Talking to Kenneth Tucker is kind of like listening to your grandpa and his friends sitting around telling stories.

“In college, you always had those professors that had everyone in the class introduce themselves,” Tucker said. “I would always say, ‘My name is Kenneth Tucker. I’ve been in jail seven years, spent three months at reform school and been on probation ever since.’ You would hear people whispering in the hall afterwards, ‘What did that guy do?’”

Tucker’s father served as the chief of police in Cullman for seven years, and the family lived at the jail. Then his father became one of the original 13 members of the state parole board. So Tucker’s intro wasn’t quite as bad as it sounded, but it sure did make for a good story.

And stories are something Tucker has plenty of. He followed in his father’s footsteps and became a parole officer. He served 41 years and retired as District Supervisor of the Alabama Pardon and Parole Board.

“I majored in that at the University,” Tucker said of the University of Alabama. “And I decided to follow my daddy.”

Tucker started in the organization so early, he has a single digit badge number. In fact, Tucker’s badge number was seven. The first three badges belonged to state parole board members. Numbers four through six belonged to officers in Montgomery.

“I was number seven,” Tucker said. “I was the first field number.”

Tucker remembers his time as a probation officer more as a way to help people get their lives back in order.

He talked of one young man who was convicted of a sex offense in another state with different consent laws. “This young man was 18 years old, and his girlfriend was 17 – would have been 18 the next day,” he said. “But her parents found out and pressed charges. Alabama had different ages for consent. It wouldn’t have even been a crime here.”

The man came home and was assigned to Tucker. Tucker let him attend school at Florence State Teacher’s College, now the University of North Alabama. He became president of the student body and graduated with honors.

“There are just no exceptions,” Tucker said. “That’s the law for you.”

The helping aspect of the job didn’t apply to just the probation officers. It extended to members of the community as well.

Tucker recalls one man with “only half sense” who applied for probation. The man had a foot infection. Tucker carried him to the doctor and then the apothecary.

“They helped us out,” he said. “The doc figured out what was wrong and what the boy needed. Nancy, the apothecary, said she would sell me the medicine for what it cost her and then she would pay half if I would pay half.”

Part of the instructions for the medicine was that the boy’s feet needed to be clean before applying it.

“Next time I saw him, he had the cleanest feet you ever saw,” Tucker said. “He was dirty everywhere else, but he had clean feet.”

Tucker was happy to be able to help people get their lives back in order after they’d made a mistake. And he understood when people had done a serious wrong and when it was just a youthful indiscretion. He never carried a gun, and only had one person run away when he tried to bring them in. He took people at their word, and that was enough.

“I just liked helping people,” he said. “I liked the folks I worked with. I liked being able to help people headed to the penitentiary make something out of themselves.”

One man Tucker took at his word stayed true to his promise to Tucker. There as a family in Lawrence County that was a good of crowd of people you’d ever come across, other than the whiskey-making operation they ran.

“Their grandpa had a permit from the federal government to make whiskey,” Tucker said. “The rest of them didn’t understand why they couldn’t make whiskey in the same still he used.”

One of the boys was placed on probation for his part in the family whiskey operation. He promised both Tucker and the judge he wouldn’t fool with whiskey while he was on probation but made no such promises about after he probation was over.

Tucker let the man go to Chicago, get a job, and report to him once a month by letter.

“No one there knew he was on probation,” Tucker said. “He had a job, and all it cost him was one stamp to me once a month.”

But the man’s brother wanted him off probation, claiming at first being on probation was embarrassing. Tucker spoke to the brother and got to the root of the matter. Turns out, the man could make a lot more money once his brother got back home and helped with the whiskey making.

“But that fellow was true to his word,” Tucker said. “He promised he wouldn’t mess with whiskey while he was on probation, and he didn’t. You can’t help but admire people like that.”

Tucker has long since retired. He and his wife of almost 53 years, Mary, drink coffee and work crossword and Sudoku puzzles, both in pen. With more than four decades of service, Tucker has earned his time off.

Do you have an idea for a Friends and Neighbors column? Let us know. Call The Cullman Times at 734-2131 or e-mail friends_and_neighbors@yahoo.com.