My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business_ A Memoir - Dick Van Dyke [2]
People left their doors open and their lights on, even when they went out. Occasionally someone down on their luck would knock on the back door and my mother would give him something to eat. Sometimes she would give him an odd job to do, too.
I had things on my mind that night. You could tell from the way I looked out the kitchen window as I did my part of the dishes. I stood six feet one inch and weighed 130 pounds, if that. I was a tall drink of water, as my grandmother said.
“I’m going to be eighteen in March,” I said. “That means I’ll be up for the draft. I really don’t want to go—and I really don’t want to be in the infantry. So I’m thinking that I ought to join now and try to get in the Air Force.”
My mother let the dish she was washing slide back into the soapy water and dried her hands. She turned to me, a serious look on her face.
“I have something to tell you,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“You’re already eighteen,” she said.
My jaw dropped. I was shocked.
“But how—”
“You were born a little premature,” she explained. “You didn’t have any fingernails. And there were a few other complications.”
“Complications?” I said.
“Don’t worry, you’re fine now,” she said, smiling. “But we just put your birth date forward to what would have been full term.”
I wanted to know more than she was willing to reveal, so I turned to another source, my Grandmother Van Dyke. My grandparents on both sides lived nearby, but Grandmother Van Dyke was the most straightforward of the bunch. I stopped by her house one day after school and asked what she remembered about the complications that resulted from my premature birth.
She looked like she wanted to say “bullshit.” She asked who had sold me a bill of goods.
“My mother,” I replied.
“You weren’t premature,” she said.
“I wasn’t?”
“You were conceived out of wedlock,” she said, and then she went on to explain that my mother had gotten pregnant before she and my father married. Though it was never stated, I was probably the reason they got married. Eventually my mother confirmed the story, adding that after finding out, she and my father went to Missouri, where I was born. Then, following a certain amount of time, they returned to Danville.
It may not sound like such a big deal today, but back in 1925 it was the stuff of scandal. And eighteen years later, as I uncovered the facts, it was still pretty shocking to discover that I was a “love child.”
I am still surprised the secret was kept from me for such a long time when others knew the truth. Danville was a town of thirty thousand people, and it felt as if most of them were relatives. I had a giant extended family. My great-grandparents on both sides were still alive, and I had first, second, and third cousins nearby. I could walk out of my house in any direction and hit a relative before I got tired.
There were good, industrious, upstanding, and attractive people in our family. There were no horse thieves or embezzlers. I was once given a family tree that showed the Van Dyke side was pretty unspectacular. My great-great-grandfather John Van Dyke went out west via the Donner Pass during the gold rush. After failing to find gold, he resettled in Green County, Pennsylvania.
The same family tree showed that Mother’s side of the family, the McCords, could be traced back to Captain John Smith, who established the first English colony in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Maybe it is true, but I never heard any talk about that when I was growing up. Nor have I fact-checked.
The part beyond dispute begins when my father, Loren, or L. W. Van Dyke, met my mother, Hazel McCord. She was a stenographer, and he was a minor-league baseball player: handsome, athletic, charming, the life of the party. And his talent did not end there. During the off-season, he played saxophone