In Memoriam I’ve been thinking about my Dad lately. He died more than a quarter of a century ago, but the 94th anniversary of his birth is July 16th.. He was my mentor and the reason I became history teacher. He taught me how to be a man and forgiveness. He showed me how to die like a man. He loved history and he loved to laugh. A few hours before he died, he made a little joke and laughed. Erica Martinez has said many times: That she loves and misses my laugh. It’s a lot like my Dad’s. I not only laugh like him, I look like him (except for the long hair and beard). When Charlotte gets tickled about something, it reminds me of my father. LOL His mother died when he was eight and shortly thereafter his father, Cecil Pitts remarried. His step mother was very abusive and he lived with his sister, Eura Christine Pitts and later his brother, Porter Kincheloe Pitts. His brother made sure he finished school and paid his way through college. He was born July 16, 1920. He was a twin, however his twin was stillborn. His ancestors were sharecroppers and moonshiners. My grandfather left sharecropping to work in the oil fields when spindletop blew its stack. My Dad grew up in the oil fields of Oklahoma. At the time few people had cars, electricity, in door plumbing, telephones, . . . 1920 was the first year of Prohibition, women could finally vote, and KDKA (the first commercial radio station) began broadcasting that year. His stepmother canned the vegetables they grew in their garden. The family also raised goats and chickens. One of my Dad’s chores every morning was to milk the goats. He joked that he had had strong hands from that chore. There were always fresh eggs and he didn’t need an axe to pop the heads off the chickens. My grandfather and my Dad hunted and fished to put fresh meat on the table. Some of my earliest memories are fishing with my Dad. Mostly they hunted rabbit and squirrel. Not the scrawny red squirrels running around the yards of Corpus Christi, but the big grey squirrels one sees in Oklahoma. Once while watching an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies, Jethro and Jed were salivating over Granny’s Possum Stew and my Dad said: Don’t knock it. When your hungry, Possum Stew tastes mighty good. I had eaten squirrel and rabbit and both can be very tasty, so I had to ask and my Dad said Possum is very greasy and he said the only thing he could compare it to was pork. One of my Dad’s favorite movies was the Seven Faces of Dr. Lao starring Tony Randall. He said those side shows would come through the oil patch several times a year. Every side show had a fat lady, a fortune teller, a half man and half woman, a bearded lady, and for some reason each one claimed to have the skeleton of Billy the Kid. My Dad loved to sing and he loved music. His first love was Jazz, but his taste in music was very eclectic. In 1936, he went to an Africa-American club to hear Cab Callaway perform Minnie the Moocher. He was just one of the many White Kids grooving with Black Kids to Cab Callaway’s music. I told this story to a friend and he said his mother had told a similar story about attending a Cab Callaway concert in Tallahasse, Floriday. In 1986, I met Cab Callaway in Disney Land. I spent about 15minutes talking to him. I told him the story and he laughed and said his concerts were always full of kids of all races. I wish we had the technology in 1986 (I Phones to record such a meeting. LOL! Another time Sally Rand brought her tent show to the oil patch. My Dad was just fifteen, but he and a buddy decided they were going. They couldn’t get in legally, but they snuck in and hid under the bleachers. Just as Sally Rand began her show, they were discovered, thrown out, and had the crap beaten out of them. When ever my Dad told the story, he would laugh and say that it was worth it. My Dad was the first person in his family to graduate from high school and the first person in his family to attend and graduate from college. He was a Senior in College on December 7, 1941. He was majoring in Social Studies and Latin. He joined the Navy shortly after Pearl Harbor. He didn’t complete his Senior Year, but he earned his BS and teaching certificate anyway. He went through basic training in San Diego, California. There he received training as an Air Traffic Controller. He worked in Long Beach, California and Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He was finally transferred to South Texas, where he met my mother. In 1946, my Mom and Dad got married in Oklahoma City. It wasn’t a big wedding. Those attending were his Dad and Stepmother and my Mom’s sister, Teresa Fasnacht Walker. My Dad had been discharged from the Navy. He started looking for a job. He found one as an Air Traffic Controller in Nashville, Tennessee. They bought a small Airstream and pulled to Nashville with a 39 Chevy. Like many people at that time period, my parents had grown up listening to the Grand Ole Opry. Working in the controller tower, my Dad met several performers on the Grand Ole Opry. Among them were Minnie Pearl and Tennesse Ernie Ford. He said Minne would walk into the Control Tower and yell: HOWDIE. She was always wearing her trademark dresses and a hat with a price tag hanging from it. She always had a humorous story about a relative My Dad liked the job, but he really wanted to teach. He started looking for a teaching position. He found one in Ryan, Oklahoma. They packed up the Chevy and trailer and moved to Ryan. The job lasted a year, and my Dad and several other teachers lost their job for supporting the wrong school board candidate. He started looking for anther job. He found an opening in Talihina, Oklahoma. The interview went real well. They told him, that pay would be a thousand dollars a year if he taught, but if he accepted a job as principal of the the secondary school the pay would be two thousand dollars a year. Good pay at that time. My Dad was no fool and he accepted the principal’s position. Off to Talihina with the Chevy and trailer. Shortly after moving to Talihina, they sold the trailer and bought a small house in the country. The house was surrounded by pine trees and Walnut trees. My Dad had to teach Latin and History and perform the duties of an Administrator. Sometime in the late 40s, he heard giggling coming from the back of the classroom during a Latin Class. One of the boys in the back of the classroom had discovered that if he threw a paper airplane out one window of the classroom, that it would boomerang trough another window. LOL My Dad had a paddle hanging on his desk. He told the young man (the son of a drinking buddy), to get to the front of the classroom and assume the position. He had him remove everything from his rear pockets (at least he thought the boy had removed everything). With the first swat, my Dad thought: This kid’s pants sure are dusty. My Dad’s sense of smell was awful and there was only one paved street in the whole town. On the second swat, the kid’s pants caught on fire. The young man had removed everything from his rear pockets except cigarettes and kitchen matches. The boys father thought it was hilarious. It was a different time period. Parents were very supportive of schools back then. In 1950, I was born in Hugo, Oklahoma. Living in the country was fun for a little boy. We were surrounded by a National Forest. From the time I was little I would walk in the forest with my Pop’s. He always took his rifle. You never knew what you might encounter. My Dad was a good shot and he often came home with a rabbit or squirrel. We also went fishing in a local creek. I wasn’t very old and it’s amazing how much I remember. It may be that we didn’t have a TV and radio reception was terrible. I spent much time outdoors with my Parent’s. I remember my Dad pulling me in the snow. I also remember the local Sheriff. I can’t remember his name, but I remember one of his cars. He was one of my Dad’s drinking buddies and he was no Andy Taylor. LOL The county was dry, but that didn’t stop the drinking and he wasn’t out to bust the moonshiners. I remember the car, because it was old. It was probably turn of the century. It fascinated me because it was open air with a surrey on top. He had to crank it to get it started and it didn’t have a steering wheel, it had a lever that turned it. He would come putting down the dirt road and sit in our driveway under the Walnut trees and talk to my Dad. My Mom hated my Dad’s drinking, especially the Moonshine. She liked to tell the story about the time she found his Mason Jar full of Moonshine in the trunk of the 39. The lid had turned black and was beginning to decay. There wasn’t a whole lot of entertainment in the town. We spent a great deal of time attending school events: basketball and football games. I remember one cold snowy night. we were watching the game from our car. One could barely see the teams. It was so cold and snowy that both sides and the referees decided that there would be no time outs and the game ended very quickly. LOL My Dad often had to travel with the team and I spent a lot of time with my mother. She didn’t work. At night one could hear wolves howling. One night I was awakened by a scream. It wasn’t my mother, it was Mountain Lion. I slept the rest of the night with my mother. Thunder storms in Oklahoma are loud. I saw lightening knock down a tall Pine tree. It was Choctaw country and open range. During the thunder storms cattle would stampede and sometimes knock down our fence. The Indian cowboys would ride their horses and round up the cattle the next morning. It was like something from a movie. Since we lived in the country, we had chickens and one time, even raised a pig. Just once, my Mom got attached to it and cried when my Dad sold it to be slaughtered. Everyday was like an Easter Egg Hunt. The chickens layed their eggs everywhere (not just the chicken pen). They often layed them in the neighbor’s corn field. LOL In 1952 my Pop’s got sick. The local doctor’s couldn’t figure out the cause. My Mother said it was because one was a quack and the other had attended medical school in the early 1900’s. He slipped into a coma. I vividly remember (I was only two) my Dad being carried to an ambulance. I was playing with my toy ambulance. The nearest hospital was in McAlister, Oklahoma, 60 miles away. It was St. Mary’s. The Sister who examined him first, spotted his problem immediately: Diabetes. (I still have the toy ambulance.) We lived in Talihina until 1955. My Mom knew she could find a job in Corpus Christi and my Dad interviewed for a job with CCISD. They hired him and in June of 1955 we moved to Corpus Christi. I remember arriving on North Beach a trailer in tow. As we drove down Surfside, a woman began chasing us. Her name was Mrs. Kunkel. She wanted us to stay at her motel on North Beach. We lived at that motel for six weeks. North Beach was different in 19 55. There was an HEB and the Beach Movie Theater. There were also several fishing piers. We spent our summer days swimming and fishing. It was awesome. My parents were also looking for a house. About this time I began to have nightmares. The nightmares were about The Rapture. They scared my Mom and Dad. Apparently the minister of the church we attended on North Beach preached Hell Fire and Damnation sermons. I already had a good knowledge of other religions and I couldn’t understand why Jews and Hindus would burn in Hell forever because they hadn’t heard of Jesus. I drove my Mom crazy with question. She consulted a Psychologist and he told her to tell me that God spoke to different people in different ways. It satisfied me for a while, but I consider that to be the end of my belief in Fairy Tales. I would struggle with my belief in God until I started college. In college I encountered others who had the same doubts. It was the middle of the Baby Boom and a housing boom. They arranged to have a house built in Nan Jean Park, near Weber and Lexington Blvd (now SPID). Lexington was just a one lane highway. I saw the house as it was being built. We moved into it in July. There were very few houses in the neighborhood. My Sister still lives in that house. My Dad’s first teaching position was at Driscoll Jr. High. He taught history. A year later, South Park Jr. High opened and he transferred to the new school. For many years, he taught World History at South Park. He would spend the rest of his teaching career at South Park. ,Warm days were spent at the beach and fishing. We went fishing on the T-Heads or from the fishing piers. Once a month, we would pay a dollar to get on Padre Island and fish off Bob Hall Pier. I remember getting up early and cooking and eating Bacon and Eggs on the island. Then we would spend the mornings fishing or playing in the water. In 1956, I started school. The first school I attended was Central Park Elementary. Later, I attended Calk Elementary, South Park Jr. High, and Carroll High School. I was even lucky enough to have my Dad for World History at South Park. Summer nights were spent outdoors. No one had air conditioning and there were dozens of kids in the neighborhood. We played hide and seek or Red Rover as parents sat outdoors talking. My parents often sat and talked to our next door neighbors: Frank and Mildred Martin. I would grow up next to them. Like my Dad, Frank was a World War II veteran. They liked to drink: Frank liked beer and Mildred liked Wine. My Dad would sneak over sometimes and have a small glass of wine or beer. He thought he was putting one over on my Mom. LOL In 1968, I graduated from high school. I attended Del Mar for a year and transferred to Texas A&I in Kingsville. I decided to major in Education and teach history like my Dad. I became a substitute as soon as I had sixty hours. As a substitute, I was lucky enough to work with my Dad. Eventually, I moved and got a roach infested apartment on Fifth Street.ouandgot a roach infested apartment on Fifth Street. In the seventies my Dad’s health took a turn for the worst. He began to develop skin cancer lesions and had to get them removed. He didn’t fish very often and avoided the beach. He had a heart attack in 1979. He worked a few more years and retired in 1981. He exercised daily. On Christmas Eve 1988, he had a heart another heart attack and entered the hospital for the last time. Later that day he had a stroke. I walked in as they jump started his heart. They moved him to ICU. He was hooked up to machines until January 4, 1989. I visited him daily. He had trouble talking. He had tubes going down his throat and up his nose. On January 4, 1989, it looked like he was getting better. They removed the tubes and he could talk weakly. The first thing he said to me: They let me suck on ice. It tasted like steak. He laughed. It wasn’t a strong laugh, but he laughed and smiled. We talked for several hours. He said he wasn’t afraid to die, he just didn’t want to die hooked up to machines. He didn’t want to spend his remaining days a vegetable. He didn’t talk about heaven and seeing his parents. He didn’t express concern about his nonbelieving son. He was worried about his wife and my sister. He knew they would have a hard time if he died. Eventually, my Mom and Sister showed up and I went home to eat. After eating, I planned to return to the hospital. Just as I finished eating, I got a phone call from the hospital. My Dad had suffered another stroke. When I got to the hospital, they were attempting to kick start his heart. My Mom and Sister were in tears. Eventually, a nurse and Dr. entered the room. The Dr. said they could revive him, but he would never be the same. I had just had that conversation with him. My Mom and Sister were silent. I spoke up: Let him die. That’s what he would have wanted. It was the saddest day in my life. I think about him often. He is the reason I became a teacher. He was my inspiration. I still encounter people who tell me he was their favorite teacher. I love you Dad. Thanks for a beautiful life. I may not be finished, but I had to add this.
Posted on: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 21:40:17 +0000