Meats

Well, I guess I'll have to write about my daddy. I don't remember my first image of him because he was always working and going to school. His father that I wrote about worked for the REA before he was my babysitter and because of that, daddy went to over 20 schools growing up from East Texas to Cloudcroft to Laredo staying for 6 months or so give or take . By the time I was born, he had his master's degree and had served his 2 years in the army. See, my grandpa had served in World War I in France as an ambulance driver and had scared his boys to death of the service. So when his time was up, he came home to TX when I was 3 months old. He had a job coaching at Chapel Hill, Texas or Snyder, Texas and he chose Chapel Hill because it was closer to his mom and dad. He taught school, coached and drove a bus so mom could stay home with me. Then he would take night classes at TJC and Saturday classes at East Texas State so he could get the GI Bill. Whenever I was 6 he was chosen to teach science classes to students all over Oklahoma, Texas and who knows where else. I just know he was gone all year teaching and one semester I had to live with grandparents because my mom was doing her student teaching. The next year he was hired in Tyler and so was mom. We built our first home. We had to pull a hundred trees out of our yard so we could build that house. He taught physical science for the next 10 years before he was named an assistant principal at a middle school. However all this time he had a second job on a piece of land-88 acres with a black top road around all 4 sides. He would come in from school after driving the bus and change his clothes and proceed with caution up highway 69N to his second love. He put in numerous hours on that place and it is one of the prettiest properties in the area. He cleaned out brush and planted coastal bermuda sprigs so he could have grass for grazing. Then after my sister graduated from high school, they built a dream house on the place and so now he doesn't have to spend time on the road everyday. He retired 17 years ago and is still spending every waking moment working on this land. There may be a man in Smith County that works harder but I don't know him. When I was growing up, I didn't think there was a man smarter than him,either. To this day, I haven't met a man to take his place in those areas for sure.