JimBlackBooks.com
1950 - 1959
OPEN LETTERS
Dear Big Red School House,
Or so you seemed to me when I first set foot inside you in the fifth grade. I loved moving into you from Crockett Elementary School in Wichita Falls. My grandmother (Mary Ellen Gowdy) had taught in you. My mother (Margaret Ellen Slack) had been a substitute teacher for you. My aunt (Mary Lois Gowdy) had graduated from you, as had my rowdy Uncle Hank Gowdy. My Uncle Hud (yeah, the real original Hud, not the fictional one) had played football for you, but was killed in an accident before he graduated. So I felt like I was coming home. And I came right into the arms of Mrs. Gann, my teacher I loved so much I once dreamed of rescuing her from a burning building, so I could be her hero.
I lived only a few blocks from you, so my siblings and I walked to school every day, home at noon for lunch, then back for the day. You were then a three-story, red-brick school, housing grades one through twelve. Nobody went to kindergarten in those days, and hardly anyone went beyond grade twelve. A lot fewer would probably have got that far, had it not been for high school football and cheerleading teams. High school football was at the core of this small town’s values. Signs, “Home of a Wildcat” sprang up in the front yard of footballers houses, and cheerleaders houses were often festooned with pompons. A lighted billboard, shaped liked a football, announced that the Wildcats had won the state Class A Championship in 1964, some years after I graduated, but I saw it when I came back from college.
Inside you, Big Red, was a wide front staircase with a shiny wood bannister that someone, probably your caretaker, Mr. Ensey, had nailed empty spools into about every ten inches to discourage the sliding down thereon. And in front of you was a flag pole up which many odd items were run by prankish school boys—a skunk, a pair of great flapping pink drawers, and, incredibly, and upside-down pelican.
In your library, at the back of the study hall upstairs, you had a limited amount of books that grew even fewer as the school board took them home to scrutinize when people complained about their content and its possible damage to youthful moral fiber. As a writer for the school newspaper, “The Cat’s Claw,” I cleverly named my column “Just Horsing Around,” and was scolded by the librarian, Mrs. Mullis, who, not appreciating my cleverness, renamed it blandly “Around Campus,” and told me my word choices were crude.
Dear Miss Ida Hawkins: Speaking of crude, you told me my mother and grandmother would be ashamed of my behavior, because I fiddled with the pencils in the slot on my desk while I recited the definition of a dangling participle. You made me go stand in the hall for the rest of the class period. You scared me to death. But you know what, dear Miss Ida? You certainly taught me English grammar, and I dedicated one of my first textbooks to you.
Dear Mrs. Frances Cassell: You were the first person, besides my mother, who thought I had any academic or literary promise. You took patience and care in going over my papers with me and suggesting how I might improve them. I adored you—even though to “broaden” my “horizons,” you took me to a couple of boxing matches in Wichita Falls, where I cringed at every punch. You were my first teacher who was also a friend.
Dear Mrs. James: Thank you for letting me make a pillow case with ears in your Domestic Science class and telling me you thought I was not quite up to making a pair of jodphurs, when I told you my next project idea. (I’m still not.)
Dear Mr. Prentice: I told you and told you that I didn’t like to play my French Horn in marching season, because all I did was go “Um pa, Um, pa” and that band uniform was unbecoming to boot. So you gave me good parts to play in concert season, like “Finlandia,” which at least had a tune. (I still know the fingering.)
Dear Buford, Bobby, Larry, Faye, Barbara, Sue, Joan, JoAnne, Margaret Ann, Patsy, Tissa: Thank you for being my friends, even though I was probably a twit and had too many opinions. It was just hard for me to sit still, legs crossed at the ankles, and smile pretty like girls were supposed to do in those days. (PS. It isn’t any easier now!)
And Dear Big Red School House: I’m sorry to hear you are going down and won’t be around much longer, like so many of my teachers and friends who lived and learned within you as I did. You don’t seem so Big to me now. But you had a Big effect on my life.
You will be replaced with a more up-to-date model, as we have been or soon will be, and so it goes…..
Much love, Celie (Ceil) Slack (Cleveland) - Class of ‘54
(Ceil Cleveland, her professional name, has written nine books of fiction and nonfiction, and edited many literary journals and magazines, including Columbia, the Magazine of Columbia University. She has been a vice president of two universities in New York City, and for 30 years has taught university students literature and writing. She lives in Durham, NC, and still writes, edits, and teaches. Whatever Happened to Jacy Farrow is her memoir about living in Archer City in the 50s and 60s.)
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I lived just two blocks from Archer High during the whole twelve years of my primary education. Only the 6th grade caused me problems. That was the year my sister Sue entered the portals of academe.
Only she didn’t enter. She would walk one of the blocks with me—getting her to school had somehow become my responsibility. At the midpoint of our walk she invariably balked. She seemed to have chosen the path of resistance, which she has even now not entirely abandoned. The potency of her resistance was one of the few things I remember about my years at Archer High.
Larry McMurtry - Class of 1954
(Larry McMurtry was born in Wichita Falls and raised on a ranch near Archer City. He is the author of 32 novels, 14 nonfiction works, and numerous screenplays and is a renowned bookseller. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his novel, Lonesome Dove, and both a Golden Globe and Academy Award for his screenplay, Brokeback Mountain, which he wrote with Diana Ossama.)
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In 1993 I was asked by Abby Abernathy and Cindi Schenk to give the welcoming address at the Homecoming pep rally honoring all Wildcat ex-cheerleaders. Thinking of them, I wrote this poem.
Homecoming 1993
Let’s go back to the fall of 1953
There was Sue, Schenk, Freda and me.
In the olden days we numbered four
With those four mouths we sounded like many more.
We were oh so loud and oh so bold
Back in those days we yelled for the black and gold
We looked well enough or so we were told.
The sweaters were warm enough for any cold night
To keep us comfortable yelling “Fight, Team, Fight!”
Then along comes the fall and football season of 1954
There was Schenk, Tissa, Pat and me
We still numbered four but sounded like many more.
This was the last year for those three
But I had high hopes for another year for me.
This particular year our uniforms were black and long
But we stood proud and tall singing that old school song.
Now comes the fall and football season of 1955
And the four of us made it come alive.
There was Sarah, Janice, Kirby and me
This was my last year you see.
Count the names, they still number four
Can you finish the rest? We still sounded like more.
I look back on those years as something truly great
I consider my self lucky or was it fate?
The bow I might have once worn in my hair
I now wear in my back.
And that spur is no longer on my boot
But in my heel and feels just like a tack.
I enjoy homecoming and visiting my friends
And to each and everyone of you, my love I send.
Sylvester, My Story
My design began in 1946, in Detroit, Michigan. My model was called a 1947 Dodge, Hunter Green, One-Ton Pickup.
My personality changed in about 1951. I went to live the next few years of my life with Ben L. Williams, Lou and Be-Bo. I was given the name Sylvester. We lived three and one-half miles in the country, but soon we all moved to town.
It was some time after we moved to town, Be-Bo and her friends went to Wilson’s Variety Store and purchased a stencil. Not thinking they needed permission, they stenciled in white on my dark green cab: SYLVESTER
In 1954 the cheerleaders needed to wrap the goalposts at the rodeo grounds (that was where the boys played football.) So Ben and Sylvester to the rescue! Ben put side boards on the sides and put a 2’x12’ long board across. Be-Bo had learned to drive me pretty good so she would back it and they could wrap the entire goal post with one move. More about the football field later.
A one-ton truck, the seats were wider, so a thin little friend sat on the left of the driver and gave the hand signals. There was also a knob on the dash—when I turned—the windshield would roll out at the bottom. Now let’s get to our senior year. The seniors had the concession stand—oh how you would snicker if you could see what we called a concession stand. Better yet—everything had to be prepared at the school house and transported to the football field in Sylvester. The Friday of our last game he had a flat. When I called my mother to see if it was fixed, she shared the heartbreaking news: Sylvester had been sold. There were a few tears when that was announced in study hall.There was a neat story that was almost forgotten. His keys were never removed from the ignition. So if we went out of town and came back home and found Sylvester was gone, my family knew that somebody needed a pickup to move or haul something. They usually brought him back full of gas. That was a shock to his gas tank—usually three to five gallons was our purchase limit. I only saw him one time after that. I passed him coming into Wichita Falls and motioned for him to pull over. I pretended that I thought I may have left a pair of earrings in the glove box. With tears streaming down my cheeks I asked the man to take good care of him. My mother said, “I bet he thinks you are a complete and total nut case.” There has never been another Sylvester in my life. A few tears were shed in recalling these memories.Bennie Lou (Be-Bo) Williams Shelton – Class of 1956
