A Boy Named Khrushchev

Stevie Rhodes as an infant in 1960

September 25, 2014

Dear Constant Readers,

This is the second installment in a new series of posts which I hope will form the first draft of a book.  The working title for this book is, "Confessions of a Second Grade Failure."  It is a coming-of-age memoir about growing up in Kingsport, Tennessee during the 1960s and early 1970s.

And don't forget - if you subscribe to receive my blog posts by email before October 15, you will automatically be registered in a contest to win a new Kindle reader from Amazon.  For more details about the contest and how to subscribe, please read this post.

Cheers,

Stephen

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Confessions of a Second Grade Failure

A Boy Named Khrushchev

On Thursday, April 21, 1960, I made my grand appearance into the world with a little help from Dr. Christiansen at Holston Valley Community Hospital in Kingsport, Tennessee.  I weighed in a little over six pounds and was noticeably absent any hair on my rather large head.  My parents were Jim and Charlotte Rhodes.  Dad was an electronic engineer at Sperry Farragut in Bristol, and Mom was a former bookkeeper turned full-time housewife.  They had been married just under three years when I came along.  I was their first child.

I was born into a large extended family of two grandmothers, umpteen uncles and aunts, and a bajillion cousins most of whom lived in Kingsport, or nearby in southwest Virginia.  And then there was the Texas branch of my mother's family, but more about them later.

The name my parents gave me was Steven Andrew Rhodes, after no one in particular - they just liked the two names.  "Steven" was a popular name at the time.  From 1955-61, Steven was in the top ten names bestowed upon infant boys in the United States.  But from earliest memory, I did not like this spelling, no matter its popularity.  Almost from the moment I learned to write, I spelled my name as "Stephen," not "Steven."  "Steven" just looked so boring as I wrote it out, so uninteresting.  But the added "ph" in my name, at least to me, made it appear more exotic, more substantial.  And according to my teachers in Sunday School, a man named Stephen in the Bible was the first Christian to be martyred for his faith.  So, yes, "Stephen" would do nicely.  So from that time since, I have gone, not by my given spelling, but the one of my own choosing.

One name over which I had no control whatsoever was the one that people actually called me.  In retrospect, I would have been okay with "Steven" even with it's mundane spelling.  "Steve" would also have been perfectly acceptable.  But no, almost from the beginning of my existence I was called "Stevie," and worse yet, "Little Stevie."  It is a moniker that follows me to this day.  When I talk to my cousins or to a friend from my hometown, I am still greeted with "Stevie."  Well, at least I can be thankful that no one calls me "Little Stevie" any more.

Another nickname that I was given early on by my uncle, Karl Hale, my mom's older brother, was one

Kanamit, the space alien

that was at least interesting, if not somewhat unique.  As I mentioned previously, I was bald at birth - not a hair on my head.  This, in and of itself, is not unusual.  Many babies come into this world bald.  What set me apart was that months and months went by before any hair began to emerge on my noggin.  To make matters worse, I was born with a rather large head for my overall size.  Everyone commented on what a big head I had.  A few would even later suggest that as a baby I looked somewhat like that alien in The Twilight Zone episode, "To Serve Man."  To be honest, my head wasn't abnormally gigantic - just a little larger than your average infant.  My mother became a little defensive about it, at which point my grandmother, Cora Hale, rallied to my defense.  She responded to such comments about my gargantuan noodle with aplomb and grace: "Why darling, didn't you know that God had to give Little Stevie a larger lead because of all the brains He gave that boy."  God bless her heart.  My nickname would have been "Big Head" if not for her.  From that time on she continued to insist that the jellied mass inside my cranium was just a little bit larger than average folks, so I shouldn't be ashamed of my hat size.

Well, back to my Uncle Karl.  He took notice of my hairless head sometime in the fall of 1960.  He just knew that my handsome profile reminded him of someone he had known or seen, but he just couldn't put his finger on it.  About this time I was learning to eat my food while sitting in a high chair.  Family lore has it that I had quite some appetite.  When I didn't get enough to eat, or if my mother was engaged in conversation with someone else and slow to feed my gaping maw of a mouth, I would begin to bang on the high chair table with my hands, my plate, or anything else I could readily grasp.  I would pound away until I got her attention and my feeding resumed.  So one day, when Uncle Karl and his wife, Loretta, were visiting, my hunger flared and my hands began to bang upon the table.  Uncle Karl's eye grew wide and then he cried out, "That's it!  I know who Little Stevie reminds me of - it's that dadburned communist, Khrushchev!"

Nikita Khrushchev at the United Nations

In early October of 1960, Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Premier, while visiting the United States made quite a spectacle of himself at the United Nations General Assembly.  Following a couple of speeches which were reportedly anti-Soviet, Khrushchev took off one of his shoes and began to bang away on the desk where the Soviet delegation was seated.  This infamous "shoe-banging incident" was all over the news, and Uncle Karl had taken notice.  And here I was, with a head as bare as my behind, sitting in my high chair, banging my little fists, food flying everywhere when Uncle Karl had his epiphany.  I looked and acted like a miniature of the leader of the communist world.  So, from that day on - until the day he died - Uncle Karl called me, "Khrushchev."  And the name stuck!