I spent major portions of the summers of 1938, 1939, 1941, and 1942 in
Hood County, mostly in Tolar. (The Goforth & Grammer store was
moved to Tolar in late 1937; Ruth and Virgil rented a small apartment and
continued managing daily operations.
Papa Grammer commuted from Acton, working only Wednesdays and
Saturdays.)
Our entire family spent much
of the summer of 1938 in Hood County.
My parents apparently thought we might not return to the Valley at
summer’s end, for we carried all our possessions when we left La Feria;
bicycles and other items tied outside the old Model A made us resemble the
Beverly Hillbillies of subsequent television fame. We traveled US 281 to Stephenville, then US 377 to Tolar. We unloaded our bikes, and I rode mine all
over town, then badly wanted to take it on to Acton, to leave tracks on
its unpaved roads like those which had enthralled me when we moved to La Feria
the previous summer. My dad, however,
wouldn’t reload it. His refusal was the
cause of the only resentment I ever felt toward my parents; though short-lived,
the resentment was intense. [In
retrospect, I imagine my dad either (1) thought I’d never successfully
negotiate the sandy lane from the Grammer place to Acton’s main roads or (2)
knew I’d soon want to take the bike back to Tolar, thereby requiring a second
reloading, but he provided no explanation for his refusal. I wonder now why I didn’t propose that the
bike be transported back and forth in my granddad’s pickup (inasmuch as he
commuted twice weekly); I suppose I just didn’t use my brain.]
We stayed at Acton more than
Tolar that summer, because Mama and Papa Grammer had more space than did Ruth
and Virgil (and my parents, quite properly, wanted to spend time with their
parents). However, we were in Tolar
enough to create memories:
·
Albert and Billy Baker, who lived diagonally across the intersection
from Ruth and Virgil’s apartment, had a fantastic swing, suspended from a high
limb on an old oak tree; I had never swung higher.
·
We rushed back to the apartment after an early-evening
activity on June 22, 1938, expecting to hear a radio broadcast of the Joe Louis/Max Schmeling fight from
New York’s Yankee Stadium, but we were too late; Joe had knocked Max out in the
first round, just before we arrived.
·
All of us (Ruth and Virgil, my parents, Twila and I) enjoyed
listening to “Amos and Andy” on the
radio. [Years later (in the mid-‘60s) I
had occasion to talk to Freeman Gosden, Jr., son of one of the “Amos and Andy”
stars, in connection with a business venture between his company and my
employer. Needless to say, his name
made the task more interesting – but the son sounded nothing like his famous
father.]
Our family returned to La Feria before the 1938/39 school-year started,
but in a 1937 Ford Tudor sedan instead of the old Model A, which had served us
well for nine years.
Our “new”
year-old car had Ford’s small (60 horsepower) V-8 engine, and was equipped with
a radio and heater – luxuries we hadn’t previously experienced. The car’s interior was heated by air warmed
as it was routed by the engine’s exhaust manifold (instead of being heated by
radiator coolant passing through a heater transfer core). I’ve been told the manifold heater system in
autos was discontinued for safety reasons – although similar systems continued
to be used in heating passenger aircraft powered by reciprocating engines,
with, to the best of my knowledge, no harm ever resulting.
We
kept the 1937 Ford for two years, then traded it in on a new 1940 Ford Tudor
sedan with the larger, 85 horsepower, V-8 engine. (Engine sizes were indicated by horsepower ratings in those days,
so I have no idea what the displacements of either the sixty or eighty-five
horsepower engines were; my first awareness of displacement in engine size
descriptions came years later with the purchase of a 1956 Ford Fairlane with a
292 cubic inch Thunderbird engine.)
We were unable to carry our bicycles back to La Feria on the newer car,
so left them in Tolar for shipment by rail.
A few weeks passed before they reached La Feria; I was so eager to have wheels
again that, after receiving notice of their arrival, I uncrated them at the
railroad station early one morning before school.
◊◊◊
Ruth and Virgil had moved from their first apartment before I started
my 1939 summer visit. They were renting
a bedroom from, and sharing kitchen and bath with, their landlord, Dr. Rose; I
slept on a pallet in a doorway between the front porch and their room. After I’d been there a few weeks they bought
a roomy old house (built about 1903), together with the entire city block upon
which it stood. It was a fairly
comfortable place, and a well on the property enabled them to be independent of
Tolar’s unreliable city water system.
They paid $2,000 for the property, then during the next sixty years made
major improvements from time to time; I spent many nights in that house during
those sixty years.
Ruth and
Virgil also purchased their first automobile that summer – a three or four year
old Dodge coupe – after having lived without “wheels” of their own for nearly
eight years. They drove the Dodge for a
couple of years, then bought a new 1941 Chevrolet sedan.
At summer’s end Ruth took me to Cleburne,
where I caught a train to Temple, then rode the rest of the way home with La
Feria acquaintances (whose identity I can’t remember); I seem to recall my
mother’s being in Temple with those acquaintances, for some sort of event, but
my memory is fuzzy.
My
memory, however, is clear about the next summer (1940), when, after our
family’s annual visit, Ruth and Virgil again asked me to stay with them when my
parents prepared to return to the Valley, but I wouldn’t stay because we had
just purchased a new car and I wanted to ride in it – and hoped I’d get a
chance to drive it. I realized later my
reason for refusing to stay in Tolar was dumb – and I’m sure Ruth and Virgil
thought I was crazy.
◊◊◊
Twila and I both spent the summers of 1941
and 1942 in Tolar, inasmuch as Ruth and Virgil had space (and furnishings) to accommodate
the two of us (they configured their house into a three-bedroom place even
before they began remodeling/adding to it).
We all enjoyed the greater living comfort of the “new” house, but the
real “action” was at the store. Goforth & Grammer was
open six days per week from about six in the morning until six in the
evening. Virgil was there all day each
workday. He woke me (by pretending to
be a bugler as war approached/arrived) before he left for work, and I joined
him at the store after eating breakfast; Ruth and Twila came after household
chores were done, and stayed the rest of the day, helping handle the routines
of operating a country store.
Goforth & Grammer (1) sold groceries and dry goods, plus
poultry and livestock feeds, to community residents and area farmers, and (2)
purchased eggs and cream from farmers’ wives.
Eggs were resold to a Fort Worth buyer and cream was shipped to Fort
Worth’s Alta Vista Creamery.
I
enjoyed being a part of store operations.
Twila and I helped stock shelves and waited on customers, helping them
locate needed items and “checking them out;” I went along on grocery and feed
deliveries (hoping to get a chance to drive, though still unlicensed) and
helped “candle” eggs we purchased (to verify their good condition), but didn’t
learn how to test cream for butterfat content (prices paid varied directly with
butterfat content).
Tolar had no bank, so Virgil
cashed customers’ paychecks, and even advanced cash to those who needed funds
before payday. Cash advances and credit
sales – probably more than half of all transactions – produced sizable
receivables. Receivables tickets were
filed alphabetically, kept in a fireproof (but never locked) safe, then given
to customers as payments were made.
Virgil’s
carelessless about receivables files was ultimately costly – when thieves broke
in, stole some merchandise, and removed the file of unpaid credit tickets from
the unlocked safe; the tickets did the thieves no good (unless they themselves
were customers with unpaid bills), and their disappearance left Virgil with no
way of determining how much customers owed.
He handled the problem by asking customers to estimate the amounts owed,
which had to be pure guesswork, for they weren’t provided copies of sales
tickets.
No
money was stolen, for he put all currency and checks from the cash register in
a bank bag at closing time each day, then carried the bag home for overnight
storage (in a dark corner of a clothes closet), but the values of receivables tickets
far exceeded the cash he had on hand when the thieves struck.
We spent most weekday evenings around the
house – working in the yard, playing “catch” (Virgil kept a baseball and gloves
on hand), or listening to Fort Worth Cats’ baseball games, seldom venturing
away from home. I recall one midweek
exception to the normal routine, when we went swimming at a Glen Rose pool; none of us owned swimsuits, so we rented
swimwear at the pool. We were late
leaving the pool that evening, and had to rush into the house when we got back
home to be sure we completed our Daily Bible Readings before midnight; reading them by midnight was important because we
wanted to be able to take credit for “Bible Read Daily” on the eight-point
record system at Sunday evening BTU.
Some might
say we were legalistic about our Bible reading, but we weren’t, for we didn’t
believe salvation depended upon our “goodness;” rather, we believed our
commitment to the Lord was evidenced by the ways we expended our time and
abilities. (I’ll have to admit,
however, that we might have benefited more from our readings had we done them
at the start of each day, then meditated on them as the day progressed.)
◊◊◊
Sundays were as “slow” as weekdays were
busy. We kids probably slept a little
later on Sunday mornings than on weekdays (I don’t remember Virgil’s “bugling”
me awake on Sundays), but we were up in plenty of time to eat breakfast, then
get ready for, and go to, Sunday School and morning worship activities at Tolar
Baptist Church.
Sunday
School facilities at the old frame church building were barely adequate. The passageway to the sanctuary was flanked by
a classroom on each side, and the sanctuary itself could be “curtained” to
accommodate several classes. The
Intermediate boys’ class I attended met on the stairway to the belfry during at
least one summer I was in Tolar; it was much like a sauna, but I heard no
complaints.
Sunday dinners were followed by afternoons
of reading, resting, and occasional outings (I recall going to Lake Worth one
Sunday afternoon in 1942). We were back
in church on Sunday evenings, for Training Union and worship.
◊◊◊
Although Tolar was a very small town (population about 250), it was
blessed with some interesting characters and places:
·
A couple
named Hines operated a restaurant in Tolar the first summer I spent with Ruth
and Virgil. Their eatery was
unofficially known as “Hines Inn.”
·
Mrs. Sadler parked her Model A Ford headed in toward the high curb in front of
Virgil’s store when she and Mr. Sadler came to town. When departing, she put the transmission in reverse, set the
throttle lever (the Model A had a hand operated throttle lever, as well as a
floorboard accelerator pedal) almost wide open, then partially engaged the
clutch; if she had ever engaged the clutch fully, their car would have rocketed
all the way across the street and through Mr. Blake Curl’s store window, for
there was no curb on his side.
·
One unmarried
man, though approaching midlife, lived with his parents and helped farm their
land; I’ll call him Joe. Joe constantly
talked to himself as he plowed their fields.
Some of the boys wondered what he talked about as he plowed, so one of
them hid in the brush along a fence row, to listen as Joe passed; what he heard
was a constant repetition of the phrase, “Yep, Yep, Pa’s the boss, and Joe does the work.”
·
Mr. Walker
was the tallest person I ever knew personally; he was said to be six feet,
eight inches in height. He walked
straight and tall, though he was up in years.
Mrs. Jim Browning also stood ramrod straight, at her full height, as she
traversed Tolar’s walkways. Their
upright statures were emphasized by their slender bodies.
·
Mr. Homer
Greer, a kindly older farmer, drank room
temperature Dr. Peppers when he came into Virgil’s store, rather than ice cold
from the cold drink box.
·
One older
gentleman, whom I’ll call Mr. Frugal, was very careful with his money. He always carried a coin between a thumb and
forefinger as he walked through town, constantly rubbing it and sucking his
lower lip in and out.
·
Jake McElroy, a bachelor jokester, added zest to the
life of a rather sedate little town.
·
Skipper
Underwood and
Harold McLemore, employees at Blake Curl Grocery across
the street from Virgil’s store, could be heard all up and down the block
laughing over pranks they pulled and at things said and done.
◊◊◊
Each summer I spent in Tolar was, of course, followed by my return to
the Valley to begin a new school-year – until the summer of 1942.