So, on Saturday afternoon and night, everyone in the county
would go to town, especially the young people. Cooper was a
small farm community of about three thousand people. The center
of town was the scene of most of the activity -- there was a
town square where most of the businesses were located, many of
which stayed open until midnight on Saturday, including the
theaters and the drug stores with soda fountains.
When I was fifteen or sixteen, I met this guy named John Earl
Stunkard one weekend in town and we became good friends,
although he was five years older than me. (I always looked and
acted older than I was because of having to grow up so fast.)
One night, he invited me to spend the night at his house, which
was located in the small town of Klondike, Texas -- about five
miles west of Cooper. When we arrived at his house, I met his
family, including his younger sister, Marie Evelyn. I noted at
the time that she was very cute, but since I had never met her
before and knew nothing whatever about her, I never thought much
more about her at the time.
As time went on, however, I kept running into her because her
brother and I were such good friends. She was dating other guys
and I was dating other girls. After all, we were attending
different schools about ten miles apart, and that was a long way
when you had no car most of the time. Actually, we hardly knew
each other.
One night three guys, one of which was me, were in town with no
dates, and we noticed these three girls with no guys. It seemed
like a good opportunity to pick up a date, so we made our move.
The girls agreed, so all six of us decided we would go out to
the little roadside park at the edge of town and roast
marshmallows.
Evelyn was with my friend, and I was matched up with one of the
other girls, but Evelyn and I flirted with each other all
evening, and I realized I had to connect with her somehow. She
had blossomed into, by far, the most beautiful girl I had ever
seen! She was prettier than any movie star I'd seen in the
theaters....
It was now summer in Texas and the war in Europe was getting
more and more widespread. Life, for me, seemed to be going
nowhere. I had graduated from Enloe High School in May, at age
sixteen, and that was too young to do much of anything except
farm work -- which I hated!
I continued to work for my room and board. In 1941, my Aunt
Vivian, who was about two years older than me, was working at
the Hotel Cooper. Every so often, I would go up to her room
and visit. Sometimes, Evelyn would be there visiting at the
same time, since she and Vivian were good friends. The more I
saw her, the more I began to think I needed to find the courage
to ask her out!
I recall one occasion when I went to visit Vivian -- she was so
busy that I decided to wait for her. I picked up a book on a
night stand, and was turning the pages, when a note fell out and
dropped to the floor. It was not in an envelope and, when I
picked it up, I saw my name in the note. I was too curious at
this point not to read it. It was a note from Evelyn to my aunt
telling her that she sure wished I would ask her for a date --
that she would like to go out with me!
Needless to say, I finally found the courage to ask, and we
started dating. We discovered we had a lot in common and we
enjoyed being together. Soon, we were only dating each other --
no one else.
I had already graduated, but she had one more year to go. She
did have her senior class ring though and we soon traded rings.
Of course, hers was so small I had to wear it on my little
finger!
One morning, I noticed the ring was missing. After searching
for it everywhere, I decided to tell her it was lost and I would
have to buy her another. By this time, my mother had remarried
and my stepfather invited me to go with him to Lawton, Oklahoma,
to find work. I had no money to buy a ring, so I thought this
might be an opportunity to find a job and make a few bucks in
Oklahoma.
We arrived in Lawton in early 1942, and rented what amounted to
a screened-in porch with two cots for beds. I did find work of
a sort -- digging foundation trenches and pushing wheelbarrows
of cement. If I remember correctly, this job was with the Merle
Construction Company. They were building houses at Ft. Sill,
just outside of Lawton.
After a couple of weeks, I was laid off. So I found work washing
dishes in a downtown Lawton restaurant. I went to work at 4:30
a.m. and worked until 9:30 p.m. I soon discovered that my
duties were whatever needed to be done. I washed dishes, pots
and pans, swept floors, bussed tables, and served food when help
was short. The pay for all this? -- $1.00 a day plus one
meal!
My stepfather wasn't working and didn't seem to be trying to
find a job. He hung out at the restaurant every day, flirting
with every woman in sight. Since he had no money, the
restaurant used my earnings to pay his food bills -- I never
drew a single pay check.
So I quit and set out for home with a little less than a dollar
in my pocket. After collecting what few belongings I had, I
started hitch-hiking back to Texas. After standing on the road
for about half an hour, an elderly gentleman stopped and offered
me a ride. I told him I was headed to Texas, but I didn't want
to be let off in the middle of nowhere -- that I at least wanted
a ride to the next town. He said fine -- that was no problem.
Well, he dropped me off exactly miles from nowhere at an
intersection. All I could see was a group of buildings in the
distance. I stood there all afternoon. No one stopped and I
was getting pretty concerned. Finally, a trucker stopped and
asked me where I was headed -- I told him I was going wherever
he was going and jumped in the cab. He asked me how long I had
been standing there, and I told him it had been hours. He
laughed and told me that if he hadn't picked me up, I would
still be standing there. Those buildings I saw in the distance
was a reform school for juveniles!
We hadn't gone far, when I noticed this trucker was acting very
strange. Every once in a while, he would get a signal from
another trucker and would tell me we were going to stop for a
little while. He would take a back road or, if we were in a
small town, he would park the truck behind some building. Then
he would wait, at times for over an hour.
This continued on well into the night, but we finally arrived at
the stockyards in Ft. Worth, Texas. During the 30's and early
40's, the stockyard district of Ft. Worth was one rough place to
be. When we arrived, he told me he had been dodging the police
all the way from Lawton -- he was hauling some kind of
contraband, but I didn't ask him what.
After we parked the truck, he told me to come with him -- he was
going to have a beer or two. I was sixteen and had been on my
own for a long time, but I was not prepared for the place we
were headed for. We walked down a steel stairway leading from
the sidewalk and back to a basement entry. There was a special
knock and password to get in. Of course, he had been there many
times before, so in we went.
Suddenly, I was grabbed by a 200-pound barfly who said "Come on,
Baby, buy mama a drink." I was way out of my league, to say the
least, and was really relieved when the trucker came to my
rescue. Some rescue it was! He slapped this woman into the
wall and advised her, not too gently, to "leave that kid alone."
He then took me to the booth where he was having a beer and I
stayed close, because I knew he would protect me.
After the incident with the barfly, no one bothered me again.
A couple of hours passed, and the driver suggested I get in the
cab of his truck and get some sleep. That idea suited me just
fine because I was not too comfortable in that joint. He took
me to the truck, and after I was situated, locked the doors.
Although I was very tired and sleepy, I couldn't rest because it
was so cold. All I had on was a short-sleeved tee shirt. About
every hour during the night, the driver would check to see if I
was still okay, because no one was safe in that part of town. I
finally managed to fall asleep toward morning.
It wasn't long before he came out of the -- I will call it a bar
for lack of a better name -- and told me he had to get going.
He said he was heading south, but I was going a different
direction. So I set out walking and didn't have any luck
getting a ride, so I continued walking for most of the day.
While walking, I noticed it was getting colder fast. In that
part of the country, the temperature can drop 30 or 40 degrees
in a very short time. Darkness came before long, and I was
still not getting a ride. It began to rain and, as night fell,
the weather kept getting worse.
The rain was beginning to turn to ice and I was miserable. The
short-sleeved shirt was not about to keep me warm and, after
dark, I had no chance at all of getting a ride. I was beginning
to feel sorry for myself, so I sat down on the side of the road
and had myself a good cry. I realized, however, that I had to
keep moving or I could die from exposure, so off I went.
I don't really know how many miles or how long I had been
walking when I noticed a bus coming. In those days, there was a
bus line known as the Red Ball, and everyone referred to the bus
as the Red Ball. As soon as I knew it was the Red Ball, I
stepped out on the road in his headlights and flagged him down.
He stopped and I got on board and asked him how much the fare to
Cooper, Texas would be. From where I was, the fare was just
under a dollar, and I had just enough money to cover it.
I slept most of the way home. When I stepped off the bus, I
counted my remaining change, and I had exactly 15 cents -- not
nearly enough to buy that class ring I had lost.
I had no idea when, or even how, I would have the money to
replace Evelyn's ring. I went to my mother's house, mainly
because I had no place else to go.
A few days later, my sister and her husband came down, and he
and I were checking the engine in his car. When I opened the
hood and was listening to the engine noise, I noticed something
glittering in the sun's rays. I saw that, whatever it was, it
was almost buried in black grease under the radiator.
I reached down and picked it up. After wiping off the grease, I
discovered it was that class ring I had lost so many weeks
before.
It seems like such a small thing today, but then it was like a
miracle to me. The next time I saw my Evelyn, we decided to
switch our rings back so that, if we lost one, it would be our
own. She kept my football jacket, however, and I didn't get
that back until we were married.
We were now well into the year 1942, and the war was raging
worldwide after December 7, 1941. I realized it was just a
matter of time before I would have to go into some branch of
service. This was about the time my cousin, Nolan Crockett,
and I decided to join the U.S. Navy.
In the farming community where I grew up, there was very little
for teenagers to do on weekends. There were two movie theaters
and, sometimes, a traveling roller skating rink at Cooper, the
County Seat, and that was about it!
THE RING SAGA
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