Remembering 1955

 

REMEMBERING 1955

 

   It all started in June of 1954 when I finished fourth grade in Sweetwater, Texas. My Mother had been fighting cancer for the past three years and my Dad decided to move to a larger city so that she might receive better treatment. I was filled with mixed emotion as I collected my end-of-year report card and said goodbye to my fourth grade classmates, that I would likely never see again. I was eleven years old and my teacher, Mrs. Owens, had been a great teacher as well as a beautiful lady in the eyes of a fourth grader. She was the first redhead that I ever fell in love with.  I was so proud that I had made straight “A’s” throughout the entire year; it was the only year I ever accomplished that feat.

   Dad sold the house for less than $5,000 and we had already made arrangements to move the 200 miles east to Fort Worth as soon as school was out. Back then, I seriously doubted that either of our parents had any notion of the trauma that engulfed their three boys. Mike was ending eighth grade, Ted was graduating from sixth grade and as I finished fourth grade; none of us had ever attended school anywhere else in our lives. David Scott, who had six toes on the right foot, was my best friend and he had been in the same class with me since first grade. All the friends we had in the world were right there in Sweetwater, Texas. All our memories were there; our school, our church, our scout troops, our pets, our home, our neighbors; our memories of everything up to that point in our life were there; and we had to arbitrarily end all of it, and abruptly just move away on that early June day. I cried silently, but we knew that we had no choice, and we knew it was for the greater good, so we reluctantly accepted our situation for what it was. As a father of four children, I can now understand our parents’ anxieties and I realize that Mother and Dad were probably sensitive to our needs, but they just did what had to be done.

 

Dad and Mother in Sweetwater in 1954

We were whisked off to our Aunt Millie and Uncle Jimmie’s farm for the next several weeks while our folks searched for a new home in Fort Worth. When they came to pick us up in August, Dad was driving a brand new turquoise and white, tutone ’54 Chevy four-door Bel-Air. He had spent part of his newly acquired ‘fortune’ to make sure that we had dependable transportation. We loaded up and headed for our new adventure in the big city. Our Uncle Jack and Aunt Toots lived there and they guided us to neighborhoods that were close to their residence. Our folks picked a rental home on Jeff Street in the Oakhurst section and we moved in just before school started. The elementary school was close so I had only a short trip to begin my fifth grade experience at my new school in September. Oakhurst Elementary was in a pretty area with actual oak trees instead of the mesquites we were accustomed to in West Texas. The larger city school had larger classes and I was suddenly thrust into a brand new universe of kids and I began making some new friends.

    I really was beginning to enjoy the new surroundings when a most remarkable thing happened. Mother was suddenly enjoying improved health so Dad decided that he would have a better opportunity for work if we moved to his hometown of Marshall, Texas. After just six weeks in my new school and after just beginning to make new friendships; déjà vu, we were moving another 200 miles east again. For sure, Dad was now struggling financially, to pay for Mother’s doctor bills, and he had to find meaningful employment. On a Friday afternoon in October, my brothers and I bade our new friends’ goodbye and again ventured to a new home at a new destination. Having just experienced a similar circumstance in June, I was somewhat ambivalent, though somber, to leave my new acquaintances. At eleven years old, you don’t control anything, but I certainly would have liked to have stayed where I was.

   The good news was that all of us dearly loved Marshall. This was the home of our Dad’s family reunion every fourth-of-July, that we always attended with great anticipation. Marshall was the “Piney Woods” compared to the barren rocky West Texas terrain. It was lakes and rivers, bayous and ponds, cypress trees and lily pads, and hardwoods and pine trees; everything green and wet and wonderful. It really was exciting to consider living there, and I think that euphoria took the edge off the dread of having to move again. Strangely, I ended fourth grade in June, and now, in October, I would be entering into my third elementary school during that five month period.

   We moved into a stately rent house on Crockett Street, a couple of blocks from the downtown square in Marshall and close to Dad’s nephew, whom we called Uncle Buddy. He and Dad were brick masons and they had worked together often. Uncle Buddy and Aunt Catherine had lived in Sweetwater and we were very close to them and their daughter Donna Kay. It was suddenly very cool to be living in the same place with them again. Sam Houston Elementary was a considerable distance away and Mother had to drive me to school and pick me up every afternoon. Mother also had to go to the Junior High and it required a lot of juggling on her part. Occasionally, on a pretty day, I would walk all the way home. I was captured by the natural beauty of the trees, flowers and the shrubs that are indigenous to the area; I will never forget seeing my first red holly bush as I walked home in a falling snow.

   Our home was an old clapboard frame home with a grand front porch and a screened in back porch. It had tall ceilings and wood floors, and it set high off the ground on piers and beams surrounded by a continuous footing concrete and brick foundation. Tall oaks and black walnut trees surrounded the house and a very large pecan tree towered over the driveway. One of my fondest memories was picking up the newly fallen pecans that November. I can still taste their wonderful freshness as I collected them by the coffee can full and cracked them right on the driveway. I have never since gorged on newly fallen pecans as I did that year. It was absolutely awesome! I tried the walnuts and though I really wanted to like them, they didn’t compare to the pecans. Those pecans were one of those rare delightful tastes in my life that still lingers on the palate.

   We developed new friends again and settled into a lifestyle that was at once exciting and novel. Unaccustomed to living near a forest, it was fascinating to forge out with Dad and cut down our own Christmas tree. Just like John Boy on the Waltons, we found our tree growing wild in the woods, cut it down and brought it home to decorate. Dad drilled holes in the trunk and added green branches to fill the gaps on the tree. We had strings of the large multicolored lights and Mother had a few of the tall bubbly lights that looked like candles to put on the tree. We finished it off with golden strands and shiny silver icicles and a star on top. Before then, I thought Safeway Grocery stores were the sole providers of Christmas trees. We enjoyed one of the best Christmas holidays of our childhood that year, even though I didn’t get what I thought I was going to get. In mid-December Mike and Ted got a chair and peeked on the top of Mother’s closet at Santa’s stash. As they pulled down each item, we each picked what we thought would be ours on Christmas morning. I never told anyone, but Ted got the model car I was sure would be mine. As I reflect on that year, it’s amazing that they were able to afford anything for us, and I should have been extremely grateful for whatever they gave me. Even with my self-imposed disappointment, my memories are of the fondest kind. Mother was still in good health during the holidays and we were fortunate to enjoy her wonderful generous spirit. She made a special fruit cake that everyone actually enjoyed eating. Even though she must have been suffering during this time, she stoically endured her pain and provided for her family.

   I learned to write in cursive that year with a pen staff dipped in a black inkwell; blue was not allowed. I was terrible at first, smearing horrible strokes that Mrs. Nesbitt would smile at as she showed me how to blot out the excess and dip lightly into the well. Fountain pens with ink bladders were not allowed and ball point pens didn’t exist. I usually arrived home with splotches of black on most of my fingers and in my palms. Mrs. Nesbitt was old school all the way, probably sixty years old; she wore long floor-length dresses and black high-top, lace-up shoes with high heels. She was patient and caring and she taught me many of the basic skills in math and grammar. Mr. Seagraves taught history and I learned all the states and their capitals in the basement of that ancient brick two-story schoolhouse. He would point to a state outline on a blank map and I was one of the first to say the name of every state and capital. He was the only teacher that I ever knew who whacked a ruler across the knuckles as a form of punishment. Today, he would be branded as a cruel and unusual criminal, but in 1955, he had a very well-behaved class of fifth graders.  Miss Johnnie taught music and I learned that I could carry a fair tune on all the old songs she taught. Songs from the Old South like ‘Suwannee River’, ‘Eating Goober Peas’, ‘Reuben Reuben I’ve Been Thinking”, and the old classic “Clementine’. And since the Civil War was actually over for some ninety years, we sang ‘Glory, Glory Hallelujah’ as well as ‘Dixie’. Outside of Mrs. Nesbitt’s room was an old-fashioned fire escape slide that I often day-dreamed to try out. It was metal and it made a long sweeping glide all the way to the ground from the second floor. Today it would be declared unsafe and unusable.

   It didn’t take me long to discover a cute little red-head wearing horn-rimmed glasses, named Diane Rodgers. She was like me, in that it was her first year at Sam Houston, and we found a common ground to talk about. Now at twelve years old, I was suddenly interested in the opposite sex, but I was incredibly shy and clueless of what to do next. My friends noticed that we liked each other and considered us to be “going steady”, but we weren’t going anywhere.

    We didn’t have a television at home yet, but we would walk one block to Donna Kay’s house every afternoon and watch early children’s programming like ‘Howdy Doody’ and ‘Pinky Lee’. They were live, black and white broadcasts and lacked much in the realm of professionalism, but we loved them all. On Saturday afternoons we would walk to the opposite side of the square, watch a matinee movie at the Paramount theatre, and then swing by the local drugstore counter for a burger and a fountain drink or a chocolate shake. Rock and Roll was in its infancy, and many of the early rock and roll groups lit up the movie marquee. Bill Haley and the Comets had just made their hit record of “Rock around the Clock” and it was made it into a pretty sad ‘B’ teen movie. Elvis was just beginning to record and Carl Perkins had a new hit called “Blue Suede Shoes”. Rock of that era pales in comparison to classic rock of the seventies and eighties or today’s heavy metal. Bill Haley’s rock and roll had the word ‘rock’ in every lyric; in fact if it didn’t say ‘rock’, it wasn’t rock. By today’s standards, it was laughable and it didn’t last very long either.

My name is Pinky Lee

Snookie Lansen,Russel Arms
Dorothy Collins, Giselle McKenzie 

Buffalo Bob and Howdy Doody

         
  
                                                                                           

 Pop music was Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Nat King Cole, Jo Stafford, Patti Paige, Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney and oh yea, the Four Tops and the Ames Brothers. Our favorite television show was called ‘Your Hit Parade’ and it featured a count-down of the top songs off the Pop Charts, juke boxes and record sales for that week. Each Saturday night, we went to Uncle Buddy’s house and waited to see whether Snookie Lansen, Dorothy Collins or Giselle McKenzie would sing our favorite songs. I remember “Mr Sandman” and “The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane” were two of my favorites that year. Life was simpler then, music was mellow and fun. The family sat together and enjoyed the fellowship as we ate popcorn and cookies while we drank sodas or iced tea around the oddly shaped 17 inch screen. For some reason, televisions had curved sides that bulged out on both sides from the straight horizontal top and bottom lines. We didn’t have remote controls; you had to turn a knob on top of the TV that controlled the motorized antennae to point in the direction of one of the four broadcast channels you wanted to watch. That seems an odd and archaic practice when I think about it now.

   When we moved from Sweetwater, we left a lifestyle that was inclusive to white America; there were no African-Americans in the entire county we lived in. Four hundred miles to the east, Marshall was deeply entrenched in the segregated Old South. It was a year of awakening for me and my brothers, because we saw the deep division that separated the races. We weren’t prejudiced, but we found ourselves in the midst of deep prejudice and segregation for the first time. Schools, churches, restaurants, buses, drinking fountains, and everything else were still totally segregated. It was a strange new world and fortunately, it was on the verge of change. Brown vs. the Board of Education had been settled by the Supreme Court in 1954. It felt strange to sit in a theater and know that others were not allowed to sit in the main theater but they had to sit in the balcony to watch the same movie I was watching. I had not been taught the prejudice that I was thrust into and at my age I didn’t know how to cope with it. Marshall Texas in 1955 was steeped in segregation as much as any southern state at that time. Mississippi wasn’t burning yet, but it was certainly heating up.

   My Step-Grandfather, “Shorty” Rodgers, back in Fort Worth, died and he was brought home to Marshall for burial. He was much loved and it saddened all of us. On a cold early Spring day we attended his funeral in the family plot under the protecting boughs of an ancient oak. He was buried with a space between him and my Grandfather J.L. Warbritton who had died 35 years earlier, leaving room for my Grandma in between. Soon after his passing, something happened to Dad’s financial situation, (either more doctor/hospital bills or difficulty in getting work), and we were forced to move from the wonderful old house that we rented. Incredibly, for a third time in nine months, we were going to have to move again.

This photo was taken on Crockett St during Grandpa Shorty’s funeral wake- it shows me in front of my Mother and Grandmother with Aunt Toots standing behind her and the tall fellow in the back was Uncle Jack.

    I will never, ever, forget when Mother came to me and told me that they had found a home on Fulton Street on the other side of town, and I would not be going to the same school for the rest of the year. It didn’t matter to Mike or Ted because there was only one high school and one junior high school in Marshall. When she saw the despair and shock on my face, she softened her approach and said, “Honey, it’s your decision; if you want to continue going to the same school, I’ll come and pick you up every day, because it’s too far for you to walk. But if you change schools you will only be a few blocks away from your new one.” As a good friend of mine used to say, I felt trapped on the horns of a moral dilemma. If I kept going to the same school, I would be breaking the law and I would have to lie about my residence at my school. If I changed schools, it would be the third school in the same grade year and I would have to leave all my friends again. I thought then, and I think now, that at twelve years old, I was being asked to make a decision that I should not have had to make. My Mother thought she was helping me deal with it, by letting me make the choice. I felt the weight of the world on me and felt it very unfair to leave it all up to me. But in reality, it was a decision that Dad was forced to make and I just had to live with the consequences. I chose to stay at Sam Houston because I clearly did not want to change schools again that year.

   I was still sweet on redheaded Diane, and I was still trying to figure out what I was supposed to do next. East Texas had the Old South ritual of Mayfest in late spring and apparently it was a time when young boys took young girls out after the festivities. My friends kept asking me if I was “going with her” after the Mayfest. In my mind, I thought they were asking if I was still considering her as my girlfriend for the rest of the school year. In reality, they were asking if I was taking her out that evening for a date. I told them, “Sure I’m going with her”, but I never realized my ignorance until several days after Mayfest when Eddie Joe Crowder explained it to me. Diane had been elected Mayfest Princess for our homeroom and I was elected Mayfest Prince. We practiced holding hands and walking up to the Royal Court during a couple of practice sessions and then someone discovered that I had not attended Sam Houston for the first few weeks of the semester, so I was declared ineligible. My good friend Gerald Brasher replaced me and held Diane’s hand as he led her up to the Royal Court. I was demoted to a square dancer at the Maypole where I twirled another girl. Diane was sweet and still remained my best friend for the rest of the year. I never had the courage to ask for a kiss, but at twelve you go a lot of places in your mind. Life was more genteel, twelve year olds were not exposed to the sexual pressures of our current age, and the pace was much slower than today.

  We managed to keep our move secret till the end of the school year. We lived on Fulton Street till the Summer of 1955. It was a smaller home with asbestos siding and less appealing than our home on Crockett Street, but it met the needs of our family at the time. We got a television with a remote channel changer and watched ‘Hit Parade’ and ‘I’ve got a Secret’ with Gary Moore at home. We listened to the radio a lot too; I first heard Elvis on “The Louisiana Hayride” out of Shreveport, Louisiana. We also listened to country singers like Hank Snow, Red Sovine, Patsy Cline, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Slim Whitman and Eddie Arnold. When DDT trucks drove down the streets spraying for mosquitoes in late Spring, we would run behind the truck and play in the hazardous fog they were dispensing. Amazingly, none of the three brothers suffered any latent diseases as a result of our folly. I learned what “cat-eye” marbles were and how to use a larger “taw” to shoot other marbles out of the ring in the back yard there. Of all the houses we lived in that year, it was the smallest and I liked it the least. My dislike probably stems from the cloak of secrecy that was imposed on my stay there. When my brother Mike and I visited there recently, it appeared to be so tiny.

   Mother’s cancer once again required treatment and my Dad was forced to make the decision of moving back to the big city that summer. Unbelievably, for a fourth time in a twelve month period, we moved. We once again packed up and moved back to Fort Worth and this time we moved into Uncle Jack and Aunt Toot’s home on Maurice Street. They had just vacated it when they moved in with my recently widowed Grandmother. This home was across the street from a park with a playground and a public swimming pool. It was to be the final home of my childhood.

   In August of that year, I went with my Dad to a Chevrolet dealer in downtown Fort Worth and sat in the car while he traded our almost new 1954 Bel-Air in on a brand new, light blue 1955 Chevrolet station wagon with the new V-8 engine. Apparently Mother had decided that she wanted to see an Aunt up in Colorado where she had lived as a child and they wanted a vehicle large enough for all of us to enjoy the long journey. It was my first trip to Colorado and I will never forget it. When you see the profile of the Rockies looming in the distance for the first time, you think you are just seeing a cloud bank. As you draw nearer, you are awestruck when you suddenly grasp that those are mountains. One is amazed at the magnificence of the natural beauty you see; especially when you have been raised in the flatlands of Texas. It was a wonderland from start to finish for me; we stayed at a tiny tourist court in Maniteau Springs on our first night. The water from the tap was like ice water and it tasted like it came directly from a mountain spring. We ventured out for a couple of days and saw all the tourist traps; Seven Falls, Cave of the Winds, Garden of the Gods and then finally we drove to the top of Pike’s Peak. I saw vistas that stirred my young heart and I knew that Mother was drinking it all in also. I suspect that she figured this would be her last chance to see these majestic sites and she wanted to share it with her children. We saw trout swimming in crystal clear mountain streams, deer, beaver and mountain sheep on the steep inclines. Twenty-eight years later I transferred to a job in Denver and I was able to do the same for my own children. I took them to places where my parents took me, but we discovered there are so many more beautiful sites that don’t cost a penny to visit. Up to that point in 1955, it was the best vacation of my childhood and for many years to come. We stopped by her Aunt’s in Pueblo on the return trip and then drove through Raton Pass and across the Panhandle of Texas back to Fort Worth. Mother started radiation treatment for her cancer shortly after we returned.

Mother was not expecting a photo as she walked out of a tourist shop in Garden of the Gods near Colorado Springs, Co. (Note the fender of the 1955 Chevy wagon in front of her.)

 

   I started the sixth grade in the Fall of 1955 at Riverside Elementary, which was the fourth elementary school (Almost five!) I was to attend over a 15 month period. I lived in the house on Maurice Street for the next six years, until Mother finally succumbed to the relentless stalker of her life during my Senior year of High School. She was a testament to the power of the ‘will to live’, to keep a person alive while battling a life-threatening disease.

   In retrospect, 1955 was filled with one new adventure after the other. We generally lived in better places than we had before and we enjoyed the taste of their new cultures and the making of many new friends. Even though I was forced to face many adversities, in many ways, it made me a better person, and it caused me to grow up prepared to face the realities of life. I’ve seldom questioned ‘why’ things happen, I just accept the things I cannot change, while exercising a lot of patience to endure their challenges. As a parent, I caused my children to leave a lot of friends behind with frequent moves, but I don’t think they ever felt the challenges I did in 1955. Through all the traumatic events of that year, I left my childhood innocence behind and matured beyond my years. I still marvel at the level of growth one can attain in so short a period of time. I learned to make decisions based on the knowledge you have before you, and that sometimes you have to make tough decisions which affect others that you love dearly. I forgave my Mother long ago, if she needed forgiveness, and I'm sure my children have forgiven me for the tough decisions I had to make during their childhood. I believe that life is a series of choices and each of us is accountable only to ourselves, our God and those we love most.

   I never saw David Scott, my best friend with the six toes, from Sweetwater, ever again; I played in the band and graduated from Carter Riverside High School in Fort Worth with Ray Parish whom I met during my six weeks at Oakhurst Elementary; I never saw Diane Rodgers again, but when my Fort Worth High School played Marshall High School in football, I saw Delores Carrington from Mrs. Nesbitt’s class in Marshall, who told me that Diane had moved to Michigan the year after I left and they never saw her again. My brother Ted married Fay Couch, who is my age and attended Sam Houston the same year I was there, though we never met during that year. My son Darren lived in Denver for many years and my Grandson Kristofer has been raised in a home near Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. And oh, by the way, I did marry a beautiful redhead named Cheryl in 1994, and she was only five years old in 1955.

   I am a child of the Fifties. I started elementary school in 1950, entered Junior High School in the fall of 1956 and I enrolled in High School in 1959. The most significant year of my life may well have been 1955; surely it was the seminal period of my youth. I experienced recurrent uprooting, painful partings, new found joys, difficult choices, and my discovery of the opposite sex. I learned to cope with the things I cannot change even though they alter our sense of security and safety. I learned that life is not always fair, that there are good times mingled with the bad, and that the love of your family can conquer many challenges. Through it all, I remember 1955 as one of the best years of my life.   It was a very good year for a Chevy, and 1955 was a very good year for me.

   Written for the exclusive use of the Warbritton Family by David Warbritton