December 29, 2015 (Tuesday)
Yesterday in this blog I got carried away with describing memories of my pre-school years. How about my sharing some of the days of my public school years today?
O.K. let’s start at the beginning when I entered First Grade at Theodore Roosevelt Elementary School in Houston. Today it’s easy to find on the map. Just go to the intersection of North Loop and Northwest Highway (Loop 610 and I-45). Back when I was in the first grade, however, there was no Loop; neither was there an I-45. The school is still in the same place, however.
I went to that school for three years. We lived on Caplin Street, which runs parallel to and just north of the North Loop today. The house we lived in is gone. But some of the houses of neighbors are still present. We lived a few blocks from Linder Lake, a huge public swimming pool (now gone, of course). I’ve written in these blogs about how the kids of that neighborhood had so much fun together, especially playing after school each day. We played Tag, Hide and Seek, Leap Frog, Simon Says, May I, Hop Scotch and a lot of other stuff.
When I got to the 4th grade, we moved to another house and my twin sisters, Elva and Melva, started to school. We went to Looscan Elementary, located on Robertson Street between Hardy Street Road and Irvington Boulevard, on Houston’s north side. Three half-grades met in my room at school, and we had lunch in a make-shift lunch room in the hall. One day in 1940 at lunch the radio was piped into the “lunch room” and we all heard Adolph Hitler’s speech. On another day I was watching two boys fight on the playground when someone pushed me into the fracas and I ended up with a huge lip. It was the closest I ever came to having a fight myself. I was sent home, just two doors down on the same street. We lived there until our parents divorced, around the beginning of summer, 1941.
We lived with our grandparents (my mother’s parents) for the next 3 years. I was in the 5th grade and my sisters were in the 2nd grade. We attended Sherman elementary school. During those years we lived in 4 different houses on Elysian, Noble and Maury streets, not counting the summer of 1942 when we were with our mother in two different apartments.
In 1944 my father married my stepmother, Dorothy, and my sisters and I moved to their home in Denver-Harbor addition on Houston’s east side. I was in the 8th grade and my sisters were in the 5th grade. They attended Elliott Elementary near our home but I continued to attend John Marshall Junior High by riding chartered city buses daily. When I got to the 9th grade, I lived with my “Grandma Fake” for several months until my mother married my stepfather, Joe Heim, and I moved in with them, on Ruth Street, on the south side, commuting to school on two city buses across town for the remainder of that school year. Later my sisters moved also. One of my sisters moved back with our father and stepmother but later moved back with mother. I lived with my father during my last semester of high school in 1949. (I attended San Jacinto High School 1946-1949. Picture below).
My brother, Joe, was born to my mother in 1944 and my sister, Brenda Joyce, was born to my stepmother in 1945. My other brother, Jimmy, was born in 1949 and my sister, Mary Ellen, in 1953. Joe is now 71 but Jimmy died at age 32. Melva, Elva, Brenda, Mary, Joe, Jimmy and I all have grandchildren. Almost everyone except me lives in or near Houston. All our parents and step parents have passed away. Life goes on.
I went to work delivering for a drug store when I was in the 6th grade. After that, I worked in several grocery stores around town, and in several theaters, in neighborhoods and downtown. I also worked in my parents’ three restaurants. I enjoyed going with my stepfather, Joe, on his buying trips around town to farmers’ market, fish markets, meat lockers, etc.
When I was 11 years old, I went to Liberty Road Baptist Church with my friend and neighbor, Troy Conner and his family, where I received Christ. During all the moving about I did not go back until the summer of 1948, when I rededicated my life to Christ and began preaching (I attended the Assembly of God with my stepmother, Dorothy, in 1944-1945). Upon graduation from high school in 1949, I attempted to attend college at East Texas Baptist College in Marshall with Troy and another friend, David Foster, but was sick with allergies and asthma so much that I could not attend classes on many days. I withdrew at mid-semester and started over at Baylor after Thanksgiving (Baylor at that time was on the Quarter system). I had no health problems in Waco. That ends this chapter of my memories. Maybe I’ll recite more in tomorrow’s blog.
I’ve covered the years of my public school education in these memories, but have left so very much unsaid. I guess it would take a book to tell it all. (But I would never write a “tell-all” book).