The Adventures of Button

By Button Douglas

The Button story is of a self absorbed, lazy, everyday little kid without financial means, wading through life's difficulties, finally beginning to become successful in his forties. The story speaks to the enhancing value of failure as a driver of success.

Besides the story of Button, the book speaks to:

A Self Cure for Phobias

A Self Cure for Anxiety

How Freedom in the World began only 600 years ago

Religious History and Development in the World

Moral Psychology of Polit

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 12, 2015
• ISBN: 9781681391045

Book preview

The Adventures of Button

Background 

Long ago this little kid graduated from college at twenty two with $40 to his name. Ten of the forty was from a dean’s award for holding a sweat of the brow job for all five years of college. Growing up was in a middle class neighborhood, far from being privileged. At seventeen, his dad passed away during his freshman college year. Sole support of his mom came at age twenty two. Living was always at the same economic level that growing up was. Despite becoming temporarily handicapped with anxiety, he became a multimillionaire in his forties. All of the newfound wealth was tied up in a business. Little was left over for spending. The modest living never changed. 

Being a multimillionaire in today’s time is not that big of a deal. Anyone that retires with a pension can probably legitimately value the fund amount that provides the retirement stream at a couple of million, making them multimillionaires. For this purpose multimillion means an asset value that nets out at two. By no means are we talking tens of millions or hundreds of millions. A multimillionaire with just a couple can spend himself beyond nothing quickly with mortgages on a big house, a couple of nice cars and a vacation place. Using the term multimillionaire is a bit deceptive but just sounds impressive anyway. 

The wealth accumulation environment usually determines the upper limits of success. The film and music industries, for those so gifted, offer outsized rewards due to their enormous gross revenues. The sno-cone industry offers more of a work your butt off labor intensive route, with the upper level of wealth creation considerably limited. 

This little kid’s route through industrial plant engineering was somewhat in between, bordering closer to the sno-cone environment, as engineers in that occupation are readily replaceable and generally looked at more in terms of being a dime a dozen. 

This is the story of a less than affluent, play oriented, otherwise lazy kid, becoming a typical in-love teen, working his way through college to an entry level engineering job. Married with a child, on a single employer path to company retirement, there were no real decisions to be made about doing anything differently. As entrepreneurial ambitions sparked fears in his wife, any ventures into business on his own would have been unlikely. This was the beginning of a happy story for a happy couple. 

Work, family, and civic responsibilities, combined with a drive to do well, resulted in overstress and a debilitating bout with anxiety. The result was hampered strength to persevere, making the prospects of even moderate success unlikely. The search for anxiety’s cause and cure, and even intermediate relief, resulted in life changing decisions being made. Right or wrong, these decisions led toward an improbable path to success. 

This is also the tale of an individual’s unlikely success after a failed marriage. No longer married and rethinking perceived long term obligations, an attitude of Why not risk it all and see what can be accomplished was acted on. An evaluation of the downside pointed to the possibility of just swapping a steady job for more volatile work, perhaps with a negative financial outcome. No longer with a family, the security of a steady job seemed not that important. The result is this story.  

This life, like everybody’s, was lived in segments. With parents gone and without brothers or sisters, no one had known him for more than a few segments. Perhaps a significant reason for writing is to let his people in on what else took place and his innermost thoughts throughout. Segments are periods where very little significantly changes and life goes on as usual. Interruptions come mostly in the form of moving away from old friends, starting anew, and making new friends. It represents a new direction in life. 

Segments in this little kid’s journey included growing up, off to college, a new job and marriage. Added were divorce, financially starting over and risking everything. Foremost is the theme of measuring decisions based on doing the right thing, and never giving up. 

Beyond the text is a litany of appendices. In the book there are friends that were spontaneously capable of giving their minds an enema on any given subject. From the sheer volume of the appendices, it looks as if that has also been personally accomplished. The appendix items are areas of self interest that required an unusual amount of effort to find a stopping point. It seemed a shame to waste the effort, as it might be helpful to someone. 

The appendices are about nagging complex issues that never really made sense. The awesome mental capacity that each of us has becomes somewhat limited when we tackle complex issues with only our thoughts. Sometimes it takes writing things down in the manner of an investigator trying to make puzzle pieces fit together. Such is the nature of the appendix items, trying to make sense of things that really didn’t make sense. 

Elusive answers to long standing questions become more clear. It could be that perception will change with more knowledge. So that’s the current nature of the appendices. Should this have been written sixty years ago, the appendices may well have been focused on his perception of teenage girls. 

Life becomes intense enough, being lived on a daily basis, that inner curiosity often gets pushed aside. Accepting other’s assessments of what’s important and why doesn’t always result in the most fulfilling answer. Besides passing on his own peculiar version of wisdom and how the world is viewed, the appendices are meant to tweak imaginations and give courage for others to learn things on their own and to be able to think for themselves. This world needs a lot more of that. 

This story is not about a special or remarkable person. It is the story of an average person, anybody, everybody. Its the story of growing up, being educated, falling in love, making a living, being happy, being unhappy, overcoming illness, living out ambitions, and living out expectations. It is the same type of story a reader might want to pass along to their children about themselves. 

A little history is in order before the story starts. Notably, on his dad’s side, his great-great grandfather fought in Texas’s battle of San Jacinto. After the war, refusing his league of Texas land, he returned to Georgia, married, and raised a family. As Sherman destroyed Georgia’s economy toward the end of the Civil War, his son, a great grandfather, moved to Arkansas, married, and then moved on to Texas seeking opportunity, escaping Georgia’s economic woes. Growing up in Texas, Grandfather, as a young man looking for work himself, became a rural schoolteacher and a Methodist circuit rider. Grandmother, one of his students before marriage, tells of a fully grown, unruly student that Grandpa had to take outside for a fist style attitude adjustment. Later, in a book of Grandpa’s, without reference to the incident, he alludes to the power of his own left hook. From her days as Grandpa’s student and throughout their marriage, Grandma always addressed Grandpa as Mr. Douglass.  

On his mom’s side, her mother was from the old Kentucky plantation days with a traceable linage through Charles Martel, Charlemagne’s grandfather. She and Granddad settled in Orange, Texas in the early 1900s. Grandma was a publicist for the Chamber of Commerce. Granddad had a Presbyterian ministry. They lived in an area near the then recently discovered Spindletop Oil Field. Grandpa dabbled in real estate on the side. The only property of his that eventually had oil and gas royalty income provided Mom and her brother with an electricity bill amount of income each during the 1970s. From the proceeds of her share of property distributed upon Grandpa’s death in the 1930s, Mom was able to come up with the down payment for a new West University Place home that vaulted us solidly into middle class. One subdivision of Grandpa’s eventually became the city of East Orange, Texas. 

Wild Indians 

Everything that occurs from 1942 on can be accounted for first hand. Everything prior to that comes from remembered stories and old papers that were found after the folks had passed away. 

A story that Mom occasionally told was about three pet ducks, Huey, Dewey, and Louie. It was about age three, before my conscious memory begins. Dad grew up in a frugal environment as a preacher’s son. He was experienced in turning chicken yard hens into Sunday dinners. Sitting down for a Sunday duck dinner, Mom starts hollering, He knows, he knows. She was always pretty excitable and apparently traumatized herself. The story was heard enough to make it one of my own. In reality, the dinner was not remembered. Whatever psychological trauma that might have come my way wasn’t from the ducks. 

Memory finally kicks in at four years old and it’s 1942. Dad is thirty eight. Mom is thirty two. We live on Riley Street in a small West University Place rent house, just about a block from Bellaire. Dad works for Texaco in downtown Houston. Mom stays home. World War II is in its first year. Our car is a black thirties vintage sedan with a floor shift. This year will find me in kindergarten. In a year, first grade.  

The same year, 1942, my folks shopped for a new house on the downtown side of West University. They settled on a roomy two bedroom brick bungalow on Quenby Street with a screened in front porch. The other available new houses on the block were of similar style and size with three small bedrooms instead of two larger ones. This is the only home my parents would own. With the realtor on the front walk outside and standing in the empty dining room of the new house, Mom and Dad agreed this was the one. Mom counted out ten one hundred dollar bills to give the waiting realtor for a down payment. Much later, among their papers was the note for $4,000 at 2 3/4 percent interest. Payments were $36 a month. 

This was before air conditioning, where windows and doors were arranged for the prevailing breeze to cool the entire house. During the many hurricanes, the windows on the lea side of the house would have to be opened slightly to equalize pressure and then changed when the eye would pass and the wind would blow in the opposite direction. This would have been a great house to keep, even if it meant moving it to property in the country. It was the place of growing up and the place of childhood memories. 

Unrecognized by me, with the new house in West U, we had moved up into middle class. Probably we were there already. Right away, Dad upgraded to a used 1940 Ford sedan, also black. New cars would not be available again until 1946, after the war. As a kid, this was the car of many fishing, camping and hunting adventures with Dad. 

And so the rest of the story of what can be remembered begins. Probably like other kids, my nature was being self absorbed with good intentions, somewhat undisciplined, and pretty lazy except for playtime and sports. My main neighborhood play buddies were my own age, some with older brothers, none with sisters. In a letter to his sister, Dad refers to us as wild Indians. All parents at that time made their kids play outside. At the time, polio had no cure or prevention and was crippling kids our age all over the community. As a result, we all had to go home for a certain amount of nap time during the hottest part of each summer day. TV did not come along until the late 1940s. There were a number of kid’s serials on the radio during the naptime period. Terry and the Pirates, The Green Hornet, and The Lone Ranger were my favorites. The evening and weekend family shows came on hour after hour, station after station, Mystery Theater, Amos and Andy, Red Skelton, Fibber McGee and Molly, Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. They were all as vivid in closed eye imagination as any television. 

About a year into my new neighborhood, it was discovered how matches worked. Towards the end of the block was a vacant lot for practice. Set a little fire, stomp it out, set a little fire, stomp it out, each time letting the fire get a little bigger before starting to stomp. Finally it got too big to be stomped at all. It was time to head home fast. The firemen had no trouble putting it out. There was no real damage, just a grass fire. Purposely busying myself at home, kept me from checking out all the commotion outside. As luck would have it, a neighbor squealed and put the firemen on my trail. They scared me pretty good with the talking to that had to be endured. After that, there was no longer any real interest in the recreational use of matches. 

My play buddies and their big brothers came by about dusk on the first Halloween, asking my parents if they could take me trick-or-treating along with their little brothers. Never having heard of Halloween, there wasn’t any understanding of what it was about. The okay was given, and off this kid went, no costume, just a paper sack. Liking the concept, and on the basis that this was just the way things were in the new neighborhood, every evening the houses that gave the best stuff were revisited. It still worked even without the sack. Days later, figuring out what was going on, my parents had to set me straight about the Halloween thing in the big picture. 

Still four, kindergarten graduation was at a gray-haired lady’s house with a short white picket fence in front. The parents mustered me into first grade at the local elementary school at five. It was really a mistake on their part, as it kept me socially behind for years. Being a year younger, my size was a little small for school sports. When the time came for my daughter to begin first grade, she was at a transition age. The choice was to start her as the very youngest in her class or wait until the next year and let her be among the oldest in her class. The decision came easy after experiencing my own problems of being a year younger than all my classmates. 

With the transition into first grade, there was a new set of kids to interface with, a bigger group than the number of my neighborhood friends. All the classmates were a year older. Walter was my given name, and that’s how school had me registered. That wasn’t my name growing up. The Walter name seemed a little uncomfortable, but that was me. My folks had nicknamed me Button. Up until school, that had been my name. My parents and all the neighborhood kids called me Button. My teacher and classmates called me Walter. It was best to let them stay separate. It was a little embarrassing to have to explain my Button name when a neighborhood kid would call me by my nickname at school. Not sure why that bothered me. My Walter name carried through school and even my early work years. When Mom would call at work, she would ask for Button. The secretary had a little difficulty at first figuring out who she wanted to talk to. Mom never called me Walter. Old friends still called me by my nickname. There was never a problem with that. My progression of names became Button, Walter, and then Walt. Walt became a more personable name that was taken on in the 1970s after a divorce and the start of an entrepreneurial business. 

My size was right for my age, the same as most of my year older classmates. It was not quite the size needed for intra-school sports. Local clubs provided the outlet to compete with kids my own age. The clubs were generally organized by age level. Little Leagues were also organized by kids of the same age. During my time, clubs were the only option. Little Leagues didn’t come to Houston until much later. Clubs weren’t an informal group of volunteer dads. They were a business and the sole source of income for the owner and his hired coaches. My difficulty with clubs was they required parental financing to join and buy uniforms. My parents couldn’t afford it. Standing around and watching at the club practice fields, there usually wouldn’t be enough club kids to make two teams for practice. They would pick me often to fill in. I’m sure the coaches were thinking that maybe my parents might be persuaded to pay up. These were usually kids my own age, a grade earlier, that didn’t make their school team. Lucky me. When they let me practice with them, it was easy enough to run over everybody in football and out-hit everybody in baseball. Always they gave me a uniform and made me a regular without my folks having to pay up. 

When my daughter was born, her mom tried her hand at staying home full time. After a couple of months of not handling it well, her work took her back. An older couple was enlisted as daycare. Over time, the older couple showed my daughter how to identify playing cards. In short order, this little baby, sitting in diapers, would take a deck of cards, turn them up one by one, and call out each card value and suit. When finished with a deck, if someone would reshuffle and hand it back to her, she would go at it again. She could entertain herself for hours. Really a sight to see. 

Not sure if something similar to that caused my mom to insist on early first grade. This was the early forties. Child prodigies had been in vogue during the 1930s. Mom apparently thought of me as one or should be one. From old newspaper clippings found among her things, both she and her brother had done the prodigy thing. My mode was to survive it. In retrospect, while it may have been a source of bragging rights for parents, it was of no benefit at all for me. My social peers were one grade behind. 

Elementary school was two to three miles from home. Mom would take me by car and pick me up afterwards. Well, almost afterwards. Mom seemed to have her own sense of priorities and responsibilities. All the other kids would get picked up within five minutes of school letting out. For me, it was waiting and waiting on the corner after school for my ride, sometimes an hour and a half or longer. The schoolyard would be vacant, and the people passing by in cars would have this look of parental disapproval. Sometimes, walking through the nearby drugstore to kill time would allow me to get out of view. Needless to say, it was really embarrassing for this five year old.  

At six and in the second grade, it didn’t take but just a couple of days of waiting too long to get irritated enough that it was decided to try my hand at figuring out which way home was. Tentative at a couple of corners, not yet being a street sign reader, a guess had to be made a couple of miles later about which was my street. On my first try, without any backtracking, the torturous corner turning route was made in a little over an hour. Walking in the front door, Mom was on the phone. She probably had been since before school let out. That was one of her things, phone conversations lasting hours. She told whoever she was talking to that Button just walked home from school, and now I don’t have to pick him up anymore. Can you believe that? Sure could. It was wise not to express myself. From then on, my bike and the school bus became my transportation. 

Mom had a few problems. Outwardly they weren’t readily apparent. She was kind, generous, compassionate, and colloquially would give the shirt off her back. She was a doting mother, almost smothering, and conveyed a real sense of love. On the other hand, she spontaneously would fly off the handle over even perceived criticism. It was embarrassing to see her lash out over the simplest slight. If she liked someone, she would be their best friend, unless of course, in her words, the friend crossed her. Volatile is a good word. She would talk for hours in a person to person conversation. Often, she would drive to a friends house and go inside for a couple of hours to talk, leaving me in the car. It also would get me so irritated. But when little, it’s best not to speak up, knowing her wrath would be experienced. On the other hand she expressed love and pride in me. Go figure. Now, put a beer in her and she would be on her way to becoming one surly, mean drunk. The worst of it would come to me then, no matter what. 

She and her brother, who was on a few day’s leave from the navy during WW II, decided to go to a drive-in a few blocks away for a beer. With me in the backseat, presumably being babysat, sister and brother became agitated over the carhop’s inattention, maybe wanting another round in a timely fashion. Who knows. Sister took the tray off the window, dropped it on the pavement, threw the money for the first round out the window, and drove off with the two of them loudly complaining to each other. What a pair. Maybe she was showing off to her brother. That was my mom. Isn’t it funny what little kids can remember and what their assessment of things are. Parents beware, little kids have more going for them than they are given credit for. They form opinions and make decisions. 

At the time, as a little kid, it was understood what was going on. Not being real happy about it, my wish was for things to be different. There was nothing that could have been done to make that happen. It was her life being lived the way she chose, with me being just a part of it. As an adult, it’s easier to sense the frustration of her life, see things better for what they were, and speak of the times in more candid terms. Mom hung in there until age seventy six, when she was just as kind, compassionate, volatile, and unpredictable as ever. Nothing ever really changed. As a child, and as an adult, my mom was loved. Growing older myself, she became easier to understand. Most importantly, her kindness and love is remembered most. 

Mom’s volatility taught me a coping skill of subordinating myself to be able to get along with anybody, sort of like a people pleaser on steroids. It allowed my first marriage to last a lot longer than it otherwise would have. Subordinated for too long a period, it would cause distress, so time became limited in that mode. You see, inherited was my mom’s strength of character and a subtle form of her belligerence and feistiness when defending myself. Later, in my first marriage, my skill would be used for extended periods to keep marriage problems at a minimum. Unfortunately the distress consequences were much greater than had been imagined. They came in the form of an anxiety reaction. Once over the consequences, for all practical purposes that coping skill went in the trash heap. It turned me into a tolerate-no-nonsense guy, a real pain for those who had previously benefited from my subordinating ability. What happened to Walt? He used to be such an easygoing guy. He still is the same easygoing guy. He‘s just different now. 

About age five or six, the war with Germany wasn’t going that well for the Allies. Japan still held the upper hand in the Pacific Islands. Germany was still in control of Europe. Brutality towards our captured military was well known. These were the dads of my friends. The daily reporting of the war’s progress came on the 6:00 pm news. The adults would gather around the radio and listen intently. They would come away solemn faced. At this time it appeared the war could go either way. At my age, being aware, my concerns would be expressed about what would happen to us if the war was lost. The parental answers were meant to be reassuring. It was obvious that they weren’t convinced. 

We would have air raid drills in Houston. The means of locating a city at night by aircraft was to see the city lights. Enemy bombings were inflicted on the general population to strike fear in the people. Dad was an Air Raid Warden and would immediately exit the house at the sound of an air raid siren. Every citizen had been instructed to turn out all their lights and pull down their shades. Dad would go about the area looking for lights left on. His job was to get them turned off. Of course, we never had an actual raid. It was never certain in a drill if an air raid was in progress or not. It kept everyone’s tension ratcheted up. Mother’s brother, my uncle, served in the navy on ships moving supplies across the Atlantic. Two of his ships were torpedoed and sunk out from under him. 

The neighborhood gang’s after school, weekend and summertime gathering place was a one acre fenced community park about a block away, Wier Park. The swing and slide were far enough away not to interfere with right field. The nearest tennis court was somewhat of an obstacle for center field. A baseball or football game was going on just about every day that it didn’t rain. When the summertime afternoons became too hot or it would rain, we would gather on Bill’s screened-in back porch and play with cities made of modeling clay. After school and Saturday mornings, my routine was to bike or walk to the park for a game. If no one was there, Bill’s would be the next stop. In the clay city business, different colors of clay could only be used for certain things. Bill might have been the one making up the rules. Money was of a clay color in short supply. Being color blind to some degree and not yet knowing it, there would often be a great squabble about ejecting me from the porch over mixing my money clay with some other color. Really couldn’t get excited about the clay city concept. It was just fun spending time with the other kids.  

One of the hazards of Bill’s back porch was the occasional swift passage of Bill’s older brother and their dad. Big brother was quite a few years older and spent too much of his time sassing his dad. When they would come through, both would be running. Both of the dad’s fists would be clenched. You didn’t want to get in the way of either. Getting older and trying out my own smart mouth ability on Bill’s big brother, it was me being chased down and given a dose of what big brother had learned from his dad. It taught me to measure risk a little better when using this newfound sassing ability. 

If headed for the park, my route would always be around the block by sidewalk or by street on my bike. Bill lived on the block behind me. Going there, it was quicker to jump my back fence into the neighbor’s backyard and run like crazy to their sidewalk. That would put me just a couple of houses from Bill’s. Our backyard neighbors were older, without children, and always struck me as not kid tolerant. The man never smiled. Couldn’t help but wonder about that guy, what his life must have been like. Coming or going, their place would always be looked over for signs of life before chancing a mad dash across their yard. If they were outside, plans would change to walking around the block. 

Wood tag was a boisterous, high sound level game that had everyone running and screaming from yard to yard. Even the girls could play that one. If you were touching wood, a tree, part of a house, or anything wooden, you were safe. When you ran from wood to wood, you were daring whoever was it to tag you. Once tagged, you became it. Faye Lou’s mom, living a couple of houses from Bill, would go bonkers and call the police when we got in her yard. A squad car would come to investigate. Kids in your yard and wood tag were not illegal activities at that time. The fuss would break up the game. The lady had some kind of a problem. We became wary enough to stay on the sidewalk and not even step on the grass, when walking by her house.  

Just before dark one summer evening, when leaving Bill’s heading for home, the Houston toads were out of their daylight hiding places in mass. They were all over the place. These are the warty ones that pee all over the place when you pick them up. Never had seen them like that before. Gathered them up one by one until there was a double arm full. Trying to pick up another, two would fall out. My status could be described as being limited out on frogs. There were too many to jump the back fence with, so the long sidewalk route back to the house was taken. Approaching Faye Lou’s house and spotting the mail slot on their front door, it just couldn’t be helped. Up on the porch, the mail lid was lifted, and the toads were dropped in one by one. Visibility from that low vantage point was into a couple of rooms, and the toads were hopping all over everywhere. My good deed done, it was time to head home. Remembering the firemen tracking me down, that story was never told to anyone. 

Dad always had time for me whenever my wild Indian buddies were not occupying my full attention. Loved my dad. He had been through the depression as a young man. Didn’t have any idea how he fared. One thing he told me, that he would see to it that there would always be plenty to eat. Seemed like an odd statement. It conveyed a sense, even when he said it, that he might not have had such an easy time of it. Cane pole fishing with worms was always high on our agenda. He must have conversationally scouted out all his work buddies’ good spots at the office. We would head out well before daylight on a Saturday morning in the 1940 Ford to be fishing at an always different place by sunrise. Some of the really good places became favorites. As an adult, after Dad had been gone for many years, driving inadvertently would take me by many of the places we had fished, giving me a nostalgic flashback. 

We were all over Houston‘s outlying bayous, streams and bar ditches. We used the type of cane pole that would break down and fit inside the car, none of that out the back window stuff. Perch fishing was our game. In a bayou east of Houston and just north of Highway 90, a bass was tangled with that fought so hard, he couldn’t be pulled out of the water. Me with a bent pole, pulling as hard as strength would allow, and the fish matching me and never letting up. Again at Galveston, loading up on small sand trout, another big one fought me and my cane pole to a standstill, beating me again. Never have forgotten those two fish. After growing up and being able to afford live bait, lures, boats, and all manner of fishing opportunities, it was always wished that Dad could have been around where he could have been taken with me. 

When still little, on Sunday mornings, Dad would sometimes take me to Kemah, fishing at Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Bess’s place on Clear Creek, where Landry’s is now. We would stop in Webster for breakfast, with me getting the change. Usually it would be a nickel or two to play the slot machines. Whatever was won went in my pocket. At Kemah, Uncle Jimmy’s pier was my fishing spot, while Dad, Jimmy, and Bess would position themselves inside the house, working the Sunday crossword and drinking gin rickeys. Mom used to go with us when they had an off water cabin, but quit going later. Their waterfront place used to be a grocery store and bait house on the creek. Uncle Jimmy bought the store and had it torn down to build their waterfront place. Being in the grocery store often, the owners had a little daughter, Sally, my own age. She would always ask me something outrageous, sometimes for a kiss, and try to get me to talk. She flustered me so bad that my ability to talk just wouldn’t work. My response would be to just try and disappear down an aisle. While in the off water cabin, Jimmy kept his cabin cruiser at a nearby marina. Everyone had to walk a ten or twelve inch wide plank between boats to get into their boat. Tired of trying to hand hold me down the plank, they told me to hold my hair to keep from falling off the plank. It worked.  

On one visit, Jimmy had just bought a new outboard motor for his skiff. He hadn’t traded in his old one as it wasn’t running. He gave it to me at about age nine. At home, cleaning it up and taking apart what was known to take apart, the first discovery was the motor had four cylinders. It had me thinking this might be a really high horsepower motor, a real powerhouse. At that time there wasn‘t an awareness of the points and condenser under the flywheel, the usual reason motors wouldn’t run. The plugs were cleaned, new gas was put in, and lucky for me, that’s all it needed. It started right up. The motor was really pretty small and we kept it in the trunk of the car. Convenient, because for two or three dollars, boats could be rented almost everywhere. For my benefit, not fishing but just driving around, it seemed every time we drove by a river or lake, Dad would stop and rent a boat for me to putter around in. Dad always let me go alone.  

He would only go when we went fishing. At Danbury, on several occasions the two of us would negotiate Bastrop Bayou in a rent boat through the early morning fog headed towards Bastrop Bay and Christmas Bay. We never made it all the way. The boat was too slow for long trips. It was just too far for the amount of gas we carried. When we had used up almost half the gas, we would stop and fish the prescribed amount of time before heading back. The motor wasn’t really that big either, a little over five horsepower. The cylinders were not much bigger around than a silver dollar. Always it was me on the helm. Dad never drove the boat. The first excursion after getting the motor running was back to Uncle Jimmy’s to show off my handy work. It had been started and run no telling how many times at home in our garbage can full of water. At Clear Creek, it went on Jimmy’s cypress skiff. The start rope was pulled and it caught on fire. The tide’s always running one way or another on the creek, and the boat wasn’t tied up. There we went, slowly moving away with the tide, with me standing in the boat watching the motor flame up. It was one of those slow motion kind of scenes. Dad, Jimmy, and Bess were wide-eyed and motionless on the pier. Jimmy broke and ran to the garage, coming back with what is an antique of a fire extinguisher today, a carbon tetrachloride squirt type. He tossed it over the water to me. The fire was put out, the motor restarted, and the boat was underway. The whole episode took place in calm and silence. Nothing was ever said. They went back to the house and the crossword puzzle. 

As a kid there was this thing about the little green garden lizards. Loved to catch them, play with them, and turn them loose. Getting them to open their mouths to bite down and hang on made for great goofy looking earrings that made the little girls scream. Getting one to bite down and hang on to the tip of your tongue was about as painful as it could get. There was an unending supply of lizards in the neighborhood. A couple of pear trees in the backyard were dropping pears and attracting flies like crazy. Being able to catch flies by hand, a wooden screened cage with two doors was built, one for putting lizards in and one for putting flies in. The lizards would scramble for the flies. We had some really huge house spiders that would hide out unseen next to their big webs. One was caught and put in the fly door as competition for the lizards. Who could catch more flies, the lizards or the spider. The spider was big, really big. He hadn’t fully taken all eight steps into the cage before a big lizard had his complete body in his mouth with all his legs hanging out. What a shock, the lizards weren’t being fed well enough. The big one acted like he was starving. They were all turned loose right then.  

Mom was a staunch anti-hunting proponent. She fought giving me an air rifle until age twelve. Still nine, Grandpa Douglass’s neighbors, the Arby’s, in southern Oklahoma, would hand me their beautiful .22 automatic rifle and a box of shells every time this little kid would go up the hill to their place and ask for it. Shooting until my heart’s content in their fifty acre backwoods, Mom was never aware. Dad only went hunting on company trips and was smart enough not to ever bring anything home. Everything was all right there. Mom had the heart and know-how for saving and raising animals. We, actually she, raised an out of the nest dove and mockingbird, turning them loose when they could fly. For me, it was forbidden to rob nests. Still, really bad, my heart was set on a baby crow or sparrow as a pet. A crow’s nest was spotted several blocks over in a backyard tree, taller than its two story house. After several climbs up the tree, the nest was just too high. A block away, there was a sparrow’s nest between the gutter and downspout of an old gray house, two stories high. There was a tree close by with a pretty weak looking limb extending close to the nest. Almost thirty feet up on that pretty wobbly limb, reaching in, one of the babies was taken. To get past security, Mom had to be told it must have fallen from a nest. 

Squeaker was raised to a fully flighted adult. She was smart enough to unlock her cage door and buzz the house at will. When home, she always wanted to be on my shoulder. She would hear me come in, pick the cage lock, and fly to me. Must not have been feeding her well enough either. One day, fixing a sandwich with the refrigerator door open, she came flying out of my room, down the hall, into the kitchen, barely touching my hand with her feet, while deftly picking the sandwich meat off the bread and flying off. The sandwich meat was too heavy and she was too determined. Doggedly holding on, she and Oscar Meyer hit the floor and rolled. She had won. It was all hers. With Squeaker, we were able to enjoy each other for a long, long time. One cold winter night when asleep, she picked the lock and flew down to be with me while sleeping. She was probably seeking the warmth of the bed and covers. She must have been rolled over on during the night. After going to school, Mom found her the next morning wrapped up in the covers. It was really sad to lose little Squeaker. 

My moral sense and principles came early and stayed throughout life. My first recreational reading and favorite reading was of hero stories. Early on, it was Tarzan. All movies of my time had the good guy prevailing and women being respected. Never was coached in that direction by my parents, but felt sure that’s the way they would have directed me. Everything exposed to was about doing the right thing. Not telling the truth resolved itself early. It became a more serene life of no regrets, even as a kid, to do your best to do the right thing and be honest with everybody. An immediate peaceful feeling came over me after deciding at about age five or six to stick with the truth. 

It was particularly impressive that many notables with fame, money, and all else eventually became destitute. It happened to most in old age, but remarkably to many earlier. That made a huge impression. High profile individuals, mostly movie and sports notables, seemed to suffer disproportionately when things went against them. Old Joe Lewis, the brown bomber, always knocked them out early in the first round. He had it all. All his matches were listened to on the radio. What he didn’t spend, he lost, dying destitute. These were life lessons that stuck hard with me. Choices began to be measured and life began to be lived by the principles adopted, trying to avoid the mistakes of the high profilers, even when it was to my own detriment. 

From my dad’s strong desire for me to have a work ethic, a good guess would be that there might have been some slackers he knew while growing up as a country boy in Texas and Oklahoma. A few years after starting school, maybe age eight or nine, there was a one legged door to door Watkins Products salesman on crutches, maybe in his fifties, selling in the neighborhood. A second person, an assistant, carried the two big trays of household products that he sold. My parents obviously had a hand in me going to work for him as a tray carrier. He didn’t solicit me. It wasn’t me that solicited him. Word came of the job offer through my parents. 

Work surely was not on my radar screen. My twenty five cent allowance was keeping me happy. Life usually takes a person in the direction where no real choices have to be made. The job wasn‘t wanted, but my parents’ urging was not resisted. Therefore, my acquiescence had me pressed into child labor. The older man being worked for was overjoyed. A curiosity was his right leg was missing from the hip. He got around on crutches and drove his floor shift car with a homemade rubber tipped wooden pole. It probably was a sawed off clothes closet hanger pole. His left foot operated the clutch and the pole was used as a right foot on the brake and accelerator. Shifting seemed fairly natural. He would take the pole off the accelerator, reach up to the shift handle while still gripping the pole, shift gears, and then be back down on the accelerator with the pole. 

Looking like a poor man with his son lugging around the heavy product trays, housewives felt sorry for us and overbought. He told me that he had never made so much money. My take was ten percent of the gross, consistently over a dollar a day. Dad was so happy that he matched my share each day. It was really nice that Dad was happy, but it was really cutting into my football, baseball and fun time. The work was all summer long. Into the second summer, expressing myself to my parents without hurting feelings, the job was quit to do what kids do best. 

Already a dollar was being made for every lawn cut. On my way to the park on Saturdays, if any adult was mowing or raking, it was routine to stop my bike and ask if they needed help. Never discussed price. If they said yes, it was just falling in and going to work. Always fifty cents or a dollar was netted for an hour or so of work. On one occasion, the guy across the street from the park was working in his yard and engaged me. While working up a good sweat, my buddies across the street were playing football. That felt a little odd. Hung in there with work until it was over. In no time, it was playing across the street with my pals with a dollar in my pocket. Movies were nine cents. The long running early Saturday morning movies with serials were twelve cents. Soft drinks and candy bars were five cents. Kid’s haircuts were twenty five cents. 

After the war, a kid whose dad was career navy moved in down the street. We were good friends, but he was a little different. His dad was doing well. They were the first on the block to get a TV. At fourteen, Bobby was given a brand new small sized Harley capable of about 50 mph. When we were both eleven, there was a strange girl in the neighborhood about our same age. She never said anything to speak of. Whenever she would come down the street, without saying anything she would jump on Bobby, pull him to the ground and start wrestling. There would be headlocks, a lot of squeezing and rolling on the ground, sometimes over the curb and into the street. Maybe something else was going on that we didn’t yet understand. The rest of us would just stand around and watch the fight. No one ever won, and surprisingly no one ever got a scratch. Eventually they both just quit. It was always dreaded that the girl might take me on instead. It would be embarrassing to have a fight like that with a girl, especially if she won. 

Around that time we were walking at night down the sidewalk on Sunset Boulevard, about four blocks from home. We were passing an older high school girl’s house where a car full of four high school boys were trying to get her to come out. The girl had a reputation and the boys were pretty worked up. As the boys were leaving disappointed, they spotted the two of us and gave chase. Bobby could run much faster, but couldn’t that night. They caught him. Knowing the backyards of all the houses in that area, the corner was turned and a backyard was ducked into. Several backyards were traversed until stopping at a safe place where the street could be watched. Stayed put for a good thirty minutes before heading home. Told the parents and they called Bobby’s parents. He showed up shortly thereafter. He had gotten away by opening the moving car’s door and jumping into the street and rolling. That was serious. We were both lucky to have gotten away. 

You had to be twelve to get a paper route. Route managers, who were newspaper employees, were generally in their late twenties or early thirties. They assessed whether a kid was strong enough, trustworthy enough, and could handle the responsibility. The individual area managers could hire you and fire you. My first route came at age twelve, and a second route shortly after when proving myself. Not big money, but about $25 a month per route. The route manager would deliver the papers daily, bundled by route to one location, central to all his area routes. The papers were sold on credit to the carriers at so much apiece. The carrier had to buy a few more papers than his number of subscribers in case a delivery was damaged or missing. The carrier sold the delivered paper to the subscriber for a slightly higher monthly price. The route manager kept book of how much each carrier owed for his papers. The carrier collected