A second group is what I will call the Squires 3, because that is what we called ourselves. This happened mainly by accident when I was over at Rick Cumming’s house. He lived with his mother Bea and his older brother Duke. One night Rick was struggling with the cording of some new folk tunes when Robert Watson came in. While he was singing I started accompanying him. Then Robert chimed in. Surprisingly we thought it sounded pretty good.

Soon we were singing all the time. Rick suggested more than he play an instrument so I began playing a tenor guitar he had. It had only four strings so with more area on the fret board it was easier to finger. I believe it was supposed to be tuned like a ukulele (my dog has fleas) but I didn't want to have to learn ukulele fingering so I tuned it like the top four strings of a regular guitar.

The first day of class was not a good one (or so I thought at the time). I crossed the hall from homeroom to Mrs. Milligan’s class and she wasn’t there. In her place was a thin new Aggie graduate – Mr. Henry Lyle. While on that particular day I was not overjoyed at this turn of events, my opinion would change during the semester.

The other shock came at fifth period. Thomas and I were anticipating smoother sailing in English class now that we would not have to deal with Miss Dixon’s highly unjustifiable grading procedures any longer. Then in walked the woman herself.

“I suppose you were all expecting someone else,” she said, and I perceived that she had a devilish twinkle in her eye and a slight smile on her lips – well, as much of a smile as her stone face would allow. It was a sad bus ride home that day.

* * *

On many of the days during that spring and summer, Rick, Robert, and I would be sitting out in front of Rick’s house expanding our musical repertoire. We noticed Mr. Lyle running up and down Orem Road in his Jeep on many occasions. He must have noticed us too because one day he pulled up into Rick’s driveway to where we were sitting.

“Come on, guys, I need you to help me round up my cattle,” Mr. Lyle ordered.

We looked at each other in astonishment.

I don’t know exactly what I expected, but in the back of my mind I was thinking we would need to saddle up first. Mr. Lyle drove to a place along Hiram Clarke Road where the barbed wire fence to Houston Lighting and Power’s property near the power plant had been broken down. Mr. Lyle was keeping a herd of cattle on property he rented from HL&P under the power lines. It was actually a good piece of land, stretching from the power plant on South Main all the way to Orem Road.

Now I found out we were expected to do the rounding up on foot. These were big animals and for the first couple of minutes I was a little worried about the possible consequences. But it did not take long for us to get all the cattle back where they belonged. Fortunately the traffic on Hiram Clarke could see what we were doing and for the most part were considerate of our situation (there are always a few jerks who were not) and no human or cow was killed or injured.

This scenario repeated itself several times more over the course of the summer. I complained to Rick and Robert that Mr. Lyle had some cheek expecting us to round up his cattle at the drop of a hat. It would pay big dividends later.

South Main was really the dividing line between the kids who were better off and those who were not. The oldest railroad laid in Texas ran alongside (actually South Main was platted to run alongside the railroad that was already there) and we were the kids on the other side of the tracks. The only person I know who ever had a new car among our group was Nelda. Her folks gave her a new Ford Falcon (a convertible if I remember right). The rest had vehicles from the early fifties.

The one exception was Fergy (Bobby Ferguson). He had a metallic green 1956 Chevrolet. When Fergy drove there were usually four of us, Fergy, Billy (his brother), Thomas Browne, and me. Sometimes Rick Cumming or Dennis Conn was with us. The windows did not roll up on this car and it made trips in the winter or in the rain a little uncomfortable. I remember a few nights when we endured 40º weather watching movies at the South Main Drive In Theater. During this season we were the short lived “Polar Bear Club”.

A good and bad aspect about us and our cars was that one was always breaking down. Western Auto was my source of cheap rebuilt parts. During the time I had the ’50 Ford, I replaced a water pump, a carburetor and fuel filter, a distributor cap, points and plugs, a coil, and all the associated belts, hoses, and wiring – all from Western Auto.

The good part was the camaraderie that resulted among the boys in much of this auto repair. On the school bus one simply had to say that he was having trouble fixing his car and there would be a host of volunteers to give him a hand. Between our own combined experiences or with some advice from the boys at Brogan’s Auto Parts or Leo’s Phillips 66, we always fixed the problem. The biggest effort came in a two week stretch when Bill Law dropped a small Chevy V-8 (with twin 2 barrel carbs, I believe) into his 1951 Ford coupe.

* * *

He had one thing that I know he was self conscious about – his voice. It was high and rasping. Rick said it sounded like someone had rammed a stick down his throat and he never healed from it. I do not know how it started but before long he was no longer known as Bing. Everybody called him by a name he now prefers nobody know.

It was cruel and many of our conversations at the soda fountain had to do with me telling him to quit acting like a kid and grow up. A point he made was that no one respected him because they all called him by that name.

* * *

The next new employee was a nightmare and an outright bully.

“What on earth is that?” I asked.

The guy smiled. “My friends”, he responded.

When they came in they were loud and obnoxious, drawing attention to themselves from all over the store. They looked as what might be expected – bikers and biker chicks – dirty and crude with language to match. They spent thirty minutes convincing the guy that he should go with them. Once Wilson came over to tell him to “do something” about his friends.

Finally they all left, including him. Although he left me to run the entire soda fountain by myself, it was turning out to be a wonderful day. He was dismissed and never came back.

* * *

That summer the 50 Ford gave up the ghost. I guess it was the recycled Western Auto oil that did it, or maybe it was just the mileage (well in excess of 100,000) but the engine needed an overhaul and it was not worth it.

So it was summer and I had no wheels. Fortunately Rick Cumming had some, a white 1953 Studebaker pick-up truck (yes, Studebaker made a pick-up truck). The grill was unusual for that period. It was fiberglass. Fiberglass for front and rear ends would not become commonplace on automobiles for another four or five years.

Since Rick was out of school he helped Duke out by running to the florist supply house to get the flowers and supplies his mother Bea needed. Sometimes we would stop and eat. Most of the time it needed to be cheap eats. A favorite place was Price’s at Holcombe and Stella Link or Chris’ hamburgers on Fuqua. Price’s was really a forerunner of the old Jack-in-the Box when it had special sauce. The special sauce tasted exactly the same and the price was 19 cents. Chris’s hamburgers were even cheaper – 14 cents with mayonnaise and the works. I still don’t know how he did it.

Fortunately Mom was soon able to find a green 1953 Oldsmobile with a weathered paint job. I bought it for eighty dollars. It was the best car I had up until now. It was my first car with automatic transmission and turn signals. It didn’t have air conditioning but it had a radio.

I kept it nice for about a month and a half.

It was a hot summer day and I was scheduled to work both the day and evening shift, a 9 am to 10:00 pm stretch. As the day progressed the sun moved around to the west side of the building. We shut the blinds to the big picture window on that side just about time the construction crew began installing a new creosoted pole in the parking lot. The lot was very poorly lit and the owner decided to add some lighting. Unfortunately for me the job would not be completed on that day.

At 10:30 pm when we had locked the doors we did what we always did. We tore out of the parking lot. The route was always the same so it was safe to assume everything was alright. All of a sudden the black pole was right in front of me. I swerved but not enough to keep it from removing my left fender. I was sick.

One of the really bad things about doing stupid things is I could never feel completely bad just for myself. I mean, I felt as bad as anyone could, but then I had to experience another couple of hours of brow beating from my folks. It just went with the territory.

When I consider all my parents did for me it was probably a small price to pay but it did not make it any more bearable. As an example, while I was going to school the next week without wheels, Mom was on the phone. She was able to get a lead on a left fender complete with headlight, parking light, and they threw in the left bumper for $50. She found an Earl Scheib ad in the newspaper and I could get a paint job for another $50. I figured the car cost me $180 now. Still not a bad deal.

I put the fender on myself. I had two strokes of very good luck. My old fender came off almost surgically in the accident. There was very little if no distortion to the panel it was bolted to. The door wasn’t damaged either. The second piece of luck was the fender gasket. Somehow I had lost mine in the accident but the new fender had one attached. It went on easier than I expected.

Mom and I both went to Earl Scheib’s separately so I could have a ride home. I was presented with the colors I could have at the price and they were all your basic primary or secondary colors – no shades and definitely no metallics.

So why not bright red,” I thought, but the man said it might not be a good selection. Since the interior was green he suggested green again – or black. It made sense so I stuck with green. It was a good choice.

In spite of it looking like a full sized toy car because of the color, I had to admit it looked a lot better than it ever did before while I had it.

* * *

Sometime after Bing came to work, another guy hired on at the drugstore. He drove a black ’54 Dodge and his name was Bill Thomason. Bill was a rare bird. Bing caught onto it right away and he was somewhat merciless on Bill. It was too bad because Bill was a genuinely friendly guy. I believe Bing had been another Bill Thomason only a few months earlier. He had attached himself to Rick Cumming and guys like me and had become accepted because he was a good guy. His only drawback was his insecurities that he couldn’t seem to shake quickly enough - but he was doing it.

I Believe Bing gave us too much credit. He seemed to think we were accepting him in spite of his shortcomings when actually he had none except maybe his height and a the sporadic acne problem that cursed most of us (especially at class picture time). He attached himself to the Aardvarks immediately and why not. Of all the guys in school they seemed the most unpretentious. They had to be when you consider the cars they drove.

When Bill came to work, our other Bill – Bill Law – was scheduled less and less frequently. Finally he quit coming altogether. Even before he left, I was already the old veteran with seniority.

We taught Bill Thomason all the things we learned when we were first hired. For safety reasons the most important lesson was changing the CO₂ tank.

The CO₂ tank came with a pressure gauge and a combination pressure regulator and shutoff valve. The hose assembly that connected to the tank had another pressure gauge, a pressure relief valve, and combination pressure regulator and shutoff valve. The pressure regulating valve on the tank would be adjusted to a lower pressure that would keep the relief valve on the hose assembly from going off, then the pressure regulating valve on the hose assembly would be adjusted to a pressure that the carbonator could use.

This was the most important thing we had to learn.

When the pressure gauge on the hose assembly started to fall, it was time to change the tank. We could get a little extra CO₂ out of the tank by opening its pressure regulating valve until the pressure gauge on the hose assembly was back where it needed to be. We continued doing this until it could no longer maintain pressure, then we changed out the tank.

On this occasion when the tank needed changing, Bill volunteered.

“Are you sure you can do it?” I asked.

He told me he could so I gave him the okay and he went to work. He had been in the back room for about a minute when all of a sudden a series of what sounded like explosions erupting in three second intervals began. I looked at the pharmacists and they had shocked expressions on their faces as they watched Bill bolt out of the back room and run for the front door.

I slowly walked toward the back room with a good deal of fear. Nothing was coming apart so I closed the valve on the tank. As soon as I did the explosions went away. They were just the pressure relief valve doing its job. If I had known then what I knew later in life I would not have been so afraid.

When Bill came back it was my turn to do some chewing. It served him right for scaring me to death! Then we went back over the procedure for changing out the tank. He never got it wrong again.

* * *

I am not sure if the drug store was a good place for budding romances, but many new couples spent a lot of time there. Jack White, one of the checkers at JMH, brought his girlfriend, Cynthia Apple. Earl Stoffel, another sacker, brought his girlfriend, Carol Phillips. I am not certain about Jack and Cynthia. I know they acted a lot like they were in love. I do know more about Earl and Carol. He worked at Leo’s Phillip’s 66 station up on Fuqua Street and swore to Alan Larson that he was in love. Alan tried to talk some sense into him but Earl wouldn’t listen. I guess Earl showed Alan. He married Carol and would be a mechanic all his life. I'm sure he is a good one because he was good way back then. Through it all he has had Carol, a fine wife to support him.

* * *

Before the fall semester began I told Bing I was going to try to get onto the staff of the Rebel Yell, the school newspaper. I explained to him that after seeing the yearbook the year before, I was not too happy about my popularity. It seemed I had none. Being on the newspaper, I explained, would at least get my name seen by a few people.

I also told him that I remembered last year Rick Robbins was able to interview several national celebrities including Annette Funicello, the head mouseketeer on the Mickey Mouse Club, who also did all the beach movies with Frankie Avalon. I thought all this was really a good idea. He thought it was such a good idea, in fact, that he decided to join the newspaper himself.

I suppose I took the newspaper very seriously. When I started writing this part of my personal history I was shocked to realize that I could not remember a single girl that I had dated through September, October, or November. Thinking back on it, I suddenly realized it was because I was spending my time in the stadium press boxes on the weekends. Our newspaper sponsor, Mrs. Ruth Long, let me be the sports editor. At that time the City of Houston had three newspapers, the Chronicle, the Post, and the Houston Press. The Chronicle was the conservative newspaper and the most read newspaper in town. The Post was the liberal newspaper and ran the Chronicle a close second. The Press took no sides, but made up for this by being the gossip and scandal rag for the city (a veteran of all three papers was the gossip columnist Maxine Messenger who first worked for the Press until it folded, then for the Post until it folded, then for the Chronicle). The Press had a circulation of about half of what the other two newspapers had. So the Press was on a limited budget. But the Chronicle and the Post had sportswriters dedicated to high school football. The Press did not have a sportswriter for high school football but they still wanted to cover high school football. They had what I thought was a good idea.

They decided to employ high school students to be their sportswriters. There would be no pay except for a photo and a byline in the Houston press. Our assignment was to go to the games take notes about the game and then as quickly as we could call the press and give them the highlights. That was it. Someone else would write the copy but we would get the credit. Dad told me I had a good future as a reporter. He said that had natural style in the way I wrote. It was one of the very few times I got some real compliments from a father so I did not have the heart to tell him it was not me.

But I had a wonderful time doing this.  I felt like hot stuff.  There I was sitting between Bill McMurray and Carol Whateverhisnamewas, all three of us reporting on the game.  I imagine they both thought I was probably pretty silly, but at the moment I did not realize it.

To earn more money the Rebel Yell also published a weekly flier called the Rebel Squeak.  It was supposed to be a sort of gossip rag but Mrs. Long had very strict standards on just how far we could go.  We could not make fun of the school, the educational system, the teachers, or the school board.  In addition, any fun we pulled at the other students had to be “good clean fun”.

One of the things I did in the Rebel Squeak week was to draw caricatures of some of the teachers. I thought I did a reasonably good job on all of them but everyone agreed that the caricature I drew of Mr. Lyle was perfect. Mr. Lyle was one of the most popular teachers in the school, so that caricature did more for my short term popularity that any thing I did throughout the entire of your of 61-62.

Another thing the school newspaper did for me was put me on local TV where I could really embarrass myself. The local channel (Channel 11 I suppose, they were always big on that sort of thing) had a program where local movers and shakers would be interviewed by high school newspaper students. The week came for Westbury and I tried to formulate a question that would have something to do with the planning of the new domed stadium. I could not think of anything good and I still didn’t have anything when my time came to ask the question, so what I said came out more than rather bad. I was embarrassed and I didn’t speak to anyone in the house about it.  They had all watched me on TV and I suppose were just as embarrassed for me as I was for myself because no one said anything.

* * *

In the fall of my senior year I was called in to the principal’s office for a very special conference. Mr. Gupton, the assistant principal, ask me about the Aardvarks. He showed me a section in the HISD guidelines that said all clubs and organizations in school had to be sanctioned and have a sponsor who was also a teacher.

I explained to him that the Aardvarks were not a school organization but rather a neighborhood organization. It was as if I was telling him that the Aardvarks were a gang. He told me that I had to disband the Aardvarks or I would be in a lot of trouble – possibly even expelled. When I got back to class Thomas Browne asked what had happened to me in Mr. Gupton’s office.

“We have to disband the Aardvarks,” I replied.

“We can’t do that!” he said.

“No, we’re not going to,” I responded.

From then on the Aardvarks had to be a little less conspicuous at school and it would show in how fewer times they were mentioned in the second yearbook. If it were not for Bruce Voorhies they would not have been mentioned at all.

Later that year the seniors were given a form to fill out where they could write down all the organizations and activities they participated in throughout their years in high school. The ones who wrote down that they belonged to the Aardvark Club got the form returned. I suppose this action was taken to allow us all to make the decision for ourselves to strike out the Aardvark Club as one of the organizations. In fact we were given another form to fill out instead of striking out the Aardvarks club in the previous form.

We were actually given time to consider actions and a deadline was set to turn the new forms back in. That allowed us time to discuss amongst ourselves what we’re going to do. The suggestion was made that instead of saying we belong to the Aardvark Club we would write in Rodeo Club instead. The more stalwart of the Aardvarks did just that while those who were too afraid that they might get in trouble filled out their forms and omitted the Aardvark Club as directed.

Anyone who has a 1963 Westbury yearbook and looks at the senior pages will see who those brave souls were. If the Rodeo Club is listed among their activities below their name you know for sure they were Aardvarks.