JimBlackBooks.com
1970 - 1979
Some boys were messing around the three-story building and killed an owl. The owl was a female with a nest of fledglings over the south door. J. B. Adams found out who the guilty parties were and made them responsible for the welfare of the owlets. They had to feed them daily until they were able to leave the nest. The nest was too high to reach from the ground, and the only way they were able to get food to them was from the 2nd story window by lowering or dropping it. They kept them alive until they were able to leave the nest. Don took me to the 2nd story window and I got to see them in their nest. He always had the utmost admiration for J.B.
My husband, Donald Shearmire, was hired in 1970 as school superintendent, and I remember going to our first school function. While standing out in the breezeway waiting to enter the cafeteria, Martha McCurrin walked up to Don and asked if he was the janitor or maintenance man, to which he promptly answered, "Yes I am". She needed to be let into an area that was locked, so Don took her and she retrieved whatever it was she was after. I chided him about his response, but he just laughed it off saying he didn't want to embarrass her. (She later told me how embarrassed she was when she found out who he was.) When it came time to go into the cafeteria, Don needed to go in ahead of the crowd, and he walked right straight into the glass partition separating the glass doors, so his introduction to the people of Archer City was with a speech given with an ever growing bloody bump on his forehead. I told him it was “Payback” for what he did earlier.
Barbara (Shearmire) McCown
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I remember our 7th grade history class where we took “personal notes” and our teacher was quite the storyteller. One windy day he told us that while teaching in west Texas, the dust blew so hard he couldn’t see his students in the classroom past about 10 feet and had Richard Hill step out on the fire escape to demonstrate the length of how far he could see in a windstorm.
Thank you to our beloved Mrs. Trent for the extra time given in her class to get those “personal notes” prepared.
I thought about something in Ms. Hornady’s class when she took on a mixed class of males and females for “home economics”. I think there were quite a few stories about that class but I was not in it. I hope someone from my class wrote about some of those tales. Quite hilarious!!!
Karen (Luig) West – Class of 1972
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A funny memory for me is Dean Fisher sleeping during class and saying “Quiet Please” when we interrupted his nap!
Jan King Graves – Class of 1973
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We always took one bus for both boys and girls basketball teams to district games. Coming home from the games the girls would always sing. It was 1970 and Tammy Wynette was particularly popular - D I V O R C E and Your Good Girl is Gonna Go Bad are two that leap to mind. We went to Petrolia and the girls were playing for the district championship. It was a very important game. Unfortunately they lost badly. As the boys got on the bus after the game the girls were very subdued and quiet. There were still some tears. As we started back to Archer City one of the boys asked if there would be any singing. One of the girls curtly replied, "If you want songs, you do the singing!" To which Johnny Hudson promptly jumped up and started singing, "Waterloo, Waterloo, where did you meet your Waterloo?"
Jim Lewis – Class of 1973
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In 1961 I began first grade. Mrs. Elmore would be my teacher. Mama took me to the school to meet her and look at the classroom. She was so nice to me and I was comfortable with her so I opened up and talked my head off. I was really shy. There were some pictures still hanging on her walls from the students from the class ahead of me had colored. Since I could already read (learned from singing hymns at church) I saw Denise Trent’s name on one of the pictures. I told Mrs. Elmore that I knew Denise and that we rode horses all the time. Apparently Denise had given Mrs. Elmore a run for her money because she looked at Mama and with a worried frown she said, “Oh dear!”
In second grade I got a spanking for telling everybody in class all the answers to a test. Kenny McMahon was my boyfriend. He’s Gary Tepfer’s half-brother. My cousin Kathy Wright asked me how I knew he was my boyfriend and I told her that he helps me spend my nickel at Ruby’s store every day!
I loved walking across the playground going to music in what turned out to be Mr. Fisher’s Science class. Especially when it rained. I can still smell warm dirt and gravel. And the novelty of getting out in the rain. I never knew they made galoshes for high heels! Miss Duran had a pair.
My freshman year I was scared to death. All of us girls joined FHA. Future Homemakers of America. During initiation week we had to do goofy things like not shave our legs or armpits, wear out father’s clothes to school, one shoe different from the other. This caused one girl’s back to hurt because she wore one house shoe and one western boot. The end of the week was a slumber party in the old gym. The upper classmen really hazed us then. Mrs. Hornady was there with her lawn chair and sleeping bag. They worked on me pretty good trying to embarrass me to see if I would cry. Tina Morris got into a hair pulling fight with Janet Bacon I think. Anyway, she got the baby doll meant for me. HA! After they all got tired of torturing us (Karen Luig kept trying to give me hints on how to stay out of the way) the really mean girls went up in the bleachers to sleep. It was really cold and about halfway sleeting that night. This girl and I snuck up the stairs and opened the windows right above the hazers. The next morning they all had head colds. On Monday we were in home-ec class standing around Mrs. Hornady while she demonstrated the proper way to whip meringue. Everybody in school was talking about how prro Diane and Jackie were sick because some mean, awful, hateful people opened the gym windows during a sleet storm. This was brought up for the umpteenth time in home-ec. Everyone was wondering who would pull such an awful prank. Mrs. Hornady raised her head and looked right at me. I know I turned white as the meringue. She never said a word—just smiled this little kitty cat smile and winked! Then went on whipping egg whites. I loved Mrs. Hornady. Her class was where the old old gym was down on the 5th grade floor.
My junior year I used to insist on taking out the trash to the janitor closet across the hall. There was a certain boy that came around picking up attendance slips from a clothes pin nailed to the door facing. We would sneak into the janitor closet and kiss until one day Mrs. Hornady missed me. She yanked open the home-ec door and yelled, “Betsy Gene Stewart! Where the hell are you?” Then she jerked open the closet door, hauled me out by my apron and, needless to say, I never got to “take out the trash” again.
The decided to paint the high school one summer and Karen McPherson and I spent several weeks playing in the building. We would go up to the 3rd floor library lie on the floor reading The Black Stallion series. We spent the night at each other’s house a lot. Her brothers Jeff and Brian would set their tent up in the backyard and we would camp out. If the high school was having a dance we would sneak over to the old gym and peek through the windows. We learned a lot of new dances, some of which weren’t very nice! One year I borrowed my cousin Jodie’s Shetland and pony cart for Ranch Week. Karen and I drove it to school. Our picture made the annual.
Not only was the town our family but the school was too. Most of the teachers taught our entire families. Mrs. Crowley taught both my parents all the way down to me. They knew us by our first and middle names and you knew you were in BIG trouble when both were used. For the longest, I was called Gayle, Mike, no Betsy by Mrs. Brothers and Coach Ray!
The school was a landmark. I’m heartbroken. Jan King Graves saved a brick for me before Mike could get one and I’m grateful.
Betsy Gene (Stewart) Gibson – Class of 1974
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I served as a substitute teacher for Archer City ISD for almost ten years, 1964-1974. My salary started at ten dollars per day. Sometime during that period, it was raised to fifteen dollars.
One day I had a class on the north end of the hall on the third floor. The fire escape is attached to that classroom. I happened to look out the window and see Gene Dooley, son of Lonnie Dooley, band director, standing on the landing at the third floor level. Gene was a toddler, probably about three years old. The Dooley’s lived in the little house owned by the school located next to the school on the north. He had slipped away from his mom to explore. I called for Eddie Morris, high school principle, who came in and easily lifted the window and coaxed him inside, and called his mother.
Dean Fisher’s classroom was just across the hall from the teacher’s lounge. Every free moment he had he would go to the lounge and flop down in an old overstuffed chair and close his eyes. When we thought he was sleeping, and would talk about him, he would speak up and say, “I’m not sleeping. I am just checking my eyelids for holes”.
One day between classes on the Junior High level hallway, Nell Trent was guarding the hall just outside her class room. She had been washing blackboards with a wet rag, when a “hot flash” came over her. She took that old nasty rag and began to bath her neck and face. She was desperate!
The day Mr. Adams hired me, I was told that I did not have to worry with discipline. He said, “Just send them to me, and I will take care of that,” and he did. One incident was when I was in the agriculture building, Preston called out to the class that the bell had rung, and they all dashed out of class. The bell had not rung. This was reported to Mr. Adams. The next time Preston was in my class, he was a perfect gentleman. He told the class he was doing so, since he had been called before the “board” for misbehaving before, and he was not about to do anything wrong.
I enjoyed most of the classes I was called to fill in for, but did not enjoy first grade when there was snow on the ground, and the students couldn’t get out for recess. That meant you were with them every minute of the day, without even having time to go to the restroom. The only break you got was when they went to music on certain days.
The students all called me Mrs. Bell in the classroom, and to this day, when I see them, I am Mrs. Bell. As a couple, we are John and Mrs. Bell. The students still have a special place in my heart.
Jolene Bell – Teacher 1964-1974
