the first time ever I was more frightened by the world than I was intrigued by it. Quietly, I had always soaked up life’s experiences. I loved schoolwork; even test taking. In the evening when my chores were completed and before I did my homework, I watched the national news with intense interest. I even enjoyed some, but admittedly not all, of the rigors of farmwork. Now, however, I wanted to retreat.
My life with my family had been more than just the farmwork. My sisters and brothers were my best friends. I rode the bicycle I shared with JoAnn. I played basketball on a dirt court with Ray. On Saturdays when my parents went to town for the family groceries and left us at home, I listened to the 45s that John played for us while Ray and Carlene danced. In the springtime Jo Ann and I picked blackberries along the roadsides. In the fall we fished the mud holes together for crawdads—one of JoAnn’s favorite activities. Even on the farm there were always sounds and sights that were pleasant, bright, and exciting—the greens of the spring peas, the croaking of the tree frogs, the glimmer of the fireflies that we called lightning bugs.
Yet in 1967 and 1968 everything in the bright world of sunshine, green grass, and purple and yellow flowers appeared to be covered with a gray film. Gone was the brother who entertained us with his love of music, the one who went streaming through our house with its seven-foot ceilings playing an imaginary game of basketball. John was gone—first to an air force base in San Antonio, then to Germany, mercifully not Vietnam, where one of his friends from high school had already died. I wrote him, but the letters he sent home could not take the place of his presence or give any assurance that he was safe from the war.
All around me people seemed to speak in hushed tones perhaps due to the fact that my father needed rest and quiet. I had never been a noisy child but I was even more quiet now, believing that it was the only way to save my father’s life. The strain hit us all. My mother was tired and not altogether healed. Each of us carried with us the stress of the injuries and recovery period. Remnants of the stresses remained for months. Wecould have each retreated into our own hurt, and left alone, perhaps I would have. However, our circumstances did not allow it. We were so accustomed to functioning as a unit that we continued, even in our healing, to do so. Work, church, and school continued. In particular, farmwork had to be done regardless of sickness or death. We continued to attend church. Our neighbors and our community expected it. And Ray, JoAnn, and I continued with school. Our parents’ misfortune and the death of our aunt were no excuse for irresponsibility.
B y 1968 my world and the world outside my home and family were changing dramatically. The county school board closed Eram as integration began to happen throughout the school system. I would transfer to Morris for junior high school. Even aside from the integration, going to school in Morris represented major change in my early life. Morris was a town—albeit a small town—with paved streets. It had a bank, a feed store, a hardware store, and a drugstore where, if I were lucky, I could buy ice cream while my mother shopped for groceries at Gale’s Market. Eram was just a school, standing alone, surrounded by fields of hay.
Though Ray started at the segregated Grayson High School, by 1967 he was attending the newly integrated Morris High School, along with JoAnn. Ray’s negative experiences with integration included having to be escorted out of Glenpool, Oklahoma, by local police because the fans there objected to his playing on the Morris High School football team. Amid the racist taunts and jeers his bus was led out of town after his team had won the game.
In my own transfer to Morris, I saw new opportunities—opportunities that were never realized. What I did realize was the signficance of race. My first
My life with my family had been more than just the farmwork. My sisters and brothers were my best friends. I rode the bicycle I shared with JoAnn. I played basketball on a dirt court with Ray. On Saturdays when my parents went to town for the family groceries and left us at home, I listened to the 45s that John played for us while Ray and Carlene danced. In the springtime Jo Ann and I picked blackberries along the roadsides. In the fall we fished the mud holes together for crawdads—one of JoAnn’s favorite activities. Even on the farm there were always sounds and sights that were pleasant, bright, and exciting—the greens of the spring peas, the croaking of the tree frogs, the glimmer of the fireflies that we called lightning bugs.
Yet in 1967 and 1968 everything in the bright world of sunshine, green grass, and purple and yellow flowers appeared to be covered with a gray film. Gone was the brother who entertained us with his love of music, the one who went streaming through our house with its seven-foot ceilings playing an imaginary game of basketball. John was gone—first to an air force base in San Antonio, then to Germany, mercifully not Vietnam, where one of his friends from high school had already died. I wrote him, but the letters he sent home could not take the place of his presence or give any assurance that he was safe from the war.
All around me people seemed to speak in hushed tones perhaps due to the fact that my father needed rest and quiet. I had never been a noisy child but I was even more quiet now, believing that it was the only way to save my father’s life. The strain hit us all. My mother was tired and not altogether healed. Each of us carried with us the stress of the injuries and recovery period. Remnants of the stresses remained for months. Wecould have each retreated into our own hurt, and left alone, perhaps I would have. However, our circumstances did not allow it. We were so accustomed to functioning as a unit that we continued, even in our healing, to do so. Work, church, and school continued. In particular, farmwork had to be done regardless of sickness or death. We continued to attend church. Our neighbors and our community expected it. And Ray, JoAnn, and I continued with school. Our parents’ misfortune and the death of our aunt were no excuse for irresponsibility.
B y 1968 my world and the world outside my home and family were changing dramatically. The county school board closed Eram as integration began to happen throughout the school system. I would transfer to Morris for junior high school. Even aside from the integration, going to school in Morris represented major change in my early life. Morris was a town—albeit a small town—with paved streets. It had a bank, a feed store, a hardware store, and a drugstore where, if I were lucky, I could buy ice cream while my mother shopped for groceries at Gale’s Market. Eram was just a school, standing alone, surrounded by fields of hay.
Though Ray started at the segregated Grayson High School, by 1967 he was attending the newly integrated Morris High School, along with JoAnn. Ray’s negative experiences with integration included having to be escorted out of Glenpool, Oklahoma, by local police because the fans there objected to his playing on the Morris High School football team. Amid the racist taunts and jeers his bus was led out of town after his team had won the game.
In my own transfer to Morris, I saw new opportunities—opportunities that were never realized. What I did realize was the signficance of race. My first
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