Growing up, we all called him Charles. It was what his parents - Mr. and Mrs. John C. Walton - wanted to call him. This Charlie thing got going only after he'd figured out what he wanted to call himself.
He was a year behind me in age, but he always seemed to be getting into things before I knew what was going on. When I was six, and he was only five, my mother took me to visit him once in East Nashville where he lived, at the corner of Cahal and Porter road in a nice house with a big yard, bounded on two sides by a white wood fence. When I arrived, Charles came riding out to greet me on a two-wheel bike. The last time I had been there we had both been riding tricycles. The word for what I felt was chagrin - I didn't know that word back then, but I was certain that I wanted to learn how to ride a two-wheeler as soon as possible. And so I did, but the situation was clear: Charles was in the vanguard of things, and I was playing catch-up.
Charles knew things I didn't know, like what a side of beef looks like on a hook. He was able to get up close and personal with stuff like that, from hanging out at his father's small grocery store in Nashville. My father was in the newspaper circulation business. From him, I learned how to fold a newspaper and, in addition, the valuable fact that you'll get more money from your customers at Christmas if you give the calendars away, instead of selling them for a quarter. It was useful information, but nothing to compare with a side of beef.
Charles also knew more about birds than I did. I knew about Robins and Mockingbirds, but Charles was, in addition, conversant about Scarlet Tanagers, Red-Headed Woodpeckers and Yellow-Bellied Sap Suckers. Not to mention Chickadees. I found out that he had a big bird book that had color pictures of all the birds with a paragraph describing each one. One rainy afternoon, when I was at Charles' house, we decided to type out, on typing paper, all the paragraphs in the book, using a Royal typewriter that was there. When his mother asked us what the purpose was of doing that, we were stumped. We said we just wanted to play with the typewriter. She took that for purpose enough, and let us do it.
Looking back, that day we spent inside, playing with the typewriter, seems to have had a formative effect on us, as we each made our living with the use of typewriters. I found out from his mother, years later, that Charles had become a professional writer. On a visit to Nashville, from the west coast where I was living at the time, I asked Aunt Virginia what Charles was doing. She smiled and said, "He's a Word Monger - that's what he calls his writing business!"
It was chagrin time for me again - I was the one who was supposed to grow up to be a writer. But I decided, somewhere along the line, that there must be easier ways of making a living. Writing, for me, has been a hobby. Charles made a good living at it, writing and creating reports and presentations for big corporations like the Coca-Cola company. And, over the years, he wrote books about his life and religious faith that became (and remain) best sellers - right now, on Amazon.com, Charles' book, When There Are No Words, ranks #12,315 among all published books in print, and #26 in his book's specific category.
Before his mother told me about it, I had no inkling of this side of Charles. I remember him, when we were still at Stokes Elementary, as being all into sports. Every time I came to see him at 1739 Hillmont Drive (where he lived then, within walking distance of all the schools he would attend - Stokes, Hillsboro and David Lipscomb), he was shooting hoops in a basket hung over his garage. He dribbled incessantly. I would go inside and read back issues of Life and Colliers, or look at Aunt Virginia's vast stamp collection. I was an inside person.
What Charles was up to became apparent when we got to Hillsboro. Before I knew what was going on, he was playing varsity basketball as a junior. His years of practice paid off.
After his school days, Charles monged words for his daily bread and traveled the world with his wife, Kay, and boys, Tim, Don and Rick. Eventually, there wasn't anywhere else to go. Charles died early this year after a brief illness.
He's still ahead of me.
