Oral history interview with Felton ""Gene"" Combs, 2002.

              FELTON "GENE" COMBS INTERVIEW
NAU Cline Library
African American Pioneers in Flagstaff Oral History Project
[BEGIN TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is Dr. Carol Maxwell. It's October 1, 2002. We're at 3566 North Steves Boulevard, Flagstaff, Arizona, interviewing Mr. Felton Combs. 
Maxwell: I'm going to ask you just a little bit of information, so we can kind of get a sense of where you come from. Where were you born? 
Combs: In Louisiana. Could I go on and on? 
Maxwell: Oh, you bet! That's exactly what I want you to do. 
Combs: Oh, yeah, the good ol' state. That's a friendly state, Louisiana. They got parishes in Louisiana -they don't have counties like we do. I believe it's the only state that's got that. So I was born in Bienville Parish, just east of Shreveport. 
Maxwell: When was that? 
Combs: My birthday? November 28, 1938. 
Maxwell: And who were your parents? 
Combs: My parents is Lonnie Combs and Cleavy Cockerham -that's her maiden name, Cockerham -Combs. 
Maxwell: How do you spell that? 
Combs: C-O-C-K-E-R-H-A-M. 
Maxwell: That's an unusual name. I've never heard that one. 
Combs: Is that right? 
Maxwell: Where were they from? 
Combs: They grew up in Louisiana. They was born right there in Louisiana also. As a matter of fact, the reason I'm here in Flagstaff, I followed a guy here by the name of Cockerham. We graduated from the same high school, although he was about two or three grades ahead of me. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't be here today. 
Maxwell: Was he a relative of your mom? 
Combs: No, we grew up together. And there, when we grew up, of course there was no such a thing as telephone and TVs and stuff. We communicated by he lived on one hill, and we lived on another hill. We'd just get out and holler when somethin' happened. So we grew up, we played basketball together and stuff out in the yard and stuff. So when he graduated from high school, he came west, and he was here in Flagstaff. And that's why I'm here. After I graduated, I came west and I was living with a friend of the church that I go to, First Baptist Church. 
Maxwell: Who was that? 
Combs: His name was Woodrow Crane. He was a deacon at First Baptist Church. 
Maxwell: Oh really? I haven't heard his name before. 
Combs: Oh, he passed away in 1971, I believe. He's been dead for some time. 
Maxwell: Had he been here a long time? 
Combs: Yeah, Woodrow had probably been here about twenty years before I got here. He was workin' for -well, as a matter of fact, there used to be a sawmill here named Saginaw. It was up on West Route 66, Saginaw. After which, it became Southwest. He was workin' for the sawmill and lumber mill here. 
Maxwell: How come your friend came out here? 
Combs: Well, he followed also some guys from back home. They was Loyds, I believe -L-O-Y-D, I believe. They also grew up in Louisiana, in Shady Grove, where we graduated from, Shady Grove High School. 
Maxwell: Were they related to the Loyds who are here now? 
Combs: Yeah. Oreen Brooks [phonetic], that was her brothers, if you know Oreen Brooks. She's married to Clarence Brooks, and she lives out in East Flagstaff also. She used to work at the bank. 
Maxwell: Which year was that, that your friend came out? 
Combs: (unclear) I guess he came out here probably.... I came out here in '59. I came in '58, but I came to live in '59. It's kind of a long story, coincident. Two of us came here from Louisiana, a guy that had a brother already here. He was a minister, he was pastoring a church in Winslow. The baby boy came here with me. We drove here together. After he got here, his brother was a holiness preacher. They called it Church of God in Christ. The baby boy that I came with, he's smokin', and Church of God in Christ people don't smoke. So when he got ready to smoke, he had to go outside. Of course he didn't like that, so we drove back to Louisiana in 1958, and I came back on the bus in 1959. So to answer your question, I think Gene Raymond Cockerham came here probably in 1956 or '57, because he was two or three grades ahead of me. 
Maxwell: And then you followed after him? 
Combs: Yes. 
Maxwell: How come you decided to come? 
Combs: Well, as a matter of fact, it's coincidence again. I was just going to stop by and check out Flagstaff, and after which.... I was really going to California. My mother doesn't have any whole sisters and brothers. She had one half-sister, and at that time she was living in Sacramento, California. I was going to stop in Flagstaff, just to check it out, and I was going up to Sacramento to live with my mother's half-sister. They have the same father, but two different mothers. And I wanted to get a job and just live up there in California. I've been to California several times, but I'm still here in Flagstaff, probably after about almost forty-three years. 
Maxwell: That's a long time. 
Combs: Uh-huh, with the exception of two years I put in the military. I was drafted into service from here in '62, and I was in the army for two years from '62 to '64. And the same thing as I do. I remember I was in service when the late John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. It was a sad day up there to Fort Sheridan, just out of Chicago. 
Maxwell: You were in Chicago then when it happened? 
Combs: Yeah, I was stationed at Fort Sheridan. Fort Sheridan, I believe it's kind of like southwest of Chicago -kind of like really east. 
Maxwell: You stayed in Louisiana a fairly long time then before you came here, right? 
Combs: I grew up in Louisiana. 
Maxwell: So '38 you were born, and you were about twenty years old when you came here? 
Combs: I was about twenty. Yeah, I didn't get out of high school, because going back to talk about my life, I didn't get out of high school until I was twenty. I was sickly when I was growin' up. I'm asthmatic, by the way -I have asthma. I missed two-and-a-half years in school. And back there, they didn't pass you just because of age. You had to complete that grade before you went to the next grade. So I was twenty when I graduated out of high school. Kind of like the situation where.... I had mentioned I had two brothers older than I am. Of course my oldest brother is deceased now. And neither one of them didn't finish high school. So it was kind of like it was left to me to kind of blaze the way for my other sisters and brothers, make sure that they finished high school. That's why I really finished. My oldest brother, he dropped out of school, I believe, when he was about ninth grade. And the brother I'm next to -he's in Houston now -he went to the twelfth grade and went about three or four days, and he dropped out. 
Maxwell: Do you know why they dropped out? 
Combs: I guess they thought they was grown enough to leave home, so they just dropped out and went to Houston. My older sister -she's older than all of us -she had already married. She got married in 1953, and she had gone to Houston, so my oldest brother followed her to Houston, and my next-oldest brother followed my oldest brother to Houston. So the first three siblings, they went to Houston. 
Maxwell: How many sisters and brothers do you have altogether? 
Combs: Well, Mother had eleven kids. It's kind of unique how the family is. We had an older sister, then four boys after that. Then we have two sisters after that, and the last four boys on the end. So I have three sisters and seven brothers. To make a long story short, it was eight boys and three girls. 
Maxwell: That's a big family. 
Combs: Uh-huh. All of us are livin', just but two. I had mentioned to you that I'm an asthmatic. I had a younger brother here, and two of us was police officers. I'm a retired police officer, and my brother started off with NAU as a police officer, and he went highway patrolman. So he went out one night and he had a terrific asthma attack. In other words, he.... They were doing drug patrol. Highway patrol has two guys in a car when they're doing drug patrol, and they had stopped a vehicle that night. They can pretty well detect when they got drugs in them. They'd stop the vehicle out by Wynona, and Jim -that was his name, James, and we called him Jim -he came down with a terrific asthma attack, and his buddy tried to get him to the hospital, but when they got him there, he was dead on arrival. I have two brothers deceased, a younger brother and my oldest brother. The rest of us, we're still living. So Mother has three children in Houston. She has three here in Flagstaff. I have a brother in Denver, and I have two brothers still home in Louisiana. One's in Shreveport, and the other one got the old home where we grew up at -the baby boy. And the one that is in Shreveport, the two of us are military. I told you about I put two years in the army. The one in Shreveport, he's a veteran, too. He was in Vietnam. He was a dog trainer -the dog that would detect land mines. One day the dog missed a mine, and the dog stepped on the mine close to my brother, and the fragment from that mine, my brother kind of got injured with the fragment that came from that mine. If my brother had stepped on it, of course, he'd have been history today also. But the dog missed it, and the dog stepped on it. 
Maxwell: Was it winter when your younger brother had that asthma attack that killed him? 
Combs: He passed away on the tenth day of August. Dad passed away in 1988, and I lost my younger brother the next year in 1989. Kind of like back-to-back. He passed away, I believe, on the tenth day of August. I was gettin' ready, I had a retreat in Winslow. I was gettin' ready to go to that retreat. Well, I was scared to go to that retreat that Saturday, and my brother passed away, really, that Saturday morning, because it was early Saturday morning when the patrolman came by here to get me after they had taken Jim to the E.R. He came by here, woke me up about two o'clock in the morning, told me I should come and go to the hospital. My brother, they knew that was my brother. Jim didn't look too good. And I got the feeling then that Jim didn't make it. So when I got there, they had done several things to him with the electrical equipment and stuff, but Jim had already passed. I was scared to go to the retreat that Saturday morning, I just wasn't in no shape to go. Our church and some other churches here, we were going to have a one-day retreat in Winslow, although I didn't go. 
Maxwell: I'm sorry that happened. That's such a shame. When you were in Louisiana, did you grow up with all your brothers and sisters in your parents' home, or with the grandparents? What was the household like? 
Combs: Yeah, this is where I caught one. Oh, just amazing. I'm not ashamed to talk about my background. I love to talk about that. Out of the eleven kids, six of us was asthmatic. We all didn't grow up together, because you can see eleven kids, that was a span -all of us are just about two years apart, the age difference. I don't know how Dad figured it out. So we're talking about nineteen -my oldest sister's birthday, 1933, '35, '37. Of course I'm a little closer to my brother, 'cause my birthday is '38. And Payton [phonetic] is next to me. But otherwise, we're spaced about two years. We all grew up together. We was kinda like -I kinda like to brag about it, 'cause we were kinda like -you want me to use the word "self." That's not the word, self-sufficient or self-whatever. When we was growin' up, we grew up on a farm, by the way. We grew everything. If you name it, we grew it: watermelon, peas, butter beans. We had our own cows to milk. We had butter, we had chickens, we had eggs. When I was a little boy, my older sister told me Dad bought two things. We didn't drink coffee. We bought two things when we were growin' up, when I was small. I didn't know about that. We bought sugar and we bought flour. Everything else, we had it. Even the corn, my dad would take that to the mill, and they would make meal out of corn, you see. But after I got large enough, I would remember Dad buying three things, and that was sugar, flour, and meal. We had everything else, because from the hog, when you got our grease, our lard from that. We cut them up and got the cracklin' out of the fat and stuff like that. We had ham, we had bacon. Like I said, we had everything else: butter, milk, peas, butter beans. We made our own syrups. We had sugar cane. We were just self-sufficient, you know. And when we were growin' up like that, it's just amazing, out in the country. I guess I'm that way today. If one family have somethin' in a community, they divide with everybody else. Everybody have. Everything was in common, you see. I was kinda different when I got here. When we would dress a hog or beef or somethin', Mother would send one boy this way to the neighbors, carry this one some. And you know, that's the way the community was, you see. 
Maxwell: Did they send things back to you too? 
Combs: Yeah. I can say yes and no. It's amazin', some of the neighbors never did have anything to give. But yet and still, just because they didn't have anything to give, they were still part of the community, so people kept.... They wouldn't say, "I'm going to give you some this time because you don't never have nothin' to give, we're not going to give you anything else." But everybody had everything in common, you see. Kinda biblical, I guess you'd say, but kinda like in the Bible, you know. But gettin' back to your question, no, none (unclear). Since there was eleven of us, we were spread out, you can see. My oldest sister got married in 1953, and my baby brother wasn't born until 1954. So you can see.... So in other words, my baby brother don't remember.... As a matter of fact, Jim, that passed away, I don't think he remembers, 'cause his birthday was 1951. So he was just a year and somethin' old when my oldest sister got married and left home. And I think that has something to do with Carl too. The oldest boy, when he saw Mother expecting, he said, "Well, it's time for me to go." Too large a family, I guess, that's the way he would think. That's me reading his mind. So after Mother was expecting with the last child, the baby.... What happened, the last two, Jim's birthday is in '51, and the last boy's birthday is in '54. So you can see that's about three years. See, Mother thought Jim was the last child. Then you look up and here's another one, the last one. So therefore Carl said, "Well, I'd better take off." And after which, Archie, my brother next, he followed him to Houston. So you can see that probably at one time, it was probably nine or ten of us home, but otherwise some of the family started driftin' away, as others grew up, which, you know, is natural. 
Maxwell: Yeah, as they grow up and all that. What was it like to be in a family like that? 
Combs: It was nice. We had everything in common. We kinda like paired off, if you want to use that word. My two oldest brothers, they kinda like stayed together. My self and Payton -Payton lives here in Flagstaff, too -we kinda stayed together. My dad called us his big boys and little boys. He called me and Payton the little boys. We was in the first group of fours, you know. Because I had said after Payton is two more girls, and after the two girls, the last four boys came along. So the boys are in groups of four. 
Maxwell: You've really seen some different kinds of lifestyles then, huh? 
Combs: Like what, for example? 
Maxwell: Well, living like that, in a community that's really connected and self-sufficient, and then living here in Flagstaff, which is, I would assume, pretty different. 
Combs: Well, it's different. When I came here.... Well, first of all, I should go back and say, see, when I was goin' to school everything was segregated. It's amazing, they bused us to school. We passed three predominantly white schools, goin' to our all-black school. We had to go way -I guess we had to ride the bus some probably twenty-five, thirty miles to go to the all-black school. We passed one white school in Bienville, a little town they called Bienville. We passed another white school at Lucky. And we passed another one at a place they called Friendship, to go to the all-black school. So it was somewhat different. Gettin' around to what you said, see, when I came here, I wasn't used to bein' around white people, to make a long story short. And when I came here, every job that I got, I was the only black guy there. And quite naturally, my first job, I'm lookin' around thinkin', somebody's lookin' at me, you know. It's that thing, that, you know, I'm not comfortable. The first job I really got, I was washing dishes. There used to be a Gaber's [phonetic] Restaurant here, right where the -what is that thing now? Whatever it is. But anyway, after that.... 
Maxwell: Fiddlesticks? 
Combs: Fiddlesticks. And after that, used to be John and Eva. The old man came here -he was a white guy -came here. Woodrow Crane, the guy I was living with, said the guy came here on a log train. He was kinda like a hobo. Well, when Mr. John Vanderbilt passed away, he was a millionaire, and it was the Eva and John Vanderbilt Laundry here, and that's the first full-time job I got. I was washin'. We used to do just about all the motels here. At that time there was the Highway House. Travelodge is still here. That laundry did most of the bedding for the motels here. So that's where I was workin'. I was a washerman there. And when I went there, of course, I was just a helper. The other guy quit, and I became the head washerman there. And after the laundry closed down -it closed down in the wintertime, they kinda like sold out, the Vanderbilts did. And I started washin' cars for a guy by the name of Jack Beamer. Jack Beamer's here now. He's got several Texaco service stations. I get most of my gas, because I know him real well. 
Maxwell: Is that Beamer? 
Combs: Beamer, B-E-A-M-E-R. Jack Beamer. I think his name may be John -we call him Jack. But anyway, I was washing cars for him, and in the wintertime you're not going to get a whole lot of business in the wintertime -which we should, because of the mud and stuff. But you're not going to get a whole lot of car washin'. So the business got slow, and I left from there. That's when they used to have a Continental and a Greyhound bus line. I started workin' for Continental. I probably started workin' for Continental in 1960 or thereabouts. In 1962, of course, Uncle Sam said they wanted me. That's when I was drafted in service. We went to Phoenix. Several guys here was my friends. I wasn't married then. We went to Phoenix for our physical, and we stayed in a YMCA. The guys, we had talked about it before I went down there. They said if you go down there and play crazy, you won't get drafted. And I sure didn't want to get -I was doin' good. I wasn't married, so I didn't want to go in service. So I went down there and played crazy. But I guess where I made a mistake at, when I told them I had graduated from high school. When they asked me what my name, I would put my address. They asked me this thing, I would put something else there. And they kept me down there, put me.... I wasn't used to stayin' away from home, because my home was with Woodrow Crane, right here at Flagstaff. They said, "This guy's playin' crazy." So they kept me down there. They put me up, said, "You going to fill out these forms right." So the next day I filled them out right, because I didn't want to stay down there. And to make a long story short, me and a good friend of mine here, we got our notices from the army, we looked at them, we compared them together, and we said, "I thought I did not pass." You know, Uncle Sam didn't want me 'cause I had told them I'm an asthmatic, you see. I thought they didn't want me, so I was real happy. This other guy looked at his notice that he got from the army. He was real happy because he thought he passed, and I thought I didn't. So both of us was happy, to make a long story short. And come to find out, I guess just the opposite, and we both were sick. He didn't pass, and I passed. And I didn't want to go in service! And I went to Woodrow Crane, the guy I was livin' with, I asked him, what did that mean? He said, "Boy, you'd better pack your bag." I thought I was going to lay around here, you know. But he said, "You'd better pack your bag, 'cause you're goin' to boot camp, you're goin' to training." So I went from here to Fort Carson. It was in the wintertime, February. And when we got up there -well, as a matter of fact, that was my first flight. We boarded the plane in Phoenix. That was a bad experience. 
Maxwell: Why is that? 
Combs: See, over these mountains you've got air pockets, and the plane would hit those air pockets, see, they'd dropped. And I called it fallin'. And I bet you the steel seat in that plane, I bet you my fingerprints was imbedded. I had a death grip on that seat. We flew from Phoenix to Denver. We landed there, then we got on a still smaller plane to go out to Colorado Springs. That was the trainin' base. We got there, the snow was knee-deep. As I said, it was in February. And the second day we was up there, I thought the sergeant was kidding. He told us to fall out in that snow. The snow was knee deep. He kicked the guy next to me, but he didn't have to kick me, because I had seen snow from here in Flagstaff, you see. We fell out in so much snow, it's just like fallin' down on the floor right there. It came just that common, you see. Well, we had ten weeks of hard basic training up there, with snow, and right at the base of Cheyenne Mountain. Of course, you know, lots of snow up there. Then after we graduated from there, I went to (unclear), I went to Fort Sheridan. I did come up on all of that. At that time, the United States, we had a conflict in Laos. We had men over there fightin'. I came up on all this, ready to go to Laos to fight. But I had an accident up there, so they sent somebody else in my place. I got two of my fingers cut off when I was workin' in the quartermaster laundry. Only me and the sergeant saw it. The sergeant was my supervisor, because we had a civilian come off camp to do our bedding, wash our clothes, at the great big quartermaster laundry. My job was to keep the machines greased and stuff like that. The sergeant had told me that Friday morning, he said, "Call me Gene, by the way." My first name is Felton, but when he said Felton, that shocked me. (unclear) call me Gene. And the sergeant said, "Gene, I'm going to let you off the rest of the day, once you get all the machinery checked, make sure they're greased. You can have the rest of the day off." So I was lookin' at havin' Friday off, Saturday off, and Sunday, three days. And I was just runnin' around there, takin' old.... I had a rag wrapped around this hand, and I was wipin' off some of the old grease, lookin' for another fitting, you see, to wipe the old grease and put some new grease on there. But the rag that was wrapped around this hand has got.... Pulleys, some of them chains go fast, and some of them go slow. And that rag got caught in a pulley, and it carried my hand through there and cut my fingers off. And I was watchin' that rag go around there. All at once my hand felt funny. And I looked at my fingers -my fingers was gone, just like that. And they took a bedsheet out of that laundry. You know, they've got sheets. They wrapped a whole big bedsheet around here, they took me, about four of them here, down to the end of the street about a block or so. We didn't have a hospital there, we had a dispensary, a small clinic. They took me down there, and when they got me just down to this one more time. When I got up to the dispensary, the clinic, blood was comin' -you know, blood was really comin' out, profusin' out. And they took the bedsheet off because the blood was comin' in. They really dressed my hand at the clinic, and they sent me to the Great Lakes Navy Base. That's the second-largest navy base in the United States. In the wintertime you see nothin' but black, because the soldiers got the black uniforms. In the summertime, you see nothin' but white, because they got their white uniforms. It was great. So they took me there, and they had put this big bandage, dressed my hand, at the clinic. And about seven miles, they put me in an ambulance and took me up there. When I got to the Great Lakes Navy Hospital, this big thing that they had.... As I said, blood was comin'. By that time, I had lost so much blood I was passin' out. And I heard the doctor fussin' at somebody. He said, "Why did you let that guy lose [so much blood]?!" I don't remember nothin' else. The next morning I woke up, they had dressed my hand and everything like that. The doctor told them, go back to the quartermaster laundry and pick up the pieces. But there was grease and stuff. The chain, those digits, had mangled in that grease. They couldn't put them back on there, to make a long story short. That's about the extent. They discharged me. As a matter of fact, I didn't get a chance to go overseas or nothin' like that. As far as P.E., Fort Sheridan was a pretty good-sized base, and I don't know if you can look at me and tell me or not, I used to be real active in P.E. and stuff like that. I was the fifth guy on that base with the overall score in P.E. I was the fifth guy. There was a guy there from Whalesbone [phonetic], Texas. He was a teacher. He was the third, and I know I was the fifth. We had to run two miles. Well, you've seen a horizontal ladder. Run, dodge, and jump. We had all those exercises. From a thousand men, when you come out fifth, you've got to be pretty good-so I was pretty good. Before I went in service, I was active. I used to be a semi-pro baseball player when I was a kid in Flagstaff. When I came out, we did the same thing. Of course when I came out of service, I was married. I got married six months before my enlistment was up. I got married to a girl, we went to grade school together in Louisiana, but after which, we went to two different high schools -my wife up there. She went to Coleman High School, and as I said, I went to Shady Grove. 
Maxwell: What was her maiden name? 
Combs: Harris, H-A-R-R-I-S. 
Maxwell: And her first name? 
Combs: Eloise. She has a brother here. She did have two brothers, but the other one moved to Phoenix. His name is Henry. Now, he started off here with Sheriff Joe Richards also, but he's a highway patrolman, and they moved to Phoenix. 
Maxwell: When you were back there in Louisiana, did you work also, before you came here? 
Combs: On the farm, yeah. Everybody works. Dad's money-makin' thing was really cotton. That's where he got his money from. If we didn't make any cotton, that meant that Dad didn't have any money. So every once in a while, there was an insect they call the boll weevil. The boll weevil would eat the stem and stuff of the cotton, so we didn't make any cotton. We may make what they call a bale. You've seen bales of cotton. If you make four or five bales of cotton with nine or ten kids at home, that's nothin'. So if we didn't make any cotton, my dad had to go out and get his axe and go out and make cross ties for the railroad track. Then sometimes he would go to work at what they call a sawmill down there. But we had everything else. But we had to have some money to buy the things that we told you about. Plus, our clothing, had to buy the clothes. Mother made lots of clothing from these sacks that the fertilizers and stuff came in. We had mules, their feed would come in cloth bags, and Mother would take that and make clothes out of it. But we still had to buy some clothes, and buy the three things that we had to eat: flour, sugar, and meal, you see. 
Maxwell: And so he'd go work at the sawmill if the cotton didn't come through? 
Combs: If the cotton didn't come through, yeah, Dad had to go and do somethin' else, you see. 
Maxwell: Did you boys work at the sawmill too? 
Combs: No, all the boys, see, when we got big enough to leave home, we left home. We didn't do that. Well, we did work a little bit. There was a thing they called pulp wood. In the summertime, we could cut pulp wood, you see. That's what they made paper and stuff out of. We would do that for ourselves, because most of the boys, like myself -I don't have it, it's upstairs -you had to buy a class ring, when you graduated, you got to be twelfth grade. I'm the only boy, I think, got my class ring, because, you know, when you start courting, you see, the little girl, they would tell you, if you don't give them your ring, you don't love them. So my brother here, he doesn't have his (unclear) the last time. But I still have mine. I love Eloise, but I kept my ring. (laughter) But let me see, can I finish what your question was. We were talkin' about Dad, wasn't we? 
Maxwell: Yeah, did you guys work before you.... 
Combs: Yeah we cut pulp wood, and pulp wood, you had to cut it and stack it about six feet tall. You can see how short I am, so we had to kinda stand up on somethin', stack it up. And you got one dollar for that whole big pen of wood you have to stack. That's what you got for it, one dollar. But one dollar at that time went a long ways. That was just like probably almost fifteen or twenty dollars now. 
Maxwell: That was in the early fifties? 
Combs: Yeah, that was in the fifties. See, I graduated in '59, because I came out here and went back and graduated. 
Maxwell: And that's how much you had earned in '58-'59, would be a dollar? 
Combs: For one pen of wood. But see, we cut more than one. About a week's time, see, you could cut probably -you probably could cut two of those things, or three of them, a day, you see. So three times five is fifteen. So you can get about fifteen, maybe, if you're real skillful at it, you can probably make twenty dollars a week, you see. Well, as I said, fifteen dollars, anyway, a week. And fifteen dollars, ho! that was lots of money! 
Maxwell: How do you cut pulp wood? It's not big trees, right? 
Combs: It's trees about this big, and you've got a one-man saw. We called it a buck saw. I got one back here, but it's not as big as the ones we used then. It's a one-man saw where you can get out there and cut the tree down by yourself. Then you go and limb it, and you cut the pulp wood, and you have to put two sticks this way, and stack it up until it gets six feet tall, and you got a dollar for that. 
Maxwell: So it's a fourteen-inch diameter tree? 
Combs: About fourteen. 
Maxwell: Or smaller? 
Combs: Sometimes it's a little bit larger than fourteen. Let's say anything probably up to almost twenty. (unclear) sixteen, eighteen inches, and smaller. 'Cause if it got down to six inches, they wouldn't take anything any smaller than six inches. It had to be six to probably whatever size, you know. Not over twenty, because they become logs when it gets to be twenty inches. 
Maxwell: So it's a good-sized tree you're cuttin' down? 
Combs: Oh, yeah, it was a big-sized tree. Some of those trees were about so big, you see. 
Maxwell: And you cut them into about two-and-a-half foot.... 
Combs: No, no, you cut them into, I believe it got to be six feet long. 
Maxwell: Oh, six feet long and six feet high. 
Combs: Yeah, about six-by-six. 
Maxwell: And you got a dollar for it. 
Combs: Got a dollar for that. 
Maxwell: Sounds like a lot of work. 
Combs: No, no, no, it didn't sound like -that was lots of work! Sometime, I believe it was when I first started cuttin', I believe it was seventy-five cents for that tall, six feet. Then it went up to a dollar before I left home. 
Maxwell: Wow. Were you ever married before, or was this your first marriage? 
Combs: No, this is my first marriage. My sweetheart from grade school. We were going to school at grade school, the principal down there, of course we didn't talk to the girl. That was a taboo. 
Maxwell: Really? 
Combs: Couldn't talk to the girl. So we communicated with rocks. She would throw rocks at me, and I would throw rocks at her. That lets you know.... (laughs) If we started talking to a little girl, that principal -I never will forget his name -the first principal I went to school, his name was Baker -that was the last name. The next one was Willis. Mr. Willis would tear us up when we'd talk to the girls. We couldn't do that. 
Maxwell: So when did you get to talk to her? 
Combs: Well, after we left and departed and went our own separate ways. After eight grades, see, I went to Shady Grove, and she went to Coleman. The only thing we had when we were growin' was a wagon, and we didn't have a truck, we didn't have no type of automobile. I was a big-sized boy before Dad was able to get an automobile. As a matter of fact, I understand that he had one when he got married. But when he got married, he had to sell it, because he didn't have anything. He had an "A" model or a "T" model -I believe it was an "A" model. See, there was "A" models and "T" models then. And he had to sell it because he had to build his own house. The house that I was born in, and my oldest sister, my dad built that house by himself. He had three things to build that house. He had a crosscut saw. And a crosscut saw, you really need two people. But you can manipulate that saw with just one man, and that's what he did. He had a crosscut saw, he had a hammer, and he had a square. He didn't have a level, because the house was put up kinda leanin' that way. It wasn't put up straight, because he didn't have a level, you see. But everything else was in place. And of course at that time there was no brass windows. Everything was shutters, you know. Dad built that house all by himself. What he would do, I think, after he had asked for my mother -they wasn't married yet. I guess his mother-in-law had said, "Yeah, you can marry her." So he got busy building this house, you see. And he would ply his mule, workin' in the field in the daytime, until it get over in the evenings. Then he'd go work on his house in the evening until it got dark. We didn't have electric lights. We didn't have running water, or none of that stuff. We didn't have TV. As a matter of fact, when I was small, we didn't even have radio. I'll have to tell you something comical about that radio. Should I tell you, or should I not? 
Maxwell: Oh, yeah, definitely. 
Combs: Well, we had well -we had to draw our water from the well. You may have seen those and you may not. A hole in the ground, your water. We didn't have electric lights, we had lamps -kerosene, to do that. And of course we had to go to bed at a certain time, because kerosene, you'd probably get a gallon of kerosene for a nickel or a dime at that time. But a nickel and dime was a lot of money, you see. So about ten o'clock we had to put those lamps out and go to bed. But gettin' back to the well, we had to draw water from the well, and the well was about as far from here to that fence. It wasn't very far, just go out there and draw your water and come back in the house. And my oldest sister was my babysitter -Esther, my sister in Houston now. Her birthday is today. I got a scar on my nose and a scar on my chest. It was the corn in the field, we called it -gave it a funny name -we called it rosenale, and I don't know how to spell it. But when corn gets ripe, you see it in the store and on the cob. You know what I'm talkin' about. But when it'd get ripe, see, we'd go out there and cut the corn, and we can bring it and boil it, and my mother could fry it or whatever. But my oldest brother, he always was kind of careless, you know. He wasn't concerned about too many things. We had a porch, and I was just crawlin', a little babe, and my oldest sister, as I said, she was my babysitter. She went to the well to get some water, and I'm crawlin', I'm on the porch. And my oldest brother had gone down in the field to cut some corn, and he put the handle of the hoe under the house, under the porch. But he left the blade part stickin' out. And I was tryin' to follow my sister to the well. I crawled off the porch on that hoe, and that's where I got this scar in my chest there. There was no such a thing as a doctor. None of us hardly went to a doctor. Wasn't no such a thing as a doctor when I was growin' up. Mother and them did their own home remedy medicine. They could make medicine out of this and that. That's what we took to get well. We had a cold or this. I think I was probably the only boy that ever went to the doctor. When I got that scar, my doctor had to stitch it up. I never stopped nursin'. My mother breast fed all of us. And then again, I went to the doctor again. My mother was eatin' peanuts. We had peanuts, had just got them out of the field, and had parched them and everything. It's amazing how we did things out there all together. When we parched peanuts, we would put them in a big pan and put them on the floor, and we all would get around this pan, and we all would eat together. Everything we did, we went to the table, we all ate together. There wasn't no person, nobody left out. We made sure everyone was there. But Mother was sittin' there, eatin' peanuts, she got a peanut shell in my eye. You know, she couldn't get that peanut shell out of there. I went to the doctor twice when I was growin' up. No such a thing as a doctor. We did our own medication. We went and got bark off of this tree, or we got herbs from here, and that's the way we got well. Whooping cough, they had something for small [pox]. You name it, they had something for it -a cold or whatever you had. If you had a sprained ankle or somethin', they can put somethin' on that -turpentine and some clay or somethin', wrap it up, the next week or so. Seemed like you healed up quicker then, because of the herbs and stuff that they used, you know. Everything was natural, you know. 
Maxwell: A lot of those natural medications are as good as anything you buy in the store. 
Combs: I messed around and slipped up years ago. My aunt, my dad's older sister -she passed away a few years ago -she was a hundred and some years old. My dad's side of the family lived a long time, 'cause my dad's dad, which is my grandfather, they put his age, I believe, at one hundred ten when he passed away, but he was much older than that, because they didn't have birth certificates. They could tell you in the summertime, in the fall. They couldn't even tell you what month they was born. One thing, my grandfather was born during the slavery times. He was born in probably 1860 or '65, 'cause my dad's birthday is 1902. And by the way, there was thirteen kids in my dad's family. 
Maxwell: Do you remember your grandfather? 
Combs: Yeah, his name was Cobert, C-O-B-E-R-T. I remember him so good. That's probably where the first pop, soft drink, that I had to drink. Like I said, we didn't buy stuff like that. And we used to love to go to grandfather's. That's when they had the great big drink. They call them Nehi. And my grandfather would give us a whole one, and we'd just put both hands around it and drink it. And we would almost get choked drinkin' it, but we would love to go over there, because that's the first soft drink that we had. Our grandfather would get them by the case. I believe it was about twelve or twenty-four came in there. 
Maxwell: Boy, with that many kids you could go through a case fast. 
Combs: Only one or two of us. The whole family didn't go over there. I'll bet you we grew up in a five-mile radius, we didn't go anyplace. We just stayed right around the house. Dad was afraid that we may go get in trouble, because at that time, again, segregation was a big thing. And Dad didn't want us to get hurt or get killed, nothin' like that. 
Maxwell: Did you know people who were? 
Combs: Oh, yeah, I started to mention a gruesome thing that happened to some people that we knew when I was small. A guy on a Saturday.... We just about worked on the farm six days a week, but sometimes Dad would let us off at noon on Saturday. You see, (unclear), we'd work in the field. He said, "I'm going to let you off today." And I would go to a little town that wasn't about three or four miles, called Bienville. That's where the elementary school was. But anyway, I would go down there, but Dad didn't really want us to go down there, because, again, some of the white people would beat the colored people, the black people. I saw an incident, a guy by the name of Will Pillee [phonetic]. Well, one Saturday morning.... I guess he must have owed the storekeeper some money. I don't know how the incident came up, but the storekeepers came out that Saturday morning, and I guess about five or six of them, they just took ax handles and they just beat his brains out. 
Maxwell: Oh, gee. 
Combs: We were growing up, it was pretty bad. 
Maxwell: Did they kill him? 
Combs: Yeah, when he got to Shreveport, he was dead on arrival. It was pretty bad. So Daddy didn't want us to get caught up in nothin' like that, so we just kind of like grew up in about a five-mile radius. We pretty much stayed home. Sunday we pretty well was in church service all day. And Monday, of course, same old thing, back in the field again. And we didn't grow up on a plantation, of course, because Dad had.... We didn't have any land, but Dad leased some land from a bank. We called it the old bank place, a place up in Arcadia. That was the county seat. That's where they had the jail and the courts, and justice of the peace and everything, up to Arcadia. That was the county seat for Bienville Parish. They got the whole rest of the parish, you know. That's where.... What was I about to say? 
Maxwell: The land, who owned the land. 
Combs: Yeah. The bank, up to Arcadia. So they leased it to Dad, or however he got it, but we kinda like stayed to ourselves, and we worked the land. I remember most of us was grown. I know I was grown when the land came up for sale. The bank had told Dad if they ever sold it, he would have the first choice. But when it came up for sale, see, Dad didn't have the money to buy it. After they told Dad that they was going to sell it, so Dad had to scrounge around. So my mother's mother, which is my grandmother on my mother's side, she always had a little money. So I think she let my dad have some money. So we bought some land that we have back there now. I believe it's twenty-eight acres. 
Maxwell: That land that he'd been working? 
Combs: No, we had to move off of there because the land came up for sale. Dad had the first choice to buy it, but he didn't have the money to buy it. So the land was sold to, I believe there was a big company goin' around buyin' up all the land. I believe it used to be Southern Union, but when I left it was Continental Can Company. They was buyin' up all the land everywhere in the southern states: Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana. They was goin' around. It was a rich, rich company. 
Maxwell: So they didn't want you to work it after they bought it? 
Combs: Oh, no. When they bought it up, they set out pine trees. 
Maxwell: Oh, really? 
Combs: Yeah, all that land went into pine trees. See, they made pulp wood out of it, and logs. That's money. Once they bought it up, you had to move off. 
Maxwell: So the house he built and all the land, the crops and everything? 
Combs: They gave Dad the house. We tore that house down and built a house -in conjunction, Dad had to buy another house. He used that same lumber from that house and from another house to build a house that is there now. My baby brother's livin' in it. As a matter of fact, my dad and I built the house. The first house, Dad built it by himself because he didn't have any kids or nobody to help him. But the second house, I helped him. Lots of times we had to stay out of school. In the spring of the year when we got ready to break the land, we had to stay out of school a whole lot. In the fall of the year, when we got ready to gather the crop, we had to stay out of school quite a bit. So we was in and out of school quite a bit. And since we were buildin' a house -we built that house in the wintertime -I had to stay out of school quite a bit. In conjunction, I said I didn't get out of high school until I was twenty, because I was bedridden for two-and-half years. My asthma, I was just skin and bones. And my baby brother, he grew up here in Flagstaff, the doctor had given Dad a choice: My baby brother was just skin and bones like I was, but I had to live or die.... 
[END TAPE 1, SIDE A; BEGIN SIDE B] 
Combs: ... this high was good for asthmatics, you see. So the doctor told Dad he had to send my baby brother -his name was Elton, my name is Felton -we got two sets of twins in the family, but we're not twins. His name is Elton. So Dad had to send him to Flagstaff, and he went to high school, he graduated from Flagstaff High School. And after he graduated, he went to Dallas. And of course after Dad died, he went back to live with Mom. But they didn't see eye-to-eye, and he moved to another house down there, down the road. After which, Mother couldn't keep the house, and that's when she moved to Houston. And of course the baby boy came back and got the house. In Louisiana, that's the way it is anyway. The baby boy always get the house. So Mom and Dad are both dead now. Mom passed away here two months ago. So that's where he's livin'. He's got the old house now. And we had two houses on the place, by the way. My dad built the house for my mother's mother, which is my grandmother. And of course we had to tear it down a few years ago because it had gotten where we couldn't repair it. Everything was rotten. That was my baby sister.... The baby boy got the house, the original house. The baby girl lives here. She got the house that my grandmother was livin' in, because, like I say, we had to tear it down because it got rotten and we couldn't repair it. 
Maxwell: Did your grandparents live within that five miles that you lived in? 
Combs: Yeah, they pretty well lived there. When I was a little boy, they lived a long way, a place they called Iron Springs. That's southeast of where we grew up at. It's about fifteen, twenty miles, which was too far for us. And of course since my grandmother, my mother's mother, didn't have but just one child, which was my mother, she didn't like that, so she moved closer after her husband died. 
Maxwell: I just wanted to ask you, why did you have a mule instead of a horse? 
Combs: A horse costs more than a mule. 
Maxwell: To buy or to feed? 
Combs: To buy and feed. A horse is more expensive. Although Dad first plied -you know, they had to ply -his first plyin' animal was a horse. Then afterwards they started havin' kids, they couldn't afford to buy another horse, so he started buyin' mules. 
Maxwell: So you lived there in Louisiana until you were about twenty. 
Combs: I was twenty. 
Maxwell: And you came out here after your friend. At one time went back and finished high school, came back here. 
Combs: Uh-huh. 
Maxwell: Had you not married while you were there at all? You hadn't married your wife? 
Combs: No. 
Maxwell: Until after you came out here the second time? 
Combs: Yeah. I was out here quite a while. The thing that.... You know, young men are wild, so I was pretty wild when I came here, workin' for Continental Trailways, and had girlfriends and stuff. And after they drafted me in service, it's kinda like I settled down just like that. And my wife and I, we were still communicating, writing each other. As a matter of fact, she had just graduated. After she graduated from Coleman, she went to Houston also, because her older sister had gone to Houston. Older sister was married in Houston. So when we said we wanted to get married, I was still stationed in Chicago, Fort Sheridan. My enlistment, I had six months to go. And I came out on leave and went to Houston, picked up my wife, and we went back to Louisiana. We got married in Louisiana. I was on leave then. I took my wife back to Houston, then I went back to the base, Fort Sheridan, and finished up my six months. And I was out six months before that Vietnamese War came up. If I had not gotten married, the only thing I was lookin' at, I was going to reenlist, and you probably wouldn't be talkin' to me now. I lost several guys here from Flagstaff. One is named Jeff. I believe one was named John. They didn't come back home. 
Maxwell: They were from Flagstaff? 
Combs: From Flagstaff, yeah. 
Maxwell: I just wanted to ask, too: the neighbors that you shared food with back in Louisiana, were they all black too? 
Combs: Yeah, they was all black. We was in a total black community. Everybody in that community was black. We had white people livin' kinda like on this end of the road, and on this end of the road. Wherever the white people lived, their road was paved, and our road was just dirt, you see. The pavement would always run out there. Of course, where we lived, just.... As a matter of fact, where we grew up, all those people were pretty well related to each other. My name is Combs. Combs live in that settlement -we call it a settlement -community. And the Bells were second cousins to us because of the marriage and stuff. That was some people's other names: Williams -we were related to them. The Cockerhams, which I said was my mother's maiden name, C-O-C-K-E-R-H-A-M. There were some Harts, H-A-R-T. But they was all intermarried, relatives, so they was all related. Everybody in that community, just about, was related. 
Maxwell: Did they go to the same church too? 
Combs: Practically -those that went to church. Everybody didn't go to church. The church was named Shiloh, and they pretty well all went to that church. 
Maxwell: I'd really like to hear about the baseball that you did here. 
Combs: Before I went in service, I was quite.... We used to be in the -I believe they called us the Northeastern League. That was a league up here, and they had several semi-pro leagues in Phoenix. At the end of the, climax of our season, we would always go to Phoenix and have a playoff to find out who was the best, you see. Winslow had two teams. Holbrook had one team. Lakeside had a team. White River had two teams -the Apache Indian guys out there, we played them. Window Rock had a team. And at one time, Williams had a team, because they had a sawmill over there called Haney, and they went by that name, Haney Sluggers. Our team here in Flagstaff, we were the Flagstaff Merchants, because the merchants here, they are the ones that sponsored us -meaning that they're the ones that gave us money. I would go to them. Babbitts' had three uniforms. They had the Babbitts' whatever you call it. That was on the back of their uniform. The Babbitt Ford, we had Babbitt Ford on one of them. The Moore Drugstore, they gave us thirty dollars. Thirty dollars would buy a uniform, bats, and equipment. Because a uniform at that time, I believe, would cost not over twenty dollars. And you had ten dollars from the thirty dollars left. And we could buy a bat, ball, and equipment. Meaning that that particular merchant sponsored that player. That's the way we got our money. 
Maxwell: So each player had a different name on the back? 
Combs: Each uniform. It's kinda like advertising, really. That's what it was, advertising. We could tell who did what, and that merchant would give us thirty dollars. I remember it so vividly, and we would put that name on that uniform. And of course the name would go back there, plus the player number -number 10 or whatever, you know. But we was a pretty good team. Just amazing that.... NAU at that time had a baseball [field], right where the swimming pool is now. And some of the guys -of course we were a little mixed, we had white, Spanish, and everybody on our team, because here in Flagstaff, we all mixed. But what I'm sayin' in essence, in the summertime, when those guys got out of school, we had several of the NAU pitchers pitch for us, they joined us. And you could see that we had a pretty good team. I hate to say a darned good team. I look at the guys now in pro, they didn't have nothin' on us. But we didn't have anybody to scout us. We didn't have anybody come and look and see how good we were. We had some good guys. And many of us should have been. Me, myself, I'm not braggin', I shoulda been in pro. But you know.... I see Willie Mays and all these guys doin' all these things. We could do that, and plus. But, you know, we didn't have anybody to scout us, to say we could go into pro. You know, out here in Flagstaff -country, you know. I look at that now, and see guys makin' plays. That's nothin' to me, because we could do that, plus! We had some good guys. We didn't lose too much, either. We went to Phoenix seven times, and we came in third and second. They would have a playoff team comin' up from Tucson, and we would have a gatherin' down there -kinda like the playoffs that you see we have in pros now. We would find out who was the best in the state of Arizona. 
Maxwell: So you must have known Okie Taylor then? 
Combs: Oh, yeah, I know him real well. I know all those guys. When I came here, really, we had a great big community of black guys. There's lots of them here now -probably more. But when I came here, I guess the black guys were more visible than now. I don't know whether I should use the word visible or not, because I guess most of the guys now, I guess you don't see them until.... I hate to say it like that, at night. Because then we kinda had a thing. We'd go down.... Well, I guess I saw them then because I could go out, down on the street there. We had a pool hall, we had a place to drink. Of course I never drank in my life. My dad never drank. All that stuff, we couldn't afford it, and we never did start it, you see. But anyway, seemed like we just had more black guys here in Flagstaff, but I guess not, because there should be more here now. 
Maxwell: I've often said that the black community here seems invisible. 
Combs: That's what I'm saying too. I guess what I'm saying, in essence, you don't see them anymore, but they're here. 
Maxwell: We're going to switch tapes. (blank audio tape for a minute or so) This is Dr. Carol Maxwell. It's October 1, 2002. We're interviewing Mr. Felton "Gene" Combs, at 3566 North Steves in Flagstaff, Arizona. This is Tape 2. You were saying you grew up with a fireplace? 
Combs: Yeah, we grew up with a fireplace. We called it a chimbley. And that was one of our cookin' things too, although we had -everything was wood -a wood-burning stove, and the fireplace. We could bake potatoes, we could cook peanuts. We could cook just about anything in the fireplace, you see. 
Maxwell: Was it a fireplace, or a metal wood-burner like this? 
Combs: No, it was a fireplace, an actual fireplace. We called the thing on the outside, you've got your chimbley, you know, and stuff. After which we couldn't hardly keep the chimbley. A storm come and blowed it. Down in the southern states you've always got that air disturbance. You get more storms in the southern states, get the tornadoes and stuff. So it would sometimes blow the chimbley down. So eventually Dad just said, "That's enough," and we went to heaters, a wood-burning stove like that. And we all would get around that. Of course my two oldest brothers probably had left home at that time anyway. But I remember when Dad bought his first wood-burning stove -heater, we called it. 
Maxwell: What was the chimney made out of, stone? 
Combs: Yeah, stone, rocks. It wasn't nothin' you'd buy -somethin' that you'd go out and pick up, just rocks. You get your clay or your mortar. We couldn't even buy cement. In Louisiana we call it the red clay. It was real sticky, when you mix it with water. They put a little other mixture, like lime or something in it, to make it sticky. And they'll build them out of rocks, you see. The only thing they had to buy, I guess, is the little lime. You can get a sack of that, probably, for twenty-five cents, and that would build a whole chimbley, because you put just a little in the clay, and you just build your chimbley, you see. 
Maxwell: Talking about the baseball here in Flagstaff, how'd you get started in that? 
Combs: Well, I don't know, somebody came up with the idea. One of the senior guys. Maybe Okie probably had something to do with it. Of course Okie didn't play with us. He's a little bit older than we were. But anyway, we got started. It was kind of two other guys my age, so we kinda ramrodded things. But there was two brothers. They was named Shad and Eddie Mack. Eddie Mack is in Las Vegas now. Their last name was Williams. We had vehicles you see. I had a car. We were the transportation. We put the other younger guys -see, the younger guys, some of them had just gotten out of Flagstaff High School. I could just name some of them. And I feel good about that, because after I could no longer participate.... See, my church is the thing that really calls me. I had to stop throwin' the chips, you know, because Woodrow Crane, the guy that I was livin' with, he passed away. Kind of like I became the kind of like leader at the church, if you will, to kinda keep everythin' goin' at the church. So I had to quit. And it's kinda like they stopped playing baseball. But us three older guys, we're the ones that went around to the merchants saying, "Hey, look, sponsor. Will you sponsor a player?" And like I said, Babbitts' sponsored three, because they had the hardware store, they had the lumber company, and one with Babbitt Ford. So they had three names on the back of a uniform, because they sponsored, they gave us ninety dollars. 
Maxwell: So who were the three older guys? 
Combs: Myself and the two brothers, Eddie Mack and Shadtoe. Shadtoe is still here. Shad, that's his name, Shad Williams. After I quit, the whole thing went to caput. What I was about to say, I kinda feel bad about it, because I feel like we were doin' somethin'. After that, a lot of the guys, the black guys, it seems like they went to crime. In other words, they went to prison. I feel good about myself, because we kept a whole lot of guys, I feel like, out of jail, out of prison, because they had something to do. And after which, a whole lot of the black guys started goin' to jail and prison and stuff. 
Maxwell: What did they go to jail and prison for? 
Combs: Well, if it wasn't one thing, it was another. At that time, marijuana was a big thing, a big crime. And marijuana, see, is nothin' now. They started with dope, and lots of them would get into robbery and stuff like that -service stations and stuff. Wasn't no big bank robbers, but still was a felony. 
Maxwell: How did all the drugs come into Flagstaff? I work with a lot of people who are in the black community here, who are in their thirties and forties, who were drug addicts. Their parents weren't. How did that happen? How did that change come about, do you know? 
Combs: How did drugs get imported into Flagstaff? 
Maxwell: Yeah. 
Combs: You know, if I could answer your question, I would. But see, drinkin' and stuff wasn't my thing. If I knew, I'd tell ya'. But evidently, I don't know whether it was transients or what brought drugs and stuff in here. Then again, I wouldn't put that out of the reach of the parents. I know you said something about the parents, but lots of the parents use drugs and stuff like that. That was a good avenue of gettin' drugs into Flagstaff. I would never put that past some of the parents, because I know, you know. 
Maxwell: So maybe it was there, but they kept working. Maybe they used marijuana or something, but they still held down a job and kept a family -that sort of thing? 
Combs: Oh yeah, some of them did, some of the parents did. They were still able to hold down a job. And some of the parents became alcoholics, and the kids wasn't much better. Let me see, how'd they say that? 
Maxwell: Oh, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree? 
Combs: Somethin' like that. Somethin' about dad's so-so, or somethin'. But anyway, have a tendency to walk in dad and mom's footsteps, you know. 
Maxwell: Yeah. So it seemed like the baseball team gave people just that edge or something? 
Combs: Yeah, it gave them that. They could look forward to something. It gave them that enthusiasm or whatever. And then again, I feel like I had an influence on them. I was kind of an older guy, they could look up to me and the other two older guys. 
Maxwell: How long did you play baseball? 
Combs: Let's see, I came out of service in '64, and Woodrow passed away in '71, so from '64 to probably '71, if you want to count those years. And like I say, after Woodrow, he was kind of like the leader in the church over here. After he passed away, I had to quit and come in and take up where he left off at. At the same time, see, when I came out of service -we probably should have mentioned something about that -when I got out of service, I got my job back at Continental Trailways. When I was in service, Woodrow Crane, the guy I was living with -I have to keep talking about him -Sheriff Cecil Richardson was the sheriff of Coconino County then. He was an educator, he had taught school on the Navajo Reservation. He could speak native languages, he could speak Navajo fluently. But when I was in service, Woodrow Crane, the guy I was livin' with, he had told Sheriff Cecil Richardson he had a boy -he was talkin' about me -he had a boy in service. See, we didn't have any black guys (unclear) come on when I was in service. We didn't have any black guy at the sheriff's office, I know. And he had told Cecil, the sheriff, he's got a boy in service -me -and when I came out of service, he wanted Cecil to hire me as the first black deputy sheriff. And after I came out, I went up there. Woodrow had told me what he had done, and Cecil said he wanted to take a look at me. So I went up there and filled out all the papers and passed everything with flying colors. And again, when I was discharged from the army, I was discharged from Chicago, just out of Chicago, Fort Sheridan. And I saw how policemen treat guys, and how they beat them up with the billy club. And I had passed everything, as I said, from Cecil. And I went back up there the next week and I told Cecil I didn't want the job. And Cecil called Woodrow Crane and said, "That boy wouldn't take the job." 'Cause I wasn't about to beat up people. That wasn't my thing, to beat up people with blackjacks and billy clubs. Like I said, in Chicago I saw what happened. So Woodrow kinda got after me. And you know, I was married then. I got married six months before my enlistment was up. Of course I had my wife and everything. I was grown when I came. You don't have to listen to Woodrow. But anyway, Woodrow kinda got after me. He really wanted me to take the job. So a week later, I went back up there and told Cecil Richardson I would give the job a try. That's what I told him, I would give it a try. (unclear) court. I can quit any time I wanted to. Which, you know, anybody can quit anytime you want to. So I gave it a try for twenty-one-and-half years -not under Cecil Richardson, but under Joe. See, when I went there, the sheriff now, Joe Richardson and Richards is two different things. I ought to plug one here, but maybe I shouldn't. 
Maxwell: Oh, go ahead. 
Combs: Joe may hear this. I don't know whether I should plug this or not. But anyway, Cecil became blind, the sheriff, and the last two, three years he was in office, really, he'd shouldn't have been there, because he couldn't see. They had a guy by the name of Malcomb Miles, M-I-L-E-S. He's the one that really carried everything for the last two years on his shoulders, because Cecil couldn't see. And after Cecil stepped down, Sheriff Joe Richards ran for sheriff, and the Native Americans would always call Joe "Cecil's son." But it's Richardson and Richards. No relationship. And Joe was kind of like a shoo-in, if you will. The Native Americans voted for Joe, "because that's Cecil's son." Like I said, it's not his son. I believe the first year Joe ran, he didn't have too many guys runnin' [against him (Tr.)]. But the second election, I believe about eight or ten guys ran against Joe, and Joe still beat them out. And the third election, they had that guy from the police department runnin' against Joe. But the Native Americans, still probably today, almost call Joe Cecil's son. So they voted for Joe, kinda like Joe was.... So Joe's been there for about almost forty years, including his deputy sheriff time. Along with that, Joe was a patrolman, when I came out of service. And I was the first correctional officer -at that time, they didn't call us -I was the first jailer. I was the one that kept the prisoners. I should write some books. I've seen some things that it would take me too long to talk about, the experience I had there. It was somethin'. I'll just mention a few things anyway. We had some pretty bad guys there. We had murderers there. The guy that they executed, Greenwald, that broke out of jail, I dealt with them. There was two of them, Randy and his brother was named Jim -James. They were some pretty mean guys. As a matter of fact, they killed a guy in jail -in a sense, they did. They wrapped a towel around his neck. It was a black guy. They wrapped a towel around his neck, and they choked him out. It so happened when I got back there, see, they had given him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, they had brought him back. And this black guy, he couldn't talk for a month, but you can never get nothin' out of a guy. When a guy get beat up like that, you always go back, and the same old story -he slipped in the shower. You slipped in the shower and you been beat up all over, and you slipped in the shower that you got that many bruises on you?! But that's the thing, they had to say that. But I saw some things.... We had one black guy, when I first got there, this black guy, I don't know why he thought I was going to cater to him, I was going to treat him better than I did the rest of the guys. I've always been a fair guy -and I'll explain that in a few minutes. But he called the NAACP. He called Woodrow. Woodrow was the NAACP president here in Flagstaff, and Woodrow wouldn't even go up there. But he called the NAACP guy, the state guy out of Phoenix. And this guy came up here, I guess to see how I was treating this black guy, seein' how I was treatin' him. And he came up and talked to Sheriff Cecil Richardson, the guy that hired me. He went in and talked to Cecil Richardson to find out about me. And after Cecil told him and got through talkin' to him, Cecil came out of there and pointed at me. He said, "That's the boy" -you know, that's what they called -"that's the boy that's runnin' the jail." This NAACP guy shook my hand, didn't ask me no, he went on back to Phoenix. Because at that time I ran the jail, and I should say something else about Sheriff Joe Richards. Now I should say somethin' about that. Maybe I will and maybe I won't. But anyway, I ran the jail. I kinda ran it like the military way. But now you can't do that, because guys got constitutional rights. One guy mess up in the military, one guy could mess up, and the whole platoon suffered the consequence. And that's mean. And when the sergeant or the captain leaves, the guy that took my privileges from me, he won't do it again. We had one guy in the military, when I got to Fort Sheridan, the guy wouldn't take a bath. The guy just stank all the time. When the sergeant left, we took that guy into the shower, and we took a G.I. brush and we just about rubbed [off] all his skin. We had no more problem with that guy. That guy took a bath from then on. But what I'm sayin', in essence, when Cecil told this guy that I ran the jail, I ran the jail. If Cecil wanted to know somethin' from the jail, he didn't go back and ask the prisoner, he asked me, and I told him the truth. Shortly after Joe became sheriff -I guess I'd better tell you anyway, keep you from bein' in suspense here -we had three guys runnin' the jail. And I have never seen but one president of the United States at a given time. You can't have three presidents: President Bush and Carter and however many. You can't have but one because they're all saying three different things. I was runnin' the jail when Joe took over. He brought in -I won't call his name -he brought in a sergeant, a well-known guy here, but he's not here now. He was under me, the sergeant. I was the lieutenant. And he had the finance guy -I'd better not call his name either. We all three was runnin' the jail. When we went back to talk to the inmates, each one of us told them a different thing. We had a problem. We almost lost some guy. They set the jail on fire when Joe took over. And we came that close to losin'. We had some guy that stayed in the hospital, I guess, probably almost a week for smoke inhalation. As a matter of fact, he would have died, but what happened, the prisoner was small enough to stay close the floor. Smoke goes up. And anytime you get a smoke situation, if you stay close to the floor or whatever, that smoke, like I say, goes up. I guess we took three or four of those guys, about three of them stayed in the hospital up here for about almost a week. And the rest of them they treated them and released them. It was a situation, when I ran the jail, we had no problem. When I went back and told a guy that I'm going to lock him down or whatever, that's what I did. And when Cecil Richardson, the old sheriff, wanted to know anything about what's goin' on, he always come and asked me, I told him the truth. 
Maxwell: Were those other two guys white? 
Combs: Yeah, both of them white. I was the first black deputy. As a matter of fact, let's say it another way: I understand that there are two black firemen. I know one of them, and my daughter called my attention the other day, they are retired over the last few years from law enforcement. Firemen are considered as law enforcement, too. But I'm the first black guy that really retired from bein' a deputy sheriff. You know, we're police officers, really. I retired in 1986. And from there, that's how I got over to the state. I started working for the State of Arizona in 1987. And I've been retired three months as of the weekend, Friday, Saturday. I retired. My last day was June 28, with the State. 
Maxwell: Wow, you worked a long time. 
Combs: If I'd have stayed around for another month-and-a-half, I would have had fifteen years with the State of Arizona. 
Maxwell: So when those guys went back and said something different, was this a matter of disrespecting you because of your race? 
Combs: Not really. I guess Joe didn't know any better. When Joe took over, he was really -everything had to be done right now, regardless of what it is. Certain things you don't do right now, you got to think it through. And I'm glad that he brought up the chief deputy. When Joe took over, we had a chief deputy in Sedona. I'm going to call his name -Will Steele [phonetic]. And Will Steele played a big, big, big part in Joe growin' up as a sheriff of Coconino County, because certain things, he would grab him, so to speak, by the coattails, "You'd better think this one through," you know. (phone rings) The same thing at that time, the undersheriff was over in Williams, Clark Cole [phonetic]. Clark Cole has been dead for quite a few years now. So we've always had an undersheriff and a chief deputy. Of course they would be in the outlying areas. We wouldn't have the chief deputy and all of them right here in Flagstaff, because we had a station. Coconino County, I believe this is the second-largest county in the United States-all these mountains and things. You're kind of spread out, even all ways, too. As you know, Fredonia, and we had a deputy up there. We lost two deputies the same year. We lost a doctor here in Flagstaff. We still do have reserve deputy, Dr. James, lost his life. He didn't get paid for it, but he lost his life. As I say, we have some mean guys. I think Chaney's the one that killed him. And up in Fredonia, we lost a deputy the same year. His name was Young. We had a warrant for a Native American arrest, and the guy was livin' in a trailer up there. And this deputy had been tryin' to catch him for a month or so. I believe this Native American worked in construction. And one Friday evening, sure enough, he was staked out, the deputy sheriff was staked out. He saw the Native American when he came home and went into the house, so he went and knocked on the door. His wife opened the door and he asked was this guy home, that he had a warrant for his arrest. And she said no, but what happened, the deputy saw him went in there, so he just went on by, and pushed on in, you see. And this guy was in his bedroom, and he had a .38. I believe our guy up there had a .357. And this guy just jumped out of the bedroom and both of them shot each other. They had stamina. They shot each other. Each one had six rounds. He shot all six rounds, hit the deputy. At that time they didn't wear bulletproof. All them got them on now, just about. But anyway, he shot the deputy so many times, and the deputy shot him so many times. When they did empty their guns, they both fell back from each other, and they both were dead. 
Maxwell: Gee! You wouldn't believe that, if you saw it in a movie. 
Combs: You wouldn't believe it, wouldn't believe it. A guy had that much stamina, both of them, unloaded the gun, and then they fell back. 
Maxwell: Gee. 
Combs: That was a situation that, kind of a hush-hush thing. It was kind of a touchy-touchy thing, because so many litigation was in that. So I don't know, the county got through it some kind of way or another, because you can see, you know, the aspects in this. I don't want to [record it]. 
Maxwell: Because he just went in. 
Combs: Yeah, just went in -although he had a warrant for his arrest. 
Maxwell: Boy, what a shame, huh? 
Combs: Yeah. Yeah, we lost him, we lost Dr. James. And Dr. James, like I say, he was a reserve. He was out here east of town, and Chaney, I believe he and his girlfriend -that's a long story -but he shot so many.... The guy had an AK-whatever it was, one of those assault rifles. And he shot so many holes in Dr. James, until.... 
Maxwell: Why'd he shoot the doctor? 
Combs: Because he was a deputy sheriff. That meant authority, as far as he was concerned. This guy was already runnin'. He had already committed several crimes back East someplace. I'm not sure whether he already had killed a law enforcement guy, but he wasn't going to let Dr. James get away, because Dr. James.... The sheriff's office had information that they was out there, they was in the county. So he wasn't about to let him get away. So when he came up on him, he just started shootin'. Our detective -I won't call his name -but he was our chief detective. He went out and looked at Dr. James. I'm glad that I didn't see it. He said the blood was runnin' out of the car. There wasn't a way for him to live. 
Maxwell (?): Wasn't that the Fourth of July that that occurred? 
Combs: No, that was on Labor Day, wasn't it? 
Maxwell (?): I knew it was some holiday. 
Combs: Yeah, somewhere near Labor Day. It was a sad thing. You could hear sirens that day -the highway patrol, the city -it was a sad day. And like I say, we had just lost, I believe, the guy up in Fredonia. So we lost two deputies the same year. But anyway, I could go on and talk about the jail, but we had some good ones in the jail. 
Maxwell: So what happened in the jail? 
Combs: Well, I don't know, so much happened, I don't know! I will tell you about, I had to deal with the Greenwalds. They just executed Randy not too long [ago]. You know, they broke out of prison. And a lady -I won't call her name -out at Munds Park, she was affiliated with these guys, and she had a house or somethin'. The Greenwalds -and there was another family involved in that. But they broke out and got up here, and this lady put them up out at Munds Park. James got killed breakin' out, and another guy got killed at the prison. But Randy got away and he got up here, and eventually they got him. I'm not sure how they arrested him, but they arrested him and took him back. I believe he was the one that had killed this serviceman. This serviceman had a wife, he killed the wife. And he had a kid, when they broke out. And I dealt with some other murderers and stuff down there. Chaney, I believe he may have died in jail, in prison. And we had a black guy from California, he.... I don't know whether I should get into that one or not. Lawson would talk to me, but see, I couldn't tell what the prisoner said. This black guy, he said he was coverin' for, I believe, his wife. His wife's the one had killed, and he took the rap and I believe he died. His last name was Alfred. He took a rap for his.... I don't know whether I'd take a rap for Weezie, my wife. If my wife should confess.... You know, think about it. We sent this guy down for life. We didn't send him down, but the Greenwalds, they was on Death Row. Chaney was on Death Row. Some other guys, their names slipped by me -gruesome murders. I believe the Chaneys had killed a guy in Texas. They got to here, by Ash Fork, but they was in Coconino County. Killed two in Coconino -they was campers. And this guy had killed this coed up in Utah, took her car, and he ended up in Flagstaff again. This coed had golf clubs and stuff in her car -stuff that he could pawn. And he made it back to the pawn shop here. But it so happened when they went into the pawn shop, he took his guns, his weapons, off, and left them in the car to go in and pawn this stuff. I'd better not call the deputy sheriff either, because his son retired from there not too long ago. His son worked for there. But in other words, this deputy sheriff went in there, and someone had told us that this guy was back in Flagstaff again, but he had gone in and left his guns in his car. And this deputy sheriff went in. He really didn't know what the guy looked like. He was askin' about him. He must have figured out the guy had committed the crime, and he put his gun on him and arrested him. But that guy told him, "If I had had the faintest idea that you were going to come in here and arrest me, you woulda been another dead deputy, another dead person." He had killed, what, four: one in Texas, two here in Coconino County, and one, killed that coed and took her car, comin' back through, and wound up here. He hadn't planned to come back to Flagstaff, but he wound up here again. Of course he knew he had to have some money, so that's why he went into the pawn shop, to pawn her golf clubs and whatever else she had. 
Maxwell: What was it like handling people like that in the jail? 
Combs: It wasn't scary to me. I had a guy that was six-seven, he was a black guy. (chuckles) His last name was Williams -I won't call his first name. He was a local guy. He said, "Gene, don't worry about nothin', ain't nobody going to bother you." (laughs) That made me feel pretty good. Nobody going to -they all knew me, especially after the black guy.... He said, "Don't worry 'bout it, nobody going to...." He wasn't in for nothin' probably bad, but I think it had to be a felony, probably checks. Some lots of black guys used to come to jail with drawin' checks and writin' bad checks and stuff. 
Maxwell: It sounds like, from what you're saying, you really felt like you were a part of the police department, like they didn't exclude you, due to racism or something. 
Combs: Oh, no. I guess if I had been -I wouldn't use the word thrust -into a situation like that, by me first coming, I would have had problems. But I had a chance to be around white people. As a matter of fact, I'm the only guy had said that my first job, you're kinda like lookin' over your shoulder. "I don't fit here, there's somethin' wrong." But I worked at so many places, just all by myself. When I went to Motor Vehicle, of course there was a black girl -she's still there now, Shirley. I shouldn't have called her, but Shirley, I'll leave it at that. But she was there. As a matter of fact, we had several other black people that come through -about three or four or five, over at Motor Vehicle. As a matter of fact, before I left the sheriff's office, before I retired, we had several black people. A college guy that come through, he quit. And another guy, he's deceased now, he was a local guy. He passed away in Phoenix. He was a deputy sheriff. But he and Joe, when Joe became sheriff, he and Joe didn't get along good, because this other black guy, he was drinkin' and stayin' out at night and stuff like that. Of course I didn't drink and stuff like that. So he and Joe didn't see eye-to-eye. And we had three black matrons there at one time. And now they don't call them matrons, they call them deputy sheriff -that's what they are now. But when I went there I was a jailer, I wasn't a correction officer. See, now they're correction officers. Three black matrons -I could call their names. As a matter of fact, they all were local. One of them is in Phoenix now, and one is a minister in our church now, and one works out at Dillard's. 
Maxwell: Why don't you go ahead and say their names? 
Combs: No, I can't do that. As a matter of fact, I ought to call their first names, anyway. We had three black matrons. One was named Shirley, one was named Esther, and Janet. I almost called her last name. But two of them are still here in Flagstaff, and one is in Phoenix now. I always tease them when I see them, because if they had stayed around, see, they could have retired, just like I did, and they could have had a free check comin' in the mailbox every month. 
Maxwell: Why did they leave? 
Combs: Oh, I guess they just left. You know, lots of people, they'll work for a while and they'll quit. They all had reason, but I don't know what that reason were right now. 
Maxwell: So because you'd already worked at places where you were surrounded by all white people, you'd gotten used to being in that kind of a position? 
Combs: Yeah, I had gotten used to it. It didn't bother me. 
Maxwell: How did people treat you? 
Combs: Well, when I first went to the sheriff's office, they always said the "N" word. See, they were usin' the "N" word right over the radio. There was something goin' on, on the South Side, and we had a dispatcher. They called Oklahoma the "old sage country." This guy was a Native American. He was from the old sage country, and he was usin' the "N" word right over the radio. He said somethin' was goin' on down on the South Side, So-and-So, So-and-So, the "N" word, that's who was involved. And (unclear) about it, we had two patrolmen. I'd better call their first names. Well, all the patrolmen at that time, everything wasn't geared up like it is now. But now, you got to be out on your beat. I'm quite sure Sheriff Joe Richards got them out. These guys used to come on the inside and stand and talk to me just about all day long, unless they got a call to go out. But this is the way it was. Once this guy used this "N" word over the phone, the guy named John, and the other one named Ross, they thought I was going to become upset or belligerent or somethin'. They really ran out and jumped in the patrol car and took off, because they thought I was going to get mad about that. And of course I had lots of training -had the same training as all the rest of the guys, but I was just a deputy sheriff, but I was on the inside. They always taught us "sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you." So it just kinda like bounced off me. I won't call their names either, but the other two guys, especially one of them that you interviewed, we were talkin' about a while ago, over there by the church. Now, one of these guys, he cannot stand the "N" word. You say it, he just.... As black as he is, as dark as he is, he just really gets darker. (chuckles) But it doesn't bother me. I guess I've been in that situation so many times 'til it doesn't bother me. 
Maxwell: Now, Okie and Ruby were telling me there was a police officer -they said, I guess, the first black patrolman -and that he wasn't allowed to cross north of the tracks, but he had to just patrol down on the South Side. 
Combs: That's a possibility, because when I got here, the chief was named Maxwell. I can name all the chiefs. And this guy, I guess that was true. That's where I saw him. Well, he wasn't the first. They had another one here before I got here. His name was Neal. I won't call his first name. As a matter of fact, they wouldn't let him have a patrol car. He had to walk the beat with his blackjack, because that's what they give him. He may have had a gun. I think they eventually gave him a gun, because that's all they wanted him to do, was go down there and beat the black guy with his blackjack. But after I got here, the next guy, he did most of his patrollin', but I think he did it all over. His name was Carlo -I'll call his first name, Carlo. He was an ex-NAU football [player]. That guy was six-six and close to 300 pounds. (laughter) I tell you an incident that happened. Well, as a matter of fact, when I came out of service, started workin' for Cecil, the sheriff, made deputy sheriff, the black guys up there, I would, if I knew their parents, I would get off work and carry a message by their house. But this black patrolman stopped me one day and said, "Gene, you don't want to do that, then don't do it." And that made sense. I don't want to run around for those guys. But anyway, this guy, I guess they treated him so bad, and probably the "N" word and everything else over the radio. And this guy should have been chief of police in Flagstaff, really -Carlo. He had a guy come from Mississippi, a white guy -or Alabama, one of them deep southern states -and I guess they messed around and called him, he pulled him over for somethin' -speedin', I guess, through the city -and he pulled him over and that white guy called him the "N" word, and he was so big, he just reached and got the white guy by the collar, and just raised him up off.... And this guy started sayin', "Yes sir, no sir." Carlo was a real patrolman. Like I say, he should have been the chief of police, but he couldn't stand it, I guess -he just quit. He went and got a better job with some oil company. But this Carlo had told his wife, he had stopped his wife once or twice by speeding. I guess she thought she had the right to speed just because her husband is a patrolman. Guess what he did? He gave her a ticket, and he had to pay it. Yes, he did! This guy was somethin'! I wish you coulda met him, he was a gentleman. That tall, six-six, and about 300 pounds, and he could talk to you so nice. And most times, guys like that, especially (unclear). I hate to say it, a black guy, you know, we're that big, we like to sometimes.... We had another one here, he was an ex-football player. Now, he liked to throw his weight around. He was about six-two, and he was way over 300 pounds. And he didn't get along with the City at all, either. 
[END TAPE 1, SIDE B; BEGIN TAPE 2, SIDE A] 
Combs: Well, you know, a lots of people not used to it. See, I come here, I wasn't used to socializing with white people either, so this [black] guy, he would go out with white people. I'll say it that way. And the city didn't like that, so he didn't get along real.... But he left here, he went over to.... There was a lady chief of police over in Lake Havasu, and she was real fond of this big black guy. I don't know what ever happened to him since then. But we had several black guys come through here. We had one named Williams -as a matter of fact, John L. Williams, one of his sons, he was there for a while. He didn't get along. It was a bad place for a black policeman to work here years ago. They just wouldn't treat them right. We got at least two there now, both of them local. We had a little guy come here about four or five or six years ago. He came from Phoenix, or one of those suburbs -Glendale or someplace. I call him a little guy because -he shouldn't have, really.... He was too little, really. Sometimes you could invite.... You run into one of these big guys, he look down and see a little ol' guy, I can give you a good analogy on that, but I won't. But anyway, he stayed here for a while. He couldn't take it. He went back to Glendale where he came from. One of them -I almost called his name -one of them here, I guess he was treated so bad about two or three years ago, he quit and went with the fire department. But now he's back with the police department. Every time I see him, I encourage him, I tell him "hang in there," because I know what I had to go through. Sticks and stones will break your bones. But still, it could be better. But I've got a good relationship with all the chiefs, especially after Chief Maxwell. Maxwell was one of the baddest chiefs that I really know of. I guess he came from a southern state, so a black person just wasn't "in," that's all. I knew he had to go, 'cause he only had a GED, he didn't graduate from high school. And after the other guys under him came up with master's degrees, he had to go. You can't work for a guy like that. So I could see the friction. But anyway, after him was Jayne. As a matter of fact, after Jayne became chief, he came down on the South Side to let everybody know, and let them know he was going to work with them. And after Jayne was Chief Laytham. And after Laytham.... Laytham had some.... I know in the sixties, when black people was riotin' and burnin' down buildings, burning down the United States law, Laytham did have some problem on the South Side. And after Laytham, of course, it was Madden. And then after Madden of course we have Macan, J. T. [phonetic] now. I was before all those guys. I started, I'm quite sure, before Jayne, before Laytham, before Madden and J. T. Like I say, I started in 1964, when I came out of military. 
Maxwell: So this one fellow you mentioned, he went out with white people, and the City didn't like that? 
Combs: No, really, when black people, men, go out with white women, that's not too good. 
Maxwell: He lost his job because of that? 
Combs: Not necessarily losin' a job. See, a guy can lose a job in a -I don't want to use the word a thousand ways -but they can put so much pressure on, that's just like they're firin' you, you see? 
Maxwell: Yeah. 
Combs: You understand what I'm saying. 
Maxwell: Yeah, true. What are your memories of the civil rights here in Flagstaff? 
Combs: See, when I came here, everything was integrated. I remember they telled me about the Dunbar School. They used to have a school here they called Dunbar. As a matter of fact, the man that used to be the principal.... See, they used to be segregated here too, years ago. That was way before I came here. But after I came here, even up until now. I'm not trying to save face, but I've always, I guess, gotten along. I hate to use the word. You don't want me to use the word that some people, you see in the paper every now and then. You know, you "stay in your place." I like white people and gettin' along. I can associate with them. Everywhere I go, I kiss them and everything else, but I've got my limitations, if you want to call it that. You see my wife's black. My best friends are white. That's the only thing I'm going to tell ya'. When I left Motor Vehicle three months ago, those people had a time over there. Some of them just cried, 'cause they didn't want to see me go. The same thing when I left the sheriff's department. Well, let me back up. I didn't finish. A while ago I was tellin' you about the jail. When I see a person, I see a person. I guess that's why I'm talkin' to you two so openly. You're just another person to me. You're not white, you're not black. If I can use that expression, you're just another person. See, when I was runnin' the jail, and when I started workin' for the State of Arizona, when I first started runnin' the jail, most of the people in jail was Native American. At that time, drunk was an offense. D&D. We call it drunk and disorderly. But it's not an offense now, it's a medical thing now. You don't lock a guy up for drunk and disorderly. But you can always lock up a guy for somethin'. You could lock him up for disturbin' the peace, trespassin' -you go on and on. You always can arrest a man, just about for somethin'. You could say he did somethin' -not sayin' it's going to stick in court. But my point being, most of the people in jail at that time, you see quite a few in Winslow, you hardly ever see somebody in Flagstaff now layin' out. Ooo! when I got here, we had Native Americans layin' out everywhere, drunk. And they would pick them up for D&D and put them in jail. The judge would give them ten days or ten dollars. Some of the Native Americans would come down and pay them out. My point being, when I started working for the State of Arizona, I used to -I don't know why my wife didn't get rid of me -I stayed on the reservation all the time. The State would send me into the reservation. If I wasn't at Window Rock, I was at Chinle. If I wasn't at Chinle, I was at Tuba City. And if I wasn't there, I was in Page. See, anything over a hundred miles, even Holbrook and Winslow, I drove back and forth. But when they'd send me to Window Rock, that's way out yonder. It's on the line. I had to go out there on a Sunday evening, and I didn't see my family 'til that Friday night. When I went to Chinle, I left here on a Sunday evening, didn't see them 'til Friday night. When I went to Page, you could stay up there the same (unclear) as most of our trainin'. Let me make my point here. Most of the people, I had said, was Native Americans. They was mostly Navajo, and you had some Hopis. But when I went to work on the reservation, those people (unclear) Native Americans. They all, a whole lot of them, knew me, because I had them in jail. And what if I hadn't treated them right? But when I went to the reservation, they was glad to see me, they always said, "Gene, I'm glad to see ya'." And they was glad to see me, because I treated it like a human being. When I saw a Native American, white, black.... That's why that black man I was telling you about didn't like me, because he thought I was going to cater to him, but not so. He was just a man, just like somebody else. 
Maxwell: He thought he had an in. 
Combs: Yeah, he thought he had an edge on the rest of them, but he didn't. And that's why he called the guy out of Phoenix, the NAACP guy. And when Cecil told him, "That's the boy runnin' the jail," he shook my hand, and he went back to Phoenix. Haven't heard from him since. (chuckles) 
Maxwell: You know, I forgot to ask you: I know that the NAACP promoted some all-black kind of demonstration baseball teams. Let me see if I can get the date. 
Combs: The old Negro baseball thing? 
Maxwell: Yeah, they did it here in Arizona. Was that before your time? 
Combs: That was before my time, yeah. I heard nothin' on that, and that's one I can't respond to. 
Maxwell: I thought it might have been before your time. 
Combs: I wish somebody had mentioned that to me. 
Maxwell: I think it was more like in the forties. I should have had a date down here, but I don't. 
Combs: What do you know about it? I shouldn't be asking you the questions, but were they pretty good? Who were they? 
Maxwell: Well, they did several different things. They were very active in Arizona, because Arizona was really, really racist. And in the turn of the century, in the early decades and the middle decades, they did a number of things -scholarships, and these demonstration teams, and several other different things -to kind of show that black people can excel. That was just one of those things. I just didn't know if you'd ever played them, or if they kept on going or anything. 
Combs: Yeah, I didn't mean to ask you a question. I guess you were asking me, but I didn't know about that here. I guess nobody told me. Our baseball team, that I had mentioned to you, we kinda like, the three older guys -me being one of them -we kind of implemented that ourselves. We wanted to play baseball. See, when I left Louisiana, I was telling you about Dad would let us off sometimes Saturday, half a day, and I would go to Bienville and we'd play baseball. Dad didn't like it because, again, we'd go down there, we'd be around some white people sometimes, around little stores and places. Dad didn't want us to get hurt or killed or nothin' like that. 
Maxwell: Yeah, be at risk. Did you participate in the Civil Rights Movement here in the sixties? 
Combs: No. When you say "movement," what does it entail? I'm still asking you another question. 
Maxwell: Oh, it's okay. They had one sit-in at El Charro's. 
Combs: You don't know what year that was, do you? 
Maxwell: In 1963. 
Combs: See, I was in the military then. I was in the military from '62 to '66. 
Maxwell: Oh, you were gone, yeah. 
Combs: No, I wasn't involved in that. I've been involved in the Juneteenth. As a matter of fact, Sheriff Joe Richards is the sheriff now. That's when I had left the jail. My last three years, I was out of the jail, I was a civil deputy, meaning that I was serving papers. I had about twenty-some different types of papers to serve, a replevin and subpoenas or summons and evictions. (chuckles) I could tell you something about evictions. Let's leave that alone. I know you're in suspense. See, I could talk all night about stuff like that. But anyway, no, I wasn't involved in nothin' like that. I mentioned about the Juneteenth, and Sheriff Joe Richards. See, when I left the jail, I was, like I said, civil deputy. George Joe let me use -see, I had my own patrol car to serve papers. I didn't have the lights on top, but I had everything else: the decals and lights under the grille. I could stop somebody, because I was a deputy sheriff, I had all the trainin' anyone else had. But that wasn't my job, so if I saw a guy speedin' or somethin' like that, I just kinda left it up to somebody that didn't see it. I wasn't supposed to do that, but you know, Sheriff Joe Richards didn't have me out there to go on a patrol here (unclear) servin' paper. But anyway, Juneteenth, I could take my patrol car, and I went down and participated in our march down the street, celebrating Juneteenth, when the slaves were freed. You know, we always have Juneteenth here, the nineteenth of June. We call it Juneteenth. And that would be a plus for Sheriff Joe Richards anyway, for kind of a political thing for him. I've got my lights on, and a black guy in a patrol car. That was nice. That brings me to another point. 
Maxwell: What's that? 
Combs: I remember when I was first hired there. I better not call his name. There were two old deputies there. See, certain things you don't forget, you don't forget, and I don't forget. After they hired me, election was comin' up. A guy or two was runnin' against Sheriff Cecil Richardson, the old man. But after the election was over, one of the old guys came up to me and told me I got to shape up now, the election was over. Now, that's a lots of words within itself, isn't it? I've always done my job to -and I hate to use the word excellence -but I've always done a good job. So I wasn't doin' anything, but what he was tellin' me in a nonverbal way, that the election was over now, so Cecil Richardson may fire me at any time. But he told me I had to shape up. When people talk to me, I understand. But Cecil wasn't like that. One thing about him, I have never seen Cecil (unclear) deputy, not only me. Cecil Richards, I told you he was an educator, he taught school on the Navajo Reservation for years, he could speak Navajo fluently. If he had anything to say to me or something that I maybe did something wrong, that was hardly ever -and I hate to give myself a pat on the back -he would call me into the office. Most of the time there was something he wanted to ask me about anyway: How are the prisoners? or Why did this happen? or Why did this guy get beat up, or somethin' like that. And like I say, they always slipped in the shower. But Cecil would never chew me out. He was a professional, never chewed me out in front of nobody else. I never seen him chew anybody else out, or rake somebody up and down. And he was something else. I couldn't say that about (unclear, comment obscured by laughing). Yeah, that was all right. 
Maxwell: That's some really good management skills, huh? 
Combs: He was a professional. And the same thing, I did my people when I was a lieutenant, I was in charge of the jail. You wouldn't see me chewin' out any of my subordinates in front of nobody else. I always called them into my office and talked to them, and they could better explain themselves. 
Maxwell: When did the Juneteenth celebration get started here, do you know? 
Combs: I believe it must have gotten started in the sixties, I believe, because the sixties is when we had the rough time. Like I said, black people throughout the United States, or some of the bigger cities -I know Los Angeles had quite a thing -burnin' down the cities and stuff like this. So it must have started in '66, '67. That's givin' a guess. 
Maxwell: Did Joe Joyce [phonetic] start that? 
Combs: It's a possibility. I know he was one of the sponsors, or one of the guys that ramrodded, if you want to, that. Joe's the one, I believe, that got drowned? 
Maxwell: Yeah. 
Combs: Somebody said a few years ago they want to keep it up in his honor, you know. This year, I guess, they had it. I guess a few times I've been associated with it. That's when I went to the sheriff's office, because most of the.... This year, I believe we was in Louisiana. Most of the time, I'm some other place and I'm obligated or somethin'. But this time, I believe my mother.... My mother passed away on the twenty-seventh.... No, before that. No, we was in Louisiana. This year we had my school reunion. Anybody who had ever gone to Shady Grove or graduated from that school, they was invited back. And this is about the third time. We have it every other year, I believe, or every three years. But they've had two others, and I didn't make it. And I sure want to make it. That's what brought about my retirement, for one thing, because I didn't want the State of Arizona to say no, you couldn't go. So I retired in June, and then July we had our school reunion. And the next week, my wife had her family reunion in Louisiana. So we had two weeks back-to-back thing. 
Maxwell: That must have been great. 
Combs: Yeah, we left here on the tenth, so we was out of town this year for the Juneteenth. I think they had it. 
Maxwell: Yeah, they did. 
Combs: But I wasn't there. Most of the time, like I say, not that I don't want to be a part of it, but I'm just about always obligated. But most of the time.... See, most of the time in July, that's our family reunion. My wife, we alternate. My wife have.... Every other year. My wife has hers this year, and mine the next year. So we're just about always out of town. We're in Louisiana. Since we've got a brother up in -we move the family reunion around. Sometimes it's in Colorado. This year it was my wife's. The year before last we were in Phoenix. We live here in Arizona, so my brother, Payton's, kids live in Phoenix. So they said, "Let the kids have it." So we had it last year in Phoenix. And sometimes we have it in Houston, because my older sister and brother, before Dad passed away. And then again, sometimes we had it down in Louisiana, back home, see. We kinda moved it around. And we've had it here several times in Flagstaff. The first two times, we got Fort Tut [phonetic] here, out at the fairgrounds. We reserved one of those arenas out there. And then the last few times we've been, we've had one at Bushmaster Park. We may have had one at Cedar Park, (unclear) thing. But we always get a reserved place and have a great time. 
Maxwell: If you have enough energy, could you talk about your role in the church here? (aside about tape) 
Combs: My role in the church, I was one of the deacons. I was placed on the deacon's board, came out of service in '64 and I became a deacon. That's one of the offices that help the pastor. I assist the pastor, and I became a deacon in 1966, and I've been a deacon since then. We call it the head deacon, which is the chairman. You know, chairmen always kind of chair the meetings or whatever, especially when you don't have a pastor, don't have a leader. So that's been my thing, when we don't have a pastor. And at one time, a few years ago in the sixties -probably I should have said the last of the sixties or seventies -we couldn't hardly keep a minister here. We elect our ministers, and we can ask them to leave, if you will. "Fire them" is not the word. We can elect them and ask them to leave. But certain churches, like the Sanctified, we call it the Church of God in Christ, their bishop sends you somebody. Whether you want them or not, you got to accept them. But our Baptist church, we elect ours. So I'm the chairman of that. What I was about to say, in the sixties and seventies, we couldn't hardly keep a minister because we got one -and I don't want to use the word.... I'd better use the appropriate word. He wasn't suitable, so we had to kind of like ask him to leave. I hate to use the word "bad actor." He didn't fit into our congregation, so we had to ask him to leave. So that was my thing. I'm the chairman of the deacons' board, so when we don't have a pastor, a leader, everything pretty well falls off on me. Because if we don't have one, I've got to call Phoenix, I've got to call Las Vegas, and always have a minister to come in town for that particular Sunday, to conduct services, until we made a choice, get the whole church, the congregation, together to say, "This one you've heard [preach], this one you've heard." We try not to bring in too many, to get them confused. We may bring in four or five, and make a choice from that, and that's the way we elect our ministers to lead as pastor. So down through the years, it's been okay. Everything is okay. 
Maxwell: What would you say the church's role is in the community here? 
Combs: Well, we're really not visible. That's my contention. Over the years, we're not visible. See, our role in the community, we should be out doin' a whole lot of things: visitin' the sick, let people know that there is -I hate to say -there is a real God. When we leave this place, leave this Earth, when we die, to us there is a Heaven and a Hell, and believe our Bible substantiates that. I need not tell you how we should care for the needy, and how we should use our monies to help the needy. And we do do that. We give people clothes, food, and stuff like that. Believe it or not, the highway patrol, the City, and Sheriff Joe Richards, out of all the churches in Flagstaff -I believe I'm speakin' the truth -all the churches in Flagstaff, highway patrol sends them to First Baptist, the city police department, Sheriff Joe Richards, they all send them to First Baptist. In my years, we have never turned people away. We give them money, we feed them, we give them gas, and all this kind of thing. We just had some people two or three Sundays ago, a girlfriend and [wife?]. We gave both of them a check for forty dollars, eighty dollars, to get them to wherever. If they were drivin' a vehicle, eighty dollars would get you.... I can go home and back, I believe, to Louisiana, just about on eighty dollars. So that would take them just about to Chicago. They were goin' someplace east, Missouri or someplace. Eighty dollars would take ya' -you know, if you don't have no other problem. Of course, what I'm sayin' in essence, we always can get you from here beyond Albuquerque, because we call it a benevolent fund. That's what we take up money for. Like I say, all law enforcement in this area, they know to send them to First Baptist. 
Maxwell: What about the black community? 
Combs: Like what, for example, how they function? 
Maxwell: No, how does the church function in it? Well, actually, I'd like to ask you about both of those. 
Combs: Well, we function in the community. We have several auxiliaries. We don't call them organizations. We've got the missions, what we call the women's department, the men's department. Our function as laymen, the men, we call it brotherhood. We do several things. Most of the black people are on the South Side, but we don't care who, if somebody let us know. We were learnin' that the city's got so many organizations, if you will, that help people. But we don't put them up. Anybody (unclear). We go cut people's lawns. A few years ago we put a top on a lady's house. I'd better not call her name. We do these kind of things. We go over to -they changed the name of Los Arcos, where they got the people that are terminally ill. We go there and visit them. We got a brother there now we got to go see, that used to come to our church. And they put him in there a little while ago. But these are the kinds of things we do, look after the needy. We kind of look after people who just don't have, down and out. 
Maxwell: Thank you so much. We've run out of tape. 
[END OF INTERVIEW]