My History as I remember it.

I was born in Lawton Oklahoma June 21, 1942 and named Roy Charles Lewis Jr. and I probably could be considered a war baby. My mother’s maiden name was Nancy Mae Arp and my father was Roy Charles Lewis. I understand that my parents were in Lawton Oklahoma because my dad was a carpenter and had a job there. Of course this was right in the middle of WWII and dad was probably working on an Army base or something. Dad was born in 1900 in Archer City, Texas and at the age of about 3 months had a cold and scratched himself in the eye and that left him blind in that eye. Dad later told me that he went to New York and tried to join the Navy in 1917 but they would not take him because of his eye.

I understand that we moved to Cleburne, TX when I was about 3 months old and moved in with my grandmother Arp. We must have stayed there until I was about 4 years old. I remember the house being a two story of the old type that had a porch that ran around the complete house. I remember playing with a metal car and it getting lost in the dirt. I also remember trying to help my dad work on the car and him thinking it was cute. I also remember playing with a boy about my age that lived behind us. I actually remember him being black and my dad or mom thinking it was cute. My sister was born there August 15, 1945 and I remember her using a walker that my dad had made of pipe and mom made the seat for out of cloth. I remember her scooting around the front hallway and up behind the stairs.

We must have moved to Fort Worth in late 1946 and moved in with my grandmother in a house off of Lancaster. I remember that house had a porch and a swing on it. I also remember wanting to use the swing and pushing my little sister off of it and her hitting a bush stump that had been cut off and breaking her collar bone.

I am not sure that we lived with Grandma Arp very long before dad bought a house in Haltom City. This is the first house that I can remember the address it was 5904 Ellis. The house was a wooden one with a living room, one bedroom, one bath, kitchen, and long screened in back porch. We had a garage that was separate from the house and it did not seem in too good of shape. We had a ¼ acre that went very far back on the lot. I also remember the family talking about how they hoped that the new freeway they were going to put through that it might go through our lot. (It actually ended up being about 2 miles south). I remember a lot about this place and will try to tell some of it now.

I remember my mom having Quilting groups on our back porch and having a full size, quilting frame on the porch. The women would sit around the frame and sew the cross patterns. I remember playing on this porch and crawling around the frame. It seems that at one end of the porch was where my toys were. I remember playing with the neighbors and having a swing on the west side of the house. I remember my sister playing with my mom’s china doll on the swing and mom getting all over her about having it out there. Anne was about 3 at the time. I also remember jumping off of the roof of the garage with a cape onto a pile of dirt and thinking I could fly when mom made me quit. We had some neighbors about 3 lots down that had a lot of kids the only one I can remember of them is Charles they were good people and used to give me a coffee cup of Red Beans and a Pickle for a lunch or snack. I love that combination to this day. Mom would get on me that they could not afford to give me the beans. They had a barn or large garage of some kind that we would play in.

We had a garden and I remember mom worrying and talking about rabbits getting in it. I do not remember where they were kept but we must have had chickens because I remember mom wringing their heads off and watching them jump around until they were dead and mom dipping them in a pot of boiling water and having to help her pluck the feathers off. I also remember playing around the garage and getting stung by a whole nest of yellow jackets, I remember mom counted 13 stings on my head.

Integral to all of this was that we were Christian Scientists and how we did not go to the doctor for minor items. I do remember Anne having to wear a sling for the broken collarbone. I also remember mom and dad fighting about money and I must have heard them arguing about needing money for children’s cloths. I remember going into the bedroom and clipping my undershirt under myself and going in and telling how I did not need underpants. I think that had a big effect on them both. I also must have done a similar thing when I went behind the couch and cut a chunk out of the front of my hair. My dad carried a copy of that picture with him in his wallet until the day he died at 95.

I remember lying in bed and hearing a motorcycle go down the street and asking dad and him telling me it was a motorboat. I do not remember when I realized what it was but I am sure it was not soon. I also got a Montgomery Ward bicycle for Christmas one year and ridding it to school it seems that I walked to school for a while before getting the bike. I also remember getting bit on the but while riding my bike by a neighbor’s dog that the kid had sicked on me. I remember having a wood across the street behind the neighbor’s house. It had grapevines and we played all of the Tarzan games in the woods and talking about smoking the grapevine.

I attended Birdville Elementary and Birdville Jr Hi and Birdville HighSchool with only a one year at the new Jr High before returning to the same building I had attended all the rest of school. The School was on Carson Street.

I remember my Grandmother Arp dying in my bed when spending the night with us. Mom and dad keep us away from it.

I also remember that at that time Dad was a SteamFitter and traveled a lot but for us that seemed normal. At sometime in our life I remember mom working at Penny’s but I can not remember when.

After Grandma died mom took the $2000 she got from the inheritance and purchased a lot at 5721 Madge Place. She told dad that she wanted a real house with a bedroom for each of us. Mom got with an architect and designed the house just like she wanted. I remember that dad contracted with a carpenter to build it and he did it between jobs. I remember getting paid a quarter to clean out the holes for the foundation supports. I am sure it was just to keep me busy and out of trouble but it was important to me.

The house had 3 bedrooms and one bath, a kitchen and a formal dining room as part of the kitchen. The living room was 20 feet long and 15 feet wide and the front faced south. We did not have central heat but had gas space (Dearborn type) heaters. The house was on a corner lot and had a side garage entrance to a 2.5 car garage. There was a breezeway between the house (kitchen) and garage and it was designed to be widened to the full depth of the garage someday but it never happened. Then it was to act as a Den. It stayed a screened in porch. Mom had the garage build so I would have a workshop and as such I had about six to 8 feet of space from the edge of one of the two garage doors to the wall and she had a workbench build along that wall. I think I still have the tiny vice that I used on that bench. When the house was build it was still common to have a septic tank with runners going out back to disburse the water. We also burned our trash in an old 55-gallon drum. Mom tried to save money by having a garden behind the house and one of the items was Okra. The only bad part is getting rid of the old stalks after they dry. I was given the job of chopping them down and they are covered with dried stickers. To this day I refuse to eat Okra because of that experience. I know now it is just a mental thing but I still stick to not eating Okra.

The location of this house was behind the Belknap Drive In Theater and the street in front of our house was great to play in. At night we could sit on our front porch and watch the movie. Of course there was a hole in the fence so we kids would sneak through the hole and go up front of the drive in and play on the playground equipment and sometimes watch the movie. There were some seats in front so you could get out of your hot car and watch the movie. Of course there was a Snack Bar and the site of my first job at I think the age of about 13.

About 2 blocks from us and on the Belknap highway (across from the Drive In) was a very good friend Billy. He went to church with us and had a big brother that was a language interpreter (Russian) in the USAF. His dad was older and had worked for the Ford Factory and had one of the first Ford V6’s that he had actually helped to build on the assembly line. They had a big Pecan tree and every year we could help harvest it. They also had a Garage Apartment that was empty and we could use for club meetings and we had a Chess club and I was the first president. Of course I never did get any good at Chess but I have fond memories of it.

When I worked at the drive in I worked in the snack bar and loved working the grill. In order to drag in the customers in I would put some onions on the grill to cook a few minutes before the intermission and the fan beside the grill would carry the smell out to the cars. We would line them up for 50 feet for hamburgers. I got good at turning out lots of burgers at once. I would have as many as 24 patties cooking at once and buns to go with them. We got as much to drink from the soda fountain as we wanted as long as we paid for the cup. One of our favorite items to make for our selves were chiliburgers using the hot-dog chili.

I remember in the 6^th grade of taking music. They talked my mom and dad into my taking the clarinet I hated it and did not take it for more than a year. I remember the clarinet being a silver one. Later when a Jr or Sr in high school they needed some Tuba players and I needed a class to take that was easy so without any classes I became a Tuba player and sometimes base fiddle player.

I remember a little of elementary School especially the first day. I remember that my neighbors that were in the 2^nd grade told me stories that really scared me. I ran away sometime in the first day and hid in some bushes. I do not remember what happened to me when they found me but I do remember that there were no bad repercussions. I remember in the 6^th or 7^th grade I had a separate male math teacher that taught us Algebra and I found that I fell in love with the concept of X-Y equals Z.

In my first year of High School 10^th grade I failed English, Math and History and it was enough to keep me back a year. I think that was the year that my Mom and Dad got divorced but I am sure there were a lot of problems at home.

I had a lot of friends that have gone on to become successful and now that I look back I feel that my life was pretty successful also. Living on the corner behind me was Charles and he was a little older than me but was in the same grade before I flunked. Charles was one of those victims of Polio and had missed about 2 years. Charles was my idol and seemed sophisticated. He had the upstairs bedroom in the only 2-story house in the neighborhood. Charles dad had been killed in WWW-II and I think that his mom was a teacher. He had two sisters that were about 3 to 4 years younger than him. Charles was the first to go on to College and ended up being a Librarian.

Another friend I had about another block away was James and he was the one that was very smart. James was the one that I got into trouble with a lot. James had a knack for electronics and I loved it also. James even had a patent for a radio amplifier before we graduated from High School. James ended up getting his PHD in Nucular Physics and was/is a Colornal in the US Marine Reserves. When I found out about that I could not help but think that it fit him completely. James and I got into trouble by pushing my mom’s 51 Studebaker out of the garage and going to downtown Ft Worth. We got hauled in to the police sub station and our parents called. We had mom’s car so she had to ride down there with his dad. I do not think that they could actually charge us with anything but it sure scared us and it was very embarrassing to us so we would never do that again. I do not remember mom saying much but it just hurt her.

My sister was around all of this time but she was 3 years younger so we did not do much together. I do remember mom or dad trying to whip her for something and my taking the belt away from them and I remember getting mad about something (it may have been the whipping of Anne) and my putting my hand through the sheet rock wall in the middle bedroom.

Also one item that we forget about was that we had the phone in the hall. Back then no house had more than one phone and that is where it was supposed to go.

I worked at the Belknap Drive In off and on from the time I was 13 and I remember that I never got a raise and the pay was $0.50 per hour. I think that working at the drive in was part of my bad grades in school, along with my being lazy. Some nights after work we would all walk over to the Griddle and sat around and had coffee because we only had to pay for the first cup and keep getting refills.

I used to hang around the Guyns store across from the High School and started smoking there to be a big shot. I also got to run with a bad crowd then and even went with them when they wanted to steal HubCaps. We got back to his house and he could not figure what to do with them and that was the end of my crime life when I realized that it just did not make any sense especially for all of the worry.

Well I even had a friend in about 1958 or 1959 who’s parents bought an Isetta car that we would borrow. I thought it was a neat car and would like to have one now as an in town commuter car.

Well by the time I got to my Senior year of High School I only needed 1 or 2 credits to graduate so I took Distributive Education so I could get out at noon and go to work. I got a job at a furniture store hauling furniture and I can remember carrying a Hideabed up two flights of stairs and I remember some of the touchup wax they used to cover the scratches.

In order to have easy credits I took Band (the tuba) and Choir. I actually may have taken this in my Junior year also because they needed male voices and I remember having to be in choir in Jr. Hi and liking being with all of the girls. In High School I was of only about 6 or 7 boys and was the only one that was not afraid to sing. I managed to co-star in the Gilbert and Sullivan musical "Shreds and Patches" The orchestra pit was sunken in the auditorium and we all talked about filling it with water and putting ducks in it some weekend. Of course it never happened but we liked to dream.

Also sometime in my 11^th and 12^th grade they started a NDCC (National Defense Cadet Corps) at Birdville and they built a shooting range. I liked the idea of marching and shooting but do not remember staying in it after starting DE.

I used to hang around the gas station down the street from our house and in front of the Drive In and one day met James who was about 2 years older than me and had a truck and was going fishing. He let me go with him and became my semi constant friend for a long time. His father had an odd jobs carpenter business from his home and I remember how James always kept every receipt so they could take the business tax deduction. Also because James dad was on disability from led poising from paint when working at Convair during the war could not do any paint jobs. They also would always never answer the phone any way but hello. They did not want to have to pay the extra for a business phone.

James and I used to go to Grapevine Lake on the weekends and during the summer and set out trotlines and fish for Catfish. We would spend the night at the lake and check the lines one or two times at night.

When I finally graduated from High School I started at Arlington Jr. College in summer school. I was late registering so I ended up taking English Grammar and Calculus or at least Algebra that I was not prepared for. I was flunking out of college and mom was about to refinance the house. I felt guilty about it and that she might loose the house over my not being able to pass college. I do not know what sent me there but I went to downtown Fort Worth to the Recruiter building. I went in the door and just happened to try the USAF recruiter first. The recruiter told me that they were about to have a 6 Flags flight that would be sworn in at 6 Flags for their grand opening on August 15^th 1961 (remember that was Anne’s birthday) We would be guaranteed to go through basic together and we all had guaranteed jobs. I tested and got Missile electronics so I signed up. Mom was very disappointed because she wanted me to get a college education. I felt good about it because I was doing something that I could be responsible for.

05/26/03