The first time I ever applied for a job with Sun Oil Company I was 8 yrs old. I had been watching the roustabout gang chopping weeds and thought "heck, I've been doing that for FREE around our house." I marched into the local Superintendents office and asked him for a job chopping weeds. He was an exceptionally nice and genial man and said "Lets you and I take a little ride." Just like he was talking to an adult! We drove over to the little village of Independence, Texas about four miles away where they had a "general" store; bought me candy and a coke and I guess he got my mind off of going to work. Over twenty years after I had last seen Mr. England I was coming back to Dallas from Beaumont on a Trans-Texas DC3 airplane. By then I had long before achieved my ambition of becoming a Sun Oil Company employee and by then was a computer programmer. We stopped over at Tyler, Texas and Mr. England got on the plane. I wasn't real sure it was him but after we took off for Dallas I went up to where he was sitting and he broke out in a great big smile and said "Why Doug Keith, how in the world are you doing?" I was amazed that he recognized me after so many years.
There were two other families that were favorites of mine there. The Sumners and the Beckhams. Mom and Pop used to play bridge with Sumners quite a lot and I entertained myself with looking at their books and playing with their little dog. Don't know how I did it but I started reading a little by the time I was five yrs old.
The Beckhams had three boys: James, Vance, Vivian and one girl, Jackie. Vance and Vivian, twins, were about 4 or 5 years older than me, James was an "old man" about 13 yrs. older, and Jackie was probably about 3 yrs older. I idolized them all. Vance and Vivian always seemed to be pulling death-defying stunts. One day Pop saw them up on top of a huge oil tank, probably about 50 ft. high, riding their bicycles around the edge of the tank. He talked them into coming down before they killed themselves. When they got back down on the ground Pop said "What in the heck were you kids doing up there?" They said, "We were trying to see how close we could come to the edge without falling off!" All of the Beckhams except James, the oldest son, are departed now. More about them later.
About a month after I turned five they let me go to the one room school that Sun Oil Company had set up there at the camp. I surprised them all and passed the first grade before I was six. The next year, we had to walk most of the time, about two miles to another one room school. Don't remember it being a hardship; just fun. One day at that school a mean little boy stuffed paper into his desk and set it on fire! The teacher quickly managed to put it out. Then she took him outside and walloped the daylights out of him; came back in and moved his desk right up by hers so she could keep and eye on him. In those days corporal punishment was to be expected if you messed up and there were no objections and no questions. And you most likely got some more punishment when you got home. Discipline was not a problem in those days.
When I started in third grade the Brenham School District had built a sort of a homemade school bus; had a canvas top that rattled when we were going down the road, and I went on the bus every day to town to a "real big" elementary school. The meanest teacher I ever had in my life however, was in the third grade. I think she took an immediate dislike to me...and it became mutual. The rest of the teachers through the sixth grade, especially the sixth, were all real nice. Rosa Smith, the sixth grade teacher, had taught the parents....and grandparents of some of the kids in my class. She was real high on Texas History and as a result I have always been interested in it. She had a real interesting way of punishment if you did something wrong. She would give you a ruler, then put out her hand and make you hit HER. If you didn't hit hard enough she would make you do it again. Since we all liked her so much some of us would cry when we had to do that. It was very effective psychology because she almost never had problems with her students. And the ruler 'punishment' I never saw but two or three times. Unfortunately, I was one of the 'times'. But just once!
In those days at Brenham, they had a big graduation ceremony when you finished the sixth grade. Then you went to "The" high school. The summer before I started seventh grade I started taking music lessons. Went to the high school bandmaster who gave private lessons. He asked me what instrument I wanted to play and I told him it didn't make any difference. (I didn't know one from the other at the time.) That really pleased him. He gave me a French Horn and I was off and running. Also became a member of the marching band at Brenham High School. At about 5ft. and 80lbs I was so small as to be almost invisible! We played at all the football games and performed many concerts in Brenham and nearby towns. One time at a football game we beat our arch rival, Caldwell, by one point in the last few seconds of the game. We were back on the train; windows were open and I was leaning out the window taunting the Caldwell fans. All of a sudden a couple of them grabbed me and were about to pull me out of the window. A couple of our football players grabbed my legs and for a while they played tug-o-war with me. When I got rescued our football players told me to sit down a shut up...and I did!
The Sumners were transferred to Sun Field in Starr County on the Mexican border and the Beckhams were transferred to a place called Wickett, west of Monahans in West Texas; both in about 1938. Right after Christmas in 1940 Pop was transferred to South Texas on the Mexican border as a Pumper (later called Lease Operator). Their house was way out in the brush over dirt roads about 40 miles from Hebronville, the nearest town. There was a post office called Randado a few miles from where they lived. They left me with Mama Jewel and Dad (grandparents) for the rest of my sophomore year in high school. I didn't mind it too much because I loved living with Mama Jewel and Dad. By June of 1941 Pop had been transferred to the Saenz lease which was about 5 or so miles from the Sun Field Camp and other English speaking people. The nearest neighbors were the Saenz family who by this time were extremely rich from oil royalties. They never showed any signs of having money, but still lived in a run down looking house. Senor Saenz however was always extremely well dressed and always wore a great big "cowboy" white hat. I never saw him without it. They had a big flock of peacocks who quite often when we came by their house would be out in the road and we would just have to wait on them to get out of the road - and they never got in a hurry! One of Saenz relatives living with them used to wander around to houses selling candy. Don't know where the other houses were - never did see any, but I guess he knew. He also couldn't speak a word of English. One day he came up to our house and started saying to Mom "Pan?..Pan?". Mom thought he wanted a pan from the kitchen; tried to give him one.. I think Pop came home about this time and knew that pan is the Spanish word for bread. The poor guy just wanted to borrow a little bread! After I moved down there I used to look forward to him coming because he always had real good peanut patty candy for a nickel. Our home had no electricity, but we had great GAS lights just like the folks used to have before Edison came up with electric lights...and electricity! We also had a nice source of water. A water well complete with a windmill. We were really living high on the hog though because we had an indoor bathroom! We lived about 30 miles over rugged dirt roads to the nearest town of Rio Grande City, aptly named because it was right on the Rio Grande River and was older than the state of Texas. Also it was the location of an old Cavalry post named Fort Ringgold which dated way back to the early days of Texas. For a while when we first got there it was still an active Horse Cavalry post and some of the men were from our home town of Brenham. One day however we went by there and the Fort was deserted. They had all been transferred overseas to unknown destinations. I think this was sometime in 1942 and the rumor was that they had all been sent to Burma.
There were lots of wild things in Starr County then; blue quail, bobwhite quail; blue doves; white wing doves; deer, coyotes, javelina hogs, hawks, and above all, lots of rattlesnakes. Some of the mesquite trees were so old they were as huge as old oak trees. The whole country was full of huge cactus plants too. No one walked around at night without a flashlight and even in the daytime you had to watch were you were going because of the snakes. Mom stepped off the back porch one day and a small rattlesnake struck at her and hit the hem of her skirt. She got so mad she grabbed a hoe and chopped it to pieces. One day Pop and I were out hunting quail and I stepped over a small bush in the middle of a trail. I had taken about two more steps when I heard a loud 'boom' right behind me. My first thought was "I'm a dead man!" But Pop had shot a rattlesnake that was coiled around the bush I had just stepped over. A couple of years later we had moved to the camp at Sun Field. One morning I started down the sidewalk toward the office. Cecil and Cythnia Colville who lived next door to us at the time had a daughter who was about two or three years old. She was on the sidewalk right in front of her house and there was a huge rattlesnake just a few feet away. I grabbed Cecilia up and took her to our house, left her with Mom, grabbed the shotgun, went back and shot that snake. Cythnia came running out the front door scared to death, but when she found out what happened I don't think they ever forgot my "good deed".
In September of 1941 I started living with a family in McAllen to go to school there. From the very first I hated that high school. I got bullied a lot I guess because I was a new kid, little and they just liked to pick on people like me. (typical nerd I guess). The two years of school there were not the happiest of my life. Many years later I was flying all over the country giving aptitude tests for prospective computer programmers when one of my former bullies appeared. He was working for Sun Oil Company too. I made up my mind that he was not going to pass that test, but it turned out that I didn't have to fail him. He failed miserably all by himself.
until next time!
Doug