from Waco
March 15, 2010 (Monday)
The subject for this series is “Towns I live in after I left home in 1949.” The last blog was about Waco, and instead of moving on to the next place it might be a good idea to talk about where I spent my summers during the four years I was in Waco.
The summers were busy. The summer of 1949 was spent working as waiter and cashier in my parents’ restaurant, the L & L Café on W. 19th in Houston. If I remember correctly, I also sang in at least one revival meeting in a country church near Hockley and preached once in League City. The summers of 1950. 1951 and 1952 were very busy, singing in youth-led revival meetings and preaching in a few also. These meetings were all around the state. When I graduated from college in May of 1953, I resigned the pastorate at Oletha and spent that summer at home with my family in Houston, where I worked in a grocery store on South Main in what is now called mid-town Houston. In the fall I moved on to Fort Worth to attend the seminary there.
Wanda was a student at Baylor also, and her family lived at Groesbeck and Oletha, where I served churches. It was inevitable that we would get together, and by the time of my senior year, we were sweethearts. She graduated in three years, attending three summers, and began teaching school in Cleburne, 65 miles north of Waco, as I began my senior year at college. There were, therefore, many trips between Waco and Cleburne that year. In October of that year, we were married in a small ceremony in pastor J. Howard Smith’s home, next door to the Fruitdale Baptist Church in Dallas. Bro. Smith was our friend with whom we had served in other churches.
So, summing up, I moved from Houston to Marshall, and then to Waco, which became a base of operations for service in many places during my college years. That period of my life came to a close when Wanda and I were married October 3, 1953. Exciting days lay ahead for us.