Revised Biography

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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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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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

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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

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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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