Pivotal Journey: Texas Roots, Moments, and People

By Mike Alan Smiddy

People talk about pivotal moments--points in time in their lives about which their memories seem to revolve. There is life before the event and life after it. And the two sides of life are never the same. Pivotal moments become like dividers in a folder. The date of the point is usually not so important; the event or the person is what makes the difference. Life is forever altered. And if we are very lucky, after a pivotal moment, we understand life in general a little better and ourselves even more.

The stories you will read here are about a boy who became a man. Stories of life--the good and not so good, but all of them were awesome. As we go, it becomes clear that the search for truth never ends, and freedom comes a little at a time, sometimes with great difficulty. Always remember, though, that it is the journey in search of truth that sets you free; a journey filled with pivotal points, moments, and people.

If these stories cause you to remember--even travel back in time--to a happy or sad time where you again see a special person or place, just remember that smiles and laughs and tears are free. They are all actually good for you.

So come and read. Take this pivotal journey with me, and remember that you are on a journey too. Enjoy all of it because life is awesome.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638857341

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Introduction

Part I: Texas Roots

Prologue

Chapter 1: The Town Where I Grew Up

Chapter 2: Tour of Town

Chapter 3: More Than Just a School

Chapter 4: Town but Not a City

Chapter 5: Potato-Picking

Chapter 6: The Yellow Corn of Summer

Chapter 7: Hearing the Corn Grow

Chapter 8: Bolls of White Cotton

Chapter 9: Los Brazos Del Dios

Chapter 10: Birds of the Air

Part II: Moments

Chapter 11: Summer Heat Secrets

Chapter 12: JFK

Chapter 13: It's Too Soon

Chapter 14: Baseball and Life

Chapter 15: Vietnam

Chapter 16: Well Done, John McCain

Chapter 17: Into Each Life

Chapter 18: From Shield to Storm

Chapter 19: Trust Me

Chapter 20: Eyes Wide Open

Chapter 21: Three Days

Chapter 22: Palo Duro Canyon

Chapter 23: When Patriots Meet

Part III: People

Chapter 24: My People

Chapter 25: Our Family Store and Friends

Chapter 26: Customer Service: Paper, No Plastic

Chapter 27: Big-Band Magic

Chapter 28: Secret Awe

Chapter 29: Goodness and Mercy

Chapter 30: Unexpected Hero

Chapter 31: Granddaddy Great

Chapter 32: Last One Out Gets the Kids

Chapter 33: Consequential Contributors

Chapter 34: Politics

Epilogue

Appendix

Source Notes

About the Author

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Pivotal Journey

Texas Roots, Moments, and People

Mike Alan Smiddy

ISBN 978-1-63885-733-4 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63885-734-1 (Digital)

Copyright © 2022 Mike Alan Smiddy

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

At the outset, I must thank all those persons who have aided in the compilation and composition of this writing. Many of the people and characters who appear here never knew what impact they had on me. I must also recognize the principal characters in my family who were most influential in my development: my parents, R. L. Smiddy Jr. (1923–2016) and Donna Lee Anderson Smiddy (1926–2014); my sister, Reta; and my maternal grandparents, Wilmer Anderson (1902–1992) and Eunice Bruton Anderson (1903–1993). My sister changed the names of our grandparents to Mam and Gran when she was learning to talk. My wife, Benita Johnson Smiddy and my children, Sarah and Adam, give my life meaning. They remind me to keep my feet firmly on the ground.

To all of them I dedicate this volume with thanks for the love and guidance they freely gave every day.

Introduction

My interest in writing came at an early age. There is nothing in my memory which does not involve the written or spoken word. The people I looked up to the most, my real heroes, were either characters in books or on television. I quickly discovered that words are the source of power for those men and women who knew how to use them. Those who put voice to words placed high on my list.

At the time, I did not think that I read a lot, but compared to other kids, I guess I did. I read all the Steve Canyon books that our school library had. I especially remember Franklin Roosevelt: Boy of the Four Freedoms. We always subscribed to the Weekly Reader during the summer. When we could buy paperback books through a scholastic book club, I signed up. I still have most of the ones I bought, proudly marked with signature and date of purchase on the inside front cover.

One of my first compositions came during the weekend following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It was an emotional time. I tried to write down my feelings and thoughts about the tragedy. At the age of eleven, it was surely an immature effort; but it was a beginning, a way to expression which made me feel better. I was fascinated by the president's speeches. His words had a profound influence on me, my generation, and the world. By writing about how I felt when he was killed, I thought that somehow, I could be a part of his legacy. As I write today, JFK's influence is still there. Words have enduring power. Great words, spoken or written, we carve in stone.

My interest in writing grew as my skills developed. The Junior High News was a handwritten personal newspaper which published one copy a week. That copy was for the self-appointed editor-in-chief. Really, it turned out to be practice for high school. The Treasure Chest (because we were the Pirates) was a real high school student newspaper. It was typed using a manual typewriter on a purple-backed carbon stencil and mimeographed by a spirit duplicator. I can still smell the denatured alcohol which made it all work.

Complete with a gossip column, cartoon, and editorial, the Treasure Chest was a bargain at ten cents a copy. As editor and only staff member, my job was to write stories, headlines, collect the gossip, do the typing, and keep up with the money. In about two years, we had earned enough profits to buy a used bass drum for the pep squad to bang on during football games. Our high school was too small to have a band. Here I learned that good writing could paint pictures of an exciting track meet or a winning basketball shot. I also learned that too much gossip is not a good thing.

In high school, our teachers encouraged all of us to compete in the literary events with a collection of other kids from across our area and state. My English teacher practically insisted that I participate. In the back of my mind, I still hear her not-so-gentle reminders on how to write better. There were other events like extemporaneous public speaking and math, but ready writing got my interest.

The writing competition worked like this: Everyone was given the same topic, usually a quote by some wise person. Using the quote as a base, you had to compose an essay of about one thousand words. No rules on what to write were given. It was a challenge. My senior year, an essay of mine qualified me for state competition at the state capital. There I won third place, which netted me a cash college scholarship, which I collected for two years. Writing could be more than fun, I discovered; it could help pay the bills.

When college came, they told us new freshman about placing out of some classes by basically taking the final exam for the course up front. If you made a passing grade, you had the option of an award of full credit for the class with that grade, or you could take the class and try to do better. My attention was peaked because I liked shortcuts. A warning was given: some professors got miffed if a student took this route, trying to bypass a full semester of class because you thought you already knew everything. It might cause a problem later if the same professor taught a class you had to take. My motive was partly economic (saving tuition), but mostly I liked the challenge. I decided to try to place out of freshman English class.

Dr. Robert Walker, the designated English professor, graded my test and told me that it was B work, which I gladly accepted. He was not offended at all that I took the test. He respected me for trying. Because of that early meeting, Dr. Walker became one of my favorite teachers and friends. I saw him on campus occasionally. He was my encourager, and he remembered how I wrote.

Once, when we met walking across campus, Dr. Walker stopped me on the sidewalk and told me to go immediately to the college newspaper. You need to write for them, he said. It fits your style. So I went to the college newspaper and became a reporter. After I had done that for a while, I ran across Dr. Walker again. Apparently, he had read my newspaper stories. Go be editor of the paper, he said. So I became editor.

Over the years, it occurred to me that I should have sought out Dr. Walker periodically to ask him what else to do in life because he seemed to know the direction I should go. Other professors at college were like Dr. Walker. They did not just teach; they pushed, encouraged, nagged, and cajoled, whatever it took to make me be the best I could be.

Sometimes my professors were simply awesome. When I applied to law school, Dr. O. A. Grant, who was my major professor, flatly ordered the admissions dean to admit me. It made no difference to Dr. Grant that I was sitting in the room when he made the call. When the law school dean called to tell me that I was admitted, he mentioned that my professor sounded like the voice of God on the phone. Dr. Grant wasn't the voice of the God, of course, but he was the best teacher I ever had, and I was glad he was on my side. I don't remember ever telling him that though. I wish I had.

Along with being editor of the college newspaper, I wrote a column for the real newspaper in my college town. The same column was also printed in another newspaper near my hometown. They actually paid me (a little) for the work. Since my major was government and history, I wrote mostly about current events with an eye toward politics and an opinion or two. At age twenty, I enjoyed trying to make people think, even disagree. I learned that I could communicate by writing much better than I could by talking. For instance, I spent one summer session writing letters back and forth to a girl I liked. She was working with Bible schools in churches all over the state. So we got to know each other through those letters. Our wedding was three years later—now over forty years ago.

Then life happened. Graduation, marriage, law school and passing the bar, first job, and a successful local political campaign at age twenty-five, and the birth of a daughter and a son changed things. Writing no longer claimed the priority it once did. Oh, there was writing to be done in practicing law and being a judge, but it was not the kind of creative or thought-provoking stuff I had written before. A couple of my cases were published by the appeals courts in the law books, but that had to do with a point of law, not my writing style.

As time went by, I occasionally got inspiration from some event so I would write a piece, which sometimes became a letter to the local newspaper editor. When I became judge the second time, there were proclamations, speeches, and dedications to be written. We put up a monument celebrating 150 years as a county. One phrase from my dedication speech is now written on a bronze plaque attached to the monument. Not exactly carved in stone like other great words, but I was proud anyway. Writing became important again.

From time to time, some of my friends read my work, and they said to me, You need to write a book. To this, I replied, Who would want to read my book? Most of what I have written lately makes people cry. It did not make sense to me that if my readers were moved to tears, it would help book sales. After all, what would one title such a book? Somehow, It's Okay to Cry, did not sound like the title of a best seller. The book-writing idea went back on the shelf.

But then, as I took time to think, I wondered if my friends might be right. Maybe there is something to be said. So I seriously looked at my random ramblings to see if they had anything in common. I looked for a thread which tied them together. Is there a central message in the stories, memories, and impressions I write about which is interesting and relevant to life today? Is there some foundation on which a rational collection of works could be built? Recently, I concluded that maybe there is.

The revelation began as I was working on a story describing an important event in my life: the day I understood baseball. As I wrote, the common thread, the message, the central theme began to take shape. I was writing about pivotal moments, turning points, watershed events, and the people and places who played a part in them.

All of us make choices, some unnoticed at the time they are made, and those choices impact our lives to the very core. We decide to go left instead of right; make this friend instead of that one; stop instead of go; listen to advice from one and not the other. If we take time to reflect and think, to process our choices, those pivotal moments reveal themselves with great clarity. And the influential people who played a part in those moments sparkle like bright stars in a cloudless night sky. They become beacons or pointers. If we look long and hard through the times and places in our lives, we find that the pivotal moments are plenty, and the important people are as hard to count as those bright stars.

People talk about pivotal moments—points in time in their lives about which their memories seem to revolve. There is life before the event and life after it. And the two sides of life are never the same. Pivotal moments become like dividers in a folder. They give organization. They allow us to sort, compartmentalize, and separate the unfolding of our lives. The date of the point is usually not so important; the event or the person is what makes the difference. Life is forever altered. And if we are very lucky, after a pivotal moment, we understood life in general a little better and ourselves even more.

There are obvious personal pivotal moments: wedding, the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, first job, first car, first real love, first heartbreak, first homerun, winning three-point basket. And there are the obvious influential people. Family should come first, but there are others. All of them help us to develop who we truly are.

Then there are pivotal moments which revolve around world events. Those of us who are old enough to remember November 22, 1963, understand pivotal moments. We can recall exactly where we were and what we were doing when the president was shot. Do you remember where you were when Neil Armstrong took his one small step for man? Were you the same after that event?

Our parents and grandparents told us about the impact the attack on Pearl Harbor and the death of FDR had on them—how those were defining moments. Younger people say that September 11, 2001, is their point in time because the world they knew stopped turning that day. It's too early to say what total impact the pandemic COVID-19 will have on the current population, but it certainly will be significant. All of these pivotal events changed not only the physical condition of our world, they changed how we look at life—how we look at ourselves and how we relate to those around us. The transformative process is a work in progress which is never finished, up and down, painful and joyful, sometimes all at the same time.

So that's what my random ramblings are about: pivotal points, people, and places. Some pieces are written under the influence of deep emotions, happy and sad. Others came about as an attempt to finally pay tribute to some of the great personalities that have influenced my life. Still others are intended to look at the places and things which triggered some defining moment. If these stories, chapters from life, move you to tears, it's all right. Be assured that the writer cried too. But if these stories cause you to remember—even travel back in time—to a happy or sad time, where you again see a special person or place, just remember that smiles and laughs and tears are free. They are all actually good for you.

And when you finish reading, if you think that you understand life in general a little better and yourself even more, then you can thank my friends who encouraged me. They will have the last laugh. I did need to write a book.

Part I

Texas Roots

Prologue

Story About a Boy

This is a story about a boy. We will call him Alan. He was born the second child of a World War II Navy veteran and the girl who kept the home fires burning for him. Alan was part of the great baby boom, albeit the second division. His older sister was part of the first baby-boom wave. The world Alan was born into was not unlike that of any other child born in rural Texas in the middle of the twentieth century, but Alan soon came to know that his world was unique in many ways.

The time period of Alan's growth to maturity covered the middle 1950s and all of the 1960s. These years are no different from any other time period in the twentieth century. This span of time becomes unique, however, when it is compared to those years immediately before and after. Life in the preceding years was similar, but there is a tremendous contrast with the years which came after.

Alan never knew a time when his house did not have a television. Because his dad worked on television sets, he kept the disabled ones and sometimes brought them back to life. Most sets were big pieces of furniture. Their small black-and-white pictures on dark screens were grainy at best. Someone had to adjust the contrast, horizontal and vertical hold, and change the channels and volume by hand. Reception often depended on the direction the outside antenna was pointed and sometimes on the weather. But television brought the world into Alan's house every day.

When the smiling, mop-haired boy named Opie walked barefoot down the trail to the favorite fishing hole with Andy Taylor, wearing jeans with the cuffs turned up, Alan immediately found a kindred spirit. Opie carried a fine fishing pole. Alan thought Opie was rich because he had nice jeans and that fine pole. Alan's fishing pole was a cut and trimmed willow tree branch with a few feet of string wrapped around the end with a cork and a weighted hook attached. Alan carried a coffee can with a few worms dug from the garden in it for bait. Shoes? Optional at best for both Opie and Alan.

Week to week, Alan watched Opie living in his town, and he wondered if people in Mayberry were somehow related to people in Alan's hometown. They sure were a lot alike, he thought. Alan and Opie were about the same age. Opie talked to Miss Sarah, the phone operator, using the crank telephone on Sheriff Andy's desk. But Alan had to climb up in a chair so he could crank the phone attached to the kitchen wall at his house. And Alan talked to Miss Gladys.

And what they ate, well, just say that Opie and Alan both understood that when Aunt Bee or Alan's mom put fried chicken on the table, it meant that it was time for everything else you were doing to stop. Nothing in the whole world was more important at that point. When the fried chicken was surrounded by fried okra and fresh corn on the cob and hot cornbread, Alan thought that his world was best. Maybe Opie thought so too. Alan learned a lot from Sheriff Andy and Opie and life in Mayberry, even if it was make-believe.

Alan loved summers. Oh, there was no escape from the formidable sun and heat in Texas, but it was just something everyone had to deal with. There were lots of things that only happened in summer. Bikes had to be ridden. Texas horned lizards had to be caught. Friends had to be visited in the cool of the evening under the shade trees. Sometimes homemade ice cream was made with rock salt and ice from the deep freeze and an old wooden hand-crank freezer, Alan taking his turn at the crank. And most important, the vegetable gardens had to be picked and the vegetables put up for winter.

Alan lived in the same town as his grandparents and great-grandparents and great-aunts and uncles and cousins of dizzying degrees. Of course, everyone knew each other. Most everyone had a garden, some large, others small, growing all kinds of produce. Alan's grandparents and his parents grew potatoes, onions, green beans, tomatoes, squash, peas, corn, okra, beets, cucumbers, cantaloupes, and smaller crops of cabbage and peppers. They picked peaches, plums, and pecans from backyard trees.

If some of the crops were small and more vegetables were needed, it was easy to go to a town nearby, which had a big farmers market. Most of the peas and beans and watermelons were picked at sunrise before it got too hot. Alan's family got to the market early for the best and freshest buys.

When the different produce was ready to pick, Alan worked alongside everyone else in the family. Corn was pulled from the stalks, shucked, silked, cut off the cob, and frozen. Peas were picked, shelled, and canned using an old pressure cooker. So were the green beans. Potatoes were dug and stored in the storm cellar along with the onions. Beets were boiled in a cast-iron pot over a wood fire, skinned and pickled. Shredded cabbage became canned sauerkraut. Neighbors shared with neighbors if anyone had too much. Waste was not an option. Alan soon came to the conclusion that it must be some kind of sin to throw good food away. He never changed his mind about that.

Alan thought everyone did the same thing in the summer because this was what he knew. Even when Alan became an adult, every spring he felt the need to plant something and watch it grow. He decided it was hereditary, or some mystical connection to the land passed on genetically from his Native American ancestors. What Alan really knew was that the taste of a fresh, homegrown tomato or a green onion or green beans is far superior to anything bought from the store.

Alan's childhood was really the final chapter in the long and full episode of the transformation of rural American life. It was, in fact, the end of an era in rural living. More precisely, it was the end of personal connection to the land. Machines and technology finally overtook this last bastion of the old rural way of doing things. The way of life which had existed for generations just ceased. There was no going back.

Not everyone knows what it is like to pick potatoes from the vine just dug from the warm ground or to pull ears of fresh corn straight from the growing stalk in the early dawn of summer. Only a few of us remain who remember snapping the white, fluffy cotton bolls from the plants, which were made brittle by the first frost, emptying the weighed canvas sacks into a trailer, having joined hands and hearts in the hard work with neighbors and the owner of the field. And surely, not everyone can know a river as a playground as Alan did, if only from time to time. Not even Alan could really claim the river. The flowing water is forever free.

Mostly through television, Alan soon learned that not every kid could run barefoot to the garden at suppertime to pull a few onions from the ground, cut the roots and tops off, run cold water over them at the outside faucet, and take them straight to the waiting bowl on the dinner table. He learned that most kids had no garden. And some kids did not have enough food.

Alan also learned that not every kid his age had a mom and dad, a sister, grandparents, and extended family all working and watching out for him all the time—all of them willing and ready to show Alan right from wrong and correct him immediately, if needed. Alan learned that not every kid saw the world the way he did because they did not have the simple happy things that Alan took for granted. When Alan understood what other kids did not have, sometimes it made him sad.

So Alan made a secret promise to himself. He promised that as he grew up, he would always try to be positive and maybe help those he met along the way to see the awe in life itself as he did; to see that something is always new and fascinating if you look hard enough. He knew that staying positive would not be easy, but the real joy, he decided, would come from a lifetime of trying. (It helped that Alan really liked to make people laugh, even if they were laughing at him.)

It is said that confession is good for the soul. Perhaps it is. Speaking about our shortcomings and hearing them ourselves sharpens our minds and produces clearer thinking thereafter. It seems like a pretty sound idea.

A wise man once said that it is not a sign of insanity if one talks to oneself. But if you do talk to yourself, you have to be honest and listen.

The confession here is that the writer has come to grips with where he came from, even if occasionally he tried to run from it or hide from it or make excuses for it along life's way. Talking to myself, if you will, is part of the reason for this writing. I have learned to listen. The time has come for truth-telling: the good, the bad, and the downright unique.

Times were different then, when Alan was a boy, and this story began. They really were. This is a story about a boy who grew to become a man; a story about a life, good and not so good but always awesome.

You and I may call the boy Alan—my middle name.

Chapter 1

The Town Where I Grew Up

Even before it was named, Texas had land—millions and millions of acres of it. State government seldom could raise needed cash, but there was the always public land. The promise of receiving free land was used to entice young men, mostly Southerners, to come west to Texas to join the war for independence from Mexico. Promised enlistments were of short duration. There was little pay, but the free-land promise was kept. After the war, some stayed. Others found that the free land afforded no easy life. The work was too hard, and they went back east.

Others made their lives in Texas. They planted family trees. They were the real founding fathers. One of these young men was named David, and he would thrive in Texas. Like King David of the Old Testament, this David would become the father of many generations—Texans, not Israelites. This David was my great-great-great-grandfather. He established roots for one branch of my family tree—really before Texas was a republic. He was here almost eighty years of the century before the town where I grew up was established.

David came from Tennessee with his kinsman. They came because an official-looking paper promised free land to those who agreed to join the fight for Texas independence. Joining others, they left their home, relying only on that promise. But you had to bring your own rifle and a horse because that was part of the deal. A company of volunteers was organized, and they rode south and west from the Tennessee hills all the way to the Texas coast; no short journey. In April 1836 the company arrived at a place as foreign as anything any of them had seen. The horses