Priceless Memories - Bob Barker [34]
I assured my father that I would always take care of my mother, and many years later, I had the opportunity of caring for her when she was elderly, and eventually ill. She lived with me in Hollywood for years when she was older. I kept my word to my father. Though he died when I was very young, I do remember him.
My father liked to box. He had boxed as a younger man, and my mother said he would go to Omaha to watch professional fights. I remember he bought me some boxing gloves, and he would get on his knees and box with me. He was, according to my mother, an incredible cardplayer and a pretty successful gambler at cards. Mother said he was wearing custom-made suits and silk shirts and driving a big car when she married him, but she told him if they were going to be married, he had to concentrate on electricity—he worked on the power lines—from then on. Mother said that between electrical jobs, my father would tease her, saying, “Tilly, maybe I should go find a card game.”
My mother and father had a lot of fun. Apparently, he was an adventurous guy. Mother told me that before she married my father, he and a friend rode motorcycles down to Mexico. They met Pancho Villa in a bar. Pancho Villa took them with him and his friends to a bullfight. Mother said that my father was aghast at the blood spectacle. He could not stand to see the cruelty to the animal, and he left the bullfight. Maybe some of my animal protectionist streak is genetic.
My mother also told me that after I was born, she had gone to an astrologer, who told her that this baby was going to make his living talking. My mother immediately thought I might follow in my grandfather’s footsteps and become a minister, or she thought I might become an attorney, speaking in court. Television did not exist, and radio was in its infancy. But sure enough, I went on to make my living all my life by talking.
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When Lewis and Clark first explored the area, South Dakota was Indian territory, and as I was growing up, there were still many Native Americans living there. According to the census of 1930, out of a population of 692,849 people, approximately 3 percent of those residents were Native American. In Mission, a farming town on the Rosebud Reservation with a population of only 200, probably one-third of the residents were Native Americans. My father was one-quarter Indian. His mother was one-half Indian. I am one-eighth Sioux. It was not uncommon to have Indian heritage in those days in that region of the country. My stepfather was one-half Indian.
As I mentioned, I was called Billy for much of my childhood. My father’s name was Byron John Barker. He did not like Byron or John, so everyone started calling him Bill. When I was born and named Robert William Barker, they called him big Bill and me little Bill. Then I was Billy. I was Billy Barker all through childhood. My mother called me Billy, and all my friends called me Billy. Eventually, I had to change it while I was at school in Mission, South Dakota, probably in the third grade. The school was approximately 75 percent white and 25 percent Native American. The government was always interested and always checking to see whether the Indians were in school or not, and I was part Sioux, so they were interested in my attendance.
Since I always signed everything Billy Barker, there was some confusion at the Office of Indian Affairs,