You guys have got me thinking about this seriously! Now in my early 50s, I am looking back at the formative places I lived and longing to revisit them and the ghosts of my youth that haunt them still. While traveling quite a bit in the last decade and living weeknights in hotel rooms, I set out to write my autobiography. Nothing special, just a compilation of facts for the family history trunk. Here's what I wrote about Del Rio from Chapter 4 entitled, "Forced to Learn About the Alamo: 1966-1967":
"Not long after returning to the States from Colombia, Dad got a job with Perini in Del Rio, Texas, right on the border of Mexico. We arrived in Del Rio February 1966. Del Rio at the time was a small rural town with a short main street containing a few stores and a movie theater. There was an Air Force Base nearby. Dad went there to work on the Amistad Dam project, which was a joint project between the U.S. and Mexico, Amistad meaning friendship in Spanish. Several other families from the project in Colombia were also in Del Rio.
"We lived in a small, single-story home next to a vacant lot full of scrub brush. Next to the lot was a streambed, and in the streambed was a young tree (some kind of willow I think). We used to climb that tree, standing on the limbs and bouncing like on a trampoline. In our backyard there was rough grass, not what could be called a lawn, and at the back of the lot were tall trees forming a kind of perimeter, with open fields beyond. We had horned toads in the back yard. It was the first time we saw fireflies.
"In Del Rio, Texas, I was in fifth grade. We were enrolled in Sacred Heart Academy, a school run by nuns. We had to wear khaki uniforms. In the mornings small bottles of milk (regular or chocolate) were delivered to each classroom, and then handed out to the kids. I think we had to go to church service every morning. During recess we would play marbles, drawing a circle with chalk on the playground blacktop, then play for keeps: if you hit someone’s marble out of the circle, you got to keep it. We learned about and sang Stephen Foster songs. I enjoyed singing those songs.
"I surmise that I completed the 5th grade at Sacred Heart and then went into sixth, because while in Del Rio I went into a different, non-Catholic school. My most vivid memory of that second school was the day I was sitting in class and somehow managed to get caught up in some in-class shenanigans that were going on around me. But I got caught holding the bag. In Texas at that time they had corporal punishment—meaning the teacher could discipline you by whacking you on the rear-end with a heavy paddle. I knew immediately I was in trouble when the teacher looked sternly at me and then said to another student, “Go get Mr. _______!” Immediately the blood rushed from my face and my stomach had that falling-off-a-building feeling. Because Mr. _______ was the witness to all corporal punishment. Like a condemned prisoner—“Dead Man Walking”—I was marched out to the hallway just outside the classroom door. And there next to the wall of lockers, I was told to spread my legs and put my hands against the wall—like a prisoner about to be frisked by the cops. Then they took this big ol’, long paddle and gave me one good smack on the bottom. It was more humiliating than painful. Welcome to Texas.
"This was also where we had to learn about Texas History. Excuse me? Texas history? What the heck does a kid from California care or want to know about Texas history? Nevertheless, I had to feign my disgust, because it turns out Texas history is really pretty cool for a boy—tales of death and heroism at the Alamo, fighting to the last man!
"We saw the Air Force Thunderbirds perform in Del Rio, at the local Air Force Base. And there was a motel in Del Rio with a bakery that made delicious sticky buns. One evening my parents went out, and I asked my Mom to get me one of those buns. That night she came home without it, and I cried. Alarmed, she asked me what was the matter. I was too ashamed to admit what upset me, but she persisted and I finally told her. I shouldn’t have: she said, “Is that all!” and I felt worse.
"I used to accumulate 25 cents, then ride my bicycle into town just a couple of miles away and buy five pieces of candy—like a Milky Way bar, box of Good & Plenty, or box of Jujy Fruits—at a nickel each. And we used to go to the movies. I think it cost 75 cents; a matinee 50 cents. I saw some classic B horror movies there, like the one about the woman who turns into a reptile, and one where the bad guy loses a hand and buys all kinds of nasty knife attachments to replace it mechanically. Cool!
"My brother, Karl, and I got BB guns in Del Rio. They were in the shape of Winchester rifles. My Dad did a pretty good job, I think, of teaching us how to use the rifles safely. We would set up our GI Joe dolls on the ground behind the house, hiding in the dirt and behind bushes in their full military garb. Then we would take shots at them with the BB guns.
"One time I was taking aim at a plastic cover used for sealing opened cans that was hanging in a tree in the back yard. I forgot to check my backstop. It turns out that I was aiming right our neighbor’s rear sliding glass door. I put a hole in it, and when my Dad got home he got the news. “Wait till your dad gets home” was the terrifying consequence. But I don’t recall being severely punished, or even losing the rifle, though that’s probably what happened. (Somewhere along the line Mom turned Dad into the guy whose job it was to punish us. Though make no mistake, she would frequently smack us as well, often with a belt. In fact she is reputed to have dislocated her arm on more than one occasion while spanking us. And so routinely we were told to wait in our room till Dad got home. Then when we heard his car pull up we would be sitting anxiously in our room on the edge of the bed waiting for that bedroom door to open. And he’d come in and, I suppose say a few words in the way of a lesson, and then he’d spank us on our bare bottoms. I suppose he spanked us instead of issuing clemency because that’s what Mom told him to do. He probably hated coming home and finding that task awaiting him. But who knows, maybe it was his idea. These were not times of enlightened parenting.)
"I also shot a bird with that BB gun. It was sitting in one of the tall trees at the back of the yard. I took aim and brought it down. I felt awful and didn’t shoot anymore birds with the gun. Though I think quite a few horny toads bought the farm.
"We didn’t live in Del Rio long, less than a year. One day we learned we were moving to Massachusetts. In January 1967 my dad was transferred back to the company headquarters in Framingham to act as a construction cost estimator."
Here's what my brother, Karl, and sister, Nena, recalled about Del Rio, included in a footnote to the above text:
Karl
: “I remember running over those toads with the lawn mower. Whack! The blade would fillet them cleanly as you passed over them: a biology lesson on the insides of a froggy. Do you remember the BB gun incident in Del Rio? You accidentally put a BB into a neighbor's window early one morning and went running past me muttering ‘O God! O God!’ And the next thing I knew some guy was grabbing my arm and me saying ‘What? I didn't do anything!’ as I held a BB gun. I ran inside and saw you waking up mom telling her you didn't mean it. Remember mom showed up from a trip with the TR3, two BB guns, and Jeff Robinson [an old friend from Palos Verdes] hiding in the back seat. I also remember the empty lot next door where, on a hot summer day, we stomped down winding paths in the tall (as tall as us) dry grass which led to a central ‘fort’ (just a round clearing, really) in the grass. I can still smell it. Lastly, I remember the hot sticky buns in the coffee shop at the motel we stayed at before we got our house. They sat on little dishes in a glass case behind the counter.
Nena
: “All I remember about Del Rio was high school football (a huge deal in a little Texas town), Jacquie's first birthday, scorpions, and yes the horny toads. You don't see them anymore. I asked my vet friend why (he loves reptiles and has a house full of them). He said because little boys captured them as pets by the millions.”
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