As Wichita Falls continued it’s rebuilding efforts throughout the often harsh winter of 1979 and welcomed in the new decade, changes could literally be felt. It was
the first time I remember ever feeling like an “American”. The Iran Hostage situation had been going on for a while and the images of Americans being held by these strange people in a strange land made me angry. They dressed differently, they spoke another language, they believed in a different God……and they were holding people that looked like ‘me’ against their will. Why couldn’t we just give the poor, dust covered people what they wanted and send a plane for our hostages? It didn’t make sense to me. The other story capturing the minds of Americans in 1980 was the infamous shooting of JR Ewing? Who shot JR? Of course, the show that brought us the entire
Ewing family was Dallas. I didn’t really understand why everybody seemed so obsessed with this JR Ewing character. Even as a kid, he seemed like an exaggeration of character. He seemed like the Hollywood vision of Texas. Of course, I never watched the show that I remember so he may have been exactly like a dirty oil-man. On the night that the world was set to find out the answer to the question posted on billboards, TV ads, magazine covers, and minds, Mom and I delivered cheesecakes. Yeah, that’s right. I’m not real sure how the relationship came to exist, but somehow Mom and Dad met a family of Brit’s that had just moved to Wichita Falls, Texas from England for some reason. They had opened up a restaurant and somehow, Mom had accepted the request to make cheesecakes for them to sell on their dessert menu. She did this for a few months as I recall. Anyway, I remember her carefully driving that piece-of-crap, orange Toyota across town, with cheesecakes in round, buckled tins in the back. I remember the excitement in the voice of the DJ on the radio as they talked about the big episode coming up that evening. I think one of our friends even wrote and sang a song about the Ewing family crisis that was played on the radio that night. I could be wrong, or simply imagining that though.On Mom’s birthday that year, May 18, 1980; Mount St Helens erupted. I was in first grade at Episcopal Elementary school by then. I remember learning all about ashes, and ash clouds, and lava. I was fascinated, but I was also a little bit nervous to find out that a lot of volcanic activity takes place in Hawaii and my grandparents liked to go there every year.
As brutal as the weather had been the previous year, it seemed to come in bursts. We had the tornado, but nothing that seemed to last too long. Obviously, every time a Springtime thunderstorm rolled into Wichita Falls in 1980, people got a little bit nervous. The few times that the tornado sirens were activated, there was a state of near panic, but we got through tornado season unscathed. No, 1980 didn’t deliver a crushing blow like 1979 had done. 1980 was more like a drawn out battle in terms of weather. The summer of 1980 brought record setting heat to North Texas. 27 days in a row of 100+ degree heat with a ONE DAY break before another 42 days in a row above the century mark. The highest temperature ever recorded in the state of Texas was 119 on June 26th AND June 27th 1980. As ridiculous as those numbers seem now, I remember playing soccer and being a happy, 7 year old kid all summer long. Couldn’t pay me to go outside and play in 119 degree heat today.
As summer gave way to the much welcomed cooler temperatures of fall, outdoor exploration was increased. One day, probably in late September sometime, Ryan and I were walking down the alley behind our house. It was a poorly paved, one lane road that separated the backyards of the houses on Sherry Lane from the backyards of the houses on Chuck Drive. (No, I have no clue who Chuck and Sherry were.) It was where the city garbage trucks came to pick up garbage on the assigned days. It was also where a large number of tornado shelters could now be seen, built into the ground beneath some of those aforementioned backyards. Anyway, Ryan and I were walking along and all of a sudden we heard the tiny voice of a kitten. After listening for a few minutes, we determined that the source of the panicked ‘mew’ was the roof of the tool shed just behind the fence on the Chuck Drive side of the alley where we were standing. I climbed up the backside of the fence, and pulled myself up onto the roofline of the shed. What I found there was a defenseless kitten.
She was tiny, but old enough to have quite a voice and an equally impressive set of claws. She came to me rather easily, but on the way down the fence, her claws dug into me pretty good. Ryan was very excited at the prospect of a new kitten in the house as we scampered down the alley to our own backyard. We burst through the gate in the chain link fence and sprinted across the expanse of the yard to the house. Ryan was now holding the kitten and seemed to believe that she would stop being so scared if she could just go for a nice, relaxing swim in our above ground pool. I couldn’t argue his logic. Swimming always relaxed me, so in she went. That was the day Ryan and I discovered that cats don’t really like water. She swam the diameter of the pool pretty quickly, but as soon as she made it to my waiting arms, the flesh-shredding began! Finally, after somehow getting her to calm down enough to let us dry her off, we brought our quivering new friend inside the house to meet the rest of the family. Dad was sick, so he was laying on the couch in the living room. Green and white paisley couch on red shag carpeting. Nice! Anyway, the kitten must have been cold because she cuddled up to dad and forced her way between his chest and chin. She fell asleep instantly and we had ourselves a new cat! Not sure how she survived, but we had Sunshine for the next 15 years.
The cooler temperatures of fall also brought about another significant and memorable change. 1980 was the first presidential election that I clearly remember. I knew that there was just something that didn’t seem right about the whole Iran hostage thing and the way our bunny fearing Commander In Chief was handling it. I didn’t understand many of the things that happened in a grown up world but I knew it was time for a change. Man did we get it!
I clearly remember sitting in a Burger King on Kemp Boulevard with my Dad on the morning of November 5th. Ronald Reagan had just won the Election and Dad explained to me some of the terms that excited men and women were murmuring all over the place. A ‘landslide’ for example, as I learned while eating my first Croissan’wich ever, was when someone wins by a lot. President Reagan got 489 electoral votes, which dad tried to explain to me. It was the first time I had ever felt like I was having a somewhat grown-up conversation. I actually understood what he was talking about. I understood something from the adult world. I couldn’t wait to rub it in Ryan’s face later that night. I had just celebrated a birthday after all. I had been 8 years old for all of two days, and I felt like my political lesson that morning was kind of a rite of passage. I was now entering the downward spiral into maturity. Time to start reading the paper, drinking coffee, and staying up late to watch the news. There was work to be done and metaphors to learn. 1980 was a good year.
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