Part III: John Boyce Life and Times
(Class of 1963)

Part III of III

Thanksgiving brought about the game that we had all waited for some time - The Almeda Bowl.  The previous year we had an Aardvark intersquad football game amongst ourselves - the Aardvark first annual Orange and Green game. We had fun and we swore would make it an annual affair.

The next fall, Thanksgiving again, we decided to hold the first annual Almeda Bowl. We thought it would be good to pit the Aardvarks against the students from the other side of the tracks – Westbury itself. The man who was up to the task to put Westbury’s team together was Larry Dillard, who said he could put together a team that would beat us. We didn’t think so. What we didn’t count on however was that Larry would recruit the Westbury football team to play with him.  We had anticipated that all players would be “amateurs”.

One of the boys who really wanted to play on our team was one of the best athletes in the school - Toby Belt. I remembered that Toby had suffered that head injury when he was in junior high school playing football and I told him that we, in good conscience, could not allow him to play with us. He seemed very disappointed.

The day of the big game saw us all assemble at the practice field at Johnston Junior High School at 10:00 AM, the Friday after thanksgiving. The entire football team showed up. We protested to Larry Dillard that this was supposed to be an amateur game. He said that was not how he saw it. After a lot of jawboning we decided to play them anyway.

It was brutal! Not only were they better athletes, they had plays that they had practiced all throughout the fall. We on the other hand or running plays like “Joey, you go long,” and “Bobby, you go down and out - on three”.

The entire game was lopsided. Toby got the ball lot for the Westbury boys. I can still see him loping down the field with about five Aardvarks hanging off of him. Sometime in the first quarter I got my bell rang. I went up to defend against a pass and when I came down the bottom part of my face hit the top of the receiver’s head.  It knocked me out cold. I was carried to the sidelined and I could not remember anything until, I was told, we were in the fourth quarter.

That was scary. Right after I became aware of things I asked the people around me what I had been doing.  Had I laid on the ground unconscious?  “No,” they said. “I had been up and walking around”. But I could not remember anything (I still can’t to this day). When I became aware of my surroundings, at first I did not know what time of the year it was. I could not remember anything about my life except for who the members of my family were and who my friends were at that time around me. I started to try to remember if we had already celebrated Christmas or not. I decided that we had not. Then I tried to think about Thanksgiving and I remembered that we had just had Thanksgiving so things started falling in place.

Soon all pieces were in their proper order in my head. I could remember everything just as before and the fear that I might have had a major head injury when away. Oh yes, the final score was 44-0.

When I drove home I thought I would not say anything to my mother about this football game. She had already forbidden me to ever play football because she said I would get hurt. I always played secretly against her will and now I did not want to prove her right.

* * *

Meredith Manor, our subdivision, was the end of the route so Mrs. Brogan would pick us up first. She did not come into the subdivision, however. We waited for the bus just outside the subdivision. It was a walk of between a quarter to a half mile depending on where we lived. The people who waited at this bus stop were Vicki Deutsch, Doug and Joy McCarty, Alice Chadwell, Pat Angier and me. From there we would move back toward Pamela Heights, picking up Dave Buchanan and Brenda Moerbe along the way. The Pamela Heights kids included the Stoffels (Earl and Edna), Eileen Mitchell, Jacqui and Melanie Dever, Carol Phillips, and Alan Larson. We would continue on east down Orem Road toward where Nelda and the Eversole girls lived, picking up Rick Cumming along the way. Then we would pick up Nelda, Robert Watson, and Bill Ward. Turning north on post oak Evelyn Sizemore, Bonnie Bryson, Carol Nagy, Randy Shackleford, and Carolyn Ludeke got on. Farther north we picked up Ward Dozier, Kay Priebe, Dana McCreary, and Barbara Burkett. There were others who rode from time to time, but these were the regulars, and they were some of my best friends.

* * *

After football season I began to have a social life again. At the same time, the Squires 3 were realizing some success of their own. We played at a dance a Presbyterian church in Dumbarton Oaks. We played at the Anderson wrote civic club. And we played in the Westbury high school talent show that was held in February. We never really ever broke up. We played on throughout the summer and on into the fall when I went to the University of Houston.

Right around thanksgiving I started dating Zollie Hill. Zollie was one of the first girls that showed me what the kind of girl was that I should have been looking for. She was cute to be sure, but she was also wholesome and funny and fun to be with. We went to a few school dances together and we went to a few Aardvark dances together. One of my favorite times with her was when we had a costume ball at Westbury. I went as a gangster and Zollie went as my moll. My outfit was pretty lame because it was made up of what ever I could find in the house. But Zollie looked super. Wherever she got that dress it was perfect. It was white with tassels and fringe all over it and with the white feathered hat she wore she looked just like a flapper. I really liked Zollie a lot, but that was my problem. At seventeen I was always afraid I would mess up with the girls I really liked, so I never got very amorous with them. I suppose that doesn’t say very much for the ones I really made out with, but that really is the way it was.

I don’t know when it was that Zollie and I quit seeing each other but the next girl I became interested in was new in the area and she started riding our bus. Her name was Barbara Hamilton and I thought she was cute in a every strange way. I asked her out and she said yes.

Barbara really wasn’t interested me. She had her eye on Mark Krinsky and she really threw herself at him. Mark was not too interested in her, however, even though he was looking for someone new because he had broken up with the girl he had dated almost since he had first come to Westbury – Mary Beasley.

I took advantage of that breakup one time only. I was venturing into uncharted waters here as I crossed the railroad tracks on south main and picked Mary up where she lived somewhere in Westbury. I don’t believe she was too fond of my old Oldsmobile. I really liked the V8 engine with over 300 cubic inch displacement and the stock two barrel carburetor.  I had taken the air cleaner off so I could hear the carburetor suck air when I accelerated.  It was all very powerful and all very good to me.  The date was cordial enough but no sparks so that was that.

To illustrate how messed up things were at the time of my life I will talk a little bit about my senior prom. I had asked Barbara Hamilton some months earlier to accompany me and as she was a sophomore she readily said yes. By the time the prom came around I didn’t want to take her but I had already had asked her. She only wanted to go now because Mark Krinsky would be there.

I really didn’t know all the ins and outs about proms so I drove my old car and wore my best suit. I didn’t even have a tuxedo. At the prom Barbara did her best to spend as much time around Mark Krinsky as she could. He had Mary Beasley on his arm because just like me he had asked her months before. It was accepted in those days that once you made a date it was very bad form to break it. The girl was supposed to that and neither of our girls did.

That’s about it. All I remember about the prom was that took place somewhere around Lawndale on the east side of town. The only romance with Barbara that was my good night kiss and it was not all that great.

* * *

The late in the spring the Rebel Yell decided to have a spring party. We discussed it in class and Bing volunteered his house because it had a pool. We already had had a few Aardvark activities there. Everyone thought that this was great so we decided to have another pool party. The funny thing was, Mrs. Long never showed up so we had no chaperone.

I took Kathy Ward. She was always very attractive to me and I thought I never had dated her enough. She was a couple of years younger and I never saw her at school so maybe that was the problem. But she was a lot of fun whenever we went out. She didn’t bring a bathing suit so she didn’t swim but she made me look good in front of all the guys and I guess that was the whole point of it.

* * *

Less than a month later Mrs. Long took us to Austin where we competed in competitions against newspaper staffs from around the state. This was all a part of the year end UIL competitions.

I cannot believe now how much freedom we had back then. Dave Buchanan, Bing, and I shared a motel room and we were free to come and go as we wished. There were no chaperones. We all had to go our separate ways anyway during the competitions, so we would have needed a chaperone for each student. I spent a lot of time when I was not in competitions walking around the capitol grounds and within the capital itself. There was no security back then because there was very little terrorism and it was assumed everyone had a deep respect for the place. Another thing I did was watch the state track competitions. When I had read about state track earlier in the newspapers, I had always pictured full stadiums watching the athletes much like in football games. I was surprised to see the stadium was near empty and the track meet run in a rather nonchalant manner.

I do not remember all the girls who took a trip with us. I know Carol Haehl and Barbara Burkette were possible candidates by I do not believe they went. The only one I remember who went was Annette Jackson, a girl who many saw as being very beautiful. I thought she was attractive.

Oh, we did very well right in the competitions.

I would like to say a few things about Mrs. Long. Many of us found her very dull and very strict. We did not like her directive that we not poke fun of anyone and we had a lot of funny things we could have printed in the Rebel Squeak.

The most important thing, I suppose, that she taught me was to try to be as objective as I possibly could in my journalistic activities. I would struggle hard to write an article that I thought was completely opinion free and she would go through it and show me how I was thinking by pointing out those things in the copy that revealed it. It was amazing and it taught me how to find a reporter’s opinion about almost anything in the articles I read later on. I also discovered that this journalistic axiom Mrs. Long preached so intensely was hardly ever practiced in the real world. Everyone had an ax to grind, especially in the news media. And even though the media denied it for decades and declared when it came to the news they were totally unbiased, when it was revealed late in the century that over 92% of them voted democratic, there was no attempt after that to keep the already poorly kept secret.

* * *

In May there was a senior party held and seniors got to take off for a day to go. I never heard too much about the senior party and I don’t think too many of the people of Almeda did.  As a result I spent the day working at K/G Drugs. But when I got my yearbook, it looked like it turned out to be a lot of fun, and I wish I had paid more attention to it.

* * *

Also late in the spring many of us took our college placement tests, the SATs and ACT. I took the ACT because I really wanted to go to Texas A&M if I didn’t get to go to Brigham Young. I took the SAT because that is what almost every other university required.

These tests were a couple of the bright points of my life when it comes to achievement. I was a National Merit Semifinalist thanks to my scores on the SAT. But better than that, I scored 24 out of 24 on that ACT, something that was almost unheard of. Regretfully my scholastic scores at Westbury were not all that great, poor enough, in fact, to keep me just out of the Key Club. I took the placement tests late in the year, much after scholarships had already been determined and as a result I only got one scholarship, a journalism scholarship to Southwest Texas.

I was happy with that, all things considered, and I told my Dad about it. But he told me that I should not go down that road because reporters do not make very much money.

Later in my life he would tell me many times that I should have been a sportswriter. He said I had been very good at it and he knew I would have loved it. It hurt a lot and I came very close several times to reminding him that it was he who advised against that career choice but I’d never did.

* * *

The week of graduation was probably the most difficult of my life up until that time. During that week we had to take all of our file examinations, go through commencement and baccalaureate, and finally pick up our report cards.

I had set up my schedule So that I had one examination on Monday, one examination on Tuesday, two on Wednesday and two on Thursday. I cannot remember the order of the examinations on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday but I definitely remember the order of my examinations on Thursday.

Thursday I had economics and physics. Mr. Lyle had been my economics teacher and Mr. Hardy my physics teacher. They were both good teachers and while I was breezing through economics I was having a more difficult time in physics. This was partly due to the fact that all my classmates in physics class were self-styled geniuses - members of the Key Club and Joseph Becker.

So I spent the night before studying physics because I figured economics would not be too difficult. The next morning at 9:00 I took my economics final examination. I had never seen such gibberish. Nothing I read made sense. By 11:00 when the examination was over I was sick to my stomach.

I did not eat lunch that day. I spent the time trying to study physics. But I couldn’t do that either because of my mental state. At 1:00 it was time to take the physics exam.

Now I had just the opposite experience.  Everything came to me clearly. I thought it was a trick my mind was playing on me. To add to my consternation, all the students around me were complaining about how difficult the test was.  One of the brightest actually got up, went to Mr. Hardy’s desk, and told him the examination was unfair.  Mr. Hardy had to get loud verbally and tell him to go back to his desk.  After about 45 minutes into the test I had already finished and re-examined the work I had done.  I could not find any way to do it better so I turn my test in amid the contemptuous or unbelieving glares from my classmates and I walked out of the room.  They probably guessed that I had no clue and simply gave up.  In a certain way I was thinking they probably might be right.

That night was extremely distressing.  We held the Commencement Exercise a couple of days earlier and now it was time for the Baccalaureate.  All this took place at the second Baptist church on Woodway.

In those days HISD policy was if a student did not pass his final examination, or did not pass the third six weeks, it did not matter what his average was for that course, he failed the course.

The seniors assembled in the foyer, all dressed in their caps and gowns. A committee of four or five came down the ranks and began removing students from the line. These were the ones who had failed their final examinations earlier that day. It had not been possible to notify them or their parents because of the short time period between the end of the last exam at 3:00 pm and the Baccalaureate at 7:30. The teachers had to use that time grading the examinations.  This was the first time the students actually had it confirmed that they had failed.  In a few minutes the parents would also know. When the committee passed me by I was both astonished and very very happy.

The next day I went back to Westbury for the last time to empty my locker and get my report card. The first thing I did was check my economics final grade.  I had made a C.  That helped me keep a B average in economics. In addition I made an A on my physics final and raised that grade to B.  Before I left the school I walked over to Mr. Lyle’s class.

“Boy, Mr. Lyle,” I said. “I was really worried about that economics exam yesterday. I had no idea that passed it.”

“You didn’t. Boyce,” Mr. Lyle said. “Now get out of here!”

He gave me the grade and I was so very grateful. I guess it paid to round up cattle the year before.

* * *

Before closing, I need to take some time to talk about my opinions and in some cases the experiences here, because in one way or another, for either good or bad, they were special to me. Since they were, they may very probably be very special to some other people who lived back then.

Although they were not to become the main focus of my life at that time so much as were the people I talked about, they did have an effect on my life, and my memories of them are sweet or sometimes even bitter. Sometimes they are sad.

It should be remembered that the opinions or impressions are those I held when I was 16, 17 and 18 years old. In many cases the opinions were definitely wrong (or perhaps the people had changed). Remember, I was just a kid, too. As an example, the opinion I held about Alan Larson was not favorable. Later in life, I found him to be a very good guy and a real genuine friend.