| BIOGRAPHY
THE LIFE & TIMES OF
B. E. PARKER
A Self Portrait in the Narrative
THE YOUTHFUL YEARS
In elementary school I was double promoted from the third to
the fourth grade, as the State of Texas increased from an eleven year program to
twelve. Therefore, I entered high school at the age of 13, and graduated at age
17.
After graduating elementary school, late in the summer I got
a job on a local dairy. I was what then was called a dairy bo. That meant that
I got up about 4 A.M. each morning to feed the cows, as the first group came
through the milk barn. After putting out the feed, I hooked up the milking
machines. After each group was milked, I moved them out for the next bunch to
get in. After all were milked, I cleaned and loaded the manure spreader, before
cleaning up to catch the school bus.
As the town of Coppell was so small, we road a bus to and
from Carrollton, Texas, for high school. After getting home from school, I
worked the late milking at the dairy.
After a while, Mom decided that work and school was too much
of a load, and I quit work. But, with the on-going labor shortage due to the
war, I was offered my first official employment. The Coppell School Board hired
me at $35. a month to be the janitor at my old elementary. It was agreed with
my Dad, that I would work an hour each morning to open the school, and clean up
after I got home. I got my first W-2.
At our home in Coppell, we had a large garden. It was about
a 100' by 100'. We raised potatoes, corn, english peas, tomatoes, okra, onions,
green peppers, and probably some things that I have forgotten. I didn't mind
the harder work, but I hated shelling peas. We did that at night while
listening to the war news, Bob Hope, Lux Theatre, Fiber and Mollie, and so on,
that some of you might remember.
Mom was a good cook, and we had company for dinner nearly
every Sunday after church. She made a great chess pie. I don't remember a meal
that was without a meat and potatoes. We also had a lot of cream gravy. That
was my job in the kitchen, particularly at breakfast. In the morning we ate a
lot of country sausage, eggs, cream gravy, and biscuits. After I married, it
was just coffee, or maybe corn flakes.
I made all A's in my freshman year, except for the semester
of English Literature. Frankly, I thought poetry was a rather dumb thing to
bother with. I might have been right. Never the less, I got a C. That C and
another later in biology dropped my final grade point average to 90.3 for the 4
years.
For 4 years I recited one poem over and over. No one but
myself ever knew. I could just about say it now. It was the poem, Trees, by
Keats. I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree.......
I was always small for my age, until I got a big growth spurt
when I was about 15. So, I only went out for baseball my freshman year. I
surprised everybody by making the team. It was the third game before I became a
starter in left field. I was still in left on the final game of my senior year.
Mom liked to have gone crazy trying to cut down my uniform to
get it small enough to fit. Later the mother of one of the bench riders was
good enough to give myself, and other boys a ride home. On the way I suffered a
huge embarrassment. The lady asked if I was the team mascot! The mistake was
really a natural one, as I only weighed about 90 lbs.
The coach was mostly interested in my being able to catch the
ball. I could do that. He was a good man, as well as coach. He used one
strategy with me that worked well for the team. I had standing orders to swing
at only third strikes. I probably averaged three walks a game. I still went 3
for 13 for a batting average of 230. But, I had a big on base percent.
As a sophomore, I went out for football and basketball,
making the squads. That did not mean that I played in varsity games, as I was
still a runt. I quarterbacked the scout team in football. I sat on the bench
in basketball, playing only in the B team games. Before trying out I had never
played before. In Coppell we were baseball freaks. We didn't have a basketball
goal in the whole town.
In my junior year my mom made a great decision for me. She
insisted that I take typing. She suggested strongly, that if I did, I could
later get office work. She didn't think in terms of college, but of my not
having to do labor work. So for the next two years I joined the girls in typing
class. It was back to Sears for a typewriter, so that I would have a chance.
I worked harder on my typing than any other subject. It was
either work, or let the girls beat me badly in daily speed drills. I competed
well. Each day the fastest student typist had their name on the blackboard with
the number of words. It was not often, but my name got there occasionally.
Today the teacher would not want to damage someone's self esteem, by having them
compete such as that.
I agree that it is not scientific, but, eliminate competition
and mediocrity will occur. Further, in certain sports or games, until you put
up some money, you will never be as good as you are capable of being. That is
from about 70 years of hard knocking experience. Lee Trevino said something
like you will never play as hard as you can until you have bet $20. with only in
$10. in your pocket. He exaggerated, but he was right.
I played as a substitute in football and basketball in my
junior year, but became a starter in all sports as a senior. I was the
quarterback, point guard, and left fielder. I was no less athletic earlier, but
I very small. I began the growth spurt at about 14-15.
As a junior I became assistant editor of the school
newspaper, having taken journalism as an elective to go along with my typing. I
was the editor in my senior year, with our biggest accomplishment being the
Christmas issue. It was done in all the seasonal colors, requiring many runs
through the machine. We used all manual equipment.
In athletics my teams won the Dr Pepper tournament
consolation bracket in my senior year. In baseball we won district once, tied
for district once, and won regional once. Regional was as far as you could go
in those days.
In Carrollton High School at that time the teachers expected
a high standard, and graded much more harshly than today's teachers. It is true
that even then there were a few of my friends that graduated with a partial free
pass. Today they might make solid C's.
From reading you can surmise that the high school days were
some of the happiest of my life. Every week there was a game to look forward
to. I practiced some sport all year. There were a lot of good times.
I was a junior before I paid much attention to the girls.
Even then it was late in the year before dating much. It was not long before I
dated a classmate, that I later married. Iretta Brimmage (Rita) and I got
married in December following our June graduation. We were both 17.
We did alright. We both had jobs. When we married I had a
few hundred dollars saves, and she had some good furniture, purchased with
earnings from summer work at a five & dime store. My Dad got a new car, and
sold us the old one on credit. After our final payment, he refunded the
interest. We saved some each month. Our main bank was under a linoleum rug,
where we slipped a $20 now and then.
We rented a 3 room frame house. It was not much, but not all
that bad either. It had only an inside cold water facet. We got our first TV,
and our first new car, while living there.
We stayed there about a year before my Mom and Dad had the
opportunity to buy a rental, which we moved into. It had everything: plumbing
and a water cooled window fan. It was a three room frame, that Dad got for
$4,200. on credit. Our rent and later the rent from others paid it off.
There was only one thing wrong with living in Coppell. If
you missed church, there would be people coming by checking on your illness,
even though you only slept late. If we had ever needed help, there were very
few in town unable, or unwilling, to come to come to our aid.
At that time we knew every living sole in town by name, where
they worked, and whether they were Baptist or Methodist, etc. Now I don't know
the name of a neighbor across the hall.
I got a job at a car dealership as a file clerk. She got a
job as a secretary for a small construction business. She made about $10. a
month more than I did.
I played baseball on the Dallas sand lots. Every Saturday
night we would go downtown to a movie, and eat Mexican food at El Fenix on
McKinney Ave. That was the original of their restaurants. My parents lived
near. Her parents were about 10 miles away. So, we got plenty of our Moms'
cooking.
THE ARMY YEARS
The world just rolled by for a while, until I was drafted
during the Korean War. Then Rita lived with my parents, while I left for Ft.
Sam Houston in San Antonio, before taking basic training at Ft. Bliss in El
Paso. Rita came to live there, sharing an apartment with a girl from our high
school. I went home for supper, and had most of the weekends off. The army
decided that I should be in the artillery.
Remember my writing about Mom's insistence that I take
typing? Well, from basic training I was tagged for Korea. But, a funny thing
happened on the way. In Ft. Ord in California, during world series time, I was
waiting in one of the many lines for processing. Along came a guy asking for
volunteer typist. Now, the old saying is to never volunteer, but what could be
worse than Korea? They had never seen a soldier type as well. They kept me off
orders for days, while they watched the series. Then it stretched into a couple
of months as the guys goofed off because they had me.
Some nut back in El Paso told us that Ft. Ord was to be
permanent duty. So Rita drove out with me. We rented a nice little place down
the coast.
As I typed daily, I got to be friends with the guys. After
shuffling my file around to the danger point of getting caught, they got me into
a personnel administration school at the Presidio in San Francisco. Yes, that
is the same place where the movie with Shawn Connery was made.
At that school I finished at the top of the class. I was
then assigned to permanent duty at Ft. Lewis in Tacoma. We stayed there for
about a year until I was finally put on orders for Korea. All I remember about
our stay in Tacoma is: our poverty, my work, and snow and more and more snow.
If it didn't snow, it sleeted.
After a thirty day leave at home, it was back to Tacoma for
shipment to Korea, by way of Japan. Going to Korea from Japan was a scenic ride
in a World War II landing barge, that you could not see out of. I did get to
ride the length of Japan on one of their trains.
I was assigned to the Pusan repo depo. That is, for nine
months I typed special orders for the shipment of troops back home, as the war
had ended. So my war was fought with the trusty old typewriter. Thanks again,
Mom.
The special orders section was on call 24 hours a day. That
is, we didn't work until a ship came in to load. Then we might work 40 straight
hours, beating on the typewriters, typing those old blue stencils.
Having so much time off, I did basically two things. I
played poker, blackjack, or gin rummy at night. During the day I played ping
pong or pool. I became friends with a guy from Tennessee, who was a former
state champion in table tennis. He wanted someone to beat up. I was it. He
started by spotting me 18 points. Before I left it was down to 8. Sooner or
later you learn to stand away from the table and return the bullets.
If you could afford it, you were allowed to hire a Korean
houseboy. We were exempt from KP, but were required to pull guard duty, or get
someone to do it for you. I made enough money at the card table to pay for the
houseboy, and a sub to pull guard.
Ultimately, I got out three months early on a program for
entry into college. I served a total of only twenty one months. I was not a
good soldier, but my work was excellent. Most of the army typist used the old
hunt and peck system.
I was a far cry from being one of the many real soldiers that
I helped to get home, sometimes a day or two early because I could produce on
the typewriter. |
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