Summer in Sudan part 2 - On the Farm

While we had fun in town, the real fun was going out to Uncle Blackie and Aunt Elsie's farm with my cousins Van and Patsy.

Their farm was several miles outside of town. After traveling several miles of "paved" roads the last turn was onto a sandy dirt road that was a real mess when it rained. The paved roads were of a tar and gravel composition and weren't really that good. When Pleaston View Drive in Arlington got paved it was the same tar and gravel composition. They owned 640 acres and there were several more sections, a section is a 640 acre plot, that belonged to the Seymour family that they sometimes farmed or that we could go hunting on.

Before they built a new house on the paved road when we were much older, they had a small house surrounded by a few trees. As you know, there aren't too many trees in West Texas and when you find two or three together you usually find a house. So their house was very typical. We always went into the door on the backside of the house away from the road. I don't know if there was even a door on the road side. When you came to their house you pulled off the road and into the chicken yard between the house and the barns and other out buildings. When you went in the door you were in the litchen. There was a bedroom to the left of the kitchen and a large living room when you went straight on through the kitchen. Off the living room was one or two other bedrooms, or maybe it was just another bedroom and the bathroom. Anyway, it was a small house.

The water came from a well and a windmill kept water pumped into a holding tank from which the livestock was watered. The well house was a thick walled stucco building and inside was a that was kept very cool by the stucco walls where they kept a lot of canned goods. I always thought that it was really neat how cool it was in that room even when it was 100 degrees or so outside.

To the west of the house about 100 feet was the main barn. It was larger than the house and held the sheltered portion of the hog pen, the cattle stalls, and the hay loft above the stalls. South of the house was the hen house and between the barn and the hen house was the well house. The area by the barn was fenced with a combination of wood planks running horizontally and hog wire. Where that fence stopped a single strand of electric wire fence ran around the well house and hen house and on around to the road. There was a wire fence that ran all along the road except where the house and driveway around the house were. The land to the west of the barn was an area for the cattle to graze. South and east of the house were the garden and usually a field planted in maize. I suppose they could have had cotton in there sometimes, but I remember maize. On the rest of the 640 acres there were large cotton fields and maize fields. Sporadically, there were grazing areas that were not tilled.

That's the physical layout of the farm and the site for our adventures.

The chickens ran all over the area between the house and the hen house. They had lots of chickens. We'd gather fresh eggs from the hen house every morning and every evening. At lunch, if we were going to have gried chicken, we got to go out and pick our chicken. We select one and go catch it. Sometimes we had to select another one more easily caught. After we caught it we had to kill it and clean it. I don't rember a whole lot about that process but we were shown how to do it and did it. Aunt Elsie always said I was really good at snapping the chicken's neck and killing it. Gary was always too squimish and couldn't get a good, quick break. I remember Van catching one and chopping its head off with a hatchet. You've heard the expression "running around like a chicken with its head cut off"? Well, I've seen it! That chicken ran around in circles all the time spurting blood. Finally, it quit and died. I guess Aunt Elsie always gutted it and plucked the feathers. I don't really remember doing that. Anyway, Elsie's chicken was always great, and, for Gary, we always had mashed potatoes. He loved Aunt Elsie's mashed potatoes.

Any leftovers that weren't fit to save were thron to the hogs. They really like the leftovers and would really go at it eating them. I didn't liek the hogs much. They stunk, they were big, and I was warned they could hurt you. When they ran out of bacon or ham they'd load a hog into the pickup truck, tie it in securely, and take it to the butcher shop in town. A few days later there was fresh bacon, pork chops, pork loin, ham, and sausage.

We helped feed and milk the cows, too. Milking a cow isn't as easy as it might appear. You had to tie their head up so they wouldn't reach around and bite you and you had to be careful they didn't kick you with their hind leg. If you knew what you were doing the cows didn't give you much trouble. Obviously, I didn't or at least didn't do it well. The normal way to make a fist is bring all your fingers together at the same time or may even bring your little finger, then ring finger, and on up first. You don't get any milk that way. You have squeeze the teat with your index finger first and then then middle finger and on down to squeeze the milk out while kind of puuling down on the whole teat. When you have both hands going right you can get alternating steady streams going and get the cow milked in good time. Perhaps the cows didn't like us because we were also known to direct the stream at someone standing nearby and have milk fights that way.

They also had ducks that swam in the stock tank and nested in the barn. They didn't eat the duck eggs. They let them accumulate until a duck sat on them for the 28 days or so required and hatched them. One day when Buddy and Travis were there with us we had a brilliant idea. We gathered up a bunch of the duck eggs and went up into the hay loft. There, we moved some of the remaining hay bales around and made a couple of forts, divided up teams, and had an egg fight! Since a lot of these eggs were ones that a duck had been sitting on for days and maybe weeks, these were rotten eggs and boy did they stink! I think we quit when Patsy got hit a by a couple of rotten eggs and went to the house to clean up. When Aunt Elsie found out what we were doing she was livid. She wanted the new ducklings and she didn't want a stinking barn. She yelled at us but we didn't get a spanking or any other punishment that I recall.

Picking cotton is tough. While they had a tractor that had an automatic picker on it, they also hired migrant workers who were paid by the sack for what they hand picked. I tried it for about 30 minutes one day. It was hot. It was hard to get the bole to lets loss of the plant. And, you just didn't get much cotton in the bag for all that work. Van and I fixed that. We crawled up into the trailer that the cotton picker attachment was dumping its cotton into and filled up our bags from that spout! That was much easier picking!

The best tortillas I ever had was from one of those migrant worker kitchens. One evening Van and I were walking back from one of the fields a long way from the house. The workers had already quit for the day and they were staying in one of the old one room houses on one of the adjacent properties. They gotto stay rent free in one of those shacks as part of their pay. As we were walking by we saw that they were cooking dinner. Vam asked them if they had anything we could eat. Thye brought us each a fresh flour tortilla. Up until that time I had never had a flour tortilla. I had only had thin corn tortillas. This flour tortilla was was as big as a pancake, hot out of the skillet. We put a little butter on it and ate it. Boy was it good! Maybe it was just because I was so hungry. Maybe it was because it was the first time I'd ever had a flour tortilla. I don't know. I only know it was good and I remember it to this day.

Well, this has been long enough; but, quickly let me tell one more story. One reason I gave you the layout of the farm was for this story. we were playing baseball over in the maize field. There was enough room between the field and the electric fence by the hen house. The ball was hit and I went back to catch it. Did you know how hard it is to catch a fly ball when you're getting zapped by an electric fence! It was quite a surprise and I dropped the ball. I don't like electric fences. They won't hurt you but they sure scare the beejeezus out of you.

I loved summers in Sudan.

Summer in Sudan, part 1 - In Town

As kids growing up my brother and I would spend at least 2 weeks every summer in Sudan. We split time between Granny's house in town and Aunt Elsie's and Blackie's farm south of town. We had a great time and many memories. I'll try to relate some of them here.

First, getting there and home was often an adventure. Many times we'd ride the bus. Mom would take us to the bus station in downtown Fort Worth, the bus driver would put our suitcase in the storage bin under the bus, and we'd get on for the almost all day ride to Sudan. I don't remember ever getting off the bus on the way. I guess we didn't have to change buses and we took a sack lunch. Anyway, the bus driver would stop the bus by the side of the road when we got to Sudan and let us off. We'd cross the highway to where Granny was waiting. On the trip back we had to wait outside by the road and flag down the bus driver to get on for the return trip.

Staying with Granny was always fun, even though she had no air conditioning. Heck, we didn't have air conditioning until we moved into the country. We had an evaporative cooler in the den that blew down the hallway running through the house into the kitchen. Around 5th grade mom and dad got a window A/C unit for their bedroom. At Granny's we had an evaporative cooler in the kitchen that blew through to the front room. Her house wasn't even big enough to have a hallway. It was literally a 4-room house with a bathroom added on later. The bathroom was really little more than a lean to. It was wide enough to put a cast iron tub in and had a small sink and commode, but the ceiling wasn't more than 6 feet tall. The other rooms were Granny's bedroom, the living room, the kitchen/dining room, and Bob's bedroom. Most of the time Uncle Bob wasn't there. If he wasn't there we slept in the double bed in his room. If he was there we slept on the couch and on the floor, or maybe with Granny in her bed.

Early on, my uncle Bud and Jean Crouch lived in Sudan with our cousins Travis, Buddy, and Carla. Later they moved to Lovington, New Mexico but they'd come to Sudan when we were there. Jean's mother lived a few blocks away from Granny. The one thing I remember about her house was that she always had a bottle of vodka on the table and was drinking it from a glass. Morning, noon, or night she always had her vodka. Travis was a year or two older than Gary, Buddy was my age, and Carla was a couple of years younger. They also had a cousin, Tommy, who was Gary's age and lived in Littlefield. Sometimes he'd come over when we were there. Of course, Elsie and Blackie had my cousins Patty and Van. Patty was Travis' age and Van was Gary's age. As you can tell, that's a bunch of kids around the same age, so we had fun.

Sometimes we would have baseball games, sometimes we'd walk all over town, and sometimes we'd have a little bit of mischief. A fun treat was to walk down to one of the grocery stores and get some candy. There were 3 mom and pop grocery stores. Granny didn't like the lady that owned the store closest to us, so she didn't want us to go there. I think she didn't like her because she didn't give credit. It was a block from the house. The other 2 stores were 1 and 2 blocks further away and they gave credit.

So, the Sudan downtown consisted of 3 blocks and there was a grocery store in each block, all on the west side of the road. They also had a bank and a newspaper, The Sudan Bee, on that side of the street. Diagonally across the street as you headed downtown from Granny's house was the Methodist church. In the next block was the Ford dealership, then a hardware store in the next block, and finally the police station and the city park. Going south from Garnny's house, the Baptist church was at the end of the block. Main Street ended with the Baptist church and dead ended into the schools. The Elementary, Junior High, and High School were all on the same block with football field and Baseball diamond (no outfield fence) right behind.

Granny spent years working as a cook for the schools and later she was a cook for the coffee shop at the Sands Motel. All the farmers would gather there for breakfast and we often walked there ( about a mile away) for lunch. It was the best reastaurant in town.

I hope you got a picture of the town, 1200 people with no stop lights. One main street down the center of town with Highway 84 on the north end and the school on the south end. I forgot one of the other prime spots. On the highway was the Dairy Bee. That was the hangout for all the high school kids. Every night they'd drive up and down Main Street, turning around at the school or the highway and occasionally getting an ice cream or Coke at the Dairy Bee.

I said "mischief" earlier. Here is an example. Granny's house had a big porch in front and the roof was at its apex over the front door. High up in the apex was a huge wasp nest, probably 6-8 inches in diameter. Buddy and I (and maybe Van) found a box of rubber bands from somewhere and started shooting them at the wasp nest. When we'd hit the nest the wasps would come swarming after us. We'd run out into the yard until they didn't follow anymore. As we hit them over and over the wasps started chasing us further and further. On our last shot we had to take refuge in the Methodist church across the street. Granny finally realized what we were doing and sent Bob out to burn down the nest. He soaked a rag in gasoline, wrapped it around a broom or hoe or something, set it on fire, and held it up to the nest until it was burned away. It also blackened the white paint.

Bob also had a huge dog, Bo. I think it was part great dane, part boxer. It was huge, tall like a great dane, but much heavier. The butcher at the grocery store was always giving us bones to take to Bo. One day, while playing baseball in the backyard, I stepped on one of Bo's bones and slit open the bottom of my foot. We were playing barefoot. We went most everywhere barefoot. Granny didn't take me to a doctor. She just cleaned the slice, put a gauze bandage on the bottom of my foot, and wrapped it in tape. I had to walk on the side of my foot. I went bowling in Muleshoe like that and on the bus for the trip home.

One other event I remember in Sudan was during the fall when I was about 5. We went to a Sudan Hornet football game to see Bob play. I remember it was extremely cold and I was all wrapped up in blankets. As far as the game went it was always "Bobby Don this and Bobby Don that." He was the Sudan football team. I think he was about 5'10" and 160-170 pounds which was really big for a high school running back in those days. Granny always claimed that the Pittsburgh Steelers offered him a contract out of high school to play pro ball. That would have been in the mid-fifties. Instead, Bob wanted to join the Marines and avenge the death of his brother Jack in Korea. He joined the Marines and became a drunk. He killed his best friend in a DWI single car wreck by running up a phone pole. Since he was a football star and they couldn't prove who was actually driving, even though it was Bob's car, the judge let him go. Many years later when he ran over and paralyzed a kid on a bicycle while DWI the same judge put in jail in Huntsville for a couple of years.

My uncle Bud was also a drunk and was divorced from Jean by the time I was out of elementary school. He too spent some time in county jails for petty, alcohol related crimes. Coupled with my dad's admission that he was an alcoholic and my belief that alcoholism was hereditary, you can see why I've always been afraid of it and abstained from it.

The only other incident I remember was the death of a 15-year old girl. I don't know how she died but Granny made us go to the funeral. I was about 10. It was at the Methodist chuch with an open casket. They moved the casket by the back door at the end of the service and you had to walk by it to get out. I'll never forget the dead girl lying in a casket shrouded by plastic. I've hated open caskets ever since. I want mine closed when I die. At that point I'm dead, leave me alone. I don't want people gawking at me.

C-J Softball

The Citizen-Journal had a softball team for some of the years while I was there, and, of course, I played on it.

Usually, companies have teams for their employees so they can build company morale and cooperation. I'm not sure the C-J accomplished that goal, but we had some memorable times.

In the early years of my C-J teams Mark Strickland and Verne Hargrave were still in the mailroom. Jerry Hyde was our Advertising Director or Sales Manager, and I was just a staff accountant that handled various different roles. As a softball team, we weren't very good and I'm sure we lost more than we won. Most of the time, the players still had a good time.

A prime example of our ineptness occured in a game at Randol Mill Park. We had one out and men on first and second. Tommy Eller was on second and Victor Garza was on first. The batter hit a line drive into left-center field. For some reason Tommy held up on the play to see if the ball was going to be caught but Victor was running from the moment the ball was hit. The hitter should have gotten an easy double. OK, the stage is set. Are you ready for what happened then?

The outfielder fielded the ball off the fence and quickly threw into the cutoff man. The cutoff man fired it to the catcher. Eller, who didn't get a good break on the play, is being waved around third by the coach. He slides into home and is tagged out on a close play by the catcher. A second or two later the catcher tags Victor out as he too is sliding into home. A double play by the catcher at home plate to end the inning. I had never seen that happen before in my life and have never seen it since. Only the C-J could have done it.

The other memorable evening involved Mark Strickland and Jerry Hyde. Strick has always been a loudmouth and very intense in sports games. As usual, he was shouting encouragement, comments, etc. He was also only about 20 years old and still small, about 5-7 150 pounds. He wasn't being negative, just loud. Jerry was a about 6-2 240 pounds. Although he was a member of First Baptist, he did not follow the no alcoholic beverage teachings. Also, Jerry was a mean drunk. He'd had quite a few beers before the game and was getting really upset with Strick and told him to shut up. Jerry was in the dugout. At Randol Mill the dugouts were fence in and the "ceilings" were only about 5 feet tall, so you had to bend over to walk through them. Strick was on deck getting ready to bat. Jerry told Mark to shut up and Mark said no. All of a sudden Jerry was in a rage and going to tear Strick limb from limb. As Jerry was storming through the dugout I stopped him with a shoulder into his chest. Strick went flying down the right field line and junped the fence with astonishing speed. I couldn't believe he cleared out so quickly. The umpire threatened to make us forfeit the game if we couldn't control our players. That too was a first, it was the first time I'd almost seen a team forfeit a game because their own players were angry with one another. Strick never came back to the field and went home. After he calmed down, Jerry went home, too.

About the time I was moving over to WBAP the C-J had a team again. The coach was the Sports Director and he also played 3B. I played shortstop. We were winning by 1 run and the bases were loaded with 2 out. We were in the field. A bouncer was hit just to the left of the third basemen and the bounce went under his glove. I had a really good break on the ball and back-handed it in the outfield grass, planted my right foot (about 6' from the foul line), and looked to throw the guy out at third. I remember being somewhat suspended in time on my right leg, trying to gain enough balance to make a throw. I was also waiting for the 3b to see that I'd made the play and get back over and cover the base. As I saw him move back to the base, I threw the ball and then fell as my momentum carried me over. We got the force out to win the game!

It was a great play! It was also a lucky play, but one I will always remember.

Living in the Country

We moved out into the country during the summer after my sixth grade year. What is now a housing edition on the corner of I-20 and Pleasant View Drive was 2 4-acre plats that my folks had bought. Pleasant View Drive was a 1/2 mile or so dirt/gravel road off of Pleasnat Ridge Road. Pleasant Ridge was a narrow, winding poorly maintained two-lane asphalt road. It was maintained by Tarrant County Precint 2 which meant there wasn't a whole lot of money for upkeep.

East of Pleasant View on Pleasant Ridge was a steep hill. It was called both hiccup hill and Morales Hill. Kelly Elliott Road ended at the top of the hill and that was how wide the hill was, just enough for the narrow raod and then it dropped off on the other side. When you drove over the hill your stomach would come up in your throat and cause you to hiccup. It was called Morales Hill becasue a guy named Morales owned the 4-5 acres on the north side of Plesant Ridge down to where Kelly Elliot started again going north at the bottom of the hill. The hill was full of slum shacks that Morales rented out.

Mom and Dad had bought the first 4 acre tract where we actually put our house a few years before we actually moved out there. I can remember having a garden with lots of tomatoes. I went to all the houses up and down and around Sharon Street in toen selling about 2 pounds of tomatoes for 10 cents. The first tract was heavily wooded, except where we put the garden. The second 4-acre tract was almost barren of trees. An old farmer had owned it. They had several kids and they all lived in a 4 room shack of a house. They boys slept out on the porch during warm weather. Of course, they were gone by the time we moved out there. We used the house for a hen house where we kept out chickens.

We also bulldozed out a stock tank (lake) and built a barn with 3 stalls for our horses. The lake was stocked with perch and largemouth bass. Crappie and catfish washed in from the stock tank on the adjacent property when it rained heavily and the water ran over their spillway. We had a great time fishing in the lake. We brought my Little League team out there for a party after we had finished 2nd in the city. I remember Steve Perry got a hook stuck in his head when he tried to cast out his line. I can also remember fishing out there in the summer when the fish were so hungry they'd bite anything you threw out there. After running out of grasshoppers, worms, and nits of cheese we tried sticking dried leaves on the hook and they even hit that! We caught 50-60 fish in one day. I never cleaned a single one. My mom always did that.

The chickens we had were really unique. A friend of my mom had some chickens that they'd hatched from eggs sent to them from an ad in the Weekly Reader. The chickens were from Chile and they laid different colored eggs. As I recall there 3 or 4 hens and one mean rooster. The rooster was black with a golden neck. When we gathered the eggs we had to keep an eye on him because he would pack at you and spur you with the claws on his feet. He was really mean. One of the chicked was kind of a mattled black and white and was smaller than the rest and dashed around everywhere very quickly. We called her Speedy. She laid blue or bluish green eggs. Another was reddish brown but had feathers coming on either side that looked like a big bushy mustache. We called her Whiskers. She laid brownish pink eggs with purple splotches in them. The other hen was an ordinary reddish brown. I don't remember her name and her eggs were solid brownish pink. We had our picture taken ans a story was run in the Citizen Journal about our chickens that laid the colored eggs. My mom is holding Whiskers in the picture with Gary and me on either side and some of the colored eggs and a normal store bought white egg lying side by side in front of us.

Our first horse was Brown. That was his name and that was his color. He was an old horse, really more of a pony. He was larger than a Shetland pony but not as large as a normal horse. We learned to ride on him. I think we paid $75 for him including his saddle and bridle. The second horse we bought was Beauty. She was a dark brown and white Paint. Her previous owner was a barrel racer and Beauty was her horse. However, Beauty had one rear hip that was higher than the other so she wasn't a competitive quality horse. She has avery easy nature and we had her several years. As we got older Brown was too small so we sold him and bought a pool table with money. We also bought anotherPaint mare. Midnight was a back and white paint. When we had races she always beat Beauty. Just up the road from us a guy had bought the land and started clearing the land to build a house. He also put in a nice dirt road that made an ideal race track. We'd take the horses up there to race them. I'll never forget day when Verne was over. He was riding Midnight and Gary or someone else who'd come over was riding beauty. The went up to the track to race. It was about a 1/4 mile away. My dad and I and I don't know who else were sitting in front of our house waiting for them to come back. We heard someone holler "Go!" and we knew the race was started. 10-15 seconds later you could here Verne hollering, "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa dammit whoa!" I still laugh thinking about him hollering and trying to get Midnight to slow down.

We built a swimming pool ourselves using a kit that we bought from Montgomery Wards. There was a natural depression and gully out in front of the house by the garage, so we put the pool there. There would be less dirt to dig out that way. We dug the deep end until we hit sandstone and couldn't go any deeper. Then after digging around everywhere else to the specifications of the plans, we lined it with sand, and put in a vinyl liner. And, that was the pool. We had a lot of church swimming parties and played a lot of "baseball" games in the pool.

Growing up in the country was great. Swimming, fishing, and riding horses were great. On the down side was cleaning the pool, cleaning out the stalls, and hauling hay. We literally shovelled the crap out of the stall and into a wheelbarrow. Then we dumped it in a pile outside the barn. Later we'd come back with the tractor, scoop up the manure, and dump it in the garden area. That would later get plowed under for the fertilizer. Hauling hay wasn't much fun either. It was hot, sweaty, and itchy. Gary and I got into more than one fight while hauling hay. One time we were hauling hay in using an old 1952 pickup over in Kennedale. We were making 8 cents a bale to haul it out of the field and stack it where the farmer wanted it. At the same time he was paying another couple of guys by the hour to use his tractor and his trailer to stack bales from ther same field. After talking to them we realized that they were actually making more money and using the other guys equipment. ALso, they got to goof off whenever the owner wasn't around , which was half the time. It didn't look so bad becasue they could put a lot more bales of hay on the trailer than we could on the truck. We got back at them though toward the end of the day. A big rain storm was coming in and the farmer wanted us to haul in hay from an alfalfa field. Those bales were a whole lot heavier. He offered us more money, 10 cents, but we said no. We needed to get our own bales home. The other guys had to work doubly hard with the owner right there working with them before the rains came.

Since this has been a book already, I'll quit. I may revisit this someday.

Sixth Grade

I have lots of stories that I remember about 6th grade, but I don't remember my teacher's name. I had her for everything but muisc and math. For Math we had Mr. Farmer.

Sixth Grade was my artsy year. Martha Sue would have been proud of me. Besides doing the lettering for many of the class posters and had two paintings that were selected class winners and were entered into the citywide art contest. One was a drawing of a horse's head and the other was an abstract with lots of mixed colors and could be construed as a field of wildflowers.

I was also asked by the music teacher to be Hansel in Hansel and Gretel but it would have required me to miss PE for all the special rehearsals. We were playing the other classes in softball to determine the sixth grade champions and I wasn't about to miss that. I told her no and was a lead Sandman instead. I can still remember part of my little solo. "The little sandman am I, and nothing evil plan I. You children I love dearly and ??? ??? ?? I don;t remeber from there.

During the winter months, probably February, we had a heavy, heavy snow one day while we were in school. School was officially closed during the morning and parents were allowed to pick up their kids and take them home. Since we lived across the street I decided I needed to go home for lunch. It took some convincing but my teacher finally let me go. Of course, I stayed home once I got there. Gary stayed and went to Mr. Farmer's Math class after school. Since there were just a few kids their Mr Farmer taught them a special formula that we would learn in junior high, but he made the kids promise not to tell anyone else. Gary still hasn't told me to this day. I think it was the area of a circle or triangle or something. I couldn't believe Gary would never tell me.

Also during that second semester Tommy Waterson got into a fight. He was the Safety Patrol representative from our class. As punishment for the fight he was kicked off Safety Patrol. The teacher asked for a volunteer to take his place and I raised my hand. I was the only one, so I got it. I got to wear a big silver badge like a policeman's and manned a crosswalk at the corner of the school to stop traffic and let kids cross the street. Now days we have hired adult crossing guards.

During the last week of school the sixth grade had a swim party where we all went out to Lucas Park. Lucas Park was on the edge of town at about Arkansas and Fielder. My mom had made Gary and me a towel cover-up. It was like a jacket or a shirt. Anyway, I wore my swimsuit and the coverup to school instead of pants and a shirt. One of the linemen on the football team started making fun of me by the bicycle rack for wearing the towel thing. I told him to shut-up or I was going to puch him in the nose. He didn't and I did. One right hand to the nose and it was busted. He was bleeding everywhere. He didn;t tease me anymore. He also didn't tell on me so I didn't get into trouble.

When I talked about 5th grade I talked about my broken finger clicking on the piano keys at the recital. What I didn't say was the recital was at the Crow Elementary auditorium and they made do a little fashion show type walk out to the piano, do a litle turnaround, and then play. All the time thet where making some comments about what we were wearing. Gary and I played a duet of Skip to My Lou. For my sixth grade recital I played the Marines Hymn. For my last recital (7th grade) I played Battle Hymn of the Republic. You've heard me play it more than once. I can still play it, sort of.

Anyway, that was sixth grade. We moved out into the country that summer so that was my last year at CB Berry and the Arilington School district.

Fifth Grade

Fifth Grade was one of my all time favorite years. I had Miss Sisk, now Mrs. Vance Hunt in our church, and it was her first year to teach. She was really wonderful.

Our room was again in the temporary buildings. I found it without any problem this year. Our "lockers" were really just open shelves mounted on the wall with would dividers every 18 inches or so. Miss Sisk's mother made nice little yellow cutains for each of the lockers. It was really pretty.

Miss Sisk went to our church and I often saw her there. That's why I was so surprised when I found out that she was going to vote for John F. Kennedy. How could she vote for Kennedy? Everyone knew he was Catholic and we couldn't have the Pope running the country. My folks had supported LBJ until he accepted the VP slot with Kennedy. Then they switched to Nixon. I can remember going to the Nixon Arlington campaign headquarters and even doing some work there.

I did really well in Miss Sisk's class and made excellent grades. I think that was the year I broke my right index finger. They put it in a curved splint of foam with an outside cover of heavy aluminum. I had to play the piano recital with my index finger curved and in this metal splint. I reworked my fingerings so that I played all the second finger notes with my middle finger, but sometimes there was no way around it and you hear a loud click adn then the note as my metal splint hit the key. That was also when I hit the inside the park home run off Mike Nicole in Little League.

Miss Sisk, now Mrs. Hunt was a great teacher and has remained a good friend all these years. Vance Hunt was a car racer. He regularly drove a dragster at Green Valley Raceway. It was a 1/4 mile track and they reached really high speeds in that short time. They had a parachute that opened at the end of the race to help stop them beofre they hit the wall at the end of the track. As a condition of them getting married, Vance had to quit driving the cars but he continued to help build them and was part of a race team. One day, on the car he would have been driving, the chute failed to open and the car wrecked killing the driver.

That was 5th grade and it was really a good year.

Fourth Grade

Again, not a whole lot happened. I do remember not being able to find my class on the first day of school. There were some classes inside the main building but my name was on any of the lists by the door. I went out to the temporary buildings. The first building was for 4th grade and the rest were for 5th grade, at least that was what I was told and how it had been the year before. My name wasn't on either door of the first temporary building. I was so upset that I couldn't find my room that I cried. A teacher or someone saw me and came over to help. It was then that I found out there was one more 4th grade class over in the next temporary building that used to be just 4th grade. Mrs. Bernard's class and my name was there.

I think it was also in 4th grade that we had to learn to cut out letters from construction paper. It was a homework assignment in my class and I had a terrible time doing it and didn't do it very well. My cuts weren't crisp and straight, they were sometime torn in appearance. I didn't get them lined up perfectly straight and, worst of all, my Y was abysmal. It was much smaller than the other letters. The whole thing just didn't look good, but I did it and turned it in. Mrs. Bernard graded the letters and passed them back out to the class. After everyone else had gotten their letters back she held up mine in front of the class. "This one didn't have a name on it, whose assignment is this?" The whole class laughed and made comments about how poorly it had been done. The Y looked even more hideous. Holding my head down I had to admit the paper was mine. The grade was a D. I was humiliated.

From then on I learned how to make the letters right with crisp cuts and straight line. I even learned how to mat different colors of the letter behind the top letter. By the time I was in 6th grade I was chosen to make the letters for the posters for the class that hung on the wall for everyone to see all year.

And that was 4th grade.

Third Grade

My thrird grade year at CB Berry was relatively uneventful and there is not a whole lot that I remember, but here are a few things.

Third grade marked the start of my brother Gary and I being in the same grade. Although he passed he was having a problem with phonetics (or frenetics as one unnamed relative seriously called it) so my parents held him back to repeat third grade. Besides, he had started school early, like I had done, and that put him in the right grade for his birth date.

Mrs. Thompson was my original 3rd grade teacher. However, she was only there a month or so when she had to resign. She was pregnant. In htose days a teacher had to notify the administration immediately if she discovered she was pregnant. A pregnant teacher was simply not allowed. I guess it would somehow have damaged our minds or morals. I don't know, that's just the way it was. Mrs. Anderson took her place and was really nice.

I broad jumped 13 1/2 feet. Really! I'd start 30 or 40 feet away, run as fast as I could, and jump when I came to the lead rope. I'd land on my butt and slide for another several feet. We did the broad jump by the swing sets. After I had won our broad jump contest, Mrs. Anderson sent someone into her classroom to bring back a ruler so we could measure it. 13 1/2 feet. I know I couldn't do that know and I'm not sure I could have even done it in college.

So much for third grade.

Top Boy

Top Boy, that's the title Handley Junior High bestowed on the 9th grader voted Student Body President except they had a Top Boy and a Top Girl and had a new election each semester. To win Top Boy you had to have a certain grade point average, formally enter the race, and make a speech for the school assembly.

John Tandy, a friend of mine and a member of the basketball team, won the first semester. I decided to run the second semester after encouragement from my homeroom and English teacher. I think her name was Mrs. Stewart, but I can't remember. She was probably in her 50's, rather large, but a good teacher. We had just won the basketball city championship, so I had a good chance of winning.

The day before the election I withdrew my name. I didn't want to give a speech. The morning of the election Mrs. Stewart asked me if I had my speech ready. When I told her I had withdrawn she got mad. "Get down to the office right now and put your name back on the ballot!" I don't remember what else she said but she was emphatic that I was going to enter.

I went down to the office and told them I'd changed my mind again and wanted to be on the ballot. They had already prepared the ballot but they hadn't run it off on the mimeograph machine. The names were in alphabetical order and to add me would put me out of order. After checking with the principal the secretary said OK. They typed my name on the master as the last name. It was slightly off register with the rest of the names but I was on the ballot.

I can still remember the "speech" I delivered to the assembly. Some of the people spoke a long time and some for just a few minutes. Mine was short.

"I'm Charles Goodyear and if you vote for me I will do my best to uphold the high honor of Handley Junior High."

That was it. One sentence, not even 10 seconds.

There were 5 guys on the ballot, so there was the possibility of a runoff. I only remember one guy who ran, Dan Young. He'd run the first semester and lost to Tandy. He was a big guy but didn't play any sports. He was in the band. In high school he was in ROTC and was the highest ranking officer in the corp. He had given a very nice, lengthy speech.

When the votes were counted I won easily. I won 98% of the vote in the 7th grade classes and about 95% in the 8th grade classes. I even won over 50% in the 9th grade classes. We only had about 100-120 people in each grade and I won about 300-40.

For my official duties I had to introduce one speaker at an assembly. I'd never met the guy or even heard of him. He was supposed to be an east Fort Worth icon and was a scoutmaster or something. Anyway, I introduced him and acted like a knew him and that all I had to do all semester.

That's the only time I ever ran for an office in school.

When I was a senior everyone who had the qualifying grade point average was put on the ballot at the beginning of the school year for Student Council President. Since that was the start of football season it was pretty much a given that a football player would win. Todd Webster, a football player and good friend, had actively campaigned for President. He'd been the class president as a sophomore and junior. I was surprised to finish second and be named Student Body Vice President. I hadn't asked anyone to vote for me and I had voted for Todd. I actually won my homeroom . I was always proud of that.