Childhood memories include parental abuse and six months in reform school

In a tell-all 1965 article in Sport Magazine, Hank Thompson wrote that he had been arrested seven times. The first arrest occured in 1937 when he eleven years old. His parents had separated when Thompson was five or six. He was being raised by a working mother whose job kept her out of the house twelve hours a day. That left Thompson with ample time for skipping school, playing baseball and running the streets of Dallas, Texas.

The first arrest was for stealing jewelry. He was acquitted of the charge, but a short time later he was arrested for truancy. This time, the charges stuck. Thompson was sentenced to serve six months at the Gatesville Reform School. Upon his release, he was ordered to live with his hard drinking and physically abusive father for a year. His father's idea of effective parenting was the application of leather upon skin.

"The way he beat was humiliating" Thompson recalled. "He made me drop my pants and underpants and he'd whip me with his belt across the bare buttocks."

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