I had "gone with
the flow" along life's highway for almost twenty-two years, with little
self-determination or temporal goals; I attended public schools in the places
our family lived, entered Howard Payne because my parents thought it would be a
good college for me to attend, served in the Navy because the United States
needed/demanded the services of able-bodied young men, then returned to HPC to
pick up where I had left civilian life, still with no career objective. When asked what I was going to be after I
finished college, I often answered flippantly, "an educated
bum." Such levity ceased with
graduation; life was suddenly as real and earnest as described by poet
Longfellow. Decision time had arrived;
I could no longer ride with the tide. I
needed to become a productive member of society, but had no idea of the road to
take, and my studies hadn't been directed toward any specific work objective.
I returned “home” to Fort Worth after
graduating from college and began looking for work, exploring any promising
avenue. I investigated three
prospective places of employment:
·
I heard Southwestern Bell was hiring people with
electronics experience to install and maintain radio-telephones in taxis and
police vehicles. I acquired the
requisite FCC license (by going to Dallas and taking/passing the appropriate
test), but went no further down that road when I learned the starting pay was
only $160 per month.
·
An employment agency arranged an interview, in their Fort
Worth offices, with a recruiter from Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company; my
electronics training apparently qualified me for work in its seismograph
operations. The job sounded
interesting, and the starting salary of $300 per month was good for that time,
but the work schedule wasn't attractive, allowing, as I remember, two days off
in every fifteen; those days wouldn't be the same two days of the week each
time, and would seldom fall on weekends.
Halliburton's recruiter was disturbed when I disclosed my misgivings
about the work schedule, and chastised the agency lady for not having told me
everything about the job before he made the trip to Fort Worth. She, of course, became upset with me, for
she thought she had lost a commission and/or a client in Halliburton, but
wasn't so upset that she looked no further for another job opportunity for me.
·
I was sent to the Fort Worth offices of Dun &
Bradstreet, Inc., to interview for a credit reporting job; D & B hired me,
and the agency received its 40% of my first month's pay, but, inasmuch as the
starting salary was just $200 per month, their commission was only two-thirds
of the amount it would have been had I gone with Halliburton.
I started work for Dun & Bradstreet in early July, 1948, spent
a few weeks learning the ropes, then was assigned to the field staff, even
though a new reporter wasn’t ordinarily put on the road so quickly; I spent
nearly a year and a half working throughout Fort Worth’s large North Central
and West Texas district.
I can’t remember exactly “when I was where” during that year and a
half. I started in nearby Jacksboro,
Bryson, and Graham, then worked towns along U.S. 287 on both sides of Wichita Falls,
beginning with Henrietta, then on northwest to places like Iowa Park, Kamay,
Electra, Vernon, Chillicothe, Quanah, Crowell, and Medicine Mound.
I was
working northwest of Wichita Falls during the runup to the 1948 presidential
election between incumbent President Harry S. Truman and challenger Thomas
Dewey of New York; Governor Dewey was favored.
I wasn’t interested in public affairs, and certainly wasn’t
knowledgeable thereabout, but some business owners wanted to discuss the
upcoming election as I interviewed them, so I listened. A Quanah proprietor assured me that
President Truman would win re-election; he reasoned that voters wouldn’t remove
a sitting president in good economic times.
The November election proved his prediction correct.
I was more
interested in Southwest Conference football than political matters. I liked the SMU team (starring Doak Walker
and Kyle Rote) and attended most of SMU’s 1948 home games. Twila and the Coleman “kids” (Geraldine and
Don) went with me to the SMU/Santa Clara game.
Our seats were in front of a man who had imbibed in strong drink, and,
before the start of the game, was noisily making predictions about the upcoming
event. A nearby fan told the loudmouth
that he could name the ball carrier on SMU’s first offensive play, and offered
to bet five dollars on his prediction; all four starting backs (Doak Walker,
Kyle Rote, Paul Page, and Dick McKissack) were good runners who regularly
carried the ball, so the odds looked good to the imbiber, so he took the bet, and
asked for the name.
“Paul
Page.”
The
prediction was correct, and the imbiber paid off, but asked how the other man
knew Paul Page would carry the ball, when any one of four backs could have done
so.
“Paul Page
always carries the ball on SMU’s first offensive play.”
The loser
was quieter for the rest of the evening.
I never checked play-by-play analyses of other games to verify the
bet-winner’s contention, so don’t know whether or not his statement was correct
– but I suspect he knew what he was talking about if he was willing to risk
five dollars.
Doak
Walker and Kyle Rote went on to National Football League stardom. (Doak rejoined Bobby Lane, with the Detroit
Lions; they had played together at Dallas’ Highland Park High School, but Bobby
had played college ball at the University of Texas.) Kyle Rote played for the New York Giants, where he became the
first back to line up as a wide receiver, an innovation by Coach Steve Owen.
At some point, probably in late 1948, I joined L.C. Green, a Dun &
Bradstreet reporter who resided in Abilene, in doing San Angelo “city
revision” – updating reports on businesses about which regular inquiries were
received. We each had a room in the
Cactus Hotel, and usually ate our evening meals together; L.C. always asked me
to come by his room when I was ready to go eat. A diabetic, L.C. injected himself with insulin after I reached
his room each evening. I hated needles
(and still do), so I asked him, “L.C., why don’t you do that before I get
here?” I don’t think he ever answered
my question, but I suppose he needed to wait until as close to mealtime as
possible, to maximize the insulin’s effectivity.
◊◊◊
I traveled in the 1940 Chevrolet Papa Grammer (my granddad) had
purchased new, but had been acquired by my mother after her parents’
deaths. I bought it from Mother after I
went to work for Dun & Bradstreet and needed transportation in my
work. I had some interesting
experiences in the old Chevy, which had no heater or defroster, while I worked
Palo Pinto County during my first winter of traveling:
·
After a weekend in Fort Worth in early 1949 I decided to
wait until early Monday morning to drive back to Mineral Wells, normally only a
couple of hours away. My aunt Stella,
who lived near Mineral Wells, was also in Fort Worth that weekend and planned
to ride with me. An ice storm blew in
late Sunday night or very early Monday morning, so the roads were glazed over
by the time I picked Stella up. We made
the trip successfully, but with some wear and tear on our nervous systems.
·
Because the car had no heater or defroster, ice accumulated
on its windshield during freezing rains.
While in Mineral Wells during the aforementioned ice storm, I acquired some
candles and a holder, then set a burning candle on the dashboard from time to
time, letting its heat melt ice from the glass. The procedure worked so well I left the candle burning one
morning while I interviewed a business owner, hoping a larger area would be
cleared of ice while I was gone. I
returned to find a larger melt-off, but the left half of the two-piece
windshield had a long crack in it; I hadn't foreseen the damage a tiny flame
could do to an ice-cold windshield, even though it was several inches
away. (I had that half of the
windshield replaced by a Fort Worth glass shop the next weekend, at a cost of
$14 - the windshield was flat, thus relatively inexpensive.)
·
Travel conditions became bad as I left Fort Worth early on
another Monday morning a week or two later.
Freezing rain had started falling by the time I reached West Fort Worth,
so, instead of taking US 80/180 directly toward Mineral Wells, I took US 377
southwest toward Tolar and Bluffdale, from where I could angle northwest to Palo
Pinto County; I hoped to go around the bad weather, but figured that if
conditions hadn't improved by the time I reached Tolar I could stop and wait
out the storm at Ruth's and Virgil's house.
I couldn't see through the ice-covered windshield (inasmuch as the car
had no defroster), so I drove most of the forty-five miles to Tolar with my
head out of the window. Freezing rain
was still falling when I reached Tolar, so I stopped and waited a day or two
for a weather change and thawing roads, then went on to Palo Pinto County.
I remedied
my car’s cold-weather deficiencies by having an Arvin gasoline-fired heater installed. A line from the
carburetor supplied fuel, a sparkplug fired it, and a battery-powered fan
circulated the warmed air; the system was effective, but wouldn’t likely pass
safety regulations today.
I also had
a radio installed, which relieved boredom as I traveled West Texas
higheays. With a heater to provide cold
weather comfort, and a radio to entertain me, my many hours of driving were
made more bearable, if not actually enjoyable.
While working Mineral Wells I often patronized a restaurant featuring
homegrown rabbit – raised in pens behind the restaurant, which was located on
the south side of US 80 at the eastern edge of town. I ate there because of the pleasant couple who operated the
business, not for their featured entrée – I never tried the rabbit. Never having heard then about deleterious
effects of excessive fats in one’s diet, I usually ate bacon and eggs for
breakfast, then beef products for lunch and supper – with chicken as an
occasional substitute.
◊◊◊
After I finished working Mineral Wells and the smaller towns of Palo Pinto County I
moved on west to Stephens County. In
Breckenridge I encountered the only banker who ever refused to discuss his
customers’ affairs with me, even though it was to their advantage for him to do
so. His refusal to cooperate continued
even after I provided customer-signed documents authorizing his bank to confirm
or deny the accuracy of loan and cash balances they reported. He gave no reason for non-cooperation; he
just didn’t like Dun & Bradstreet.
I had encountered business owners who resented (and resisted) anyone’s prying
into their financial affairs, which was understandable from a privacy
standpoint, but that banker’s resistance to D & B wasn’t understandable.
◊◊◊
After Palo Pinto and Stephens counties, my itinerary took me to towns
west of Abilene along US 80 (e.g. Loraine, Colorado City, and Stanton). In late spring and early summer of 1949 I
did city revision work in Midland/Odessa, where Bob Phillips was the resident D
& B reporter; I spent several pleasant evenings with Bob and his wife,
Marguerite.
[Two future
presidents of the United States were living in Midland when I worked there,
although I couldn’t have known that fact at the time. George H.W. Bush and his young family had moved there following
his graduation from Yale in 1948, to enter the oil business. He was elected the 41st president
in 1988, and his son, George W. Bush, was elected the 43rd president
in 2000, then re-elected in 2004.]
I spent numerous weekends in Brownwood during my D & B travels, inasmuch as I still had many friends
at HPC – plus some in town, primarily because of acquaintances I’d made while
attending Calvary Baptist Church. One
of the latter was Mrs. Jesse Coppic:
As I
walked along Center Avenue one late fall afternoon in 1948 I heard someone
call, “Kenneth Miller! Kenneth
Miller! Come over here!” Beckoning from across the street was Mrs.
Coppic (mother of Leroy, Daphine, Raymond, and Linda); she wanted to tell
me that son Raymond had just been named to the All-District football squad,
following a super season as a tackle on Brownwood High’s team. (I had been in her house many times on
double dates when G.O. Baten, my roommate, was dating Daphine, so knew the
whole family; we double-daters had often gathered around her piano to sing
gospel songs.) [I see Raymond from time
to time nowadays when I’m in town for events at Howard Payne or at Brownwood
High School reunions. The reason I
attend BHS reunions will become evident in the next segment.]