Chaper Eight--Moving on!
Back in 1965, as we left for Kansas, housing in the Dallas area was plentiful and relatively cheap, meaning that rentals in the $40-50.00 range were plentiful. But by 1967, the area had evidently experienced some sort of boom and even though we had funds due to my job, there was just no place to rent. Now I’m sure if we had had enough cash to buy a place or to pay several hundred dollars a month, we might could have found something. However, that was certainly not the case. We had left a friend in Wylie, Texas, a 70+ year old retired chiropractor. He had moved to small lake house on Lavon. The house had a garage type storage shed and he allowed us to unload our rent-a-truck in it and let us dwell with him for a few weeks until we finally persuaded a local grocer to move the hay (he kept for his cows) out of a badly dilapidated house and rent it to us (the house, not the hay). We called it the Hay House and there is a picture of it towards the end/beginning of SnowStoryHere. It’s the one with the kids lined up with their Christmas bicycles. It was during the move-in time that the “opossum” story happened, as well as the “sickest time ever” occurred. We might get to those later.
One final note about church stuff might be addressed at this point. We were back at Wylie where we had lived just two years earlier. Prior to preaching at the Culleoka Church of Christ (remember that’s where the woman would squirm around and loudly clear her throat if the preaching went too long) and before going to Kansas, we were members of the Wylie Church of Christ. In fact, I had functioned as their song leader at one point. Anyway, we attempted to re-join the church when we moved back to town. However, the folks in Coffeyville had corresponded with the Wylie church and they elected not to offer us the right hand of fellowship. I never quite understood just why they would visit their judgment on my wife and children also, when it was me and my alleged false teachings that they had a beef with. But they did.
The very next Sunday, we attended the First Christian Church in Wylie, joined and were welcomed with very open arms. It was not long before I was regularly doing supply preaching for the Disciples. It was because of this connection that we were asked to go live as house parents at Fowler Home in Dallas. While there, I volunteered in the maintenance department, worked at Collins at night and went to Elkins Institute of Radio Broadcasting during the day. We lived in cottage with our five plus several other boys. This was really a learning experience for both of us.
Living and working in the combination children’s home and old-age home in a then fairly rough section of East Dallas with five children of our own got to be a bit much and we did not last a year there. But it was enough time for me to finish my radio course and become a real live disk jockey (an ambition that I had had for quite some time). I must admit that the time sequences just here are fuzzy but I do remember working at my very first radio job at KTER, Terrell, Texas.
One day, while on the air at KTER, I got the call to come to Caddo Mills and talk to the folks at the First Christian Church there about being their pastor. During my time at that station the space program successfully planted an American flag on the moon and I remember tearing the copy from the teletype and reading the AP story over the air. I’m quite sure that millions were listening to our 250 Watts of clear-channel power!. The year was 1969.
The Caddo Mills church insisted that we move our mobile home to the church lot right in back of the church house. They put in the pipes for it (we had bought a new mobile home after we left Fowler Home) and we had it moved from the lot next to the hay house. This is where the tornado story happened, perhaps more about that later.
Caddo Mills was a nice little town. We could charge groceries and gas if we were out of money and the banker was very helpful with auto financing. The kids liked the school, I guess. It was not long until I changed radio stations and went to work for KGVL, a 1000 watter! The station was only about eight miles away, compared to 20 or so to Terrell. Caddo Mills was were Randall had a paper route and where he bought a mower on time from the local store and went into the mowing business and Richard forgot his speech and here Amy learned a little about race relations in Texas and I learned another lesson in church politics
.
Commerce, Texas was just a few more miles up the road and there was a wonderful university campus and Carolyn decided to go to school. To make a long story shorter, I decided to try to stay up with her. Good thing too! I owe her a lot for helping me to see clearer and take some positive action. Oh, we muddled around a lot, I did at least, but somehow got through a degree in record time. We moved to Commerce, was able to buy a house, operated an upholstery shop and got graduate degrees. I’m compressing years into sentences here. In the middle of this, there was a sojourn to Mexia and later, for me a very short sojourn to St. Louis. We might visit these stories later.
Our great computer venture was flopping and it seemed that jobs were hard to come by so, for lack of anything better to do in order to get bread to eat, we moved to Arlington and put in a nice respectable upholstery shop right there on Pioneer Parkway. We worked hard, long hours for not much left after expenses and one day a call came from an old college friend. And, to make a longer story shorter, we moved to Marshall, Texas. It was December, 1977.
One final note about church stuff might be addressed at this point. We were back at Wylie where we had lived just two years earlier. Prior to preaching at the Culleoka Church of Christ (remember that’s where the woman would squirm around and loudly clear her throat if the preaching went too long) and before going to Kansas, we were members of the Wylie Church of Christ. In fact, I had functioned as their song leader at one point. Anyway, we attempted to re-join the church when we moved back to town. However, the folks in Coffeyville had corresponded with the Wylie church and they elected not to offer us the right hand of fellowship. I never quite understood just why they would visit their judgment on my wife and children also, when it was me and my alleged false teachings that they had a beef with. But they did.
The very next Sunday, we attended the First Christian Church in Wylie, joined and were welcomed with very open arms. It was not long before I was regularly doing supply preaching for the Disciples. It was because of this connection that we were asked to go live as house parents at Fowler Home in Dallas. While there, I volunteered in the maintenance department, worked at Collins at night and went to Elkins Institute of Radio Broadcasting during the day. We lived in cottage with our five plus several other boys. This was really a learning experience for both of us.
Living and working in the combination children’s home and old-age home in a then fairly rough section of East Dallas with five children of our own got to be a bit much and we did not last a year there. But it was enough time for me to finish my radio course and become a real live disk jockey (an ambition that I had had for quite some time). I must admit that the time sequences just here are fuzzy but I do remember working at my very first radio job at KTER, Terrell, Texas.
One day, while on the air at KTER, I got the call to come to Caddo Mills and talk to the folks at the First Christian Church there about being their pastor. During my time at that station the space program successfully planted an American flag on the moon and I remember tearing the copy from the teletype and reading the AP story over the air. I’m quite sure that millions were listening to our 250 Watts of clear-channel power!. The year was 1969.
The Caddo Mills church insisted that we move our mobile home to the church lot right in back of the church house. They put in the pipes for it (we had bought a new mobile home after we left Fowler Home) and we had it moved from the lot next to the hay house. This is where the tornado story happened, perhaps more about that later.
Caddo Mills was a nice little town. We could charge groceries and gas if we were out of money and the banker was very helpful with auto financing. The kids liked the school, I guess. It was not long until I changed radio stations and went to work for KGVL, a 1000 watter! The station was only about eight miles away, compared to 20 or so to Terrell. Caddo Mills was were Randall had a paper route and where he bought a mower on time from the local store and went into the mowing business and Richard forgot his speech and here Amy learned a little about race relations in Texas and I learned another lesson in church politics
.
Commerce, Texas was just a few more miles up the road and there was a wonderful university campus and Carolyn decided to go to school. To make a long story shorter, I decided to try to stay up with her. Good thing too! I owe her a lot for helping me to see clearer and take some positive action. Oh, we muddled around a lot, I did at least, but somehow got through a degree in record time. We moved to Commerce, was able to buy a house, operated an upholstery shop and got graduate degrees. I’m compressing years into sentences here. In the middle of this, there was a sojourn to Mexia and later, for me a very short sojourn to St. Louis. We might visit these stories later.
Our great computer venture was flopping and it seemed that jobs were hard to come by so, for lack of anything better to do in order to get bread to eat, we moved to Arlington and put in a nice respectable upholstery shop right there on Pioneer Parkway. We worked hard, long hours for not much left after expenses and one day a call came from an old college friend. And, to make a longer story shorter, we moved to Marshall, Texas. It was December, 1977.
posted by David R. Snow at 5:20 AM
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