On To Argyle

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my mom's job back in 1970 consisted of driving around to various cattle auctions in Oklahoma and Texas selling "advertising time" on monitors that showed the vital statistics of cows as they crossed the block. Her territory ranged from up near Oklahoma City down towards Houston. She didn't get home as often as she wanted because Tyler was quite a bit out of the way.

In early 1971 the lease on the Chilton Street house was just about to expire and that gave us the opportunity to move somewhere more conveniently located. Dallas probably would have been ideal but mom really didn't like living in heavily populated areas (traffic and all) so we settled on Denton...So one fine morning in early 1971 we drove there, bought a newspaper and starting going through the rentals.

Sidebar: Denton is located roughly 30 miles northwest of Dallas and is home to two major universities: North Texas State University (now called University of North Texas) and Texas Woman's University (AKA "T.W. Zoo"). At that time Denton had a population of 20,000 with a college enrollment of 30,000. (Hence - the population more than doubled during the school year.)

Now, before I go any further I should point out that there was a significant distinction between "looking for a place" and "needing to find a place".
We were always looking for a place. It was primarily a recreational activity - sort of like window shopping - one of mom and Karina's favorite things to do:-)
But needing to find a place was totally different. We went about that in a deliberate and businesslike manner. There were only 2 criteria - minimally livable and in our price range. It rarely took us more than 2 to 3 hours to find something.

That day in Denton we were all business. We gleaned a list of potential rentals from the classifieds, prioritized them, made a couple of pay-phone calls and we were off.

Another aside: Back in those days handheld mobile communication devices were only used by people like Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock... In the real world phones were typically black, had dials, and were physically connected to things... Bell Telephone (asubsidiary of AT&T) had a virtual monopoly on telephone service in the U.S. and you couldn't even buy a phone. You had to rent one from them and it was not cheap. Especially those new-fangled push button "touch-tone" ones. (When they first came out people played songs on them - it was quite the fad.) But I digress :-)

I remember that we looked at a couple of apartments in Denton but they were pretty bad. (We're talking about the kind of places even college students wouldn't live...) The next place on the list was a house located about 5 miles south of Denton in a little place called Argyle.
It turned out to be a lovely 2 bedroom furnished home on an acre located a couple of hundred yards from "downtown" on Old Justin Road. I remember it being quite affordable. That was probably because the owner wouldn't rent to college students and that cut out about 95% of the local market :-)

It was a no-brainer... We went back to Tyler, packed up and said our goodbyes... Aside from my friendship with Wayne I really didn't have anything going on at the time so (for once) the move didn't cause any significant disruption in my life...

That was a quite a novel experience :-)