Lampasas in between
March 16, 2010 (Tuesday)
Texas towns I lived in . After Houston there was Marshall (1949), Waco (1949-1953), and Fort Worth (1953). There would be several moves to that area in the years to follow.
After Baylor, I enrolled in Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in the fall of 1953. (The Dudley family lived there and invited me to live with them in their home at 3840 Tulsa Way. What a gracious and wonderful family that was. Their son, Dwight, had furnished me transportation to Oletha and after I got a car, had continued to serve with me there). I got a job at Vandervoort’s Creamery on Hemphill near downtown. Several of us seminary students worked together around a stainless steel table, creating ice cream specialties every afternoon after morning classes.
Wanda was teaching school at Cleburne, just south of Fort Worth, and we were deeply in love, finally getting married October 3, and, of course, I moved to Cleburne then, commuting to Fort Worth for work and school. Wanda had been a Methodist, and became a Baptist after we were married, joining and being baptized at Field Street Baptist Church there.
After a couple of months of marriage, a mission church in Lampasas contacted us about becoming their pastor. They had been in existence only two years or so, and would organize into Northside Baptist Church while we were there. After completion of one semester at the seminary, we moved to Lampasas at the very end of 1953. Our first child, David, was born while we were there, in the hospital at Burnet. We remained there until the summer of 1955, when we returned to Fort Worth to resume the seminary education.
Upon arriving in Fort Worth, we moved to a very small house at 1505 Hammond, near the seminary, and I got a job as Departmental Clerk in the Chassis Department of the B.O.P Arlington automobile assembly plant. The new second shift was beginning, and I planned to work at night and attend school during the day. There was no time for study, and I soon withdrew from school, intending to try again the second semester.
But GM had to cut back to only the day shift, giving me the day job, and making it impossible to attend the seminary classes. I held on to the job because the company expected to resume the second shift as soon as the economy improved. In October, 1955, our son, Danny, was born. So there we were, in 1956, with two children, working at a secular job, and seeking God’s guidance, being members of Polytechnic Baptist Church in Fort Worth, and preaching wherever I had an opportunity.