animals. We had cows and chickens and four or five horses. We had one rooster. This is probably why Mickey got so fast. We had a rooster that was meaner than any dog you ever, ever saw. Every time you stepped outta that house, that dang rooster was right there. And, man, it would jump on you. He would take a ball bat and run to that bathroom, just trying to beat that rooster.”
There was yet another move, to Whitebird, before the family settled back in Commerce. There was always enough to eat—especially biscuits and beans. Enough, Larry recalled, to feed Mutt and Lovell’s friends Jay and Eunice Hemphill, who often showed up just in time for dinner and left as soon as it was done.
Pauline Klineline, a cousin on Lovell’s side of the family, said her mother always laughed when she saw childhood pictures of Mickey in a clean white shirt because he never owned one. Lovell took in ironing to supplement the family income. “They could just barely eke out a living,” said LeRoy Bennett, Mantle’s first childhood friend.
Though Lovell’s father was a church deacon and Mutt’s English forefathers were known as “dissenters” because of their fidelity to the PrimitiveMethodist Church, religion was not stressed in the Mantle household. Nor was education—Mantle later said he never saw his father read anything but the sports page.
In the Mantle canon, Mutt is portrayed as a tough man in a tough world who was tough on his oldest son. Kind? “That’s an interesting question,” Bennett said. “Yeah, I’d say so. But he probably didn’t realize that himself. He was just an ordinary, hard-rock miner.”
Mutt was a surrogate father to two of Mickey’s pals, Nick Ferguson and Bill Mosely, and to his nephew Max. “He’d just grin at you,” Mosely said. “You could tell when you were doin’ somethin’ wrong and everything, but he was pretty quiet. Everybody wanted to please Mutt, seems like. He’s the type of guy, he didn’t have to really tell you a lot what to do, but you just felt that you wanted to do what he wanted.”
In the family he was known for his prowess in cards and dominoes and his caution behind the wheel. “Mutt had a team of horses and a wagon,” Max Mantle recalled. “He drove the horse and wagon down to Afton, traded it for a car. Ray said, ‘We made just about as good time gettin’ down there with the horse and wagon as we did in the car on the way back.’”
When Mickey got old enough to drive, Mutt’s speed limit was strictly enforced. “Mick’d kick it up to forty-five or fifty miles per hour,” said Jimmy Richardson, Mantle’s first cousin on his mother’s side. “Mutt, he’d be squirmin’ around, and he’d say, ‘Slow down, son! You’re airplanin’ it!’”
Mutt’s two youngest children remember a gentle man, worn out and worn down by the mines, who came home every day, lay down on the divan in the parlor, and had them brush his hair. He was very particular about his dark, reddish black hair, which he wore combed straight back from his brow. “He’d say, ‘Okay, Bob, get your brush and your comb,’” DeLise said. “And I’d set down on the divan and comb his hair for hours and he’d take a little nap. I’d get a nickel for every hour.”
Larry didn’t get paid.
Like her husband, Lovell came into a world fraught with uncertainty and peril. A tornado demolished the family home when she was an infant, injuring an aunt who also had a newborn, Pauline Klineline’s mother. “Mickey’s grandmother took my mother and Mickey’s mother and nursed ’em both,” she said.
Lovell grew to be “a fair-sized woman,” Max Mantle said, who wasalso stout of opinion. She was patient with Mickey’s crew on winter afternoons, when they ran wild in small quarters. But she had no tolerance for anyone who messed with her boys. Mutt refused to sit with her at Mickey’s ball games. Her bellowed motherly support would have made her deacon father wince.
Nor did she shy
There was yet another move, to Whitebird, before the family settled back in Commerce. There was always enough to eat—especially biscuits and beans. Enough, Larry recalled, to feed Mutt and Lovell’s friends Jay and Eunice Hemphill, who often showed up just in time for dinner and left as soon as it was done.
Pauline Klineline, a cousin on Lovell’s side of the family, said her mother always laughed when she saw childhood pictures of Mickey in a clean white shirt because he never owned one. Lovell took in ironing to supplement the family income. “They could just barely eke out a living,” said LeRoy Bennett, Mantle’s first childhood friend.
Though Lovell’s father was a church deacon and Mutt’s English forefathers were known as “dissenters” because of their fidelity to the PrimitiveMethodist Church, religion was not stressed in the Mantle household. Nor was education—Mantle later said he never saw his father read anything but the sports page.
In the Mantle canon, Mutt is portrayed as a tough man in a tough world who was tough on his oldest son. Kind? “That’s an interesting question,” Bennett said. “Yeah, I’d say so. But he probably didn’t realize that himself. He was just an ordinary, hard-rock miner.”
Mutt was a surrogate father to two of Mickey’s pals, Nick Ferguson and Bill Mosely, and to his nephew Max. “He’d just grin at you,” Mosely said. “You could tell when you were doin’ somethin’ wrong and everything, but he was pretty quiet. Everybody wanted to please Mutt, seems like. He’s the type of guy, he didn’t have to really tell you a lot what to do, but you just felt that you wanted to do what he wanted.”
In the family he was known for his prowess in cards and dominoes and his caution behind the wheel. “Mutt had a team of horses and a wagon,” Max Mantle recalled. “He drove the horse and wagon down to Afton, traded it for a car. Ray said, ‘We made just about as good time gettin’ down there with the horse and wagon as we did in the car on the way back.’”
When Mickey got old enough to drive, Mutt’s speed limit was strictly enforced. “Mick’d kick it up to forty-five or fifty miles per hour,” said Jimmy Richardson, Mantle’s first cousin on his mother’s side. “Mutt, he’d be squirmin’ around, and he’d say, ‘Slow down, son! You’re airplanin’ it!’”
Mutt’s two youngest children remember a gentle man, worn out and worn down by the mines, who came home every day, lay down on the divan in the parlor, and had them brush his hair. He was very particular about his dark, reddish black hair, which he wore combed straight back from his brow. “He’d say, ‘Okay, Bob, get your brush and your comb,’” DeLise said. “And I’d set down on the divan and comb his hair for hours and he’d take a little nap. I’d get a nickel for every hour.”
Larry didn’t get paid.
Like her husband, Lovell came into a world fraught with uncertainty and peril. A tornado demolished the family home when she was an infant, injuring an aunt who also had a newborn, Pauline Klineline’s mother. “Mickey’s grandmother took my mother and Mickey’s mother and nursed ’em both,” she said.
Lovell grew to be “a fair-sized woman,” Max Mantle said, who wasalso stout of opinion. She was patient with Mickey’s crew on winter afternoons, when they ran wild in small quarters. But she had no tolerance for anyone who messed with her boys. Mutt refused to sit with her at Mickey’s ball games. Her bellowed motherly support would have made her deacon father wince.
Nor did she shy
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