I had to wait about six weeks before returning to college after I was
discharged from the Navy. Veterans
could join the “52/20 club” – twenty dollars per week
for up to fifty-two weeks – while getting readjusted to civilian life (e.g.,
finding a job), but I didn’t enroll, for I saw no justification for filing a
claim for benefits during six weeks of “vacation” – which I spent (1) getting
reacquainted with Poly friends, (2) meeting local veterans I hadn’t previously
known because they were already in military service before our family moved to
Fort Worth in 1942, and (3) participating in a citywide youth revival effort (I
helped place revival announcement posters in windows of Poly businesses and
sang in the large choir during nightly services).
“I’d
Rather Have Jesus,” which I hadn’t previously
heard, was the revival theme song; I liked its lyrics, tune, and harmony –
which was fortunate, for we sang it several times each evening during lengthy
invitations to Christian commitment.
An evangelistic team from Baylor University conducted the multiweek
youth revival effort, held in Will Rogers Auditorium. The group included some gifted young men: Jackie Robinson was an All-American
basketball player; Howard Butt was a talented son of the founder of the H.E.B.
grocery chain; Dick and Bo Baker were good speakers and musicians, and went on
to full-time Christian work; Charles Wellborn was pastor of Seventh & James
Baptist Church near the Baylor campus.
My “vacation” ended soon after Fort Worth’s citywide youth revival
effort concluded; I packed my things and headed for Brownwood a day or two
before the start of HPC’s 1946 fall term, to look for a place to live. I wanted to room off-campus, for I didn’t
want to live in the “Barn” again. I ran
into old friends (G.O. Baten and Homer Swartz) almost immediately after
reaching Brownwood, who, with another vet (Ardell Jacquot), had
found two rooms and a bath (in the Urban Smith’s large old residence at 200 W.
Adams, several blocks from the Howard Payne campus), and needed a fourth
suitemate, so they asked me to join them.
G.O. and
Homer had started HPC with me in the fall of 1943. “Jocko,” a Missourian, was
enrolling for the first time. I’m sure
I asked how he found his way to a school in Central Texas, but I don’t remember
his answer. He probably said he was
interested in obtaining an education at a Christian institution, and HPC had a
good reputation.
G.O., Homer, Jocko, and I not
only roomed together, but all joined Calvary Baptist Church, where Brother K.C.
Stedman, a good man/pastor/preacher was still
pastor; Calvary grew under his ministry, and attracted a sizable group of HPC
kids, in part because it ran a bus from college to church and back mornings and
evenings on Sundays, plus Wednesday evenings.
He was a better speaker than one might have expected from an ex-plumber;
his only grammatical error I can recall occurred in an expression he used
often: “To He, and He alone, belongs the ______ (praise, glory, adoration);”
had he turned the phrase around I’m sure he would have said, “The (praise,
glory, adulation) belongs to Him, and Him alone.”
We suitemates at the Smith place were among dozens of veterans
enrolling at Howard Payne (322 photos were included in the “Veterans Club”
section of the Lasso that year), and were typical of the millions
of veterans returning from military service to continue interrupted educations
at colleges and vocational schools across the nation, all as beneficiaries of
the GI Bill, wherein the federal
government (i.e., taxpayers) paid for books and tuition plus a monthly stipend
($65, as I remember) for the number of months one served in the military, plus
twelve. I used eighteen of my thirty
months of GI Bill eligibility in finishing my work toward a BA degree at HPC.
I view GI
Bill benefits as deferred compensation for military service, not as
socialized education, but the social impact has been immense. I suspect few, if any, WWII veterans realized
the impact our return from military service would have on colleges and college
life, both socially and economically.
The social
impact of returned veterans occurred immediately. Girls, who had grown used to campuses almost bereft of eligible
young men, suddenly had a plethora of possibilities; the next few years saw
many coeds married to fellows they hadn’t known before war’s end.
The infusion of manifold thousands of
veterans and accompanying federal funds financed substantial growth in college
faculties/facilities and started an inflationary spiral of higher education
costs that hasn’t yet ended. I think
the inflationary cost spiral could have been dampened if education vouchers had
been issued to veterans (based on their months in service multiplied by a
common rate per month), which vouchers could have been spent at institutions of
their choosing, thus establishing competition between all providers of
educational services. The method chosen
(bookstores and schools billing the federal government for veterans’ books and
tuition) invited inflation – and got it.
From a more positive standpoint, the GI
Bill resulted in a better-educated middle class, with all its benefits
to society, industry, and commerce; it delivered many young men (and their
future families) from lower-income status to middle-or-higher-income potential.
G.O., Homer, and I were together much of the time that first year back
at school. We ate at the same table in
the dining hall, were members of the same intramural basketball team, attended
Calvary Baptist Church, sang as a trio (sometimes formally, but more often
impromptu), and dated three Brownwood High seniors – Daphine Coppic, Carolyn Hayes, and Nelda
Phillips.
G.O. married
Daphine the next year, Homer married Carolyn soon thereafter, and each couple
reared a son and two daughters (Steven/Lynn/Kathy Baten and Gary/Rebecca/Rachel
Swartz).
Our favorite impromptu song was
one G.O. learned while in the Air Force.
Its lyrics weren’t uplifting, but it was fun to sing; I don’t know its
title, so I’ll just call it “Beneath the Bar:”
‘Twas a
cold winter’s evening, the guests were all leaving.
O’Leary
was closing the bar,
When he
turned ‘round and said to the lady in red,
“GIT OUT!!! You cannot stay here anymore!”
So she
shed a big tear in her bucket of beer,
As she
thought of the long night ahead.
Then a
gentleman handsome looked over the transom,
And these
are the words that he said:
“Her mother
never told her
The things
a young girl should know,
About the
ways of college knaves,
And how
they come and go.
“Now life
has taken her beauty,
And sin
has left its dread scar,
So,
remember the words of your mother, boys,
And let
her sleep under the bar.
Beneath the bar!!!”
G.O. had a deep bass voice, so always did the big “GIT OUT!!!” phrase alone.
The “Beneath the bar!!!” tag
line was stretched out in close harmony.
Carolyn wanted
a recording of the song, and made arrangements for us to cut it at radio
station KBWD. The “flip” side of the
record was a quartet rendition of “My Jesus, I Love Thee,” on which Jocko joined G.O., Homer, and me.
The idea of putting two songs of such disparate nature on one record
seems incongruous now, but that was probably true of lots of our ideas those
days.
◊◊◊
I was classified as a Junior when I re-enrolled at HPC, inasmuch as I
(1) had completed three full semesters and a summer term of college before
entering the Navy, and (2) was awarded eight semester hours of credit for Navy
schooling. I still had no idea what
sort of work I might pursue after graduation, so decided to obtain majors in
mathematics and social sciences, with minors in English and physical sciences,
thinking a broad liberal arts education might be of benefit in any field of
endeavor.
The minor in physical sciences required no further work; I had twenty
semester hours after the eight hours credited for my training in naval
electronics were added to the hours in chemistry and physics I had earned
before leaving for military service. I
had also completed twelve hours each toward the minor in English and the majors
in mathematics and social sciences; I took the six hours needed for an English
minor during my first year back at college.
The big job ahead was in mathematics; I had several courses to wade
through (e.g., descriptive geometry, integral and differential calculus, theory
of equations, differential equations, and advanced calculus).
Dr. Thomas Taylor was President of the college; Dr. Z.T. Huff was Dean.
Dr. Taylor was a “personality,” a roving ambassador for HPC, in demand
as a speaker because of his “country-boy” humor. Dr. Huff was a good man and administrator; in addition to his
duties at school, he taught a downtown Sunday morning Bible class carried on
KBWD 1380.
[When I learned
in recent years that Dr. Huff’s initials stood for Zachary Taylor, I wondered
if his family could have been related to mine (I’ve noted that one of my
great-grandmothers, Zena Taylor Stribling, was a great-niece of
General/President Zachary Taylor); Twila opines that Dr. Huff was given his
name because of his relationship to the former president, and that we may well
have been related.]
I noted in an earlier segment the professors I had before entering the
Navy (Accounting under Mr. I.A. Hicks, Bible under Dr. M.E. Davis, Chemistry
and Physics under Mr. O.E. Winebrenner, English under Miss Eula Haskew,
Government and History under Miss Annie Shelton, plus Mathematics under Mr.
J.H. “Cap” Shelton and Miss Faye Hogan). I continued taking English courses under
Miss Haskew and social sciences under Miss Annie after I returned from the
Navy, but didn’t take further courses under Cap Shelton, Dr. Davis, or Mr.
Winebrenner. I continued with
mathematics courses under Miss Hogan, but she became Mrs. Johnson by marrying
her ex-Army fiancee; Bennie Williams taught a Surveying course which counted as
mathematics (I'll have more to say about him later in this segment).
Mr. Hicks was no longer at HPC when I returned from the Navy, either as
an Accounting professor or Dean of Men; Mr. Bill Brewer took his place in the school of business, and Mr. Gordon Taylor
was employed as Dean of Men.
◊◊◊
Dr. Thomas Havins, a military veteran
returned to pedagogy, taught social sciences, loved history, and loved
teaching; he highly admired Dr. Prescott Webb, who was probably the most expert
of Texas historians, and often quoted him.
He served in the Army during both World Wars, and reached the rank of
Captain in WWII. He was appointed to
the state board of pardons and paroles after returning to civilian life – a
position in which he took great pride.
Texas and the plains states were included in a “History of the West”
course I took under Dr. Havins, during which I learned a bit of trivia that has
stuck with me – that on the Great Plains “every direction you look is up;” I
always check out that memory when I travel the plains.
He was an
expert on Brown County history, and was also quite interested in the West Texas
sheep-growing industry; a research project he assigned me required my going
through old newspapers in the library basement looking for articles about the
sheep industry. I remember nothing that
I found about sheep, but in my searching I noticed an article in an 1898 issue
of The Brownwood Bulletin reporting
the marriage of my landlords; I could hardly wait to get back to 200 W. Adams
and tell Mr. and Mrs. Smith I had read about their marriage, then almost fifty
years past.
Dr. Havins and his family attended Calvary Baptist Church, where he
taught a class of college boys one of the years I was there – and did as well
with the Bible as with social sciences at HPC.
His daughter, Mary, was about my age, and attended Howard Payne; Tom,
Jr. was older than I.
◊◊◊
I probably took more courses under Miss Annie Shelton than any other teacher, with the possible
exception of Mrs. Johnson (nee Hogan). Miss
Annie was a discussion leader in her history and government courses (in
contrast to Dr. Havins, a lecturer), so a significant portion of each student’s
grade was comprised of her “personal equation,” which
meant her evaluation of the quality of participation in class discussions; she
described students she really liked as “pure gold.”
Miss Annie loved hats and ties on men.
I never wore hats, and wore ties only to church and on special
occasions, but her “personal equation” for me apparently wasn’t impaired by my
sartorial deficiencies, for I couldn’t complain about the grades I received in
any of the courses I took under her.
Miss Annie
was years ahead of her time in one respect.
Long before “y’ know” became an almost universal (but useless) part of
modern speech, she said “y’ know” in practically every
sentence. Students often counted the
number of "y’ knows” heard during one class period. I suspect those tabulators probably didn’t
receive very high marks for the “personal equation” portion of Miss Annie’s
grading system, not because she knew what they were doing, but because it would
be difficult to participate meaningfully in class discussions while keeping
count of the “y’ knows.”
◊◊◊
Dr. Cleo McChristy taught English, but I took none of her courses – although I’ve
often wished I’d taken her advanced grammar course. In my youthful shortsightedness, however, I perceived no need for
the added grammatical competence.
All my English courses (eighteen semester hours) were taken under Miss
Haskew, but my only specific
memory from her classes was generated during a study of English literature,
when she required memorization of the following passage (from “Locksley Hall,” by
Alfred Lord Tennyson):
For I dipt
into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the
Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the
heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of
the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the
heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew
From the
nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue;
Far along
the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the
standards of the peoples plunging thro’ the thunderstorm;
Till the
war-drum throbb’d no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’d
In the
Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
There the
common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly
earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.
I don’t know whether Miss Haskew’s requirement that we memorize that
particular passage was motivated by her love for the works of Alfred Lord
Tennyson, or because she was impressed by his forecast of things to come. I imagine she had great hope that the United
Nations would fulfill the poet’s optimistic vision, but she lived long enough
to be disappointed in that hope.
Writing
these memories about Miss Haskew set me to wondering whether or not she had a
“one-world” philosophy, for I was under the impression that she received her
Master’s Degree from Columbia University, where John Dewey was a long-term, and well-known, professor. Mr. Dewey was a signer of Humanist Manifesto I, which decried nationalism and espoused a
“one-world” government.
Twila
recalls Miss Haskew’s expounding “chicken in every pot” and similar economic
concepts. Those, too, could have
resulted from thoughts implanted by socialists such as Professor Dewey.
Twila has also reminded me of Miss Haskew’s habit of placing hand to
forehead, gazing toward First Baptist Church (across Austin Avenue), and
declaiming, “Literature is the expression of life in words of truth and beauty.”
I was too busy expressing life at things such as intramural sports to
appreciate her declarations about literature.
◊◊◊
Mrs. Lucretia Weaver taught French and Spanish.
She was a likeable lady, but wasn’t fluent in Spanish, as had been Miss
Tillman, my first Spanish teacher years earlier, so I learned little during two
years under her at HPC. She was a
native of Maine, if I remember correctly, and was said to be stronger in French
instruction than in Spanish.
◊◊◊
Dr. Grady Harlan headed Howard Payne’s Music department; Mr. and Mrs. Stewart
(Charles and Maurine) headed the Art department. Although I knew all the instructors and professors in the schools
of fine arts, I was never exposed to any of their teaching; I wasn’t born with
the requisite talents.
The faculty of the postwar school of music was apparently pretty
strong, but Dr. Harlan, who led singing at daily chapel exercises, was the only
member of that group whom I really noted.
Proper musical performance was so important to him that he sometimes,
when leading singing at chapel, stopped the student body in the middle of a
song if he felt we weren’t singing it properly, to instruct us in its execution;
for example, he once stopped us abruptly after the second phrase (“love is
supreme”) of the chorus of “Love Is the Theme” and
told us the word was “sue-preme, not “sup-preme,” then made us sing it
correctly.
Late in my
final year, on a day when seniors presented takeoffs on HPC faculty and staff
during chapel exercises, my assignment was to lead singing, playing the part of
Dr. Harlan; I couldn’t resist repeating his “love is sue-preme” performance. My titillation of students’ musical memories
got a laugh, but the hit of the day was George Brownlee’s imitation of
President Thomas Taylor’s backwoodsy speech patterns; his perfect re-creation
brought the house down.
Although I loved music, enjoyed singing, and wished I were an
instrumentalist, my lack of talent and/or prior training prohibited my
enrolling for courses in the school of music.
I am even less talented at drawing, or painting, than at music, so I
never even dreamed of taking art courses.
◊◊◊
Another missing talent in my makeup is public speaking, but I tried to
ameliorate that problem by enrolling in Mrs. Hargrove’s speech class. Mrs. Hargrove was a personable lady, the
wife of Dr. H.H. Hargrove, pastor of Coggin Avenue Baptist Church (Dr. E.D.
Dunlap, Coggin’s pastor when I first went to Brownwood, had moved to Waco’s
Belle Meade church). I learned a few
things about performing in public in her class, including pantomime (but I didn’t realize until many years later that the word’s
spelling ended with “mime;” I thought it was “mine,” even when I was doing it;
its etymological relationship to “mimic” never crossed my mind).
◊◊◊
I also skipped Howard Payne’s Business
department in my postwar education, for I hadn’t learned much in the Elementary
Accounting course I took the semester before entering the Navy. (My reason for learning little back then was
purely psychological, for I eventually became a Certified Public Accountant; I
just hadn’t applied myself as I faced impending military service.)
I missed a
good opportunity to begin an education in accounting during the last two years
I was at HPC, for one of the accounting instructors was Mr. Bill Brewer, a doctoral candidate at
the University of Texas. Mr. Brewer
taught at UT during succeeding summers, and I took the second half of
Elementary Accounting under him in UT’s 1950 summer school.
◊◊◊
Ministerial students and future teachers comprised a sizable percentage
of HPC’s enrollment, so Bible and Education classes were well-populated. I wasn’t preparing to either preach or
teach, so took no Bible courses beyond the required six hours (taken during my
freshman year), and took no Education courses, but I knew the professorial
staffs in each department.
◊◊◊
Howard Payne was a small institution, so I knew all staff
and faculty members, whether or not I had direct dealings with them or was
enrolled in their classes. HPC tried to
capitalize on its relatively small size by calling itself “The college where
everybody is somebody;” wags often added, “but
somebody ain’t much!”
◊◊◊
Pre-war sports heroes back on campus after WWII ended were big
“somebodies;” names such as “Chili” Rice, “Big Dog” Rittiman, and Bennie
Williams acquired bodies and made possible the resumption of varsity sports
programs suspended during the war.
Student interest was high, following the long drouth of varsity athletic
competition. I went to all home
football and basketball games in both 1946/47 and 1947/48, and to numerous
football games away from Brownwood.
I attended
one “away” football game in a semi-official capacity; H. Don Rodgers, sports
editor of The Brownwood Bulletin, asked me to go to Abilene with him one
weekend to cover two football games for his paper. We went on a Friday afternoon, attended a game between
Hardin-Simmons and Texas Tech that night, then went to HPC’s game the next
afternoon (I don’t remember whether our opponent was McMurry or ACC). I sat in the press box with H. Don at both
games, and helped keep statistics on the HPC game.
Revived sports programs required cheerleading; three veterans (Groner
Pitts, who started HPC in 1942,
plus Milton Dowd and Guy Joe Roberts from 1943 entrants) became cheerleaders.
Groner
ultimately became a leading (if not the leading)
citizen of Brownwood; well-known all over West Central Texas, he promoted both
his alma mater and his city. Always
helpful to those needing a hand or an encouraging word, he was mourned by many
following his death on February 13, 2004.
Cheerleader elections for the upcoming school-year were held late in
each spring semester. I was never a
cheerleader, nor a competitor for a cheerleading position, but I was recruited
one spring, along with three other guys, to sing a jingle promoting Leon
Aduddell’s candidacy:
If you want zip, zing, and zest
When the
boys come out of the huddle,
Elect for
your cheerleader
Leon
Aduddell.
We sang the jingle two or three times during a chapel period devoted to
the cheerleader campaign. Leon’s
candidacy was successful, but I have no way of knowing whether or not his
success was because of, or in spite of, our singing.
◊◊◊
One of the best-known personalities on campus was an individual known
simply as “John,” who was of neither faculty nor student body. Twila says his surname was Mitchell, but I
don’t recall having known that during my student days. John’s primary duties were janitorial, but
he also took tickets from those entering the stands at HPC home basketball
games, and may have had other duties of which I was unaware.
Janitor John wrote poems on blackboards.
I suspect a connoisseur would have classified his poetry as doggerel,
yet his works found their way into The
Yellow Jacket, the college newspaper.
Following is a sample (supplied by ex-HPCer Don Jones) from a little
“John Sez” booklet of poetry:
Dear Old
Howard Payne,
College of
romance,
If you
don't get married here,
You
haven't got a chance.
◊◊◊
One of Jim Dixon’s interests was neither romantic
nor poetic; he participated in Sweetwater’s annual rattlesnake roundup, and
enjoyed telling us less nervy students about the process of trapping a rattler
with a forked stick, grasping it behind the head, then placing it in a tow sack
(with others) for carrying as he continued a hunt.
I’ve
wondered in years since, as I’ve watched televised Rattlesnake Roundups at
Sweetwater, whether any of the
featured hunters was Jim Dixon.
Actually seeing the event has given me an even greater appreciation of
risks taken than I had while listening to Jim describe the procedure.
◊◊◊
Twila, as noted earlier, was also a Howard Payne
student, having first enrolled in September, 1944, the last term I was in
school before entering the Navy; most students in school that semester knew she
and I were siblings. Some of those who
enrolled while I was in the Navy, thus knew Twila before they knew me, thought
I was younger than she. Others thought
we were twins. Some students didn’t
realize she and I were related, a fact I learned in later years as situations
arose wherein those persons disclosed their surprise at finding us to be
brother and sister. She was a Junior
when I came back from the Navy in 1946, as was I, so we graduated together two
school-years later, at the end of the 1948 spring term.
Inasmuch as I could finish work on a baccalaureate degree in two years
after returning from the Navy, I had no need to attend summer school between
those years. I did, however, register
for two correspondence courses (Psychology and Mathematics of Finance) at some
point during the 1947 spring term, intending to work on them during the summer.
A proposal by G.O. Baten (my roommate) caused me to alter my plans; he
suggested we work in the upcoming wheat harvest. His parents had moved from Slidell (Wise County) to White Deer (in Panhandle wheat-growing country),
so he asked if I’d like to come there to join a combine crew with
him, then stay with that crew as it harvested wheat across North Texas,
Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas.
I agreed to his proposal, and went home after the term ended to (1)
await his call and (2) work, while I waited, on the two correspondence courses
for which I’d registered before hearing his plan.
I’d barely gotten home when G.O. called saying laborers were needed on
an elevator construction project in White Deer, and asked if I wanted to work
at that while we waited for wheat harvesting to start; he and his brother
Raymond were already working on the project.
He said we could stay at his parents’ house, and his mother would
provide room/board for $10 each per week.
The immediate employment opportunity trumped correspondence courses, so
I put them on hold and headed northwest, riding a bus all one night and half
the next day, from Fort Worth to Amarillo, thence to White Deer. G.O.’s dad met me at the bus station, took
me home to lunch, and I went to work either that afternoon or the next day.
Our work
schedule was nine hours per day, six days per week, at $1 per hour. After paying Mrs. Baten $10 each week for
our room and board, G.O. and I still had $44 (less taxes) to add to our college
kitties; working those long, hard hours left us with neither time nor
inclination to spend much of our money, so we saved most of it.
Construction of the grain elevator was nearing completion when I
arrived. Longer-term members of the
crew, a group of young men from Kansas, were working at the top. G.O., Raymond, and I worked with the crew
finishing the steeply sloped bottoms of the bins; the sloping allowed grain to
“flow” (when gates were opened) into the distribution mechanism at the
below-ground-level heart of the elevator’s grain-moving system. Sand was used to shape those bottoms and
form a base for a thick layer of concrete; much shoveling of both sand and
concrete was required. Sand was
delivered to the site by rail, concrete by mixer trucks.
I shoveled
sand from railroad cars several days, one of which was July 4, 1947. A freak cold front had blown in, and I never
removed my jacket while shoveling sand that day. I always think of that time when someone starts a sentence with
“It’ll be a cold day in July when I ……….!”
We used wheelbarrows to move sand from beside the tracks to piles
beside bin access doors, then, as needed, shoveled it into the bottoms of bins
for shaping into a base for concrete (which we also shoveled through the access
doors as mixer trucks dumped their loads).
The job was mostly without excitement until four guys assigned to work
at the top overloaded the small service elevator for a noon descent, causing a
mechanical failure. (Two boys had squeezed
inside of, and two stood on top of, an elevator designed to carry only one
person.) The elevator fell part of the
way, hitting hard at the bottom. None
of the boys was injured seriously, but each had bruises and sore knees. The steel mesh forming the cage top was
stretched several inches inward. The
accident could have resulted in fatalities had the elevator broken loose
earlier, to fall farther and faster.
The passenger limit was strictly observed thereafter.
◊◊◊
Elevator construction was finished just as local wheat farmers started
harvesting their crops, so G.O., Raymond, and I were asked to work at elevator
operations when wheat started coming in for storage/processing. G.O.’s dad worked for the company that owned
and operated the elevator, so I’m sure his presence worked in our favor (sounds
like nepotism, but I didn’t even know
the word then). We worked at elevator
operations for a week or two, but farmers needed help in their first
post-harvest plowing, disking stubble under; Mr. Baxter Haley, who raised wheat on
several sections of land in the area, asked G.O. and me to work for him.
Most wheat
farmers plowed their land immediately after harvesting, then replowed it a time
or two before planting the next year’s crop; I plowed some of Mr. Haley’s
fields twice. Mr. Jack Earp, a bachelor farmer who led
the music at First Baptist Church, didn’t plow his fields until just before
re-planting, because he wanted natural plant growth to replenish nutrients in
the soil. I recalled Mr. Earp’s theory
when, in later years, I read of “no-till” agriculture.
G.O. and I never joined a combine crew (our original plan). We spent most of the rest of the summer plowing
Mr. Haley’s fields, earning our room and board plus $8 per day, six days per
week. The workdays were long, for we
were in the fields soon after daylight, then plowed until dark; again, we had
little time, inclination, or opportunity to spend our money, so most of the $48
each week went into our kitties.
On my first
day at work for Mr. Haley, Mrs. Haley’s uncle took me to the section of land to
be plowed, started the John Deere tractor engine for
me, and went on his way. I wasn’t sure
I remembered all the steps he took in starting the engine, so didn’t kill the
engine all day, even while refueling, then failed to ask my mentor to show me
again when he took me to work the next day.
Fortunately, he didn’t leave immediately after dropping me off, so, when
I couldn’t turn the flywheel he reminded me to open the petcocks on each
cylinder to reduce compression while I cranked the engine.
The engine was cranked manually by turning an open
flywheel ridged inside for gripping.
Gripping those ridges soon numbed the ring finger of my right hand; it
stayed numb all summer, but feeling returned within a couple of weeks after I
returned to college.
Speaking of my hands, I should note an experience involving the under
(palm) side of the little, ring, and middle fingers of both, which were covered
with twenty-one warts that developed while I was in the Navy, and
which I had fought ever since. The
fight had included (1) applications of topical remedies (e.g., castor oil) and
(2) multiple removal attempts by both Navy and civilian medicos; a Brownwood
doctor’s attempts to remove them by electrolysis (during the school-year just
past) had been unsuccessful. However,
one midsummer morning, while sitting in the choir loft of White Deer’s Baptist
church, I looked down at my hands and saw no warts. I didn’t know when they disappeared, or what
caused their disappearance, but was glad to be rid of them. At summer’s end, when I told my parents of
the warts’ disappearance, my dad related a similar experience he had as a young
man; I suppose warts are hereditary in more than one way.
[Happenings more unusual than disappearing warts were occurring in the
larger world that summer, as the nation’s interest was aroused by claims that
unidentified flying objects had been sighted and a report that an
extraterrestrial vehicle had crashed near Roswell, New Mexico. “Unidentified Flying Object” entered our
lexicon; thousand of UFOs have been reported in years since.]
G.O. and I got a break from the long workdays on Fridays. Mr. Haley permitted, even encouraged, us to
attend Friday evening singings at White Deer’s Church of Christ, which he and
his family attended. He knew we loved
to sing, so let us quit work early enough on Fridays to eat, get cleaned up,
and go with them. The pastor led in
singing spirited southern gospel music; the church sanctuary was always full
and the singing was great, even without a piano or other accompaniment we
Baptists were used to.
Several Baten
family members attended the Church of Christ singings with G.O. and me. The Baten kids all loved to sing, so the
four older still-at-home siblings (G.O./Raymond/ Bonnie/Gwyda) and I usually
gathered around their piano after enjoying Mrs. Baten’s Sunday feasts, to sing
for an hour or two. The five of us were
asked to sing for worship activities at the Baptist church several times, and
were even invited to sing at the Methodist church one Sunday morning, where we
were joined by a Church of Christ friend of Bonnie’s. [I wonder if a sextet comprised of five Baptists and one Church
of Christ kid has ever before (or since) sung for Methodist worship; the six of
us (Jimmie Lou, the Baten bunch, and I) should probably be in the Guinness Book
of Records.]
Besides helping fill our musical appetites, the Haleys satisfied us at
the dining table. My love of music is
almost equaled by my love for fried chicken, which Mrs. Haley supplied in abundance;
we had hot fried chicken for supper nearly every evening, then took leftover
chicken to the fields with us for our lunches the next day. I never tired of it; I’ve often said I could
eat fried chicken every day, and had the chance to prove it that summer.
◊◊◊
Our living facilities didn’t match the food quality. G.O. and I slept in a cabin near the Haleys’
house; it had probably been a cowboy bunkhouse when the Texas Panhandle was
mostly cattle range. We bathed outside
in open air, about fifteen feet from the bunkhouse door, in a #3 washtub close
by a water faucet and cast iron wash pot, in which pot we heated
bath water over an open gas jet. We usually
started heating water as soon as we finished supper, for darkness had long
since fallen. When the water was hot,
one transferred enough for a bath into the #3 tub, added cold water in the
amount necessary to achieve the desired temperature, then climbed in to remove
dirt accumulated from a day’s plowing.
Dry West Texas breezes quickly evaporated water from one’s skin when he
left the tub, so towels were hardly needed; we used them primarily for
warmth. We often left the gas jet
blazing until we were dried off, to combat the chill from evaporation; I’m sure
the flare backlighted us nicely.
We couldn’t bathe outside on Fridays when we had to get ready, before
dark, to go to singings at Mr. Haley’s church, so we took our tub into the
bunkhouse, then carried both hot and cold water from our outdoor bath area.
◊◊◊
One day as we returned from an errand in one of Mr. Haley’s old flatbed
GMC trucks, G.O. barely slowed down when he turned into the lane toward the
Haleys’ house, but he misjudged the width of the bed, so caught it on the right
stanchion of the cattle guard at the entrance to the lane, stopping the truck
instantly. Unfortunately, I didn’t stop
with the truck (seatbelts hadn’t been invented), so I flew forward, striking my
nose against the angle iron across the top of the windshield. The impact cut and broke my nose. The cut soon healed, leaving a small scar,
but I still had a deviated septum and torn cartilage, which went unrepaired for
thirty-six years.
Because of
the deviated septum, I lived with a
continuously stopped-up left nostril for those thirty-six years, then had it
surgically repaired in 1983 after I retired from full-time employment.
The cut, broken nose added to other facial disfigurements that
summer. One or both lower jaws stayed
swollen much of the time, because tractor bouncing irritated bone still
tender/unhealed from dental surgery the previous spring; I often looked as if I
had a golf ball in one or both jaws.
Impacted
wisdom teeth had made dental surgery necessary; none of my wisdom teeth had come through the gums.
The lower teeth not only were impacted, but pointed forward, causing misalignment
of my lower front teeth (the signal that had caused me to seek dental
attention). A Fort Worth dental surgeon
(Dr. Cliff Ochsenbiem?) chipped the teeth out of the bone, leaving me with very
tender jaws.
◊◊◊
Although G.O. and I worked for Mr. Haley most of the time after wheat
harvesting began, we were occasionally caught up with his plowing and he had no
other tasks for us, so we sought fill-in employment.
·
The lady who lived across the street from the Batens needed
new screening on all the screen doors and windows on her house, so she hired
G.O. and me to do the job, which took a couple of days.
·
I spent a week plowing near Stinnett on wheat acreage belonging to White Deer’s Oliver Implements
dealer, having been hired to go there with one of his full-time employees. We loaded a plow and an Oliver Cle-Track (built like a small bulldozer, but with rubber tracks and no
blade) on a truck, hauled them to Stinnett, then worked 24 hours per day (six
hours on, six off for each of us) while plowing the section of land. The small cabin on the place had no
conveniences, so we drove into town (individually, between our work shifts) for
our meals; we slept outside on a cot, in our work clothes.
·
G.O., Raymond, and I went to Perryton during one slow period, planning to stay with a Baten cousin in
his small mobile home if we could find work.
We found one day-job, then nothing else, so gave up on Perryton prospects
and returned to White Deer.
Our one
day-job was with a concrete contractor.
My tasks were (1) shoveling sand and gravel into a small concrete mixer, then (2)
starting the mixer to turning after cement was added. Unfortunately, the engagement lever wouldn’t stay in place, so I
had to hold it throughout each mixing operation. The combination of (1) shoveling and (2) holding the vibrating
lever produced blistered palms and fingers on both hands; the top few layers of
skin were worn away. I also made the
mistake of working shirtless most of the day, thereby acquiring a sunburned
back to go with my raw hands. I slept
little that night on my trailer-floor pallet, making several trips to an
outside faucet (the trailer didn’t have running water) to pour cool water over
my burning back.
G.O. and I were with the Haleys the last several weeks of summer,
during which they moved from their house just outside White Deer to another
place several miles away, on another section of land they farmed, near the town
of Panhandle; G.O. and I moved to another bunkhouse. From time to time, when we were caught up with plowing, Mr. Haley
had us do various odd jobs aimed at getting the place in shape (e.g., scooping
out and deepening his earthen stock-watering tank). Our last job was painting the inside of his steel fresh water
tank, which was about fifteen feet tall and six or eight feet in diameter, so
we spent several hours at the job, during which we got rather woozy from
breathing trapped fumes. G.O. joked
about our “cheap drunk.”
Classrooms beckoned as September arrived. My mother and Twila came from Fort Worth to White Deer to get
G.O. and me, starting us on a roundabout trip back to Brownwood. Mother wanted to visit Aunt Evelyn and Uncle
PeeDee Stribling in Shamrock, so we spent a night with them on the trip
from White Deer to Fort Worth.
Having a day or two to spare before going on to Brownwood, G.O. and I
went to Slidell to see his old home country.
(His family had moved to White Deer while he was in the Air Force, so he
hadn’t seen Wise County after having been discharged from military
service.) The farm where he’d grown up
appeared abandoned, but “volunteer” watermelons were growing in the sandy soil
– having reproduced on their own from year to year after the Batens moved away.
We were back in Brownwood by mid-September, again at the Smith place,
but we had two new suitemates; J.E. “Hoppy” Hopkins and Russell M. “Bill” O’Brien replaced Homer and Jocko. Homer moved into the new boys’ dormitory
(Gordon Taylor Hall), to room with his
brother Bobby; Jocko was in school again (living at the new dorm?), but
ultimately transferred to Bob Jones University.
Even G.O.
was soon gone from the Smiths’ house, leaving only me from the “original
four.” He and Daphine were married a
few months after school started.
Several of us guys and gals saw their wedding as an opportunity to have
some fun when we learned they had rented and furnished an apartment during the
weeks leading up to their wedding. G.O.
wouldn’t tell us the location of the apartment, but a little detective work
enabled us to find it, after which I procured a key that would unlock the
door. We “decorated” their place in the
hours immediately preceding their wedding, then surreptiously followed them to
the apartment after the ceremony and were close enough to hear their expressions
of frustration as they cleaned and straightened up. I have no idea how long the cleanup took, but it wasn’t an ideal
way to start a honeymoon. Fortunately,
we all remained friends afterward, in spite of our dirty trick.
I carried a full course load during the 1947 fall semester; I also (1)
completed required work on the two correspondence courses for which I’d
registered the previous spring, but on which I’d done nothing during the
summer, and (2) took/passed their final examinations, putting me near
completion of the “degree plan” I outlined earlier. I’ll delay further academic discussion until the end of this segment,
to discuss extracurricular activities in which I was interested.
I signed
up for the college chorus and A Cappella Choir at the start of my Senior year,
in spite of little talent and no formal musical training. I stayed with neither, primarily because
their meeting/practice times interfered with intramural football.
I
continued, however, with less formal vocal pursuits. I filled in at first tenor a few times for Walter Langston with
“The Heralds,” a
quartet comprised of Walter, his brother Bill on baritone, Bill Smith as lead,
and Leonard Penny on bass. The Heralds
were quite good, at least when Walter was singing with them, and in some
demand. Many of the religious songs
they sang were from Coleman’s Songs for Men (copyrighted in 1932); I
remember singing four songs from that book with the two Bills and Leonard (#3 –
“Wonderful Story of Love”/#33 – “The Riches of Love”/#66 – “Going Down the
Valley”/#80 – “Nearer Home”).
We
sang “Going Down the Valley” and “Nearer Home” at a banquet for the college department
of Calvary Baptist Church’s Sunday School.
We didn’t consider the fact that both songs dealt with life’s latter
stages, rather than the younger stage where most of our listeners were; we just
liked the music.
I
particularly liked the Southern Gospel sound of “Nearer Home,” so I got the other
three guys to join me in recording it (on a small 78 RPM paper record, using
equipment in the HPC music department); I lost the record a few years later,
much to my chagrin, probably during one of my moves. (George MacDonald, another friend from those days, says
three moves are equal to a fire, so I suppose the loss shouldn’t have
surprised me.)
As noted
earlier, I attended all home football and basketball games played by the Howard
Payne varsity squads, plus some of the “away” football games. As I recall, HPC had decent, though not
championship, records in both sports my senior year.
[Even my
mother attended Howard Payne’s last football game of the 1947 season – the only
sporting event I ever saw her attend after my dad stopped playing Sunday
afternoon baseball back in the ‘30s.
She, Ruth, and Virgil came to Brownwood to (1) see our Thanksgiving Day
game with Abilene Christian College, then (2) take Twila and me back with them
for the Thanksgiving holidays. ACC was
favored, but Howard Payne won 35 –7; Brooks Dozier, HPC’s big, rangy running
back, ran wild.]
I decided
to try out for track after I discovered I could run faster than some football
players on the track squad. Cap Shelton,
however, said only “big” men could run dashes, the events for which I might
have qualified, so insisted that I (and other “small” guys out for track) go
for the distance races. I developed
shin splints running in track shoes, then several
“strawberries” (acquired while playing intramural football) on and around my
left knee became infected during the Christmas holidays and took weeks to heal,
so I never returned to track workouts.
Intramural sports provided my greatest
enjoyment in college. At only 5’ 8½”
and 140 pounds I couldn’t compete in varsity sports, but, with others like
myself, played on some pretty good intramural basketball and touch football teams.
The teams on which I played during my last two years were known as the
“Umbriagos;” the name was G.O.’s
choice, for “Umbriago!” was an expression of excitement Jimmy Durante (G.O.’s
favorite entertainer) used in his radio shows.
Some of the
1947 Umbriagos basketball team grew goatees as a team trademark, another of G.O.’s
ideas. He had a heavy beard, so grew a
nice goatee. Others, such as I, could produce
little beyond a fuzzy chin; I painted my fuzz with moistened brown pencil lead,
to give it some color. We didn’t grow
goatees during the 1948 season – possibly because G.O. was married by then, and
Daphine may have preferred his chin smooth.
At least two intramural basketball teams had names related to their
campus identities or backgrounds:
·
The “Todd Hall Saints” team
was comprised of married ministerial students who lived in Todd Hall, a
college-owned apartment complex. I hope
their preaching was better than their playing, for we Umbriagos handled them
easily.
·
The “Osceolians” were named for the hometown of some of its
team members. I scored twenty-six
points points against the Osceolians one night in a 67-36 win for the
Umbriagos, which was the highest number of points scored by a player at that
point in the season; I still have the blurb that appeared in the Yellow Jacket about that feat. I should note that (1) most of those
twenty-six points came easily, off fast breaks started when we captured
defensive rebounds or they turned the ball over, and (2) the record was
probably broken again soon thereafter.
Texas
towns provided plenteous possibilities for team names, such as “Antelopes,”
‘Argyles,” or “Parisites” - although I doubt whether HPC had students from
Antelope or Argyle. We should have had
“Comanches” from nearby Comanche. Brady
could have produced a “Brady Bunch” decades before television did. Other possible city-based team names: Arpchucks from Arp; EarlyBirds from Early;
FerrisWheels from Ferris; Groomsmen from Groom; JollyRogers from Jolly;
Katydids from Katy; Martians from Mart; MundayKnights from Munday; PaigeTurners
from Paige; PearlDivers from Pearl; PharrOuts from Pharr. I also liked the idea of GoodnightLadies
from Goodnight, Texas, but that would work only for a girls’ team – and there
was no intramural girls league.
Five of us who lived at 200 W. Adams during the 1946/47 and 1947/48
school-years – G.O. Baten, Homer Swartz, J.E. “Hoppy” Hopkins, Bill
O’Brien, and I – played either
touch football, basketball, or both with the Umbriagos; Bill and I played both,
as did Hoppy, who had played basketball and football (quarterback) in high
school, so added ball handling and passing skills to the Umbriagos in both
sports in 1947/48.
As I recall, we Umbriagos finished second in (1) the 1947 touch
football round robin and (2) in both segments of the 1948 double round robin
basketball schedule. We also
participated in a city basketball league whose games were played in the
gymnasium at the black community center; we reached the finals of the
season-ending tournament, but lost the championship game.
◊◊◊
Organized intramural sports weren’t my only recreation. I bowled some at the alley diagonally across
the intersection from 200 West Adams, occasionally patronized the skating rink on Highway 67/377, and played miniature golf at the course on
Coggin Avenue. Miniature golf was attractive because the lowest scorer in a
foursome won a free game. A hole-in-one
on certain holes also won a free game.
I’m not sure we realized the “freebie” policy was a marketing device
designed to insure our return, accompanied by paying participants; we were
willing victims, regardless.
One night
I hit my first shot down the long, curving fairway of one of the holes in such a
manner that the ball skipped out of the fairway, back in, out again, back in,
out again, and back in. I exclaimed,
“My cow, it jumped out three times!” A
fellow playing a nearby hole said, “I wish I had a cow that could do
that.” Everyone around had a laugh at
my expense.
I needed only a few semester hours of credit when I started the 1948
spring semester, but enrolled for a full course-load; the GI Bill covered costs of both tuition and books, so I took maximum
advantage of the benefit. One of the
courses offered that spring was “Surveying,” under Bennie Williams; I
signed up, because (1) I thought the course would be interesting and (2) it
counted toward my major in mathematics.
Bennie had
been a civil engineer (with a captain’s rank) in the Marine Corps during
WWII. He was center and captain of the
HPC football team during the 1946 and 1947 seasons. (His younger brother, Stan,
was an All-American end at Baylor some years later. The Williams boys were talented.)
I had acquired 130 semester-hours of college credit by the end of the
1947/1948 school-year, with grades high enough to qualify for membership in
Alpha Chi, an honorary
society. At graduation, I received a
Bachelor of Arts degree. Ready or not, I
was about to experience the “real world.”