January, 1951- Floyd had just graduated from Texas A&M with a degree in Civil Engineering. He attended school on the GIBill and also tottered Aggie football players for $1 a lesson. He earned his degree in 3 1/2 years, which was pretty amassing. He was offered a job with Silas Mason, at Pantex Ordnance Plant, 25 miles east of Amarillo, TX. Pantex was operated by the Atomic Energy Commission, Silas Mason doing the construction. He arrived about 10pm and had not made any arrangements for spending the night. When he saw the 12-story Santa Fe building, he thought it was a hotel. He quickly figured out he had to get a motel room, and reported for work the next morning. He later found out that a family member of some friends in Bonham ran a boarding house, so secured a room there and roomed there until we got married. His work place was huge- Civil Engineers, numbered 8 and Mechanical a few more. I don't even remember how many acres the plant covered (it is still there and I think under operation), but it is HUGE.
It was June 1, 1952, the start of summer between my Freshman and Sophomore years of college at Amarillo Junior College. I had been elected President of my sorority, I played 1st chair Viola with Amarillo Symphony, and I had a job with Commercial Credit Corp. I went to work one morning and at about 10am got a call from a classmate... she said Silas Mason was paying top dollar for secretaries taking shorthand and typing. I called in sick at noon, went for an interview, and was hired "on the spot." I was secretary to the head Civil and Mechanical Engineers... Floyd's bosses. Part of my job was to keep time tables on the "under engineers," which included Floyd.
July 4th was coming up and the company was having a July 4th picnic. (I would add that I was dating someone at this time.) Floyd asked me to go to the picnic with him, and I said "It's going to rain" -he never let me forget saying that. It didn't rain and I ended up going to the picnic with him. One of my childhood friends (Jean King) was dating one of the engineers (Kenneth Kelly) and we double-dated.
The end of August came and Floyd asked me to marry him, I said "YES," and he took me to Bonham on Labor Day weekend to meet his folks and family. We set the wedding date for October 19, 1952, and that was just the beginning.
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My Mother got busy and made me a beautiful wedding dress. My sister, Winona, was my matron-of-honor, and she wore a dress that my Mother had also made. Floyd's twin brother, Lloyd, was his best man, and we had identical twin ushers. Floyd didn't think his parents would get to come to the wedding, but they rode the bus from Bonham to Amarillo and got there just in time.
After the wedding, we rented an upstairs 1-bedroom apartment. The kitchen was an add-on and it sloped pretty bad. I never did much cooking at home and Floyd got pretty tired of spaghetti and meat sauce and strawberry shortcake. We decided to find a better place to live, and the opportunity to rent a house came up. The owner of the house was going to have to work in another town and stored personal stuff in a locked room, which left us with 2 bedrooms and 2 baths. One of the bedrooms had an outside entrance, so we rented that room out to be able to afford the rent... then I came home and found her in bed with a person from the Air Base. NOT ACCEPTABLE. That left us in a bad shape for rent money, but then on July 4th the owner knocked on the door and said he wanted his house back and would refund the rent.
Amarillo had an area called Green Acres that had 4-plexes, so we applied there, but it was going to be a couple of weeks before we could get an apartment, so we moved in with Mother and Daddy.
We soon got settled in a nice 1-bedroom apartment, and Butch was born in August. At this point, the apartment was not furnished. We bought a lime green couch, 1 chair, a bed with a mattress, and a lime green chrome dinette set. The job at Pantex was completed and Floyd- along with 4 other engineers- were transferred to Los Alamos, New Mexico. They set up a car pool and left every Sunday evening about 5pm to drive to Los Alamos, and they came home to Amarillo every Friday evening. This lasted until January and then Silas Mason wanted to transfer Floyd to California. NOT ACCEPTABLE.
At that same time Lloyd was pipelining in Victoria, Texas, so Floyd applied for a job there. My Daddy made a trailer for us which had a rod to hang clothes at the back and space for other necessities like dishes. We packed no furniture except the baby bed, and we put the rest of the furniture in storage, not knowing how long it would be before we would be able to get it. Thus I could pack to move in a couple of hours- and that was Pipelining.
We left Amarillo with 1 car, the trailer, and our 6-month-old baby. I had never lived any where else and moving to Victoria, Texas was NOT ACCEPTABLE.
For part of our journey we were to go to Bonham and I was to stay with Floyd's parents while he went to Shreveport to pick up a company car. (I had never had a car.) So we left Bonham with 2 cars, the trailer and the baby. Back then, baby Butch was in a bed-type infant car seat that hooked on to the front seat, so there I was driving down the highway, pulling a trailer and feeding Butch a bottle. NOT ACCEPTABLE.
Eventually we found a nice 2-bedroom upstairs apartment in Victoria. Butch weighed 30 lbs and when I took him to a Doctor for a checkup, he put him on a diet, and he was not a "happy camper."
Later, Floyd's Mother died and Floyd's brother, Walter, and family decided they would bring Mr. Carroll to see us and let him stay a week. Afterwards Mildred, his sister (they lived in Houston), would take him back to Bonham.
Two months later the pipeline moved and we had to move to Falfurrias. We found a house in nearby Beeville that had been a garage (400 sq ft) and had a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen and a bath... all small. The couple that owned it lived next door and they were really nice. Floyd was working 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. NOT ACCEPTABLE. I cried a lot.
By this time Lloyd and Jackie were married and living in Victoria. Her Daddy became very sick and she went back to Tennessee. Lloyd soon quit and followed her to Tennessee.
The people that owned the "garage" we rented were the only people we knew in Beeville (I can't even remember their names, but they were nice and kept Butch occasionally). About a block away there was a housebound lady with a sitter that sat in a sunroom and faced our house. She discovered that I had a "peeping tom" that was watching me (while Floyd was working 14 hour days), so when it got dark, Butch and I had to get in the car and ride around until Floyd got home. NOT ACCEPTABLE.
One night about 9pm, we got a call from Bonham that Floyd's Daddy was dying. We immediately packed the car and left Beeville about 10pm. At about llpm Floyd said that he could not drive anymore because he was sleepy. I had night blindness. Mind you, this is long before highways were marked like they are now and I really had no idea what to do. Floyd said, 'Just stay on this highway and go North.' God was really watching over us- there was no traffic. We drove all night without any stops, and finally the sun came up and we were about 15 miles south of Bonham. We arrived just a short time before Mr. Carroll died.
Finally Floyd's work in Beeville was finished and the Texas Eastman Transmission transferred him to Shreveport, Louisiana. We found a 2-bedroom apartment in a development called Plantation Park in Bossier City. Butch was a toddler now, and there was no place for him to play, so I put a rope around his waist and tied it to the clothesline and fixed him a play box. I could watch him as I washed dishes or cooked. NOT ACCEPTABLE.
Floyd was not happy with the office work and I hated our living conditions. One Sunday the Dallas Morning News had an ad that stated, "Small Central Texas Town seeking a City Engineer." I said let's see about this! He even asked his boss, "What does a City Engineer do?" The man said he thought Floyd could handle it. So Floyd made an appointment for an interview. We spent the night in Dallas with CW and Frances. They kept Butch while we went to Cleburne for the interview. His appointment was for 10am. The wife of the City Manager took me on a tour of the City while Floyd interviewed. Floyd picked me up about 2pm and we headed back to Dallas. They ended up offering him the job, but they wanted an answer by 7pm the same day. We were not happy with our situation in Louisiana, so he accepted the job... ACCEPTABLE.
On the morning of July 4th, 1954 (a Saturday), we left Shreveport-1 car, 1 trailer and a nearly-two-year-old-Butch. We had rented a 1-bedroom upstairs apartment at Jamestown on North Main Street in Cleburne. Our furniture (the wonderful lime green stuff) was going to finally get out of storage. In the meantime we had an apartment, but no furniture delivered yet. We discovered that the couple in the apartment under us happened be someone Floyd had know at A&M- Charles D. and Carolyn Kirkham. They were going to Dallas for a few days and insisted that we stay in their apartment until our furniture arrived on Monday and we could officially move in.
It was July in Texas and hotter than HADES in that apartment. We bought a swamp cooler and Charles D. helped Floyd install it in upstairs kitchen window. It really helped. There really wasn't a good place for Butch to play, however there was a little girl about 3 living downstairs, and she and Butch played together a lot.
The laundry facilities were a washer and dryer in a small building out back. The night that Floyd had gone to his first City Council meeting, someone had left some bleach in a small open orange juice can and Butch decided to drink it. I really panicked, and Charles D. heard me and was able to rush Butch and me to the hospital. They pumped his stomach and I made an effort to keep a closer eye on him after that!
We settled in to our new life, and by October I was pregnant with Linda. We found an apartment on College Street owned by the Graham's with two bedrooms and a bath upstairs, a living room, and a kitchen-eating area downstairs. It also had washer space on the back porch, so that year I got my first washing machine. Linda was born on my birthday, May 28th. (Dr. Wright had predicted that due date, but I really didn't think it would happen.) After the birth, the doctor told Floyd that I was to stay upstairs for 2 weeks (LOL now). We later found a wonderful lady that ended up being our sitter for over a year.
Another help was Wilma Reed, who lived across the street and had a daughter Butch's age. They played together a lot and were really good friends. Wilma and I would swap out keeping Butch and her daughter, Karen. She and I are still good friends to this day- Wilma is in her middle 90's now.
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The day Linda was born, the Cleburne City Council appointed Floyd City Manager. We decided to build a house. I got busy designing what I wanted. We found a lot on Bellevue Street and proceeded. It was wonderful. I put the washer and dryer in the bathroom, I had a beautiful hutch in the kitchen/eating area, 3/2/2; just what I wanted. Cleburne was going to be our Home.
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