After arriving back in Austin from our honeymoon travels, Arlette and I spent a few days trying to make our tiny efficiency apartment homelike; we used some of the items we bought in Mexico, plus inexpensive materials purchased locally. The apartment had no closet, so we devised our own by suspending a bar from the ceiling in one corner of the room and surrounding it with a serape purchased in Reynosa; Arlette made decorative window curtains from burlap bags we dyed. We made the place livable, if not “homey.”
We also established a church home. I had joined Congress Avenue Baptist Church back in the summer, in part because Alice Irene Hodel, another
Howard Payne graduate, was church secretary; it was nice to “know someone”
already in the church. Arlette joined
Congress Avenue the first Sunday we were back in town; it was our church home
for the years we lived in Austin.
Broader implications of “home” included the necessity for my settling
down from a relatively carefree single existence. The words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Life is real and life
is earnest,” literally “struck home” to me; I had become responsible not only
for myself, but also for a wife – real motivation for a “pursuit of excellence” (to use a phrase
popularized by Rush Limbaugh long years later). I got busy:
·
I carried a full course load at school, heavy in
accounting. (Inasmuch as I already had
an undergraduate degree, I had to take no courses outside the schools of
business and economics as conditions for an MBA degree, so could “load up” on
accounting courses.)
·
I worked afternoons as a credit reporter for Dun &
Bradstreet during the last half of the 1950 fall term and
the 1951 spring term. I “wrote up”
reports in late evening hours after I’d finished studying and homework. (I didn’t seek the employment; the manager
of their Austin office learned I was in town and came by our apartment one
afternoon to recruit me for part-time work, rousing me from a nap and talking
with me as I sat on the edge of our bed in my boxer shorts.)
·
I graded papers for Mr. Bill Bell, my first elementary
accounting instructor.
I missed a lot of sleep, but received three checks each month during
the 1951 spring term – the GI Bill stipend, a Dun & Bradstreet check, and a state warrant
from the University for grading papers.
We weren’t getting rich, but the three checks helped, particularly when we
learned Arlette needed extensive dental work.
Knowledge of that need came about because Dr. B.O. White, after
confirming that our first baby was on the way, suggested a dental check-up as
part of her prenatal care; we spent about $2,000 on her teeth over the next two
years. Fortunately, I had savings from
my 1948-1950 days with Dun & Bradstreet.
I
saved well over $2,000 during the two years I was employed fulltime by D &
B. In addition to my salary ($200/month
the first six months I worked, $225/month the next six, and $250/month the last
year), I received $44.75 per week expense allowances while traveling. I could stay at hotels or motels in most
towns for $3 per night, and my meals probably averaged one dollar each. I had to dress nicely, because I was
constantly before the public, so my clothing expenses were relatively high (I
still have dozens of neckties I bought during that period). I also burned lots of gasoline and car
upkeep wasn’t cheap. Nevertheless, I
had a nice “kitty” by the time I left my job to resume my education, although I
had come close to blowing it a short while before meeting Arlette, when I was
sorely tempted to buy a new 1949 Pontiac Chieftain Fastback, for which the
dealer was asking $2,100. Fortunately,
I resisted the temptation. (Years later
I bought a well-worn 1949 fastback Chevrolet as a second car
for our family, then later traded it in on a 1954 Pontiac, but I never got
both fastback and Pontiac in the same vehicle.)
Mrs. Westbrook, our landlady, upon learning Arlette was expecting a
baby, suggested that we might like to move into the larger efficiency apartment
adjoining ours; it would cost $42.50 per month, $5.00 more than we had been
paying. Needing the added space, we
moved.
I could walk to everything on campus from our apartment at 2306
Sabine. The block in which we lived was
located diagonally northeast across Red River Boulevard from Memorial Stadium;
that block (and several others) ultimately became a part of the grounds upon
which the LBJ presidential library now stands.
Mentioning
nearby Memorial Stadium reminds me of a clever trick executed by some Texas
Aggies during the 1950 fall term, when they sowed winter grass on the
football field in giant block letters, spelling out “AGGIES” from goal
to goal. The permanent stadium grass had lost most of its summer color when the
Longhorn/Aggie game was played on Thanksgiving Day, but the new “AGGIES” winter
grass stood out brilliantly. UT
officials didn’t attempt to prevent the Aggie handiwork from showing, but
locked stadium gates from that time onward.
We lived near Oscar and Bennie Nipper, another young married
couple, whose apartment was about a block south of us, directly across Red
River from the stadium; I often studied with Oscar (another accounting
major). We also got together as couples
from time to time, usually to play “42.”
After one “42” session at their apartment on a cold January evening
during semester break, Arlette and I took a shortcut when we headed home,
traversing a steep, icy slope on the south side of 23rd street. She slipped as she started down the slope
and rolled/slid to the bottom; fortunately, neither she nor our expected baby
was injured. After determining she was
unhurt, I told her she reminded me of the lady who had fallen from her horse
and rolled across the pasture at Cedar Crest Dude Ranch in Bandera; that wasn’t
really true, for she was still relatively small, although she went from 110
pounds to nearly 160 before our baby arrived.
Arlette
and I continued playing “42” with Oscar and Bennie even after we finished our
schooling, until a college teaching job at Edinburg took them away from
Austin. One night Bennie provided the
rest of us with a big laugh when, after failing to make a bid, she declared, “I
had the wrong offs.” We asked her what kind of “offs” were right;
she didn’t answer, but I suppose she meant those for which her partner held the
“catching” doubles.
After having received three modest checks
during each of the months of the 1951 spring term, Arlette and I were suddenly
without income at the end of that term; my GI Bill eligibility ended, I no longer graded papers, and I terminated my
employment with Dun & Bradstreet.
I don’t remember why I quit D & B; I must have felt I had no
time for outside efforts in the face of (1) summer school’s accelerated pace
and (2) imminent birth of our first baby – and I still didn’t enjoy some
aspects of the work.
◊◊◊
One of the courses I took in 1951’s summer school was Business
Management. What I really needed at the
time was a course in Baby Management, for Vicky, our firstborn, arrived July
7 – several days late, but ready for life at eight pounds, eleven ounces.
Vicky’s
entrance into the world at Brackenridge Hospital cost $165 (doctor and hospital
combined). We had no insurance
coverage, so were fortunate to get out so lightly.
I didn’t register for the second summer session, because I thought I
needed a break from the grind before continuing my “pursuit of excellence,” for which I had, with
Vicky’s birth, a second reason. We
spent most of our late-summer break in McAllen (at my parents’ house),
relaxing, caring for our new baby, and going places Arlette had never seen
(e.g., the beach between the Brownsville ship channel and the mouth of the Rio
Grande River).
Q: Why didn’t we go to South Padre?
A: One couldn’t get to the beaches on South Padre Island in those days (except by boat), for it hadn’t been
developed; Port Isabel was still a sleepy fishing village, unattractive to
visitors.
We stayed in the Valley until mid-September, then returned home to face
(1) my final term of full-time schooling and (2) full-time parenting. Parenting responsibilities made us realize
our living quarters were inadequate; we lacked space and couldn’t put Vicky to
sleep in a darkened room (everything in our d’efficiency apartment except the
bathroom was in one open area). While
investigating other residential possibilities, I learned that married veterans
were eligible for housing at the University-owned Breckenridge Apartments, at a cost of only $28
per month (including utilities); each of those units had a kitchen, living
area, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. The
apartments were located several miles from the UT campus, near the Lake Austin
dam on the Colorado River, but we needed more room and privacy for Vicky, so I
signed a rental agreement for apartment 1613-A.
We needed more furniture. Beds
(ours and Vicky’s) and a chest of drawers were the only furniture items we
owned, so we purchased (1) a couch for the living area, (2) a small table and
two chairs for the kitchen, and (3) another chest of drawers, all in the used department
of a downtown furniture store. We soon
decided we also needed a washing machine, for I was hand-washing Vicky’s
diapers every day (disposable diapers weren’t available, and we couldn’t
have afforded them if they had been). I
returned to the store where we’d bought our furniture and found a good-looking
used Bendix washer (just like one Ruth and Virgil had at their house in Tolar), so I
bought it, not realizing (and not having been told) that it had to be bolted
down; it danced all over our bathroom when it reached its first spin
cycle. I hesitated to attach anything
to the unsubstantial floor of our rented quarters, so returned the Bendix and
bought a new Thor (like my parents owned); it performed sedately, so Vicky’s
diapers and the rest of our laundry were done at home from that point onward.
◊◊◊
Having accumulated, before the 1951 fall term, more than the
prerequisite 20 hours of accounting credits for taking the CPA examination, I submitted my
application (to the Texas State Board of Public Accountancy) to sit, in
November, for the three parts of the exam for which I was eligible. I could take only Auditing, Accounting
Theory, and Commercial Law, because I hadn’t yet fulfilled the experience
requirement for taking Accounting Practice; I took, and passed, those three
parts.
When the 1951 fall term ended I had completed all requirements for the
MBA degree except for one seminar course and a thesis, so I registered for an
Advanced Taxation seminar and was assigned a Thesis Committee. My registration
advisor was Dr. John Arch White,
chairman of the Accounting Department and one of my professors during the
preceding term. When he heard I had
passed three parts of the CPA exam during the fall term and noticed I had made ‘A’s in four courses
and a ‘B’ in Advanced Accounting, the course I had just taken under him, he
said, “Ken, I almost gave you an ‘A,’ too.”
I didn’t feel badly about the near miss, however, for Dr. Charles
Zlatkovich had given nine students ‘A’s in Federal Income Taxation even
though each of our grade averages was only 89; he could easily have decided to
assign no ‘A’s. Furthermore, as I’ve
already said, I felt all the way through school at all levels that my grades
always exceeded the knowledge I absorbed, so couldn’t honestly complain
thereabout.
Shortly after registering for the spring term I met with Dr.
Zlatkovich, the chairman (supervising member) of my thesis committee. Inasmuch as I had no particular research
interest, he suggested I investigate and report on procedures for accounting
for costs of interdepartmental services within U.S. municipalities – a subject
of interest to him. I began work
immediately – more about which I’ll comment later.
◊◊◊
Soon after the 1952 spring
term started I learned (from the School of Accounting placement office) of an
upcoming opening for an Internal Auditor with the
Texas Education Agency. I applied
for the job, was hired, and began work in February, a month before the
incumbent left. Inasmuch as the
agency’s budget didn’t allow two persons in one slot, I couldn’t draw the
position’s $325 monthly salary until the incumbent was gone, so I was initially
classified as an accounting clerk and worked for $1 per hour until he left, at
which time I went on the salaried payroll.
My boss at the TEA, Senior Auditor Bill Van Horn, let me
leave work three times each week to attend my Advanced Taxation seminar
sessions at the University, enabling me to complete my MBA course work that
spring (May, 1952).
Holding a full-time job ended my eligibility for housing at the
Breckenridge Apartments, so Arlette and I found and moved into a small
two-bedroom house at 212 Ben Howell Street in south Austin. It
was new, recently built by a local lumber company; the rent was $50 per month,
and we paid the utilities. We had moved
up in the world a bit, but our living costs were rising.
◊◊◊
I spent about fifteen months compiling information and writing my
master’s thesis, which was based, per Dr.
Z’s suggestion, on my research of practices in costing/billing for
interdepartmental services within municipal governments. I could find little material on the subject
in the University library, so I sent a long questionnaire to financial officers
of the 108 cities in the United States having populations exceeding 100,000,
asking about their cost accounting practices.
Amazingly, over 60% of the questionnaires were answered (some in great
detail, with accompanying procedure manuals), thereby enabling me to
successfully produce a thesis which I entitled “Municipal Cost Accounting;” it was accepted by the
University late in the 1953 spring term, so I received the MBA degree in May.
Dr. Zlatkovich,
my
thesis supervisor, took leave from the University (on special assignment to the
American Institute of Certified Public Accountants) before I finished my work;
Dr. C. Aubrey Smith replaced him. After
completing my writing, I presented a draft to Dr. Smith for review; he marked
out many commas, but suggested no textual changes, and approved it for passing
on to a university-approved typist – before the other two committee members,
Mr. F. Lanier Cox and Dr. Glenn A. Welch, had seen it. Both ultimately approved the typed thesis,
but Mr. Cox noted many comma blunders (i.e., missing commas); however, he
signed off after I told him my original draft included the needed commas, but
Dr. Smith had marked them out.
◊◊◊
My first year of work at the Texas Education Agency satisfied the experience
requirement for taking the Accounting Practice part of the CPA exam, so I sat
for that part in May, 1953 – about the same time I was completing/submitting my
Master’s thesis. I made only 62, with
70 needed to pass. I began studying for
the November exam as soon as I learned my score on the May exam.
◊◊◊
More was going on, however, than work at the education agency, thesis
writing, and studying for the CPA exam; things were happening at home,
particularly with respect to our little girl.
Vicky began walking when she was nine months old, was talking by her
first birthday, and noticed things (e.g., our spelling words when we talked
about things we had rather she not hear, to which she began responding in kind
as soon as she started talking):
·
My asking Arlette, “Do you want to go for an R-I-D-E?” was
sometimes answered by Vicky herself, “I wanta go for an R-I-D” after she
realized we often took rides through the hills west of Austin after that
question was asked.
·
Soon after hearing Arlette and me ask each other whether we
should give some C-A-N-D-Y to V-I-C-K-Y, she began initiating the subject
herself, “I want some C-D-Y.”
Vicky discovered things as
her investigative talents developed, and discoveries led to action, often while
Arlette was in the back yard hanging out wet laundry or talking with Billie
Figer over the back fence:
·
She found blankets in
the lowest drawer of the chest in her room, then scattered them widely the next
time Arlette went out the back door.
She worked upward on Arlette’s subsequent trips outside, strewing
contents of successive drawers everywhere.
·
She found Arlette’s
makeup, then marked the dresser with lipstick.
·
Pens, pencils, paper
clips, and other items from our library table drawer flew across the living
room when no one was watching. Arlette
was caught outside once, listening to a neighbor relate the details of some
occurrence, while growing ever edgier about our unattended little girl inside
the house; when she finally got away, she found Vicky sitting in the floor
unrolling Scotch tape, producing a sticky mess.
·
She loved tearing
pages out of books; an “Old Fashioned Revival Hour” songbook of mine was a
favorite target. (I still have the
mauled evidence.)
Arlette
eventually learned to have Vicky stand at a back window where she could be
seen, thus preventing her from going into investigative mode.
I don’t
know whether Vicky could have been described as a precocious child, but she
was as near to one as we needed. She
was also one of the cutest toddlers I’ve ever seen.
As Vicky’s
primary caretaker and the one who usually had to straighten things up after
her, Arlette thought it amusing one Sunday when I was the victim of two of
Vicky’s ventures. Vicky had a slight
cold and a low-grade fever, so I stayed home with her while Arlette went to
church; she wasn’t “sick,” but we didn’t want to risk transmitting her cold to
other kids. While Arlette was gone (and
as I listened to a Jordanairres radio broadcast) Vicky found an opened box of
starch in a kitchen cabinet and trailed its contents all over the kitchen and
bedrooms before I discovered what she was doing. Then, as I cleaned up the mess, she went into the bathroom,
grabbed the end of the roll of toilet tissue and strung it around the house.
Inasmuch as I try (usually with success) to forget
unpleasant occurrences, I don’t remember the events of that morning; Arlette
reminded me as I began recalling incidents to be related in this segment about
Vicky.
Two unpleasant events of that time, however, are unforgettable;
medically-related, both ended well (or, at least, without disaster):
·
Shortly before our move from Breckenridge Apartments I
noticed a swelling near the base of Arlette’s neck, the cause of which was
ultimately diagnosed as “Hashimoto’s disease,” or
“struma lymphomatosa”, a type of thyroiditis;
surgery was required, during which Dr. Joe Thorne Gilbert “peeled” away most of her thyroid gland (a
three-hour process). [She has taken a
thyroid supplement daily since shortly after the surgery.]
My mother
came to stay with Vicky while Arlette was in the hospital. Vicky, not yet fourteen months old, missed
her mom badly, so I took her to the hospital for a brief visit. A nurse saw her and asked who she was. After hearing, “This is Vicky, our little
girl,” the nurse responded, “You look like babies, yourselves!” Arlette was only twenty, but I was nearly
twenty-six. The nurse was probably
forty-five.
·
One morning after Arlette and I had eaten breakfast and she
was resting on the living room couch (being large with our second child) while
I got ready for work, she heard a sound in the kitchen, went to investigate,
and found two-year-old Vicky (who we thought to be still in bed asleep) sitting
in the middle of our small dining table with an open pill bottle in her hand
and thyroid pills scattered over the table and in the open window
therebeside. We had no way of knowing
whether she had consumed any of the pills, so took her to Brackenridge
Hospital’s emergency room to have her stomach washed out.
She didn’t enjoy the experience, but suffered no ill effects therefrom.
The
hospital attendants, noting Arlette’s girth (she went from 110 pounds to about
160 pounds while expecting each of our children), thought we had come to have a
baby delivered, so we lost a minute or two in diverting their attention from
Arlette to Vicky.
At some point Vicky discovered
the merry-go-round at
the corner of Lamar Boulevard and Barton Springs Road, after which discovery
the car rides she had previously liked so well no longer satisfied her. She started riding the merry-go-round before
she was old enough to safely sit on the horses alone, so the operator let me
stand beside her as she rode. She would
ride as many times as I had nickels, which weren’t numerous in those days when
(1) the wolf at our back door regularly had pups and (2) we always had too much month left at
the end of our money.
◊◊◊
Even though nickels, and all other currency, were often in short supply,
Arlette and I didn’t worry about finances.
Without consciously realizing it, I suppose we believed we would survive
if we were faithful to the Lord with our time, tithes, and talents; He has undoubtedly been
overly patient with us, for although we’ve managed to do alright with the
tithes, I’m sure He’s never received His fair share of our time and talents.
Speaking
of talents, I wasn’t as talented musically as I would like to have been, but I
had sung in trios and quartets from time to time during my Howard Payne days,
and did again at Congress Avenue Baptist Church in Austin. On one such occasion, soon after Vicky
learned to talk, four of us young fellows gathered around Congress Avenue’s
pulpit, preparing to sing; Vicky noticed I was among the four, and sang out
from near the back of the sanctuary, “Daddy!,” at which the congregation
laughed.
I sang in Congress Avenue’s choir, as did Arlette until Vicky began
sitting in church with her, and I played on its basketball team in the city
church league (though I wouldn’t classify the latter activity as using my
talents for the Lord). One of our team
members sang (1) in the church choir and (2) first tenor in the boys quartet
(which had a Sunday radio program).
Another choir member wasn’t fond of the talented young player/singer,
and during a special revival service went over to him (both were in the choir),
apologized for the hard feelings he had felt, and asked forgiveness. Instead of improving their relationship, the
apology produced a worsened situation, for the young player/singer was
offended, and became angry with the well-intentioned apologist.
◊◊◊
Bobbie Woolsey, her two children, and
her nephew Sonny were our neighbors to the west on Ben Howell. Bobbie’s husband was in the Navy, and came
home on leave only once during the months we were neighbors, so Sonny was
really the “man of the house.” Sonny
was a small independent contractor, doing residential foundation
underpinnings. They were good
neighbors, and provided us with memories:
·
We often heard a noise like a steel-wheeled wheelbarrow
coming down the street, but it was the sound of a tireless wheel rolling over
gravel. Sonny apparently never changed
a tire when they had a flat away from home; he simply drove home on the flat,
even if the tire disintegrated and he reached home on only the rim. On at least one of those occasions they had
driven from the hills west of Austin, possibly fifteen miles away, chewing up
both tire and wheel. (Hearing them
drive in that way always brought to my mind the WWII tune, “Coming in on a Wing
and a Prayer,” whose words wags had changed to “Coming in on a rim and a spare.”)
·
We were awakened about two o’clock one morning by a very
little boy trying to open our front door.
We didn’t know who he was, and he couldn’t tell us where he was supposed
to be. I decided we should notify the
police of his unexplained appearance, but, before doing so, I looked outside
and saw an unfamiliar automobile in the neighbors’ driveway, so I called next
door and asked if its owners were missing a young one. They were, having left him asleep in the car
when they arrived late; he had wakened, however, and hunted them.
◊◊◊
Our second daughter, Terry, was born at St. David’s
Hospital early Sunday morning, August 23, 1953. Her imminent arrival was obvious when Arlette and I reached the
hospital, so Arlette was rushed to the delivery room while I checked her
in. I hadn’t reached Arlette’s room by
the time Terry was born, so the nurse who went there to inform me of her birth
called our house (where Arlette’s mother, Alice Belle Wilson, was keeping
Vicky) to see if I’d returned home.
Mrs. W immediately called Arlette’s dad in Odessa to tell him the news,
so “Granddad” knew about our new nine pound, six ounce baby before “Dad” did.
Terry, larger than the average newborn, had so much hair she looked as if
she were already three months old. Her
arrival was only $1.80 more costly than was Vicky’s. Our doctor charged $100.00 for prenatal care and delivery; the
hospital charged $66.80 for its services.
◊◊◊
Terry’s birth provided a third incentive for my pursuit of
excellence. I needed to pass the
Practice part of the CPA examination, which should make
that pursuit easier. Earlier in the
summer I had purchased a two-volume Accounting Theory and Practice Quizzer
published by a firm in Oklahoma; I needed the Practice portion and my boss,
Bill Van Horn, wanted the Theory
portion. We studied from our respective
Quizzers, sat for the November exam, and passed with better grades than either
of us had made on other passed parts; I made 84 and he made 82.
I didn’t
know my grade until some time after I received a congratulatory telegram,
delivered late one January (1954) Saturday night, stating that I had
successfully passed all parts of the CPA exam.
Use of Western Union for that purpose was standard practice for the
Texas State Board of Public Accountancy, but, inasmuch as the telegram was
delivered late on a Saturday evening, not on a normal workday for the Board, I
was fearful some trickster was at work, so said nothing to anyone about having
received the notification of success until after I received mailed
confirmation, with my grade(s), some days or weeks later. Needless to say, I was relieved when the
confirmation arrived.
◊◊◊
With MBA work completed and CPA certificate in hand, I decided to seek other
employment. My work at the education
agency wasn’t unpleasant, but neither was it stimulating, and prospects for
advancement were slim. The pay, $365
per month by then, wasn’t bad for Austin, which had little industry and demand
for accountants wasn’t great.
I’d just begun checking newspaper ads when Bill English, my friend with Dun
& Bradstreet, now managing their Waco office, called and told me a
local CPA firm (Wilcox, Pattillo & Company) needed a staff member;
he said he’d told “Pat” Pattillo, one of the partners, about me, and suggested
I talk with them. I was already
favorably disposed toward the firm, because I’d been impressed with Mr. Frank
Wilcox, the senior partner, when
he was guest speaker at the Beta Alpha Psi (honorary accounting fraternity) meeting at which
I’d been inducted to membership.
I was interviewed by the three Wilcox, Pattillo & Company
partners, was hired, and agreed to report for work in March. I accepted a $40 per month salary reduction
(to $325, a typical beginning salary in public accounting) because I needed the
experience; I looked at the situation as if I were being paid to continue my
education.
With four
people to support, I didn’t need a reduction in income, for our monthly outgo
had increased a few months earlier when we traded our old Chevrolet on a 1950
Ford Tudor sedan, signing a note for $850, on which payments were due each
month.
I
saw our old Chevrolet in Temple as I drove from Austin to Waco for my interview
with Wilcox, Pattillo, & Company; I recognized it by a distinctive
blemish. Curious about its new
ownership, I looked in the records of the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles
when I was back in Austin and found it was indeed registered in Temple, by a
man named Adams.
I
sometimes dream, after more than fifty years, that I again have the old
Chevrolet, so I suppose one never forgets his first automobile (or is it his
first love he’s never supposed to forget?).
Having to make a monthly car payment and living on $40 less income per month presented a challenge, but Arlette and I had become accustomed to living on the edge financially, so didn’t worry about the consequences of less money – we moved from Austin to Waco, at reduced income, without qualms. Bill English arranged use (for a modest fee) of a truck (owned by Harry Kidwell, a builder friend from whom we purchased our Waco home) to transport our household belongings.