I’ve mentioned various La Feria people in specific life contexts, but
others, without regard to particular contexts, also come to mind:
·
My school and church friends included Nellie Pearl Berry
and Rodney Black. Nellie Pearl was
probably a year younger than I; Rodney, her uncle, was a couple of years
younger than she. The anomaly of their
ages with respect to their kinship was of interest to me, but I learned later
of even greater age/kinship disparities among my Goodwin relatives; I discuss
those in the “SAN DIEGO NAVAL TRAINING CENTER” section of the “MILITARY
SERVICE” segment.
·
One young lady, perhaps a year or two older than I, often
addressed me as “cousin of my cousin.”
I can’t recall either her name or who our common cousin was – very
frustrating. I’m sure the cousin was
probably a Goodwin or a Stribling, but I have no idea which.
·
Edwin Moore, the mayor’s son, a member of my class, was a
bit heavy-set and stuttered at times, particularly if flustered. Some of the boys called him “Porky,” at
which he seemed to take no offense, but I’ve wondered since if his stuttering
wasn’t in part the result of self-consciousness about his build and
unflattering nickname. (I last saw Ed
in 1950, when he was attending law school at the University of Texas; I heard
no stuttering while we talked, so assume he’d conquered the speech impairment,
and I don’t remember his looking “porky.”)
·
The Cox family, who lived five or six blocks from us the
first couple of years we were in La Feria, had a small shed and cow lot back of
their house; each morning their son Garrett, who was in my class at school, led
their milk cow to some grassy patch around town (on a vacant lot, or a space
along a roadway), staked her there to graze, then returned in late afternoon to
lead her home. I had never before seen
cows led on long (twenty or twenty-five foot) chains, much less staked out to
graze on someone else’s (or public) property.
[I wonder now what neighbors thought about cows in adjacent yards, with
attendant odors and noises. Perhaps
people were tolerant in those depression days, realizing that folks should be
permitted to do whatever was required to get by, as long as the activity was
legal.]
·
Richard Hoverson, a member of my class and still a La Feria
resident, batted “cross-handed.” We
tried to get him to uncross his hands, to no avail. [I saw Richard at a 2004 reunion of LFHS students, held at the
Bahia Mar Resort on South Padre Island. I asked him if he
remembered having batted cross-handed.
He said he didn’t remember, but that cross-handed batting may have been
the reason he wasn’t a great softball hitter.]