Vicksburg was a wonderful place for kids to grow up, Elmo Allen said, but there were times when his mother probably thought he wouldn’t make it. Like when he was about 8 years old, playing “Cops and Robbers” near their Main Street home and he accidentally hanged himself, barely breathing when his mother and some firemen revived him.

Or the time — no, two times — when he was rescued from drowning in Lake Centennial, each time by a family friend, Red Maguire. Elmo had been warned by his mother not to play in the Mississippi River.

And then there was the time when he and some of his buddies were sitting on the wall in front of the Old Court House one night, just talking, when a Koestler’s Bakery truck came down Jackson and turned left onto Cherry. Gas was pouring from the truck, and someone ran out and threw a match, which set off a wide, long wall of fire in both directions, and Elmo remembers, “To us, it looked like the whole world was on fire, and we all took off for home.”

Elmo, who lives in Jackson, was born there 86 years ago, come Oct. 6, while his parents were visiting his grandparents. He said, “I don’t think they meant for it to happen, and they immediately came home.”

He went to Clay Street and Carr Central schools, but quit in his senior year. He admits he wasn’t too interested in studying, but “I mostly had a good time.”

When the captain of a ship asked him if he wanted a job, he temporarily left his books behind and set sail aboard the SS Miraflores from Galveston to Haiti and back. At first, he thought he had “died and gone to heaven,” but then he got seasick — and discovered they were being followed by a German submarine. The fact that the ship was flying a British flag — and that Britain and Germany were at war — escaped him at the time. The Miraflores quickly exchanged the Union Jack for a Swedish banner and then hung around Guantanamo Bay for a while until the sub left — and so did Elmo, heading for home as quickly as he could. Four months later, the ship was sunk off the coast of New Jersey with no survivors.

Elmo’s activities included being a carrier boy for The Vicksburg Evening Post. He had two routes, one out Halls Ferry and the other along the waterfront through the Red Light district. He was about 14, and he remembers the girls at 15 China always gave him a 50-cent tip at Christmas — and that was when the paper cost a dime a week and included the Sunday edition. He remembers going with his friend Charles Drexler to collect for his papers when a little boy, about 4, said, “Mama said to tell you she’s not here.”

His bicycle was Elmo’s mode of transportation, taking him to jobs, to events of interest — even to Tallulah, 22 miles away, where he thought the girls were prettier. That lasted until some Tallulah boys decided to protect their territory.

When the Clear Creek Bridge collapsed in 1939, Elmo rode his bicycle to the site on the other side of Bovina and watched as Sugarman Daniels dove into the cold water, retrieving bodies and hooking cable to submerged cars. He’ll never forget his heroism and remembers onlookers taking up a collection for the man.

There were some embarrassing times, like when he was making a Hadacol delivery on his bike and a car turned in front of him causing a collision he couldn’t avoid. His bike was embedded in the car’s grill, and Elmo was catapulted over the vehicle, landing on the street in a pile of horse doo where a wagon and horses had been parked earlier. He was terribly bruised and skinned and was even more mortified when he discovered that, in addition to being covered in manure, his pants were also unzipped — and a crowd had gathered!

Elmo usually had an after-school job. He worked at the skating rink that came to town each year, buckling skates on people and occasionally getting a tip, usually a nickel or dime. He hopped cars at a drive-in and remembers when a lady decided to roll her window down just as he hooked on the tray containing milk shakes, spilling them all over her fur coat. She just laughed and admitted it was her fault, much to his relief.

About 1939 or 1940, he worked at Pennebaker’s Dairyland as a soda jerk and car hop for $1 a day and all the ice cream he could eat (two scoops were a nickel, a banana split was 15 cents and a gallon of ice cream was $1).

There were pranks that boys pulled, such as hiding in the vines that covered the synagogue on Cherry Street and jumping out in the night scaring passers-by. He recalls older boys soaping the trolley tracks on the Clay Street hill so the trolley would sit and spin until the conductor would drop back down the hill and try again.

It wasn’t unusual for a car to careen down the hill toward the ferry and floodwall, often with fatal results, but Elmo remembers one Christmas season when he was running a fireworks stand in front of Chilton’s Drug Store at the corner of Clay and Washington when he heard a lot of yelling and the sound of a collision. He looked up and saw a driverless car headed down the street. He ran alongside, managed to open the door, jumped in and stopped it.

“For a day or two, I was somewhat of a hometown hero,” he said.

There were other events in Vicksburg when he was growing up that Elmo has never forgotten, such as the day the “Human Fly” climbed the wall of the Vicksburg Hotel, making it to the top as a crowd watched, “and, for us yokels below, he threw down loaves of bread — which we playfully fought over.”

He remembers the Ford, riddled with bullets, in which Bonnie and Clyde died — a famous couple on the wrong side of the law. It was parked for about 10 days in front of Central Smoke House.

On another day, he and Charles Drexler saw a white Cadillac convertible pulling a horse trailer head down Clay Street and stop at a garage. They ran to see who it was and were treated to a visit with Hollywood star Tom Mix.

There was the Great Depression that began in 1929 and lasted about 10 years. The men who were called hobos, but were often well-educated professionals who were destitute, came looking for food, but were always willing to work to pay for it. Some became friends of the family.

One special friend he’ll never forget was Genora Kelly who worked for his mother cleaning house for $1 a week. “About 1935, World War I veterans got a bonus of around $500 each,” Elmo said. Her husband died, and she was afraid to put the money into a bank, as so many had failed, and was also afraid it would be stolen, so she offered to loan it to the Allens so Elmo’s father could buy a car, which he urgently needed in his work as an electrician, “to get to what little work that would come along.” The family repaid the loan, and Elmo remembers Genora as “a wonderful person” who worked for his family from the time he was born until he enlisted in the Navy.

Times were so hard during the Depression, Elmo said, “We’d do anything to recover a coin in a gutter.” Sometimes he would spot a nickel or penny which he would retrieve with a piece of bubble gum on a stick.

“When I did, I would go straight to Mr. M.J. Fousse’s little grocery store at the corner of Cherry and Grove and buy a big  stick of candy for one penny. It was over a foot long,” he said. “Mr. Fousse kept a box of chocolate mints on top of a counter. They were a penny apiece. If you got one with a pink center, you won a large pecan log candy bar. When poor Mr. Fousse wasn’t looking, we would punch a hole in the mints until we found a pink one. I don’t think he ever got wise to our little trick.”

When Elmo was a little boy, his daddy took him to Central Smoke House and Cafe. There was a sheet of poster paper on the wall with tallies of who had drank coffee and charged it. Elmo continued to patronize it as long as he lived in Vicksburg.

He and his buddies would peek in the window at the Aeolian where some guys were building an airplane. One day it was gone, but he never knew if it flew or not.

Maybe his most unforgettable moment — or minutes — was when he was double dating, a blind date arranged by a friend who knew that Elmo had never kissed a girl. It was a setup for, when they were parked on Fort Nogales, “that girl grabbed me, put her arms around me and planted a nonstop 2- or 3-minute smooch right smack on my lips. It scared the living hell out of me at first, and I really believe the hair stood straight up because I do recall my scalp tingling. It took my breath away. I guess you never forget your first kiss — ever.”

He was a senior at Carr Central when Pearl Harbor was attacked. That would change everything.

Gordon Cotton is an author and historian who lives in Vicksburg.