Marty, our youngest offspring,
graduated from Parkview High in May, 1975, stayed with his job at Kroger’s
until summer’s end, then left to attend the University of Texas. Arlette and I were back where we had started
twenty-five years earlier; the nest was empty again.
Vicky
had graduated from Hall High in 1969, attended Louisiana Tech, married, and
graduated at the end of the 1972 fall term.
Terry had graduated from Parkview High in 1971, attended Ouachita Baptist University, married Gregg
Greenway in 1974, graduated from OBU in May, 1975, and moved to Fort Worth when
Gregg enrolled at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. With Marty having left for UT, none of the
three was even in Arkansas, much less still in the nest.
In addition to Marty’s graduation from high school and Terry’s
graduation from college at the end of the 1975 spring term, Arlette received her
M.S.E. from the University of Central Arkansas and Vicky was awarded a Master’s
degree from Louisiana Tech (she had returned to school when her USAF husband
was transferred overseas). Everyone in
our family except me received “sheepskins” that year.
I had a sense of relief with
Marty’s entry into college, because that put Arlette and me just one step away
from completion of the commitment we’d made to provide the kids with college
educations; my major concern through their growing-up years was the possibility
that we wouldn’t be economically productive long enough to see that commitment
fulfilled.
Arlette, however, wasn’t as
sanguine as I; she missed Marty’s sympathetic ear and, without realizing it,
was a victim of empty-nest syndrome.
She sought the counsel of our pastor, Brother Phil Lineberger, who helped her work her way through the
problem. I think she was surprised at
the “empty-nest” diagnosis, because she had tended to feel that family
responsibilities were burdens she would be relieved to unload. In retrospect, I suspect she had derived a
sense of fulfillment from the dependence of the children (and the importance to
them of her presence and availability), and the sudden absence of that
dependence left her feeling empty.
Conversely, I felt fulfilled by Marty’s progression to “the next level.”
The neckties I had purchased from Arlette at Penney’s on July 23, 1949
allowed me to become involved, in a minor way, with the 1976 bicentennial
celebration. My involvement resulted
from an article I saw in the July 5, 1974 issue of The Wall Street Journal,
which described a clothing collection being assembled by the Smithsonian
Institution’s Department of Cultural History, for exhibition during the
upcoming U.S. bicentennial celebration. The exhibit, to be
called “Suiting Everyone,” would display wardrobes
typifying attire worn in the United States during each year since 1920. The collection was substantially complete,
but some items were still needed, and contributions were being solicited;
missing items included men’s neckwear for 1949.
I recalled, of course, the two neckties with whose acquisition I had met Arlette – now stored with others
no longer in style. Perceiving a small
opportunity for cultural usefulness, I conferred with Arlette about giving
“our” ties to the Smithsonian, obtained her concurrence, wrote a letter
offering one or both for use in the exhibit, and noted the circumstances of
their acquisition.
Months later, when I had almost forgotten the matter, I received a
letter from the Associate Curator of the Smithsonian’s Division of Costume and
Furnishings, which (1) included an apology for the long delay, caused by an
unexpectedly large volume of correspondence about the “Suiting Everyone”
exhibit, and (2) said they would like to have one of my neckties if I was still
willing to donate it.
I mailed one of the ties, along with
several items of requested information, and assumed I was finished with the
matter. However, I received still
another letter, acknowledging receipt of the tie and thanking me for sending
it, but informing me I would have to formally deed it to the Smithsonian before
it could be accepted. A deed was
enclosed, ready for my signature; I signed and returned it, happy in knowing
the tie could again be useful.
Arlette
and I visited the Smithsonian in June, 1976, following meetings I attended in
Danbury, Connecticut. (The school-year
had ended, so I decided to take vacation days before and after the meetings,
travel by automobile, take Arlette with me, and sightsee going and coming. We headed toward Washington when the
business reason for our trip ended, to visit the Smithsonian Institution and, later, Williamsburg.) We spent most of one day looking at various
Smithsonian exhibits, including “Suiting Everyone,” the exhibit to which we
had donated my necktie the previous year.
Space limitations prohibited simultaneous showing of the entire
collection, so the exhibit displayed four years at a time. The four years then on display included 1944
and 1948, but not 1949, the year I had bought the tie we had donated. Amazingly, however, the mannequin dressed in
1944 attire was adorned with a necktie identical to another old tie I had at
home; someone shared my taste in ties back in the ‘40s.
The “Suiting Everyone” exhibition was scheduled to last eighteen months
to two years, but I hope the collection has been retained in storage for future
display to later generations. If such
is the case, I also hope that some day my children (and their descendants) will
visit the Smithsonian Institution when men’s wardrobes for 1949 are exhibited, will look at that
necktie that once was mine, and realize that for our family it is more than a
typification of style for a period in our nation’s past – that it also symbolizes
a union of two lives, without which union they themselves would never have
existed. And I hope they are as
thankful for that union and all that has followed as I am. Although I never would have dreamed before
July 23, 1949 that the mere purchase of a necktie could lead to marriage and
all that has since transpired, I could not have devised a better dream had I
tried. The Smithsonian has that necktie
now, but I still have the girl; I’m glad it’s not the other way around.
Our 1970 and 1973 family vacations in rented motorhomes were, in a sense, “test runs” leading toward
a decision to purchase a recreation vehicle; Arlette and I had been attracted
to RVs for years. As early as 1968 I
had acquired brochures from thirty-one companies then manufacturing motorhomes
(our first choice in RVs), but we couldn’t justify (afford?) the cost of a
self-propelled RV, so decided to look for a small travel trailer towable by our
1972 F-100 pickup. We searched for
months, looking for an affordable small self-contained unit; that search
culminated with our April, 1976 purchase of a 17½’ Vaquero travel trailer, in
which we hoped to “practice” the sorts of things we wanted to do after
retirement.
Our property was accessible through the park behind us, so we installed
a gate in our fence, enabling us to put/keep the RV in our back yard. Its parking spot was upgraded two or three
years later with the installation of a 20’ concrete pad.
The RV sat unused most of the time during the six years before we
retired, but we learned much about the lifestyle and mechanics of “trailering”
and “motorhoming” from RV magazines.
Other
creatures liked our trailer, but didn’t realize it was for travel; one year a family
of squirrels decided it was a permanent part of the neighborhood, so built
their home in it. Arlette discovered
them at their work; “Squirrels are building a nest in the trailer!” she exclaimed when I returned
from a Saturday visit to my barber. She
had seen them carrying oak leaves through a roof vent.
I leaned a
ladder against the RV and climbed up to inspect the situation. The squirrels had torn the screen from the
vent above the refrigerator, and built their nest in the “dead” space between
the refrigerator and the roof. I
precipitated action when I removed the vent cover and caught them inside their
new home, for I was too close for their comfort; Mama and Papa flashed by me,
brushing my face with their tails. I
extracted the leafy branch-ends they had brought in for their nest, rescreened
the opening, and replaced the vent cover, thinking I had eliminated the
problem. However, I soon heard
scratching sounds from the space I thought had been vacated. I removed the vent cover and screen again,
and tried to see the cause of the noise, but the culprit (a baby squirrel) hid
out of sight.
I couldn’t
leave the vent opening uncovered, for Mama Squirrel was sitting in a nearby
tree, chittering her displeasure with me for having destroyed their nest and
trapping a family member inside our RV, so I knew she and Papa would be back if
the vent were left uncovered. Also, I
didn’t want to risk rain damage or entry by birds or other unwanted creatures,
so I rescreened the opening and replaced the vent cover, still not knowing how
I was going to extricate the unwanted tenant.
Mama
Squirrel chittered her displeasure all Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday,
but was gone when Arlette and I returned home from work Monday. She had given up, but the trapped squirrel
was trying to find a way out; as I looked the scene over again, I saw small
fingernails and toenails poking through the louvers in the access vent behind
the refrigerator. Seeing light from
below, he had crawled down the refrigerant tubing, hoping for an escape
route. He couldn’t get out, but I saw a
possibility for helping him.
I removed
the vent (at which point he went back to the top of the refrigerator, out of
sight), leaned a wooden step ladder against the side of the RV, with the top of
the ladder at the level of the bottom of the vent opening, then went inside the
house to watch from our bedroom window.
Baby
Squirrel didn’t wait long to investigate.
He climbed down and saw the free world, went out on the ladder, wrapped
both sets of legs around a side rail, and slid from step to step, soon reaching
the ground. He scurried through the
back fence, and climbed to the top of a large tree just outside our yard,
hoping, I suppose, to be able to see his mother. No luck. By that time I’d
gone back outside to re-secure the trailer, so saw him come back to the ground,
turn toward the park behind our house, cross the basketball court, and go up
the hillside and onto the apron of the swimming pool, still searching. Mama Squirrel was nowhere to be found, so he
eventually came back to our yard.
I couldn’t
help him find his mother, so I replaced the refrigerator side vent on the RV,
put the ladder away, and went back inside the house to supper and evening
routines.
Upon arising
the next morning I went out back to see whether or not Junior had found his
family overnight. Success! Sitting side by side high in a black-gum
tree just behind our house were Junior and Mama – Junior pressed tightly
against Mama’s side, lest she should get away from him again.
Arlette
told the story to her second-graders at school that day. At the happy ending, they burst into wild
applause.
We made our first major trip
in our Vaquero during the summer of 1977, accompanied by Arlette’s mother and
dad; they joined us when we reached Odessa, to go camping and sightseeing in
New Mexico and Colorado. We spent a day
in Santa Fe, camped a night beside the Rio Grande
River between Santa Fe and Taos, visited Taos, then crossed the San Juan
Mountains into Colorado. Arlette’s
parents had heard good things about Lake City, so we headed that way.
Our first overnight stop in
Colorado was at Pagosa Springs.
We were advised against taking the most direct route from Pagosa Springs
to Lake City (across the mountains via Slumgullion Pass), so we went west to Durango, north to
Montrose, east to Gunnison via US 50, then south into Lake City. We spent a week there, returned to US 50 at
Gunnison, and traveled east to a campground in Cañon City, where we left the
RVs while we took day trips to Royal Gorge and
the Garden of the Gods at
Colorado Springs.
I was beginning to run out of
vacation time by then, so we parted company with Arlette’s folks; they headed
northwest and we headed home. We
followed the Arkansas River across Kansas until it veered northeastward at
Ford; we continued southeastward toward Tulsa, Fort Smith, and home, with
accumulated memories of the trip to relate:
·
I purchased a
pair of good-looking low-top hiking shoes (for half-price, $14) at a store on
the square in Santa Fe; the shoes stay in our RV, ready for hiking ventures
when we’re camping. (I usually don’t
remember their existence until I return from hiking in muddied or scuffed
tennis shoes – so they still look almost new.)
·
As noted
above, we took the long way around from Pagosa Springs to Lake City because we
were told we might have difficulty negotiating the roads that led to and across
Slumgullion Pass.
While in Lake City we decided we would drive to Slumgullion Pass in our
pickup, to see what we had missed. We
had to ride four abreast, with Arlette’s dad sitting at the right door, next to
the dropoffs beside the roadway; the rest of us laughed at him as he grew more
and more nervous looking at the chasms below him, urging me to stay toward the
center of the roadway, and scooting us over in the seat as far as he could.
·
Our pickup
was severely underpowered for trailer-towing at altitude (240 cubic inch six
cylinder engine, with standard transmission and a 3.07:1 differential ratio),
and it “bogged down” twice in Colorado, first on an unpaved secondary (or
tertiary) road to a back-country campground, which at one point was so steep we
simply ground to a halt; a Good Samaritan in a V-8 powered Chevy Blazer came
along and let me hook it to our trailer and turn it around. Going back downhill was much easier.
·
A day or two
later on Colorado 149, a secondary road between Gunnison and Lake City, we were
caught behind a creeping truck on a short, steep climb, lost momentum, and came
to a halt. Arlette’s dad hooked a tow
chain between the frame of his motorhome and our pickup, and we crested the
hill with the extra towing power he provided.
[Having had those two experiences, we faced Monarch Pass (11,312 feet) with trepidation the next week as we drove eastward
from Gunnison on US 50, headed generally homeward. Fortunately, the highway was wide, with nothing to slow us, so I
drove eight miles in low gear, at thirty miles per hour, passing heavier,
slower vehicles as if they were standing still.]
·
The Arkansas
River was a rushing stream near its headwaters in Colorado, was still a
good-sized river in eastern Colorado and western Kansas, but was only a trickle
by Dodge City, because it had been pumped dry for irrigation purposes. I could step across the river at Cimarron
Crossing.
The
trailer-towing difficulties we experienced in the mountains of Colorado
prompted me to find more power for our pickup after we returned home. I replaced the six-cylinder engine with a
360 cubic inch V-8, then ultimately replaced the three-speed gearbox with a
“grandma-geared” four-speed transmission.
We experienced no further difficulties in driving at high altitudes.
I
placed an ad in a local newspaper offering to trade the replaced engine for concrete
work (we needed a “pad” for the RV). A
small contractor responded to the ad, then constructed forms and
poured/finished the pad we needed.
We never traveled again with
Arlette’s folks, but met them from time to time at Lake Chandler (near Tyler),
where they owned a lot; they had a nice bass boat, which they left in storage
near the lake. Although I’m not an
adept angler, I joined Arlette and her parents in their fishing ventures when
we were there; I sometimes took reading material with me to help pass the
time. One hot summer day I read while
they unsuccessfully fished for bream for an hour or more; I finally put my book
aside and told them I supposed I’d have to teach them how to fish, put a
cricket on a hook, and dropped my line over the side. My hook barely hit the water before it was struck. I removed the fish, rebaited my hook, and
dropped it in the water again – with an almost instantaneous favorable result. Arlette’s dad said, “Let me try that spot,”
so I moved away, dropped my baited hook at another spot and pulled in another
bream, while my three fellow-fishermen still caught nothing. Mr. Clipper (Arlette’s barber dad) followed me all around the boat as I
continued to pull fish in.
My methods weren’t magic,
however, for bream were soon hitting all the hooks, and we caught enough for a
couple of meals; I just happened to join the fishing when the fish started
biting.
Arlette’s parents eventually installed a mobile home on their lake property, retired, and moved there in 1981. They added a den/living room soon after moving in; Arlette’s mother, then sixty-eight years old, did most of the construction, for her dad’s emphysema prevented physical exertion. (They later learned he also had lung cancer, which caused his death in early May, 1982.) They never traveled in their RV after retiring; Arlette’s mother sold it soon after Mr. Clipper’s death, but continued living in their upgraded mobile home for thirteen years.