By Ron F. Hale
Growing up with an alcoholic father is a “Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” existence. Your heart-cry is to be normal (like other families) but every dashed hope marks your heart like the rings of an oak tree.
Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, John Wayne, and Hopalong Cassidy were the motion picture shoot-‘em-up cowboy heroes who shaped Carlos Ray Norris, Jr’s image of a man and the notion of what his father could or should have been.
Little Carlos grew up dirt-poor as the oldest of three brothers in small-town Ryan, OK. He was born in 1940 with Cherokee and Irish heritage. Sixteen low-rent housing moves were made by the time Carlos was 15 years old.
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