my last year of high school i had distibutive education.it was a work program and you got two credits for one hour of class time,after the class period i left school went home and ate lunch and started work at one o'clock.i had worked my way up to stocker from sack boy,which was neat because i didn't have to deal with customers except when things got busy and all available help was called to the front,i had sacked for about a year and had worked the summer stocking before my senior year started.i enjoyed it,and made decentn money for a high school boy,i was the only kid left at home but i bought all my own clothes and had been saving my money to get a car.
i had about 600 dollars saved up and so on weekends when i wasn't working the dad would take me out looking for cars all over dallas,ft.worth or arlington and i would look at the individual ads in the papers,but with the dad,i knew i'd never get a car from a lot because in his mind used car dealers were all crooks and wanted to much for what they had.i came close to getting a 65 falcon with a 289 and a 4 speed but it didn't work out.
i was getting aggravated and impatient and me and the dad would jaw back and forth a little,but i finally found a 66 malibu with a column shift 3 speed and 283,it had some nice low tone glasspacks and was candy apple red,the guy that owned it had taken good care of it.he said he hated to git rid of it but had an expanding family and needed money,and he wanted the person who bought it to take care of it also.
he wanted 725.00,i had 625.00,my heart kind of sunk,the dad was a decent mechanic,he worked on aircraft in the service and tore down a model -t he got for a bicycle when he was 12.he said this is about as good a car as you'll find and i'll tell you what,me and your momma will give you the difference.man,was i happy,i drove it home that day,new found freedom around the bend,no more borrowing one of my parents car.
well as my senior year started i needed every credit to graduate,and the stocking late night at the grocery store till 2 o'clock in the morning about 3 nights a week was making it hard for me to get to my first period class.so my D.E. teacher suggested i get a different job,and he had one in mind,where i would work daytime hours.
man i hated the idea of leaving the stocking job,i'd busted tail sacking to look good so i'd get the stocking job,and it paid 40 cents more an hour.well,he sent me to the local lumber and hardware store to talk to the owner about working there,it was going to be a pay cut,and i would only be getting about 24 hours a week,where i had been working about 33 hours.
well,the parents had always bugged all us kids to get a high school education,only my black sheep brother didn't,so the writing was on the wall,i quit the grocery store and went to work at the lumber yard.
well,what a change,i went from the big dog senior stock boy,who was now looking down on the junior and sophmore sack boys from whence i came to working with guys going to college,all older and bigger than me,one had gotten out of the air force and was doing the g.i. bill thing and had children,the other two had gone to the high school i was,and were only about three years older.
i had to get a commercial license,which at that time in texas you could take your test in a 3/4 ton pickup,no problem there.so i made deliveries in the pickups and the flat beds with the lift beds that i think were 2 or 21/2 ton,you just went to the build site and dumped the order you usually pulled.we hand delivered all sheetrock bought at the yard,we counted the studs in each room and left the appropriate amount in each room.i occasionally drove to the west side of dallas to pick up shakes and wood shingles from a supplier and man you could never get the dang things tied down good,i just knew that i was going to lose a load of them on the highway.
well,i ain't braggin',but hauling sheetrock,loading brick mortar and sackcrete bags put some muscle on my 5'9 and 146 pound butt,not only that two of the college guys were always using me for wrestling practice,and i always came out on the short end.
well,my birthday was jan.14,and texas lowered the drinking age from 21 to 18 on jan. 1,1974,so for the last half of my senior year i was a legal drinker and i took full advantage of it.i didn't grow up in lewisville,so on weekend i headed the 28 miles to my old hometown to party and hang out with my friends that i had pretty much grew up with.
i had smoked and inhaled cigarettes from the time i was 12,but i developed an allergy or something at this time and every time i smoked one i got light headed,so i decided to quit and to ease off i started chewing pouch tobacco to get me through.
it's a good thing i worked outside because that pouch tobacco created more juice than you can believe,you could tell everywhere i had been because there were big blotches everywhere
i had to cut back on saturday mornings when all the do-it-yourself ladies came in to get landscape timbers or 1x2's cut up,nobody enjoyed working in the yard,everyone wanted to be doing something else.
everybody in mckinney hung out on parking lots,either drive -in fast food places or businesses that were closed,or on the parking lot of the ice cream plant,which was across the street from a drive in,and you could jockey back and forth across the street.mckinney was dry,but beer drinking on the lots went on,but the cops would start hassling people after about 10,so we would hit the open fields that someone's folks might own
convience stores use to sell welders caps,the polka dot or striped ones made out of duck material,i wore the later,i had long hair,and looking back i must have looked like a clown with that short brim and all that hair sticking out
well there was a guy about 25 that hung out at the drive-in i frequented with my buddies,and we had had a few beers,he was trying to impress the ladies and was wrestling around with everyone.i had a big jaw full of tobacco and was having a good time,he came over and started wanting to wrestle so i messed around a little bit,and somehow i slung him down on his knees,heck i thought we were playing,so i didn't think nothing of it.
i was laughing and up he comes and grabs me around the throat and starts choking me,at first i thought he would turn lose,but soon with a mouth full of juice starting to slide dowm my throat i knew he wasn't playing,i was real uncomfortable and my mind raced as to what i should do,i could feel panic set in,and then i started getting desperate,i only remember that feeling one other time,it was when an older kid held my head under water at the public swimming pool and wouldn't let me up,i found the energy to knock his hand away and get to the surface gasping,i don't mind telling you even as a kid if i could have found some pipe i woild have beat him with it.
well as my mind raced i finally got pissed,grabbed his shirt,and with all my might slammed him to the asphalt,i then stumbled away to gather myself and spit tthe tobacco and juice out,and to gasp for air,nobody was paying attention and i was a little bit pissed that my buddies didn't get the son of gun off me, i went back to where he was and a bunch of hollering ensued,and the manager came out and broke things up.
i can't tell you the relief i felt getting his hands off my throat,i found out later he had been in a car wreck and had had plastic surgery to repair his face,he became enraged when i knocked him down by accident,only i didn't know it.
i learned a lesson that night,don't play fight to much,some people like to play,but when they get the short end,they don't like it,avoid situations where your not a part of the clique,and never get in a wrestling match with a mouthfull of tobacco juice
.
i had about 600 dollars saved up and so on weekends when i wasn't working the dad would take me out looking for cars all over dallas,ft.worth or arlington and i would look at the individual ads in the papers,but with the dad,i knew i'd never get a car from a lot because in his mind used car dealers were all crooks and wanted to much for what they had.i came close to getting a 65 falcon with a 289 and a 4 speed but it didn't work out.
i was getting aggravated and impatient and me and the dad would jaw back and forth a little,but i finally found a 66 malibu with a column shift 3 speed and 283,it had some nice low tone glasspacks and was candy apple red,the guy that owned it had taken good care of it.he said he hated to git rid of it but had an expanding family and needed money,and he wanted the person who bought it to take care of it also.
he wanted 725.00,i had 625.00,my heart kind of sunk,the dad was a decent mechanic,he worked on aircraft in the service and tore down a model -t he got for a bicycle when he was 12.he said this is about as good a car as you'll find and i'll tell you what,me and your momma will give you the difference.man,was i happy,i drove it home that day,new found freedom around the bend,no more borrowing one of my parents car.
well as my senior year started i needed every credit to graduate,and the stocking late night at the grocery store till 2 o'clock in the morning about 3 nights a week was making it hard for me to get to my first period class.so my D.E. teacher suggested i get a different job,and he had one in mind,where i would work daytime hours.
man i hated the idea of leaving the stocking job,i'd busted tail sacking to look good so i'd get the stocking job,and it paid 40 cents more an hour.well,he sent me to the local lumber and hardware store to talk to the owner about working there,it was going to be a pay cut,and i would only be getting about 24 hours a week,where i had been working about 33 hours.
well,the parents had always bugged all us kids to get a high school education,only my black sheep brother didn't,so the writing was on the wall,i quit the grocery store and went to work at the lumber yard.
well,what a change,i went from the big dog senior stock boy,who was now looking down on the junior and sophmore sack boys from whence i came to working with guys going to college,all older and bigger than me,one had gotten out of the air force and was doing the g.i. bill thing and had children,the other two had gone to the high school i was,and were only about three years older.
i had to get a commercial license,which at that time in texas you could take your test in a 3/4 ton pickup,no problem there.so i made deliveries in the pickups and the flat beds with the lift beds that i think were 2 or 21/2 ton,you just went to the build site and dumped the order you usually pulled.we hand delivered all sheetrock bought at the yard,we counted the studs in each room and left the appropriate amount in each room.i occasionally drove to the west side of dallas to pick up shakes and wood shingles from a supplier and man you could never get the dang things tied down good,i just knew that i was going to lose a load of them on the highway.
well,i ain't braggin',but hauling sheetrock,loading brick mortar and sackcrete bags put some muscle on my 5'9 and 146 pound butt,not only that two of the college guys were always using me for wrestling practice,and i always came out on the short end.
well,my birthday was jan.14,and texas lowered the drinking age from 21 to 18 on jan. 1,1974,so for the last half of my senior year i was a legal drinker and i took full advantage of it.i didn't grow up in lewisville,so on weekend i headed the 28 miles to my old hometown to party and hang out with my friends that i had pretty much grew up with.
i had smoked and inhaled cigarettes from the time i was 12,but i developed an allergy or something at this time and every time i smoked one i got light headed,so i decided to quit and to ease off i started chewing pouch tobacco to get me through.
it's a good thing i worked outside because that pouch tobacco created more juice than you can believe,you could tell everywhere i had been because there were big blotches everywhere
i had to cut back on saturday mornings when all the do-it-yourself ladies came in to get landscape timbers or 1x2's cut up,nobody enjoyed working in the yard,everyone wanted to be doing something else.everybody in mckinney hung out on parking lots,either drive -in fast food places or businesses that were closed,or on the parking lot of the ice cream plant,which was across the street from a drive in,and you could jockey back and forth across the street.mckinney was dry,but beer drinking on the lots went on,but the cops would start hassling people after about 10,so we would hit the open fields that someone's folks might own
convience stores use to sell welders caps,the polka dot or striped ones made out of duck material,i wore the later,i had long hair,and looking back i must have looked like a clown with that short brim and all that hair sticking out
well there was a guy about 25 that hung out at the drive-in i frequented with my buddies,and we had had a few beers,he was trying to impress the ladies and was wrestling around with everyone.i had a big jaw full of tobacco and was having a good time,he came over and started wanting to wrestle so i messed around a little bit,and somehow i slung him down on his knees,heck i thought we were playing,so i didn't think nothing of it.
i was laughing and up he comes and grabs me around the throat and starts choking me,at first i thought he would turn lose,but soon with a mouth full of juice starting to slide dowm my throat i knew he wasn't playing,i was real uncomfortable and my mind raced as to what i should do,i could feel panic set in,and then i started getting desperate,i only remember that feeling one other time,it was when an older kid held my head under water at the public swimming pool and wouldn't let me up,i found the energy to knock his hand away and get to the surface gasping,i don't mind telling you even as a kid if i could have found some pipe i woild have beat him with it.
well as my mind raced i finally got pissed,grabbed his shirt,and with all my might slammed him to the asphalt,i then stumbled away to gather myself and spit tthe tobacco and juice out,and to gasp for air,nobody was paying attention and i was a little bit pissed that my buddies didn't get the son of gun off me, i went back to where he was and a bunch of hollering ensued,and the manager came out and broke things up.
i can't tell you the relief i felt getting his hands off my throat,i found out later he had been in a car wreck and had had plastic surgery to repair his face,he became enraged when i knocked him down by accident,only i didn't know it.
i learned a lesson that night,don't play fight to much,some people like to play,but when they get the short end,they don't like it,avoid situations where your not a part of the clique,and never get in a wrestling match with a mouthfull of tobacco juice
.
My brothers and I used to do the same thing with boxing gloves. Then one day my one brother and I started hitting each other a little too hard. We kinda stood there glaring at each other not knowing what to do next.