than he. Just walked right up to him and quick as lightning popped him once in the jaw with a right uppercut. The big man went down like a sack of rocks. Pretty sure he broke his jaw. My Step-dad picked up the man's pistol off the ground and fired once into the air. Then he told those men to come get their boss man and their cross and get the hell off our property. With that, he emptied the shells out of the revolver. Put them in his pocket and dropped the gun beside the man he had knocked out. After he walked a safe distance away, 4 or 5 of the Ku Kluxers hurredly came and carried their leader and the cross and the gas can over to one of the trucks and they left. Never bothered us again.
Thanks for the memories,
Harry
