My Childhood in Abilene, TX

     When I was a child in Abilene, I attended the second, third and fourth grades.  For some reason we moved, every summer.  So, I attended three different schools.  This was very traumatic.  Just when I would make some friends, we would move and I would have to start all over again.  I was painfully shy.  I had to deal with all of the things that make childhood miserable such as loneliness, feelings of rejection, and bullies of course.  I remember roaming all over the neighborhood on my bicycle.  Mother never seemed to worry about where I went.  Sometimes I would be a half mile away from the house.  It is a wonder I didn’t get abducted by a serial killer.  But, things like that were rare in nineteen sixty.  We were extremely poor.  Daddy worked for the city of Abilene as the city carpenter for one dollar and sixty cents an hour.  That was what we lived on.  Someway we managed to get by.  I don’t remember ever getting hungry.  But, I was smart enough to know that we were poor.  I remember sometimes we would have treats such as cheese.  Now I loved cheese.  Sometimes mother would buy me a small strawberry sundae.  This was a rare occasion.  So I vowed that when I got grown, I was going to buy myself as many strawberry sundaes and as much cheese as I wanted.  I have kept that promise. 

     I remember mother, my older brother, and myself riding on the city bus to the Taylor county fair one time.  We got to see Brenda Lee sing.  She was just seventeen at the time.  I remember getting lost from mother in the crowd.  I was lost for a good while.  But, I decided I would try to get a closer look at Brenda Lee.  So I went to the front row of the crowd.

  Mother had to get the police to help find me.  She was almost hysterical by the time they found me.  We finally moved back to Menard in nineteen sixty one, when I was in the fifth grade.  I haven’t left Menard for any length of time since.