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
10 Comments:
YEAH! He's back!
I love the story and remember coming to visit you at various places you mentioned. It sure would be nice to have more detail on those several points you said you would visit later. You piqued my interest to hear the "opossum" story.
It was interesting to know how/why you made the transition to the Disciples, but I would love to hear what form of church politics you ran in to in that group. What speech did Richard forget and what did Amy learn about race relations?
You mentioned your sojourn to Mexia and St Louis, but not Lake Jackson.
Having said that let me say that I am happy to read whatever you write with whatever level of detail you choose to provide. Just know that your little tidbits do create a thirst for more details--inquiring minds want to know...
You forgot to mention that KGVL was next to a pasture which was purchased by your youngest son 20 years later, also, his Mother in law lived very close to where we were living in Caddo Mills. "The Circle of life..."
Great to have the newest installment! But one thing puzzles me: If you'd hankered to become a disc jockey for a long time, why did you take such a long detour to get there.....2 degrees?
I'm with David....so what's with all these coy teasers?
One may have hankerings, i.e., multiple hankerings, of varying intensity. Or, perhaps necessity rears it head to provide roadblocks to hankerings, or a hankering, in this case.
I did not realize that the "teasers" were coy. Its just that in trying to tell the story that occured witbin a certain time frame or geographical area and to take an enlongated detour to explain a detail tends to be awkward and I think better done at some later time in the form of a flashback as a kind of response to a circumstance.
Or, another explanation, if I must give one, might be that I am writing along and thought about a cetrtain detail, but forseeing the time required to give it due space and desiring to finish the piece as the readers are clammoring for more and more, I make a field decision and give it a mention, finish the chapter and go on to bed or wherever it was that I wanted to go that was more important at the time than the telling an insignificant sidebar.
In re-reading all your questions in "comments" I might say to the one about transitioning to the Disciples, that it, of course, had become obvious to me that the Disciples were very close in theoology and doctrine to my birth-church, but a bit to the left and thus more accepting, so that I could fit right in. And that's why we switched.
Betty: You are so kind with your comments. I do like, make that enjoy, writing. And it makes it so much more enjoyable when there is an audience. You may not be aware of it, and as we get further along, I will tell of my foreys into the publishing busniess. It is good to have a photo of you now.
I wonder if I aquired my affinity for the written word from you?
I am truly puzzled as to the why that this stuff seems to produce such avid comments and that you say you are waiting for the next installment.
Actually, I thought the last few chapters were a bit dull, but then how is the creator of something to assess that something with any real sense of objectivity?
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