Real Happy Days
One would think that just about all one could write about the little town of Beeville has been written here....but wait...there's more! Where to begin?
Perhaps I should start by explaining that although Beeville is deep in South Texas, between San Antonio and Corpus Christi, and was historically an agricultural, oil and cattle town, it had another feature when I was growing up. Chase Field Naval Auxiliary Air Station opened in 1943 and was located about eight miles past my home on the Refugio Highway. Its primary reason for being was to train Naval personnel to fly jets. The Navy bought some land from a prominent cattle rancher and life in our quiet country town changed quite a bit. The rancher was not happy with the roar of the planes but many young ladies were extremely happy with the influx of young men.
A USO was opened downtown and it was a great place for the servicemen and the citizens to socialize. In 1944 I began taking piano lessons and one day I came home from school to find that my piano was missing. When I asked my mother what happened to it, she said, "Oh, I gave it to the USO for the service boys." With that she whipped out a long hard paper replica of a piano keyboard and told me I could learn to play on that. Ha! No sound, no learn. A few years later I learned to play the trombone...sweet revenge. It's a lot louder.
We kids soon learned that we could help with the war effort too. We gave up our metal toys and collected them for the scrap drive. In those days chewing gum was shaped in long, thin strips wrapped in wax-covered tin foil, (the current day aluminum foil). We carefully stripped off that foil and rolled it into a ball, quite a large ball, after chewing a lot of Wrigley's gum, and gave it to the Ladies Auxiliary who in turn sent it off to be formed into U.S. weapons. I remember one day in junior high when someone showed up with a piece of Fleers Dubble Bubble gum. We hadn't been able to get that for a few years so about five of us girls each took a little bite of it just to get that familiar sweet flavor. Couldn't blow any bubbles with it, but it sure tasted good. Yes, World War II influenced my entire pre-teen years.
During my stint as a social worker in Bee County, I had occasion to visit the base and it always seemed odd to me to be met at the gate by a guard who ushered me on with "Welcome Aboard". Then when I arrived at the main office building I was told to go down the "passageway" and up the "ladder". Little did I know that 20 years later I would be on a real ship doing just that.
Sorry, I do tend to get off the subject.
Back to Beeville............There was one hotel downtown, opened in 1925 with fifty-four rooms and had a cafe and beauty parlor within. I remember going with my mother to the beauty parlor and then having lunch in the cafe afterwards. The hotel was owned by a couple but run by the lady (I am not using names here) who was quite a character. She went to our church and when she entered she immediately started greeting people with "Hi, Toodles" waving at all the attendees. Well, back to the hotel: Her husband was an alcoholic who sat in their limousine right in front of the hotel and yelled in a drunken voice to all who entered, "You don't want to stay there.!" Most people knew to ignore him.
They had one son who was obese but was a charming character. He used to throw big parties in his hotel penthouse and he didn't eat until the party was almost over because as soon as he ate, he had to go to sleep. His mother had raised him on four meals a day and a nap after. My husband and I went bird hunting one time with him and his wife and they brought a case of beer for the four of us, lots of food and one little Mexican boy. His job was to retrieve the birds after we shot them. No birddog for our host! No, humans are better!
This poor man, many years later, was leaning out of his hotel window to see how the new patio was progressing, when he lost his balance and fell headlong into the cement mixer! He didn't get to see the finished product.
One of the highlights of my young life was the stock show, rodeo and parade which occurred every October in Beeville. Daddy usually had a float entered in the parade and I rode a horse or marched in the band. Hometown parades always fascinate me because the townspeople stand on the side of the street and wave happily at people they see every day just as if it was a homecoming and they had all been away a long time.
Goldie who was one of our town characters and in every parade he rode in the remains of a wrecked car mounted on a flatbed waving an empty liquor bottle and whooping loudly. A sign on the side of the car read "Don't drink and Drive". Of course, he couldn't drive but he sure could drink!
There was always a rodeo after the parade and it was real. I say that because there were no "Rhinestone Cowboys", just real cowboys who knew how to ride anything that didn't want to be ridden, including brahma bulls. There were characters who knew how to do trick roping and clowns who risked their lives to draw a bull away from a downed cowpoke. The stands for the observers of the rodeo were not fancy and also not very high. One angry bull threw his rider and decided he wanted to be in the stands so he took off, jumping the low fence that surrounded the arena and managed to get to about the third row before some clown roped him. It really was never dull.
Come to think of it, dull as all this may sound to some readers, it was only boring sometimes, but most of the time we found plenty to do. We had a couple of drive-ins like the one in Happy Days and we had "sock hops" in the school gym. The dances were called that because we couldn't wear shoes in the gym. We drove to the nearby town of Goliad where they had wonderful dance bands in a huge building and we went to Corpus so we could swim in Corpus Christi Bay. Each summer many of us went to Port Aransas on the Gulf and that was fantastic fun. I was fortunate enough to have parents who liked to fish so I spent many hours standing on the beach and surf fishing or going out in the Gulf deep-sea fishing. I am now paying for all those hours in the sun because we didn't have access to sun-block "back in the day". Sure was fun though. Can't imagine what body parts I would have trouble with now if I'd worn the teeny weeny bikinis they wear today.
That's about all I can write today. If I could find my photos of that era I'd put them here, but alas, they are somewhere in the nether regions of my closet.
Perhaps I should start by explaining that although Beeville is deep in South Texas, between San Antonio and Corpus Christi, and was historically an agricultural, oil and cattle town, it had another feature when I was growing up. Chase Field Naval Auxiliary Air Station opened in 1943 and was located about eight miles past my home on the Refugio Highway. Its primary reason for being was to train Naval personnel to fly jets. The Navy bought some land from a prominent cattle rancher and life in our quiet country town changed quite a bit. The rancher was not happy with the roar of the planes but many young ladies were extremely happy with the influx of young men.
A USO was opened downtown and it was a great place for the servicemen and the citizens to socialize. In 1944 I began taking piano lessons and one day I came home from school to find that my piano was missing. When I asked my mother what happened to it, she said, "Oh, I gave it to the USO for the service boys." With that she whipped out a long hard paper replica of a piano keyboard and told me I could learn to play on that. Ha! No sound, no learn. A few years later I learned to play the trombone...sweet revenge. It's a lot louder.
We kids soon learned that we could help with the war effort too. We gave up our metal toys and collected them for the scrap drive. In those days chewing gum was shaped in long, thin strips wrapped in wax-covered tin foil, (the current day aluminum foil). We carefully stripped off that foil and rolled it into a ball, quite a large ball, after chewing a lot of Wrigley's gum, and gave it to the Ladies Auxiliary who in turn sent it off to be formed into U.S. weapons. I remember one day in junior high when someone showed up with a piece of Fleers Dubble Bubble gum. We hadn't been able to get that for a few years so about five of us girls each took a little bite of it just to get that familiar sweet flavor. Couldn't blow any bubbles with it, but it sure tasted good. Yes, World War II influenced my entire pre-teen years.
During my stint as a social worker in Bee County, I had occasion to visit the base and it always seemed odd to me to be met at the gate by a guard who ushered me on with "Welcome Aboard". Then when I arrived at the main office building I was told to go down the "passageway" and up the "ladder". Little did I know that 20 years later I would be on a real ship doing just that.
Sorry, I do tend to get off the subject.
Back to Beeville............There was one hotel downtown, opened in 1925 with fifty-four rooms and had a cafe and beauty parlor within. I remember going with my mother to the beauty parlor and then having lunch in the cafe afterwards. The hotel was owned by a couple but run by the lady (I am not using names here) who was quite a character. She went to our church and when she entered she immediately started greeting people with "Hi, Toodles" waving at all the attendees. Well, back to the hotel: Her husband was an alcoholic who sat in their limousine right in front of the hotel and yelled in a drunken voice to all who entered, "You don't want to stay there.!" Most people knew to ignore him.
They had one son who was obese but was a charming character. He used to throw big parties in his hotel penthouse and he didn't eat until the party was almost over because as soon as he ate, he had to go to sleep. His mother had raised him on four meals a day and a nap after. My husband and I went bird hunting one time with him and his wife and they brought a case of beer for the four of us, lots of food and one little Mexican boy. His job was to retrieve the birds after we shot them. No birddog for our host! No, humans are better!
This poor man, many years later, was leaning out of his hotel window to see how the new patio was progressing, when he lost his balance and fell headlong into the cement mixer! He didn't get to see the finished product.
One of the highlights of my young life was the stock show, rodeo and parade which occurred every October in Beeville. Daddy usually had a float entered in the parade and I rode a horse or marched in the band. Hometown parades always fascinate me because the townspeople stand on the side of the street and wave happily at people they see every day just as if it was a homecoming and they had all been away a long time.
Goldie who was one of our town characters and in every parade he rode in the remains of a wrecked car mounted on a flatbed waving an empty liquor bottle and whooping loudly. A sign on the side of the car read "Don't drink and Drive". Of course, he couldn't drive but he sure could drink!
There was always a rodeo after the parade and it was real. I say that because there were no "Rhinestone Cowboys", just real cowboys who knew how to ride anything that didn't want to be ridden, including brahma bulls. There were characters who knew how to do trick roping and clowns who risked their lives to draw a bull away from a downed cowpoke. The stands for the observers of the rodeo were not fancy and also not very high. One angry bull threw his rider and decided he wanted to be in the stands so he took off, jumping the low fence that surrounded the arena and managed to get to about the third row before some clown roped him. It really was never dull.
Come to think of it, dull as all this may sound to some readers, it was only boring sometimes, but most of the time we found plenty to do. We had a couple of drive-ins like the one in Happy Days and we had "sock hops" in the school gym. The dances were called that because we couldn't wear shoes in the gym. We drove to the nearby town of Goliad where they had wonderful dance bands in a huge building and we went to Corpus so we could swim in Corpus Christi Bay. Each summer many of us went to Port Aransas on the Gulf and that was fantastic fun. I was fortunate enough to have parents who liked to fish so I spent many hours standing on the beach and surf fishing or going out in the Gulf deep-sea fishing. I am now paying for all those hours in the sun because we didn't have access to sun-block "back in the day". Sure was fun though. Can't imagine what body parts I would have trouble with now if I'd worn the teeny weeny bikinis they wear today.
That's about all I can write today. If I could find my photos of that era I'd put them here, but alas, they are somewhere in the nether regions of my closet.
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