FAMILY AND FRIENDS 1946-1948
When we moved into 20A Veterans Village in September of 1946 we had instant friends. All of us were in approximately the same academic and financial situation: undergraduates dependent on the GI Bill, about the same age, married with varying number of children, but all sharing the most important common bond of being survivors of WWII. Because we didn't have much (like no) money for entertainment, we made our own. The wives played a lot of bridge, the men mostly studied. A lot of the wives, like Pat, worked, so they couldn't stay awake for late bridge.
Norman and Mary Joan Strange lived across the sidewalk and became our best friends in Veteran's Village. Norman and I had met before the war, on the football field; he caught the pass for Masonic Home that beat us in the season opener our senior year in high school. I don't remember knowing him at A&M before the war. Despite his growing up in an orphan's home, they were much more affluent than we were. He had been an officer in WWII and had saved some money; they had a car and Mary Joan didn't even have to work, she stayed home and took care of "Little Mary Joan". We kept in contact with the Stranges for many years. Norman earned his CPA, opened his own business and, like the good Catholics they were, had several other children, a couple of whom were largely running the business at our last contact.
Henry and Phyllis Crew lived at the end of the row. He was a Wildlife Mgt. major, class of '43 and had also been an officer in the war. I had known him prior to the war, maybe in the then Fish and Game Department but mostly as a bouncer in the toughest honky-tonk in Bryan. Henry was pretty adept at handling troublemakers, but he was famous for having an English bulldog at he called on when necessary. The bulldog solved a lot of problems without bloodshed.
He had met his wife, Phyllis, in Oregon during the war and she was blond and beautiful. They had a daughter, Chris, who was precious. I don't know whether Phyllis adapted her vocabulary to Henry’s or they had been attracted to one another by their speech mannerisms. Whichever, obscenities dripped from their lips like honey from a hive and, especially, epithets were spit out like machine gun bullets. Pat was horrified the first time she heard Phyllis say "God Damn it, Chris, brush your teeth and go to bed". Henry was even less gracious; we stopped by their place one night just as Henry was finishing dinner. He had just finished off ten of the dozen biscuits, along with gravy, mashed potatoes and pork chops, that Phyllis had made for dinner. She asked "do you want me to save the biscuits?; Henry belched and said "throw 'em to the hogs, they ain't fit to eat". NOW, THAT'S GRACIOUSNESS.
Henry and I did a lot of things together. I went with him to his home in Orange, Texas for some hunting before the fall semester began. I loved his family; his father was manager of the fruit and vegetable section of a large grocery store and his mother specialized in cooking. Lots of vegetables from the store found their way to the Crew's kitchen; beef, pork and chicken, too, but the men preferred to kill their own meat.
As soon as we got out of the car to hunt, we'd all load up with chewing tobacco; within minutes Mr. Crew would disappear into the bushes. I soon discovered that he threw up on his first "chew" of the day, "had been for thirty years". Dove season always opens on September 1st in Texas; the favorite way to hunt them is to take a couple of stools and a tub of iced down beer to a waterhole where doves come for their evening drink. You place the stools on each side of the tub and sit, drinking beer, while waiting for doves to fly in for their own drink. The drier the area, the more productive this system is because of the scarcity of watering sites. Thirty nine years later we used the same technique on sand grouse in Kenya, except we didn't have the stools or the washtub of cold beer.
After the hunt one afternoon in Orange, Mr. Crew and I were sitting in the kitchen drinking beer while Henry took his mother shopping. I fetched two more beers from the refrigerator, but we had depleted the supply to the extent they were still warm. When I opened my bottle, I inadvertently sprayed Mr. Crew. He immediately put his thumb over the mouth of his bottle, shook it and expertly got me full in the face. I retaliated; when our bottles had lost all their fizz, we grabbed new warm ones from the case and continued the battle. When Henry and Mrs. Crew returned, we were sitting at the table, convulsed with laughter and with everything in the kitchen, including the ceiling dripping beer. Mrs. Crew didn't think it was very funny, but she felt a lot better about it when she got a complete kitchen remodeling out of it.
Henry and I took almost all our classes together our senior year. My mother had given me a typewriter for my birthday and I edited and typed up my notes every night. Because Henry had taken me home with him and hunting and fishing in College Station, I made a carbon copy of my notes for him. That gradually evolved into an annoyance; he soon learned he was going to get a typed set of notes from each lecture, so he quit taking notes. He just sat and listened and sometimes got things I missed while writing. THEN, he would sometimes make a higher grade on a quiz than I did, even though I was smarter than he was and he was using MY notes to beat me.
The culmination of my frustration came with a reading assignment in one of W.B. Davis' courses, Ecology. He had told us to read Matthews' "Climate and Evolution" and made it clear he was going to cover it on the next exam. I read it from cover to cover, taking careful notes as I read. Actually, it was fascinating, providing some concepts that had never occurred tom me. I typed up my notes but didn't make a carbon because I assumed Henry would read it. The night before the exam Henry showed up at 20A Veterans and asked, "Where are OUR notes on “Climate and Evolution"? I was so annoyed that he hadn't bothered to read the book, depending on me to provide him with the critical information, that I balked. I said, "Henry, these are MY notes, and you can't have them; I will loan you a copy of "Climate and Evolution" if you want to read it before the test". After a few pointed comments about my legitimacy, loyalty and integrity, Henry took the book and probably stayed up all night reading it. He bombed the test and I aced it, but things were never the same between us afterwards.
We lost track of the Crews; the second time Phyllis became pregnant, he told her, in our presence, that if she didn't have a boy he was going to divorce her (Henry didn't do real well in Genetics; he couldn't accept the fact that the male determined the sex of the offspring). She didn't and he did. She went back to Oregon with her two daughters.
After graduating, Henry got into, among other things, the pest control business. He has been dead for many years; I heard he lit a cigar inside a sealed house he was fumigating, blowing up the house and himself. A couple of things I have to say about Henry, he was never boring and he was a hell of an artist with a shotgun.
Veterans Village was about a hundred yards from Kyle Field; all the men were totally hooked on football and the women faked it REAL GOOD. Pat worked and I had classes on Saturday mornings when we had home games, but we hurried home to get ready for the game. I'd take Donner for a disappointly short walk while Pat fixed lunch, usually a can of "Beenie Wienes" (I had problems accepting that real people actually ate that stuff and called it a meal; it was about the level of C Rations and not as good as 10 in 1 Rations). Then we would walk over to Kyle Field and stand up through the whole game, exulting when we won and despondent when we lost. Actually in retrospect, I don't think Pat gave a damn whether the Aggies won or lost; she just wanted to get back to our place and get some rest.
In early October of 1946, my parents came down for a game; neither of them had ever seen a college football game, but they handled the excitement well. They had gone to a lot of high school football games when I was playing so it wasn't totally foreign to them. It was a really nice weekend; A&M won the game so we didn't have to go through some sort of pagan rites of sacrifice for defeat; my parents seemed to enjoy themselves and appeared to be completely relaxed.
The following weekend was the "Corps Trip" to Dallas to play SMU. We gladly accepted a ride with someone gracious enough to offer it on Friday afternoon and were sound asleep on the couch in Nellie and Muddie's living room (Pat's favorite aunt and grandmother) when Nellie waked us to tell me I had a long distance phone call. How they found us I don't know and I've forgotten who called, but the message was clear; my mother had died, apparently of a stroke.
Pat and I were on the next bus to Wichita Falls. My father was devastated, but holding up well especially considering that he had returned from a "Railroad Run" to find her comatose and, besides, didn't handle emotional crises effectively. He had tremendous physical courage, but was an emotional coward. I knew he really needed me for support because I was the only one he had. All my sisters and my brother were there from California, but they were his stepchildren and had never accepted him as part of THEIR family.
We were each consumed with our personal grief, but certain items of business had to be done by SOMEBODY; as the baby of the family, I suppose I felt I should have been protected. Instead, I went to the safety deposit box with my father for the insurance policies; I picked out the casket and arranged the funeral (because I had worked in a funeral home). Although I wasn't too happy with the responsibility at the time, I'm sure it was excellent therapy. I was too busy and too exhausted to crack up. To me, once we buried her that was it. I tried not to waste time and energy grieving. Although I can't imagine loving a mother more than I did her, I have never visited her grave and I don't remember the date of her death or when she was buried. The IMPORTANCE and IMPACT of my mother was the influence she had on me and all her other children (and grandchildren); not her death, but her life.
After the funeral, marked by a respectable but not ostentatious casket, a steel vault insisted upon by my sisters, a sermon by a new preacher at my mother's long time 10th and Austin Street Church of Christ who obviously didn't know her, many friends and more than a few flowers, Pat and I rode the bus back to College Station. I was acutely aware that I had lost the most important person, to that point, in my life, but I had missed a week of classes and had a lot of work to make up.
We spent the Christmas of 1946 with Nellie Jo and Muddie in the apartment on Columbia Street in Dallas. In retrospect, I suppose that was when I threw in my lot with the Georges. My mother was dead, my father was not much comfort and all my sisters, my brother and all my nephews and nieces were in California and apparently didn't give a damn about me. Once our mother died, I no longer existed.
That was my first Christmas at home after three overseas, two in New Caledonia and one in Korea. In addition to being a returning "war hero", I had a lot of other things going for me: none of Muddie’s children had produced a male offspring, and I was the first to marry into the family; they couldn't do enough for me. I didn't have any clothes except for the good brown suit Sol Laskie had saved for me and a high waist pair of green slacks. The Georges, mostly Nellie, tried to give me EVERYTHING and I graciously accepted. There were more ties than I bothered to count, white shirts, socks, and even handkerchiefs with my initials on them. I suppose I thought it was always going to be like that in the George Family.
Then we had the first, for me, of many of Nellie Jo's Christmas Dinners. EVERYTHING was PERFECT; she got up at 4:00 AM to put the turkey on, basting it every 15 minutes while she made the dressing, baked the rolls, cut up everything for the fruit salad, cooked the sweet potatoes and mashed them before whipping the cream to top them. In between, she "set the table": Silver Serving Dishes, sterling silver knives and forks, crystal glasses. It was obvious I had married into a family with CLASS. It took me a while to realize that NELLIE JO was the class act of the George Family.
Back in College Station, life went on inexorably. Pat had to work and I had to study. Once I went to Loupot’s place at North Gate and told Loupot "I need some money, do you have a job I can do?" Loupot said, "How much do you need, I'll loan it to you." I said, "Lou, I don't want to borrow any money; I'd have to pay it back; I need to MAKE some money, do you have anything going? He said "the only thing I have going is picking turkeys and you wouldn't want to do that, all the turkey pickers are “nigger women". I said "Lou, some of my best friends are nigger women, how much does it pay?" He gave me a price and then said "I need a turkey killer too, I’ll pay you extra if you will slit their throats when we hang them up on the line.” I said, “Lou, you have found your turkey killer, I love to slit the throats of young turkeys, especially for money.”
Actually, that was not too bad a job; those
"nigger" women were not stupid.
They accepted me, the only male and the only Caucasian, into the line of
stripping the feathers off turkeys dipped in steam. We sat and gossiped while we worked; I loved
them and I think they accepted me. All
of them, including Loupot, were sorry to see me go when I accumulated enough
money to get out of the turkey plucking business. A lot of Texas Aggies have said a lot of bad
things about Loupot (Judson E. Loupot, class of 1932), but he probably loaned more
money without security to Texas Aggies than anyone.
Matt and Aubey Whisenhunt were
good friends of the Stranges and friends of ours. Matt was also a Wildlife Management major and
we took as lot of courses together. I
had gone frog gigging with him, in his Model T Ford, before we were called to
active duty. He and Aubey were from
Idabelle, Oklahoma, a small town near the Arkansas border. Somehow, they had enough money to buy a house
rather than live in student housing.
One Sunday morning, Matt dropped in on us and the Stranges in Veterans Village. After a while he said, "I came to ask you all over for Sunday Dinner". It was obvious when we arrived at the Whisenhunt residence that Aubey was just as surprised at the invitation as we were. She dropped the bottle of Scotch I had brought along to liven things up before dinner (that was a catastrophe with our incomes), but she valiantly stretched one small steak into dinner for six. We and the Stranges were acutely embarrassed, but Matt seemed oblivious that anything was amiss. The Whisenhunts were divorced a few years later, reportedly because Aubey couldn't have children and Matt wanted a family. I'll bet she would rather have killed him than being divorced that Sunday afternoon.
Through the Stranges, we met Betty and Leon Gibbs; Norman and Leon had both been at Masonic Home, the orphanage for children of members of the Masonic Lodge in Fort Worth. Leon was in Veterinary School, but he had been a major on General Macarthur’s staff so they also had enough money to buy a house. They also had three daughters and subsequently a son. Betty worked like Hell being a mother and wife, but didn't have time for outside employment. Now THAT was affluence, a real house of their own (not rented), three children, all on the GI Bill and savings not bad for someone who had grown up in an orphan's home. We played bridge with them frequently for many years; Betty was one of the most gracious and lovely ladies I ever met.
During the three years of my completing the BS and working on the MS, we had a lot of social relationships with Pat's associates in Biochemistry. Her boss, Dr Paul Pearson, occasionally had us over for dinner; Bernie Swaggert had us over for parties; and Russell Couch was big on chicken barbecues, with chickens (hopefully controls) from the experiments. The graduate students in Biochemistry weren't too shabby either; H. O. Kunkel was Dean of Agriculture at Texas A&M for many years, Mack Prescott was Dean of Arts and Sciences at Texas A&M, and Don Hood was Director of the University of Alaska Institute of Marine Science.
Pearson became Head of Biochemistry, then Dean of the Graduate School while still holding on to his Professorship and research grants AND Chairmanship of the Department of Biochemistry and Nutrition. He did all the jobs superbly and without wrinkling his suit or his face. Pearson left Texas A&M to become head of Biology and Medicine for the Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, DC, but he left his dog, a lovely Boxer named Bianca, with us. Russell Couch was the consummate big time operator; Pat did not enjoy working for him after Dr. Pearson left. In contrast to Pearson, Couch seemed to be a lot more interested in getting the work done than whether it was done accurately. While Pat was working for him, his wife became pregnant. I remember her telling everyone at one of Couch's chicken barbecues that she had been to the doctor that day; "that God Damned Russell has to overdo everything, I'm going to have twins." The two teen-age Couch children were not thrilled at the prospect; the daughter, especially, was acutely embarrassed as her mother's pregnancy became increasingly more obvious.
Pat really liked working for Bernie Swiegert; actually, it was working WITH rather than FOR him. He was usually in the lab, helping Pat and Frances Panzer run the assays. Much of the work done in Pearson's and Swiegert's labs was classic at the time: Biochemistry was booming. Pat was excited with her work and some of it rubbed off on me; Bernie loved to explain the significance of their research over a few drinks at their house. Swiegert also had a distinguished post A&M career. He was head of the American Meat Institute, head of Biochemistry at Michigan State and at the University of California at Davis.
We had almost no social relationships with the faculty of Wildlife Management while I was finishing up my BS or Biology while I was working on my Master's. Neither department was fun oriented; I slightly regret that I didn't have the opportunity to know my professors as well socially as I did those in Biochemistry.
We spent Christmas of 1947 at the Jesse George's place at Thompson’s, Texas. Actually, it was Jesse's wife's, Girlie’s place. Girlie was orphaned by the Galveston Hurricane (known in Texas as the Galveston Flood) of 1900 in which more than 5,000 people drowned. A friend of her family, Mr. Thompson adopted her and took her to his plantation near the mouth of the Brazos River. Jesse George met and married her while Mr. Thompson was the American Consul in Tampico, Mexico. It's the end of the line for the railroad; there is no town but there is a post office, Thompson’s Texas. The lovely old house that Girlie grew up in is still there, but a problem to maintain after the slaves were freed. The house is surrounded by lawn and shaded by the biggest pecan trees I have ever seen. To a former sharecropper, cotton picker, Western Union boy, and buckass private, it was impressive.
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