December 7, 1941

When I was five years old, I sat in the darkened theater in our little town watching a two-year-old film.

The theater, or picture shows as they were called back then in Neolithic times, was named ‘The Rogue’. The movie was ‘Wizard of Oz’, and the day was Sunday.

Dad was treating Mom and me to the town’s Sunday afternoon matinee, which always began at one pm, ran only one time, and then shut down for the day. Each Sunday film was shown again Monday night. Tuesdays, best I can remember, The Rogue was closed only to be open the rest of the week.

Dad wasn’t a movie-goer. In fact, not too many grownups back then were. Still the Guthrie family had enough business to keep the picture show in the black.

That was back in the country’s period of innocence. Our little town was so out of the way that delivery of new films was made at night and left at the front door of the movie house. Films to be returned were left at the same spot.

Try to imagine if you will the fate of films left in such a manner today? Probably before the delivery truck turned the first corner, the film would be in somebody’s car and heading for the pawn shop.

But, enough editorializing. Back to the movie.

That Sunday was a treat—while it lasted.

While the film enthralled me, what I remember most that day was the film stopping; the overhead lights suddenly flashing on; Mister Guthrie hurrying down one aisle and climbing up on the stage.

Holding up his hands to quiet the muttering of the audience, he told us the radio had just reported that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.

Now to a five-year-old boy disappointed that the Munchkins had been turned off, that meant nothing. I didn’t have the slightest idea what a Pearl Harbor was. When I heard my Dad muyter a curse and Mom ask him what it meant, I knew something was wrong. It had to be something seriously wrong to shut down ‘The Wizard of Oz’.

At home, the family gathered, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins- all in front of the radio desperately seeking more news.

As the tragic figures grew, so did the family’s anger and resolve. Now, we had a vague idea there were problems with Japan. For months, the news carried bits and pieces concerning the rocky relationship between the U.S. and Japan.

But up there in the middle of nowhere called the Panhandle with only a couple ‘bobbed’ wire fences between us and the North Pole, the news meant little.

But as details trickled in, the words took on new meanings, and the anger and resolve grew in my family, as it did in millions of families across the country.

The surprise attack hit at 7:53 Sunday morning. The first wave damaged eight battleships, sinking five. Three light cruisers, three destroyers, and smaller vessels were lost along wit 188 aircraft. Fortunately, the main targets, the aircraft carriers, were not in harbor.

Casualties? 2,117 servicemen, 68 civilians, and over a thousand crewmen on the USS Arizona were killed plus 1,760 were wounded.

Sunday night, Japan attacked Hong Kong; Guam; Philippine Islands; and Wake Island. Monday morning, they hit Midway Island.

On Monday, December 8, President Roosevelt spoke to Congress, asking it for a declaration of war against Japan. He called the previous day ‘a date which will live in infamy.’

Congress did as he asked, and immediately infuriated Americans clamored to enlist.

I didn’t really understand what was going on, but I knew things were changing about me. And change it did. In its outrage, our country turned its bucolic existence into an all-consuming rage at its attackers.

A quote attributed incorrectly to Admiral Yamamoto, mastermind of the attack, states ‘I fear all we have done is awaken a sleeping tiger.’

That’s a movie quote, not his, but it proved apropos.

The Greatest Generation, outraged at such treachery, responded with fervor never before nor since witnessed in the history of the world. All the men in my family volunteered. I had cousins in the Air Corp, uncles in the Navy and Army, and my father in the Navy. Fortunately they all returned.

A few years later in Korea, my cousin, Dooley, was lost, Missing in Action. As of November 30, 2011, he is still missing. His DNA is on record, our one hope someday he’ll be back.

Of the 16 million plus Americans serving in WWII, over four hundred and five thousand died. You and I are here today courtesy of that generation and their supreme sacrifices. We dishonor their sacrifices if we do not keep America great.















rconwell@gt.rr.com

http://www.kentconwell.blogspot.com/

www.goodreads.com/author/show/13557.Kent_Conwell

www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JPCK26

www.kentconwell.blogspot.com

First Day Magic

“School days, school days, dear old golden rule days.’

Remember that? What was the rest of it? ‘Reading and ‘riting and ‘rithmetic taught to the tune of a hickory stick—‘

It goes on, these words of an old song written by Gus Edwards and Will Cobb back in 1907.

As kids up in the Panhandle, we used to sing it, at least the first few lines. After ‘hickory stick’, it continued ‘you were my queen in calico. I was your bashful barefoot beau’. That’s as far as we ever went, but it was a favorite for us back in the forties.

Now, we knew about the reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic, but as third and fourth graders, we weren’t just real sure about ‘queen in calico’ or ‘bashful barefoot beau’ stuff.

Back then during the summer, if anyone had asked if we were ready to go back to school, we’d have grimaced and cried out ‘no’. Same way today. The truth is, then, as now, most of us were eager to get back to school, especially those who lived on farms and had daily chores.

It is easy to understand just how much more preferable it was sitting in an English class diagramming sentences rather than out in the hot sun chopping corn or pulling
cotton.

And as an educator for forty-one years, I always felt the excitement of that first day back in class. There was a sort of magic about it, and although most of the magic had worn off by the second day, it continued to come back year after year.

And if there is a teacher reading this, he knows of what I write.

After my first year in a school district on the outskirts of Fort Worth, I landed a position as a Penney’s manager trainee, a job that almost half again the size of my paltry $3900.00 teacher’s salary.

I had thoughts of staying with Penney’s. One of my friends was a trainee also. His dad managed a store in Conroe at a princely income of around $25 thousand.

That folks, was good money back in 1959-60.

But a strange thing happened on the way to the forum—oops, sorry, on the way to financial security.

The first of September rolled around.

What an eerie feeling.

For some reason, about a month before the start of school, I started thinking about what we were going to do that year. Unconsciously, I began laying plans.

Now this was before curriculum guides and politicians’ big noses; before George Bush doubled educational testing with ‘No Child Left Behind’ just after his brother, Neil, got into the educational testing business. (What a strange coincidence, but then seems like politicians and coincidences follow one another. Isn’t that a strange coincidence also?)

I was scheduled for a senior English class, which at that time focused on British literature the first semester and grammar the second.

As appropriate, I gave Penney’s my two weeks notice, and being a compassionate business, they appropriately suggested I just take the two weeks off and rest up.

I protested that I needed the pay, and in their sympathetic manner replied, ‘tough.’
But, I was back in the school business.

Even after forty-one years and more changes than I like to think, the first day always remained magical, exciting.

I’ve witnessed the transition from a bucolic educational system to one loaded with stress for students to achieve higher test scores. And if they don’t, the teachers, the schools are blamed, not the kids, not the parents.

Today’s system is more concerned about helping a youngster build self-esteem than readying him to face the world beyond the comfortable confines of high school. What does your boss pay you for, producing for him or feeling good about yourself?

That’s what I’m talking about.

When my daughters were in high school, a teacher friend asked if they were going out for the drill team. He was surprised when I replied they were staying in the high school band.

“But,” he said. “Drill team will be the highlight of their lives.”

“If being on a drill team is the highlight of someone’s life, they don’t have much ambition or any goals,” I told him.

The importance of education is just that, education and skills that give each youngster a chance in a world that is changing by the day.

Every year, kids will return to school, and every year, that first day magic will be there.

I miss it.


rconwell@gt.rr.com
http://www.kentconwell.blogspot.com/
www.goodreads.com/author/show/13557.Kent_Conwell
www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JPCK26

Letter to My Father

Dear Dad,

Well, it’s been twenty-five years. And never a day goes by that I see something and have a thought that reminds me of you. The good stuff, you know. And, perhaps a few incidents that weren’t so good.

But that’s life.

And if I had it to do over, you’d be the father I’d pick to make sure I grew to be a man meeting the responsibilities that a man will face in this world today.

You know, when I was in elementary school in Wheeler, I never could figure how you always knew when I got in trouble. It was years before I realized that you didn’t have magical powers, but that you and the superintendent often visited.

Carrick? I think that was his name. I was grown when you revealed that you had specifically requested he contact you whenever I broke any school rules.

One thing you should know is that I would have taken five paddlings from him than to get one from you.

As a Dad, I never could match your skill and finesse with a leather belt. Now, if you were here today, you’d be cussing the namby-pamby discipline many parents pass on to their children.

I have no question there are very few problem kids today that you couldn’t handle. Remember the old spanking merry-go-round?

I’ll never forget you holding my arm, me screaming and trying to run from the belt.

All I succeeded doing was running in circles while you just pivoted on your feet and flailed away at my legs with your belt. If you only knew how many times I considered making that leather strap disappear. But then, you would have known who did it.

Today, some bleeding heart would claim such discipline was child abuse. Nonsense. It’s child abuse not to discipline kids, but the idiots can’t see it that way. And they’re always wondering just why kids are so much trouble today.

Spankings weren’t the only way you managed me. I was mischievous, sneaky, lied if I thought I could get away with it. I had so many things wrong with me only a hard-headed Panhandle boy with the nickname, Nubbin, could have kept me straight.

You always were one step ahead of me like the time the Haltom City police stopped me for reckless driving. I was only fourteen, so they called you and tossed me in jail. I was scared witless. For the next fours, it was all I could do to hold back the tears. Then they took my license away from me.

Remember that?

It was all of fifteen years later out on your patio listening to a Texas Rangers baseball game that you laughed and revealed you had asked them to throw me behind bars and you were the one holding my license.

Well, you sure made your point.

And who can ever forget that Christmas when Mom and Sammy came down with pneumonia out by Lubbock and you and I went back to Fort Worth for—well, I don’t know why we went back, but I remember you telling me to pick up my trumpet.

You mentioned that night many times in the years to come. There we were in a 1947 Nash speeding through small towns shut down for the night, and I’d stick my horn out the window and blast out the cavalry signal for ‘charge’. Then we’d laugh as lights popped on.

You were always there for me, even when your work took you out of town. I’ll never forget the second year I boxed in the Golden Gloves. That was about ’51 or ’52. You were on the road back from Houston listening on the car radio. When the announcement was made that I forfeited the bout, you stopped at the first house and paid them to use their telephone.

Gosh, Dad, there’s so much I’d like to talk to you about.

I’d like to sit around a campfire like we did on our deer hunting trips and shoot the breeze. I’d like to go fishing up in Oklahoma with Mo and Mae. You and Mo always had such a great time together. Mo passed away. So did Mae. But you already know that. You and Mom have probably already gone fishing with them.

There’s a lot I’d like to do with you. I can’t, but I can do it now is with my children and grandchildren.

You understand what I mean?

I can’t say exactly when it came about, but somewhere in the mid-sixties, we became friends, good friends.

The most rewarding moment of my life was not long before I moved down here to Port Neches. You and I were on the patio with Jim Beam and talking about what lay down the road as well as a lot of other philosophical mumbo-jumbo. Just before I left, I hugged you and said for the first time, “I love you, Dad.”

You simply hugged me back and replied. “I love you too, Boy. You take care now, you hear?”

I heard, Dad. And thanks for everything.

I Remember Mama

I'm sure you won’t be surprised to know there’s over a dozen theories of the origin of Mother’s Day. They range from the ancient Greece festival of Cybete to West Virginia’s Anna Jarvis after the Civil War.

My Mom was special, just as yours. I mean, after all, where would you be if not for her? Okay, bad joke, but all mothers, real mothers and not simply birth machines, possess an intense, unique love for each of their children. It’s curious how there is no limit to a Mother’s love. She loves with all her heart, and when another child comes along, so does the love.

The only love greater than that of a mother is that of God’s, and hers is a mighty close second.

You know, poetry is almost a lost facet of literature. It’s a shame for some poetry contains nuggets of wisdom that are pure gold.

One of my favorite poets is Robert Frost. In his poem, “Death of a Hired Man,” a husband and wife argue over the return of their hired man, Silas, who jumped from farm to farm, but always returned to the home of Mary and Warren.

Warren doesn’t want Silas back because he is so undependable. Mary tells him, ‘he’s come home to die.’

“Home,” says Warren, “Is when you go there, they have to take you in.”

Mary replied, “I should have called it something you somehow haven’t to deserve.”
Every time I read the poem, I substitute the word, ‘Mother’ for home. To paraphrase Frost, ‘Mother is something we somehow haven’t to deserve.”

That’s true with me as I’m sure it is with you

Mom was a farm girl who, along with three sisters and four brothers, fed chickens, milked cows, slopped hogs, grained cows, pulled cotton, and any of another number of tedious farm chores from Montague County in North Texas to Wheeler County in the Texas Panhandle.

She was like all Mothers who put herself last. I wish I had a dollar for every meal she made for herself from her sons’ leftovers.

She was a true Texas girl, unwilling to back away from any challenge. When Dad was sent to Los Angeles during the war, she was right with him. From there it was Albuquerque, then Hutchinson, Kansas.

Finally, we returned to Wheeler when Dad went overseas. Mom planted corn on our five acres, harvested it, loaded it in the car, and drove to neighboring towns to sell it door to door. That we didn’t sell, we ate. She came up with dozens of ways to prepare corn.

There was no task she’d refuse to tackle if it had to do with the welfare of her children. I can’t count the number of jobs she held down, but always while we were in school. She was always home when we came in.

And, like all mothers, she was snoopy. There was nothing of mine private. I had no secrets. Fortunately, she never told Dad everything. Otherwise, I might not be here.
Of course, she thought her sons hung the moon, and if any other youngster proved to have more talent than Sam and me, she sniffed and said they were nothing but ‘shameless showoffs.”

One of the most valuable gifts she gave me was the opportunity to explore the world beyond the farm. That was all she had known, but through her travels with Dad, she realized there was a whole world out there for her sons.

When Dad had a job offer in the Fort Worth-Dallas area, she urged him to do take it. For me, it was like Bubba goes to town. I discovered worlds I never knew existed, worlds completely alien to rolling sandhills of the Texas Panhandle.

Mom wanted Sam and me to have the opportunity, and she didn’t rest until we had it.
I was fortunate to have a mother like that. Oh, we had our ups and downs, sometimes big ups and downs, but we managed to work through them to our own separate peace.

So, you can see why that whenever I read Frost, I think to myself, “A mother is something you somehow haven’t to deserve.”

She and Dad have been gone many years, but not a day passes I don’t think of them, grateful for their love.

Happy Mothers’ Day.

Shootout at the Sam Holley Corral

I was probably twelve before I learned that sleeping on the floor and riding bucking calves was not part of the Christmas celebration. That was also the Christmas of the Shootout at the Sam Holley Corral.

You’re probably thinking, now what’s the idiot talking about?

You see, I was one of the fortunate youngsters who was surrounded by a large, and I mean large family. How large, you ask? When we got together, we took up two zip codes. And this family gathered every Christmas.

Mama and Papa Holley had eight children. Now you give each of those children a spouse and kids, and the numbers explode exponentially to the fifties and sixties.
During his seventy-odd years, Papa Holley had four farms. The two farms I remember most were near Littlefield, some thirty miles or so north of Lubbock where the country is flatter than a wet saddle blanket.

The one out near Hart Camp had two family homes, one a three-room, the other, two. The next farm, back south of Littlefield, had four rooms. When the clan gathered, people slept everywhere, and in the middle of the night, if someone unfortunately felt nature’s calling, they had to tiptoe and stumble over dozens of bodies to get outside.

Oh yeah, this was way back in the days of outdoor facilities.

It was a joyous time for me and my cousins. Gifts back then were spare, but a cap pistol, a couple boxes of caps and being with each other more than satisfied us.
And that’s what brought about the ‘Shootout at the Sam Holley Corral’ on the farm near Hart Camp.

Papa’s barn with its loft and stalls and surrounding corrals made an excellent playground for cowboys and Indians—or marines and Nazis or good guys and bad guys.
Riding our stick horses, Ed and I climbed and rode through every inch of the barn, planting bad men in the ground with our trusty cop pistols(not to mention spooking Papa’s cows).

Our older cousin, Dooley, was always picking on us, and as I remember one particular day, Ed and I had grown tired of shooting imaginary outlaws, so we holstered our sixguns and took up bronc busting. Of course, having no wild horses around, we had to settle for Papa’s calves.

Ed, having lived on the farm, could stay on the bucking calves longer than I. Of course, if you know anything about corrals, the animals that inhabit them leave behind copious evidence of their presence.

Now, one of the natural laws of Nature is that when you are thrown from a bucking calf, odds are astronomical against your missing any of the numerous deposits the animals have left behind. And believe me, we didn’t beat the odds at all. Never came close.

Once, when I was trying to scrape some of the deposit from my shirt, a marble-sized rock slammed into the dirt at our feet. We looked around and spotted Dooley on top of the pole shed attached to the barn. He was drawing back on his slingshot.

We broke in different directions while he laughed maniacally and continued shooting at us. Now, we were just kids, but we weren’t stupid. Cap pistols couldn’t compete with his slingshot.

Darting under the shed, I grabbed a broken plank about two feet long. At first I didn’t know what to do with it, and then my feeble little brain gave birth to a brilliant idea. I scooped up a load of manure with one end, raced back into the corral, and slung it at Dooley.

The plank was just like a catapult. We could hurl that stuff almost fifty feet. My first shot, I missed by a mile, but now, we had a means to fight back.

Dooley was good with the slingshot, but it’s hard to hit a nine-year-old boy darting about like a crazed banshee. He did connect a couple times, but so did we.

When Ed caught him in the side of the head and Dooley started gagging, we figured flight was the better part of valor and raced for the house and the protection of the grown-ups.

Mama Holley ran us all out of the house to clean up. That’s when Dooley caught up with us. You don’t want to know what happened then.

Looking back, I was one lucky kid. It’s a shame they don’t make Christmases like that any more.






rconwell@gt.rr.com
www.kentconwell.blogspot.com