My Heroes

Ray Smith

Ray Smith was probably my first real hero. He is the son of a man who married my father’s aunt. When he was about 14 and I was about five - he had babysat us once or twice.

When he was 15, he was running with “the wrong crowd” and both his mother (who lived with her parents) and his father really felt like they could not deal with him anymore. If I remember correctly, his father asked my mother - or my mother volunteered to let him stay with us. I do not remember my father being as enthusiastic!

At the time, we were living in a two-story house in Detroit. The second story was a converted attic split in half. My brothers Doug, Dan and I had our bedroom on one-half - and Ray moved into the other half. He also quickly took over the basement for his model cars. I remember he painted this real cool King Cobra on a basement wall.

Ray and his friends were greasers. In my book, they were the coolest people on Earth. Ray was a regular James Dean. Always dressed nice and had plenty of young snapper swinging from his zipper. This too was cool!

Shortly after Ray moved in, we moved down to Texas. Even though I was a punk kid, Ray would often take me with him cruisin in his 55 Dodge. Cowboys and robbers was the big kid game back then and Ray would take the time to play it with us. He would always be Dishonest John (Beanie and Cecil was the new cartoon). When we lived in San Marcos, we lived in a one-bedroom apartment in a big house converted into 10 apartments. My parents and Donald (the baby then) would sleep in the living room and my two other brothers, sister, Ray and I would sleep in the bedroom. We only had one pillow and would fight over it every night. But it didn’t matter much because when it was Ray’s turn to go to bed - that sucker would come flying out from under whomever’s head was on it!

Ray joined the army when I was in the third grade and I did not see much of him for a couple years as he was in Germany, and then Atlanta when he got out. When I was about 14, we took a cross-country trip, which included stopping to see him, Glenda and their new daughter Andrea in Atlanta. Ray was the manager of a collection agency, had a brand new 68 Thunderbird, and showed me a closet of clothes that I never knew was possible for one person to have. I made up my mind right then that I was going to be in the debt collection business and have nice stuff too!

When I turned 15 - my family had just moved to Buffalo and Ray was a manager of a collection agency 200 miles away in Cleveland. I was having problems getting along with my family, mostly with my father as most teenaged boys do, and Ray drove to Buffalo to bring me back to Cleveland for a couple weeks. That was two weeks of Heaven! Men’s clubs, strip joints, 3D porno movies, poker games and just about everything else a 15-year-old boy lives for! I really hated to go home.

In March of 1977, I moved back down to Houston, Texas - where Ray lived. He would give me advice as to which agency to work at and other debt collection tips. Once I had gained experience, I went to work for him.

Ray was the first cool person I ever knew. I learned from him that a poor boy could hit the jackpot.

Sadly, the last ten years of Ray’s life he was in bad health — and led a fairly miserable life. He passed away in 2008.