The Winds of Change

Nita and Ted lived in Shreveport for a short time then returned to Dallas. In the summer of 1948 my Aunt Eunice moved to Los Angeles to be with her daughter, Iola, and Iola’s husband, Grady. With Aunt Florence and Uncle Bryan, their daughter, Opal, and Opal’s son, Ronnie, we had seven family members living in California. Today the California family includes Ronnie, Nita’s sons Ted III (Teddy) and Jim plus Jim’s wife Jill and their daughter, Ainsley, numbering five. Also in California are Ted’s brother Jack’s daughter Jackie and husband, Bill.

With Eunice gone, that left Mom, Pop and me. Although we had Mrs. Gunn and another roomer or two upstairs, the big numbers at dinner were also gone. This was a noticeable change for me but it was minor compared what was ahead.

1949 Television Set

By 1949 changes were taking place that would affect us and the country. I noticed these things casually but did not think of the effects until years later. The war veterans were marrying in great numbers and the birth rate was rising. Many of these new families wanted a small home in the suburbs and began to move to Garland, Richardson and Mesquite from the north and east side of Dallas.

The Michell family had the first television set on the block and Ted made one himself. Joe and I went to their house on Fitzhugh to watch the SMU-Notre Dame game on the small screen of Ted’s newly made set. This was a big game because Notre Dame was number one in the nation. SMU played a good game but lost 27 to 20.

Ted's homemade set may have looked like this

Ted’s homemade set may have looked like this

The availability of television caused people to spend more time at home and outside entertainment began to slow down. Neighborhood movies and drug stores began to suffer. The evaporative cooler window fan and later window air conditioner units made home more comfortable in the long summer months as well as causing homes to be less dusty and easier to clean. Munger Place was a neighborhood of huge two story homes difficult to cool and to clean as well as becoming out of vogue in the new post war America of small suburban houses.

In 1948 we still had electric transit to Richardson and Plano along Matilda Street north to those outer cities. One could go most anywhere in Dallas on public transit either by electric streetcar or by bus yet it was to die within a decade. At great expense, we are struggling to regain that today.

The petroleum industry along with the auto and rubber interests, with considerable clout and capital, lobbied the political parties and congressional leaders for favorable legislation to put the automobile forward and to downgrade the transit interests. Transit died in most American cities and the car became a necessity. To us their advertisements were powerful; what more freedom could one have than to drive your own car when and where you pleased. We loved it. For a teen age boy a car was a necessity to socially exist. Married or single, the car became an important part of life. With a car and low- priced fuel (gas was around 20 cents a gallon), a home out from town was most desirable.

To a war veteran, a small home in a little community to build and help to grow was a dream long awaited and the move outward continued. That’s what he fought the war for – to return home, marry the girl next door and live in a Norman Rockwell image of a quiet country town.

As years went by, along with the commute outward came the long sprawl of strip shopping centers and stores. Our zoning began to separate where one lived and where one shopped resulting in the necessity of the car just to go to the store. The idea of the town square, a European village or a Munger Place as we knew it became a thing of the past or of somewhere else. The goal of the ex- GI to have his little country home in a small village must have been forgotten along the way as his long drive home through the growing sprawl began to look like everywhere else in America.

Shopping for the Future A 1950 Strip Mall

Shopping for the Future
A 1950 Strip Mall

In the Forties you could still swim at the giant Lake Cliff Pool where the lifeguard paddled through the waters in a rowboat. On the southeast corner of Ross and Greenville, beneath tall cottonwood trees strung with lights, was one of the city’s many watermelon stands—a great place to go to get away from a hot home and enjoy the night’s breeze while eating watermelon and spitting the seeds on the ground. Walking to one of the nearby drug stores for a coke, or a few blocks over to visit a girl friend and sit on her porch, or just going to Blackie’s Ice House by Munger Park on a warm clear night are fond memories. The small talk with Blackie including a lot of give and take was small town amusement we all seem to remember and appreciate.

Another pleasure soon to disappear was to drive from Munger Place, past Fair Park to Forest Avenue (now Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard) to one of the many root beer stands that served the drinks in frosted mugs. These were simple mid century pleasures that would soon be lost to the advantages of low price gas, cooler homes and television. Walkable communities, like Munger Place, would soon disappear. While looking back now, we might wonder which was better but reality tells us which we chose.

A big ice storm in January 1949 was one of the worst. Ice covered everything and the Gas Company had difficulty in providing heat. We heard a big crash in the early hours and the morning that turned out to be the big tree falling from the corner across Collett. The big tree was there since 1910 but left out of illustrations for clarity.

Joe and I took pictures in the afternoon before the ice melted.

Joe and I took pictures in the afternoon before the ice melted.

When we arrived at school that morning they told us we could go home since the gas company was cutting off the heat to preserve the supply for the city. Since the streets were covered with ice, we decided to play ice hockey. We knew nothing about the game but we called it the only ice hockey game the Mongrels ever played. We found a hub cap for the puck and some sticks to push it with. For an hour on two we clobbered each other in the street in front of the Michell house, then fell in a heap in their yard. While we were wondering if we would live, we said it was the most fun we ever had.

icehockey

Ted Lincoln was working for KRLD-TV & Radio that was part of The Times Herald. On that same cold January day something on the top of their Radio-TV tower was stuck because of the ice. This was prohibiting their broadcast as it could only be fixed manually. They asked if anyone would volunteer to climb the ice-covered tower and break it loose. Ted volunteered; he climbed the icy tower, fixed the problem and climbed down. They thanked him. Nita and everyone else were angry for him to have done it. He said it was simple to do; one just took it a step at a time making sure you were secure as you reached toward the next step.

KRLD Tower to the left of The Mercantile Bank Building

 

While the Mongrels were playing in the ice, events were happening in the Far East that would affect them all within a few years. Hardly any one seriously thought about a future war. It was not until later in 1949 that the Soviets were able to produce an atom bomb. There was a growing fear of communism that was fed by fearmongers that became worse in the next few years but still none of us thought of being in a war.

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The Mongrels had a couple of years as a close group before graduation, college, marriage and the draft separated us but never completely or to the point that we could not regroup.

My life continued with little direction as I enjoyed the sports and the social gatherings with the Mongrels. With just Mom and Pop in the house, life was different and I remember them talking of possibly moving to a smaller house but I don’t think any of the three of us wanted to leave 5003. Pop’s store was not making money because of the popularity of the supermarkets. Late in the summer I started working there daily and then after school in the fall. In August on the day before I started full time at the store, Joe and I went to Crockett School where we had so many times practiced batting; we knew it would be the last time and it was. It was a sort of a ‘rite of passage’-our adolescence was over but I’m not sure adulthood had set in.

Joe bought a Model A Ford early in 1949 and took us everywhere for the next couple of years. Jim bought a 1940 Ford convertible in the summer and like Joe hauled the Mongrels around during our high school years.

Pop’s store continued to lose money as most small grocery stores did at that time due to the growth of the supermarket. At the end of the year (1949) he sold the store to Dale. This worked out good for Dale as his wife, Elsie, owned the beauty shop the second door down in the three store business structure at Beacon and Lindsley.

Pop had three weeks in January 1950 to rest and plan what to do; he looked into route sales among other things. On Saturday January 21 he became seriously ill with stomach pains and went to St. Paul Hospital Sunday morning. He had an exploratory operation which he survived but his kidneys failed and he died Wednesday morning, January the 25th. We were shocked but we should have known he was in bad health. His blood pressure had been high for years and apparently had destroyed his kidneys. His doctor said the operation indicated appendicitis but he wanted to do an autopsy for some reason. This caused us to wonder if it had actually been appendicitis. Mom refused the autopsy.

Sam Densmore Sr.

Sam Densmore Sr.

From the store Mom had some money; it was small but extremely helpful. She moved into the dining room with two beds for me and her then rented out every other room in the house. I was still in school but in June I was able to get a job with Allen Fronk who had a small grocery store on Collett. Mr. Fronk’s way of dealing with the supermarkets was to open one himself on Columbia just west of Fitzhugh. He did this as a franchise with Tom Thumb that had just organized with many other grocers.

This gave me a job at the new store and some needed cash to pay off the 1941 Oldsmobile that Pop had bought in 1949. We survived without any difficulties through 1950. Allen Fronk was a wonderful man to work for and my job was to wrap cuts of meat in cellophane. This was put in open bins where customers could pick up the packaged meat without waiting for the butcher to prepare it individually. In 1950, this was a new innovation. I worked next to Mr. Fronk who was the butcher and found he was an intelligent person with many interests.

On June 5, 1950, Nita’s and Ted’s first child, Kenneth Lee Lincoln was born. His middle name, Lee, was after Pop’s middle name that has been used often in family names. There was a problem with Kenny’s heart that kept it from developing and he died five months later to the day on November 5, 1950. 1950 was a hard year for us. Joe’s dad, Bennie Wyatt, died that summer as well.

Joe set up a baseball game in June; the last game the Munger Mongrels would play together. David Michell pitched 14 innings and won the game in the bottom of the 14th with a hit. We never thought it would be the last game but things were changing and we never thought of that either. David went on to many accomplishments including, as quarterback, to lead Woodrow Wilson to its only undefeated season.

Joe & David

Joe & David

In the early pre dawn hours of Sunday the 25th of June Communist North Korea invaded South Korea; subsequently President Truman called on the U. N. to stop the hostility. The Soviet delegation in the UN had walked out over some dispute and could not veto the move to stop the aggression. Most of us were around seventeen and knew we were of the age that could be involved in a war and joked a lot about it. Still I doubt we thought it would last long enough to really call on us or what the reality of that would be. We were the strongest power on earth – how could some small state be much of a bother – we had won World War II. This would not be the last time our people or our leaders would make this mistake. The Korean War was called ‘the forgotten war’ and it really was. Life went on without much thought unless one was personally touched in some way. But from that time on, our future would be altered in some way because of both Korea and the Cold War. The summer continued as usual – I doubt if we thought much about change – or that it even happened at all – but the cloud of Korea shadowed over us – and would for years to come; yet most of us forgot about it like everyone else.

During the World War II years as a kid I had followed the war but afterwards my interests in world events were casual at best. Marcus Aurelius said,

“He who knows not the world,
knows not his own place in it.”

I did not know the world, had no thought of my place in it and had never even heard of Marcus Aurelius.

People talked of the war being over by Christmas but at Christmas we were in full retreat from the north of North Korea back almost to where we started. It was to be a long war. The group that called themselves the Mongrels was soon to break up. With graduation, college, marriage and now the war, the change was inevitable.

Travis was the first to leave in the war. He was also the most versatile of the Mongrels. He was the toughest player on our football team; although he was not big, he was lean and hard.

Travis

Travis

He walked everywhere, even to the little town of Wilmer about 20 miles south to see his girlfriend, Laquata.. He wrote poetry and often would write notes for his buddies for their girlfriends. He could tell which berries in the woods were edible from those that were not. In summers during college he would hop freight trains usually going west. In August 1956, he appeared at my window about four A.M. and said, “I just jumped off a freight about a mile away and thought I would come by and say hi.” He later became a writer while working for newspapers both as a drama critic for the Dallas News and an investigative reporter in Louisiana. He worked for the city of Monroe as a civil rights official and taught journalism in college.

Travis joined the Navy to see the world in June of 1951 and his ship ranged from Point Barrow to Saigon while he corresponded with his English teacher (as her favorite student) at Woodrow Wilson High. The captain gave Travis the helm of their vessel during Typhoon Tess and his ship was run out of port by the harbor authorities in Okinawa because of the behavior of the crew on shore leave.

After high school my life seemed aimless and it was. I had no known talents but that didn’t matter in looking for a job. The first thing an employer asked was, “What are you going to do about the draft?” There was no good answer for that and no one wanted to hire someone for a short time. I finally found a job in the print shop for an insurance company. I knew I needed to do something to improve myself but had no idea how. My buddy, Rudi, felt the same way although he had a job that paid a bit more than mine.

Sometime in late January 1951 at Roy Bandy’s Barber Shop, Rudi ran into James Douglas who lived on Worth Street, just behind us in Munger Place. Roy knew all of us in the neighborhood and considered himself as, at least, our elder uncle. All males had their hair cut every two weeks; usually at Roy’s near of the center of Munger Place on Collett near Columbia. It is only fitting that the conversation between Rudi and James took place there as it later had considerable influence on Rudi, Jim, and me. A portion of the tile floor and a bit of the corner stone of the old cleaners/barber shop still stands over fifty years later mid-way on the west side of Collett between Elm Alley and Reiger Street.

Rudi was feeling that he needed to make some change in the somewhat pointless existence of our life. James was in uniform and on leave from the Marines that was the branch of service Rudi was considering joining. When asked about the Marines, James told Rudi if he joined he would have eight weeks of boot camp and go straight to Korea with a rifle in his arms. He suggested Rudi go to Grand Prairie and join the Marine Air Wing as a reserve. He could stay home as a reserve waiting to be called up, which might or might not occur, or ask for active duty in the air wing. James was just back from the retreat from the Yalu in North Korea and wished he had done what he was advising Rudi to do. Rudi would not be eighteen until July but his Uncle Fred was officially Rudi’s ward and would sign for him again as had done before when Rudi bought his first car. Actually, Fred Moore was his great uncle and did a lot for Rudi. Uncle Fred lived just east of Blackie’s Ice House on what is now the parking lot for the Garden Café. Roy Bandy and Uncle Fred were typical of the older generation that took care of us in the little community that unknowing to us was beginning to disappear.

On February 12th, 1951, Rudi joined the Marine Air Reserves at the Naval Air Station in Grand Prairie. At the time I thought it was not a good idea but I believe Rudi realized that we were going nowhere and he wanted to change. I was not ready to deal with the military and did not know what branch to join anyway.

Late in the spring of 1952 I still struggled to find myself. At nineteen the draft was getting ready to change my life for me and, at least, I realized that. I did not want to be a plain old dogface soldier and for some reason I thought being a Marine would be better. I should have realized the Navy or the Air Force offered better opportunities for skills whereas all Marines are basic infantry men with the Navy providing all of their supporting units. At the Marine Air Wing, however, where Rudi was in reserve it would

be possible to avoid the infantry. After two years of telling Rudi he was crazy for joining the Marines, I joined myself in May, 1952. I suppose I did change my life in that spring of 1952 and in the long run it was the best thing that I could have done. As a reserve, one had to spend one weekend a month at the Naval Air Station. The unit could be called up at any time. If you received a draft notice, you could go on active duty with the Marines or go along with the draft. Later in the year, Jim joined the reserves with us.

During the summers in the fifties, Skip and Betty would visit Mom. I think later Peggy would come when she was a little older. They played with a girl named Glenda that lived upstairs and would go to Buckner Park to swim.

Betty Peggy Skipper

Betty Peggy Skipper

Skip remembers the train ride that he and Betty made by themselves. Betty remembers details like the ice man that made deliveries to homes that still used ice boxes instead of refrigerators and the ice cream man on a bicycle with the box in front. She and Skip would play under the cover of the big cedar bushes in the back yard. Mom would walk with them to the Avenue Theater on Columbia and they listened to the Dallas Eagles baseball game on her bed at night. Years later Betty listened to baseball games on her bed with her grandson, Alex. Betty recalls walking down the alley observing the ‘shanties’ that she called the servant quarters that still remained but were in terrible repair and mostly vacant. Everyone in the family loved the Tremont house but no one loved it and remembered it more than Betty.

By the summer of 1952, the house was showing its age. The yard, with all of its shrubbery, was overgrown to the extent it was difficult to walk around the east side by Mr. Haeber’s house. The fish pond no longer had fish and it was necessary to put oil in the water to prevent mosquitoes. The garage door was difficult to slide and the roof of the deserted servant building had holes in it. By 1951 I had my own room that was the original study on the east front side. The upstairs was rented out to a family from Blooming Grove with their daughter Glenda, and the big downstairs bedroom became Mrs. Gunn’s. Mom was still in the original dining room where we installed an evaporative cooler fan in the south window. The window was not sturdy but held the fan well enough to get by.

Evaporative cooler window fans were new and extremely popular. Dallas humidity was low enough that evaporative coolers worked here. They would have put out too much humidity in Houston but would work great in west Texas. This type of cooling brought an amazing relief for the average person at that time. Shortly before Pop died ,he would sit on the front porch and say if he could put a hose on the roof and spray water then somehow blow a fan through it, he could cool the porch. The evaporative cooler came just after he died.

Air conditioning existed back in the 1920s but it was too expensive for the average home. In the ‘20s air conditioning itself became an attraction, as people flocked to movie theaters to experience the new way to stay cool. Movie theaters inaugurated a tradition of mechanically cooled air conditioning that spread to many stores. Some wealthy homes in Dallas had air conditioning but the type used was terribly expensive.

By the late fifties, with steadily decreasing costs, air conditioning was touted as a technology “for the millions, not just for millionaires.” The refrigerator provided the model for early, lower cost residential air conditioners. First came window units then outside units provided cooling for the whole house. The evaporative cooler, that added humidity, slowly disappeared.

Window Air Conditioner

Window Air Conditioner

Domestic air conditioning meant that traditional architectural features–wide eaves, deep porches, thick walls, high ceilings, attics, and cross ventilation that were important features in the Munger Place homes–were no longer needed to promote natural cooling. These architectural changes made the Munger Place houses seem out of date to the GI generation looking for the little cottage in a small town. Also irrelevant was locating or landscaping a house that maximized summer shade and breezes, since mechanical equipment was able to maintain perfect indoor conditions independent of design. Builders found they could pay for the costs of central cooling systems by deleting elements made unnecessary by the new technology. As air conditioning replaced traditional features, the design of the modern house became fully integrated with–and dependent on–air conditioning. It allowed postwar architects and builders to achieve a new “ranch house” aesthetic of glass picture windows, sliding doors, and rectangular forms.
Rudi and I were wandering aimlessly through life and realized it but did not know how to change. We spent our time cleaning our cars, watching movies downtown where Rudi could get us in free through a friend that managed the Majestic Theater. Rudi, John Kersey and I went to New Orleans early in 1952 and then Rudi and I went there again with the Marine Air Wing. It was evident the Korean War was much closer in our future.

Because of Drought Cars Could be Washed Only With Lake Water

Because of Drought Cars Could be Washed Only With Lake Water

By the early fifties people were moving to Garland, Richardson, Mesquite and elsewhere into small ranch style houses. Nita and Ted moved to Walnut Hill and their son, Teddy was born September 24, 1952. When I went to Baylor to see Teddy I was able to see Ted’s cousin and close friend, Merwin Seay. Merwin had been in South America since right after the war and on his return he went to Europe to the 1952 Olympics in Stockholm. I had heard of Merwin for years but he was always away in some distant place. I thought of Merwin as a Daddy Warbucks character or, in more recent language, as an Indiana Jones.

The Last Family Picture on Tremont St. Bill Teddy Nita Mom

The Last Family Picture on Tremont St. Bill Teddy Nita Mom

By December time had run out and the cloud of Korea caught Jim and me. When we received our draft notice we decided to ask for active duty with the Marines rather than wait for the army. Rudi had been in the Marine Reserve longer and could not be drafted but he wanted to get away so he applied for active duty with Jim and me. Our report date was February 11, 1953. Mom would be the only family member left in the big old house that had so many in the years before.

During our last month or so, Rudi and I spent most of our time with Sue, who lived on Reiger near Beacon, and Shirley, who lived on Columbia. I’m not sure if we ever made a date with them; we just went and found them almost every night and drove around. This was December and January and it was cold. There was a feeling of uselessness while we were killing time. It seems we just went through the paces of life without feeling. The future seemed like a vast unknown. After we took the girls home late, I would still stay up in the kitchen, eat peanut butter sandwiches and read Fletcher Pratt’s colorful history of The Civil War. I finally realized my life was going to change.

The Corps was good to me. Boot Camp shocked me into growing up; I was lucky to have some good schools that were rare in the Marine Corps instead of basic infantry training. The schools were like a college atmosphere with excellent instruction and responsibilities I never had before. The drawback was I did not get leave until the fall.



The conflict in Korea paused with an armistice signed July 27, 1953. With the war ended, the new Republican Congress wanted to cut costs and ended the program I was in. Instead of going to Quantico, Virginia, we were promised many opportunities during August that never materialized; then we were given a one week leave in September. This was to be my last week in the 5003 Tremont house.

The short leave was over in no time. Sam, Virginia, Skipper, Betty and Peggy were visiting but left before the week was up. Nita, Ted and Teddy visited and brought back my car that I would drive back to my base in California. The house was not in good shape but it was still full of renters. The interior was not so bad but the porch floor on the Collett side was warped. The door to the dining room that Mom used as a bedroom could hardly be opened. The mortar on the brick columns on the front porch were beginning to crumble. The worst was the column on the west side that had many loose bricks. The yard was overgrown; particularly on the east side. Small trees were coming up in the front hedges that later became major trees in the yard.

Worst of all was the remaining original tree on the east side of the front parkway was leaning dangerously toward the east side of the house. The most depressing thing was one of the giant pots by the front steps had somehow toppled to the sidewalk. I had always loved the big white pots and hated to see it in such a condition.

The Fallen Pot

The Fallen Pot

I very clearly remember the night I left to return to my base in California. I was to pick up a buddy, Gerald Alexander, at 9 o’clock and slowly walked to my Pontiac in front of the house. I had no clue of my future; neither as to where I would be based or what I would do in the Marines nor on what I would do afterward. In a deep nostalgic mood I somehow I knew I would never return to the house I had loved for so many years. I had no control of the next year and wondered where it would lead. I had no fear of war as it had ended even though it was a shaky armistice but somehow I knew I would not come back here. I purposely stood and looked at the house in the dark for some time. I did not want to leave it and I felt like I owed it an honorable goodbye.

The last look was something like this - with the broken pot and the leaning tree

The last look was something like this – with the broken pot and the leaning tree

My guess was right. In the summer of 1954, while based in Japan in the shadow of Mt. Fuji, I opened my last letter from 5003 Tremont from Mom that said she was moving to a house near Love Field. The house was in such bad shape she felt she could no longer live there. She was the last of ten or more family members that either lived in the house or spent many nights there for fourteen and a half years.

I have often wondered what thoughts she had during those fourteen years. In 1941 the house was full of her family but slowly the world evolved and the change took one after another from her. Along with seeing her children leave, there were three cousins who left that loved her deeply. She lost her mother in 1944 then her close sister, Eunice, moved to California and in 1950 she lost her husband. When I left for the Marines in February of 1953, she was left in the big house alone with all of her memories. Typical of her strength, Mom said while she had many memories that made it hard to leave she also felt refreshed by the move because of the terrible decline of the house. For all of those who left, each have said that it was 5003 Tremont that they remember as home. It could not have been home for any of us without her.