Читать книгу When the Porch Light's On. . .Stories of People, Popcorn, and Parasails - Don Ph.D. Newbury PhD - Страница 4

IT IS HARD to imagine any person, anywhere or any time, being so blessed by family. These blessings have continued throughout my life. My parents were the late Mr. and Mrs. T. J. Newbury. Both were from big families, both had little formal education (neither finished high school), and both were familiar and comfortable with hard work. My mom’s mother died during the national flu epidemic around 1930, and Mom--the oldest of three girls among nine children--helped her dad raise the younger siblings. My dad, born in Louisiana to a railroad family, had seven brothers and sisters, one of whom was claimed by diphtheria at an early age. Mom (the former Tempie Gotcher) and Dad (Thomas J. Newbury) met when both families lived in rural Brown County, when the country was in the depths of the Great Depression. When they married in 1931, they scratched out a living in farm work, including long days picking cotton bolls, sometimes moving around West Texas to the next fields needing cotton pickers.

I was born September 7, 1937, in their small rented farmhouse west of May, Texas. Dr. McDaniel drove out to the farm for the delivery, and Dad joked many times about how the doctor charged him twenty-five dollars--and that I probably wasn’t worth it! In those days, it was common to be born at home. (I was not to be hospitalized—not even once—until open-heart surgery required it sixty years later.) Soon after my birth, my dad got a job with May Schools. He was custodian, “fix-it” man, bus driver, and you name it—there were no written job descriptions. He eagerly did whatever “Mr. White” (H. E. White, Superintendent of Schools) asked him to do. After all, the school paid him thirty dollars a month….

I’m not sure how we got around—most likely, we didn’t go many places. When we did, I think we either walked or hitched rides with friends fortunate enough to own motorized transportation and generous enough to share it. I do recall riding the school bus routes with my dad; I was about three years of age. I remember his cheery countenance as he drove the lumbering yellow bus over the country roads and how he encouraged all the riders.…He was mighty proud to be a part of May Schools, even though his “position” was several cuts below a professional one, and I doubt very much if he had ever heard the word “contract.” If he had, he would have consulted Superintendent White to make sure he should sign it. Dad was usually leery about signing his name on anything, and he urged me repeatedly to be careful what I put my name on….

One of my earliest memories concerns Friday night movies at the school. I was fascinated by the guy who knew how to thread the projector and how quickly he could take off one reel of the old black and white film and slip on the next one with minimal delay. The projector was noisy, the picture sometimes jumped, and the film almost always broke at least once. They took up a collection to rent another film for the next week, and there was free popcorn, lemonade, and “Polly-Pop” for us kids. (“Polly-Pop” was a precursor of Kool-Aid.) Life was exceedingly uncomplicated….

IN 1940, OUR lives changed greatly. Mr. White changed professions, becoming principal owner of the Central Texas Gas Company, a small firm providing natural gas for several rural communities in Brown County. Dad was loyal to Mr. White, taking a similar multi-task job with the new company. Our family moved a dozen miles east to Blanket. I doubt that our economic status improved much, but the company provided free housing, a pick-up truck that we could also use as a personal vehicle, and a telephone! The phone, of course, was critical to my dad’s work. He had to be accessible in case of emergencies. There were few phones in the community, and many neighbors borrowed ours. A ring of “one long and two shorts” caused our phone to clang, and others up and down the party line could listen if they chose.

Part of my dad’s job included making monthly rounds to pick up payments for gas at several grocery stores in the county where customers left payments. They had no meters for gas usage; they simply paid two dollars in summer months and four dollars in the winter. I marveled at people paying so much for this utility every single month!

AT AGE FIVE, I moved to the country again (as if the early years in May and Blanket were urban). The family moved to the Salt Creek Community, about eight miles west of Blanket and a dozen miles from Brownwood, county seat of Brown County. The house redefined modesty. It had a kitchen, bedroom, and living room. My bed was in the living room. There was a bathroom with a commode and lavatory, but a washtub was brought in for bathing. A few years later, Dad hired a man to pour concrete for a makeshift shower, and Dad walled it with planks on three sides. Had there been a door, it would have looked exactly like an “out” house “in” doors….

The move to Salt Creek put dad closer to several gas wells that supplied the company, and there was plenty of room to store steel pipe used in the natural gas lines. Though I lived in the country, I was anything but a “country boy.” I don’t think I ever milked a cow and gathered but few eggs. Costs of allergic reactions to cotton fields put an end to that, and working with barnyard animals never piqued my interest. I rode a school bus to Early School, where I attended all twelve grades. This was about a ten-mile ride each way, with arrival back home each afternoon leaving time to ride my bike, skip rocks on a farm pond, or fire my air rifle. (Often, I emptied entire packages of BBs into the armor of armadillos, never fazing them.…)

IT IS NOT possible to think about that air rifle without remembering a bleak moment, perhaps when I was ten years of age or so, when I wondered if a BB would penetrate the glass on the gasoline pump we had on the place. It was a primitive pump--Dad would move the handle, forward and back, to force ten gallons of gasoline into the glass cylinder. I was fascinated to see gas slosh about, then disappear when Dad put the nozzle into the truck’s gasoline tank. I had sense enough to know that I would NEVER pull the trigger of my air rifle anywhere even close to the pump, fearful of the possible dangerous result of mixing BBs and gasoline.…Still, I wondered many times if a BB would penetrate that gasoline cylinder.

One day, with Dad away and the cylinder empty, my boyish curiosity begged to be satisfied. I drew a bead on the upper part of the cylinder and pulled the trigger. I was mortified to see a tiny hole appear in the glass; I had figured the BB would simply glance off the surface. I was hopeful that my dad might not notice the hole right away, but he was bound to see gasoline when it came spurting out….

Before the inevitable spanking was administered, I tried to reason with him that if he would pump eight gallons into the cylinder instead of ten, the gasoline level would never reach the hole. He didn’t like my logic, but had to follow it for years. He made me realize there was a price to be paid for unhealthy curiosity.

WHEN MY BROTHER, Fred, was born, I was seven years of age. We seemed to be from two generations. Immediately, I felt almost old enough to be a babysitter. In the early years, we had little in common except the affection we both felt for our mongrel dog, Prince.

A favorite summertime activity was forcing bunny rabbits out of the six-inch pipes stacked on racks near our house. It was a simple procedure. I placed a coffee can inside the pipe, using a metal rod to push the can thirty or forty feet through the pipe. At the other end, I stationed Fred and Prince. Sometimes we would catch the bunnies in gunny sacks; other times we both delighted in just watching Prince take off after them….

A seemingly failsafe way to determine if rabbits were seeking a shaded respite in the pipes from the hot summer sun was simply to peer inside. If the view was obscured, or if we saw two bunny ears erect, it was almost certain that a rabbit was blocking the view. One day, we were wrong, very wrong….

Seeing what I thought was a rabbit, I pushed the coffee can through the pipe, with Fred and Prince “at the ready,” gunny sack in place for the catch. When our prey hit the sack, Fred held it tight, and Prince pawed at the bag like crazy. In an instant, both brother and dog looked sick. I wanted to go help them, but the odor was too great. Our “rabbit” that day was a petrified skunk, but this little creature was not so petrified that he could not make both Fred and Prince smell like a skunk’s siblings for the next several days….

ENTERTAINMENT WAS MOSTLY “42” (a game played with dominoes) with relatives and friends, and in those days, there were “drop-in” visits. It was not uncommon for relatives to land on us (or us on them) completely unannounced and almost always at mealtime. This was the “expected” thing, and Mom always hustled about to make sure there was plenty of food. After supper, kids played croquet, pitched washers and horseshoes, or shot baskets while the domino games kept the adults busy, often well into the night. While they played, amidst the plethora of boasts, bluffs, and threats, they caught up on the news of the day. Upon becoming totally “tuckered out,” the kids curled up on pallets when their bodies insisted that rest could no longer be ignored.…

About once a week, Mom and Dad would take me to the movies in Brownwood. This modest entertainment was not as “tame” as it would seem. Remember, there was no television in those days. When World War II broke out, the army’s Camp Bowie, located a couple of miles from Brownwood, became a military center, doubling the county’s population in a short period of time. Most of the soldiers lived in tents, but when they had a pass, or even a few hours off, they “went to the picture show.” (That’s what we called movies back then.) Though they had theatres on base, current releases played in the downtown theatres.

A typical procedure involved ticket purchasing, then munching on a bag of popcorn, waiting until the feature ended. When it did, soldiers poured out of the theatre, and those of us outside poured in, trying to enter early enough to get seats that weren’t too close to the screen. (Seated way down front, we had to look up at the screen, often getting cricks in our necks.)

I remember holding on to my folks’ hands for dear life, because soldiers were everywhere. I knew there was no reason to be afraid of them, but, at age five or so, I had a horror of getting lost in the big crowded city! Youngsters today can’t believe that in those days there were eight theatres in downtown Brownwood, and in the 1950s, three drive-in theatres. (There now are only about a dozen drive-in theatres in the entire state!) Theatre admission was thirty-five cents and twelve cents for children under age twelve at the best “picture show,” the Bowie Theatre. At most of the others, it scaled downward to twenty-five cents and nine cents.

I THINK I was “under twelve” until I was well into my thirteenth year, perfecting, as did my friends, the rehearsed art of “slouching down” in front of the cashier’s booth, meekly asking for a child’s admission. The savvy cashier no doubt knew of the ploy, but also knew that whatever money we had left would be spent just a few feet away at the concession stand. (One Saturday, the carnival came to town, and I had to be “short” and “tall” on the same day! I was “short” when admitted to the movie, but stood on tip-toe at the sign where they made sure you were tall enough to ride on the carnival’s bumper cars. You had to reach a minimal height of “this tall,” or they wouldn’t sell you a ticket….)

One time, we had more fun AFTER the carnival left town. We kids biked to the deserted carnival grounds, going over the area sort of like guys with metal detectors might do, except we had no such equipment. Our search was limited to what we could see. What we saw was the “you must be this tall” sign; perhaps it had fallen off the truck. We took it home, and thought of some creative re-wording. Turning it sideways, we painted the words: WEENIE DOG CONTEST SATURDAY—entries must be THIS LONG. We leaned it up against the vet’s front door that night, then ran away pronto. It was the laugh of the town the next day….

ALL OF MY family loved Early Schools, where Fred and I completed public school--I in 1956; he in 1963. We didn’t miss many school activities. I excelled in several “county meet” literary events (now called University Interscholastic League), and Fred was several cuts above average in both football and basketball. Sadly, I didn’t see many of his games because I was deeply involved in sports information work for Howard Payne University, as well as covering numerous games for the Brownwood Bulletin and Radio Station KBWD.

Fred and I were loved, encouraged, and disciplined. Both of our parents regretted not having more formal education, and they spoke often of “when the boys go to college.” It was never IF, but WHEN….In fact, Dad often said, “Don, we’ll help you get through Howard Payne, and then maybe you can help Fred.”

That’s exactly what happened. I earned enough money to pay all direct college expenses, but I was allowed to live at home, and was provided food and clothing. (When Fred entered first grade, Mom started working in sales/alterations at Brownwood department stores, earning little more than minimum wage.) In 1955, they borrowed two thousand eight hundred dollars to build a four-room frame home in Early. This time, my brother and I had a bedroom to share. (More than once I’ve wondered how they handled this debt so quickly. It was a three percent note and was paid off in three years.) In the mid-1950s, Central Texas Gas Company was sold to Lone Star Gas Company, and Dad worked there until retirement around 1970. He never earned as much as six hundred dollars per month….

Finishing HPU in 1961 with a triple major, I stayed on to teach journalism and help with college information duties for a couple of years. Then, in 1963, I left home for the first time; it was the best move of my life. I was twenty-five years of age, and accepted the “lofty” position of “Director of College Information and Instructor of Journalism” at Sul Ross State University in Alpine. It was a queasy feeling, not only leaving home for the first time, but moving three hundred thirty miles away. SRSU’s offer of five thousand four hundred dollars a year, plus a free room in the men’s honors dorm if I would direct it, seemed like a ton of money. (I had earned three thousand dollars and three thousand six hundred dollars, respectively, during my first two years out of college at HPU. When Dr. Guy D. Newman, my president, learned of my offer at Sul Ross, he offered to equal it.) Though much of my heart was at HPU, I couldn’t bear to accept such a big salary from a small, church-supported school where the never-ending struggle to meet monthly payrolls was a way of life for several generations….Dr. Newman remained a close friend and loyal supporter throughout his life, championing me every step of the way.