Slice of Life

I'm pretty close to wrapping up the time I spent living with the McDaniels in Argyle Texas in the spring of 1972. All that's left are some "odds and ends". You know - "slice of life" kinds of things.

First off - there was a lot of conflict between Steve and his Dad around that time. It got pretty rough at times, and that was tough for me because I could usually see both sides of the issue. Occasionally Steve would "take off" for a while and I'd just try and stay close and make sure he was OK...  I sometimes wonder if there wasn't some resentment because I was getting a lot of positive attention from his parents... Regardless - it seems like everything turned out OK in the end.

Next - bait for gas:  As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Argyle gas station was also the local bait shop and that's where Steve got a lot of his gas. He knew of a couple of cattle ponds in the area that were full of crawdads. So he kept a seine (fishing net) in his trunk and when he needed gas we'd sneak over to one of the ponds and make a pass with the seine. (Yes - that involved wading waist deep in some pretty foul water.) That would usually net enough crawdads (pun intended) to trade for a few gallons.

"Leftover" Chili: When Steve and I had to cook for ourselves our standard meal was chilli over a layer of Frito corn chips. But there was a twist: Whatever leftovers were in the fridge got added to the chilli. It didn't matter what they were - that was the rule. We ended up with a lot of pretty strange meals - odd, but always edible :-)

Motorcycles: That was when I learned to ride. Dewitt had a Honda CB175 (small 2 cylinder street bike) and a 305 Scrambler. I was not allowed on the Scrambler (that was considered a pretty big bike at the time) but I spent a lot of time on the 175. I still remember the first time I rode it. Dewitt showed me the controls and had me ride it up and down the street a couple of times. There was no "learning curve" at all. Shifting and braking were effortless - almost like I was born knowing how. Afterward I was allowed to ride the 175 around on the rural roads whenever I wanted (as long as I promised to take it easy).  I found it to be incredibly enjoyable. (And yes, I always wore a helmet.) I did ride some other bikes during that time period and my only comment is that they should not make street bikes with 2-stroke engines. They're kind of "temperamental" :-)

Campaign signs:  I don't know why politicians bothered putting them up on rural roads in Texas. They just got blown to hell anyway...  Enough said about that :-)

There's not really much else worth telling. It was cool being part of a "normal" family. And despite everything that was going on in the background it was one of the more pleasant periods in my life (to that point). But all things must come to pass and as the semester drew to an end it became clear that a move to Dallas was in my immediate future - and that's the topic of my next post.