My Father, who I called "Pop", was working for Hermans Furniture Store in Brenham, Texas in 1930 when he heard that Sun Oil Company was looking for baseball players. He has been an all-star athlete in high school and so went to the Sun Oil Company Camp 14 miles out in the country to try out for the team. The Superintendent, Henry England, told him if he got a hit off their pitcher, he would hire him. Pop hit the ball "out of the park" on the very first pitch and was hired immediately as a Roughneck on an oil drilling rig.
My earliest memory was a short time later when we were living in a tent when late one night, a man came up to the tent and started yelling "Mrs. Keith! Mrs. Keith!". Pop had been seriously injured in a accident on the oil drilling rig. They had taken him to a hospital by car to Brenham where a doctor was going to amputate his foot. Dad (my Grandfather) refused to let them do that however, and took him out of the hospital and carried him to Herman's Memorial Hospital in Houston. A Dr. Scarboro operated on Pop and managed to save most of his foot. After several months in the hospital and while he was still recuperating, Pop and Mom were both were avid fishermen, so they bought a big tent and we camped out on the Brazos River for several weeks.
After almost a year Pop went back to work and also back to playing baseball on weekends for Sun Oil Company. We used to go out of town on some weekends to play other teams. Several times they played against the prison baseball team in Huntsville. One time at Huntsville they took us on a tour of the prison that included the death chamber where at that time they were still using the electric chair. The guard said, "would anybody like to sit in the chair?". A man in our group strutted up to the chair saying, "I'm not afraid of that thing!". Just as he sat down the guard flipped the light off and ran his billy club across the corrugated iron side of the room. It not only scared us, but when he turned the lights back on the brave man was back over with us....I think he had jumped the 20 ft away from the chair and was white as a ghost!
When Pop went back to work we moved into a single barreled shotgun house consisting of three rooms in a row: Living room, Kitchen, and bedroom. I think I had a bed in the living room. There was no bathroom. We bathed in a wash tub and took care of other duties in a two-holer outhouse. A while later we moved on up to a double-barreled shotgun house (just like two single-barreled ones put together side-by-side. It had two bedrooms, a living/dining room, and kitchen. But we were still were using washtubs and outhouses.
Then when I was about 10 yrs. old we moved into a "real" house. Had a screened in front porch, two bedrooms, a big living/dining room, a small den, a screened in back porch and lordy mercy, above all a real bathroom. I thought we had become rich! Things were still primitive as far as laundry was concerned. Pop had a gas line run up to the back yard to a big iron tub that Mom used a scrub board and boiled clothes in with lye soap. I had a little dog and of all things, a pet chicken. The chicken was in the habit of chasing the dog until one day the dog had had enough and chased the chicken underneath the house. Daisy the dog came out from under the house in a few minutes strutting proudly with a mouthful of feathers. The chicken survived, but never chased Daisy again!
When we were living in the double barreled shotgun house I got a bicycle for one Christmas. I never will forget getting up before daylight and then seeing Mom and Pop sitting by the Christmas tree and the red bicycle shining like a jewel. For the next few years I probably put thousands of miles on that thing. Not very many kids had a bicycle then so all of a sudden I had lots of new friends. Pop built a wooden rack that fit on the handle bars that would hold cokes and I became a traveling sales boy. It didn't take me very long to figure out that being an entrepreneur was a lot better than picking cotton!
After Pop's baseball days ended he took up golf and it didn't take very long until he was shooting par golf. After a few years Mom decided she "couldn't beat em so she would join em". After that, the main recreation for them was golfing with some fishing thrown in for a change of pace. Pop was transferred to Hobbs, New Mexico where they joined the country club. Golfing then became almost a daily activity and each of them won the Country Club and City Championships. I was caddying for Pop during the Country Club Championship and on the last hole Pop hit his tee shot about 300 yards.....200 up in the air and 100 toward the green! His second shot hit the green, bounced one time and then went right into the hole and he had won the tournament! Pop also won the New Mexico State Amateur one year.
The amazing part of this all is that they were both in their 50s when accomplishing all these feats. Unfortunately their outstanding golfing abilities didn't rub off on me and though 20 yrs. younger than Pop I could never beat him. The last time I remember playing with him he made what he considered a bad shot and yelled "Old age is the sh....!". Funny part about that though, although he was 70 yrs old he was 2 under par at the time! Five years earlier, at 65, he had shot his age. Till the end of his golfing days I don't remember him ever shooting over the 70s. Mom and Pop together had a total of about 20 holes-in-one. After Pop had retired and they had moved to Dallas we were playing together in a tournament when Pop made another ace. Don January, the Pro, just happened to be standing near the tee when that happened and signed Pop's score card as a witness. I think I was more proud of that than Pop was!