From 1961 through 1963 I can remember living on North East 23rd Street, either with my Pepaw, or an old shack or our Insurance man's rent house. It was an old dirt road that went past our house, a dip that was usually filled with water and then it dead ended in a turnaround. Just before you got to my grandfathers house on the North side of the road stood a huge orange water tower. Must have been the 70's when my dad showed me polaroid's of it frozen over from an ice storm. The ground was mushroomed with ice, fence honeycombed with ice windows, trees with huge hanging stalactites hanging down, a virtual Winter Wonderland.
Pepaws was also on the North side of the road, a two story house of great mysteries to a young boy. He had this huge garage or barn that looked like an airplane hanger to me. There must have been two dozen broke lawn mowers in there and a Link Trainer, an old school virtual reality teaching aid for pilots. I fancied sneaking in and playing in it but never could gather up the courage. Pepaw was a Civil Air Patrol pilot and on occasion would take me up in borrowed air planes for birds eye views of my hometown & Milsap where my great granddad lived.
Over on the South side of the road before you got to Pepaws was a Feed Tank or pond if your not a Texan. Dad and I would go fishing there and one time when we had not caught anything I drug my line in the water, I was using a cane pole, line, weight and floater and caught a small perch. It was the first fish I ever caught but dad made me throw it back as it was too small. I was about five years old when this happened and at the same tank dad and I would take burlap bags, a frog gig and go Bull Frog gigging along the banks of that tank. I would hold the bag open and dad would gig the frogs. Mom prepared the frog legs in an iron skillet but failed to cut the nerves in the legs so they danced in the pan. They did taste good, though most of those days we ate beans and biscuits.
Across from Pepaw's were the Shoemake's, Pa, Ma, Tiny a teenage girl and the boy Jake. Jake could roll a Prince Albert cigarette with one hand doing all involved making a smoke except licking the paper close. Once Jake gave a Horny Toad a roll your own and we watched the cigarette's tip glow as he inhaled but never exhaled and died. I was sweet on Tiny and remember her showing me her music box that looked like a miniature juke box, not sure what tune it played, possible Elvis.
When we had moved next door to the Shoemakes I had climbed the rock fence in front of our house and into a Persimmon Tree, picking the fruit and hauling them home in my white t-shirt. Well that shirt was stained and ruined by Ma Shoemake took the Persimmons and made us some jam with it. These people were more family than friends or neighbors.
I remember one day when my little Cousin Ricky was staying with us, we were at Pepaws and got our shoes and socks covered with grass burrs. Mom had two of us pulling burrs out of our socks while she drank coffee. Well she must have dropped one in her coffee because one became lodged in her throat. She grabbed Ricky and Robin in her arms, me in tow and we went over to the Shoemakes to call for a doctor. She was taken to the Nazarene Hospital where she stayed a couple days and had the burr removed. I still have the burr in a glass jar. She liked to tell the story how she tickled the nurse with her complaining, "I wish I was going into labor and repeating" I remember worrying about mom as dad too me to outside the hospital where I had to wait for mom trying to guess where she was in that big hospital. I remember when Pa Shoemake died, they layed him out in his casket at his house. They use to do that in those days, I'm not sure if I attended services. Jake and I continued to be friends for many years to come, even as an adult.
Music like many Southern family's was a cornerstone, with grandfather playing piano by ear, aunts and uncles on guitars. My own talent was nil but I was young and cute and cute is like money in the bank. One day I cashed cute in by taking an old cigar box & pretending it was a juke box taking requests from the family and extended family to hear me sing songs. Many of the requests I didn't know so I made up lyrics, taking in pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters in my invented juke box. I scored a lot of loot but we had no place to spend it near our home so I had to wait till we went to town.
It was the downtown five & dime, a kid's idea of Heaven with a treasure trove of candy and toys. I think I picked out some candy, memory fails me there but I remember the small metal boat you would wind up a key that would turn the propeller. I didn't have many toys during this time in my life and most of what I played with I invented out of old wooden thread spools, boxes and things of nature I found outdoors. The boat I could play with in one of my father's steel wash tubs he used to clean his brushes in. I was happy with the one toy but still had a nice piece of change left over.
The church we attended was just down the road and we went fairly often. I would sit, exploring the pictures and stain glass along the walls, people dressed in their Sunday best, surrounded by family. I would listen to the stories the minister told, the music and watch the people around me. I knew who the Baby Jesus was and stared at his image feeling an emotion for him that could only be love. When the men came by with their wooden plates to pass along to the people, I watched them place their offerings of dollars and coins, so when the plate came by I placed the remaining sum of my vocal earnings. I wanted to send it to the Baby Jesus and in my mind it was like the US mail.
Gospel music was the lion's share of what I heard in my early years, along with Country and folk tunes. Mom use to put me to bed with gospel tunes by Tennessee Ernie Ford and Elvis Presley. I fell right to sleep hearing "The Old Rugged Cross" and "I Walk Through the Garden". My tastes for gospel music today has only expanded a little, some Country, I love "I'll Fly Away" and bought the song writer's autograph of that tune, a Mr. Albert E. Brumley. I do enjoy some black gospel, not sure how much I listened to as a child though.
When I was age six we moved from North East 23rd Street to the South East part of town and started to attend a Methodist Church. I remember liking the Sunday School but didn't care much for the sacramental wine and bread of Christ. Watching the end of the movie "Places In the Heart", taking the sacrament was very much like it was at my church. Like most children I imagine I would get restless during services kicking my legs back in forth, waiting for Sunday School.
We didn't attend much church after that I can remember but when I was in Fort Worth I remember my Aunts taking me to a Holy Roller Church. Scared the pee waddling out of me, I tell ya. People were rolling in the floor in convulsions, going into fits and when my aunt did like wise I was really freaked out. I was clinging to my Memaw, I didn't want any part of this freak show. When we got home I stuck my finger in my aunt's husbands back and told him to stick em' up. He did and I told him, 'now you got the Holy Ghost'. He chuckled but it was the first indication to me my aunt had a big stick up her ass.
Seems like years later until we started to regularly attend church and it was when we moved to the North West part of town and attended an Episcopalian Church, still looks the same today. I loved it, us kids were Baptized and took communion. I became a Alter Boy, a C-Server for Father Bradshaw. I was sick as a dog on Midnight Mass one year and tried to beg out but Father Bradshaw did not have a replacement so we worked out a plan if I got sick. I was horribly I'll and all the incense that night seemed to zero in right towards me. As planned I made my exit returning when I was better.
I forget the name of the place we got dressed for services but while we were there Father Bradshaw asked me a favor. He wanted me to talk to my younger sister Robin about hogging the sacrificial wine. He said it was like a tug-of-war with her and he would have to refill afterwards. I must say the wine and the bread of Christ there was much better than at the Methodist Church.
For some reason mom got the notion I had a problem with my self esteem and had Father Bradshaw talk with me about it. I think it was all wrapped up with my poor grades which we also discussed. He had a phone call and needed to attend to something so he gave me paper and pen and I was to practice signing my name as it was my first gift as a baby and something to take pride in. Well I practiced well into adulthood, never totally satisfied but think this grew into part of my interest in autograph collecting. This was the last place of worship my family attended as a child, I don't know if it was moving to Welcome Mountain or something else that pulled us away. I had some great times there, I loved the Wednesday night pot luck suppers, the food was so good. I can still remember Father Bradshaw sitting, drinking and smoking with the Bishop when he came. I had them both sign my Communal book. I have it somewhere around hidden away, like memories I search for and occasionally locate.
We were living in the North West section of town during this time, not far from down town. Hippies lived in the big two story dwelling on the corner and the Episcopalian Church we attended was only a couple blocks away from home. I was in Boy Scouts then and was working on my God & Country medal so I was an Alter Boy as part of my work. Our next door neighbor was Mrs. Woodruff, a blind woman who I believe was a home town librarian.
West Hill was right next to us and the Nazareth Hospital was a couple blocks just East. My sisters and I dug Crinoid Columnal plant fossils to make necklaces out of. It was adventurous times and I made full use of my bicycle, that sported a banana seat and colored Good Year tires, the latest thing. Good Year was a spot in my wanderings where I got free air and meet my Scout Master Mac Howell who worked there.
Our house was a three bedroom, mine was the front room I had the walls covered with posters from the time and Boys Life piled next to my bed. The living room had strong sliding French doors and where I watched TV from, a favorite was Hogan's Heroes. I liked to sleep in this room as we had a big swamp cooler & it's rhythmic sound and cool breeze made for a good nap.
My parents slept in the back bedroom, this is where we watched the first landing on the moon, all five of us piled on their bed. It was like pulling teeth as I remember, we seemed to wait forever for those first steps. It was a magic moment and my family shared it together.
The year before my uncles were serving in Vietnam and was there during the Tet Offensive. Mom was putting a care package together, candy and such, I swiped the licorice out of it's box in the kitchen pantry. We exchanged letters with my uncles but we also exchanged cassette taped messages. My uncles brought me back Vietnamese currency, military patches that mom sewed on a camouflaged jacket she made me. Uncle Chuck also brought back a new song he sang to us kids, the "ding-a-ling" song by Chuck Berry. Uncle Burton came home to a new wife waiting to divorce him. Hey lady, try giving peace a chance.
At night we could here Rock & Roll music played from a teen hang out above the Grand Theater on the side of Welcome Mountain. I was a shade to young but longed to join in at a place originally called "The Bag" but because the 'B' fell off, it became referred to as "The Ag". I so longed to see Yellow Submarine at the Grand but they didn't let it stay long enough for me to go.
The house we lived in had a wrap around porch, a reverse "L" shape, first I ever enjoyed. I'm glad to see they have repaired it today, nice to sit and catch a breeze from either the front or the side. Over fifty years later, the oval glass window door is like it was when I was twelve to my bedroom leading outside. The neighborhood is much the same as it was back then, the church the exact same. I hope it is unoccupied when the 50th anniversary of the 1st lunar landing takes place. I would like to sneak in and honor the moment back then by watching those moments on a portable TV my family and I observed America's best history being made.
It was Al Spark's Texaco Station near the East Side Dairy Queen I meet my first car, a 1963 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88, brown and I paid $200.00 cash I had saved up for it. It had a body that was pristine and the inside was clean. So big back then, six people could sit in it and not even touch, you could lay down flat in the back seat for a good snooze if you liked. Powerful, 120 on the speedometer and the price of gasoline was well under a dollar.
So many times I would cruse East and West and North and South of my familiar hometown. I use to hit the Idle Hour Bar just South of town for Pool, dancing and drinking, not much luck with the girls there. I sometimes would go across the road to Bill's Gold Nugget for dancing and looking for girls. One night I did find one with a fiery head of hair and a volcanic personality named Kathy. We danced, I was interested, but when I told her my age she said I was too young for her but suggested her sister. This really didn't sit to well with me but when she lead me back to her table and introduced me to her sister, Sheri Lynn McBride I was sold in an instant. We drove around awhile and I finally took her back to her families home in Milsap.
Milsap is a small town not much of a population but fairly large in size for farming and raising horses. It's about ten miles from Mineral Wells and is where my great grandfather A.F. Garrett had his homestead. Ken McBride was a volunteer fireman at Fort Wolters and Sheri's dad. Sheri and I sat in front of her parent's house, kissing till 4AM in the morning until she said she had to go inside to sleep. I had to be at work at Buddie's Grocery at 8:30AM but my mind was in a hazy world of young love. So much so I backed out on that moonless night into a bar ditch, front wheel dangling in the air. I went back to the house, used their phone and called my mother and her boyfriend to pick me up.
Not sure how long I had this car maybe a year but the transmission was going out on it so I sold it. I think maybe it was from when Sheri's father pulled it out of the bar ditch with his tractor that might have caused the damage or my ignorance with working with cars. I still managed for awhile with the problem and visited Sheri and my great grandfather in Milsap as often as I could.
It was coming back from these visits that my youthful piss & vinegar had me try my car's power and speed on the old Milsap Highway. Back in those days there was a straight stretch of road with no turn-offs, just uninterrupted driving. I had no fear and no sense of my mortality in those days so I put the pedal to the floor, steaming along, God was with me no farm tractors pulled out in front of me. The speedometer just kept creeping forward until I could push it no more to the speed of 110 miles an hour. I felt like Ben Gazzara in the 60's TV series "Run for Your Life". It's a wonder I didn't crash and burn.
Today I have the hardest time wedging my head, neck and body into cars and miss the room of my first love. I miss drive-in movies I saw in it, girls I took for rides and cruising my hometown like that little dot in the Pong game for girls. I guess I miss just being young most of all and would do it again in a heart beat.
When I was four or five if I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up my first choice would have been a Navy Frogman. Now a boy's imaginations wont be limited to just one future so the only other choices I knew were an Astronaut or a Cowboy. It was at age five the birthday gifts I remember well were Roy Roger's six-shooters and a stick pony I immediately rode off on into grand adventures. My kindergarten teacher thought I was confused that it was dress up day when I wore my Cowboy outfit to school soon afterwards.
It was about 1962 when my parents invested in two sets of encyclopedias, Colliers and the World Book. They came in spaced apart shipments, not at the same time so their arrivals were an event. Now as I could not read, the boxes they came in were more of an interest to me than the books were. One I found fit perfect inside my little red wagon I made into my own John Wayne "War Wagon" when I could get my aunt to pull me in so I could fight off Injuns. Years later I actually saw the wagon at The Universal Studio's tour in Los Angeles.
We lived on North East 23rd Street during this time, my best friend Tommy West (my age) and his brother Mickey lived North West of me not too far away. It was there we played Cowboys and Indians in a cow pasture next to his home.
When the rodeo came to town it was a home town event that included a parade. Back in 1962 Smiley "Frog" Burnette (Gene Autry's Sidekick)rode in the parade that year, visiting for the rodeo and they had him meet the crowds after the parade. It was next to the historic Baker Hotel my sister Robin and I sat his lap for a picture. I remember it well, I wasn't familiar with him and my only experience of sitting on a fat mans lap was Santa Clause. I remember looking up at him, his funny old trade mark hat and thinking that someone was trying to pass him off as Santa to me. The event none the less is imbedded in my mind, a grand day in old West Town of Mineral Wells, Texas.
Other than Tommy there were no other kids around so living in my imagination became my closest ally and being a Cowboy living in the place where the Old West actually was, I was only separated by time. I was actually born in the next County which was Parker County, named after Chef Quanah Parker the famous Comanche leader who lived in the area I played in. I often was on the search for arrow heads from his hunting party days but never had any luck. Just North of 23rd Street, I had no idea I lived just nine miles from Oliver Loving's Ranch, the Texas Cattleman portrayed in Lonesome Dove as Augustus 'Gus' McCrae played by Robert Duval. In early October 2016 I visited the Ranch and the State marker that tells of the Ranch. The current owner came out to meet me and pointed out the old well and area of the bunk house. The place I played as a boy, Loving and his men most likely rode through or grazed cattle at. He was buried in the next town of Weatherford, Texas along with a friend Bose Ikard after his partner Charlie Goodnight carried his body from Fort Sumner New Mexico back to his Weatherford. Bose Ikard's grave marker reads near the same from the mini-series Lonesome Dove, {never shirked duty or disobeyed an order, rode with me in many stampedes, participated in three engagements with Comanches, splendid behavior. C}. Just a century before where I played as a boy, the history of the Old West was made.
As a boy I remember the large "Welcome Sign" you could see from miles East of town that sat on the front of the mountain and behind the historic Baker Hotel. Moved to East Mountain where it sits today but to me and perhaps others, the mountain of my youth will always be known as Welcome Mountain. Stories tell that this sign gave Cecil DeMille the idea for the Hollywood sign in California.
I can't recall if I was nine or ten years old my when dad would take to the precipice to look out on my home town and see the lighted Christmas Tree during the holiday season. I think the Welcome sign was lighted in those days but started to become neglected and was salvaged and moved to the next Mountain.
My sisters and I would often climb that hill, we lived there on top when I was about thirteen years old. I had read stories where a stage coach had been robbed and it's gold had been hidden in a cave along side the hill. One cave a few feet away was a large rock with a lizard carved in it we called 'lizard rock'. I wonder if either the rock or the cave is still there. I remember back in the 60's stories of Hippies living in a cave on one of the mountains.
Going back to the start of the last century there was a brick burro trail along the West side of Welcome Mountain. It was a well known tourist attraction that I imagine many of the bricks that make it still lay among a over growth of weeds & prickly pear cactus. The lizard rock I refer to is just off this trail. I'm not sure where all the bricks were made but imagine many were made in Mineral Wells and near by towns. People from all over the World came to Mineral Wells visiting for it's healing waters would take excursions on donkey's up this hill for views of the town and perhaps a sack lunch, maybe even stolen kisses and proposals of love.
Recently I went back for my high school reunion and I did a little looking around on Welcome Mountain. The road going up the mountain next to the old USO Club revealed a log cabin of some considerable age in the woods off the road. As many times I explored this mountain I never remember finding this place. The gate is locked and no trespassing sign warns against entry but I have to wonder what is the history behind this dwelling and when was it built. 11/11/2016 I talk with former Boy Scout member Brian Bennett of Bennett Printing. He said the log cabin was used when he was a boy by the Girl Scouts as a meeting or camping place. He is unaware of when it was built or any details. Bennett Printing today is where you turn to go up Welcome Mountain and was the location back somewhere between 1910-1915 as a Silent Movie theater on North Oak. Welcome Mountain today is pretty well hard to hike as it is either blocked off or over grown with Mesquite Trees, Cactus and other unfriendly protectors. Still I would love to walk it once more, aside from inside my dreams.
It must have been about 1965 when playing on the play ground at Lamar Elementary when I was eight years old, if memory serves. All the children's fingers pointed skywards towards the municipal airport. A silver beast was tacked to the sky, hardly moving with clouds moving among it. It was the Goodyear Blimp and it came to visit my hometown of Mineral Wells, Texas.
At home war birds fought in mock dog fights hung with string over my bed. Building models, planes, ships, submarines & monsters was my joy & captured many hours of my youth. So an aircraft that I had never known before whispered among the clouds of Texas sky, I was mesmerized. My mom, the best mom, none better in the whole U.S. of A. pulled up nearby and honked a come along tune that excused me from my play. I checked out quickly and we headed towards the Air Ship and the Airport. We approached the parked vessel on foot, walking the length of it's under belly. Meeting with the crew which must have been about three, pilot included spoke with us that day. I could not imagine a dinosaur as big as this flying apparition. The Mineral Wells Index, a local newspaper captured the event in photo and story but I relive that day sometimes in day dreams and remember how even this giant came not just to visit my hometown, but my childhood memories.
