San Antonio..Trinity University...College, Religion, ROTC and the Draft

Trinity Campus

Let me first say that some of my friends who read this will not like it, others who know me and lived through the mid 60's to early 70's will understand...to the rest, it's just a story. If you were a male, between 18 and 26 during the height of the Vietnam conflict then you had a lot on your mind. Mostly that you were going into military service one way or another....either by joining up or being drafted. If you were "normal", healthy and hadn't been convicted of a major crime...you were going to be drafted, PERIOD. The only way to delay the draft was to stay in school....as long as you were in college and passing, you could avoid the draft but once you graduated, you went straight to the top of the list. There were other ways of legally staying out of the draft but it's a complicated discussion and would take to long to explain. The draft could be dodged by illegally hiding from it by running away and living "underground" or you could flee to Canada or Mexico to avoid it. Was I a "draft dodger"...I guess in the strictest definition of the term, I was....I avoided the draft but staying in college. I basically turned a four year degree into seven years...mostly because of the draft but also because of other mitigating circumstances. My job and my mindset at the time was to do everything possible within the system and legal to avoid being drafted. But as proved by one of my earlier blogs....when all else failed and it was definite that I would be drafted....I would go and do my duty.

OK, I graduated from high school in May of 1964...I was already attending Trinity University during my Senior year in high school and all summer of 1964. I entered Trinity in August of 1964 as a second semester freshman and that put me miles ahead of the true incoming freshmen. Life was pretty good at Trinity, at least for the first year. I was in college, I had a nice car, I had a small job (I'll discuss that later), I had money, my grades were ok and things were cooking right along.....AND I WAS STAYING OUT OF THE DRAFT!!

Trinity was a private Methodist University. It was supported by the Methodist Church. It was also one of the top private schools in the country. Because Trinity was essentially a private church school...it demanded that EVERY student take two years of religion to graduate. A degree from Trinity would afford you the ability to write your own ticket in life, especially in Texas. Because Trinity was a private school....it was VERY expensive...certainly much more costly than the state schools. Back then, and still today, the thought was the pricier the college, the better education you could get and the better job waiting for you at graduation. I mention this because many, if not most students came from very wealthy families. My family was upper middle class but a far distance from being "wealthy".....especially Texas wealthy. The reason I mention this is that it sets the stage for some of my friendships and the easy access to lots of distractions.

Trinity was also a school that offered ROTC on campus....this stood for Reserve Officer Training Corp. Since Trinity was a private school, they could get government money by offering ROTC. The government would pay Trinity a set amount of money per male student who took ROTC. At Trinity, ROTC was NOT an elective...it was MANDATORY that every male student took ROTC the first two years. By doing this, Trinity was able to maximize the money the government would pay them. ROTC was becoming a flash point all over the country. The "anti war" crowd was looking for anything to criticize or demonize to further help them organize the "students" or young people against the conflict in Vietnam. The total mobilization against the war would not culminate until roughly 1967 into 1968.

OK, here I was...in a college that made me take religion AND be forced to take ROTC. I was certainly having my struggles with religion and I was certainly not wanting to be trained for war by having to take ROTC. Do you see the conflict here....a church school supporting the war effort...I really started struggling with this real life oxymoron.

I was a good student making very good grades. I was smart, articulate, had a pretty good personality and had an opinion on everything and not really afraid to voice it. I also liked my freedom....at this stage in my life, I was at the point of knowing that nobody was going to tell me what to do or how to do it. Not my parents, not my elders, not my superiors, not teachers or police or anybody else who thought they had authority over me. Was I heading for disaster...yes I was and at a million miles per hour!! As discussed earlier, my upbringing was very liberal and basically I got away with just about everything.

I decided that I would rebel at Trinity by taking on the two sacred cows....religion and ROTC. Both the religion and the ROTC courses were pass/fail.....no grades were given and they did not affect your GPA or grade point average. Knowing this to be the case, I decided to play the devil's advocate in my religion classes and just be an overall asshole in my ROTC classes. Who cared anyway!! I won't go into everything but I challenged the religion professor on almost every point he was trying to make. I just took the opposite position whether it was my true beliefs or not. I was labeled an Agnostic or better yet, an Atheist..I didn't care...at least I was making other students think. Needless to say, I failed the course (all three semesters) but they couldn't kick me out because they were getting money from the Methodist Church. As for ROTC, a friend of mine who thought a whole lot like me, decided that we would try to set the record for the total number of demerits we could get in one semester. A demerit is....

Noun

1.

demerit - a mark against a person for misconduct or failure; usually given in school or armed forces; "ten demerits and he loses his privileges"

The upper classmen who were taking ROTC seriously were usually the Sargents or Captains or Lieutenants and they were the ones dishing out  the punishments (demerits) for doing something that was "against orders".  I would get demerits for not cleaning my brass, for not spit shining my shoes, for not cleaning my weapon and for just about every other thing I was told to do and didn't. Needless to say, we did set the record for the most demerits and were proud of it...and needless to say, I failed all three semesters I took ROTC. But again, they had to keep me in class because they were getting money from the government for me being there.

During my third semester at Trinity...I hooked up with some buddies who were more looking for a good time than to get a quality education. Again, needless to say...my grades dropped and at the end of my third semester...I was kicked out of school. This was now the summer of 1965 and was about to loose my college draft deferment. If I didn't find another school to take me in, I would be drafted so in the summer of 1965, I enrolled at SAC or San Antonio College. Even though I flunked out of Trinity (they had higher standards), I still had pretty good grades and was able to enroll at SAC. I dodged a bullet. Trinity had informed the draft board (which they were required to do) that I had flunked out so my draft status was changed from a 1-S (student deferment) to a 1-A (available for the draft). Thank goodness for government bureaucracy. By the time the draft board got the notification that I flunked out of Trinity, SAC had sent them a notice that I was a full time student and was classified as 1-S. This would become a valuable lesson to learn and I was going to manipulate the system as long as I could. Yes, it would catch up with me in the near future.

I am going to list the different types of draft deferments because I would get to know them well and it gives a better understanding to future blogs.

1-A=available for the draft
1-S=student deferment
1-Y=available only during declared war (remember, Vietnam was not declared war)..this was also used as
         a medical deferment as I was about to learn
2-A=deferred because of a critical job...I would come to know this one too.

There were a lot of other deferments but they didn't effect me so I won't go into them. I recently read a statistic that said over 60% of all eligible males that were available for the draft between 1965 and 1972...never served because of the deferment system.

I think I will end here.....I will start my next blog at San Antonio College in the summer of 1965.

San Antonio (6/63 to 8/64)...my Senior year...MacArthur HS

My senior year was very much unlike most kid's senior year. As I mentioned before, I was pulled out of 11th grade with a week or two to go. My dad was hired by Ford and immediately  relocated to San Antonio Texas from Baltimore Maryland.

We moved into our beautiful home in San Antonio around June of 1963. It was summertime in Texas and that was going to take some getting use to. The great thing was that this house was big and had a huge in-ground pool in the back yard. My bedroom had sliding glass doors leading out to the huge covered deck that lead straight to the pool. It was many a time I walked out of my bedroom and straight into the pool for a late night swim. I used the pool a lot but no where near how much my sister used it. She always had the greatest tan!!

Anyway, I went to register  for my senior year at MacArthur High School. I went into the counselor's office with all my school records. This is where I found out that an East Coast education was a bit ahead of a Southwest education. When the counselor added up all my credits through the 11th grade...it was found that I already had all the credits and the courses to graduate from a Texas high school with the exception of one......TEXAS HISTORY. Yes, it is a law in Texas that ALL high school seniors MUST take Texas history to graduate.

It was then that I found out I had some options as a senior. I had to be in home room by 8am every morning to be counted as having attended that day. This was important to the school because they got federal money based on the number of students who showed up every day. My next class from 8:30-9:30am was Texas history. GUESS WHAT...after that, I was legally able to leave school......BUT, I was given some options. I could leave at 9:30 to go to a job (I wasn't about to choose that option!!), or I could take a couple of advanced classes and leave at noon or I could enroll in college early and take some freshman classes so that I would be ahead of the game when college actually did begin for me.

I decided to take advanced Chemistry and advanced Spanish (living in San Antonio, I thought the ability to speak a little Spanish would come in handy..especially with some of those beautiful Mexican girls!!) and leave high school at 11:30. I then enrolled at Trinity University to take 3 classes in the afternoon. These were freshman classes and these, combined with classes I took the summer before college gave me a good head start. I entered Trinity my freshman year as a second semester freshman....a big deal back then. More on Trinity later.

My senior year at high school was not all that eventful. Of course, leaving at 11:30 didn't allow a lot of time to make a lot of friends. Yes, I went to all my high school events, always looked forward to Friday night for pep rally's and football games. MacArthur HS was a powerhouse in sports back then and every football game was a huge event. The big deal was that I had my own car which most seniors did not. I had a huge amount of freedom and basically came and went as I pleased. My dad joined Canyon Creek Country Club so I was able to continue playing golf and was getting better and better.

The only thing that really sticks in my mind during my senior year is that I helped organize what was called senior skip day. That was a day that all the seniors would skip classes and head to Canyon Lake for a day of debauchery and other assorted activities. I had one of the cars so I volunteered to drive. Well, the administration got wind of it and made an announcement that any senior that was caught participating in senior skip day would not be able to attend graduation and have it noted on our "permanent record" (big woop!!). Well, that scared off a lot but there was still this hard core and we decided to go anyway. There were about 30 of us (out of a class of about 1200) that decided to go, no matter what. We knew that they would not enforce their threat. We went, had a great time and everybody was swimming, drinking beer or something else and just kicking back. Then, all of a sudden we see this school bus coming down the road...it was our chemistry teacher (and school bus driver), coming to pick us all up and take us back to school. He also had two of the high school security guards with him, making sure we would all comply and get on the bus. He made those of us who drove, leave our cars at the lake just as a form of punishment. Well, we got a tongue lashing and some of the kids got detention but since I was not a full time student, all the punishment did not apply to me. Yes, I eventually got my car and we all attended our graduation in May of 1964!!

It was certainly not your average senior year experience.

San Antonio (part 1)....the end of a presidency and the beginnings of chaos!

Well, our journey has brought us to San Antonio Texas....a real culture shock for a kid who was brought up on the East coast!. We arrive early summer of 1963. I was pulled out of the 11th grade in Lutherville/Timonium Maryland just weeks before the end of school. I will be discussing my enrollment into MacArthur High School and the interesting things that happened to me in my Senior year in later posts.

But first, I need to touch on maybe the most significant event of the 20th Century and the event that would be the beginnings of 7 years of total chaos both for me and our Country. That of course was the assassination of John F. Kennedy on Friday November 22, 1963.

I have always been a healthy kid.....never ever missing a day of school because of illness or accident. I think I even got gold stars for my attendance. But that was about to change. Friday November 22, 1963...I woke up feeling really bad. I got up and started to get ready for school but I felt so bad that I told my mom that I thought I needed to stay home. I really wanted to go to school because our high school football team was playing a big game that night against Robert E Lee....our crosstown rival!!. I didn't want to miss the pep rally and all the fun stuff we did before these big games but I was so sick....I just fell back into bed.

Around noon, I turned on the TV....yes, I had a TV in my room and was starting to watch the local news. Well, as we all know....a bulletin came on saying President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. I thought it was a joke at first but the more the news played, the more it became real. Remember, we are in San Antonio, just 5 hours south of Dallas. I called out to my mom who was in the kitchen making me lunch. I yelled at her to come into my bedroom.....I think the President had been shot!! She rushed in and sat on the end of the bed and we both watched the TV until it was confirmed that yes, he had been shot and yes, he had died. I noticed that my mom was crying and I really thought to myself...why would my mother cry over something like this. My mother was not a crier. She got up and quietly walked out of my room. I heard her dialing the phone....she was calling my dad. You know, it's funny but I don't even remember my dad being around during any of the next four days. He may have been traveling, I just don't remember.

Well, like everyone else in America, I stayed glued to the TV. For the next four days, I did nothing but watch TV. I liked NBC, so that's the network I watched. Even then, NBC was a liberal network and yes, I was noticing stuff like that. I was a very aware teenager....maybe to aware in retrospect!!  So anyway...I watched all day Saturday and into Sunday. I watched live, as Lee Harvey Oswald what shot dead on live TV.....talk about your reality show. I saw Jack Ruby get wrestled to the ground and eventually hauled off by the Texas Rangers. Those were heady times and the world was changing. This was just the opening salvo. I watched the funeral on Monday and by that time, I had forgotten about my flu...the football game was canceled so I really didn't miss anything and we were back to school on Tuesday.

This memory is probably the most vivid one I have.....I can remember everything. I guess it is for everybody who was around that day and witnessed it all happening live.

Well, life goes on and Johnson was made President. No small coincidence that Lyndon Johnson was from Texas....just sayin'!!

Baltimore (part three)...guns, the Colts and Don Shula and heading to Texas!

OK, we are continuing on with some of my memories of living in Baltimore. We actually lived in Lutherville/Timonium, about 30 minutes north from downtown Baltimore by expressway. My dad was managing a business that was down by the wharf, not such a nice place back in those days (mid 61' to mid 63'). He had a unique burglar alarm system set up for the business. Since he was very knowledgeable about electronics, he had a special alarm set up. He had the regular alarm that would notify the police when something was happening. This alarm was not much different from what we are use to today. When a break in occurred, the alarm bells would go off and the nearest police station would be alerted. The only problem was that his business was located in a very tough neighborhood and the police were always busy with something more important than small time break in's. Of course, my dad did not look at them as small time. He had one of his technicians rig up a second alarm at our house so when the burglar alarm was tripped, a bell would also go off at our house. I really don't know how he did that back then but he did.....certainly not a big deal today. 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Here is where it gets interesting, at least to me. My dad had both a pistol and a shotgun in the front hallway closet. When that bell went off, usually at night (and not to often, thank goodness), he would grab the guns and a bag of ammunition. He and I ran to his car, he drove. My dad was a fast driver anyway so just any excuse would set him off. Anyway, it was my job during the drive to load the guns (my mother would not allow loaded guns in the house) and have them ready for him when we got to his building. Once we arrived, he would stick the pistol in his pants and carry the shotgun. Sometimes the police were there before us and sometimes not. If they were, he would unlock the front door, turn off the alarm and let the police do the search...usually with a dog. If the police did not arrive before us, he would turn off the alarm, put me next to the phone with some numbers ready to call, grab a big flashlight and head into the warehouse part of the building. For a 16 year old, this could not have been more exciting. I really learned the affects of adrenalin on my body back in those days. I swear, if he could, he would have shot anything that moved in that building but it never happened. Usually, if there was somebody in the building, the loud alarm bell would go off and scare them away. There was only one time that I remember the police catching a person. They got there before we did but we did get to see the police lead this guy out from the building all bloody. The police had turned two dogs loose and once the dogs found the bad guy, the police were in no hurry to call the dogs off. Just a little street justice before the bad guy was hauled off. The police were sending a message to the neighborhood!! Nothing like bonding with your father at 80 mph and two loaded guns. Oh well.

My dad was friends with the owner of the Baltimore Colts back then (I don't know how they met but I'm sure it was through the DuPont family my dad worked for).The owner was Carroll Rosenbloom. We got to see a few Colts games but the real memory here was that my dad became friends with Johnny Unitas, the quarterback for the Colts at the time. Johnny Unitas owned a few bowling alleys around the Baltimore area called The Colt Lanes and he had one in Towson, a town next to where we lived. I was looking for a part time job and I guess my dad said something to Mr. Unitas and the next thing I knew, I was working in one of Johnny Unitas' bowling alleys. How cool was that!! I did all kinds of stuff but it was mainly just cleaning up, sorting bowling shoes, getting the bowlers beers (something I was NOT suppose to do) and stuff like that BUT I did get to bowl for free and even got a few lessons from the pro who was working at the same alley. By the time I made it to San Antonio, I was both a pretty good golfer and a pretty good bowler...two sports that would come in handy in my later life.

The last thing I will mention is that we were getting ready to move to San Antonio Texas (I will write much more about this in future blogs) and my mom and dad had to put our house up for sale. As mentioned before this was a very large house, in a great area and I'm sure was pretty expensive. I could have cared less about that kind of stuff back then. Remember, my dad's connection with the Baltimore Colts. The Colts were looking to hire a new coach and they were interviewing Don Shula.Don Shula and his wife were in Baltimore for the interview while our house was on the market. I remember that the Realtor called and told my dad that the Colts had just called her and Don Shula and his wife wanted to have a viewing of our house. I remember my dad and mom being excited to meet him. Anyway, I do not remember being there but the showing took place, my parents met the Shula's and as I remember, they did not buy the house. If you do not know who Don Shula is, here is a little from his Wikipedia posting.

Early coaching career

Shula's first coaching position was as a defensive backs coach at the University of Virginia in 1958 where he coached under head coach Dick Voris. He stayed for one season before moving on to the same position at the University of Kentucky in 1959 where he coached under head coach Blanton Collier. In 1960, Shula entered the NFL as defensive coordinator of the Detroit Lions.

Shula played under both Paul Brown and Weeb Ewbank, a Brown disciple, who is also in the Hall of Fame. After Ewbank left the Baltimore Colts to coach the New York Jets in 1963, Shula was hired by Colts' owner Carroll Rosenbloom to coach Baltimore. Shula's hiring was controversial because he was thought to be too young at only age 33.

Shula took the controls and led the Colts to an 8–6 record in 1963. He was successful, compiling a 71–23–4 record in seven seasons with Baltimore, but he was just 2–3 in the postseason, including two losses in championship games in which the Colts were heavy favorites, the 1964 NFL championship game won by the Browns 27–0 and Super Bowl III, the game in which Joe Namath of the New York Jets guaranteed and delivered a victory.

The 1965 team lost a special tie-breaker playoff game in overtime against the Green Bay Packers while using running back Tom Matte at quarterback because of injuries to Johnny Unitas and his backups. The 1967 team failed to make the playoffs despite a regular season record of 11–1–2, losing the Coastal Division on a tiebreaker due to an 0–1–1 record vs. the Los Angeles Rams. The Colts' only loss was a 34–10 setback to the Rams at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on the final Sunday of the season.

When I think about it, I feel a little bit like Forrest Gump.....always being around famous people and events but never directly involved with them. There are so many famous and near famous people my parents knew and my sister and I were always exposed to them in one way or another. I will have to say that my mom and dad really did live interesting lives and they remembered to include their children when they could! I really wish I was a bit older back then so I could have been more involved with my parents social life!!

Well, a new and very important chapter in my life (and my sister's too) is about to begin. Ford Motor Company bought the business that my dad was running for the DuPont family and had a very important position open up in Texas. Ford changed the name of the company to Ford Aeronutronic and asked my dad to move to Houston Texas for reasons I will blog about later (or see below) but my dad refused to live in Houston and told Ford that if they truly wanted him in Texas, they would have to let him live in San Antonio. I guess Ford wanted him bad enough because they let him live in San Antonio.

Here is what Wikipedia says about Ford Aeronutronic....

Aeronutronic was a defense and space related division of Ford Motor Company set up in 1956. In 1961 Ford purchased Philco and merged the two companies in 1963. Aeronutronic provided major support for the development of Project Space Track. Philco Aeronutronic became NASA's primary communications equipment vendor during the 1960s, also building the consoles in the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. Many portions of the Philco side of the company were sold off in the 1970s and 80s, until in 1975 all that was left was the original Aeronutronic divisions. These were renamed Ford Aerospace and Communications Corporation in December 1976, and then again to Ford Aerospace Corporation in January 1988. In October 1990 what remained was sold to Loral to become Loral Aeronutronic, before eventually disappearing when Loral was purchased by Lockheed Martin in 1997.

My dad, going to work for Ford was interesting because of the history of the Howe family and the Ford Motor Company. You see, my father's father (my grandfather) was friends with Henry Ford and opened up one of the first Ford dealerships in the state of Ohio. I wish I knew a lot more about that time in our family history but I don't. I do know rumors and family stories but I don't know them as fact so I don't want to publish them. What I do know for a fact is that my Grandfather lost his dealership during the depression.

Well, we are moving to San Antonio. We get there in the summer of 1963 (the summer before my senior year). We stayed in San Antonio from 1963 to about 1970 or when I was 17 to 24. BOY, DID MY LIFE TAKE ON A NEW DIRECTION!!!!! If you were 17 to 24 during this time....you will know exactly what I mean. I will be able to write volumes about these seven years....some good, some bad but all interesting.
You couldn't cram any more history into 7 years as what was seen from November 1963 to mid 1970.

THE WORLD WAS ABOUT TO CHANGE!!

Baltimore (part two)...a dog, another dog and a bird

Well, I am continuing on with my memories of living in Baltimore. If you read the last blog, then you know that I have absolutely no memories of going to school even though I went to Dulaney Valley High School for both my 10th and 11th grade years. I don't remember any friends that I might have played with and I don't really remember a lot about our time there. I do have strong memories of the following.

Pharaoh, my sister and my mom

Like all families, we had pets. The first pet I remember was a Basset Hound named Pharaoh. We had Pharaoh in Wilmington. He was an indoor/outdoor type of dog. I don't remember playing with him much. I think he was really my dad's dog. What I do remember was that dog really smelled and slobbered all over the place. I don't think that is so unusual because I think the smell and slobbering comes with the breed. Anyway, I remember Pharaoh being a good dog that never bothered anybody. My parents would let him out to do is business and he usually came back home in a very short time. Pharaoh died while we were in Wilmington and I remember that my dad said that he was poisoned by a neighbor (Pharaoh was probably using this neighbor's yard to poop). I don't remember the exact time that he died but I do remember my dad being really upset. I don't remember how my mom felt one way or the other.

George

After Pharaoh, we got a miniature French Poodle as a pet. His name was George.  I can't remember if we got him in Wilmington or Baltimore but he turned out to be a great dog. I think my mom liked him a whole lot more than Pharaoh mainly because the dog didn't smell or slobber. I do remember that George barked a lot. Anytime anyone would ring the doorbell, that dog would go into hysterics. As George got older (in San Antonio), not only would he bark at guests at our front door...he would always greet them by peeing out in the open somewhere. I think that was his way of marking his territory. I also remember that George always smelled good. I think that after our first dog, my mom would spray her perfume all over him...and why not, he was a French Poodle!! George eventually died in Oklahoma City. I don't really remember when.

I have to mention one more pet we had while we were in Baltimore. Most families have dogs and cats but not many families have birds. Leave it to my dad to come up with something unusual. One day he brought home a Myna bird. I am going to refer to a Wikipedia description of what a Myna bird is and why not every family on the block has one. I think that was the appeal to my dad.

Henry....Dirty Bird

The myna is a bird of the starling family. This is a group of passerine birds which occur naturally only in southern and eastern Asia. Several species have been introduced to areas like North America, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, especially the Common Myna which is often regarded as an invasive species.
Mynas are not a natural group; instead, the term myna is used for any starling in India and surrounding areas, regardless of their relationships. This range was colonized twice during the evolution of starlings, first by rather ancestral starlings related to the Coleto and Aplonis lineages, and millions of years later by birds related to the Common Starling and Wattled Starling's ancestors. These two groups of mynas can be distinguished in the more terrestrial adaptions of the latter, which usually also have less glossy plumage except on the heads and longer tails. The Bali Myna which is nearly extinct in the wild is highly distinctive.
Some mynas are considered talking birds, for their ability to reproduce sounds, including human speech, when in captivity.

Read that last line again...."some mynas are considered TALKING BIRDS.....YES, a f**king TALKING bird. Was my dad nuts! Well, he didn't think so. This bird cost a fortune and I'm sure that my mom expressed her feelings about this bird the first chance she got. My guess is that my mom probably withheld some favors over this bird, giving my dad more time to train it. It was noisy, messy, pooped everywhere and was able to throw it's birdseed out of the cage and all over the floor. BUT IT COULD TALK!!! This bird was going to be the life of all my dad's future parties!!

OK, now we have this bird that has the ability to talk....all my dad needed to do was spend time teaching the bird words. Well, you can see where this is headed. First, my dad named this bird HENRY...yes, Henry. Don't ask me why...we have no idea. The first thing the bird learned was his name...his first sentence was "Henry is a dirty bird"...so when you walked into the room...the first thing you would hear was..."Henry is a dirty bird". Then Henry learned the "wolf whistle" and that bird knew pretty women because it would only whistle at the pretty ones...not really sure how my dad taught that bird NOT to whistle at the ugly ones. I remember thinking at the time that my dad did not have time to help me with my homework but he found plenty of time to teach this bird to talk. I swear, if he could have....he would have taught the bird to smoke and drink too!!

Other things that bird could say were...."shut the front door", "Henry looks like the devil", a variety of dirty words and a few more phrases. Henry was building a huge vocabulary. Henry was very good at picking up words and phrases and one phrase would cause his downfall. My mom would always be calling her dog, George...the Poodle...remember him. Well, my mom called that dog so much, Henry picked up the phrase, "here George", here George" and started repeating it all the time. Henry would start calling out "Here George, Here George" and of course the dog thought it was my mom calling so it would go running into the room where the bird was, looking for my mom but not finding her. This happened over and over and that poor dog was run ragged by that bird calling him all the time.

Well, the inevitable happened. We don't know exactly how it happened  but our guess is that while we were away....Henry, the bird started calling George the dog and the dog finally had its fill of being fooled because when we got home, we found the bird had strangled it's self between the wires on the cage. My guess is that George, the dog, got up on the table where the cage was sitting and literally scared the bird to death. Needless to say, we did NOT replace the bird.

Baltimore Maryland...A Strange Stop during my Cosmic Journey

We lived about where the red dot is

My dad in the parking lot of the Baltimore business.."cool dude"

OK, we have left Wilmington Delaware in the rear view mirror and are now in Baltimore Maryland (to be accurate...Lutherville/Timonium). This would have been mid-1961 to mid-1963. I would have been 15 to 17 years old during this time. My dad did such a great job in Wilmington that the DuPont family I spoke of decided to expand to Baltimore and they put my dad in charge of getting the business up and running.

I left some good memories in Wilmington, especially my girlfriend. As mentioned before, her parents allowed her to come and visit us in Baltimore. She would come by bus and we would drive into Baltimore to pick her up. It was only about 100 miles from Wilmington to Baltimore. This happened two or three times but things cooled, as they will do when you are 14 and little by little the boyfriend/girlfriend thing died away. We wrote to each other for awhile but that died away too. As they say, you will never forget your first and I don't.

My Dulaney Valley HS picture

Baltimore was a strange stop in my cosmic journey. I have memories but they are of specific things. I have absolutely NO memory of going to school and you would think I would since it was my 10th and 11th grade years. How strange is that. I found myself in the Dulaney Valley High School yearbook but I have no memory of going there, no real memory of any friends, no memory of attending any classes....it is the oddest thing.

Our house was just above the Hwy 146 oval above the red finish button

The fishing cabin

The Lake not 10 minutes from our house

Lock Raven from the air

The fishing boats you could rent on Lock Raven

Since I don't have any real memories of school, I will hit on some others that I do have. The first is Lock Raven Reservoir. My dad did not want to live in Baltimore proper. He wanted to live where there were good schools (which I don't remember) and a neighborhood that was safe. Baltimore was getting kinda iffy if you know what I mean. As mentioned, we lived in Lutherville/Timonium in Dulaney Valley. Not 10 minutes from our house (by bike) was Lock Raven Reservoir. Here, I could rent a little boat...head out to the middle of the lake and go fishing....something I remember doing a lot. There was also a very nice country club out there that my dad joined. He was also still a member of Kennett Square Country Club but that was now about an hour away. I just remember hanging out at the fishing lodge and talking to the owners and the fishermen that were coming and going. I also remember going with my dad to play golf. If he had a foursome of adults, I would just drive the cart, but if it was just him and me...he would continue my golf lessons.

Our boat and house in background

The Sunfish sailboat I learned on

Since we were so close to the reservoir and also had access to a summer cabin on the Severn River...my dad decided to buy a small boat. I think we all knew that he was never really going to use it but he bought it anyway. I do have some great memories of that boat and also some bad memories. I have more memories of that boat after we moved to Texas, but that's for later blogs. We had the best time taking that boat to the cabin, launching it into the Severn River and heading for the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay....right in front of the US Navel Academy in Annapolis Maryland, just about 5 miles from where our cabin was. We would do our fishing and crabbing right there. The crabbing was excellent. We would catch a couple bushel baskets of crabs, put them in a cooler and head back to the cabin and have a crab bake with all the neighbors. My dad was still the social butterfly and knew everybody. He would make a few phone calls and by the time we got back to the cabin, there would be bunches of people waiting for the crab bake and beer drinking party. My mom was still social but not as much as she had been while in Washington DC. I also remember taking our boat right up to the boat docks at Annapolis, tie up and walk the grounds. The Navel Cadets would meet us, make sure we tied the boat up securely and then watch the boat for us until we returned....I think that was part of their training. I'm pretty sure you couldn't do that today. I also learned to sail while we lived in Baltimore. Our next door neighbor on the Severn River had a small sail boat and he would take me and his daughter out into the calm part of the Chesapeake Bay and teach us how to sail. Boy, did we have a great time. I learned to sail a small sailboat called the Sunfish and I thought I was in hog heaven!! I also really remember his daughter's two piece bikini. She was my age and was really filling out. She and I had a really good time sailing the little boat up and down the river and talking to all the neighbors on both sides.
Before I leave the memories about the boat...I have to mention that my dad and I went to Power Squadron school together. That was an organization that taught new boat owners how to handle a boat correctly. That was fun and one of the better memories of my father and I doing something together.

This would become my car but it was the blue of the convertible

I will talk about one final thing. It was about time for me to get my drivers license and at the same time, my dad was buying another new car. He was always a Buick fan but he knew a guy that could get him a Chevrolet at a real good price. He bought a blue 1960 Chevy Impala two door. I didn't know it at the time but that would become my car as soon as we moved to San Antonio. I have included two pictures of the 1960 Impala. The convertible you see was the exact color so use you imagination and put that color on the picture of the hard top and you will get an idea of what my first car looked like. I needed to get my license so I had to start learning to drive. I remember my dad taking me out to a parking lot on a Sunday morning to teach me to drive. I do find the humor that he was teaching me on a Sunday morning while all the while swearing at me for every mistake I would make (my favorite was...."Goddamn it, you're going to kill us both")....the beers in the car didn't help. Apparently he thought he needed to bring some beer along during my lesson to give him the courage to ride with me. My mother was really the one who taught me to drive. She was sick and tired of my dad coming home after one of my lessons and being pissed off the rest of the day, so she decided to take over. The day of my test, I had to go to downtown Baltimore to take the test. My mother refused to go because she really didn't like downtown Baltimore. In those days, it was dirty and very unsafe. Anyway my dad drove me down to the testing station and I passed both the written and driving tests with flying colors. We headed out to the car and I headed to the passenger side and my dad said, what do you think your doing. You just got your license so you drive home and give the old man a break. I got in and started up and the next thing I remember was that my dad had me getting onto the the expressway at rush hour in Baltimore Maryland, driving towards home. I was scared shitless, I didn't have that many hours of driving experience under my belt and now he had me out there with thousands of cars driving 70+ MPH. I wanted to pee so bad that I almost let it go, I was scared so bad, but I got home and when I pulled in the driveway, I felt so good that I had really accomplished something.

Well, I'll stop here for today but in the next blog, I will remember George, our Poodle,..... Henry, our Mynah bird, Johnny Unitas and bowling, and a few other memories that made my short stay in Baltimore interesting!!

Wilmington...final thoughts before we move on to Baltimore Maryland

                                                                                                                                                                          Well, I've talked about some of the main memories that Wilmington Delaware left me with. I did a lot of growing up in Wilmington....we were there about 6 years so I was between 8 and 14 years old. Yes, I got into some trouble but those days were rapidly coming to an end. My infatuation with matches and setting things on fire was over. I had a bike and strong legs and no fear so Michael and I went everywhere. There was nowhere we wouldn't go. I talked about going to Philadelphia to play with the South side kids, we went to the Delaware River often....we either rode our bikes downtown or we took the bus. One of the cool things about the buses in Wilmington was that each bus had a bike rack kind of contraption so when we rode our bikes downtown, we didn't have to ride our bikes back.....all we did was to put our bikes on the rack, get on the bus and pay our tokens. It sure made coming home easier.

I mentioned that I had my first real girlfriend in Wilmington. We lived right across the street from each other. She was Irish Catholic and went to St. Helena's Catholic School....I went to Mt. Pleasant Junior High School. They were both just off Philadelphia Pike so we always walked home together along with other neighborhood kids. We only did this when the weather was nice. She was fun and I guess you could say we went through puberty together. She came from a pretty good size Catholic family and had lots of brothers and sisters. She knew more about the birds and bees than I did and she was willing to explore. Her parents would let us sit in the basement game room watching television with no lights on. Her mom would keep the other kids from coming down for a certain length of time. I remember her mom, telling us she was about to turn the lights on so "get decent". I think she was kidding. She had an older brother who was made to take us along with him on some of his dates. I remember him having a black convertible but I don't remember what make. He would always take us to the outdoor movies on warm nights. We always sat in the back seat but that never stopped him from making out with his girlfriend in front of us. Anyway, we had that storybook first young love, at least for a couple of years...always wondered what happened to her. I have done a lot of different types of searches but with no luck.

One of the good memories I have was of Brown's Drug store. It was on the way home from school so if we were walking..all of us would stop there for a coke. They were an old time drug store and had a soda fountain behind a counter and tall, green stools to sit on. They had every drink imaginable along with lots of different flavors of ice cream and they even cooked food like hamburgers and hot dogs. One of the not so good things I remembering doing was this. Next to Browns, there was a little convenience store...not like we know of today...it was more a small mom and pop grocery store. They sold all kinds of sodas by the case and they also took deposits on the bottles they sold. Some of you might remember paying a two cent to a nickle deposit on a coke bottle. Well, when I need some extra money for the drug store.....I would ask the drug store for an empty bag, then I would go around back of this little grocery store and grab me a few empty coke bottles....the grocery store stored them out back until the coke truck came by to get them. I would then fill the empty bag up with empty coke bottles and come around front and walk in the grocery store and head up to the counter. I told them that my mom sent me there to get our deposit back....they would give me about .60 to .80 cents and I would head back over to the drug store to spend my ill gotten gains!! I know, it wasn't right but hey...

One thing that I learned early on and kinda liked about the Catholic religion was this whole thing about confession. If you did something wrong, all you had to do on Sunday, was go into this little phone booth looking thing with a door and a small window in the wall. Once you were in there, the little window would open up and this guy would ask you if you had sinned....when you said yes, he would absolve you and make you say a couple hail Mary's and rub some beads and your sin would be erased.....how great was that. Of course, I wasn't Catholic but I did go to an Episcopalian Church on Sunday....I figured that the Episcopalian and Catholic religions were very much the same but without all the kneeling and all that Latin, so I pretended to confess while I was at Church, then I would absolve myself....say a couple hail Mary's...I didn't have any beads to rub...and I would be good to go, till the next Sunday. Hey, this confession thing was pretty cool!!

A quick note about my girlfriend. She really liked me because when we moved from Wilmington to Baltimore her parents would allow her to get on a bus and come and visit me on weekends. This happened a few times but I think the flame burned out because she quit coming. Hey, we were fourteen, what do you expect.

Another good memory I have about my time in Wilmington is that's where I started to like sports. My dad was teaching me and paying for golf lessons and I was pretty good.....I would get better but for a thirteen year old kid....I was doing well. I also was a walk on track team guy in junior high. This story is kinda interesting. The track team always practiced after school and one day I walked on to the field during practice. One of my friends was a short distance runner and he was on the track doing wind sprints. I walked down to him and ask if wanted to race a 100 meter dash. He said yes and off we went. Mind you, he was one of the fastest kids in the state of Delaware. I lost to him but by only a few steps. I guess the track coach saw us running and called me over. He ask if I would like to try out for the team and I said sure. I made it and ended up earning a letter in track and field. I ran 100 and 200 meter sprints plus I did the broad jump. I was pretty good. Good enough to get on the Senior High track team when I went from 9th grade to 10th. The unfortunate thing was that I was at Mt. Pleasant Senior High School only two months before my dad was transferred to Baltimore.

Well, these were the highlights of my time in Wilmington Delaware. I have a lot more memories of Wilmington and might come back to revisit. Ask me sometime about the 1960 election between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy.....I ended up with lots of campaign buttons from both sides. In one of my future blogs, I will mention how I got them....maybe in the blog about antiques.

Now it's on the Baltimore Maryland (actually Lutherville-Timonium Maryland) for the next chapter of my great adventure in growing up!! Coming attractions...getting my drivers license, my first car, our first and only boat, answering an alarm with a loaded shotgun, Lock Raven Reservoir, Brownstones and great fresh fish!!