Autobiography, Chapter 6

When I decided to return to Oklahoma State in early 1968, I looked around for the field which would be considered the easiest major in the University.  It appeared to be a tie between Business Administration and Political Science.  “Poly Sci” sounded more interesting to me so that became my newest (and last) major.

I had negotiated a settlement with Maurice Roger McSpadden’s insurance company (from the 1968 car accident - see my blog of March 21, 2013) which gave me about $10,000, a huge sum in those days.  Even though I had had surgery twice on the broken right arm, once to put pins in and once to take them out, I thought the settlement was fantastic.

I had enough money, in fact, that in the Spring of 1968, I decided not to come home to Mannford and work but to stay in Stillwater and go to school.  I took two classes over the summer including botany and remember that the ratio of female to male students in that class was about 10:1.  Yes, life was good!

When I first returned to Stillwater, I bounced around, living in two or three different places.  One was a boarding house on the second floor over the “General George” on Washington Street.  The General George was a head shop and the other people who lived there were all Indian students.  The smell of stewed, curried chicken legs became almost more than I could stand.

Since I didn’t have the crew from Mannford to run around with (which probably helped my grade point average!), I started running around with a group of “town” people, not students.  These included Junior Mullendore, who ran a service station, Jim Wellington, a Coors route man, Fred Wellington, his father and a jailer for the County, J.O. Dodgin, a motorcycle mechanic, David Turner, Ted Sebring, Tom Crozier, and J.R. Graves, who ran a detailing shop.

Most of these guys were into CB radio and motorcycles and I was into both of these as well.  In fact, it was about this time that I bought my first Harley, a 1963 Sportster.  The guy that I bought it from had done a lot of work to the engine and it was the fastest vehicle in Stillwater, bar none.  It actually got to the point that every Saturday, someone wanted to race me to see if they could knock me off my throne.

In the fall of 1968, I moved into the house that I would live in for the next two years.  It was a tiny house converted from a garage and was located at the corner of Ninth Street and Washington.  Ray Bigler was the landlord; I had met him while working for Joe Lewis at his Conoco Station out north on Highway 177.  By now, I had the motorcycle, a power boat, a slick 1963 Chevy and was living in a house by myself.  Now this was the way to attend school!

Even though I had quite a bit of money from the settlement, I did continue to work.  In 1969, I went down to the feed mill, Stillwater Milling Company, and applied for a job.  Since I had a chauffeur’s license, they put me to work immediately driving a truck.  I told the guy when I interviewed that I was good at driving bobtails but had no experience in semi’s.  He said that they had plenty of semi drivers so that wouldn’t be a problem.

The second week that I worked for them, I got a call one morning asking if I could take a load of feed to their store in Perry.  It was snowing that morning but I told them I could and went down to the mill.  As you may have guessed, the load that morning was on a semi.  Well, I “white knuckled” it all the way to Perry and from then on, I was in semi’s all the time.

By this time, I had figured out how to study and work and have a good time all at the same time.  In fact, there were a couple of semesters that I would work 60 hours a week, carry 15 hours in school, have a good time and still made the Dean’s Honor Roll.

On weekends and when I wasn’t working, I would hang out at Jim Smith’s Café at the corner of 6^th and Main and drink coffee with the guys.  The waitresses in there were attractive and we liked to harass them.  I was attracted to one in particular, a redhead by the name of Louise, but I didn’t get around to asking her out.  Besides, I was going with a girl, Carolyn Ventris, and didn’t need to confuse myself.

Carolyn had a little boy, Bobby, who was cute as a bug and Carolyn was looking for a Dad for him.  I wasn’t ready for it to be me, although I did have a close call one night.  Carolyn, Jim Wellington, Junior Mullendore and I all went out drinking and we had way too much to drink.  The next morning I woke up with a terrible hangover and finally made my way to the café.  Jim and Junior were in there and they both allowed as how it was too bad that we had not been able to find a minister the night before.  They both wanted to know if I was still going to marry Carolyn, like I had said last night.  Wow, I didn’t remember any of that!

In the summer of 1969, I had been going to school for four semesters straight so I decided to take the summer off and go back to Mannford and work.  I came home, lived with Mom and Dad and worked for Ted Norwood in his service station.  It was a pretty uneventful summer except the visitor I had at the station one day.

I was in the back working on a car when Ted came back and told me that Orville Barton was on the driveway and wanted to talk to me.  I went out to Orville’s car where he and his wife Bessie were in the front seat and another couple that I didn’t know was in the back.  Now, I knew Orville but he and I weren’t old buddies.  He made small talk for a couple of minute and then he and the others left.

I thought this was a really strange encounter until I explained it to Mom.  She knew that Orville and Bessie were friends with my Aunt Ninah, Roy Pierce’s sister.  The couple in the back of Orville’s car had been my aunt and her husband whom I had never met.  It would be another 30 years before I would meet her.

I did go over to Stillwater a few times during the summer.  One of those times I was on the Sportster and happened to see the red headed waitress from Jim’s.  She waved at me but I decided to be a big shot and ignored her.  Boy, would I pay for that later.

The other big event of the summer in Mannford was getting beat in a drag race.  The old motorcycle was still pretty fast but one day I raced Gary Walker in his 1967 Nova.  It had a 365 hp 327 ci motor and he waxed me.  I still hadn’t been beaten by a motorcycle but that day was coming too.

When I returned to Stillwater in the fall, it was just like I had left it.  I still had the little house on 9^th Street and I was still going with Carolyn, although I was beginning to feel uncomfortable about it.

One night in September, Carolyn and I were sitting in Jim Smith’s Café when the phone rang.  One of the waitresses came and got me and told me it was for me.  When I got to the phone, the caller was Bonnie McKnight, a girl I knew.  She said that Louise Nance (the red headed waitress) and she were both out at the Lamplighter Bar and they wanted to know if I would join them.  As I hung up the phone, I was trying to come up with a lie to tell Carolyn.  When I got back to the booth, I told her that my Mother had become very ill and that I was going to have to go to Mannford that evening.  That was the last time I ever saw Carolyn.

When I got out to the Lamplighter that night on the Sportster, I, for some reason gravitated toward Louise instead of Bonnie, and danced with her all night.  When the bar closed, it was raining but Louise wanted me to give her a ride home on the motorcycle in spite of the rain.  I can remember today as well as if it were yesterday standing outside her parents’ house, kissing her in the rain.

Well, it wasn’t love at first sight but it was just about that quick.  We went together until I proposed to her in November.  I had never brought a woman home to introduce to my parents until I started going with Louise so I’m sure they knew right away that this was going to turn into something.  We initially set the wedding day to be in May or June, after school was out.  Then we moved it to March, during Spring Break.  Then we moved it to January, between semesters.

Because I had gotten to the point where I really wanted to spend all my extra time with Louise, I had gotten to where I was turning down more loads at the Feed Mill than I was taking.  Finally, one day, the foreman called me to come down there.  He told me that I was going to have to make a choice, either the job or the girl was going to have to go.  Well, that was the end of my truck driving career.

We did get married in January, on Louise’s birthday, the 20^th.  We were married by Reverend Don Combs at the Methodist Church in Yale.  Her Mom and Dad, my Mom and Dad, her sister and brother-in-law, Esther and Vernon, and my brother, Milt, were the attendees.  I gave the Minister $20, I bought a corsage for about $5, and a roll of film for the camera.  This was the total of our wedding expenses.

We got married on Tuesday and were going to have to be back in Stillwater on the following Monday to begin school.  We planned to go to Arkansas but the day of the wedding there was a blizzard east of Tulsa.  We decided to go west instead and spent our honeymoon night at the Buffalo Motel in Canyon, Texas.  At the time we thought this was fantastic.  In 2002, we had occasion to be in Canyon again and the Buffalo Inn is still there, with a minor name change.  Our tastes have changed a little in 32 years, however, and we decided not to spend the night there.

During my last semester at Oklahoma State, I didn’t’ work much.  Louise was still working for Jim Smith at the Café and I worked some for Joe Lewis at the Conoco Station but not nearly as much as I had in previous years.  I had one class that last semester that was really eating my lunch!

I had taken a couple of courses under this guy (I don’t remember his name) and had done well in them, so I thought I would be wired in this course, Latin American Governments.  I got in there, found out that this was his specialty, and that I was the only student in there who was NOT a “Latin American Studies Student”.

Toward the end of the semester, I knew I was in trouble so I went to his office to beg for a grade.  I told him that I had to have that course to graduate.  On the day that grades were to be posted, I went running up to his office.  Next to the code number that was assigned to me was the grade “D” with two minus signs after it.  My begging had been successful!

In spite of that course, I managed to graduate with 128 hours and a 2.3 grade point average.  If you do the math and start with 60 hours of 1.4, it takes a pretty good effort to finish up where I did.  If that sounds like bragging, maybe it is but after my poor start, I needed to brag about something.

1970 was a horrible year to graduate in.  I had three or four interviews while still in school but no job offers from them.  After school was out, we decided to move to Tulsa where I could spend full time looking for a job.  The School Superintendent at Mannford then was Fay Stout; his son Allen worked for the State Unemployment Agency.  I went to see Allen and he got me interviews with several companies.  I had two offers, one from Allstate to go to work as a claims adjuster, and the other from Vickers, as an inside sales rep.  The Allstate job paid more, $650 per month, but I would not be able to start it for six weeks.  The Vickers job, which paid $590, started immediately.  We didn’t have any choice; we couldn’t wait six weeks.

Autobiography, Chapter 2

If you are still awake after reading the first chapter, here goes the second.  We only have about fourteen more to go!

2-Life in Pampa

In 1957, Carl White sold Franks Manufacturing to Cabot Corporation and they announced that they were moving the entire operation, except for a service center, from Tulsa to Pampa, Texas.

Dad was an assistant foreman in the assembly department, and they offered him a job in Pampa but he had to move himself.  He didn’t like the area around Pampa but decided to take the move.  Mom, on the other hand, was excited about moving to Pampa, in large part due to the fact that we rented a house with indoor plumbing in town.  This was a definite step up from our house in Mannford!

The owner of the house in Pampa wanted Dad to buy the house we rented for $4800 but Dad declined, saying that he didn’t want to stay in Pampa that long.  Instead we rented it for $100 per month and stayed in it about 40 months.  Hindsight is always 20/20!

As I recall, we didn’t have any trouble fitting in in Pampa.  Our school, Lamar Grade School, was right across the street and we made a lot of friends in the neighborhood quickly.

One of my best friends in Pampa was Kevin Romines, who lived just down the street and around the corner.  He and I had a lot of fun and got into a lot of trouble but we always seemed to be able to get out of it.

My first job was helping the janitor at Lamar School clean after school.  I would run the dust mop, sweep floors and empty trash.  He gave me a 48-star U.S. Flag which had flown over the school and whose ends had become frayed.  I took it home and had Mom teach me how to sew it up.  I still have that flag today.

I also delivered newspapers and caddied at the Pampa Country Club while living in Pampa.  Delivering papers tested my resolve, especially when the snow was a foot deep and the wind was howling.  I had many good customers on the route and they treated me good.  At one house, the hedge was about eight feet tall in front and the area between the hedge and the roof of the house was narrow.  About once every five days, the woman who lived there would call and I would have to come down and either dig the paper out of the hedge or get it off the roof.  The biggest problem with paper delivery was the hamburger stand on my route.  When I went out to collect, I would spend all my earnings at the hamburger stand.  The burgers were 35 cents and were as good as you could buy anywhere.

Caddying was a lot of fun.  Had I known that, in later years, I would spend as much time on the golf course as I do now, I would have been a better caddy.  As it was, I had a good time and made a few bucks.  We got paid $2.50 for a round of golf.  If we carried two bags, that totaled $5 and with tips we could make as much as $7 in a day!  Big money for back then.  I did have a couple of customers who made a habit of throwing clubs.  I learned to watch them when they flubbed a shot.

One thing offered at Lamar School which was not available in Mannford was the opportunity to play in the band.  I had an old trumpet which Grandmother and Grandfather Nash had given me so I decided to play trumpet.  Gary opted for the French horn.  Our little grade school band wasn’t very good but it did prepare us for the big time – Junior High School.

In 1958, I started to school at Pampa Junior High School, downtown.  Some of my fondest memories of the next two years involved band.  Mr. Ben Gollehon, our band director, decided that I should play the tuba, since I was one of the few kids big enough to carry it.

The Pampa School System had just the year before built a new junior high school, Robert E. Lee, and Lee had been given our uniforms.  Mr. Gollehon got us all to dress in matching gray hooded sweatshirts and blue jeans and we marched in the Christmas parade that year.  Some rich patron saw us and donated enough money to buy brand new uniforms for the entire band.

Mr. Gollehon had a way of getting the most out of us.  We were preparing for the statewide band contest to be held in Canyon at West Texas State University and he kept telling us that we stunk!  He had us marching down the field in the form of a treble clef, playing “Say It With Music”.  This was pretty complicated stuff for a junior high band.  At the last minute, he told us that we were so bad that he wasn’t even going to go.  Of course, this inspired us to give the performance of our lives and we found out later that he had hired a 16 mm camera crew out of his own pocket to film our show.

While we kids were having a great time in Pampa, Dad hated his job and could hardly stand to go to work each day.  He had severe peptic ulcer problems and couldn’t seem to get them under control.  Mom had a lot of friends in Pampa and they all used to play canasta and go fishing together during the day.  In spite of this, she was having health problems and was finally diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.  Fortunately, she has not suffered the debilitating effects which most people with MS do.  She has had problems at times, some of them severe, but they have never left her permanently disabled.

One of the scariest things that ever happened to us in Pampa was when  Mom fainted and fell on the bathroom heater.  She got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and just lost consciousness.  She had severe burns on her neck and breast but they healed and, over the years, became less noticeable.

While I had a good time in Pampa, some of it was at the expense of other people.  I got into a crowd which did a considerable amount of shoplifting and I did my share of it.  I also discovered the ridiculously stupid trick of sniffing gasoline.  Fortunately, that was as far as it went.  I also started an addiction to tobacco in Pampa that took me 35 years to get rid of.

When we moved to Pampa, Dad decided to keep the farm at Mannford, since he wasn’t planning on staying in West Texas very long.  We rented the house out to the Baneys, a family which had lived around Mannford for a while.  Thelma Baney was a Harvison and many of her relatives are still around Mannford today.  After a couple of years, they moved out and we kept the house empty till we moved back.

Often, we would load up the car on Friday afternoon and, when Dad got off work, we would take off for Mannford.  It was about a six hour drive up through Canadian, then to Arnett, Okeene, Stillwater, and home.  We would spend the weekend working and cleaning up around there and go back to Pampa on Sunday evening.

As I explained in the first chapter, Oklahoma remained dry until 1960.  On many a Friday night in 1958 and 1959, we would load up the car and head for Mannford.  Dad would always take his tools in the trunk which would make the car sit down in back.  Almost invariably, we would get stopped by a highway patrol trooper who was convinced that he was going to find liquor in the trunk

One Friday evening, we were rocking along in Western Oklahoma and someone asked Dad what time it was.  He slowed down, turned on the overhead light and looked at his watch.  About that time we topped a hill and there was a highway patrolman who waved us over.  He wanted to know how Dad had known he was there since he had been listening to the sound of our engine coming and had heard it slow down!

It seemed like every holiday that Uncle Albert and Aunt Beulah Winans would come out to Pampa to see us.  They didn’t have any children of their own and we were about the only family that they had.  Uncle Albert was a fine person who loved children and loved to play with them.  One summer when Uncle Albert came to visit, Gary and I had just gotten an old used Sears Allstate Moped.  Uncle Albert wanted to ride it and we couldn’t say no, but we were scared to death that he would break it!  Fortunately, he didn’t.

Every kid we knew had a dream of owning a Cushman Eagle motorscooter; Kevin Romines actually owned one.  We would go out riding together but our little Moped would not keep up with his Cushman.  We also spent a lot of time playing at a place we called the “big hole”.  This was an excavation about 2 or 3 blocks west of our house and it was huge!  You could almost not see from one side of it to the other, or so we thought at the time.  I went back there later, after I had married Louise, to show it to her.  Man, was I disappointed at this little tiny hole in the ground.

Dad finally had his fill of Pampa and gave the company an ultimatum: either transfer him back to Tulsa to work in the service center or he would quit.  Because of his knowledge and skills, they decided to transfer him.  We moved in early January, between school semesters.  I can remember that Gary and I rode with the man Dad had contracted to haul the furniture.  I’m sure that Mom did not want to go back to Mannford because of the condition of the house there and because of leaving her friends, but she did willingly anyway.

A Lifetime of Motorcycles

I was 14 years old living in Pampa, Texas when I got my first motorcycle, an Allstate Moped.  My brother, Gary, and I flogged that thing as only youngsters can until it wouldn't go another mile!  Dad was continually working on it to keep it running.

Over the years since then, I've had countless bikes including several Harleys, Hondas, and even a Moto Guzzi.  Today, I have four bikes: a '66 Harley Sportster, an '03 BMW, a Yamaha TW200, and the '74 Moto Guzzi Eldorado.  My favorite ride was a '63 Sportster which I rode when I was at Oklahoma State back in the late '60s.  It was, at the time, the fastest motorcycle in Stillwater!  The picture above is me with it in about 1969.

Louise and I had our first date on this motorcycle and I can still remember that night vividly.  Over the years, she rode behind me a lot of miles on a lot of trips.  Several years ago, we were in Houston, Texas, on a Harley Ultra Classic and it was extremely hot that day.  Also, the traffic was horrible, a standard condition in Houston. When we got back to the travel trailer that evening, Louise told me that she was through riding.  She has never ridden with me again.

I purchased the '66 Sportster about five years ago in an attempt to re-create the old days.  It cannot be done, as most people know, so now I need to sell the Sportster.  I've also decided that, like Louise, I'm about through riding.  I won't completely quit motorcycles but there won't be any more cross-country rides.

It has been a lot of fun but it is time to move on to something else.  Besides, I can use the money from the sale of the motorcycles to buy a new antenna tower!