Papaw and the Early Days of WWII

Dad says he was living in Alvord and in high school when he learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  He was 15 years old.  He was out on a Sunday evening with his friends Durwood Fox and Willard Howell and their dates listening to KDNT in Denton playing Glenn Miller tunes in the car radio.  The announcement of the attack came on the radio, so they all decided to go home.  When he got there, Grandma Magers had already heard it too.  When he came in the house, she hugged him and cried.

He was 15 and could not join the service, but Grandpa Magers did not want him to anyway, so he went back to school that semester.  The following fall of 1942, Grandpa Magers got a job at the pump station in Punkin Center, so they moved from Alvord to Electra.  Dad finished school in Electra at age 16 at mid term and began working in Electra at various jobs including working for McAlister, Frank Wood and at the Magnolia pipeline yard in addition to doing some ranch work.  Grandpa still wanted him to wait until he was 18 to join the service.

When he became 18 in February of 1944, he went down to the Electra draft board and signed up on his birthday.  T. Leo Moore was a oil operator in the area and served as head of the local draft board.  Dad remembers that his classification was SV6 which stood for selective volunteer.

He thought about the various branches of the service but decided on the Navy.  He had long been fascinated by ships, how they operated and how they navigated with no landmarks to guide them except for the stars in the sky.  So he opted to join the US Navy. 

About 4-5 weeks later, he got a letter telling him to appear on a certain day and at a certain time at the Electra train depot, which he did.  He was joined by the Grandma and Grandpa Stanford and Mother, Grandma and Grandpa Magers and Patsy.  It was a real emotional event with lots of kisses and tears being exchanged.  In addition to Dad, there were 6 other Electra volunteers and draftees on the train.

About 4-5 weeks later, he got a letter telling him to appear on a certain day and at a certain time at the Electra train depot, which he did.  He was joined by the Grandma and Grandpa Stanford and Mother, Grandma and Grandpa Magers and Patsy.  It was a real emotional event with lots of kisses and tears being exchanged.  In addition to Dad, there were 6 other Electra volunteers and draftees on the train.

They disembarked the train, he thinks, downtown at Union Station and they all received street car passes to go several blocks north to the Adolphus Hotel.  By that time, it was evening and they did not do much more than to get their rooms and turn in for the night.  The Adolphus was a very nice hotel and he liked the room. 

Dad has a few recollections of the trip.  The train was smokey and threw off a cloud of cinders and smoke that found its way into the rail cars as the train wound its way west.  He says that the cars weren't sleepers and that they slept in their seats.  He recalls a stop in Flagstaff, Arizona where they spent the night on a siding.  He got off the train and went to the cafe of a nearby Harvey House Hotel where he bought a pint of milk and a bologna and cheese sandwich with his own money before getting back on the train.  It was cold in Flagstaff and he remembers that he could see mountains with snow on the peaks in the distance.  The next stop was in Needles, Arizona and the climate was completely different.  By then, they had made it to the desert and it was much warmer than before.

They finally arrived in Los Angeles, California where they boarded the Orange Blossom Special.  At some point, his new friend Smokey Wiley and he saw the Pacific Ocean both for the first time and he recalls Smokey saying that it was the "biggest tank" he had ever seen.  He had arrived at boot camp.

Papaw goes to the Texas Centennial State Fair

In Septermber 1936, Dad was living in Alvord, Texas.  They lived on Hubbard Street on the edge of town.  There were no house numbers back then, he recalls.  His aunt and uncle Whitmire who lived in Petrolia, Texas who had made plans to take Dad and his cousin Jimmy to the state fair in Dallas.  Dad was about 10 1/2 and Jimmy was about six months older.  Uncle Bunk was a tailor and had a shop in Petrolia.  Dad said that the night before, Uncle Bunk had driven his family down to Alvord to be ready to leave for Dallas the next morning.

The day of the trip, Grandma Magers cooked them a breakfast of fresh eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy to get them on their way by 6:30 AM.  Dad was excused from his usual milking chores that day.  They rode in Uncle Bunk's new 1936 Ford 4-door sedan ("He probably gave $600 or $700 for it, brand new."), taking a route through Rhome, Roanoke and Lewisville.  Dad remembers driving though farm land until they could see the skyline of Dallas.  The flying red horse, Pegasus, was then the tallest thing they could see atop the Magnolia Building on Commerce Street.

hey pulled into Fair Park about the time the fair opened at 9:00 AM and paid about 50 cents to park for the day.  He remembers spending much of the day looking at the livestock and farm equipment exhibits.  He recalls also spending a great deal of time in the Car Barn where the hottest thing was the new Hudson Terraplane.  At the livestock exhibit, he remembers seeing sheep, goats, hogs (white Ohio or OIC, Pollan China that were white with black stripes, red Duroc and others), chickens (Plymouth Rock, White Rock, Leghorn and more), dairy and beef cattle and rabbits.  It was here that he saw his first Brahma cow and bull.  

At lunchtime, they bought Orange Nehi drinks and brought them out to the car to eat their lunch.  He thinks the drinks were 5 cents, if you agreed to return the bottle.  Grandma Magers had sent them four sack lunches containing more sausage and potato biscuits and another biscuit  with melted butter and jelly, which they ate under the shade of some trees by a lagoon or lake nearby in the park.

At some point, Jimmy and Dad walked into the Cotton Bowl.  "It was the largest grandstand I had ever seen." he says.  They were amazed at the size of it.  They also toured the Midway, though they did not ride any rides or play any games. 

I asked him how much money he brought with him and he remembered bringing 4 or 5 quarters to spend for the day.  He said that rather than spending it all on the rides in the Midway, he decided to use his instead on ice cream, cotton candy and drinks. 

They stayed until they were tired of walking and about 5:00 or 5:30 PM, they drove down to Oak Cliff to spend the night with the Bruners, a family they had known from Chico.  Aunt Ovie and Grandma Magers had gone to high school with their daughter, Shann Bruner.  Mr. Bruner worked at the huge Sears building on Lamar, just out of downtown.  He says that Aunt Ovie had warned him on the trip down not to sop his biscuits in the gravy at breakfast but that Shann came over to the nook where he and Jimmy were eating and told them it would be okay to do it.  After breakfast, they loaded again into the Ford and returned home to Alvord. 

Dad says that it was not the first time he had been to Dallas, but was probably his most memorable trip for many years.