5.2.3: Dog Days and First Car

 

Dog Days

     We were "dog people" for more than 30 years.  During that period we met a plethora of fascinating real "dog people" and more importantly, even more fascinating dogs: Dachshunds, Boxers, Dobermans, Min Pins, Schipperkes, Labrador Retrievers, and many, especially our final favorite, Hungarian Viszlas.           We did not have a dog when we moved to College Station in, 1946.  We moved into a furnished room in a lovely home owned by a Mrs. Blumberg, the aunt of a classmate of mine, Kent, while waiting to move into college housing provided to World War II veterans. However, shortly after we moved into a Quonset hut apartment in "Veterans Village" we kept a pair of dachshunds, Fritz and Trudy, for a couple while they went on vacation.  The DeVolds were instructors, or perhaps professors, of language at Texas A&M, he in German and she in French.  A few months after they returned from vacation, Fritz produced a litter of puppies.  We got "pick of the litter" for $50.00 and took him home a couple of weeks early because we could wait no longer.  Our Donner was a lovely puppy and we loved him dearly.  We came home at lunch time each day to take him for a walk.  That was a couple of miles round trip and was in addition to walking to work or class in the morning and back home in the afternoon. Suffice it to say, neither of us had weight problems in those days          

We made fudge one night when Donner was about 12 weeks old; it "surgared" and we dumped the entire batch into the garbage can.  We must have overslept the next morning for we forgot, for the first time, to put the garbage out of the dog's reach. When we arrived home that noon he was obviously ill.  We quickly found the raided garbage and took him to the Small Animal clinic at the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine.  He was sent to the hospital where, after three or four days, he died, attending veterinarian, Dr. "Fuzzy" Knight, told us of acute liver damage because chocolate was a potent poison to dogs.  Interestingly, in 1987 we read an article that warned against feeding chocolate to their dogs because it contains a bromide that dogs cannot metabolize.     

We were devastated by his death, but were determined to get another dachshund puppy.  We attended a dog show put on by the Valley Kennel Club in the Animal Husbandry Pavillion on Texas A&M Campus where we were entranced with a lovely dog owned by the Cox's, well known dachshund breeders from Worth.  On our next visit to Pat's family [by bus, of course] we visited the Cox's to see whether if they had any available for sale.  They didn't, and we almost certainly could not have come up with the money to buy an offspring of the sire, who finished his AKC championship in the minimum three shows. They were lovely people who graciously entertained a couple of youngsters with tales of how they were first into raising and showing Great Danes but were unable to cope with the amount of food they required.      

They suggested we contact a Mr. Plummer, whom they told us one was of the top Dachshund breeders in the country.  We took their advice and the next day were in Mr. Plummer's home looking at a puppy sired by his famous champion, Kurt von.  We wrote him a check for $100.00 for the puppy; it was a good sign of our love for dogs because I was receiving $105.00 a month on the G.I. Bill and Pat was making $280.00 a month as a technician in Biochemistry and Nutrition Department.  I don't remember how we got the pup back to Fort Worth, but I'll never forget how we got Donner, the name we quickly agreed on, to College Station.  We obviously couldn't use public transportation and, of course, didn't own a car.  We checked the newspaper section for a "share a ride" to College Station, a means of transportation during the automobile shortage post World War ll. Following a phone call to make the arrangements, we were up at Pat's parents' domicile shortly after noon to be met by two young men who looked, and subsequently talked, like a couple of guys rejected from the 'Dead End Kids' because of authenticity.  We sat in the back seat, Pat cradling “our Donner" in her lap, while the two hoodlums bandied about their imagined escapades.  Although I had learned in the army to subtract a sliding scale "fudge factor" from the tales of braggarts, I was happy to get out of their car at Veteran's with my wife unviolated, the dog unharmed, and my wallet in my pocket.  Pat, who had never been exposed to that sort of people was even more relieved.  

Our life at 20A Veteran's Village, though not idyllic, was pleasant.  I got up first, took a cup of coffee and a lighted cigarette to Pat and, without speaking, cooked breakfast. She was so exhausted from walking to and from work, more than a mile each way, plus working hard all day as a laboratory technician that an unkind word could bring tears.

We took Donner everywhere we went on foot.  One afternoon we walked a few blocks to the grocery store at South Gate with him, about six months old at the time, on lead.  When a cat that apparently had kittens somewhere in the store, pounced on what she perceived to be a threat to her young, and bit his head, I rescued him as quickly as I could, but he was terrified of cats, even tiny kittens, for two to three years.  However, when he overcame that fear he was a terror on cats.

One of the most shocking --and to us -- unfair rulings we had up to that time was an arbitrary announcement that after a certain date no dogs would be allowed in Veteran's.  There was no limitation on the number of children, a point that, even then, infuriated us.  We probably would not have bought Donner if we had had any inkling of the ban on dogs in college housing, but once we had him there was no way we were going to give him up.  However, moving out of college housing caused a lot of hardship and cost a lot of money.     

Somehow, I found a Dr. Barger, head of the Economics at A&M, who was building an apartment behind his house for rent.  I was finishing up my B.S. in Wildlife Management and been accepted to Graduate School in the Biology Department.  An impending Teaching Assistantship and GI Bill stipend plus Pat's salary made it possible to move out of college housing and buy the car we thought we had to have to live at Barger's.  It was on Highway 6, between Bryan and College, and more than two miles from the A&I Building where Pat worked.  In our new affluence, we decided it was too far to walk.

 

First Car

            Shortly after moving into Barger's apartment we made a trip to Fort Worth to buy a car Pat's father had found for us.  I don't remember how we got there -- not by public transportation; we took Donner with us -- but I'll never forget the return.  The car was a 1937 Hudson, an earlier model of which had run over me, owned by an elderly couple who only drove to and the grocery store.  We paid $600 for it, $100 down and$100 a month for five months with no interest.      Paul George, Pat's father, suggested we go downtown and see it.  I said I had a friend in College Station who was a mechanic and I thought I'd give him the business.  Paul said, "You do whatever you like, Sparks, but I wouldn't drive it off the lot if it wasn't insured."  That sounded good to me, and so we did as he suggested.     

We, Pat, Donner and I, left for College Station after Sunday.  After about 50 miles, the heat gauge suddenly went off into the red and the radiator boiled dry.  I walked to a nearby farm, pumped enough water from a well to refill the radiator and we continued our journey.  Fifty miles later it happened again; by then I was experienced enough to take extra water along. When I limped into a service station, the attendant said, "your fan belt is busted; I'll take it out if you want me to".  I told him that I, indeed, wanted him to take it out. Of course it, cost a few dollars, and that hurt because we were playing close to the vest.  All went well until we were between Bryan and College, less than a mile from our apartment.  Someone driving on Highway 6 waved frantically and pointed to the front of the car as we met.  About then, smoke began coming up from our feet and from beneath the dashboard.  Pat said, "Stop, the car's on fire".  I replied "I'm going to make it to that filling station where there's water to put it out."  "Not with me," she said and, holding the dog and her purse, she bailed out in her high heels onto the shoulder of the road.           Deserted, I lost my nerve and pulled off the road just as flames erupted around my feet.  A couple of drivers with fire extinguishers stopped, raised the hood and began spraying foam on the burning engine.  Someone had also called the fire department; they put out the fire, but only after considerable damage. I walked the short distance to the apartment, leaving the burned car on the shoulder of the road.   It was NOT a happy time.       

The next morning a young insurance adjuster arrived, prepared for a "buy and burn insurance scam".  He took one look at the car and said, "It's totalled, you can have your $600 back".  I said "can we have it fixed instead".  He said we had that choice, but he advised against it -- by then he realized we were too dumb to be involved in any kind of insurance scam and was trying to help us.  Unfortunately, I was too stupid to take his advice. The Insurance Company put the repair job out for bids and a family in Bryan, the Scardinos, made the lowest bid.  In addition to having the local Hudson dealership, they also owned a store.  I don't know if the Mafia had penetrated the College Station area, but they operated with mob-like ethos.  They were always polite -- "sorry the car isn't ready like promised, but we've had some problems".  The estimated two-week repair time stretched into something like two months.  When the car was finally ready, it looked like hell; the Scardinos had let their kids repaint the dash board for "show and tell".  I was so tired of dealing with the slippery Scardinos and or riding the bus everywhere we went that I accepted the mess without further argument.  Pat cried when I brought it home.           

We joined the Brazos Valley Kennel Club after seeing an ad to enroll in an Obedience Class in the local paper.   This opened a whole new world to us; we made many new friends, human and canine, and learned about the Dog World.  Mrs. Stewart  raised and showed Boxers; she owned Tree Cedar's Kennel, the one Boxer kennel in the Southwest.  Her Chris, a fawn, was a famous champion and Cactus, a brindle, was well on his way when we met Mrs. Stewart, and he soon won the requisite number of points in AKC sanctioned shows.  Mrs. Stewart was obedience training Chris so that she could make him both a conformation and obedience champion.  He was not only gorgeous, he was smart; she took him through the Trials in almost record time.           

The other side of the coin was Mrs. Clark, a lovely elderly woman, and her unregistered Dachshund, Trudi.  In between were people and their dogs, drawn together by one common factor -- a love of dogs and the compulsion to educate them so we could communicate with them to the maximum possible. We were encouraged to show Donner by other Brazos Valley Kennel members and entered him in the Puppy Class at the next AKC Brazos Valley Kennel Club sponsored show.  Despite the fact that I didn't know how to show him, or even to groom him, he did well enough in the Puppy Class to go to the next round.  There both of us were outclassed, though all the Dachshund fanciers recognized his father: "Kurt always throws that gorgeous head".  The problem then was my inexperience in the show ring, and always was that we did not put any weight on him.  In retrospect, I'm confident if we had had the money to put him with a professional who also kenneled him between shows, he would have become AKC Champion in a short time.     

After we got our ugly duckling car back, we were happy at Barger's apartment.  Everything was new and it was the nicest place either of us had ever lived, except for the short stay at Mrs. Blumberg's.  We settled down to enjoy it at least until I got my Master's Degree , but after only a few months, Dr. Barger informed us he had other plans for the apartment and that we would have to move.            We were devastated; we had been good tenants, paid the rent on time, kept the place immaculate, didn't have wild parties and didn't even make noise-- we were so tired we slept most of the time.  I have no idea why he evicted us -- perhaps for a student in his department or the idea he could get more than wee were paying (he was close with money); but when I asked him why, he pointed out that he didn't have to explain his reasons.  It was his apartment and he wanted us out of it; life WAS different then. 

Having to move created a serious problem; with all the veterans there was a monstrous housing problem in the Bryan Station.  Texas A&M had been a military school prior during WWII; virtually all undergraduates lived in college and there were few graduate students.  There was no housing in College Station and very little in Bryan, a few miles away.  The returning married veterans, many of them with children, were far too numerous to be accommodated in college and quickly overwhelmed the local rental market while waiting their turn for college housing.  Texas A&M worked desperately to build more student housing for married veterans, but they couldn't keep up.  The only place we could find to rent was in Munnerlyn, a collection of World War II Quonset Huts bought surplus and thrown up by Mr. Ford Munnerlyn to help alleviate the housing shortage AND make a lot of money.  Once again we were in WWII prefab housing, but these weren't put together nearly as well as Veteran's Village, the rent was much higher, and we had Donner and, by then, Schatzie, a choice of litter from Donner's first stud fees. 

It was not a happy time; the rent was more than we could afford, the curtains stood out from the closed windows when the winter winds blew and we couldn't generate enough heat to get the place acceptably warm.  I put up a chicken wire fence which was supposed to contain the two dogs, but Donner "swam" the soil beneath the fence and Schatzie followed him through the excavations.  I'd search the neighborhood for them; when they saw me they would head for home, trying to keep me from seeing them.  By the time I got back they were always safely in the pen happily waiting to greet me.  I thwarted them once by blocking their exit with a board and catching them outside the pen, but it never worked again.  Donner dug another tunnel before I could get home.  We abandoned the pen when one of the neighbors complained that Donner was eating their pet Bantam chickens.  Actually, we didn't believe gentle, sweet Donner would do such a vicious thing until he brought one home.     

Fortunately, we were able to escape Munnerlyn Village fairly quickly.  Howard Joham, an instructor or assistant professor in the Biology Department, took a year's leave of absence to go to finish his PhD and offered to lease us their house at a very reasonable rent.  We were delighted with the offer, though there were some stipulations such as the dogs being kept to the kitchen.  Mrs Joham carefully oriented Pat as to where everything was and EXACTLY how she wanted everything cared for.    Retrospectively, it was pretty funny, but didn't seem so at the time.  The house was fairly new, all wood, and plain and small by present day standards.  The separate garage had a dirt floor, and I'm pretty sure the driveway was unpaved, but I think street was.  It was in a new addition between Bryan and Station; even the street name, Chocalaco, was new.  However, it was the first house the Johams had and, from the perspective of Munnerlyn Village, it seemed like heaven to us.  There was nothing behind us until the dam at Fin Lake, about a quarter of a mile away.  Although Joham was a botanist, there was no yard to keep; I'm not sure that it had been sodded with grass.        

The year we lived there was tranquil and productive.  Pat was happy in her job, I was doing well in Graduate School and teaching, and we were luxuriating in living in a real house of our own with even an extra bedroom for guests.  We usually ate at a small table in the kitchen, but there was even a separate dining room. 

5.2.2: Family and Friends 1946-48

 

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. 

 

5.2.1: A&M 1946-9, MA in Bass

 

TEXAS A&M (1946-1949)

            I returned to Texas A&M when the Summer Session began in June, 1946.  The plan was for me to go to summer school, after which we would decide whether Pat would leave her good job with the Humble Company in Baytown and try to find work in College Station or I'd forget getting a college degree. 

            The first course I signed up for was the first half of Comparative Anatomy, a potentially academically suicidal move. Comparative Anatomy was the bane of all Wildlife Management majors.  It was required for graduation and some took each of the two courses several times.  It was taught by Dr. George Potter, whom all Wildlife majors were convinced discriminated against us. Why I started out with that killer course rather than something more reasonable, I have no idea, but it was a real test of both my ability and desire.

            That first six weeks term I slept in a nearby dormitory, but I ”lived” in the Comparative Lab in old Science Hall.  I received a C+ for the first course and was convinced I had earned a B. However, I had learned a couple of worthwhile lessons: I could cut it in even the tough college courses, and Potter wasn't the ogre I had been told.  After seeing my grade, I went to see Potter.  "Dr. Potter", I said, "I guess I deserved that grade, but I didn't do better because I was scared of you.  I'm not scared anymore and I'm going to make an A in the next course." Potter smiled and said, "I hope you do, Sparks".

            By the time the second summer session began, Pat had already quit her job in Baytown and moved to College Station.  I was able to really concentrate on the comparative anatomy and I aced it.  I led the class the entire course and was off and running academically.

            During the next two semesters, I took almost all the advanced Wildlife courses, including Ornithology, Mammalogy, Herpetology, Ichthyology, Ecology, plus such crib courses as Systematic Botany, Advanced Technical Writing etc.  One semester I got off 26 credit hours -- 22 hours plus making up a four-hour incomplete from my last semester before reporting for Active Duty in WW II.  I also accumulated more grade points that semester than in my entire prewar career.  I was in class between 40 and 44 hours a week (we had classes on Saturday mornings).  My mother had given me a typewriter for my birthday and I typed up all my day's notes every night.

            Those Wildlife courses were excellent!  At one time I could identify on sight every species of vertebrate native to Texas and correctly spell it's scientific name.  I could also do the same with most of the native plants.  I was particularly fortunate in taking Herpetology from Hobart Smith, one of the top Herpetologists in the US and the author of the definitive book on lizards, and Mammalogy from Bill Davis, one of the leading Mammalogists in the country.  Gary Soule taught the fish courses and Bill Haight taught Ornithology.  Both of the latter were there for only a year or so and I haven't heard anything about either for at least 40 years.  Hobart Smith left for the University of Illinois after a few years where he taught Comparative Anatomy and Herpetology for years and eventually moved to the University of Colorado as Chairman of the Department of Zoology.

            Our decision for Pat to remain in Baytown was not viable. We had been separated for so long by the war, over which we had no control, we found we could not accept a self-imposed separation.  I went to Baytown or Pat came to College Station every weekend, always by an interminable bus ride.  On one of her visits to College Station she interviewed for a job with Dr. Paul B. Pearson, Professor of Biochemistry and Nutrition.  She was offered the job as a Laboratory Technician in Dr. Pearson's Lab at about $165.00 per month.  That was a pay cut of about $20.00 per month, but we jumped at it.  With the $105.00 per month I received from the G.I. Bill (plus tuition and books), we could manage, but we were on a tight budget. 

            Pat was a meticulous bookkeeper and I reported every cent I spent.  For years, she was never off more than 10 cents for a month.  We were frugal, but not stingy.  We both smoked lots of cigarettes (a pack each every day), but spent little on food or entertainment.  Pat had not discovered booze; I had a beer or two every evening, but a bottle of whiskey was for a party.  We seldom went out because she was tired, I had to study, we didn't have any money, and no car to go anywhere to spend it if we had any.  Nevertheless, I believe that is where we developed our basic philosophy and family expression, "if you can't go First Class, stay home" We didn't do anything we thought we couldn't afford, but if we decided we could, we didn't try to do it on the cheap.

            If, in retrospect, those times seem austere, it's probably because they were.  However, neither of us had ever had it easy and, most importantly, we were together after almost four years of separation.  I could see that I was going to be the first, and probably the only, member of my family to get a college education and I possibly could become a professional (”somebody”) instead of a worker.  I don't remember us giving each other inspirational speeches, we were too tired or busy most of the time, but it must have been in the back of both our minds or we wouldn't have done it. I didn't have any doubts and if Pat did, she kept them to herself.  In view of my High School and previous College undergraduate under achievement, she was either blindly in love, saw something in me that no one else (other than my mother) had or didn't know how to get out of a bad situation.  Whatever the reason, I'm glad she stuck with me.

 

Next Step into Academe: MS and Bass

            In early 1947, several professional Boy Scout executives put on a three-day course to train people to be Scoutmasters.  I had benefitted so greatly from the Boy Scouts I thought I would eventually want to be a scoutmaster, so I signed up for the course.  The professional executives were so impressed with the knowledge that Bill Delaney, another Wildlife Management major, and I had of natural history, they offered the two of us appointments to the Boy Scouts of America training school for professional scout executives.   We were selected for a session in September, but sometime in the spring I was invited to an interview in Okmulgee, Oklahoma for a position as the Assistant Regional Scout Executive following completion of the training program.

            Pat and I rode a bus to Dallas, flew to Tulsa, then another bus ride for the fifty or so miles to Okmulgee.  We stayed at the home of Ken Strong, the Regional Scout Executive, and I met all the local volunteer Boy Scout leaders.  I was offered the job and accepted.

            One day during the Summer Session I was walking from class to meet Pat for lunch and, to get out of the hot sun, walked through Science Hall.  Dr. Potter was in the hall and I spoke to him.  He had encouraged me to apply for admission to Medical School after I did so well in his Comparative Anatomy course; he was the Premed Advisor, so his recommendation virtually guaranteed acceptance.  "Aren't you about to graduate?" he asked.

"Yes Sir, in August" I replied. 

"What are you going to do?"

"I have a job as a Scout Executive in Okmulgee, Oklahoma" I answered.   His response to that was "What a God Damned waste of brains".  He asked me what my salary would be and I told him I was going to make $200.00 a month. 

            Dr. Potter then made me an offer I could not refuse.  "I have never had a Teaching Assistant in my Comparative Anatomy courses because I never trusted anyone to handle the labs, but with all the veterans returning I'm going to have to set up two lab sections.  The assistantship pays $110.00 a month, you get $105.00 a month on the G.I. Bill, so you'll be making $15.00 a month more than you would in the Boy Scout job and working towards a Master's degree.  Besides, your wife has a good job with Dr. Pearson in Biochemistry and I don't think there are many jobs for chemists in Okmulgee, Oklahoma."

            When I told Pat about Potter's offer, she was ecstatic.  She was not thrilled with the prospect of living in Okmulgee, but, in the role of supportive wife, hadn't said so.  There was one problem: even though I had made almost all A's in my postwar academic career, I was still a little shy of the B average required for admission to Graduate School.  Dr. Potter assured me that if I applied he would see to it that I was accepted.  Sure enough, I did and he did.

            In September 1947, I began the most intellectually stimulating and academically rewarding two years of my life. Somewhat to my surprise, Dr. Potter gave me complete freedom to teach the Comparative Lab.  On the rare occasions that he needed to enter the lab, via the connecting door to his office, while my lab section was in session, he would always knock before entering and ask if it would disturb anyone if he came in.  I also assisted Dr. Arthur Schipper in the two Introductory Zoology courses that were prerequisites for Comparative Anatomy.  That was ironic; I had D'd both of them (the second a going away to war gift) under Art Schipper in my illustrious prewar academic career.

            Although the idea of becoming a college professor had never entered my mind, within a couple of weeks I was hooked.  Never reluctant to be the center of attention, having a captive audience that had to not only listen to you but also memorize what you said was a real ego trip.  Almost from the beginning, I was completely at ease, enjoying, I'm sure, the teaching far more than the students taking the courses.

            Knowing nothing of graduate school protocol, I informed Dr. Sewell Hepburn Hopkins that I was his new graduate student and that I was going to do my Master's Thesis on the helminth parasites of the largemouth bass in Texas.  I'm sure he was appalled at my temerity.  Sewell Hopkins was a true Southern Gentleman.  He was born and grew up in "Tidewater" Virginia, on the banks of the North River in Gloucester County.  Katherine Hepburn was a first cousin and a frequent visitor when he and his brother were growing up. 

            Dr. Hopkins earned his Bachelor's Degree from The College of William and Mary and was a graduate student for a year at Johns Hopkins University, named for his great uncle who left the bulk of his fortune to found the University and Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.  He then "went west" to the University of Illinois to do graduate work under Dr. Henry B. Ward, the "Father of American Parasitology".  Ward was Head of the Department of Zoology, other faculty members included Harley J. Van Cleave (Systematics, especially of the Phylum Acanthocephala, and Invertebrate Zoology), Waldo Shumway (Embryology), Charles Zeleny (Genetics), L.A. Adams (Vertebrate Anatomy), Victor Shelford (Ecology), and Richard Kudo (Protozoology).  They were then and continued to be for many years, the leaders in their respective fields. 

            Equally stimulating were his fellow graduate students, whose names read like Who's Who in American Parasitology.  Justus Mueller had just left, Sewell was awarded the research assistantship vacated by him when he received his Ph.D.  Fellow students were H.W. Stunkard, George LaRue, William Cort, Harold Manter, George W. Hunter III, Wanda Sanborn Hunter, Paul Beaver, Harry Bennett, and John G. Mackin.

            Sewell, who was Ward's research assistant from 1928 to 1933, described Ward's character as complex, even contradictory  (Parasitology at Illinois, 1928-1933.  unpublished, privately circulated essay.).  He was quite proud of his "New England conscience," but he frequently lied without shame, even delighted in it.  He was also vindictive and demanded absolute loyalty from his staff and students.  However, he was fanatically loyal to his students, even long after they left Illinois.  Hopkins noted that there was no such word as "former student" in Ward's vocabulary.  To him that would have been equivalent to "my former sons and daughters".  He often referred to his students as his "intellectual sons" and their students as his "intellectual grandsons".  In that perspective, I am one of Ward's "intellectual great-grandsons" and my graduate students are his "intellectual great-great-grandsons". 

            If one of his students experienced financial difficulty, a frequent occurrence in those depression days, Ward loaned or gave them money, insisting that he had obtained it for them from a special fund even though Hopkins knew the money came from Henry B.'s own pocket.  Despite the fact that he was well off financially, Dr. Ward was proud of his frugality (part of his "New England" heritage).  He had a succession of large powerful cars, all of which were bought second hand. He freely loaned his car to his favorite students, but they knew better than to return it without at least replenishing the gasoline they had used.  He also frequently took students with him on trips, most of whom were too poor to travel on their own.

            With his students, Ward maintained the kind of warm relationship he had with his professors during his graduate study in Germany.  He entertained them occasionally in his home and frequently at picnics, always at his own expense.

            Despite my brash, and probably offensive Texan ways, Dr.Hopkins agreed to be my major professor.  The other members of my graduate committee were Dr. George Potter and Dr. Richard Turk, Head of Veterinary Parasitology.  Turk was a fine parasitologist, even though he insisted he was "just a country veterinarian who's interested in worms".  He was "deaf as a post" and couldn't afford a hearing aid until he graduated from Veterinary School. He got through school reading lips and as a professor took great delight in reading the lips of whisperers in his lectures and, especially, during exams.  "Johnson", he'd say to a student two thirds of the way up the Veterinary Medicine Ampitheatre, "if you want to know the answer to the fourth question, don't ask Jackson, ask me, he doesn't know any more than you do".  That usually put an end to any collaboration in that particular course.

            I shared an office in Foster Hall, across the street from Science Hall, with E.H. Hughins.  Ernie was from Bryan, but had graduated from Baylor.  He was also a student of Sewell Hopkins so we took many courses together.  He was an excellent student but a worrier.  I would finish an exam in about forty minutes and Ernie would keep going over his paper until the professor took it away from him at the end of the hour, or later if the prof was not assertive.  When we got the tests back, Ernie would have a 98 and I would have a 95; I just couldn't see that the extra three points were worth the additional twenty minutes.

            Together, we took George Potter's graduate course in Comparative Anatomy (I worked out the anatomy of the largemouth bass and Ernie that of the cotton rat); Parasitology and Protozoology from Jim Mangrum; Helminthology from Sewell Hopkins; Vertebrate Histology and Advanced Invertebrate Zoology from Jim Mangrum; and I took Embryology from Howard Gravett.

            Ernie subsequently got his Ph.D. in Parasitology under Lydell Thomas at Illinois, with his dissertation on the life cycle of a trematode parasite of the double crested cormorant.  He has been a professor at North Dakota State University for many years and visited us while on active duty in the Naval Reserve at Sand Point Naval Air Station in Seattle.

            Ernie did his Master's thesis on the helminth parasites of the cotton rat,” Sigmodon hispidus; I occasionally suggested to Ernie that he work on the parasites of the common Norway rat. There were enough of them in Foster Hall for a thesis; collecting them would eliminate both our rat problem (they came out and stared at you when you were working at night) and the need for field work.  I thought Ernie's thesis problem was boring, perhaps because of my experience in rodent collecting and control in New Caledonia. 

            The research for my thesis was a lot more fun.  I, most of the time accompanied by Pat, drove all over the State of Texas fishing for bass, unfortunately at our expense.  Early on I explained to Pat that you had to collect bass by angling because conventional methods such as seining wouldn't work.  The bass would swim faster than people could pull a seine and, when driven into a cul-de-sac, would jump over the top of the seine.  The only recourse was catching them on hook and line; artificial lures were much more effective than bait and top water plugs or fly rod floating bass bugs were the most effective of all collecting devices.  Relatively early in the project, Pat (to whom research consisted of analyzing some substance –petroleum hydrocarbons, blood, urine, etc -- in the laboratory) decided, or perhaps realized, she had been had.  I was going to get a Master's degree for fishing all over the State of Texas.  She really thought I should work harder and suffer more rather than enjoy doing my field work.  I've always, then and now, believed that if you had fun doing research you could stay with it longer and do a better job.  Although I have not always succeeded, I've tried to become involved only in research that I really wanted to do and would enjoy doing.

My modus operandi went something like this, we would arrive in a small town in a locality from which I needed material.  After checking into a motel, I would go to the local Sporting Goods store, or to the Hardware or General store if the community was too small to support a separate Sporting Goods store.  "I'm doing research on the largemouth bass and need to catch some.  Who is the best bass fisherman in town?"  I would almost always get one name, rarely two.  

            I would ascertain where he worked or lived and find him. "I'm doing research on bass all over the State and I need some from here.  I understand you are the best bass fisherman in this part of the country and I'd sure appreciate your help."  It never failed to work.  They would take me to their favorite spots, frequently saying "I ain't never brought nobody here before, but this is the best place in these parts."  "I'll never tell" I'd say --and I never did-- but I did have some fabulous bass fishing, oops, bass collecting, experiences.   Once, while fishing an oxbow lake with a local expert near Silsbe in deep East Texas, I saw the biggest largemouth bass of my life.   

            I had walked out over the water on a large fallen tree for better access to potential locations of bass; casting with a bait casting reel and underwater plug to tree stumps and other "fishy" sites.  I had retrieved the lure to within a foot of the log on which I was standing and, just as I was about to lift it out the water for another cast, the monster bass came out from beneath the log and engulfed the lure.  With the rod tip down and less than a foot of line, she simply took the bait, rolled over and snapped the line, all in slow motion.  However, I clearly saw that the characteristic stripe along the side was wider than my extended hand-- palm to middle finger-- and it was at least three feet long.  I made my way back to the bank and sat down on a log, still shaking.  My "guide", realizing something was amiss, joined me and asked what had happened.  "I just lost a world record largemouth bass", I replied quaveringly.  Two cigarettes later I was no longer shaking, but I had no desire for further fishing.  That fish had to have weighed over twenty pounds; I've caught a lot of big bass since, but none were half the size of THE EAST

TEXAS MONSTER.

            Another time I parked by a tavern below the dam at Eagle Mountain Lake near Ft. Worth (I have no idea why it was named Eagle Mountain, there were no mountains within 500 miles and no eagles in the last 100 years) and went to the nearby fish hatchery to try to talk the hatchery superintendent into letting me catch a few of his brood stock.  I frequently tried that ploy, but it seldom worked; the superintendents were emotionally involved with their brood bass.  However, when I could talk one out of a four or five pound mature fish, it would be loaded with helminth parasites.  Most superintendents would turn me down, then offer to let me catch all the younger fish I wanted.  It was not very challenging, one cast into the hatchery pond, one fish, whether five pounders or ten inch yearlings, but it did provide data and beat seining by a wide margin.

            In that particular incident, the superintendent allowed me to catch a half-dozen juveniles but would have killed me if I had thrown anything with a barbed hook on it into the pond with his precious brood fish.  I put the small ones on ice in a cooler in my car trunk and thought "what the hell, I'll go up on the dam for a few casts and maybe get lucky".  Carrying my casting rod with a Heddon Pumpkinseed on a swivel at the end of the line (and nothing else), I trudged up the wall of the dam.  Like most artificial reservoirs in Texas, the lake side of the dam was covered with a layer of imported rocks.  As usual there was a typical Texas fisherman on the dam: blue overalls, 12 foot cane pole and live minnows.  (I'm not being condescending-- that rig can be deadly on both bass and, especially, crappie under the proper conditions).

            I asked the cane pole fisherman if he minded my making a few casts and was welcomed to the fishing.  I made a long cast as near the rocks as I could and, after about three turns of the reel, had a solid strike.  The fish hooked itself and, after a short but powerful fight, I landed it by wading out and grasping it by the lower jaw as it lay on its side on the surface.  I didn't bother to take the lure out of its mouth there and started back over the dam to the car.  The resident fisherman asked "aren't you going to fish anymore?"  "No, I just needed one", I replied. 

            After depositing the five-pounder in the ice chest, I went into the tavern for a beer.  The cane pole fisherman was there, having a beer and enlightening the other customers.  "I just seen the God Damndest thing I ever seen in my life.  This guy with one of them short poles with a reel on it and a artificial fish on the end of it throwed it out one time and caught the biggest damned bass I ever saw.  He knew exactly what he was doing!  When I asked him if he was quitting", he said " I only needed one".  Fortunately, I was in a booth in a dark corner and he didn't notice me so I didn't have to explain how the world’s greatest bass fisherman knew how to catch a five pound bass on the first cast at a new site.

            The best fishing of all, however, was at Lake Texhoma, a new reservoir created by damming the Red River at Dennison, Texas. The Red River is the boundary between Texas and Oklahoma for most of northeast Texas and southern Oklahoma, hence the name Texhoma. The biologist for the Texas Department of Fish and Game was Homer Buck, a fellow Wildlife major and classmate at A&M.  He fished the lake every day and knew all the best fishing spots.  I think I limited (10 bass) every time I fished with Homer.  My most memorable experience was a Sunday morning on Platter Flats, my first Lake Texhoma fishing trip. 

            I spent Saturday night at Homer's apartment and we were up well before dawn.  While we were having breakfast at a local cafe, Homer mentioned that he would like to get back for 9:00 o'clock Mass.  I had a sinking feeling that I was facing a shortened fishing trip, but I did not realize either the numbers or voraciousness of the Texhoma Bass nor Homer's knowledge of their whereabouts.

            We put the boat in the water and headed out, at top speed, into the darkness.  After a run of 20 minutes or so, Homer cut off the motor and we glided into a surrealistic, almost erie, scene.  Wisps of fog were rising from the water and clinging to numerous emergent dead tree limbs; in the half-light of dawn, it looked like the opening scene of a black and white horror movie.  "This is Platter Flats", Homer said, "it's shallow and these drowned trees provide a fantastic habitat for bass.  We'll catch a lot of them, but you have to fish for them in a special way."

            Homer handed me a bass plug (artificial lure) I had not seen before, a Heddon Chugger Spook.  "Cast this out as far as you can, jerk it hard, and reel in as fast as you can."  I knew he was putting me on; everybody knew you cast a topwater bass plug to an appropriate spot, let it sit while you lit a cigarette, then gently twitched it to entice any waiting bass to attack the crippled creature.  Therefore, not taken in by Homer's con, I cast to a likely spot by a protruding tree limb, let it float while the ripples from its splash slowly expanded.  Meanwhile, and before I could light the mandatory cigarette, Homer cast into the open water and began threshing the water with the Chugger, sending up a plume of water three feet into the air.  Just as I was thinking "that's the craziest thing I ever saw", I saw several V-shaped bow waves converging on the rapidly moving lure.  The first to arrive intercepted it, engulfed it, and when the hooks were set erupted into the air.

            I immediately got the picture and began "horsing" my own Chugger, with the same result.  We got back to Denison with plenty of time for Homer to make 9:00 O'clock Mass and two limits (20) largemouth bass, all looking like littermates at almost exactly three pounds each. 

            Upon returning to College Station with a collection of bass, I would move them from the cooler to a refrigerator until I could "post" them.  The postmortem examination was initiated by an incision from beside the anus to the gills.  The entire digestive tract was removed and placed in a vessel containing Ringer's Solution (a salt solution at about the salinity of blood).  After examining the body cavity for encysted or free-living worms, the urogenital system (kidneys, ureters, and urinary bladder; gonads and gonadal ducts) were treated similarly.  Then the gills were removed and placed in Ringer's.  Finally, the skin, fins and muscles were examined for encysted helminths.  All organs were opened, the G.I. tract from esophagus to anus, and examined with the aid of a stereoscopic microscope.  All helminths, of which there were many, were carefully removed, "fixed" in appropriate fixatives for subsequent staining.

            Looking for the helminths was even more fun than the fishing.  There was nothing in the literature on the parasites of the largemouth bass in Texas, so everything I found was new information.  I had carefully assembled all the published reports on bass parasites by requesting reprints from the authors after locating the original articles in journals in the library.  At Sewell's suggestion, I wrote a personal letter rather than using a printed reprint request form.  That was prior to the days of Grants, so everyone had to pay for reprints out of their own pocket.  As Sewell pointed out, someone would be far more likely to send you an expensive reprint if you explained why you needed it for your own research.  An important side benefit was that I became acquainted, via the U.S. Postal system, with some of the foremost parasitologists in the United States.

            Several times in early 1949, Dr. Hopkins said "Sparks, you'd better get started on your thesis, it's going to take a lot of time and you're not going to finish in June if you don't get

busy".  I would always answer, "I'm working on it"; I was.  I was thinking about it, but the truth was that I hadn't put the first word on paper.  I did have Camera Lucida drawings of each species of worm, and my postmortem records on each fish I had examined.

            One Friday afternoon in the Spring of 1949, I took all my records and drawings and a couple of pads of lined paper home with me.  I sat down at the dining room table, in the Joham's house on Chocolaco we were leasing, and told Pat I was going to write my thesis.  Mid-afternoon on Sunday, I said, "would you like to go to the movies?  I’m finished".

            I took the pencil copy to Mr. Richardson, in charge of Equipment and Supplies for the Biology Department, who had agreed to type my thesis at a reasonable fee.  The G.I. Bill paid most of the cost of thesis typing, but some came out of your pocket.  He looked at it and said, "This is in pretty good shape, if you want to gamble we may be able to save you some money.  I'll skip the rough draft and type it in final form, with all the carbons  (photocopying had not been invented, or probably not even thought of in those Paleolithic days.  You'll break even if I have to retype half of it, anything less and you're ahead."  A few days later he brought me the original and required number of carbon copies on onion skin paper.

            I took copies to Potter, Turk, the Graduate School member of my committee and Hopkins.  Dr. Hopkins appeared surprised.  "You really have been working on it", he said.  In less than a week I had all copies back.  George Potter insisted on some picky change that necessitated the retyping of one page; everyone else returned with no changes requested.  I learned an extremely valuable lesson that helped me immeasurably with my own graduate student's theses and manuscripts: People are reluctant to deface a pristine page that appears to be in final form. The same reviewers, editors, etc will savagely attack a document with even one penciled-in correction on it.   

           I was particularly amazed that Hopkins did not find more to change; he was a real scholar and savored the English language.  I never told Sewell Hopkins, or anyone at Texas A&M, that I wrote my Master's Thesis over part of a weekend and had the final draft typed from the handwritten first draft.  Neither he nor the other members of my committee would have believed it, but Pat knows it's true.