“I close my eyes for a little while, just to rest ’em, but I don’t
sleep. I haven’t used a bed for over five years,” Bill-Ike would tell
me. Then the gentle old man with a flowing white beard would add that
he had gained 38 pounds in the past year.
He would just “set” in a decrepit old chair by the stove or putter
about the house long winter nights. He’d while away the tedious hours
reading sea stories and cowboy yarns and go through three or four
magazines in a night. But, his mother’s glasses didn’t serve him as
well toward the end and time became more of a burden. Around 3 a.m. he
would brew a pot of tea and make himself a sandwich. Moonlight nights
in the spring and summer were welcomed, for then he was able to get
outdoors and do a few chores.
Bill-Ike said he first discovered the capacity to go without sleep when
he was a youth working in the cranberry bogs during a rush season. He
worked night and day for three months that time and discovered that
he could get along with only an hour’s snooze in the morning before
breakfast. But, he didn’t really begin to make a habit of staying awake
until 1928.