I've got a lot of scars, some I got earning a living, one really big one I got when a skilled surgeon named Laurence Hildebrand took out my cancerous left kidney. And I got a couple of them growing up in Texas. The first house I remember living in was a duplex on Danville Street South of downtown Houston. It's gone now, replaced by a freeway but we lived there until shortly after the end of the war and going to Kindergarten and First and Second Grade was the only time I ever went three years to the same school. After that it was two and move along. Not anybody's fault, Houston was growing like weeds in the late 40's. Got me used to making new friends and I did that. When we moved to a new subdivision along about 1946-47 there were a bunch of kids moving in along with us. The neighborhood was a lot like old Lincoln Village, or the area West of UOP, small houses with wall heaters, and being South Texas, screen porches. No A/C, too humid for swamp coolers. We played baseball in the morning and if we had 15 cents (dime to get in, nickel for popcorn) we went to the Santa Rosa theater (air conditioned you know) to see a newsreel, a short subject, a cartoon and a feature film. I saw "Wake of the Red Witch" 5 times. Only time I couldn't go to the show was if it was a Robert Mitchum movie, he got busted for smoking dope. Pretty funny now If we didn't have 15 cents it was the Mutual game of the day on the radio with an oscillating fan to keep the air moving.
Couple of weeks ago I found out that the Houston School District has a project to put all the High School yearbooks from Houston on line. This is independent of all the commercial sites like Classmates and I think it's a hell of an idea as long as you have the money. So I began to peruse the Milby High School 1957 yearbook because if we had stayed in Texas that is where and when I would have graduated. I found some of my neighborhood buddies, a girl I crushed on, a girl who crushed on me, and a girl who was a skinny kid when I left in 1953 and grew up to be a real beauty. There was the son of a partner in a fried chicken franchise that was famous all over Texas. There was a kid named Tommy who ended my baseball career at 12 when he learned to throw a curve ball. And my best friend Willie who grew up to be an FBI agent of some repute. Willie's pic isn't here because his family moved to central Texas the year after we came to California. They were all good kids, nobody went to jail (I think) and we played all kinds of games together without any big fights.
So, Scars? The year after we moved in the developer began construction of a group of duplexes around the theater parking lot. They were two story, built on slab foundations from a hollow red brick re-inforced with re-bar. The brick was delivered on flatbed trucks, stacked right on the bed of the truck and offloaded by hand. A small army of laborers stacked the bricks in a rectangular pattern with a void in the center about big enough for two of us to hide in. Now stack bricks with a hollow in the center and every self respecting Texas boy upon seeing this thinks "FORT" followed quickly by "CLOD FIGHT". There was a code to a clod fight. The clods had to be black clay, soft mud, not dried out. They could be as big as the diameter of a half dollar. And you had to throw them. No slingshots or catapults. A team of two would hide in the brick pile and another team would attack, both sides threw clods until they ran out. One day a couple of kids we sort of knew from school showed up and joined in. One of them hit me with a well thrown clod that had a sharp rock in it. Split my head open just above my hairline. I bled like a stuck hog, the whole left side of my face was covered in blood. Mom was pretty level headed but when she saw me she lost it. Regaining her composure long enough to evaluate the cut she put direct pressure on it. Stopped the bleeding, got the iodine and patched me up. The scar has almost disappeared, I have trouble finding it now. The kid who threw the clod?. When my Dad saw him he took me aside and said "Don't hang around with him, Just don't". He wound up in Huntsville, for those of you who don't know Huntsville made Parchman Farms look like a church social. Worst prison in Texas and a contender for worst in the country. Dad had a good eye for miscreants. That kids picture isn't here.
None of these kids were miscreants. They were all smart and got good grades. The girl second row center was the only one who could beat me in spelling bee's and math flashcard drills. The kid second right is Jerry, he replaced me as lead singer in the school choir when my voice changed, Didn't last long, his changed too. The girl in the bottom row center is the skinny kid when I left who turned into a real beauty. When I went back in 1961 for a visit one of my neighborhood buddies was so in love with her it hurt to watch.
This is a pretty good cross section of the kids from the neighborhood and the ones I went to school with. Oh, the other scar? Mom bought me an Exacto knife with an assortment of blades to replace the single edged razor blades I used building model boats and airplanes. First thing I did, cut my left thigh open. That one you can see when I wear shorts.. Didn't tell anybody, taped it up. Bled a little and went to the store for some razor blades.
So, Scars? The year after we moved in the developer began construction of a group of duplexes around the theater parking lot. They were two story, built on slab foundations from a hollow red brick re-inforced with re-bar. The brick was delivered on flatbed trucks, stacked right on the bed of the truck and offloaded by hand. A small army of laborers stacked the bricks in a rectangular pattern with a void in the center about big enough for two of us to hide in. Now stack bricks with a hollow in the center and every self respecting Texas boy upon seeing this thinks "FORT" followed quickly by "CLOD FIGHT". There was a code to a clod fight. The clods had to be black clay, soft mud, not dried out. They could be as big as the diameter of a half dollar. And you had to throw them. No slingshots or catapults. A team of two would hide in the brick pile and another team would attack, both sides threw clods until they ran out. One day a couple of kids we sort of knew from school showed up and joined in. One of them hit me with a well thrown clod that had a sharp rock in it. Split my head open just above my hairline. I bled like a stuck hog, the whole left side of my face was covered in blood. Mom was pretty level headed but when she saw me she lost it. Regaining her composure long enough to evaluate the cut she put direct pressure on it. Stopped the bleeding, got the iodine and patched me up. The scar has almost disappeared, I have trouble finding it now. The kid who threw the clod?. When my Dad saw him he took me aside and said "Don't hang around with him, Just don't". He wound up in Huntsville, for those of you who don't know Huntsville made Parchman Farms look like a church social. Worst prison in Texas and a contender for worst in the country. Dad had a good eye for miscreants. That kids picture isn't here.
None of these kids were miscreants. They were all smart and got good grades. The girl second row center was the only one who could beat me in spelling bee's and math flashcard drills. The kid second right is Jerry, he replaced me as lead singer in the school choir when my voice changed, Didn't last long, his changed too. The girl in the bottom row center is the skinny kid when I left who turned into a real beauty. When I went back in 1961 for a visit one of my neighborhood buddies was so in love with her it hurt to watch.
This is a pretty good cross section of the kids from the neighborhood and the ones I went to school with. Oh, the other scar? Mom bought me an Exacto knife with an assortment of blades to replace the single edged razor blades I used building model boats and airplanes. First thing I did, cut my left thigh open. That one you can see when I wear shorts.. Didn't tell anybody, taped it up. Bled a little and went to the store for some razor blades.
