“Take care of all of your memories, For you cannot relive them.”
— Song lyrics by Bob Dylan and The Band
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Memories. I write about them often. Because at this age, I have a lot of memories to keep up with. And possibly because that’s all I can remember.
Most amazing are moments remembered when I forget everything else. My phone. My keys. My checkbook. It will come to me in a minute, but while we’re waiting, let me share a conversation with a good friend not long ago. We talked about what we remembered as new South Ward Elementary students in Mount Pleasant. Back when Fred Flintstone was still in Bedrock kindergarten .
By chance or destiny, we arrived in northeast Texas just a few years apart; coming from opposite directions. The reminiscing was fun. But what we agreed was really the amazing part was how much we remembered about grade school.
My first-grade year was 1954 at Crockett, Texas. The small white frame structure my parents rented sat in the middle of an empty field next to the only nearby residence. Two houses not far from downtown with a long, shared dirt driveway, surrounded by woods on three sides.
We didn’t have a television, or a telephone. What we did have was the sound of rain falling on a tin roof, the smell of Mom’s morning glories covering the trellis on the front porch, and late-night crackers and milk with Dad. It was his favorite bedtime snack.
A green Studebaker was transportation for our one-car family until the fateful Sunday afternoon when Dad and the neighbor, Mr. Hooks, went fishing. Old timbers on a country bridge failed, sending them off into a dry creek bed below.
The crumpled car and my father in bandages are scary memories. He and Mr. Hooks were banged up and bruised, but otherwise, all right.
My youngest sister, Sylvia, was born in Crockett. I remember Dad showing off our newborn sibling at the hospital’s back door, where middle sister Leslie and I waited in the car. Mom in a bathrobe, ws standing behind Dad. Both beaming with smiles.
My father worked for the long gone five-and-ten-cent store chain, Perry Brothers. Small wooden crates in which china dishes were received at the store served many uses, from garage storage to creative kid’s activities. One pinnacle of playtime was the day I launched one in the creek behind our house to see if it would float.
It did.
Basking in that delightful discovery, I then talked Leslie into boarding it to see if it would still float.
It didn’t.
Thank goodness the creek was shallow.
The bungled boating caper, plus the time I talked Leslie into jumping off the roof, certain that a bed sheet was a good parachute, probably accounts for less-than-good memories of parental punishment. Mom seldom administered any, deferring that chore to Dad. But her warnings were stern enough. “You just wait until your father gets home!”
Dad was good to take me to town following his lunch break on summertime Saturdays. Clutching a quarter and a dime, I walked to the nearby theater where the two coins were ample funding for a double-feature matinee plus popcorn and a Coke.
The last of 1954 summer movies was the beginning of first grade in the basement of an old brick school building.
The quintessential teacher, whose name I don’t remember, wore gray hair up in a bun and lace-up, high-heeled shoes. We wrote 1+1=2 on black chalkboards over which hung examples of cursive writing and the obligatory portrait of George Washington. The unfinished one that renders the appearance of clouds at the bottom.
First grade was my first and last playground fight. It went down near the front steps of the old schoolhouse. I don’t remember what it was about or who won it.
I do remember thinking that I didn’t particularly enjoy it and made a mental note to never get into another exchange of fisticuffs if I could help it.
First-grade classes moved into new classrooms after the Christmas break, from the basement into the modern mid-1950s structure with lots of glass and open spaces. That’s where we stood in line for the Salk polio vaccine. It’s also where a spring tornado turned the sky black, dark as night, as we huddled behind the new green chalkboards.
We left Crockett with our memories in 1955, arriving in Seymour where we lived until 1959 when we moved to Mount Pleasant where we stated long enough to call it home. It was the last relocation my parents would make.
I could tell you about our arrival in Seymour. It was about the same time that a young entertainer named Elvis performed at the Seymour High School gymnasium.
But that’s a different memory for a different day.
Right now, I’m still trying to remember where I laid my keys five minutes ago.
—Leon Aldridge
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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, , The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.
© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.
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