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.

Everyone Has a Story

Someone (I forget who) used to tell me this all the time and it really is true.  Everyone has a story.  They said, "Encourage people to tell you their story.  Most of the time it will be fascinating!".  Most of the time, however, people don't need encouragement; they are more than willing to share their stories (experiences) with you.

As expected, I find that as I get older, the number of stories I have available becomes larger and larger.  I now have a story for almost any occasion.  This blog is a perfect example of that.

It's interesting to watch the group dynamics with a bunch of people discussing nothing in particular (being retired, most of my conversations fit into this category; I seldom have a discussion about anything important).  Everyone wants to relate their experience and the subject becomes like a chain.  It gradually moves from one topic to another as the conversation continues.

To exchange information or ideas requires two things: someone who is has information or ideas and is willing to share them, and someone who is willing to listen to receive these ideas.  It seems that we have a lot more of the former than of the latter.  I know I fit into this category.

I used to work for a division of a large corporation.  This company decided that they needed a new tag line so they came up with the phrase, "We know how important it is to listen".  To support this philosophy, they sent every one of their 43,000 employees to a seminar on listening.  They truly spent a lot of money on the idea of listening.

Did it help?  I don't think so; that company doesn't exist today.  Oh, bits and pieces of it are still around but the company is not.  Someone on Madison Avenue made a lot of money promoting the tagline but we didn't listen.

The next time you see me, be sure to tell me your story (unless, of course, I have a more important one to tell you)!  Did you say something?

Genealogy Failures

I was going to write a post on my successes in genealogy but it dawned on me that I should first mention my failures.  I have two of them which are particularly outstanding and they both deal with great grandfathers.

The first is my mother's grandfather on her father's side.  Granddad always told us that he was raised in an orphanage in Utah.  He knew his mother and father's names but had never met them.  I have been able to track down the mother and her family all the way back to the Revolutionary War but have gotten ZERO on his father.

Granddad always said that his father's name was Harry Nash and that he was from Detroit, Michigan.  On the other hand, Granddad's sister, Sedelia, always said that their father was from Ohio.  At any rate, Harry Nash continues to elude me.

My other prominent failure relates to James Oliver Alexander, my great grandfather on Dad's side.  Coincidentally,  one of my greatest "Aha!" moments also relates to him.  Let me describe it first.

J.O.'s wife was an mystery, like a ghost in the wind.  Finally one day, I was examining a photo of Granddad, their child, and noticed that the photographer was located in Bentonville, Arkansas, a place I had never associated with J.O.  I began to dig into Bentonville and discovered my great grandmother, Malinda, was buried there, about a block from Wal Mar's World Headquarters!

My failure which relates to J.O. is where he was for the twenty years between Malinda's death in 1871 and when he resurfaced in Childress, Texas in the late 1880's.  Oh well, I'll keep plugging away and someday I will find out where he was.

This picture is of J.O. and his brother, John Walker Alexander.  It is interesting to note that these two brothers fought on opposite sides during the Civil War.  J.O. fought for the Confederacy in Texas and John Walker fought for the Union in Missouri.

One more thing which is interesting from a genealogy point of view is the loss of the 1890 census records.  Census records are a vital part of genealogy and are the "backbone" of most family trees.  However, the 1890 census records don't exist.

These records were stored in a warehouse in St. Louis.  In 1921, a fire swept through that warehouse and destroyed all but a few thousand of the census records.  I can't tell you how many times I have looked at someone's history and wished I knew where they were in 1890.  Oh, well!

Autobiography - Chapter Five

Another boring installment of my autobiography!  At least my children might enjoy it!

5-Working, Part One

Although I had worked at many jobs by this time in my life, I had not been in a situation where I just went to work and came home with no thought of school.  Things were about to change.

The war in Viet Nam was beginning to heat up and David and I decided to beat the draft by going down and enlisting in the Army.  We were going to go into the Army Security Agency on the “buddy plan” and the Army would guarantee that we would stay together, at least through Advanced Individual Training (AIT).  At any rate, we packed our duffel bags and went to Oklahoma City to take the induction physical.

I remember that there were long lines of guys carrying reams of paper from their doctors explaining why they should not be in the Army.  It didn't help; they were all going!  Here I was, trying to get in and I didn't make it!  On one of the forms I had to fill out it asked if I had any paralyses.  I checked it “yes” and wrote that my left thumb was paralyzed.

Sure enough, a doctor came up, asked me about the thumb and looked at it.  When he was done, he said, “Son, we can’t take you with that thumb!”  Well, I was heartbroken for about 30 minutes until it began to soak in that I was never going to have to go to the Army.  I found out later that David spent two tours of duty in Viet Nam lying in a ditch pounding code on a key.  I’m still glad I didn't have to go although I have the greatest respect for those who did.

Since I wasn't going to have to go to the Army, I decided to spend the summer of 1966 on the wheat harvest.  David had an uncle, Carl Rice, who lived in Cherryvale, Kansas and ran a custom combining crew.  Since David was going to the Army, his spot was open.  The pay was $300 per month and room and board.  I had a little S90 Honda motorcycle which I had bought during my last semester in school and I took it with me, at least as far as Dodge City.

Wheat harvest wasn’t bad, at least until late August, but I didn’t manage to save much money.  I did send some home but not a lot.  In late August, we had gotten to Opheim, Montana, about 10 miles from the Canadian border.  A serious rain spell set in and Carl and the older guys took off for Canada.  After about a week in the trailer house, I was out of money and out of food and there was no sign of Carl.  I called Mom and got her to wire me $50 to buy a train ticket home.

I had never been on a train before so this was quite an experience.  The train from Opheim to Williston, North Dakota was literally a milk run.  We stopped at every small town and loaded cream cans onto the train.  When I got to Williston, I caught the Great Northern Empire Builder to Minneapolis, then the Rock Island Rocket to Kansas City, and the Santa Fe Super Chief to Dodge City.

When I got to Dodge City, I had $5 left to get from there to Mannford.  I told the guy who had been storing my motorcycle that I didn’t have any money to pay him but that I would send him some.  He agreed to that and I took off for Mannford.  Fortunately, the S90 didn’t burn much gas and I had enough money left over for a couple of candy bars.  When I pulled in at home, however, I didn’t have anything but change in my pockets.

When I got back home, Mom had a hot lead on a job for me at a pipeline x-ray inspection company, Conam Inspection.  I got on with them and they sent me to Emporia, Kansas to help a technician on a 42” pipeline being laid from Emporia to Kansas City.  As I recall, I only worked on that job about 60 to 90 days before it was finished.  When we were done, the manager offered me a “camp” job but I turned it down.  In a “camp” job, you literally live in a camp in a remote area for weeks on end.  This did not sound at all attractive to me.

About this time, I decided I wanted to become a policeman.  A friend from Mannford, Kenneth Moser, and I went down to join the Tulsa Police Department together.  Does this sound familiar?  Well, to cut to the chase, he got in and I didn’t.  We both passed the written test easily but I flunked the physical because I was ¼” too short.  At the time, you had to be 5’9” tall and I was only 5’8 ¾”.  Kenneth wound up becoming a Major in the Police Department and had an excellent career with them.

In November, 1966, I decided to try to get a job at National Tank, since a bunch of the Mannford people worked there.  I went down to apply and talked to the Personnel Manager.  He told me that they couldn’t use me, probably because I had received a Workman’s Compensation claim from my injury at Creamer and Dunlap.  As I was leaving his office, I heard him say something to the secretary about him being gone the next day.

I went back the next day, filled out a new application, and sure enough, he wasn't there.  I talked to a guy by the name of Bob White, who offered me a job in the drafting department.  I told him that I would rather work as a welder’s helper, since they made more money than draftsmen.  I started work there the next day.

I was assigned to help a welder who was totally illiterate, F.W. Dobbins.  I think the reason they put me with him was because I had had two years of drafting in college and could do all his layout work for him.  The foreman in Bay 3A, our bay, was Gabby Etheridge and the assistant foreman was Marvin Code.  3A was a piping bay, where all the vessels were brought, mounted on skids and plumbed.

After about six months, I got to where I thought I was better than F.W., since he couldn’t read or write.  I’ve learned since that I’m no better than anyone else, but I didn’t know that at the time.  Anyway, my idea of punishing him for being “stupid” was to not talk to him at all, except where it was required for work.  After a couple of weeks of this, Marvin Code came up to me one day and asked if I liked my job.

Being a smart-alecky kid, I replied that I didn’t particularly like it.  He then told me that, if I didn’t start treating F.W. better, I was going to have a lot of time on my hands to look for a new job.  Even though I didn’t really like working at National Tank, I was too lazy to want to go find a new one, so I starting talking to F.W. again.

The whole time I worked at National Tank, just over a year, we worked nine hours a day, six days a week.  I started out at $1.85 per hour and worked up to about $2.15, so this was pretty good money for then.  National Tank had over 1100 employees at the time and was non-union.  It darn sure wasn’t a “sweat ship”; in the whole time I worked there I never overworked myself once.  On many a day, I would get Dobbins lined out for the day and I would spend the whole day working on some personal project.

Although the work wasn’t hard, it was extremely dirty.  I remember one day in particular I was laying on my back under a skid burning a hole overhead.  The fire was falling all around and on me.  When I got ready to get out from under the skid, I had to crawl through a big chew of tobacco that someone had spit out on the floor.  I thought then that I would be a lot better off being back in school.

In December, 1967, Bill Murr and I were trading rides back and forth from Mannford to work.  Because I liked to take a shower after work before I came home, Bill decided to quit riding with me.  This was probably the best move he ever made, since about a week later I had a head-on collision in Fisher Bottom on the way home.  The right side of the car was really caved in and Bill would undoubtedly have been killed if he had been in the car.

I was “tail gating” another car when, all of a sudden, it went into the ditch on the right side of the road.  When it did, I saw the Mustang coming right at me!  I guess I thought I had a better chance going left so I jerked it that way as I hit the brakes.  I left 39 feet of skid marks before the Mustang hit me, went airborne, and landed in the bar ditch behind me.

I wound up with a broken right arm and cuts and scratches and the car was “totaled”.  In fact, the front bumper on the passenger’s side was pushed back even with the windshield post.

The guy who hit me was Maurice Roger McSpadden, nephew of Clem McSpadden and a great nephew of Will Rogers.  McSpadden was a “disk jockey” at KVOO Radio and his air name was “Boomer” McSpadden.  He had worked all night the night before and then driven to Stillwater to see his girl friend.  He was on his way back to Tulsa and just picked that time to fall asleep and hit me.  He had several broken bones and cuts but survived it.

I never did talk to McSpadden about the accident, although I wanted to.  It had changed my life in a profound way and I always wondered what impact it had on him.  Once, a good twenty years later, I went up to him at the State Fair where he was working the KVOO booth.  I introduced myself to him and his jaw dropped.  I stood there for what seemed an eternity and he never said a word.  I finally just turned and walked off.  Apparently he was not able to deal with the memory which I wanted to discuss.

This accident provided me with the motive and financial means to go back to school.  I had had about enough of National Tank and was ready to do something else.  With my arm still in a sling, I went back over to Stillwater and enrolled for the Spring, 1968 semester.

South Texas Revisited

Every once in a while, my friend, Larry, reminds me that I need to post something on my blog.  He just did that again so I suppose I should write something.

Louise and I came to South Texas again this year.  We arrived here on January 6 and will be here till March 6.  The weather was absolutely atrocious the first week we were here, making us wonder whether we had made a good choice.  It has since corrected itself, however, and has been beautiful for weeks.

There are too many things to do here to get them all done - many of the activities center around eating.  No wonder I can't lose any weight!  For example, we had the Oklahoma luncheon the other day.  Everyone in the Valley who is from Oklahoma is welcome to attend.  There were about 300 attendees at the luncheon and it was a lot of fun to meet and talk to some of them.

The woman seated next to me won the prize for being the oldest attendee.  She will turn 101 in June and lives in Bearden, Oklahoma, near where my mother grew up.  In the course of the conversation, I found out that she knew my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and my mother quite well.  As the old saying goes, it's a small World!

Another man seated at our table heard us say that we were from Mannford and asked if we had, by chance, known a fellow by the name of Bill Heller.  Of course, I had known Bill and Mary Heller from when I was a kid.  It turns out that he was their ex-  son-in-law.

Speaking of eating, today is half price day on oysters out on South Padre Island.  Guess where we are going this afternoon!  Last week, I ate 2 1/2 dozen of them, I think I can repeat that this week

After we leave here, we are going to go to Louisiana for a few days before returning home.  We have some serious eating to do (crawfish!) over there.  I'll keep you posted on our food adventures.

Big Toys

When I was in college, I had a part-time job driving a truck.  Back then, the state didn't have a Commercial Drivers License, or CDL.  They issued what was called a commercial chauffeurs license.  You didn't have to take a driving test; only answer ten questions in addition to the standard test and pay them a few bucks more.  This license made it legal for you to drive any truck on the road.

Because they were so easy to get, I had a commercial chauffeurs license.  Dad always had a truck around the place which we used to haul hay or other things with so the truck license came in handy.  When I went down to Stillwater Milling Company during my junior year in school, the people there found out that I had a truck license and asked me if I wanted to drive a truck.  I told them that I would love to but I only had experience with "straight" trucks, not semi-trailer trucks.  They replied that that was fine; they had a lot of loads that were in straight trucks.

Because I was in school, the boss would call me when they had a load.  If I had the time, I would go down to the mill and take off from there.  Sure enough, within a couple of weeks, he called with a load to go to    Perry to the company store up there.  When I got to the mill, I discovered that it was a semi load, not a small
straight truckload!  I protested but the boss said I could do it so that was the beginning of my short lived truck driving career.

After another month or two, I worked my way up to a somewhat regular run to Muldrow, Oklahoma, just west of Ft. Smith.  The truck I drove was a 1964 Mack, Model B61.  This truck had a five-speed main transmission with a 4-speed auxiliary transmission behind it.  The B Series Macks were made from 1953 to 1966 and were probably the most recognizable trucks of that era.  By the time I started driving this truck (in 1968), it had become outdated and slow.  I could reach a top speed of 64 miles per hour on the Interstate and get my doors blown off by all the other trucks out there!

Even though the driving job only paid $1.85 an hour, I felt like I was a big shot truck driver.  I did wind up quitting though, when my boss told me I had to choose between my job and my girl friend, Louise.  I chose Louise and it has been a good deal, since I've been married to her for 43 years.

Let's shift to the current time.  For the past several years, Louise and I had a 1999 International truck to pull our fifth wheel RV with.  I also used it occasionally to pull the small dozer around.  When we traded the trailer off on a motor home, I didn't really need the International other than for the dozer.  I thought about an older truck (we've always liked older vehicles) but couldn't find one I liked.

One day at the doughnut shop, my friend Wayne mentioned that his cousin in Owasso had an old Mack B61 and that it might be for sale.  This got my attention big time and I started asking questions.  Wayne assured me that the old truck was in pristine condition so I conned him into going to Owasso with me to look at it.  Well, it was in excellent condition and I wound up buying it from Wes, Wayne's cousin.

This truck is a blast to drive!  Its big, loud, and attention-getting.  I've got some work to do on it but not so much that I can't get out and herd it down the road some.  The other thing thats neat about it is the Tulsa Model 34 winch.  Having worked for that company for 28 plus years, its fun to have a truck with one of their products on it.

As the old saying goes, the only difference between men and boys is the size of the toys.  I guess this one is probably right!

Autobiography, Chapter 4

4-College, Part One

The reason this chapter is called College, Part One, is because it took me two hitches to get through school.  I know I have ruined the ending of this chapter by telling you this but you have a right to know.

In the fall of 1964, David Alsip, Donna Kellert, Rick Spess, and I all started to school at Oklahoma State as fresh Mannford High graduates.  David and I shared a room in a rooming house, Donna lived in a dorm, and Rick lived in another dorm across campus.

Our rooming house was at 301 South Duck in Stillwater.  A multi-story credit union stands there today but in 1964 it was an old two-story house with about four or five bedrooms upstairs.  I don’t remember the name of the woman we rented from but she seemed to be very old and very frail.  She occupied the downstairs part and rented out each of the upstairs bedrooms.  I remember coming in once and learning that her daughter had found her unconscious at the bottom of the steps going to the basement.  In a couple of weeks, however, she was back and seemed to be fine.

As college freshmen are apt to do, we did do our share of drinking.  There was a pub called the Anchor down by the fire station and we would buy gallon jugs of draft beer in there.  We would then carry the jugs home to the rooming house and have a good time.  Its hard to believe now that someone like me, whose parents could not afford to pay anything, and who had to work to go to school, would “screw off” and party as much as I did.  It is a fact, however.

One morning, I woke up and discovered that there was no door on our room.  David informed me that I had come home drunk, couldn’t find the key to my room and had just busted the door off the hinges.  We managed to get the door repaired before the landlord found out about it.

I had decided to major in Chemical Engineering, since I had done fairly well in chemistry in high school.  Well, college wasn’t like high school; you had to study to get good grades and I wasn’t into studying.  At the end of the first semester, I realized that I had made a terrible mistake and changed my major to Mechanical Engineering.  This wasn’t enough, however, to save my downward spiral.

Sometime during my freshman year, Cabot Corporation decided to close down their service center in Tulsa and let their former manager, Dudley Jorden, open up his own shop to do their service work.  Dad decided to stay there and work for Dudley.  The impact this had on me was that my scholarship from Cabot went away after only one year.

Mom and Dad didn’t have a lot of money and couldn’t help us with tuition or room and board but every time we went home we got the laundry done and managed to raid the freezer.  During my first year of school, I got a job sweeping floors in the university classrooms.  As I recall, it paid about 60 to 75¢ per hour.

Between the first and second years of school, I went back home to live with the folks and went to work at a “sweat shop” in Tulsa by the name of Creamer and Dunlap.  It was a fab shop that paid the minimum wage, $1.25, and the work was hard and dirty.  After about a month there, I got hurt on the job and spent the rest of the summer receiving physical therapy.  I got a rope wrapped around my left arm, almost cutting it off; in fact, the attending doctor told Dad that it probably would have to come off.  Dad told him to take it off when “it rotted off”.  Fortunately, I still have two arms, although the injury did paralyze my left thumb.  One year later, this injury was to affect my life in another profound way.

When I returned to school in the fall of 1965, there were some differences.  David, Rick, and Donna were still there but in addition to them, my brother Gary started to school at Oklahoma State.

Gary and I rented a small apartment together at 213 ½ North Husband.  It was on the alley between Husband and Main streets just behind Cooper’s motorcycle shop.  By this time, I was into a “no study” mode and should not have been in school at all.  I remember a lot of things about living in this apartment but studying was not one of them.

I did still have to work.  Instead of sweeping floors for the University, I got a job pumping gas for a fellow, Joe Lewis, who had a Conoco Station up north of downtown on Highway 177.  Joe was a prince of a guy and I really enjoyed working for him.

A couple of years later, Joe went into Burtrum Marine in Mannford to buy a boat.  He didn’t know that he was talking to Milt, my brother, and asked him if he knew Edd Alexander.  Milt replied that he didn’t think so until he found out that Joe liked me and then admitted that he was my brother.  Anything to sell a boat!

Probably the worst thing that happened to me while I was working for Joe was the day that Dr. Oliver Wilhelm, the President of the University, came in to get gasoline.  I wanted to impress him so badly that I opened the radiator cap too rapidly and almost burned him and me with coolant.  Fortunately, neither of us did get burned but I got really embarrassed.

By now I had switched my major to mechanical technology and the tech school was a lot easier than engineering school.  Still, though, you couldn’t pass the courses without studying at least a little bit.  My last major change was between the first and second semesters of my sophomore year, when I changed from Mechanical Technology to Aero Technology.  Alas, it was too little too late.  I had completely given up on school by this time.

I now had 60 hours of college credits but with a 1.6 grade point average on a 4.0 system.  Not a pretty sight!  David and Gary too were through with school and ready to quit.  Looking back, I don’t know whether I drug them down, they drug me down, or we all just self-destructed together.  I suspect it was the latter.  At any rate, we were done with Oklahoma State, at least for the time being.