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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCollege Station Days, 1922-940_CampbellWORK COLLEGE STATION DAYS 1922 - 1940 My father, Dr. C. B. Campbell, came to A &M in 1903 and was head of the Modern Language Department from 1903 through 1948. He met my mother, Margaret Boulware, from Palestine, Texas at a house party at the Henry Seale home in Benchley, Texas. How he got there I'm not sure, but I expect it was horse and buggy, as Benchley was about 8 miles north of Bryan. They were married in 1917, and my sister, Peggy, was born December 16, 1919. I was born on November 13, 1922. With a doctor in attendance we were both born at home - a big argument later on as to who was born in College Station and who was born in Bryan (at the hospital). Bryan and College Station were like St. Paul and Minneapolis - rivals. I had my first newspaper clash (there were many later) when I wrote a letter to the Bryan Eagle complaining about the coverage of the Bryan Broncos and the Consolidated Tigers. I (as a 2nd stringer) was nearly wiped out at the next basketball game between the two schools. I sold Rival wall mounted can openers and magazine subscriptions door to door. I worked at the Aggieland drugstore when I was 14 or 15 years old - 6 days a week - 12 hours a day - $45 a month. I took a 10 day train trip to Cuchara, Colorado with my drugstore earnings. I had my first summer job taking care of clay tennis courts working for Mr. Fritz Hensel - I was 12 years old "I think" - for 75 cents an hour - "I think." TROUBLE I was bored one summer day and chunked some rocks through windows of the old Animal Husbandry Rodeo Arena. I got caught, of course, by D. W. Williams, Sug's father. (I always got caught!) I spent a half day a week sweeping the grandstand area until damage was worked out. In those days we respected our elders and everyone knew everyone so word of misdeeds always found their way home. Mother told the story that one time when she confronted me with something I knew she couldn't have known about, that I said, "Woman! You think you're God!" I got spanked. Another time, out of boredom, 5 or 6 of us climbed out a 3rd floor window of Old Main building and walked completely around the building on the 18" wide cornice ledge. We also frequently slipped in the P.L. Downs Natitorium and went skinny dipping - when A &M was out of school. Once we found a bunch of girls' clothing outside as we were going in, so we hid the clothes, but weren't smart enough to hang around! We also played tin can shinney on roller skates on the "Little Gym" basketball court - another no -no. I'm afraid on Halloween we might have tipped over a privey or two. Bill Hensel had a tree house we built in his backyard in an old Hackberry tree. We used to go across campus and get a 10 cent hamburger and a 5 cent Nehi and have lunch in the tree house. 2 Some of us would take the family car on dates to Brenham or Navasota or Calvert. I would disconnect the odometer and put in what I judged to be the right amount of gas and reconnect it. This worked fine until the car broke down and Bill Hensel came to get me - I got home at dawn with my folks in the driveway! While collecting coke bottles in the old Cedar Grove across the street on Thanksgiving day right after the game with T.U., I got hit by a car and broke my leg. It was a wild ride through post game traffic to the hospital. That Christmas we had the biggest snow in memory, and I was in a cast! We played Cowboys and Indians all the time. We also had inner tube rubber gun fights. We climbed trees alot, and generally made our own games and fun. Growing up as a child in College Station was a wonderful experience. We went to Sunday school every Sunday. We had a neat life - no one was rich - no one was poor - and everyone knew everyone. We had superb teachers in school, as most of them were either faculty wives and/or daughters. Carolyn Mitchell, Mrs. C.C. (Henrietta) Doak, Ethel Walton, and my Spanish teacher, Mrs. Spencer come to mind. They could all make you learn in spite of yourself! We walked to school and came home for "dinner." We had "supper" at night. The old grammar school was about 3 or 4 blocks away. For high school (we had no middle school), we went to old Pfeiffer Hall, a condemned building on the campus - just south of Old Main where Dad had his office. 3 Mr. Ferguson, the principal, gave me a hard time. We got caught kicking trash cans downstairs and I got caught smoking - tobacco. (Dope had never been heard of). Brooks Cofer never got caught, but Jack Miller and I always did. We started the Shorthorn in high school - the first annual. We only had 11 grades, and when I graduated_in 1939 we only had about 18 or 20 seniors. No one had TV, of course, but we had radio. I had a crystal set with earphones and could get the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago - wonderful music. Being "campus brats" we were huge Aggie fans. I think I remember a 6 -6 or 7 -7 tie on Thanksgiving of maybe 1928. First game I remember. We used to go over to the Assembly Hall near Sibisa Hall to hear radio broadcasts of Aggie sports events. Everyone was in the Corps when I was young, and we had both horse cavalry and horse -drawn artillery. Final Review - across the street from our house - was the ultimate thrill for me. The band kept playing "Home Sweet Home" and "Auld Lang Syne" - a teary time, as the Corps passed in review. In the early years, I remember the bugle calls that ran everything - Assembly all the way to Taps. The Corps marched to Sibisa Hall for meals. 4 I don't think we had a street address. Our mail came to Box 273, Faculty Exchange. On our street coming west was Dr. Ball's home, Sug Williams' home, the Morgan home, and the Hensel home. Then the street going south to Kyle Field and then the Bagley home and then our home, the Karper home and one more before Highway 6 and the RR Station. We were across the street from the Cedar Grove on what is now the site of Cain Hall athletic dorm. There's a picture of my sister, Peg, me, and our dog Lucky at the RR Station. Lucky was a huge dog of mixed parentage who used to take one end of a heavy rope and pull 4 to 6 of us kids all over the place. We had no air conditioning, not even an attic fan until the late '30s. We didn't know any better so it was all right. We had ice deliveries and ice boxes. We'd put out a card for 25 or 50 #s of block ice. Milk was delivered to the door. Actually, the ice was brought in and put in the ice box. We never locked doors in those days. The depression didn't really affect us, as the faculty didn't get laid off, and their salaries, while not wonderful, were never cut as far as I know. As a result, when prices fell off the scale, our parents probably had improved buying power. Many of us had "servants' houses" on our lots. We had a young black woman named Leila who baby -sat, cooked, cleaned, washed - did everything in return for bed and board, utilities and a very small weekly wage. This is just the way it was in the '20s and '30s in College Station. 5 Leila had a "man friend" and also a real temper. She chased another woman up on the hospital steps one night and cut her with a razor. When the authorities came to question her, Mother was appalled and asked Leila how she could have left us children when she was baby- sitting. Leila said, "Mrs. Campbell, I wasn't gone 30 minutes. I went out to my room to get something and this woman was out there talking bad about me, so I chased her and cut her up. The children didn't even know I was gone cause they wuz asleep!" I got my driver's license when I was 12 years old from the County Judge. Grandfather Campbell had come to live with us after his wife died. Dad didn't have or allow any beer or whiskey in the house, so I needed to drive Granddad down to Ed Hardlika's bar every afternoon for his daily beer. No College Station stories would be complete without some Jean Benz stories. Mrs. Mayo, one of the College Station grand dames whose bachelor son Tommy taught English at A &M, was having one of her high teas, and Jean came with her mother (her father was a Major in the Army). Mrs. Mayo said to Jean, "Jean, dear, wouldn't you like to have one of these lovely cookies ?" Jean's instant reply was, "You're Gdamned right I would!" Another time Jean was repeatedly asked if she mistreated a neighbor's cat, and Jean repeatedly denied any such act until finally she gave up and said, "Well I damned near twisted his tail off!" 6 College Station had its characters, in spades. One was old Doc Asbury, and eccentric bachelor on the faculty. His collection of pictures and paintings covered the entire walls and ceilings in every room in his house. Later, his hobby was climbing roses, and his small house was completely hidden by climbing roses on tall poles and trellises - probably 20 feet high. In the mid '30s, campus expansion required that the faculty homes be moved off campus with the occupants given the 1st chance of buying the state -owned homes. It was said that when the occupants added to the homes at their own expense that the additions belonged to the occupants provided they were bolted on - not nailed on! In any event our home caught fire one Saturday afternoon while Mother and Dad were at the movie at the "Bloody Bucket" theater (actually the "Queen ") in Bryan, and Peg and I were off somewhere. The fire department was volunteer; many cadets showed up, too, and they got Grandfather Campbell out. Their inexperience showed, however, when they got the baby grand piano to the front door where it burned. Had they broken the legs they could have saved it. We lived at the Aggieland Inn for I suppose a year while rebuilding, and, shortly after, our home was cut into 3 pieces and moved to 315 Suffolk where it was family occupied until the untimely death of my sister, Peg, in 1989. The house was later sold, remodeled, and is presently occupied. 7 At one time the house south of the Hensels was occupied by D. X. Bible, the legendary football coach, and later Matty Bell lived there. I believe the next house south toward Kyle Field was the J. M. Jones' house where Virginia and Johnny Jones lived. I couldn't pronounce "Js" when I was small, so it was "Donny Dones" to me. Brooks Cofer and I went to a beauty parlor and had our hair peroxided. Brooks was blonde and his hair turned white. Mine was dark and turned strawberry blonde. Dad was on his knees working in a flower bed when I showed up. He looked up at me and raised his eyebrows but said nothing. I said, "It looks pretty silly, doesn't it ?" He looked me right in the eye and said, "It damned sure does!" The first time, and only time, I ever heard him curse! A bunch of us went to a summer YMCA camp on the Bosque River near Waco. We called our cabin the Aggie Cabin and, to our surprise, our hero turned out to be Preston Bolton who could run like the wind. He won the track meet for us. As we were kids there was a younger boy, Jimmy "Red" Cashion, who was allowed to play with us rather reluctantly since he was so little but very talented. To my surprise, while I was in the Navy, Jimmy quarterbacked the Kiddie Korps to a SWC championship! His younger brother, Mason Lee, later became a famous NFL referee. 8 Naming names is risky as you will inadvertently omit many who were important to you. Age differences of only a year or two were huge when we were young. Sara Allen Cofer, my sister Peg, Edith Thomas, Bill Hensel, Alan Madeley, Frank Brown, Paul and Leila Haines, and Preston Bolton were "older ", but closer perhaps than the "younger" such as Mary Beth Winkler, Ruth Williams, Little dee Cofer, David Williams, and the Cashion boys. Our group included Betty Jane Winkler, Lucille Thornton, Sug Williams, Ruth and Johnny Jones, and Brooks Cofer. Jack Miller and Betty Shelton and her brothers, who were not original "campus brats ", were a real part of our bunch during high school and several years earlier. Others such as Archie Hopkins, Ann Washington, and Jack Beasley were "military brats" who carne and went but with whom we were close. Our graduation from A &M Consolidated was in June of 1939. Betty Shelton • and Sug went to Sophie Newcomb, most of the boys went to A &M, and I stayed home and worked on the campus grounds for the entire school year for Mr. Hensel. Among other things, I must have rooted and potted 10- 20,000 alta nanthera which were used to make the letters Texas A &M in the oval at Kyle Field and other topiaries and sheared designs on campus. Being born on campus, I wanted to go . to school away somewhere, so I followed Sug and Betty to New Orleans and Tulane University in 1940 which really was the end of my College Station life except for 1946 -1948 when I came home and went to A &M on the G. I. Bill. I was labeled with the name "Sunny" when I was 4 or 5 years old, and to this very day when I go back to College Station my name changes from Charles to "Sunny" to those few dear friends still living in College Station. I suppose it will ever stay that way, but growing up in College Station was a wonderful experience. 9 C. B. Campbell, Jr. February 14, 1998