DIDN’T RAISE HIS BOY TO BE A “SLACKER”
THEY don’t raise their boys to be gun-shy down in the mountains of Kentucky, so when John Calhoun Allen, of Clay County, heard that his son had been arrested in New York as a “slacker” he was “plumb mad.”
The young man was rounded up with a bunch of other “conscientious objectors” and taken before Judge Mayer in the Federal Court. John C. junior told the judge that during his boyhood in the Kentucky mountains he had witnessed so much bloodshed that he was now opposed to fighting and had a horror of killing a man or, in fact, of being killed himself. The judge was puzzled. He had never heard before of a Kentuckian with any such complaint, so he packed the young man off to Bellevue for the “once-over” while he communicated the facts to his father down in Clay County, and, says the New York Times:
The answer arrived in the form of the 6 feet 2 inches of John Allen himself. The mountaineer came into court just before the noon hour. He wore the boots and the corduroy trousers of the Kentucky hills. His shirt was blue, collarless, and home-made. His coat was old-fashioned, and in his hand he carried his big black sombrero.
“May it please your honor,” said United States District Attorney Knox, “we have with us the father of John Calhoun Allen.”
The mountaineer looked the Judge squarely in the eye and bowed. Tall and erect, he towered above every other man in the court room and he was not in the least embarrassed.
“Judge,” he said, “I got your letter and I thank you for it, and I started to answer it in writin’, but decided that maybe it was better that I come here myself and see what’s the matter with that boy of mine. It ain’t like our folks to act as that youngster has acted, and I assure you that I am plumb mad about it. I have five boys, and this one who is in trouble here is the oldest. Two of my lads are already in the Army and the two youngest will be there soon as they are old enough.
“And so I have come all the way from Kentucky to get this one who I hear is a backslider. All I ask is for you to let me take my boy back to Kentucky with me, and I will see to it that he comes to time when his country calls. There ain’t going to be no quitters in the Allen family. My boys that are already in the Army ain’t twenty-one yet. This one is my oldest and he’s the first to miss the trail, but he’ll find the trail again or I’ll know the reason why.”