Mr. Croft lived in a 28-room house all year long, farming all his land. In the summer his wife and two children were there, but during the school year they lived in Fremont, Nebraska where Mrs. Croft was a school teacher. She and the two teenagers were excellent musicians, Mrs. Croft on piano; the son was my age and about my ability on clarinet, and the older daughter on flute and piano. I liked and appreciated every member of that family very much; and, they all befriended me. They were all well educated people, and were very nice. Also, they were generous with everybody I saw them in contact with. The names of their children are on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t spit them out. The Crofts seemed to be a happy family, always enjoying life with one another. But, I never learned how Fremont, Nebraska fit into their lives.

One day, after hearing her son and I playing clarinet together, Mrs. Croft invited me to perform at some dinner at a private club on a pier out on Lake Michigan. I don’t know what the occasion was, but it was for a lot of very wealthy people. Mrs. Croft was to accompany me on the piano, but we never got a chance to practice together; so, I performed unaccompanied. I played a number called “In the North; In the South.” It was a difficult piece of music, and I was really surprised at the enthusiastic response of the patrons.

Somehow the Crofts determined that Peggy and I were two of the most polite young people they had ever known, and told us so. I think we were just shy. Nevertheless, they invited us to accompany them for a day at “Deer Forest” where the deer were so tame they would eat out of our hands. Food for the deer was available in little machines that accepted a dime for a large handful of food. It was an enchanting day for me. A pleasant day to remember. The Crofts brought a picnic lunch from home, which was quite elegant. The meat was fried chicken, and their fried chicken was boiled before frying. It is some of the best fried chicken in my entire memory. I’m not sure, but I think Mother and Pop were with us that day, too.

How could I ever forget people who treated me as the Crofts did? What wonderful experiences we had together! There were other incidents that I could add, but this tells enough to remember them by. I’ve always had great respect for that family and I’ll remember them forever with warm and kindly feelings.

The automobile factories in Michigan began making tanks. There was a train track near our home, and several times every day we saw long trains carrying tanks to California. Every train had over a hundred flat cars–some over 150–all carrying tanks to the West Coast. It was a heavy feeling. I don’t recall seeing any flat cars with automobiles on them; I suppose those were carried to their destinations only by truck.

Hallowe’en night was very special. We had a party at church. We played games and had apple cider and doughnuts for refreshments. I recall that we drank last year’s cider so they could put up the this year’s juice in the same containers. They grew lots of apples in that area. I think I ate a broomstick of doughnuts, too.

The last thing we did was to have a scavenger hunt. There were three or four people on each team. I forget what the prize was, but we had to go out into the town to do the hunt. One item was a dime of a certain year. Another was a lump of coal, and so on. The dime we got at the first house we went to. Also, the lump of coal. I was really impressed with the coal. I had never seen coal before. I was fascinated with it.

Anyhow, we got everything gathered up in just a few minutes and went back to the church. We were the first ones back, so our team won the scavenger hunt.

The kids there were very special. They were all so friendly and so good looking,–boys and girls alike. They were fun to be with and invited me to other parties in their homes. Though most of them lived on farms, I was unfamiliar with the quality of lives that they led. All so civilized and proper.

After the church party, almost everybody went to the party sponsored by the city of Bridgman. It was a carnival with lots of games and dancing. There was also a talent show.

At the talent show I played “The Glow Worm” on the clarinet (a difficult arrangement) and won first prize. Doing so was one of the highlights of my entire life. It was my first time to solo in public, and the crowd’s response was uplifting to me.

The thing I remember best about that Hallowe’en was that I had such a glow about me. Everything was so nice and wholesome! The people were so caring for one another; and they included me.

I have had many friends over the years, and had some really close ones in Texas before moving to Michigan. But, the ones in Michigan had an air of refinement and culture that I was not familiar with before that.

To this day I recall the quality of life I learned to appreciate in Michigan. That was my favorite Hallowe’en.

I was in the eighth grade at Allan Junior High School.

Allan Jr. High was a rough school. Half Latin American and half Anglos. Fifteen hundred students in grades 7-8-9. During my two years there I saw a lot of fisticuffs as well as many knife fights. In two years I saw 30 boys cut up with knives, some of them very seriously wounded, but no deaths. As I said, it was a rough school. (There was a knifing death at Austin High.) There were often rumors of “the big rumble,” which never came off. Once I stayed home from school, expecting “the big rumble” that day.

My two years there I experienced knives pulled on me three times, but it never resulted in a fight. In fact, one fellow was mouth-agape after I asked him why he wanted to cut me and he had answered (without reason?), “…to see if my knife is sharp.” I had then asked him, “Well, why don’t you whittle on a piece of wood then?” I knew he had almost killed a boy once with a knife. As result of our encounter, he became one of my best friends and protected me from bullies at lunch-time from then on.

We had 103 boys in my P.E. class. I was not a fighter. I was among the taller boys in the class. We had a surprisingly large number of boys six feet tall or better, including me. I was thirteen years old and was 6’1″ and weighed 110 pounds. (On my 12th birthday I was 5′ 11 3/4 inches tall and weighed 107 pounds, like a big stick of spaghetti!)

Well, it seems we played all sports in P.E. We played football in the fall, softball in season, soccer in season, track in the spring, and last of all–BOXING!

We were paired up by–no, not weight, but by height. That pitted me against one of the toughest boys in school: 169 pounds.

I saw him fight one night at the Austin Collesium in the Golden Gloves Tournament. He fought another boy in our class, also very tough. I told a friend who had gone with me, “I know these boys. It’s just a matter of who get the first hit in, and he’ll be the winner. That’s how it worked out. One hit in the first round: knees buckled, and a big fall. It was a knock-out!

That winner was my opponent! I was really scared. We were the last to fight. I saw fifty boxing matches in the days building up to our matchup in P.E. Actually, I was preparing myself for death. I thought to myself, “If he hits me, he’ll kill me.” So, when our time came, I went out swinging like a windmill with fifty blades. I hit him so fast and so often that he never got a lick in, and I won the fight. Afterwards, he told me, “I’ve never seen anybody fight like that in my whole life! ” Little did he know it was nothing but the abject fear of extinction that motivated me.

We went skating a lot that summer. The skating rink was designed to travel from city to city, the floor being of wooden panels and the “building” being a large tent. Skating was one of the “funnest” things for me to do in those days.

Other things we did for entertainment were: going to the carnival, (as long as it was there), going to a shooting gallery downtown, attending movies, hunting rabbits, and having old-timey family evening singing at the Craven’s Trailer Court. Mrs. Craven would play the piano, and others would play guitar, banjo, chicken leg-bones or spoons, etc. while we all sang. Some nights we would all go outside to sing, but without the piano, of course. We sang songs of the old South, Negro spirituals, hymns, patriotic songs, and Cole Porter songs, among others. Everyone enjoyed the evening singing, and it always ended up with either ice cold watermelon or homemade ice cream and cake.

I turned twelve that summer, and someone decided it was time for me to have my first date. She, too, was twelve years old. It was a blind date, and she was probably the ugliest girl in town and she had bad breath. It was a quadruple date. I think we went to a movie. Most of all I remember that she just wanted to hold hands all the time, and I wanted to be somewhere else with somebody else all the time, and after the movie and cokes we all hopped into the car and ended up out in the country at a windmill. It was very late, and I was sleepy and wanted to go home and go to bed. I think my date wanted to go to bed, too, but not at home. She wanted to smooch. I didn’t. So, we didn’t. We just held hands. At one point, I looked outside of the car and saw a pack of about thirty coyotes circling us about fifty feet away. Nobody else noticed. My date just snuggled up real close, and I kept trying to will myself into some other scenario. Next time I looked out, the coyotes were circling about twenty feet away, and I was pretty scared, but still didn’t say anything. Soon after that, I looked out the window again, and one coyote had his paws on the side of the car and was looking in the window at me. I sounded the alarm, and the party broke up and we were out of there in a pretty big hurry, seeking an improved environment, and I think it was at least two or three years before I had my next date.

Later that night, safely in my own bed (alone), from the direction of that windmill, I heard a pack of coyotes howling and yapping, probably in pursuit of a rabbit or something; and, having survived, I peacefully fell asleep.

In the 7th and 8th grades I went to Allan Jr. High School in Austin. It sat atop a hill and was a big square red-brick building with a basement and three upper stories. Half of the students were Anglos and half Latin American. It was a good school, though we had some inter-racial fights once in a while, often with knives. But, I had a lot of Latin friends as well as Anglos. For the most part everyone got along pretty well.

Some important steps in my life came at Allan Jr. High. I took wood shop for six weeks, & metal shop for six weeks. In those classes I learned a lot about tools and how to use them safely. A lot of practical knowledge from that class has helped me in being my own “handy man” at home.

Another six week class was Cooking. That was really a fun class. We sometimes paired up with a girl to be a “family.” We learned table manners, how to set a proper table and learned proper respect for the girls. It was one of the most useful classes I ever had. We learned some nifty recipes that I still use. But, one time when we cooked peanut butter cookies, my partner and I decided to double the recipe. Then we decided to split up because there was an extra oven. Therefore, we had quadrupled the recipe. The teacher didn’t realize what we had done until class was almost over and she was really put out at us because she was being nice that day and let each pair of cooks double the recipe. My partner and I had each ended up with eight times the dough for one recipe and the teacher made us stay there until all our cookies were done. We missed our next class and had a lot of dishes to wash. But, she let us keep our cookies. She was really a nice lady, as well as being a good teacher.

Then we had typing for six weeks. I loved typing. Boy! We really had some good teachers in that school! I learned to type 67 words per minute in six weeks, and that’s about how fast I type to this day. I learned to read what I typed, and got through some wonderful literature in that class.

We had Spanish for six weeks. After two other six-week courses, we came back for another six weeks of Spanish. That’s all the foreign language I ever had all the way through college. Just twelve weeks. I was in love with my pretty Spanish teacher, Miss Villanueava. She was an excellent teacher, though quite young, and fresh out of college. I learned a lot of Spanish in a short time, and it has served me very well over the years.

I sang in the Boys’ Chorus for two years. That was really positive experience. We had an excellent conductor and we sang only very good music, including Ten Thousand Men, Battle Hymn of the Republic, and The Holy City. That teacher stuck to music that we would know and appreciate for the rest of our lives. Good music! One might be surprised at how seriously that whole class took to our music. There were about 85 of us. Some had soprano voices, some voices were changing, and we had some fully developed basses. I sang alto. We made some beautiful sounds that I can still hear in my mind fifty years later.

Though I had Beginning Band in the sixth grade at West Columbia for half a year (starting two days before the Christmas break), I caught up with the other clarinet players who started at the beginning of the year. Then, I had to be in the Beginning Band again in the 7th grade at Allan Jr. High, because the Beginning Band there consisted of only 7th graders. I had already gone through all the books we used that year. One of the best things that ever happened to me was to go through Beginning Band twice! By the time that was behind me, I was really solid in the basics of playing the clarinet and in reading music, and I was a leader in Band that year and from then on. Band was my favorite class from the 6th grade all the way through Graduate School.

At Allan Jr. High I was put into a special class for advanced math students. There were 32 of us. Half a dozen of us in that class were way ahead of the others. After doing our daily work, the teacher had special problems for us to work. To us it was a game. I was in the top three math students in the entire 7th and 8th grades,–about 550-600 in each grade. Both years our little class stuck together, and we had the same teacher both years. She was a real genius of a teacher, not only in math, but in handling her students.

My English teacher was a real “Dud.” She was the only under-achieving teacher I had during my two years there, and I had her in both the seventh and eighth grades. I learned a lot about how not to teach while in her classes, and I don’t think my knowledge of our language was enhanced much in either grammar nor in literature. I think that my age was just right to learn to read better about that time, but saw little lasting improvement. I’m not making the excuses of a poor student; she was really not a good teacher, and should not have been there.

In PE because we learned the rules and went through the motions of playing all the major sports and some minor ones, competing with other teams in the class. That was another of my favorite classes. I didn’t like boxing, though. Whatever sport we were playing I was almost always one of the worst on our team. I was terribly awkward, both then and now. Years later, the game I played best was basketball. I couldn’t run then, and I can’t run now. I never could run well.

We had 48 Home Rooms in that school. During election year, each Home Room took the identity of one of the 48 states. We learned a lot about how the American political system works.

That year our family stood in line for hours to get on The Freedom Train, which carried some of our country’s most sacred documents. That’s one of the highlights of my life. Also, Harry Truman came through town on a campaign whistle stop, and that’s about what it was. He came out on the back porch of the caboose, waved his hat and the train moved on. I was a bit disappointed, because he looked just like his pictures.

A third highlight of that political year was attending the Democratic Caucus with Dad, Grandad Durden, and step-uncle Albert Durden. I think Jim was with us, too. Albert had run for the Democratic nomination for governor “way back when” against Coke Stevenson, and got splattered with political mud. Well, anyhow, at this convention were people that I recognized from pictures in the papers: Mayon Tom Miller, John Ben Shepherd, Sam Rayburn, Lyndon Johnson, and others. The platform was loaded with big-name Democrats. I recall as the evening drew to a close that I turned to Dad and said, “See that tall man up there next to Sam Rayburn? Some day he’s going to be our President.” That man was Lyndon Johnson. He wasn’t even a senator yet! That came with that year’s election.

Some of the friends I gained in Jr. High remain friends now, fifty years later. Jeannie knows some of them, too. Especially Burt Schulle. He and I were born on the same day in 1935. Also, Burt and I went to Austin High together in the 12th grade, and worked together at H.E.B. Sometimes we would spend the night at each other’s homes. His parents were some of my favorite people.

In 1968 Jeannie and I took a 29-day vacation. She was pregnant with Kelly Jo, and we spent most nights camping in a tent. We had a Volkswagon bug. I took the back seat out so we would have more room for camping gear, clothes, and for our food boxes, etc. I had a piece of plywood where the back seat should have been. It was longer than the car was wide, so I put hinges on it. I could take the passenger’s side front seat out and put it in the back, swapping the hinged boards for the front seat. It made a bed 7’2″ long so sometimes Jeannie could rest while I drove. We went to Palo Duro Canyon, Carlsbad, The Painted Desert, the Petrified Forest, Flagstaff, Las Vegas, Morro Beach, Sequoia Park, San Francisco, Stockton, Salt Lake City, and back home to Austin.

In Flagstaff we called Burt Schulle and his family, hoping to visit with them. But he was a forest ranger up on the mountain. We chatted by phone, but he said for us not to try to come up the mountain to visit, because the snow was still ten feet deep, though it was August. Another year we visited him and his family at Clovis, New Mexico. He was still a forest ranger, but was then in charge of the prairie around Clovis. I can’t recall his wife’s name, but I knew her family when I was still in high school and while I was at Southwestern, especially her sister Mary Beth!

I have a lot of good memories of Allan Junior High School, the students and teachers and the many extra-ordinary experiences I had there.

Years later the building succumbed to arson. But, for me, many good memories remain.

Austin, Texas: Spring 1949

Our family in Austin all attended the First Baptist Church. My Sunday School Teacher was Mr. Nollner. He’s one of the mildest, kindest, nicest men I have ever known. He was also an excellent Sunday School teacher, and was respected by all in his classes. Mr. Nollner also coached our softball team for the junior high school age group.

I was one of the pitchers on the team,–but not the best. I did get to play some, even though I couldn’t run well if and when I got a hit. I think I didn’t get to base very often. However, I did get to pitch regularly, a few innings at a time. (Everybody got to play.) Few people got to base off of my fast pitch with the spin on it. It was my one good skill in playing the game. In those days I was very bashful and soft spoken, and I spoke with a very slow drawl.

At the end of the season we scheduled a team picnic which included our siblings and our parents. Then, for some reason or another they changed the date of the picnic, moving it up a few days. The next Sunday Mr. Nollner asked me if I had a ride to the picnic and I told him I didn’t and probably wouldn’t get to go. He seemed upset and said that I really should go if I could, for the date had been moved up because I had told him I was moving from Austin to Andrews the next week. He said that at the picnic I was to be honored for my pitching for the team. I was terribly embarrassed, but certainly went to the picnic. It was one of the greatest honors I have ever received, to be recognized for my athletic prowess. They gave me a trophy. Me! The guy who couldn’t run like the rest of the guys!

Andrews, Texas, 1947, age 11, almost 12.

I needed a job. I was eleven years old, about six feet tall, and I weighed around 107 pounds.

I applied for a job as a Roustabout in the oil field, and got hired. They thought I was eighteen years old, and the pay was $3.00 an hour.

I was assigned to work with a man fixing rods on the horses that pump the oil out of the wells. He drove us to our first site about twenty miles out of town. We walked about 1/8th of a mile to the first horse. He appraised the situation and told me to go the truck and get him a crescent wrench of a certain size. I asked, “What’s a crescent wrench.” His reply was short and relatively polite, and it was to the effect that I was to just observe all day. He went for the wrench himself. He didn’t talk much, and I didn’t learn much, but I got one of the worst sunburns of my whole life. I didn’t report to work the next day. Instead I went to town and got a job washing dishes in a cafe at 35 cents an hour, having retired permanently from the oil business.

I hadn’t been in Andrews long when a carnival came to town. David Brown and Bobby and I went to it. They had all kinds of fun things to do. We were there a long time and were having a really good time. One thing I liked was shooting the moving ducks with a rifle. (The bullets were .22 shorts.) We were all good at that. Suddenly the mood all around us changed. It seemed as though panic had seized the entire carnival all at once. People were yelling and running every which way. Many people were running away from the carnival, toward their cars. Everyone was running. Everyone! All the games and rides stopped, and the carnival people were closing up their tents as fast as they could. But, it was too early in the evening for closing time. What was wrong? Bobby looked up and pointed at the sky. A hundred feet above us the town lights and the carnival lights lit up huge fast-moving boiling clouds of red, and sounds I had never heard before roared out at us. It was really scary! I had no idea what was going on. Bobby yelled out, “It’s a sandstorm!” Half a minute later it hit with all its fury. Vision was down to just a few feet. I was scared, but Bobby and David took us all to a safe place. I don’t remember anything else about that night except having learned that everyone there had proper respect for those sandstorms. This was only my first one, with many more to come.

Not long after that I was walking west from downtown on the highway toward home. One of those sandstorms hit suddenly, and I was surprised at how strong the wind was and how thick the sand was in the air. A car pulled off the road just ahead of me and the driver motioned frantically for me to get in, so I ran and got in. It was a very hot day. Inside the car the temperature was almost unbearable; but outside, the storm was even more unbearable. There were times we couldn’t even see the hood ornament on the front of the car. The sand blew for a long, long time that afternoon.

Another time I was walking somewhere when a sandstorm hit. After a few minutes it began to rain. The rain, wind and sand stopped almost as soon as it started. It was a very brief storm. But the white shirt I was wearing was now sand-red, and the red color really never did wash completely out of that shirt.

Sandstorms were an oddity, but I can’t say I ever got to where I enjoyed them. I recall one storm that lasted for three days and nights. Daytime temperatures in the house were 105 degrees, and the dust was so thick in the house we wore wet handkerchiefs over our mouths to breathe. Like wearing a fur coat on a hot, hot day, it really felt good when we were finally out of it.