Another Mickey: Ruminations of a Texas Guitar Slinger

last.

Chapter One

The Golden

Triangle

It was the Cold War that brought our family to England in nineteen fifty-three. My father, Triggs Reeves White, had joined the army in the fall of 1940 and cut his teeth working flight training schools for the Army Air Corps in Texas during World War II. He had moved off the flight line maintenance crew into supply during the course of the war and excelled in that role, enabling him to eschew Officer Training School in favor of an immediate promotion, with its accompanying pay, to the rank of Warrant Officer. A loyal patriot, and attracted by the security, organization, and discipline of military life, he reenlisted after the war. He served in the occupation force in Tachikowa, Japan, where my brother was born, then was transferred to Chicago, and on to Detroit, Michigan where I was born Michael Parr White in 1951. The recently constituted United States Air Force saw a need for his abilities in operations supporting NATO in England, so he was stationed at Ruislip Air Force Base in northwest London, an outpost that supported the B-29’s of the Seventh Air Division. Military people are always quick to point out the importance of supply (quartermastering) and Dad served with dedication and pride. I never purchased a $200 toilet, was an oft repeated phrase. Desiring combat during the war, he probably aspired to a role that had a bit more glamour and prestige. He would have to wait on that, but it would come.

We lived initially in Wembley in a house that provided me with my earliest memories, the first of which was my brother Bob (Mitt at the time) whooshing a boat he had received for his birthday through the air. There was a friendly elderly gentleman next door who had his own little train, like you see in city parks, and would take us on rides. I remember waking up scared one night in the dark, fearing I’d been left alone. But it was in Pinner, on Waxwell Lane, where memories come into clarity. We had a fairly comfortable time of it. There were two nannies from the continent, A Dutch girl named Anita who was nice and a German girl named Margot who was not. We felt safe and protected and loved. That was not enough to keep me from running away from home for the first time when I was 4 years old, having been denied Rice Krispies for dinner. Anita followed me for a block or two and talked me into coming back, pointing out the difficulties of life on my own. Mom, a devotee of Dr. Spock and keenly aware of the art of compromise, presented me with a bowl of Rice Krispies after I had finished half my meal. The big yard was our playground, the only restrictions being to stay out of the coal bin and don’t climb over the fence which separated us from the River Pin. Pinner was a joy, marked by village fairs and the beloved movie theater. But there was another focus of activity, Ruislup Air Base, with its guard gates, wire fences, homogenous buildings, and uniformed men and women. There was something foreboding, though not threatening, about it. It was where we would go to get food from the commissary, clothes from the BX, and medicine from the dispensary.

Josephine Marguerite (Fowler) White was a nurturing mom and a dutiful military wife. She dressed me and fed me and taught me to tie my shoes. On occasion she would load Mitt and Mike on the train to London for the Saturday matinees. Rarely openly expressive with affection, she nevertheless provided comfort and companionship to the three males in the family. Proudly spiffing me up in a little green uniform with an emblem sewn on the breast, she got me off to my first day of kindergarten. The joviality at 114 Waxwell Lane would always be enhanced with the return of Dad from work as he greeted his adoring kids with enthusiasm and delight.

There was music in the house. I had my little kiddie phonograph and a yellow 78 that I would spin constantly, playing a song about putting a nickel in the nickelodeon. Mom and Dad would perform in the Officers Club variety shows doing comedic skits and pantomiming songs like We’re a Couple of Swells, from Easter Parade, and Hot Lips by Spike Jones. Being the dawn of the golden age of television, the tube had a prominent place in the living room. The Buccaneers was one of our favorites along with Robin Hood. (It’s pretty evident that America’s fascination with outlaws is rooted, at least in part, in our British heritage.) I recall one night watching a group of suited guitar-toting folks gyrating across the screen. What’s that, Dad? I asked. That’s rock ‘n roll, replied my father.

Top: 114 Waxwell Lane; Jo White as Ado Annie-I Can’t Say No

Bottom: Story Time

Late one night in the summer of 1956, wee nipper Mike crept cautiously into his parent’s bedroom and announced he had a tummy ache. My ever-nurturing Mom was not content with giving me a shot of Pepto (or her sure-fire stomach remedy, Coca Cola with chipped ice) as I seemed to be in considerable pain. She took my temperature which was alarmingly high. So off we rushed to the emergency room at Ruislip’s hospital, where the doctor informed my parents that they had brought me in none too soon—I had acute appendicitis and surgery was required immediately. They prepped me and wheeled me into the operating room where my only clear recollection of that night occurred. A kindly nurse brought a mask to my face, told me to relax and take deep breaths. Almost instantaneously came my first chemically induced mind-altering experience, as I briefly saw a spinning kaleidoscope of clowns before the ether put me out. The Air Force’s team of commissioned doctors and nurses proceeded to save my life. Recovering at home I had a fascination with the stitched-up slice in my abdomen that would heal but produce a lasting scar. (After having hernia surgery at the age of 62 I asked my surgeon how the procedure went. He said fine, except for having to negotiate the scar tissue around the old wound). I don’t recall experiencing pain or discomfort either before or after the surgery. Obviously, I remember the clowns.

Idyllic as it seemed (or was) there was no containing the excitement when Dad came home one evening and announced we were moving back to Texas. We were to leave in the late fall and would be able to spend Christmas with Mom’s and Dad’s families in Beaumont and Port Arthur before Dad began his new assignment at Goodfellow Air Base in San Angelo. I had absolutely zero frame of reference that would create any anticipation about the move, other than what I gleaned from my parents, but they were clearly pumped. There weren’t too many good-byes to deal with, apart from Chris, the house, and the village. We made it down to Southampton a day or two before departure and stayed at a little cabana on the beach. This would be one of the first of many family forays to the coast, where the wind and the sand and the surf enraptured us all, and would provide (in Texas) solace and familial communion for most of my life.

The Air Force had booked passage for us on the newly commissioned SS United States, which was heralded as safer, faster, and larger than the Titanic, and stood as a proud symbol of what was great and good about the U.S. We boarded the ship and got settled into our cabin. The grand dame set sail, but pulled to a stop within a few hours at Le Havre, in France, to take on additional passengers. I, naturally, thought that was the end of the voyage until Mom and Dad explained to me that it was really just the beginning. We headed out across the Atlantic the next morning for an adventure that would create a vivid remembrance for me. We pretty much had the run of the ship. There were numerous activities, like playrooms and movie theaters, that would occupy our time. But I recall spending hours (probably minutes) standing at the railings and looking out at the choppy, white-capped purple vastness that was being tamed by this giant hunk of metal. We would eat every evening at the same designated table, where our friendly Chinese waiter would always inquire as to the well-being of my imaginary friend, who accompanied me on the trip.

The once glorious United States is presently moth-balled on the Delaware River, gathering rust and docking fees since 1969, having been rendered obsolete by the advent of commercial jet air flight. Various efforts have been made to restore it as a cruise ship, hotel, or casino. It’s been managed by the SS United States Conservancy since 2010, an organization dedicated to keeping the ship from becoming the latest artificial coral reef.

Despite its inglorious fate, the SS United States ferried us into New York harbor after a five day voyage. I’d be lying if I claimed to be overwhelmed with emotion at the sight of Lady Liberty standing sentinel at the entrance to the harbor (I don’t remember seeing her at all), but I was struck by the stunning New York skyline, initiating an infatuation with the Big Apple which remains to this day. We retrieved our pale green Ford sedan, that had crossed the Atlantic in the cargo hold, and started driving south. It was a trip that does not evoke a lot of memories, save for the regalia of white marble buildings in Washington D.C. It was, however, the first of numerous family road trips, many of which would culminate in the Golden Triangle of southeast Texas.

•••

Port Arthur, Texas, was incorporated in 1898 after numerous failed attempts to settle the swampy mosquito infested lowlands along Lake Sabine in the far southeast corner of the Lone Star State. When oil was discovered at Spindletop in 1905, the town quickly developed into an active seaport and location for oil and chemical refineries. It was to this boomtown that my Grandfather, John Milton White, moved his family from Louisiana in 1922. He came from a family of doctors that had matriculated at Vanderbilt University’s medical school. His father, William White, had treated Confederate soldiers during the Civil War, and, according to family lore, had escaped the Siege of Vicksburg by hanging onto a log and floating across the Mississippi River to safety. Doc White’s family was already growing by the time of their move to Port Arthur. My dad’s birth in 1919, in Gueydon, Louisiana, had been preceded by two brothers John and Bill and sister Helen. Needing bigger digs than what the small house near downtown afforded, Doc purchased a house in a new development called Griffin Park that had been reclaimed from a network of swamps and bayous. In November of 1929, less than a month after the stock market crashed, the family moved into a roomy two-story colonial at 4525 Sunken Court.

Doc White was a civically active New Deal Democrat that had his support rewarded with an invitation to John Kennedy’s inauguration, an event he could not attend having suffered a heart attack shortly before the election. His first words (to the Catholic nuns at St. Mary’s Hospital) after recovering from the trauma were Hurrah for Kennedy! The extended network of friends and relations were die-hard Democrats. Dad’s second cousin, Jack Brooks (or is it cousin once-removed? I can never figure that one out), served in the House of Representatives for 42 years before getting ousted in the Gingrich Revolution of 1994 due to his reluctant support of the assault weapons ban. Cousin Jack sponsored my cousin Duane for a position as a Congressional page, who then served as Speaker of the House John McCormack’s personal page from 1966-68. His graduation ceremony was presided over by none other than LBJ. Democrats in the Triangle had been buoyed by union activism in the refineries that had been spurred along by the CIO following the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935. Despite the anti-union measures requiring open shops that followed, unions in Port Arthur remained remarkably strong throughout the 1950s. By the end of that decade the little pocket of semi-liberalism in the increasingly conservative south would produce an intelligentsia (some from my family) of artists and intellectuals, some of which would have a significant impact on American music and pop culture. That effect, however, would be manifested at a later time and place.

My introduction to my extended paternal family came during Christmas of 1956. Mitt and I were particularly taken by Grampy, who was friendly, jovial, and larger than life (well, certainly larger than us—for the record he was 5’7" and 170 lbs.). Grampy had a propensity for strutting around a room spouting non-sensical verse,

Googly-Goo and his ten men two

All gaily robed in gowns of blue

Pooh-pooh! Pooh-pooh! Pooh-pooh!

as the grandchildren giggled and the adults smirked. He was remarried, following the death of his first wife Olive, to Chloe Dalrymple, (Mama Chloe to us), who politely oversaw the house and cooked the best roast beef, rice, and gravy on planet earth. They had a single son, tall and handsome George, who was coming of age in 1956. On our visits to the Triangle we would all sit in the evening on the screened in porch attached to the south side of the house while Grampy regaled us with all the old family stories. When the wind was right, and the stench of the refineries came wafting through, he would exclaim, Ah, the sweet smell of money. When the horns blew from the nearby train tracks, we would all chant, ritualistically, Hi ya boys! He was a kind and empathetic soul by all accounts. When I became an adult, and after Mom and Dad had assumed ownership of the house on Sunken Court, we came across, in the archives, his prescription record that dated to the 1920s. Every transaction was carefully documented:

Bill Johnson- 1 pint whiskey- cough

Adrian Thibodaux- 1 pint whiskey- cough

Mary Maxwell- 1 pint whiskey- cough

Etc.

The names and treatment would be repeated on a weekly basis. I realized while reading that my grandfather had been a prohibition era incarnation of a pill doctor.

On Christmas Day the extended family was gathered around the big table for Christmas dinner with Bill, John, Helen, George, Dad’s younger sister Joanne, and all the cousins. Mama Chloe served up the requisite turkey, stuffing, and gravy as the family noisily and gratefully partook of the feast. When Mitt and I lamented having left behind our good friend Chris in England, Uncle Bill remarked, Poor Chris, which morphed into a somewhat sarcastic but humorous chorus- Poooor Chris, Poooor, poor Chris, a mantra affirming not only America’s greatness, but that Port Arthur was a pretty cool place to be.

Doc White, on the porch at 4525 Sunken Court

The Kirby Lumber Company had been pilfering pines for profit in Western Louisiana and East Texas since the early 20th century when they transferred one of their company doctors, Ivy Robert Fowler, to a somewhat thriving mill town just north of Beaumont during the throes of the Great Depression. John Henry Kirby and his partner Nathaniel Silsbee, namesake of the little burg, had established the Beaumont and Kansas City Railroad in 1894, which, when sold to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe in 1899, connected Silsbee to the civilized world. It was to this company town that Ivy, along with his wife Goldie Mae, brought their family of seven (two boys and five girls) to serve the little community of mostly mill workers and merchants, along with the few white-collar types necessary for the functioning of the mill. The Great Depression had not been as devastating to Southeast Texas as other parts of the country, due to the relatively stable demand for timber and oil, so the family was fairly well off, though payment for Doc Fowler’s services often came in the form of chickens, eggs, milk, or garden vegetables. The sisters would dress in homemade, hand-washed hand-me-downs, and the oldest son Robert (Uncle Bubber) brought in a little money by delivering newspapers on horseback. Even with his salary cut in half (to $125 a month) Doc Fowler had faith that his family would get along fine without any help, certainly not from any of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs.

Doc Fowler on a house call-

c. 1915

Mom greeted this earth on January 27th, 1921 in Emad, Louisiana. She recalls a happy childhood, evoking memories of fresh bread from the bakery near one of their homes in Bessamay, Louisiana, and trips to the beach and pools and theaters and parks. She absolutely idolized her father, often reminiscing on the respect Doc Fowler had among the residents of the towns where he practiced. I think she had a special attachment to her little brother Parr who was born when she was 18 months old, but her older siblings, at least as a young girl, seemed remote from her day-to-day existence. She was a teenager when she moved to Silsbee, and she fought the usual battles of wearing hose and makeup and dating boys. High school life was typical—she cheered on the sidelines at the football games and sucked at math. She recalls being a bit of a rebel, relating the time that Goldie (one of her rare Goldie stories) chewed her out for allowing their black housekeeper to ride in the front seat of the car while giving her a ride home. She attended the Baptist church every Sunday without much enthusiasm, aside from mugging with her sisters during their favorite gospel songs. It would be dance that would fire her passion.

Mom’s older sister Maureen introduced dance to the family, and while studying with a noted instructor in Beaumont, Mom caught the attention of the head of a touring dance troupe, which performed at county fairs around the South and Midwest. A picture taken in the summer of 1939 in Chicago shows the Dorothy Byton Dancers at their apogee—a line of a dozen young ladies, feathered heads tilted in unison to the right, hosed legs pointed slightly forward, and gleaming smiles on their faces. Mom’s claim to fame in her brief tenure as a touring dancer was meeting Eddie Rochester Anderson, Jack Benny’s sidekick, in Kansas City, who, she said, liked to follow the girls around.

Jo Fowler returned to Silsbee after a few months of touring, and opened a dance studio with her sisters in Silsbee before enrolling at Lamar College in the fall of 1940. It was at Lamar that she ran with a group of friends that included a crew from Port Arthur, one of which was Triggs. They had dated others from the circle, and, as it turned out, kind of ended up with each other. They both mentioned in separate recollections having met and fallen in love, but it never was set forth as any passionate love story. Dad did not really have the approval of many of the Fowler family members, but they pursued their relationship nonetheless. Mom recalled that Triggs and I met at Lamar where we were only friends. I would help him with French. The Port Arthur Boys were fun and a little bit crazy. They called me the Silsbee Flash and the ‘Queen of Baby Galvez.’

As trouble loomed in Europe and Asia, and the draft expanded in the summer of 1941, Dad decided to enlist in the Army Air Corps, giving him some choice in his service. Doc wanted him to stay in school and become a doctor, but Dad wasn’t overly enthused about college in general, and certainly was struck by the surge of patriotism that preceded the war. He proposed to Mom that fall, she accepted, and plans were made for a June wedding. December Seventh compromised those plans. Dad was to be transferred after the first of the year to a training facility in Sherman, Texas, so they decided to marry on December 26th in Silsbee. Goldie Mae, hardly enthused by the imminence of the ceremony, nor Mom’s choice of spouse, nevertheless called in her chit as Doctor Fowler’s wife and had a wedding cake prepared on short notice. The two families gathered awkwardly, many meeting for the first time, in the Fowler living room, and Mom and Dad exchanged vows before a local Justice of the Peace. The day after Christmas, and just a few weeks after America’s entry into World War II, Triggs and Jo began their adventure of marriage, a marriage characterized by deep respect and fierce loyalty to family, but not a whole lotta love.

Chapter Two

Air Force Brat

Texas Highway 71 heads west from Austin, carves its way through the hill country of the Edwards Plateau and terminates at U.S. 87 just south of Brady, the self-proclaimed but rarely disputed Heart of Texas. A granite carving in the shape of Texas, with a painted red heart in Brady’s approximate location, still stands on the grounds of the McCulloch County Courthouse where the White family first noticed it over 50 years ago. Traversing northwest from Brady the landscape quickly transitions from the live oaks, cedar, and rock outcroppings of the Hill Country to the mesquite, cactus, and red loam of the West Texas rolling plains. West of Eden, U.S. 87 is bordered by diagonal rows of maize and cotton, with pastures occupied by sheep grazing on the waving fescue. Slowly appearing on the horizon are a series of low-slung ridges that mark the northern and western edges of the Concho River Valley. Spread along the banks of the conjunction of the North, Middle, and South Concho Rivers lies the town of San Angelo, where our family arrived in late 1956.

The Concho Valley had been variously inhabited by Native Americans, Spaniards, and Mexicans prior to the U.S. government identifying it as an ideal location for a military outpost. Fort Concho was established shortly after the Civil War and was garrisoned by a unit of Buffalo Soldiers whose mission was to make the area safe from Indian renegades for the western migrating and settling white Americans. Goodfellow Air Force Base continued the military tradition of the city when it was established as a flight training school during FDR’s preparedness initiatives in 1939 on the eve of U.S. involvement in World War II. These influences created a hodge-podge of cowboy, Indian, farmer, oil speculator, Hispanic, and soldier culture that formed a unique little community on the western plains of Texas.

In the 1950s, San Angelo was known as the Wool Capital of the World, and every spring was marked by the Miss Wool Pageant accompanying the annual Livestock Show and Rodeo. Tex Ritter made an appearance one year in what was probably the first musical performance on that scale that I had seen. He entertained the sizeable crowd with his cowboy songs, amusing them with his self-deprecating reference to the raggedy underwear that lay beneath his black, sequined, spangled, baubled, and embroidered outfit. But what united the community and created the most excitement and interest was high school football, San Angelo being illuminated every fall by the Friday Night Lights.

We had moved into a little two-bedroom house on Southwestern Street in College Hills, a little subdivision that, like in other cities in the Southwest, had named the streets after colleges and universities. I suppose the intent was to equate the developing middle-class self-concept with the idea of being educated. At any time of the year, but especially in the fall, there would be groups of boys engaged in neighborhood football games virtually every afternoon after school. Our neighbors, the Sanders, had three boys, one older than me and another older than Mitt, and that would constitute the core of our little games. The earliest one I can recall found me at one juncture waving my arms wildly at Billy Sanders, the oldest of the Sanders boys, screaming I’m open, Billy, I’m open! Billy took the football by its ends and thrust it off his chest like a medicine ball, whereby it landed softly in my waiting arms. I cradled the prized possession, spun around, and raced unscathed to the Sanders driveway, which had served as the opponent’s end zone, thereby achieving my first adrenaline rush of athletic accomplishment.

Despite that success, I was relegated to the sidelines when the big boys would put together teams and challenge others from different streets or blocks. A grated lot of red clay at the foot of Southwestern, aptly named the Red Dirt, served as the gridiron for these regular epic clashes. It was there one afternoon in the heat of battle that Mitt picked up a loose, crazily bouncing pig skin (undoubtedly made of leather) and raced toward the end zone with red dust swirling and a trailing group of combatants screaming and yelling, as I was, at the top of their lungs. Mitt, amidst the chaos and confusion, had run the wrong way and scored a touchdown for the opponents. Nevertheless, Billy Sanders’ steady hand guided Southwestern to victory and we marched back up the street with our standard victory chant: We won! We won! We won, by golly we won!

Intense as it was, the Red Dirt contests paled in comparison to the spectacle and pageantry of the Friday night games at San Angelo Central High Stadium. The blue and gold clad Bobcats would race onto the field while the cheerleaders cheered, the Tex-Annes waved their pom-poms, and the crowd, when at stadium capacity of 13,0000 would equal about a quarter of the town’s population, rose and roared. The Bobcats would meet the challenges posed by Midland, Midland Lee, Odessa, arch-rival Abilene, and the new kid on the block, Odessa-Permian. In 1960, Central hired a new coach, Emery Bellard, with the goal of reviving a somewhat slumping program. Unfortunately for me, the coach’s son, Emery Jr. was chosen over me as quarterback of our fourth-grade football team at Travis Elementary. Truth be told, he was better than me, but I got to start on defense, and would do mop-up duty as quarterback when we were comfortably ahead (which we usually were). Coach Emery would eventually lead Central to a state championship in 1966. He was hired by Darryl Royal as offensive coordinator for the Texas Longhorns, where he developed the wishbone offense that helped the Longhorns become college football’s undisputed national champion in 1969. Central hasn’t won a state championship since the Bellard era, but on Friday nights in the fall, the lights still burn bright, the Tex-Annes still dance, the Bobcats still fight with grim determination, and the crowds still roar at Central Stadium, a monument to Texas high school football.

A week before my sixth birthday Mom gave birth to a little girl that she and Dad named Linda Jo. Mom brought the wrinkled and pink little creature into the house at Southwestern, gently holding her against her shoulder with a tenderness that I hadn’t seen before nor have seen since. With the family having expanded, we moved a few blocks down, remaining in College Hills at 2774 University. Mitt and I shared a bedroom in the house which was smaller than Waxwell Lane, but we were comfortable and secure in our Cleaver-like life. The television kept its prominence. San Angelo had one station, but would cherry pick the most popular shows from the three networks, and we would follow our favorites, mainly westerns like Rawhide, The Rifleman, Bat Masterson, and Wyatt Earp. The three males would often sit on the tiny front porch watching in awe as powerful West Texas thunderstorms rolled through, flashing and rumbling. We remained indoors, however, the time one storm pounded the roof and bounced golf ball sized hail stones off the lawn.

The Cody’s lived next door. Andy was my age and Jim Bob was Mitt’s age, we became tight friends, sharing football, kite-flying, hide-and-seek, and explorations into the brush country which nestled up against College Hills behind Travis Elementary. We would troop to one of the two movie theaters for Saturday matinees which would show the usual serials, sci-fi, and westerns. The movies that made the biggest impression on me, however, were the historical epics like Ben-Hur and the propaganda-filled The Alamo. We lived a fairly typical suburban existence, but Goodfellow Air Base was only about 10 minutes away, on the other side of town, and was still an ever-present aspect of our lives, the source of groceries and medical care.Christmas and summers found us in the Golden Triangle where Mitt and I formed some fairly close bonds with our cousins on both sides of the family.

In the summer of 1957, Uncle John invited us to his beach cabin in Gilchrist, which sits at the foot of Bolivar Peninsula, a thin strip of land flanked by the Gulf of Mexico and East Galveston Bay. The Gulf at that point is marked by a series of shifting sandbars created by the deposition from the Mississippi River. The waters are murky and choppy, but that didn’t prevent us from becoming enamored with, and attached to, this (still) relatively isolated and quiet little piece of the Texas coast. John’s little yellow cabin was simple but accommodating, and we swam and splashed in the waves and learned the ropes of proper beach house etiquette—rinse the sand off your feet and use charcoal lighter fluid to clean off the oil goop before entering the house. Later visits to that spot required maneuvering through the telephone pole-like piers that marked the remains of the first little yellow house, decimated by Hurricane Carla in 1961, in order to reach the water. A second house was built on the newly established beachfront, subsequently moved a few hundred yards down the beach, and finally permanently washed away by the fierce storm surge of Hurricane Ike.

On that first excursion, Dad decided to return to San Angelo through Galveston, so we drove the car to the end of the peninsula and onto the Bolivar Ferry. The trip across Galveston Bay was an exhilarating sensory experience, with the shrieking seagulls, the blare of the foghorn announcing departure, the rumbling of the multiple diesel engines that churned up the water and moved the boat away from the landing, the smell of salt air with a hint of rotting fish, the splashing dolphins, the maneuvering of the ferry around the big ships plying their way along the ship channel, the picturesque palm covered Seawolf Park off the boat’s right side, and the awaiting arms of the ferry landing on Galveston Island. The boat bumped off the pilings that would guide the unwieldy ferry into its destination, there to be clamped to dry land by the descending iron linkspan. We exited the ferry and made our way down to Seawall Boulevard with the little shops and motels and crowded beaches. Jutting out onto the water was a small amusement park called Pleasure Pier. Mitt and Mike pleaded with Dad to stop and let us have a go at the twirling, spinning rides. Not this time, he said, acknowledging the legitimacy of our desire. The next time I saw Pleasure Pier, the rides had been replaced by the multi-storied Flagship Hotel, the amusement park having been obliterated by Hurricane Carla. Ironically, Hurricane Ike destroyed the Flagship, but the pier itself withstood the wrath of the storm surge, and is now the location of an amusement park called Pleasure Pier. I still haven’t been.

As the decade of the 50s drew to a close, Mitt and I were largely sheltered from the impact of the turmoil that was beginning to convulse the United States. I was vaguely aware that the Russians had launched Sputnik and we certainly knew of Yuri Gagarin’s accomplishment. We had air raid drills in school that were really no different from tornado drills. Although I remember watching Eisenhower on TV, I don’t recall anything from the conflict at Little Rock’s Central High School; San Angelo’s schools were still segregated at the time. We followed the Election of 1960, intrigued by the candidates and the buttons, posters, and bumper stickers of the campaign. I thought JFK was pretty cool and I was pleased when he beat the devious-looking Nixon.

One phenomenon that entered the household like the aforementioned hurricanes was the sound of rock ‘n’ roll. One would think that living in a West Texas town that revered Tex Ritter that country music would make its way into our experience. But Mitt went off to seventh grade at Washington Junior High School and began listening to the same stuff that many teenagers in other West Texas towns were listening to. The little one-speaker table radio was on constantly and my big brother’s obsession with rock hits trickled down to me. Many rock historians look at the period following the day the music died (a reference to the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper) as a lull in the development of rock. The narrative goes that Elvis was drafted, Jerry Lee Lewis was blackballed for marrying his cousin, Chuck Berry was busted for dallying with underage girls, Little Richard had gone religious, and rock ‘n’ roll was reeling from the payola scandal. From my experience at the time, and in retrospect, a lull in rock and roll couldn’t have been further from the truth. Sure, there was Fabian, Bobby Rydell, Frankie Avalon, and Pat Boone (whose Moody River was actually pretty good), but there were plenty of other artists and musicians that were bringing creativity and energy into the musical form. Two of Elvis’ biggest hits, It’s Now or Never and Are You Lonesome Tonight were released after his return from military service. The Everly Brothers were coming into their own, establishing the template for vocal harmonies in rock, and scoring hits with Bird Dog, All I Have to do is Dream, Cathy’s Clown, and Wake Up Little Suzie between 1958 and 1960. Ray Charles, in the process of creating a sub-genre of rock, charted What’d I Say in 1959. Bobby Darin wrote and released Dream Lover, a multi-million dollar hit prior to his crossover success with Mack the Knife. Roy Orbison’s vocals soared across the airwaves with Only the Lonely. Ricky Nelson could have easily been pigeon-holed into the bubble gum class, but his producers teamed him with some of L.A.’s most prominent studio musicians, most notably guitarist Jim Burton. Burton’s stunning and influential guitar solo on Travelin’ Man, which hit number one in the spring of 1961, established a new template for rock guitar solos. No longer confined to riffs and notes, rock solos could now become self-contained musical compositions unto themselves, with a beginning detached from the melody, a climax, and a resolution that carries it back to the verse or chorus. Burton had been influenced by country, which had crossed over with Marty Robbin’s El Paso. The coming folk boom seeped in with the Kingston Trio’s Tom Dooley and Tijuana Jail. All these artists, not to mention emerging writer-performers like Neil Sedaka, Carol King, and Smoky Robinson, clearly demonstrate that in the late 50’s, the music had hardly died. It was just getting ramped up, and my brother and I followed each development and new artist with keen interest and enthusiasm.

In 1958, Goodfellow Air Force Base had been reconstituted as a training facility for Security Service from its original role as a flight training base. My father, a highly respected supply