This is one of those "back in my day" stories that tends to send people running the other direction. But now that I'm 50 I tend to drift back in time to simpler days.
I am from a small east Texas town know worldwide for incarcerating and sometimes disposing of our nation's criminals. But that's not what this is about.
Except for that my early years were much like Leave It To Beaver. My mom and dad moved there in 1955 (I think) so he could start a career as minister for the penitentiary system. That was a career that lasted 30 years and took our family to many different units to live in on-site duplexes, one apartment building and one old grey house that I loved and still have my happiest memories. So therefore I grew up in childhood with a state pen in my backyard, frontyard or side yard.
Outside of that, it was just an ordinary small town. There is also a moderately sized university there. I worked on the maintainance department there from 1980 - 1987. More on that later.
Back in the '60s our neighborhood was like what you saw on tv. Full of kids of different ages. After dinner (which for us was always at 5 no matter what) it was time to go outside and fool around. We would do that until nightfall.
When it was time to go in, it was bathtime, some tv and then bed. The fog horns would go off at the penitentiary behind us and I still remember that haunting sound. We lived in a old big grey house just down from the unit with wooden floors and wallpaper. Behind us was the rodeo arena where once a year the unit would throw a prison rodeo that drew thousands from all around. They would sort of camp out all up and down the street and around our house on blankets. Vendors would line the streets selling popcorn, hotdogs, cotton candy and such.
My dad woul walk me the hundred yards to the state pen and take me in so inmate trustees would cut my hair. The only thing I hated about that was they would cut it so short and toss lard all in it at a time when the Beatles were the fashion.
And shopping: In those days my mom would take me shopping on the square, that's where everything was. There was a J C Pennies with wooden floors and when a sale was made the invoice was placed in a wire basket and run for many yards to an old geezer up on the balcony, where he would keep a copy and run the costumer's copy back down the same drag line.
Also was a shoe store, a drugstore and across from those two a coffee shop where my dad would get with the fellers and drink coffee and start trouble. He was good friends with the man who owned the shoestore, I only knew him as 'Rodge' as that's all my dad would ever refer to him, and the drugstore owner, Mr. Goolsby.
All the bustle seemed to be downtown. It was smalltown life in the '60s before WalMart and the like would send everything out to the hightway. I'm glad to have been a part of it.
