George Martin Rex

Born June 12, 1931 Kirkwood Missouri

Parents Father, Clarence Bartlett Rex Mother, Clara Katherine Martin

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KIRKWOOD MISSOURI

My earliest memories have few that include my father. The ones I have
may depend more on being told of him. One story is of mother and father taking
me to the Ringling Brothers circus. They were very disappointed in my reaction.
It seems that I sat very still and quiet and did not laugh or show any enjoyment
of the performances. Once the show was finished and we went home and for
some time afterward they were deluged with vivid descriptions of every detail of
the three rings of activity. There had been no reaction because I was
concentrating on seeing it all.

Things mother told me about my father- he was a golfer and his clubs
(1930s type) were in the attic in Ft. Smith, perhaps mother played also but I don’t
know. He smoked a pipe and some were also in a steamer chest in the attic. He
liked un-frosted angel food cake which is probably why I prefer mine only lemon
glazed. His red leather easy chair went with Mother in all her moves and she sat
in it in the apartment in Little Rock. Father bought mother a small wooden rocker
after I was burn which I still have. At some point one of the thin shaped spokes of
the back was broken. I would like to find a wood shop that could repair it. The
chair is in our front living room along with a wood stool that from Uncle had in
front of his chair in hie living room. A very nice oil painting that I got from mother
hangs by the stair to the attic and I would love to know who the artist was.

Because Father had a ‘strawberry’ birthmark on his forehead he did not

like to have his picture taken. Evidently I was born with one on my back and one
behind my left ear which were burned off with radium which resulted in small
scars. I doubt that that would not be done today. Some children’s shoe stores
such as Buster Brown used to x-ray feet to see the fit of shoes a practice long
since stopped, no doubt when the realities of radiation exposure were
understood.

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 Evidently my Father was interested in the Hot’ cars of his day Mother said
he owned a Rio and a Cord. I wish I knew what the car he is pictured with here
was. I think my mother was also employed by the Frisco railroad and may have
been my father’s secretary. Or worked in office. Mother was able to secure tickets
for John and I to have Pullman car sleeping rooms with bunk beds for our trips to
Carrolton by way of St. Louis. An overnight trip under the care of a negro porter
mother knew. We had the run of the train and went to the rear smoking car to
look out of the platform at the end and those where the cars were connected. We
ate supper and breakfast in the dining car, I think the conductor provided for us
as I don’t remember paying for those meals myself. A friend of Mother’s met us
at the station in St. Louis and took us to the bus station to go on to Carrolton..

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 I was born June 12, 1931 at St Louis Maternity Hospital in Kirkwood Mo. My
first home was Apt D, Russell Arms, and 3302 Russell Rd. St Louis Mo ON June
25... The picture of me in a crib which was a family heirloom was taken in Aunt
Louise’s bedroom on December 12, 1931. I was six months old.

I was baptized on October 11 at Tyler Place Presbyterian in St. Louis and

named George for grandfather Rex and Martin from mother’s family name.
George Rex was also my father’s older brother’s name.

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 According to the Rex Genealogy book published in 1931 the first George
Rex in America was the UN acknowledged son of King George III and Hannah
Lightfoot known as the “Fair Quakeress”. They had several children the first two
were female. The third was a son (George Rex II) and following on in Line Three
to my father’s older brother. There are several published books about Hannah
and her relationship to George III.

This photo and the one of John in mother’s lap are from a very extensive
record in the baby book mother kept of my early life. Many other facts will be
added to what may be viewed by the reader as an exhausting ego trip. I do know
that mother also had a baby book following Johns early years and I hope his
family has it but as I remember it was not as extensive. Probably due in part to
the death of our father and her move to Rogers,

Aunt Lucy was one of four sisters, grandmother, Aunt Lena and Aunt Nina
who probably was the youngest; she was the last to die at about 92. I visited her
in a nursing home in Hot Springs Arkansas. She was bed ridden for at least two
years and very impatient to die. “Why won’t He” let me go? Was her question at
the time? She still had the active mind of a former school teacher.

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 John came into the world December 11, 1933 while we lived here. The
picture below of mother with baby John seems to have been on the front porch of
the Walker home on W. Walnut Ave in Rogers Ark I remember the fluted columns.

Our next stop was 217 East Adams in Kirkwood. This was the house I
remembered and made the background for my short story “George and the
Squirrel.” This was our home until Fathers death

This photo of Mother holding John was taken on Aunt Lena’s and
Uncle Wyeth’s front porch.

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 Mother then moved to 615 W, Walnut in Rogers Arkansas where we lived
until the start of World War II in Dec 1941. Mother lived on what Father left her
until she needed to go to work. She moved to an apartment in Ft. Smith and John
and I were placed in St Anne’s convent which was two blocks away. I was half
finished with grade five. John and I lived with the sisters of Mercy until Mother
sent me to Gulfport Miss to attend Gulf Coast Military Academy. The sisters lived
in a four story stone building with dormitories’ for grade school boys on the third
floor and a fourth floor dorm for high school girls. The elementary school was
across Grand avenue from the larger campus that contained the Catholic church
which faced down Garrison Avenue, the main drag and former parade ground of
old Fort Smith. Also on this campus was the Catholic high school, the Mercy
Hospital and a stone grotto with statues of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. The grotto
was built around the stone chimney of Andrew Jackson’s home from when he was
the commanding officer of the fort. Garrison Avenue was six lanes of traffic and
two lanes of diagonal parking that continued across the Arkansas River into stock
yards in Oklahoma. I got a ticket there in one of my illicit uses of Mother’s car,
doing dido’s in an open area

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 The last two years of H.S. I returned to Ft. Smith and lived with Mother and
John at 2703 Kincade. The house was the second from the corner of Kincade and
Greenwood. Next door was the home of Lola Allen, a second grade teacher and
her mother.

This house had a living room behind which was the dining room and on
back was the kitchen. A wide archway the front living room to the dining room a
door on the left to mother’s bedroom and a door further on to the kitchen.
Continuing back from mother’s room was a door to John and my bedroom then
the small bathroom. The stairs to the second floor went up from a small utility
room in very short hall connecting the dining room and our bedroom.. The second
floor had a large attic area with a door to a room which was our playroom in good
weather and a door to a screened sleeping porch looking out on back yard. A
garage sat on the back right corner with a sliding door out to the alley. The
access door from the yard went into a sort of workshop storage area. It had work
counter on which I had cages for guinea pigs and a chemistry set. There were
often roaches in it but I never saw them in the house

Mother was a great supporter of the University of Arkansas football team

perhaps because John went there and was on the tennis team for two years. She
was such a fan that when a stadium for the team was built in Little Rock she
bought stadium bonds which provided her with two 50 yard line box seats. Twice
when she went out of town to foot ball games I was able to sneak the car out of
the garage and use it.

The house was the second house on Kinkade with a brick building used
then as an ice cream plant behind it. The ivy covered back wall of which edged
one side of our back yard. Across the alley was a small mom and pop grocery.
Lola Allen a second grade teacher was our neighbor on the other side of our
house. Her elderly mother lived with her. As mentioned elsewhere she tried to
teach me hand writing, not very successful it seems. One of the unintended
results of this was that I use two different lower case r’s in my writing. Depending
which lettrt the r proceeds or follows. Evidently I was taught the r that looks like
stump in elementary school, Lola had me use the somewhat “v” like one. I was
totally unaware of this until the mrn’s dean at Hendrix pointed it out to me when
I was called to his office foe something relating to my working as a laundry
pickup and delivery agent for a laundry in the dorm. Several times a week I went
about the dorm to collect laundry an place it in a large cabinet outside my room. I
was the only such agent to provide washed and ironed dress shirts. Two other
boys dealt with suit and slack cleaning.

This laundry deal provided a regular substantial income to supplement the

allowance Mother gave me. At one point I also worked in the dining hall dish
washing room for about three months.

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 .

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 I have some memories of our home in Kirkwood Mo., a part of St. Louis.
We lived in a two-story stucco house with two stairways, one in a wide entry hall
with carpeted steps and the other of narrow plain wood steps that led down to a
door at the bottom into the kitchen. I remember sitting at bottom of the kitchen
stair and teasing our black cook who may also have been the house keeper. My
Mother said that I called her Aunt Jemima as she reminded me of the picture on
the pancake box.

I remember the front hall staircase as a place where I played and where I
fell with a wooden balloon stick in my mouth. The stick jammed into and tore my
tongue and I seem to remember mother walking me to a doctor’s office nearby
with the stick still embedded. The damage was so bad that three stitches were
needed and they left a long jagged scar on my tongue that remained for years. I
liked to stick my tongue out to show the scar well into my teens.

In the front yard had a least one large pecan or walnut tree that attracted
squirrels. I have written a short story based on this, “George and the squirrel” in
which the maid helped me trap a squirrel.

I have little memory of the rest of the house except for being sick in a
bedroom and having people around me as I struggled to breathe. I had bronchial
phenomena perhaps at that time or close to it and as a result have had breathing
problems ever since. St. Louis at that time had soft coal heating and the coal
dust was in the air and probably contributed to my poor breathing. Even after we
moved to Arkansas I continued to have asthma and allergies and I still have a
constant post nasal drip. I have been diagnosed as being allergic to MT. Cedar,
eggs, grass seed and similar windblown stuff.

Mother was my father’s second wife. His first was still living and they had
one son, my older half brother Clarence. My Father was Clarence Bartlett Rex and
his first son was also named Clarence. Father was general auditor for the Frisco
railroad and mother I believe had been his secretary. I remember seeing Clarence
(2) only one time as a child and I have a photograph of me, my younger brother
John with Clarence’s (2) son David riding in a wagon. I think I do have
somewhere a brief info note about fathers family, I do know Bartlett was part of
his mother’s maiden name.

That must have been on a trip we took through St. Louis and on which we
visited father’s grave and I believe visited some of mothers old friends. We must
have been on our way to visit my grandparents. Grandmother Zelda and her
second husband, Clark Thomas were farmers in Carrollton Illinois. And I have
many happy memories of their farm. At harvest and haying time I helped get the
bailed hay loaded and into the barn loft. One chore was grinding dried field corn
to be mixed with house slops for fog feed which was poured through the fence
into a trough in the hog lot just inside and a few feet from the front yard. This lot
had several tent shaped huts for the mother sows.

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My Early Childhood in Rogers Arkansas

Following my father’s death in 1933 my Mother moved us to Rogers and

rented a small house on W. Walnut less than a block from her aunt
(grandmother’s sister). The house had a small front porch with a swing, The front
room had a fake fire place with a mantle over which was a reproduction of the
“Cowper Madonna” The couch and a red leather easy chair, a gate leg table, tall
clock all of which must have been in our home in Kirkwood and followed us to Ft
Smith and some on to mother’s apartments in Ft. smith and then Little Rock.
Next on back to the right a dining room again with dining table, chairs and buffet
which John took to his home when he married and I believe along with the porch
swing followed him with his various moves. There were two gate-leg tables and I
have one and John took the other and had it refinished.

I believe the photos below were taken on visit to family (?) where I don’t,
but I think my Father’s sister in San Antonio perhaps. I do not know any of his
family that are still living. I seem to remember the sister may have been Funky
Fox and was with the S.A. schools but I don’t know really. It is a real shame to
lose track of family.

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I don’t really know. They are dated spring of 1936 so John would be about two
and me 5 but I think the date is wrong. Both sets of pictures probably were of
our Easter outfits.

Behind the living room next to the dining room was mother’s room with
other furniture that traveled along with her and John and me. Next back on the
left was the bath then John and my bed room with twin beds a chest of drawers
which Mother kept with every move and was in her apartment in Little Rock when
she died. Past the dining room on the right was a nice sized kitchen then on back
to a small room out of which was a door on he left opening to a stair up to the
attic room which was our play room. A small single car garage was toward the
back of the lot with a small garden area with asparagus that grew very tall as it
went to seed. To harvest it must be cut early before it got more than 6 to 10
inches tall. A swing set and boxed sand pile was in the back yard.

The house was between two other houses in the last block on the road that
went on west and then north to Bentonville the county seat where we had to go

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to get our school books. About a quarter mile out on south side of the highway a
family who brought the second movie theater to town built a home out on the
Bentonville road. The house on our right was a single story brick the one to the
left was a large two story wood structure.

The large house sat on a very large lot and it was torn down when I was in
the first grade and a six or eight cabin tourist court each cabin with an attached
open garages was built toward the back right hand corner. An old man who lived
in the house often sat on bench under a tree in the front yard and smoked his
pipe. He filled it with Prince Albert tobacco from a tin which the crow owned by a
boy who lived across Walnut from us. He said “If you cut a dandelion off at
ground level and tapped repeatedly on the root , worms would think it was
raining an come to the surface, tried that with no success but who knows. “ Do
you have Prince Albert in a can? Better let him out.” Was a prank we loved to
inflict on the drug store.

The crow was a regular thief of bright objects. The boy was an Eagle
Scout. He had cages in his garage of several kinds of small animals and snakes,
copper heads, rattlers and water moccasins I think. Next door to the scout lived
an elderly lady with a large flower garden with a tall castle like raised bed. Her
collection of U.S. postage stamps got me started on my collecting. I believe she
wanted an early stamp my grandmother gave me which she did not have. Her
collection was faked up with blocks of four that were really four singles mounted
together to look like blocks. She traded me out of the stamp she wanted I guess
convincing ne that the stamp she swapped with me was a better one. I later
realized that the swap was not good and managed to swap back.

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 Across the dirt road side street was a house on a raised ground with a
small candy and soda shack on the front corner. Dirt streets went along both
sides of our block and one ran on back to lighted ball park. A concrete retaining
wall about 24 inches tall and 12 deep ran from the corner across the front and
sloped away to curb height.

The road south toward Fayetteville ended in the large wide intersection.
This wall was often run into by cars that had gone south to get alcohol as Benton
County was dry. To make the wall more visible and less of a target it was painted
white with diagonal black stripes but to no avail as the cars continued to hit it
and sometimes almost continuing on into the house. A blinking light hanging
over the intersection did not stop all this mayhem and a concrete pylon four feet
square at the base and four tall with a blinking light on it was hit several time,
once killing 3 or 4 people. The most interesting vehicle to hit the wall that did go
on into the front of the house was a truck load of cantaloupes which provided
breakfast fare for neighbors in all directions.

Four houses on into town was Aunt Lena and Uncle Wyeth’s large house.
Two floors of living space, attic and basement laundry room with a large pantry
stocked with produce from their farm including quart jars of tomato juice and a
box of saltines. I could get a quart of tomato juice to take out on the second floor
porch with a stack of early 1930s National Geographic’s from the bookcases on
the landing just inside. Read the mags and look at the naked native girls.
Naughty naughty

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 Uncle Wythe and perhaps two other Rogers Arkansas businessmen
founded the Progressive life Insurance Company with a building downtown.
Across in front of the building was Lane Hotel, owned by a cousin of Tom lane’s
father. Today it is the Peachtree at The Lane. The picture below shows additions
to front which were not there when I lived in Rogers. The bus station was across
the street in front of the Hotel and on the fourth corner was a Magnolia gas
station with the old pumps that had a glass jar type top that filled with gas to be
pumped.

The other view shows a restaurant Uncle Wythe added on. He insisted that a
toaster be available for each table at breakfast.

Just past the edge of town was a creek that ran under the highway and
John and I and a neighbor boy played under the bridge in the creek to catch frogs
and throw rocks to splash. Once I was up in a tree at the back corner and that
boy threw a rock at me. Either I caught it or I had one in my pocket and I threw
back at him. I hit him on top of his head and the rock sunk in enough that he ran
home with it there. Must not have been a big deal as I don’t remember that I got
in trouble.

We were members of the Presbyterian Church. John and I went to Sunday

School and sometimes mother took us to services. Pictured below are the front
steps and the Sunday School class. I remember a man there who when asked his
name would reply “Edy McQueedy Grandover lockensloy Jones” which I have
quoted many times when asked my name.

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 Summer occupations included making kites and paper planes; At least
once I made some stilts. A barrel hoop could be guided along the walk with T
sick, we got metal oil cans from the filling station on the corner and stomped
them to catch around our shoes and made a great clatter running on them.
School recess games were softball work-up, red rover hide and seek and others of
that sort. After the showing of the first Jesse James movie cowboys and Indians
became the James gang. Two other movies of that era were Treasure Island and
the Buck Roger Serial and then wolf man, zombie, Dracula, Frankenstein etc

Clarence Bartlett Rex

b.6/2/1884
1st wife Dixie Bell McCleary 2nd Clara Katherine Martin
b. 12/7/1900 -1983
Clarence (Jr.) George Martin David Austin
10/10/1939 6/12/1931
Janet Brown John Williams 11/11/1933
Berta Faye
John -David Rebecca NMI – George Martin –
Madeline Charles Morgan - Jan Bartlett
James Russell - Rochelle NMI
Dates and Children e
Janet and my children
Rebecca b. 4/24/57 – 1 daughter Rachel Rex Turner 1/7/75 -3 children -Jamie

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Oliver Rex
George Martin II aka Geoffrey Marshal Reagent – no issue
Charles Morgan 9/8/? – m. Marilyn – no issue
Jan Bartlett -? /?/? 1st wife, Elaine –2 children –Isaac, Ryan
2nd. Wife Beth 2 step children, Kris, Rachel
James Russell “Russ”– Janis (JJ) 2girls

Rochelle n.mi
Need to add birthdays, anniversaries and other bio stuff here

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Clarence Bartlett Rex II
.

The following can be a bit confusing, two Clarence’s my father and his first
son, two Johns my younger brother and his oldest son, and two David’s Clarence
Jr’s son and younger brother’s John’s youngest.

My nephew John Rex, brother John’s oldest son now a research physician
working on viral infections, was contacted via the internet at his home in Houston
by the son of my father’s oldest son Clarence’s son David from his home in Katy
Texas. David Rex, again Clarence’s son is/was the Houston area Boy Scout
director. He was starting on doing research on our family history and was trying
to locate his father’s younger sons, George and John. He asked in an e-mail if
this John Rex had a brother George. John (called Johnny by his parents) replied to
David Rex that he had no brother George but he did have younger brother named
David also. With a few more back and forth messages they came to realize that
they had a generation problem. The John Rex with a brother George was this
David’s father.

Clarence, whose mother was still living when Mother took us to see him
when I was ten, Clarence at that time did not want to really know his half
brothers and any letters we wrote over the years were never answered, mother
felt that his wife may have diverted the letters as she may not have wanted us to
be close. But now if David wanted to contact us and bring us together he was
now ready to do so. A visit was scheduled for the following Thanksgiving at
David’s home in Katy and John and I made plans to go to Houston so we could
get together.

Shortly thereafter Johnny was informed that Clarence’s wife of some sixty
years had died. She was a very active 80+ year old who regularly swam across a
lake near their home. She collapsed while shopping at a mall and was taken to
hospital. Exploratory surgery revealed that organs had failed and become
gangrenous and nothing could be done. When Johnny was informed of her death
we thought that the meeting was off but David said no, his father still wanted to
see us and he would bring him to Katy.

I drove to Houston to stay at a motel. John and Berta Faye were

staying with John and Sara. I had Thanksgiving dinner with them and the
following day John and I drove to Katy. Many of David’s family were there as a
wedding of his daughter was in the works. John and I together with David and his
wife and others had a nice about three hour visit and took some pictures.

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 Clarence was very surprised to hear our side of our father’s death. He was
totally unaware of the cancer and knew only of the Father’s gunshot death. At
the police station when he went to retrieve some father’s effects he was offered
the pistol which he rejected. I think that for all these years he had believed the
suicide was caused by remorse relating to his leaving Clarence Junior’s mother
and marriage to my mother.

Shortly after we returned to Johnny’s home I received a call from Jane with
the news that Janet had died. The next day I drove to Fredericksburg to be with
all of our children as they gathered for Janet’s funeral. I did not stay for the
service as I needed to get back to teach...

Some weeks later I went alone to Houston to go to Katy and see Clarence
again. We had a good meeting, just the two of us. John with his business travel
was able to visit him twice once he moved back home. He was 84 at the time of
our meeting and aware that he had prostate cancer for which, at his age, no
radical treatment was recommended and he died about two years later.

Carrollton Illinois

Zelda William’s first husband and Mother’s father died due to a long illness
with tuberculosis. She was a very strong minded woman and when mother’s
father moved to Arizona to a dryer climate for his health she made him move
back to Arkansas where he died.

Grand mother Zelda, as I knew her, had a ‘dowager hump’ but I think it
was more due to having her back broken several times, twice in car wrecks. She
also had a 3" thick sole on one shoe again due to her injuries. Neither of these
prevented her from being an active farm wife, tending to the cooking,
housekeeping, gardening and taking care of the chicken yard or wringing the
necks of the Sunday chickens and pumping water. She had a two story house to
keep with bedrooms on two floors and a cellar food pantry. She cooked for her
family and field hands, canned, made soap and butter. But heaven forbid any of
that to prevent her from listening to her ‘soaps’- Stella Dallas, Just Plain Bill, The
Lady in White et al.

She had three sisters, Lena, Lucy, and Nina. Ask Tom if he knows which
one was eldest. She and Lena were courted by Wyeth Walker but she thought
him too dull and “gave” him to Lena. This may have been a dumb move on her
part. He formed a partnership with two other men in Rogers Arkansas which had
among their interests a local life insurance company. He became president of
Progressive Life which developed a branch in Little Rock which became Union Life
which in turn was a major financial factor in Little Rock.

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 Zelda wanted Clark Thomas to marry her. He took off for Washington State
to homestead some land. Not to be denied she followed him by wagon train.
She persuaded him to marry her and they returned home. They moved to
Carrollton Illinois to farm the 140 acres he inherited from his father. They took
mother with them and left Thelma, the younger daughter, with family in
Springdale Arkansas. This was the fact that soured the relationship between
mother, Thelma and their new half sister Lena Louise, born at the farm.

*Clark (?) had two brothers who farmed on adjacent farms and they owned
some equipment together. Wheat and corn harvesters as well as a hay bailer and
planters were some of the machines moved from farm to farm. The three men
also had hired men living on each of the farms to help with the plowing, planting
and harvesting.

Aunt Louise married one of them, Haunts Lynn but I am not sure how long
this marriage lasted. She next joined the Army Air Force and worked fueling
military aircraft.. She had a narrow escape as she was driving a fuel tanker. The
fuel stopcock was open and the gas spilling behind the truck as she drove
became ignited. Another corps man saw the fire and ran to pull her from the
truck. They were badly burned when the truck exploded. She was packed in ice
and sulfa and had no visible scars.

Louise had two other narrow escapes. She was driving and going up a hill
(known as dead man’s hill) she met a lumber truck. The load shifted and some of
the boards punched through the wind shield. Louise was barely missed and the
car was lifted off the pavement. Another time she was home sick, the only time
she missed school, and the one room country school house was destroyed by a
tornado. Everyone including the teacher was killed. Louise was the only child of
her generation in that area for some time.

Later she married another man (name (?) who worked for Ely Bridge
Company. I visited them and was shown through the factory which at the time
was said to be the only Ferris wheel manufacturer in the U.S... They also made
other carnival rides. During World War II she was in the army air corps. The
sequence of her life escapes me. At one time all three sisters were together at
the farm and the long time jealousy and animosity led to a big fight. Thelma’s
son Tom and John and I had the idea to go to the tool shed and arm ourselves
with axes so we could defend our mothers, not a very smart idea and we gave it
up before we got to the house.

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 That may have been the only time the three of us were together at the
farm. One of the dumber adventures we had was to try to capture one of the
little shoats. There was a fence about three feet behind the barn and adjacent
corn crib. John climbed up on the crib with a rope with a lasso in the end. Tom
and I chased several of the pigs through this space and John was to pull up when
one of the shoats ran through. He caught a pig all right, a full-grown sow and as
he had the other end of the rope wrapped around his wrist he was jerked off the
shed and over the fence. Fortunately the rope came loose and he landed on
fairly soft ground and was not hurt. (?) You would think we would have known
better as Tom’s older brother, Bob, was drug by one of the horses some years
before when he tried to lasso it.

They had a very nice two story house. By the time I was aware of the farm
it had several other structures, a large barn, a milking shed, good sized corn crib,
and storage buildings. These buildings were in a fenced area across the road
from the also fenced house yard. This rather large area also had a small pond
and several a-frame hog sheds for the pregnant sows. There was a long hog
trough with one end against the fence so that it could be filled through the fence.
The area in front of the barn was primarily used as a hog fattening yard and
birthing yard. Several small “A” frame structures provided shelter for the mother
sows.

The barn had stalls for the two mules and two horses and a hay loft. Also,
kept in the barn were three milk cows. Clark milked them every morning then
turned them out to pasture. I think they were also milked in the evening. Zelda
objected from time to time to the amount of milk that Clark fed to the cats and
kittens. She would go to the barn when she was aware of new litters of kittens,
kill them with her cane and throw them into the hog lot. Quite a few cats were
kept in and about the barns and the house to keep check on the rats and mice.

The mules and horses and two tractors were used to cultivate and harvest
the crops grown primarily as feed for the hogs and sheep which were from time
to time taken to market in St Louis. Clark regularly listened to the radio to check
on the farm market reports.

Several separate fields were rotated from wheat, clover, and corn. Clark
Thomas was, according to his daughter, mother’s younger half sister, the first
farmer in Illinois to grow soy beans as cash and feed crop. Soy beans are a
nitrogen fixer and adding them to the crop rotation reduced some need for
fertilizer. His brothers and neighbors were surprised at the improved crop yield
when other crops were rotated onto the soy fields. The corn was harvested and
stored in a shed near the barn. One of my chores was to shell and grind the corn
that was then mixed with house garbage and milk and fed to the hogs.

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 Eggs from about 20 chickens were collected daily and stored in a crate in
the kitchen to be taken to town to trade or sell. The collecting of the eggs was
another regular chore. Besides the chickens there were a few ducks and a goose
that liked to hide and sneak up behind and peck as well as several guinea fowl to
be fed. Another summer task was to search though the nearby wheat or corn
fields to find the guinea nests. The mature guineas provided eggs as well as
being natural alarms with their load cackles. These eggs were placed under a
hen so that when they hatched they would grow up and continue to stay near the
house. Clark enjoyed eating fresh guinea eggs.

A large herd of hogs were kept in a field not far from the house and we
would take a wagon load of corn still on the cob to feed them. Once as Haunts
and I were on a wagon tossing corn to the herd to feed them a piglet got its head
caught in the spokes of the wagon. It began to squeal and a sow got under the
wagon and started to hump up bouncing the wagon and us. Haunts put his leg
over and kicked it free and the trouble ended.

The hogs were regularly rotated from field to field to feed on the stubble
and other leftovers from the harvest. Hay was bailed from the wheat stalks; corn
stalks were collected for silage and stored in a silo. Sheep were shorn and the
wool and sheep were sold at market in St. Louis. I think he had a panel truck to
haul them in

Three milk cows provided several gallons of milk a day. The milk was
drunk; some eventually provided heavy cream to be churned into butter. Left
over milk and sour milk and other kitchen scraps mixed with some grain were fed
to the hogs. Not much goes to waste on a farm.

Grandmother also tended a “truck” garden across the road next to the hog
lot. There was also a garden patch near the back door. She grew many
vegetables including carrots, sweet corn, radishes, tomatoes, onions, okra,
potatoes, several kinds of beans and strawberries. There were peach, apple and
cherry trees in and around the house yard and a large mulberry tree. Over the
walkway from the road was a grape arbor with benches on each side.

Much of this produce which did not go directly to the table was canned and
stored in a large cellar the stair of which led down from the dining room.

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 Approaching the house from the road the front entry was into a hall. Across
from the hall was a downstairs bed room which also was a library. Going to the
right from the entry and turning right again was the stair to the second floor and
several bedrooms. Going to the left from the entry was a small living room music
room containing a piano and wind-up Victrola. Going on into the dining room and
then through the kitchen we came to a back store room. A large wash tub was
kept in this back room for bathing. Hot water was heated in a part of the coal
fired kitchen stove. On past the back room was a covered storage area for tools,
some food stuffs and coal. This room was a passage from a walkway to the hen
yard. It went out to the right to a three “holer” chic sale better known as the
outhouse and on past it to the smoke house.

The sheep had to be run through a dip to control the fleas. On one
occasion while helping with this I got lots of flea bites and many of them became
infected resulting in over thirty boils. As I was very sick and feverish I was put to
bed in the downstairs bedroom/library. The books in the library had belonged to
mother’s father and included a family bible. In reading through the bible I found a
clipping relating the suicide death of my father. He ran a hose from the exhaust
of his car into the car and then shot himself according to the clipping.

I never told anyone of my discovery except perhaps John and mother’s

story of his death was quite different, attributing it to a hunting accident.

The coal fired kitchen strove had four burners and a large oven as well as
the water heating chamber. All of which required several daily chores to
maintain. Coal and water had to be brought in and ashes had to be removed.
Water came from a well in the front road which also supplied water to a trough
outside the fence to water the horses and mules when they returned from work
on the farm. Another pump house was near the back door and from a rain water
cistern just outside the kitchen door towards the outhouse supplied water for the
kitchen and the back room bath house... Coal and firewood were in the back
shed/passage area. One of the food stuffs kept here was pop corn grown in the
truck garden. The ashes were sometimes used to make soap. Zelda’s three
daughters gave her a butane gas range which she never cooked on and it sat in
the kitchen used mostly for storage unless one of the daughters was visiting and
cooked on it. After they sold the farm and purchased or rented a small truck
garden farm on the highway she may have used it there.

About the time I was in high school they sold the farm and bought a
smaller place on a highway into Carrollton. It had an apple orchard a good sized
vegetable garden and also a small hen house. Clark had a collie that never
learned to leave the badgers in the area alone and frequently came home with
his battle scared face.

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 Crows are very smart birds. They are said to be able to count to two but
not more. If two hunters go into the woods and one comes out the crows know
that one is still in the woods, but if three go in and two come out they do not
know that one is still in the woods. Across the road a fence line ran straight back
dividing a wooded area on the left from open pasture land to the right. A bare
tree stood about five yards in from the fence near the road and another about
thirty further in and well back from the road. A flock of crows used the two trees
as a path across this wide open space. One would fly to the first tree and sit for a
bit and then on to the other while a second would land in the near one. After
three or four had hop scotched across the field the rest of the flock fly across.

Sometimes Clark would sit on the front porch of the house with a shotgun
and try to shoot one of the crows.

Not far on out the road was a country store with a bar to which Clark went
to play Euchre and drink beer. The bar had a free lunch counter with sandwich
makings and pickled hard boiled eggs. It was great fun to go with him and to be
able to make a ham sandwich and have one of the eggs.

With hogs being a major product of the farm, bacon, sausage and ham
were always on hand in the smoke house. Although sheep were also raised I do
not remember that they were used as food nor were beef a major food source. I
think Clark did buy a calf to raise and butcher every year so beef was also along
with turkey and game from his hunting was also on the menu. He had traps in a
local stream for river catfish and took me squirrel hunting once. I am sure he
hunted for other wildlife.

Various pieces of farm equipment and tools were kept in a shed which
housed the two tractors. Some plows and harvesters were in the area between
the house and poultry yard. The house, barns and other structures were
surrounded by the crop and pasture fields and the road from town passed
through the farm and on to other farms. The mail box was on this road about
300 yards from the house. One of the few fun chores was to run down to the
mail box when the red flag was up and collect the mail.

Saturday night we all bathed and went to town. The crate of eggs was
taken to sell or trade at a grocery store for sugar, flour and other staples. We
might go to a movie see the latest and “swap fleas” with the other patrons.
Sometimes went to the bowling alley and always made a visit to the ice cream
parlor. Sometimes I got a haircut. All of these places were in buildings that faced
the courthouse on the streets surrounding it. Many sat on the benches’ in the
park surrounding the court house and talked and watched haircuts and the
‘passing parade’.

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 Sunday we went back to town to go to the Presbyterian Church. I had a bit
of a crush on Caroline Ledbetter who was in the Sunday school class and I always
looked forward to seeing her each summer.

Rogers Arkansas

After my father’s death we moved to Rogers. Mother rented a house from a

lady Gladys (?) who was one of the women mother played bridge with. The rent
was $11 a month. It was about a block from the mother’s aunt and uncle, Lena
and Wythe Walker. There were three other houses on the block facing West
Walnut. A large two story house on a large lot was across an unpaved street and
then our house.

Past our house were a brick house and then another dirt street. Continuing
out Walnut the paved highway crossed a bridge over a small stream on its way
toward Bentonville. A sort of alley ran behind the houses back toward Aunt
Lena’s and there were vegetable gardens and garages along the way. These
gardens were good places to sneak a raw turnip.

Pauline Price was my first art teacher, she taught in a room in the high
school. Perhaps she was allowed this room in exchange for teaching some art to
regular HS students. Her method of teaching would not be well thought of by
most art teachers as she had us copy works of other artists, yet many art
programs do use some forms of copying. I remember copying pictures of George
Washington. It was in her class that I did a Poppy Day poster that won first prize
from a veterans group. I think one of her students became a commercial artist
and designed the Butter Crust Bread wrapper.

I am sure that my interest in art started here as did my love of owls, which
is why I use an owl as a logo on my art. They were frequent guests in our home
and Price would help mother in putting us to bed by telling us bedtime stories
about owls and their hooting. He was the station manager of the Frisco railroad
station in Rogers.

Pauline and Grace together with another lady whose name escapes me
were members of mother’s bridge club. The other lady became the owner of the
area Coca Cola franchise and mother did not. She was offered it, as owner or
partner, but Uncle Wyeth discouraged taking on this “just soda” venture. The
corner drug store had a soda fountain and the daughter of the owner was an
unusually small child and Aunt Lena expressed the idea that her drinking of Coke
was the reason. The other lady became the owner of the northwestern Arkansas
Coca Cola Company.

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 Wyeth Walker became quite successful and he and Aunt Lena had a large
house in town and a beautiful farm some ways out of town. The town house was
on corner lot and had nice size second house between it and the corner that was
the in town home of the major hired man and foreman. Andy and his wife Mural
and daughter Betty lived in town during the winter when the Walkers lived in
town and in a house across the lake from the summer house when the folks were
on the farm.

The town house had four levels, two living floors, and a basement laundry
and food storage and a fourth floor attic. An elevator connected all four floors;
the stop at the attic had a locked door. A dumb waiter served the living areas and
the laundry. The kitchen was at the right rear of the house and had a small
screened porch and steps leading to the back yard. A door to the laundry was
just to the left. A walk way went back to a barn and on back to a chicken house.

There was a sitting room in the front next to the entry hall next on back
was a music room with a small grand piano then thru two pocket doors was the
dining room with a large ten seat dining table. A connecting door went into the
kitchen. The front sitting room had a high ceiling with ample room for a tall
Christmas tree. A tree placed here served as the backdrop for pictures of the six
cousins such as the one below.

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 The picture was taken Feb.2 1950 includes a portrait of Wythe Walker’s
bride no doubt the reason for our picture. Those shown from the left to right are
my then 17 year old brother John Williams Rex, Jacob Wythe Walker 25 Aunt
Lena’s oldest grandson, Robert Martin Lane 26 Aunt Thelma’s oldest, Thomas
Bradford Lane 18, George Martin Rex 18, and Robert Gillette Walker 16.

The second floor had four bed rooms and a bath. Aunt Lena’s room was
across from the landing. Proceeding down the hall next to her room was Uncle
Wyeth=s room with a connecting door between them. His room had a large
closet in which was “secret” door into the closet of the next bedroom.

Across the hall from this bedroom was the bathroom and next to it coming
on back to the front was one more bedroom which was John Walkers.

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 The barn was meant to shelter two horses and a cow but I don’t remember
it was used that way during the time I lived in Rogers. A cow may have been
brought to town in the winter and chickens were kept there year round. An
unpaved road came off the street between the main house and Andy=s. A
garage for the two family cars was at the end of the road and then it curved on
back to a gate for the horse enclosure. There may have been a one car garage
attached to the far side of Andy’s house.

The yard had several large walnut trees and well kept bushes around the
houses. One of the things Andy dealt with every year was the web worm
infestations. He burned them out with kerosene soaked rag on a long bamboo
pole. We collected black walnuts from the trees. Black walnuts have a thick hard
shell that is very tough to crack.

Another bridge club lady we knew, Mrs. Duty, had two children our age and
I learned to ride a bicycle on the girl’s bike. Not sure of her name, Carolyn I
think. Her brother was John White Duty who was blinded at about age eight by
having measles and scarlet fever at the same time. John White went on through
school and college with a Seeing Eye dog and I believe became a lawyer
practicing law (?) with his father.

Down town Rogers had a corner drug store with a soda fountain, a
hardware store whose window had mechanical village with several moving
objects such as a windmill and a water wheel mill. Nearby stood the mercantile
store which sold fabrics and household goods such as bedding, towels and
notions and cooking pots and pans as well as table ware. The most fascinating
thing to me was the money handling trolley system of little cars in which the
clerks placed the sales slips and cash to be carried up to the second floor
business office for the sale to be completed and the receipt and change returned
to the clerk.

The IGA grocery store was in the same block as the drug store and the first
movie theater. Mother was very lucky, winning five pound bags of sugar and flour
in promotions there. She had a good stock of them when they became rationed
during the war. We were listening to Frank Sinatra on the radio December seven
1941 when news of Pearl Harbor was broadcast. December seven was also
mother’s birthday. She was born in 1900.

Lowell Arkansas

As I remember, one or two family members lived and may have been born
in Lowell Arkansas. I remember bring in a home there whose owner had a pet
parrot and a very large cat. She showed us an air plant pined to a window drape
and pointed out the new starters along its edge. I believe Lowell was a
recreation destination. There was a large public swimming pool with dressing
rooms and a diving board.

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 Small towns such as Rogers took care of the less fortunate of society.
Hound Dog and Butter were the names of two men that the business owners in
Rogers kept busy as window washers and sidewalk sweepers, make work to
provide some money and care for, what today would be homeless pan handlers.
On any trip to the business center we would see these somewhat retarded men
busy in front of a store. More than once I remember hobos coming to our back
door asking to do some small job to earn a handout of food. Our house, being on
the edge of town, was a natural target for the wandering unemployed and they
were not seen as a threat as a they as they might be today. I think once Mother
had one dig a vegetable garden at our back fence.

A block over from Walnut on the major cross street was an intersection
with four different businesses on each corner. The Progressive Life building was
on one corner, the Rogers/Lane Hotel on the corner across the street. Proceeding
clockwise, the bus station and café faced the hotel. The bus station had a lunch
counter and newspaper and magazine sales shelves, were catty corner from the
insurance building.
A gas station garage was on the remaining corner. Next to the gas station
was the fire station. The library was on the second floor of the station house. A
treat was to have a hamburger and coke at the bus station and buy a comic book

The Magnolia gas station was owned or operated by a Mr. Joby. He was a
man mother dated, with the disapproval of Aunt Lena as he was just a gas station
owner. The gas pumps were the kind that had a glass chamber at the top that
filled and emptied as the gas was pumped

The Rogers Hotel (research current name) was a resort destination and at
one point was owned by a relative of Lander Lane, Tom’s father, and was known
as the Lane Hotel. Uncle Wyeth owned it for awhile, perhaps through Progressive
Life, and was instrumental in the (?) construction and operation of a restaurant
addition to the hotel. He directed that a toaster be available to the tables during
breakfast so that patrons could have hot toast. I believe this was the only
restaurant in Rogers at the time other than the lunch counter in the bus station.
.One of the employees of progressive Life was Mr. John T. Wespy. He traveled for
the company and took along a small loom and wove scarves as a recreation
hobby. On past the town business center and across the railroad tracks were
some warehouses and related businesses. One of these was two story feed and
seed and farm equipment operation. It had an elevator that was operated by
pulling on a rope to start it in motion.

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 The Frisco station was just a block over from the hotel. Several times
mother put John and I on the train to St. Louis here in the care of a train porter
she knew from her visits there and one of her friends would meet us and put us
on the bus to Carrolton to spend some time with her mother and Clark Thomas
her step father.

Dream Valley

The Walkers also had country place called Dream Valley which was their
summer home. (According to Tom Lane Dream Valley is now a country home).
The road out to it passed several other dwellings as it wound its way into a long
valley area. A breeding kennel for some type of dog, perhaps black Chows, was
at one turning point. Further along the road turned and crossed a creek at which
we sometimes stopped to pick watercress. A turkey farm was the next place we
passed. Just beyond it was the first of the “double gates” and the start of Dream
Valley. From here the road wound on in following the bottom of a hill on the right.
The property consisted of long valley between two ridges with pasture and farm
land between them. Several other valleys led off on both sides.

(?) Three houses about a half mile apart nestled next to the hill and were
home to families belonging to ranch workers. One of these had a couple of barns
behind and in front of them that were associated the raising of a small herd of
registered White Faced Herford cows. Two bulls were kept in separate pens
across the road from this house.

Each of these families had gardens of their own. At one of the other
houses was a good sized truck garden in which vegetables and flowers to supply
the Walkers were grown. Aunt Lena and her maid canned this produce and
stored it in a pantry next to the laundry room. One of my great pleasures was to
take a quart of this tomato juice and a box of saltines up to the porch on second
floor to eat while I read the National Geographic magazines stored in a book case
on the landing on the bed room floor.

NOTE: The chronological succession of events and order of the story needs much
revision.

The valley had many springs scattered about the various farms. Several
were developed with small retaining walls so they could be used to water the
cattle. They were identified with the year of development as their name. One
was up on the hillside of the road and had been piped down to a fountain. A wide
place in the road and concrete steps allowed us to stop and get a very cold drink.

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 When we were almost to the summer house another double gate
separated the field on the left from a wide meadow along the far side of which
was a long row of poplars curving to meet the road just before we crossed a
creek. A road or cattle path was behind these trees and it was along it that the
milk cows went to pasture and returned to the milk barn. Andy had a semi-pet
bob cat that would wait at a point along this path where it could jump down on
the back of one of the cows as they returned to milk barn at night. Andy had put
the cat on the cows back when it was a kitten so that both the cat and the cow
were trained to this behavior. No one else could get close to the bob cat.

The ground rose up here and was held by a field stone wall. A chicken
yard and house was next on the left below the hill and then a wide grassy area
leading to Andy’s house on the farm. Starting again at the creek on the right
which was the runoff from the lake was the damn spillway. The road rose until a
view of the main house appeared across the small manmade lake. Right in front
of Andy’s the road turned right and followed the lake around to the yard
surrounding the house. A bed of flowers was between the road and the lake. One
more poplar was at the point where the road left the lake. In front of the house
were a walnut tree and two weeping willows. The ground around the walnut tree
was so soft that the nuts sank half way into it. Several flower beds of pansies and
large red cannas were in the front yard. Behind the house was a grove of trees
home to large grape vines and under which were several barrel stave hammocks.

The road divided to go to a sheltered carport entrance to house and the

kitchen porch as well as on to the garage, horse barn and the dance pavilion.
Going into the house from the carport was into the screened porch which
continued around the three long sides of the house and around a portion of the
kitchen. The first part was the women’s porch with six (?) iron beds. Steps
leading in from the lawn through a screen door and on in divided the beds into
threes. The next section was the men’s porch and six more beds again divided
by an entrance to the house proper.

The third section was used as a sitting area with several chairs and
rockers. A couple of tables and shelving filled the last part of this porch as it went
on around to a small part at the kitchen. This third section was again divided by
a screen door and steps down to a path to a spring fed stream that went through
a spring house.

This stream had three improved and rock surrounded basins and was home
to many ‘crawdads’. The first two were met by a spring outlet from a cave at the
base of the hill. This basin was about eight feet in diameter was deep enough to
float water melons in season. The combined flow went beside and through the
spring house. Inside the water flowed around the inside edge in a concrete
trough in which bowls of milk and other food was kept chilled. The stream then
empted into the lake and was the major source of water for it.

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 The porches surrounded the house proper; a large family room was at the
corner where the sleeping porches met. Next to it on the women’s side was a
dressing room with a bath room between it and the kitchen. A large dining room
was beside the family room next to the sitting porch. There were three doors to
the dining room, one from the family room, one from the sitting porch and one
from the kitchen. The family room had a large fireplace and many chairs and
sofas and several carpets.

Just outside of the corner of men’s porch and sitting porch was a very large
walnut tree. Hanging on long chains hung a giant swing. A large black swing the
bed being about five feet deep and seven or eight feet wide with a two foot high
back. It hung at an angle to the trunk between it and the porch. Two or three of
us could hold on to the back and walk towards one end and the reaction of the
swing was to go the other direction. Reaching the end we would turn and walk
the other way. Going back and forth we got the swing moving sideways in an
ever increasing pendulum arc. Sometimes we would jump off toward the lake
into the soft grass. The ground was soft near the lake and we would sink an inch
or so into it hopefully not landing on a walnut and stone bruising our feet.

The twin of this swing was hanging from another large tree near the dance
pavilion at an angle that would not allow the pendulum action so we just sat on
the edge and pumped our feet to swing back and forth. The dance pavilion had a
stage at the back. It was located somewhat on a hill and had a large sloping open
area under it which was used to store potatoes and onions. Behind it was the
remains of a fox run from the time fox hunting was practiced by the family and
friends. The dance pavilion was screened on three sides and of a foxtrot
enclosure. The horses were trained jumpers used for fox hunting by the family in
earlier times. Going on back from the spring at the start of the creek that fed the
lake there was a horse shoe pitching set up and on back a grape vineyard. Once
John and I rode the horses the one John rode was called named Firecracker.
When we turned back it may have been feeding tome and Firecracker took off on
the way he jumped one fence and then tried to clear a creek and up on a raised
area below the lake\and dumped John.

One year a big hornet’s nest was built on the outside of the screen and of
course we just had to try to knock it off. We (me, John, Tom) hit the screen on the
inside and were fortunate that we did not get stung as some of them managed to
get through holes in the screen.

A path up the hill opposite the house went up to a pump house for water
for the house. The path continued to the top of the ridge and an apple orchard.
There were persimmon and chinquapin trees on this hill. We collected chinquapin
nuts as we walked barefoot along the road to the swimming area of the lake
which was in front of Andy’s house.

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 The swimming area had a stucco surfaced paved area and the stumps of
two trees cut off just at water level. These water covered stumps probably
survived because of the water being so cold. We could climb on them and jump
off to splash someone. Further out was the diving board. Floating in water was a
giant ‘ladder’ with four 4"x4" rungs about 3 feet apart and 4x4 sides producing
three openings. We sat on it or leaned on the rungs kicked to propel it all over
the pond.

But the best feature of the lake was the hand trolley. Walking along the
bank we very carefully crossed the top of the spillway. The bottom of the most of
the lake was dirt and because a kind of moss grew on it and floated to the top
the lake was treated with Blue Stone to control it. Some moss would still float in
the water and eventually collect at the spillway so we would use a broom to push
it carefully on over the edge. So we would use a broom to push it carefully on
over the edge. I think Bob Lane once slipped on it and his back was scraped raw
as he slid down it. Across the spillway and on a path along hill we would come to
a tree with a board ladder nailed to it. Up the ladder we climbed to a wooden
shelf out over the water. Stretching from this perch back to the bank we had
crossed was a wire cable and on it was trolley with a rope to haul it up to the
platform. Grabbing on to the hand grip we would sail down across the water and
drop in some feet from the bank.

Back to the house in town, the last house at the other end of the block was
on a somewhat raised corner lot with a street that went back to a ball park
between these two blocks. A concrete wall protected the yard. A very wide
intersection for the road from the south and Walnut Street the Bentonville
highway separated these houses from a service station to the left and a two story
house across the street. Mother rented our house from the lady living there. The
people who lived in the corner house had a very small candy store on the corner.
They sold penny candy and cold sodas to the neighborhood.

A concrete wall about 2 feet tall to hold in the yard was some protection
from the traffic from the south. People had to go south to Fayetteville get
alcoholic beverages as the town was dry. But several times cars hit it as drivers
under the influence plowed into it. Several things were tried to prevent these
accidents, first the wall was painted with wide diagonal stripes. Then a blinking
light was hung in the center of this wide intersection. When this failed to deter or
warn drivers a concrete pylon with a blinking light on it was constructed and
painted with red and silver stripes. This resulted in a very bad accident as a car
full of drunks struck it not long after it was built.

A most interesting event was the night a truck full of melons plowed
through the wall and on into the front of the house. Fresh melons were enjoyed
by us and many others in the neighborhood. The final solution to these
continuing problems was to put three red lights spaced blocks apart between the
city limits and the corner.

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 There were two other houses across the street. In one lived an old lady.
She had a large yard with a large rock garden flower bed. She had a good stamp
collection and may have provided the impetus that started my collecting. Next
door lived a family with a teen aged boy. He was a boy scout. He had a small
building in which he had several cages of snakes. I think he had copperheads, a
rattle snake and a black racer among others. He also had a pet crow that had the
run of the neighborhood. Any small or bright shiny object that was missing was
usually found in the crow’s collection.

Next door to us on the corner across from the candy shack stood a large
two story house. The big yard had several shade trees. An elderly man lived
there. He often sat on bench and smoked his pipe. His Prince Albert tobacco tins
were some of the targets of the crow’s depredations. He would cut the
dandelions weeds off level with the ground and tap on the dirt which caused
earthworms to come to the surface thinking it was raining. This house was torn
down and a motel was built in its place.

The gas station and garage was a source of materials for some of our
games. My brother and I collected empty oil cans from it. Placing the cans on
their sides we would stomp on them which folded them up around the soles of
our shoes. They made a wonderful loud noise as we ran about. Scrap inner
tubes could be cut into loops that became ammunition for a wood gun. A cloths
pin could be fastened to a wooden gun and the rubber looped around one end
and stretched back and held by the pin. Aiming and releasing the pin the rubber
band shot out with a good deal of force.

From somewhere we got metal barrel hoops. We made a T-square shaped

pusher and used it to roll the hoop. Stilts were another homemade toys made
from scrap lumber perhaps from the motel construction. Kites were another
scrap material toy. Thin wood strips, old newspaper, string and glue were used
to make the kites and cloth torn into long strips provided the tail. Usually the
kites were the simple traditional diamond shape but once I tried to construct a
box kite but I don’t remember I had much success fling it.

Of course another use for the tire rubber strips was to make a bean flip by
attaching two ends to a y shaped tree fork. Some had a leather pocket to fill with
rocks or acorns as ammunition. We shot at tin can targets and boxes with target
circles as well as birds. We made folded paper planes. Marbles, pocket knives,
tops, cap guns, a pogo stick, roller skates and roller skate scooters were some of
our other toys.

Among the items in the baby book was this clipping from a news paper
Nellie Bartlett sent to Mother feeling it looked like me.

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Παγε 35 οφ 59
 The house in Rogers had a small upstairs room John and I used as a play
room. There was a table and chairs and we played board games and did some
drawing and watercolor painting. The stair up to it was on the back porch behind
the kitchen. The front porch had a swing which John still has, it has followed him
from house to house as he and family moved. The front room had false fire place
with a space heater. Other furniture included a couch, a red leather chair which
had been fathers, a gate leg table, bookcase clock and a radio. There was a copy
of the “Cowper” Madonna and child over the fireplace mantle.

The dining room was furnished with a table that had extension leaves and
six chairs and a matching side board. These must have come from our home in
St. Louis as did the twin beds in mother’s room. That bed room set also included
a dresser and a chest of drawers. The bathroom was between mother’s room
and ours. John and I had twin beds and another chest of drawers. I don’t
remember what other items we had. A door from our room opened onto a
sleeping porch. A wind up victrola was part of the things in the sleeping porch
and another screen door in it went out the back. Our tall stick phone was on a
ledge in the dining room. Much of this furniture which must have been owned by
mother and father in St. Louis stayed with her from Rogers to her apartment in
Ft. Smith and then to our home on Kinkade and then with her to her apartment in
Little Rock.

The dining room set went to John at some point and I think he still has it
and has refinished it. When mother died in 1983 John and Berta Faye and I
cleared out much of her stuff and the furniture was shipped to their place in
Oklahoma City. I claimed a wooden stool that had been Uncle Wyeth’s and a hall
mirror from great grandfather Martin. John and I each have one of the matching
gate leg tables. He has had all of his part refinished. I also have a large oil
painting that was in the Walker living room which I suppose mother got after Aunt
Lena died.

Perhaps this is as good a place as any to insert my memories of another of

grandmothers sisters; great Aunt Lucy. John pronounced it Shushe and that
became our name for her. I don’t know much about her life. As I remember she
owned or operated a restaurant in a two story house and lived upstairs in it.
Inset in the concrete of the front walk was a Purple Parasol which was the only
sign indicating this was a restaurant of that name? The table service was of
Wedgewood China with sterling silver implements. Small purple paper parasols
were part of the table décor.

John was her favorite and at one point she gave him a dog I think it was a
white spitz. The only dog either of us ever had as children. When she died the
extensive collection of dishes and tableware was divided into and given to some
of her nephews. The oldest boy got the china and the silver went to the
youngest. Janet did not want my part of the china and we gave it to John and
Berta Faye as a wedding gift.

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 At some point about fourth or fifth grade mother put me in the hospital, to
take out my tonsils and adenoids, or so I was told. Imagine my surprise on
waking up to find that a ‘Bris’ had occurred. Circumcising a 10 or 11 boy without
warning was bad enough, but then subjecting him to having the bandages
changed by his aunt caused me much embarrassment. Aunt Thelma and family
were living in an upstairs apartment in Ft Smith at the time so my recovery was
with them.

One of Tom’s activities was to take shot gun shells or 22's to an abandoned
lot next door with a concrete slab over a well. We would wedge the shells into
holes in the slab and explode them with a hammer and nails. One of the games
we were lucky to survive as I look back on it. I remember Tom had molds to cast
lead soldiers which we would paint with enamel. At the walker farm Uncle Wyeth
had the congressional record which were great for paper to fold into tents. Tom
also had a punch out circus set up.

Another painful memory of visits to the lanes was the time I was chasing
around the upstairs landing and falling down the long flight of steps and sliding
down shirtless on my back. Lander, Tom’s father, laid me out on an ironing board
and rubbed ice on my shredded back.

The three sets of nephews were John and I, Bob and Tom Lane our first
cousins the sons of mother’s sister Thelma. The other two were third cousins and
the grand sons of Aunt Lena so not the same generation. Wyeth and Bob were
the sons of Uncle Elmo who was the oldest of the Walker boys with a younger
brother John who never married. Bob Lane had a different father than Tom. He
was a several years older than John, Tom, and I and Little Bob. Bob Walker hated
the name of Little Bob and looked down on his “poor” relations.

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John Williams Rex (17) Jacob Wythe Walker (25) Robert Martin Lane (26) Tomas
Bradford Lane (18) George Martin Rex (18) Robert Gillette Walker (16) February 3,
1950

He and John were tennis players. John played on the University of

Arkansas team and Bob no doubt played at the Little Rock country club which
abutted the Walker compound in the high rent area of the Heights. Three houses
fronting on a circular drive with a gated entry, first on the right was Gertrude’s
Wyeth’s mother then his and then on around his daughter’s. The main house was
built into the hill behind it and an underground shelter could be entered from it.

Once John visited the Walkers in Little Rock and Lil Bob was very
contemptuous of the idea that they should play tennis together. Once at a big
Christmas dinner the four of us were seated at a card table in the music room
while the adults were eating in the dining room. Little Bob put a pat of butter on
a knife and flipped it up on the ceiling. He died in sports car accident in his late
teens.

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 I was the oldest to the four younger boys followed by Tom then John and
last Little Bob but all four of us really never were together much except at
Christmas when we had the “Big Tree” in the front parlor of the Walker house.
There is a picture of all six of the boys in front of the tree taken one Christmas
when Bob Lane and Wyeth Walker were teenagers. The older two had rifles in
their hands posed at parade rest. Insert picture

I understand John Walker had been injured in a sleighing accident and had
a silver plate in his head. Mother was quite fond of him and they were of about
the same age. I think she may have really been in love with him and could not
express it or do anything as they were first cousins. When he died, perhaps due
to complications of the accident, she was extremely upset. Shushe died not long
after and mother drove as fast as she could from Ft. Smith to Rogers when she
heard she was dying. On the way she flipped a cigarette butt out the window
which blew back in a rear window and burned a hole in John’s pants. We had to
stop so he could change as it would not do for Aunt Lena to see.

The elementary school was a block from the Walkers down the street that
ran between their block and the next toward town. The high school was on the
same land which was also a large city park. I started school in a kindergarten
that was taught in a room of the high school. The first grade classroom was at
one end of a long hallway. Second grade was next on the same side then third
across from first with fourth next on that side. Fifth and sixth across from each
other at the other end I think.

I can picture the first grade room and the teacher and remember she often
had my nose in a circle drawn on the black board. No memories of second grade
surface. But third left several clear pictures. We had geography workbooks with
pictures to cut out and paste into each chapter. I remember the round straw
boats of the Egyptians and the map of the Nile. My teacher was Miss Leathers
and I was in love with her even after she swatted me on the head for shooting a
spit wad that missed her and hit the blackboard while she had her back to the
class while writing on it. I must have been aiming at a student in front of me.
She lived in Fayetteville and once when mother took me there for an eye
appointment we stopped at her house for a quick visit. She got married the next
year.

Was never a very good student as is evidenced by my third grade report

card?

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I

I wish could remember the fourth or fifth grade teachers name as I do

remember her room and some of the things we did. Several reproductions of
paintings were on the wall; Gainsborough’s Blue Boy, Pinky, Gilbert Stuart’s
Unfinished Washington and Washington Crossing the Delaware were displayed
along with flags and charts. A map rack was on one wall with several pull down
maps. A wind up Victrola stood in a front corner and she played Blue Danube,
America, Carmen and other classical recordings.

I attended a kindergarten, I think housed in the high school, Many of the

materials were the same as I had in 1st grade which I think was not a good idea
as I was very bored to have to repeat stuff and got into some bad study habits.
The years I lived in St. Louis before we went to Rogers soft coal was used for
heating and the ever present coal smoke was a contributor to my lung problems
and I was often sick during the first three or four years of school.

I was half way through the fifth grade when Pearl Harbor was attacked on
December 7, 1941. We were in the living room listening to mother’s favorite
singer, Frank Sinatra, when the program was interrupted with the news.
December 7 was also mother’s birthday. This change in world events caused
mother to have to go back to work as the money left her by father would not last
as prices would rise. So we moved to Ft. Smith so mother could go to work at the
army hospital at Camp Chaffee.

St Anne’s

Mother took an apartment about a block from the grounds of St. Anne’s
academy, the Mercy Hospital, the Catholic Church, and the four story nunneries
and dormitory which were to be John and my home for three and a half years.

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 The nunnery also housed the dormitories for the boys and girls who were
boarded here. Boys in the third through eighth grade lived here. The bottom
floor housed the kitchen and dining room for the students. The nuns had a
separate dining room also severed by this kitchen. Down the hall from the
serving area were two rooms in which the boys played. There was another room
across a covered open space we had access to for game materials.

I don’t remember much about most of the second floor. I think there were
meeting rooms for the nuns and offices. The back second floor entrance was up
a wide concrete staircase. Inside was a large foyer with two stairs going up each
side to the third floor?

The boy’s dormitory was at one end of the third floor. Across the hall from
the dorm were a bathroom, Sister Beatrice’s room, and two small rooms for boys
who were ill. We small beds and had a small chest for our clothes. John and I
had a foot locker for our toys. The girls had two dormitories, one for elementary
school girls on third floor and one on fourth. For the high school girls our study
hall was also on the fourth floor. The nuns had rooms on the top three floors.

The high school, convent, Mercy Hospital, and Catholic Church were on one
block of land at the head of Garrison Avenue. A grotto with three religious
statues had been built around a chimney that once was a part of General
Zachary Taylor’s home when he was commander of Fort Smith. This grotto sat
near the nunnery toward the back of the hospital. We found that some of the
stones could be pulled out to be used as hiding places for our secrets. A walkway
ran from the back stairway around the grotto and to a back entrance of the
hospital which the sisters who worked there used.

A room near this back entrance was used as a theater for us once to see a
movie with religious content about a priest, the name of it may come to me. It
may have been “The Keys of the Kingdom”. We were not subjected too much
proselytizing but did have to attend services in the Catholic Church on vespers
nights and Saturday morning mass. The pews had pamphlets in the back in front
of us and I read these stories of saints and martyrs. If I had believed much of
that BS I might have become a catholic.

John and I attended the Presbyterian Church which was in walking

distance. I took some religious study and was confirmed as a Presbyterian while
at St. Anne’s. I was at some point an officer in the Youth group after I was living
at home in Ft. Smith during the last two years of HS. We attended summer
church camp at Lake Ft. Smith at least two summers.

The elementary and secondary school was across a major street from the
nunnery. Sister Mary Beatrice was also my fifth grade teacher and one of the
nuns who supervised the study hall on forth floor. When I started grade six I was
surprised to find that Sister Beatrice was now the teacher she was still the dorm
mother and study hall monitor.

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 I passed grade six and moved on to grade seven and guess who the
teacher was, yes Sister Mary Beatrice and still dorm and study hall fixture. For
two and a half Sister Mary Beatrice was more mother to me than Clara Katherine
Rex.

Mother was becoming the ‘go to gal’ at the base hospital at Camp Chaffee.
She had taken a typing and Gregg Shorthand refresher course. She took the civil
service exam and made the highest scores achieved to that point. She now went
back to work for the first time since father’s death. Her first job included taking
notes on autopsies while standing behind a screen. She dispensed with the
screen and as a result began to acquire an extensive medical vocabulary taking
these notes which served her well when she became secretary to Dr Foltz.

She earned merit award after merit award and was moved from
department to department to straighten out their records. She was the next to
last civilian employee to leave the base after the war and was private secretary
to the Chief of Medical Operations at the time. The PBX operator was last.

Among her close friends and one who continued to be after he retired was
Sgt. Crow. From time to time he would “borrow” her car and when he returned it
a miracle would occur as it would have one or more new tires and or a full gas
tank. She had a high gas rationing sticker on her windscreen because of her
priority military occupation. I think she and the good sergeant were a bit more
than friends as he was a frequent guest at our home.

Mr. Crow became quite an entrepreneur, starting and operating one

restaurant after another in Ft. Smith. The first was a classy drive in called Crow’s
which he sold after about two years. He built at least two others. One was a
regular family sit down establishment and the other a café dine and dance place.
Neither of these last two was as successful as Crow’s. I have no idea when he
left Ft. Smith.

Mother lived in the apartment near the convent for several years and then
she rented a house on Kincade Ave. This occurred while I was in Gulf Coast
Academy. The house had two bedrooms, a bathroom, living room, dining room
and kitchen on the first floor. The partially floored attic was divided into three
rooms and had a screened sleeping porch. It was floored with unfinished planks.
The stairs to it went from a small hall between the dining room and our bedroom.

This building was the second from the corner of Kincade and Greenwood.
Behind the first house was a small ice cream factory facing Greenwood the back
wall of which formed one side of our back yard. This brick wall, covered with
English Ivy, was the nesting place for scores of sparrows. The alley at the back
was fenced and our garage sat on the opposite side. The other side was fenced
between our house and Lola Allen’s next door. Miss Allen was a third grade
teacher in the elementary school further along Kincade toward a city park.
Across the alley from the ice cream plant stood a small mom and pop grocery.

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 Ft Smith High School was about 8 or 10 blocks toward town and in easy
walking distance. I took art in both the 11th and 12th grade. Ora Wilburn was the
teacher, I have often said that the first year we drew daisies and again the next
year only they had wilted. The Scholastic art competition was available and
several of her students received recognition. My own experience indicates that
art competitions are not a good indicator of good products. I am aware of works
entered one year being rejected and then reentered the next year to receive
awards. It is often a crap shoot.

I had learned how to operate Bell & Howell

classroom projectors and became the head projectionist
Part of my job was to train ney students to take the two
mobile set ups to classrooms as needed. There was also
a fixed projections booth in the auditorium accessed
thru the girls sewing room on second floor which made
for some interesting days passing thru
My handwriting was not very good (still isn’t) and mother had Lola Allen try
to work with me one summer to improve it. She had me doing the row after row
of lettering exercises. The only thing that really changed was that today I use
two kinds of lowercase r s. Depending on what letter the r follows it will be stump
like or like a closed v. I was unaware of this until Dr. Buthman, dean of men at
Hendrix, remarked on it when he called me into his office to remonstrate with me
for ‘calling too much attention’ to the girls on the dance floor, dipping too deep
that is. This disturbed the women faculty I suppose.

Mountinberg, Lake Ft Smith, Van Buren Arkansas

The highway from Ft Smith north to Rogers was through a major part of
the Ozarks was quite twisty, with steep ups and downs. Mountinberg was at the
bottom of a valley between two of these steep climbs. Long haul trucks would try
to maintain speed as they went through at night to make the climb up easier. At
one time, in the mid 50s the city fathers put in a blinking red light in the center of
town to make the drivers stop this practice. The drivers put up with this for a
short time but did not like and as they stopped at roadside cafes passed the word
that on certain date they would stop at the edge of town and proceed through
town changing gears. The resulting gear grinding was loud and constant. Two or
three nights of this got the point across and the light went away.

Lake Ft Smith

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 Lake Ft Smith, just north of Ft Smith was a center of summer camps.
Several cabins on the lake front were used by church and other youth groups for
summer programs. The our Presbyterian church held one and John and I went
there several summers to swim, canoe, enjoy several crafts and have religious
meetings including night time picnics and song fests. We swan in a large pool
with diving board and a two level diving tower. I remember that the boards were
removed because of an accident.

Gulf Coast Military Academy - Gulf Port Mississippi

Παγε 44 οφ 59
 I was at St. Anne’s for two and a half years, half of fifth grade and sixth
and seventh plus the summer months. I was hard for mother to

Παγε 45 οφ 59
Παγε 46 οφ 59
puput up with and I guess I was very mean to John. Mother sent me off to Gulf
Coast Military Academy in Gulfport Mississippi for the eighth grade. I had a very
unhappy year there.

GCMA

All first year cadets were called freshmen regardless of their class year,
they were hazed from day one. I roomed with three other boys; Carl Markham
was a senior and the “Old Man” in our room. He was very muscular and though
not very tall was a first string football player. He was also a boxer and pole
vaulter. As the only upper classman i.e. former student, he was the boss of all
that transpired in our room. The first day he came into the room and threw two
sheets bundled with his clothes on the floor and told the three new
boys/freshmen to fold them and put them away. As we did not understand the
situation Clark, Binford and I refused at which point he knocked Clark who was
the largest of us to the floor and repeated his demands and we proceeded to
learn what was to be done.

We soon learned that there was a proper way to fold or hang all clothing
and arrange it in our closet and foot lockers. The barracks were inspected every
week day and any shoes not polished and properly aligned under our bunks or
dust found anywhere or bed not made in a military fashion resulted in a “gig” on
that room. There were four regular barracks and the band barracks. The Number
of gigs each barracks received was compared and the barracks ranked. If our
building came in last each freshman was given five licks for each gig he caused.
We were collected in the bathroom and licks were given with either a board or a
short handled straw broom with the bristles cut off below the string binding.

Clark was an over age (16) eighth grader and a big dumb bully. Binford
was in twelfth grade and quite small for his age. Carl Markham was seldom in
the room and Clark soon began to force us to do all the work until one day Carl
caught him hitting Binford. This was only the second time I remember him
striking one of us other than during the licks we got after inspections along with
all the other plebes in the bathroom. He grabbed Clark and lifted and threw him
into an upper bunk. That was the end of Lord Clark’s reign.

I was not at GCMA the next year as I was at Subiaco and Clark, as an upper
classman that year, hit a freshman with a 2x4, striking him in the lower spine
breaking a vertebra. What punishment other than expulsion he received I don’t
know but he was not at GCMA when I returned for the tenth grade.

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 GCMA had two campuses, a lower school for boys from first grade to
eighth. The upper school had students from eighth grade through high school. As
I started in the eighth I was placed in the upper school. Because there were
eighth graders in both campuses the students from both were combined for
classes away from where they were housed. We had class in two rooms on
second floor of the armory. Captain Mason was the teacher of my group and he
was also the faculty member housed in and in charge of our barracks. He had a
wooden leg and walked with a limp. Our company flag was a chicken with a peg
leg. He was married and his family had a three room suite on our side of the
barracks. His bathroom sink was back to back with a wash basin in our room.

One of the coaches had a single room at the other end of our hall. A lounge
separated the barracks into two L shaped wings with another faculty suite next to
it in the other hall. Our company student officers had rooms at the outer ends of
each hall.

The first day of class Capt. Mason looked around our classroom and called
on the biggest boy a Cadet Jarrett to come his desk in the front. “Cadet Jarrett
bend over this desk”. He directed and then proceeded to take a black electrical
tape wrapped paddle out of his desk and gave Jarrett three good swats.
Sometime later another cadet did something wrong and Capt. Mason said “Jarrett
come here and bend over this desk” Capt. Mason then applied three more very
hard licks. Later that afternoon Jarrett caught up with the cadet who was the
cause of the second set of licks and proceeded to pound him. Capt. Mason’s
form of class control was never challenged and I don’t think he needed to paddle
Jarrett but one more time a few days later to ensure no further class disturbance.

The second year at GCMA my interest in art was discovered by the officers
in charge of our military training and I was given charge of the chart making
room on the second floor of the armory. The room was rather large and I was
supplied with sheets of tag board and refillable felt tipped pens. These markers
were large and had a variety of tips from round pointed to a flat and 1 a T, and
one with a comb like tip that produced parallel lines. There were plenty of pens
and black, red, and green ink refills. My work table/easel was 6’ wide and 2’ tall
and leaned against the wall with a window above it that looked out over the
parade field.

My ninth grade year was another bummer. Subiaco, meaning below the
lake named for a parent monastery in Italy, is a Catholic institution in Subiaco
Arkansas, about five miles from Paris Ark about midway between Ft. Smith and
Little Rock. The main structure is a four story stone building. It is a monastery
and school. Several groups of ‘inmates’ are housed there. It is a high school for
boys, a retreat for priests who have problems with alcohol and had abused their
female parishioners or boys. Boys who were novitiates were separated from
those who were not.

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 I have lost track of the exact arrangement of the floors so what follows
may not be correct. A large bathroom with several shower stalls and toilet stalls
was on the bottom floor. A recreation room and a store at which we could
purchase school supplies and snacks from our account were also on this floor.
The front entrance was on the second floor and opened into a three story atrium
with stairs on two sides. Glass cases on the third and fourth floors contained
historical items related to the site. I believe there was a library on the second
floor. Rooms and dormitories for the boys and monks and classrooms were on the
second and third floors and perhaps the fourth as well. Steps on the fourth floor
led to doors to the roof on which were walkways the monks used to walk, to say
their rosaries and read their micelles.

All of the buildings were constructed out of stone quarried by the monks on
the site. They included a church still under construction, a print shop, dairy, and
gymnasium which also served as the auditorium. The print shop was also being
added to while I was there. Out buildings for the farms and dairy may have been
of wood. There was a bakery and winery, the bread was made with wine and was
served with honey and butter produced by the monks. I once worked a few days
harvesting onions and was paid eleven cents an hour. In the dining room we were
served family style at long tables in parallel rows with a head table for the abbot
and faculty.

There was a rose and flower garden at the rear of the monastery and
beyond it a slope and a stone wall led to a swimming pool with a dressing room.
Window seats looked out the back on the third and fourth floors and were my
favorite retreat to read. Every boy’s school in my experience has a boy who is
the butt of cruel jokes. I have been in that position but here at Subiaco the victim
was Walter Zimmerman by talking to or about him in ways to confuse and
embarrass him. He was accused of ‘peering’ out the window, or wearing
garments. The pool was often the site of his torment.

FT SMITH

High School

My junior and senior years were at Fort Smith HS. As I had not gone to
school with most of the students I felt very much an outsider and a loner. Brother
John went to junior high in FS after mother sent me off to GCMA and Subiaco and
was well along with the IN crowd. HS fraternities and sororities were legal in
Arkansas and there were two of each filled with the IN crowd. John and his future
wife were members of what I think were the most favored ones and led to John
becoming a Sigma Qui in college. As an outsider I was not invited to join one of
the biggies but another frat with membership of both HS and junior college
students did. Jack Rowland, a year ahead of me and a guy I fell in with got me
into Kappa Alpha when I was a junior and I was president in my senior year.

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 I took art for two years the teacher was Ora Wilburn. I wasn’t a very good
student in art or any other subject and generally made Bs probably was more
interested in girls and reading. I still have my note/sketch book with tooled
leather cover I made in the class. I have always characterized the class as
drawing daisies the first year and we drew daisies the second year but they had
wilted. Not a very creative approach to art We did do some ceramics and I made
some very poor figure sculptures which mother had in her apartment when she
died and I took home a did away with them. Working on the potter’s wheel did
not really start until I started teaching although did take a ceramic class at North
Texas University. The teacher was not very good on the wheel so my first real
help came from watching and talking to other potters at art shows. One artist
told me about a book by his instructor which had step by step instruction which
really got me going good until I was able to take work with Greg Reuter at what is
not TAMU-CC and finally get my masters degree.

I dated several girls and found that I was a good dancer. The two
fraternities and two sororities including those to which John and Berta Faye
belonged formed a Pan Hellenic Council and each of the four sponsored a formal
dance at Christmas with one ticket to attend all four. A very large hall on the
second floor of a mid down town store area was the site for them. A quite good
local orchestra provided the music. I think Dorothy Speer was my date for them
my senior year. I believe she was a member of a girls club associated with the
Masonic lodge and we went to dances there. Her twin sister Anne dated a
fraternity brother of John’s H.L. Hembree and we doubled dated several times
and I have photo of us at night club. Insert picture

Mary Lou Dollar’s father was the distributor of several beers and had a
large entertainment lounge in his home. It was furnished with several very
comfortable couches and easy chairs. Several of his beer brands had keg heads
with taps in the bar at one end of the room. She had several small group parties
there during the time I dated her and her parents left us pretty much alone
though I am sure they kept an eye on us.

Another somewhat older young lady was a nurse whose name is missing
from my memory. She was one I took to daces given by my fraternity at a club
somewhat out of town. There were several other venues and clubs around Ft
Smith as well a sock hops at the high school and I was a very active attuned to
many of them not always with a date as stags were very welcome at those
functions as they stirred the pot as it were.

A very nice roller rink caught my attention and Jack Rowland and I tried to
be there a lot and several of the better girl skaters soon taught me to do the
dance figures. I got good enough that I won a pair of very good shoe skates.
Need to flesh this out more.

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 Because I had some experience with projectors at GCMA I was able to get
on as one who did much of the projecting in classrooms with two or three
moveable units... A projection booth was also in the auditorium with two
projectors and by my senior year I was the head projectionist and as such I could
usually stay in the booth and have others take the two moveable machines to
classrooms. Sometimes I would tell them to have a problem with one of them and
have to come get me out of a class to fix it, sneaky but it worked to get me out of
a class. Another perk of the job was that the projection booth could only be
entered through a girls sewing class and as they sometimes were trying on/fitting
dresses they made I would be ‘caught’ and unable to get out quickly- ho hum
trapped with only one thing to do- read a book.

Speaking of books, another way I got out of having to have a study hall
period was to take care of the junior college library section attached to the larger
school library - a small room about the size a large bedroom with a counter and
one door. The J.C. students would have to come into the counter and check out
books reserved for them. It was during this time I discovered an interest in
biographies as they were shelved just beside the counter and I read several
during my senior year as that was my time there. As I look back on this time I
really don’t remember why I had so much time perhaps I had more than one
period free of regular classes I know I had a study hall both years and the
projectionist job came out of it.

I took art both years, Ora Wilburn was the art teacher and the art room
was away from the main building next to the football field and beyond the junior
college class rooms which were under the stadium bleachers. The art room had a
gas fired kiln and my first ceramics work was created there.

Hendrix College

I attended Hendrix in Conway Arkansas after high school largely at the

suggestion of Robert Speer, the father of my then girl friend. Bob Speer was an
amateur artist and art teacher and he felt that I ought to go to Hendrix to study
art. Hendrix had a grant to put in a ceramics course and that was an interest of
mine. The grant was never taken up during my time there.

Hendrix was a small Methodist college with an enrollment of about 500

students in 1949 located in Conway Arkansas. Conway is about 100 miles from
Ft. Smith and 50 from Little Rock on the highway from one to the other. I got to
know the highway and the towns along it quite well in my four years hitch hiking
both ways. I had a small paper board suitcase with Ft. Smith painted on one side
and Conway on the other that I placed at my feet to alert drivers as to my
destination and it did help to get drivers to stop and give me lift.

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 State highways 64 and 65 went through Conway and divided at Morrelton,
64 going more north and on through Van Buren coming into Ft. Smith at the
northwest side after crossing the Arkansas river. The other route went more
directly due west through Paris and Subiaco to the southeastern side of FS. Most
of these trips were after class on Friday and were completed in one afternoon but
occasionally I stopped in one of the other college towns along the way as there
was at least one on each road.

Rosemary (?) Whose father was the Fort Smith Junior Hi principal and one of
the groups of kids I played with after school and during the summer, she was at
Ouachita College and when I stopped there on my way home she would arrange
a room in the boy’s dorm the couple of times my trip was interrupted in Ouachita.
The student union had lounge with a jukebox and we would go there and dance
to Rag Mop or other popular tunes.

As I recall I dated Janet Brown, my future wife, first during my junior year
and her freshman year. We went to dances and played cards and took in a few
movies but nothing serious was going on. I had dates with other girls during this
time and one other seemed to be more serious but even though I went to Sara’s
home during one Christmas break that did not last. I was not much of a Romeo
and was very shy about kissing most of those girls, a quick hug and kiss as I
returned them to the dorm door was the usual thing.

The first dance of the year was always the freshman dance and every
freshman boy was required to have date for this kick off of the dance year,
required as part of the freshman initiation and orientation along with the green
beanie we had to wear. The girl I took, strange to say her name escapes I was
perhaps the most beautiful girl in the freshman class and I talked to her in the
school café and was very surprised when I asked her to be my date that no one
else had and she said yes.

All most all dances at Hendrix were formal ‘program’ dances. Program
dances are almost unheard of today and very few people today knew what they
were. The boy was mostly responsible for filling in a dance card for his date with
her input. This dance card had spaces for about 15 dances to be arranged.
Usually the first and last dance and a middle dance were filled in with your date.
To complete the program I went to other boys and swapped with them filling in
the boys name on one card and his date on another. The gym was the dance hall
for the dances during my freshman year and it was decorated with crepe paper
and other materials to carry out the theme of the event. Green for the freshman
dance, -then orange and black for Halloween, red and green for Christmas etc.
Located around the room were posters with large letters, ABC, DEF and so on. At
the start of the second dance I would take my date or the girl with whom I had
danced to the letter of her last name and then find the next one on my card
under her initial and so on throughout the night.

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 I loved to dance and had gotten pretty good during high school so after a
few dances of the year some of the young ladies would ask their date to get me
on her card. Not everyone had a date, many stags though no girl would think of
going without a date. The most popular girls were ‘cut in’ on by one of the stags
or by a guy who got bumped and when I was free I quickly cut in to dance with
one of the good dancers, particularly the Jitter Buggers or if I knew it was a slow
number one I wanted to have a chance to hold and talk to and perhaps a dip or
two would ensue. Hendrix frowned on our doing much off campus but I
discovered that the teacher’s college across town had frequent dances and high
school dances were held in a hall easy walking distance down town and then the
parish hall was also open to visitors. Most of that took place during my first two
years.

Several f us found that a café about a block from school had very good
food and a back room we could use away from the jaundiced eye of Hendrix.
Negros did not openly attend class then but I do understand some
accommodation did provide class credit. The back rom door of that café was also
open the blacks of Conway this was long before segregation began to disappear
from public places.

Hendrix was a small school so most of the girls lived in either the freshman
sophomore dorm or the junior senior girl’s dorm, some town girls lived at home
but most wanted to live on campus. Each of these dorms had a dance space in
them and would have a dance each year to which they would invite 10 stags.
Usually if I was available I would be one of those. Unbekownst to the powers that
be and somewhat against the expectations of the school I also went to dances
across town at Arkansas State Teachers and to Conway High School dances in a
hall over the drugstore down town as well as to Catholic parish events on
occasion. I don’t think I ever saw another Hendrix student at any of these
functions and I would not think of bringing a girl I met at them to a campus
event.

My freshman year I had a corner room with two other boys in the
‘Catacombs’ the half basement bottom floor. There were four rooms on each side
of the bottom floor with a good sized recreation room between each half. Our half
had a shower/bathroom next to the rec room. A pool table and a ping pong table
as well as some couches and easy chairs were there. Double doors on each side
of this rec room separated the halls from it. Both of my roommates were pre-med
students and passed the med-school entrance exam that year which was their
junior year.

Hendrix had a very strong pre-med reputation and quite a few students
came to Hendrix from high school or transferred in after their sophomore college
year. The reputation was that Hendrix pre-med students always passed the
entrance exam for medical school, often in their junior year.

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 My sophomore year Bob Mounts was my roommate and we had the same
room I had the year before. Bob was a brilliant student with a top IQ. It was said
that he knew more about every course he took in high school than any of his
teachers. He had a double major of English and history. He could read and write
several languages, several self taught, play the piano almost like a professional
again self taught. He developed his own bridge system and taught it to me and
we did well with it in the games in the student union lounge. Culbertson was the
bridge system most used at that time.

At Hendrix students took a comprehensive exam in their major field to

receive a bachelor’s degree. Bob took the comp in both of his majors and
graduated magna cum laude. He went on to grad school at Harvard and evidently
found himself for the first time with other students as smart or smarter and the
pressure was too much for him and for a time he was in a psychiatric hospital. I
heard he then was in the army as an interpreter for a time but he was discharged
as a homosexual.

My junior year I had a room, little more than a long closest, on second floor
with no roommate which was just fine with me. A bed, a closet, a desk and a
washbasin with medicine chest and a bookcase as well as one window on the
backside of the dorm suited my loner style. I was already a science fiction nut
and most of the books in the bookcase were sf paperbacks. As the school
enrollment must have fallen off by my senior year I moved back to ‘Catacombs’
but in a room on the other half hall. A regular sized room which would have
housed three students previously. No roommate. Across the hall my best friend
and fellow art student Charlie Rietz also had a room to him-self.

The school annual each year ran a popularity deal the results of which
were published in the book... Some of the categories were “Most Beautiful”,
Most Likely to Succeed” etc. including Best Dancer which I won junior and senior
year. One was “Campus Radical” which went to me and to Janet several times.
Our junior year pictures had a caption reflecting something about us, usually
complementary or tongue in cheek. My best friend and fellow art student was
Charlie Rietz, under his was “Very few understand my works”. Under mine which
followed his was “And even fewer understand mine....... which is perhaps well” So
much for fame.

One of the couches Chic Austin and his wife introduced me to square
dancing at Hendrix. A one semester credit course that fulfilled a PE credit
requirement was offered and I took it, anything to get out of real PE. Because so
many of us who took it wanted to continue a repeat was allowed. We went the
whole route and had matching square dance outfits. We even went to a state
square dance in Little Rock and gave a demonstration there. How was I to know
what the future had in store for me?

I dated several girls over the years at Hendrix Janet Brown was the last but
more of that later.

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 One requirement of our freshman (hazing) orientation was to attend the
freshman dance with a date. I spent a lot of time in the old building which housed
the café student union. There was a very beautiful freshman girl who I talked to a
lot and I was very surprised when I asked her to be my date for the Frosh Prom
she accepted. I thought surely she would have been snapped up by some other
student or an upper classman. Strange ti say I cannot recall her name; she was
at Hendrix only one year I believe but will have to check the annuals for her. I did
not continue to date her don’t ask me why. I did usually have a date for the other
dances that year but no ‘steady’ girlfriend. One other (name?) was also from Ft.
Smith I think she was my date for a couple of dances.

SQUARE DANCING and the Rat Pack

At lunch with Faye Harvin at Ray H.S. in 1976 she mentioned that she and
her husband were going to take square dance lessons. I mentioned it to Jane and
we went with the Harvin’s to the lessons sponsored by Circle Up Squares. I am
not sure it started the first night but it soon became our habit to go to a different
restaurant each evening. We had no idea at the time how this habit and new
friendship would change our lives.

The shopping for shoes, petticoats, boots, and costumes became a regular
occurrence. We made one trip to San Antonio to shop for boots at a Luchase
outlet, and of course to eat. I often say that square dancers go hungry a lot; we
go somewhere hungry so we have an excuse to eat.

Square dance lessons usually take forty weeks to learn the “Basic” level
and graduate as qualified dancers able to attend dances at other clubs. Our caller
was the first teacher but we learned that another caller was giving lessons at two
other churches. We and another couple, Dorothy and Gordon Zahn, added these
Basic sessions to our schedule and as a result we felt we were ready to hit the
road as it were. Before we graduated as certified dancers, the three couples went
to a “special” dance in La Grange, and our connection to each other grew.

This trip was the first of many to come that became part of our group
adventures. Ed Harvin’s sister Mary and her new husband Dick Brown joined
Jane and I on our first of several summer trips to Concan. We stayed in a cabin
together and cooked some of our meals together and took some at the Concan
restaurant. The Harvin family, Ed and Faye and Ed’s sisters and the children of
all, had been making a trip to Concan to “float the river” every summer for some
time.

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 We had heard there was a square dance club in nearby Camp Wood so we
called and found out the time and place and drove over there to dance. Camp
Wood is described as a “Cedar Choppers” town. The trip was over dirt back roads
to this very small community. The dance was held in the civic center which at one
time was probably a church. The civic center was a wooden un-air conditioned
structure with a wide double front door and about three windows along each side.

We were well received as the club was having its first dance after its first
graduation. It was the caller’s first club and his wife and daughter and her
husband one other couple were the club. So the Browns, Harvins and Rexes just
about outnumbered the members. And we provided enough dancers to have a
full square with a change of dancers each “tip” or dance. We were the
experienced dancers although the Browns were the only graduate dancers.

The caller’s wife was so overweight that when she danced she would get
so out of breath that another lady had to be ready to jump in to take her place for
the dance to continue. The daughter’s husband had most of his teeth missing
which did not prevent him from chewing tobacco as he danced. As he passed the
wide front door he would spit from time to time. The caller was quite a story
teller. He told of a team of Shetland mules he had once owned which story was
very amusing to Dick.

At one point in a dance the caller, somewhat confused, said “Square

through three hands, two hands, oh whatever” and “oh whatever” became an oft
repeated saying of ours to cover any confusion in the ranks. Dick added another
often quoted or modified saying when the caller apologized for his ineptness. “Oh
we’ve danced to callers a lot worse than you” he remarked.

We finally graduated the next August and joined the club on our first bus
trip to an out of town dance to Victoria for an Association dance. (All area clubs
had about 6 dances a year, most in CC but one in Victoria and one in Kingsville,
the local ones at either Ray or King HS cafetoriums) The club costume at this
time was called the Buttercrust Dress as it was a checkered material that
resembled the Buttercrust Bread wrapper. As has happened to me more times
than I care to have happen, as an artist I was asked to make a bus banner saying
“Circle up Squares on the Road Again” which we taped to the bus.

The old members of the club were often called on to try to quell the antics
of members of our class as we picked up bad habits from the other clubs we were
taking lessons from. The Circle Ups were and still are a more reserved bunch,
and some of the moves we learned elsewhere were frowned on. The Rex, Harvin
and Zahn couples happened to be seated at the back of the bus. As often
happens on bus trips or other group activities singing of various songs was
started. The group started singing the common rounds, “Row Row Your Boat” and
“Three Blind Mice” and for some reason the new bad actors at the rear began to
interrupt which ever song was being sung at the front with the other.

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 If the front sang “Three Blind Mice” we sang “Row Row Your Boat” if they
sang Three Blind Mice we sang Row Row Your Boat. Whatever they did we
interrupted it with something. A few weeks later was to be the annual steak
cookout at the Wilder Wildlife Park near Sinton so we decided to do a take-off on
the club dress and activities. I had the choir director at Ray find the printed
music for “Three Blind Mice” and with it I printed song books with which to teach
the club how to sing it properly.

The three ladies made dresses out of transparent cleaner’s bags and
covered them with Butter Crust bread sacks and the men had white shirts also
decorated. After the steaks were eaten we collected the club in their lawn chairs
in lines to form an audience. We enlisted another couple to pass out the books
and act as master of ceremonies to introduce the “Three Blind Mice Master
Singers” and we proceeded to conduct the club in a sing along. From that point
on we were known as those damn mice or The Mice.

We wrote a Mice pledge and from time to time at a club dance we would
swear in a new member who had demonstrated a proper lack of respect for club
decorum. I designed a blind mouse to draw on white price labels and we affixed
them to our club badges and awarded them to the new recruits. Before long
many of our club and a few from other groups were proud to wear our logo. And
so was born Three Blind Mice that I often refer to as the Rat Pack

At that time I was driving an Explorer van conversion, a small motor home.
It had been painted red, white and blue and had a red stripe with white stars
around it as part of the 1976 Bi-centennial year celebration. Inside it had a couch
that could be opened out into a bed. The dining table could also be converted to
a bed. It had a small bath room with a sink and a commode/shower. A stove with
oven and range top and a small refrigerator completed the arrangements. On
the back was a mounted tire with a cover.

I painted three blind mice chasing each other on the spare tire cover. This
vehicle, now christened the Mouse Wagon, became the rat pack travel bus.

The following summer Jane and I and Faye Harvin drove it in a caravan of
fourteen cars to a square dance lodge on Lake of the Ozarks called Kirkwood
Lodge for a week long dance vacation. Ed could not leave with us at the time
and came a day later by plane. We arrived and checked in on a Sunday. The
lodge has several older cabins and newer ones as well as a larger building. This
larger building housed the office, dance hall and several more rooms. Because
we were the rookies and the returnees had preference they got the onsite rooms
and Ed and Faye Harvin and Jane and I and two other couples were placed in a
nearby motel.

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 Sunday night was the first night welcome dance at which we were
introduced to the staff and other dancers. The schedule for the week and the
rules were explained and then we danced. The schedule for most days was to
have a mourning two hour teaching session at which we learned some new
square dance steps. Lunch and a short rest break followed by two more hours of
Round Dance lessons and then time off until supper. After supper, dressed full
square dance costume, was two hours of square and round dance which was
always followed by snacks and drinks and about a half hour of skits. Wednesday
night we were taken to a country music theater. Friday night was the farewell
dance and Saturday morning we checked out paid our bill and made reservations
to return the next summer. Jane and I did return the next two summers.

Another time the mouse wagon carried us to New Orleans so that we could
go to the King Tut exhibition. This was our second group visit to ‘sin city’ to eat
and see the sights. This time we had rooms in a very nice down town hotel. On
the first trip we stayed in a motel over the bridge in Algiers with a Mexican
restaurant next door.

The six of us got in line about 6 AM and were number 501 to 506. It was
the day after x-mas, most of those ahead of us had spent the night, in sleeping
bags with the weather below freezing. We almost went by the First Call Benet
shop on the way but decided not to. If we had we probably would not have gotten
in that day as they shut off the line about seven. We have wonderful pictures of
Jane with her feet in one orange and one yellow paper bag as she was in tennis
shoes as her feet were freezing. She was also wearing a Big Bird stocking hat.

Helen Lund a member the Unitarian Church of C.C. to whom I had shown
my portfolio. Felt that artists in Corpus needed a sales outlet as the art museum
did not like to display “Local Art”, a basic snob approach. The Art Mart was the
creation of Helen Lund a friend of ours and a member of artists in C.C. needed an
outlet for their work. She contacted the management of Parkdale Plaza, the only
mall in C.C. at the time and secured an empty store space for us. The mall was
glad to have someone in the space even un-paying as it ART MART as it reduced
their fire insurance cost. We were even able to get a lighted sign like the ones on
the other stores in the center. J.C. Penny’s, Lichtenstein’s, and several major
retailers no longer exist in C.C. including a cafeteria. We moved several times as
the space we were in would be rented.

The initial membership included several major artists of C.C. as well as

many minor lights of the area. Artists, several of whom competed in local and
statewide competitions were initial members. One offshoot of the Art Mart was
the Art Mart Studio, classroom and exhibit space closer to downtown. Neither still
exists. The only other exhibit space was the Centennial Art Museum which then
was in South Bluff Park. Many art events were staged in the adjoining large tree
filled park.

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 At some point the Junior League stuck their horn in which had some
positive long term effects and some not so. One good result was the creation of
what is now the Art Museum now a part of the group of Museums next to
the port area.

BIO Info etc To be added to mine

Name – Birth date and place

Spouse or significant others = Include birth info

Children Birth info

Schools info

Travels including residence info

Miscellaneous

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