BULLIES AND BICYCLE STEALERS AT OLD LA CASITA

by Richard Drake

My folks moved to Clovis when I was in the middle of the 
third grade.  Next thing I knew, I was enrolled at La Casita
School!

My classroom was in the remodeled service station across
the street at the corner of Thornton and Seventh. I remember
having some difficulty in becoming acclimated.

An interesting event was the big football game later on against
Eugene Field. My friend Bob has told that story about Ned Biddix
and the Grant kid, who were our running backs. 

That game was a big deal, as I remember. We played in our street
clothes.  Three years my brother played for La Casita and they had 
complete equipment. We had played baseball on hard-packed ground,
and my brother and his teammates played on grass fields in their 
beautiful uniforms.

In the summer before the sixth grade my folks gave me a new Schwinn
bicycle for my birthday. I was proud of the bike and parked it where I 
could see it from my desk during class. One day I was called to the
chalkboard and when I went back to my desk my bicycle was gone!

Someone had stolen it. I stormed out of the class in a hurry. I didn't
ask for permission as we were supposed to do. I ran around the 
building and finally found it in the inner courtyard. I was very relieved 
until I found a big long scratch on the tank between the handlebars.

In those days I had a temper and went looking for the culprits! I had
a good idea who they were because two of the boys had been excused 
from the classroom a short time before. I was going to put a serious
amount of hurt on the boys, but the teacher would not let me.

I learned that he had sent the two out to play a trick on me. To this day
I have not forgiven that teacher.

Another story which I have mentioned before is about the school bully!

One day he decided that my turn had come. He always made his victim--
his "pick" of the day-- meet him just over the rock wall at the southwest 
corner of the playground. That morning before breakfast I told my Dad 
what was going on. His advice was simple. "Fight him and do the best 
you can. If you don't, he will haunt you forever."

On the way to school I found a nice piece of 2X4 lumber near the wall.
I leaned it up against the old rock fence and continued to class. At noon
I took off as fast as I could to the wall and jumped over it.

The bully was much larger than I, since he had been put back in grades
in two different years. I had run as fast as I could and barely beat him over.
I picked up the board just as he was making a tackling lunge at me. I 
swung as hard as I could and hit him on his arm just below the shoulder!

I felt like Babe Ruth hitting one out of Yankee Stadium. The bully started 
crying and ran off the school grounds headed for his home north of the 
school. We never did see him again. Someone said that he and his family 
had moved.

I loved La Casita but really don't have many memories.
**********************
By Richard Drake,
"BARD of CHS '53"
For MIL'S PLACE
02-27-15

CROCUSES PEEKING THROUGH THE SNOW

The lavender, yellow,

    and the white

crocuses, peeking

    thru' the snow

there by the gray 

    rock fence....

on a freezing day

    late In winter

were simply telling

    their part of

the planet---

    "IT'S SPRING

AGAIN!"

(barely)

*****************
BY MIL
02/25/15

SOMEDAY, WHEN THE EARTH…...

WHERE DID THE PEOPLE GO?
************************************

Some day, some century, some eon..
    When in this vast universe...
of billions of galaxies, planets, suns, 
    orbs...

After TIME has ended, and man's 
    intrusion into ETERNITY...
is permanent...

Maybe the old EARTH will still be
    revolving its way in its
 appointed
revolutions around the sun...
    Tho' it may be scorched and bare---
or frozen...in a new ICE AGE...

Burned up...or frozen...but cleansed
    of all evil, sin, hatefulness, murder,
disobedience to God...there it is...
    Is the SUN and is the MOON
still giving light?

Will angels and heavenly historians
                 STUDY
the EARTH, as it existed.......?

For it had a BEAUTY, who knows,
    maybe unsurpassed in the
whole COSMOS! Volumes were likely
   recorded somewhere, to tell
of its WONDERS!

The skies, the clouds, the sunsets,
    the rivers, springs, trees, mountains;
The wind...don't ever forget...the wind...
    The miracle of SEEDS providing man
with his food...

Choirs, symphony orchestras, mothers singing
    to babies, soft guitar music, singers, with 
purity of voice...celebrating life...with a 
heavenly expression---MUSIC.

The SEASONS, for variety...summer picnics,
    sports,  green lawns, dogs playing frisbee,
Winter-time, families around the fireside,
    Pancakes at Aunt Mary's. the smells
of bacon, eggs, and coffee...oh the joy
    of being!

The counting of a new baby's fingers and 
    toes...a tear comes to the eye, with 
his first little GIGGLE...

The beauty of a woman, her smile, and 
    the lilt in her voice...        

O, this EMPTY EARTH could tell stories...

Ah, where are all the people? GONE from
    this ARENA, now!

Where are all the evil ones of history?
     Who nearly ruined the beauty...?

Where are all those who knelt and said:
    "Forgive me, I need the AMAZING GRACE!"

One group is in HEAVEN with GOD...
    The other in the TRASH HEAP OF 
                   HUMANITY.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven
and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea."
Revelation 21.1

*****BY MIL*****
01-10-15

"A KICKING AND A SPANKING AT THE BLURBLY FOUNTAIN"

Bill, Mil, Art and Bobby Joe

RESPONSE TO "BURY MY HEART AT LA CASITA"
*******************************************************
by Bobby Joe Snipes

Enjoyed every word...brought back a lot of memories!
Remarkable that you can remember all that.

I got my first spanking at that old water fountain. I was
in the second grade. Ms. Norris was my teacher. We
were all lined up to get a drink and the kid in front of
me put his mouth over the water spout in order to get
a drink.

I knew this was so unhealthy and besides all that, he
had snot dripping from his nose and I was going to 
have to drink right after him.

So I told him to quit and I kneed him hard right in the
seat of the pants!

Well, Ms. Norris saw me and jerked me up and spanked 
me right there and all of the time I was telling her what
happened....I got the spanking anyway. Guess I over-
reacted.

Ms. Norris was nice lady. I would see her many times 
after I graduated. I am sure that she died in Clovis

The old rock fence brought back a lot of memories.

Mr. Warren, our ruddy-faced janitor...a good-natured
man--lived just across the street south of the school.
Sometimes at recess he would sit out on that rock 
fence and tell us boys stories about when he was a 
boy.

He said that he and his brother, on their old farm, 
plowed the field walking behind two big mules.
He said one day they were plowing and this ole
mule passed gas and it stank to high heaven and
they whipped the mule that did it.

He said they did not tell their father about it at the
end of the day.

But he said that the next day his dad was plowing 
and every time the mules would pass gas, they 
would break and run.

Well, that evening at the supper table, their dad
simply said: "Which one of you boys whipped the
mules when they f-----d?" 

Mr. Warren said they both got a spanking! Aren't 
parents wise?

Bobby Joe, far right

*********************************
By "Country Boy" Bob
FOR MIL'S PLACE
2-14-15

THAT HALLOWED GROUND

THAT HALLOWED GROUND
********************************
Today, when a boy from the forties drives around
Reid, Thornton, Edwards....by Todd's House up
on Fourteenth.... by the old lake bed (now a Park!)
at the end of Fourteenth Street....by  the site of
Pleasant Inn, across from the hospital---drives
around that neighborhood...he feels a deep 
feeling of time-passed, precious childhood times,
long gone.

Who ever thought---we'd get this old?

Rolling balls of all kinds were just part--a big part---
of our fun, during each grand, eternal summer.
I doubt there's a foot of ground around there
that balls didn't roll on.

We built a baseball backstop at the corner of Reid
and Tenth. We built it---AND THEY CAME, from all
over town...a backstop! Bruce and Cecil came..
and Cameron McTavish (CHS 50), with that awful,
scary curve ball of his...

Art and Bob had a croquet set for their front lawn---
only croquet I ever played.

Bob had a nice wooden basketball goal on the
back alley, near Eleventh Street. It was murder
on a basketball, with the dry, dusty, dirty, rock
and nail-filled soil...socks got dirty--quick.

We rolled tennis balls over our roof tops
and made a game of it.

We played catch and "grounders" on our lawns.

Most of us boys had a valuable (to us) little
box with six or seven black friction-tape-
covered-baseballs which had seen their best
years...at some previous time.

Who amongst us in those wonderful, frugal times,
could afford $1.25 for a real Major League
WHITE STITCHES-SHOWING BASEBALL?!

Our generation of boys remembers that our
marvelous childhoods were bought and paid
for by men who went off to fight WWII for us...
dying at Pearl Harbor, The Death March, 
Tarawa, Guadalxanal, on the USS Quincy,  
Pointe du Hoc, D-Day, Battle of the Bulge, 
Bastogne, over Germany in B-17's, the 
Doolittle Raiders, and yes, even The Flying 
Tigers.

The same old SUN that was shining down on
us boys seventy years ago, is still shining down,
bright as ever it seems, as I parked my car 
recently, facing west there on Eleventh, right
by Art's house.

I could see our old beloved home, on the corner
of Reid and Eleventh...where we grew up, 
measles, mumps, chicken pox...there we  listened
to Fibber and Molly...and Bob Hope...and Red
Skelton...

...And played all these ball games and countless 
other great and glorious activities, which
only little American boys could dream up!

*******BY MIL*******
01-30-15

ANYONE FOR "AMERICA"?

SUMMERTIME IN THE FORTIES,,,,
        LASTED....FOREVER!
**************************************
Clovis, New Mexico, 1943......

You  really needed six for a good game of 
"AMERICA."

It would not have been surprising for a little
kid,  along about 1943, living in a nice, new
small two bedroom house, over there on Reid 
St, near the new MEMORIAL HOSPITAL---to
hear a knock on the front door...open it and---
there on the first day after school was out at
old La Casita, would be three or four neighbor-
hood kids, all dressed for play---one juggling
the most worn, beat-up football you ever saw.

It was Art and Bob, Charles, and James.

"Wanna PLAY AMERICA?" "Sure," let me 
finish my corn flakes." (This was before the
the days of the sinful Fruit Loops.")

Soon we had six out in the middle of Reid 
Street, between Eleventh and Twelfth Streets.
Reid was nicely paved by then.

"AMERICA" was not a contact game---it was 
a pass or kick game. Goals were set up a
block apart...anything you could find marked 
a goal.

Your side kicked and a caught kick was three
points for the opposition. A caught pass was two
points. If they missed,  your side got the points.

(I'm setting this down--FOR  HISTORY!) When
a team amassed eight or ten points, a star
player would take eight or ten GIANT STEPS...
and kick or throw the ball far over the heads
of the opposition, thus winning the game--if they
couldn't catch it.

I wonder if, today, kids take a break from their Tweeting
at all and maybe say: "Hey, how 'bout a game of
NEW WORLD ORDER?"

Oh, oh! Did I mention: our football was probably...
UNDER-INFLATED?!

-----30-----
MIL'S PLACE
2/15/15

BURY MY HEART AT LA CASITA

"Doc" Gattis

(AN EPIC STORY/POEM)
*****************************

"IT'S GONE."

Beloved old La Casita School, in Clovis, New Mexico, 
   at Seventh and Thornton...is gone. 
Lost in the sands of time...
     Has been for half a lifetime.

Before it was.lost, in later years, I must've driven
    by it dozen or more times!
Never thought to stop and walk around the school,
     around the old two-feet-tall rock fence,
that went clear around it--back west on Seventh, 
     all the way to Edwards St.--- and it never kept 
nothin' out--
    No dogs, no kids, and no bullies. no perps.
(Were there "PERPS" in those halcyon times?)

Coulda walked it, the route of "Max and Doyle,"
      clear around the grounds,  where those two 
first graders and their gang....terrorized us all;
    They were like a little posse running, without
horses...but with their own legs.

Coulda snapped photo after photo...front and
     back....but didn't...
Now, who has any pictures?

Ah yes, sometime...maybe back in the 50's,
     or 60's, when the old school was left
unguarded...at that moment
    They tore La Casita down--to the ground--
With all its history.

With it..and sit down for this...went:
    THE OLD BELOVED "BLURBLY WATER
        FOUNTAIN," the one-of-a-kind;
          THE PRIDE AND THE JOY OF
             THE PRINCIPAL, DOC GATTIS---

For who knows how many years it sat right
    out in front, where the sidewalks 
crossed--a weird fountain, to be sure--
     And maybe not sanitary, for water that
hit your mouth and missed...fell right back
    onto the new water coming up...

But who ever cared? Us "early Americans" of 
    those days were expected to have measles, 
mumps, and chicken pox...
    People were tough and down-to-earth, and 
not as picky as we are today.

They tore down the school, and with it went the
    Blurbly Fountain, and I reckon all the
candy stores closed. Our  favorite being the one 
    right across the street--with display case in 
their living room....

....where we all went at 12:45, after lunch, to
watch the kids with pennies, nickels and dimes 
    load up, buying: jaw breakers, penny suckers,
red hots, licorice, Luden's Cough drops, gum 
    drops, Paydays, Snickers, Baby Ruths, bubble
gum, O Henrys, Bit-O-Honeys, and "plumgranites."

The last were ten cents-and-turned-you-purple-
    and-dripped-and-you-had-only-until-the-
ONE P.M. bell---to eat them, before class time.

When I had a nickel, my choice was a Black Cow
     or Walnettos. Still had to eat fast!

Oh the memories of that school!

Getting there, in 1939, when we lived behind
    the old laundry...I walked west from 417 W. Grand...
by Tom Phelp's Red-and-White Store---there
    at Hinkle and W. Grand...(there was a Saykelly
Candy Co. across north on Hinkle, but those kids
     went somewhere else to school.)

Then I walked by Jerry Crook's Mom's Beauty Shop,
     and turned north on Thornton
at the Blaylock Grocery, headed up Thornton,
    by the little "White Church On the Corner,"
on north, missing the haunted house on the west
     side of the street...

Finally reaching La Casita, getting a drink at the
    Blurbly Fountain (except in winter), and 
heading in to an always warm room with
    excellent radiator heat! Whatever grade, 
we were in... there was good warmth!

Memories:

Free milk in the third grade, Ms. Bledsoe's room.
    New song taught by Miss Dodie, "GOD BLESS 
AMERICA."
     "Red Rovsr," and tackle football on that cement-hard 
playground, along with baseball!
     Right across the first rock fence, every May 1,
we wound the maypole.
    There was folk dancing before school---
"JUMP JUMP, JUMP JIM CROW," and such.

In the ancient school gym/auditorium (with bleachers)'
    Mil sang the title role in the 6th grade musical,
"REDDY'S MAMMOTH SHOW." thus almost 
    beginning...a life in show biz!

In the sixth grade in wonderful Ms. Gustin's class,
    we "EMBROIDEREED"---each kid sewed something...
My piece was a linen towel, with a waiter carrying
    a slice of watermelon.

In the sixth grade, we had grown up a right smart.
    WWII was winding down, tho' we may not 
have realized it yet. The summer of THE BOMB
    was ahead.

We lost a beautiful young blonde classmate,
    that year--Mary Lou Powell---to a
lingering illness.

A popular new girl came into the future CHS '51
     class that sixth grade year...she came from
Belen and became one of us...Dorothy Fawnette
    Pike!

"Country Boy Bob," a couple of years behind us,
    in CHS '53, loving marbles the way he did,
(and being a wicked "KEEPS" player also), 
    One year at the LC HALLOWEEN CARNIVAL
At the ten cents string pull, managed to figure 
    it out, and bought five or six sacks of 
marbles @ ten cents each!

Mil won a flat caramel icing cake in "Musical Chairs,"
    at that LC carnival. (Only thing he ever won!)

O the memories! But LC is gone, never to return.
    Has been for  a long time. It woulda been a fine
building for a Clovis Teacher's Museum. It's empty
    rooms would have made good venues for
quilting clubs, book-readers'  clubs, Spanish classes...

I coulda found 'em some land out west'o  town 
     for car licenses and stuff.

The other day, I was pondering this story...and
    remembering the school,  the friends, the
times...and I sort of had my mental-photographic-
    vision playing...maybe I slipped into a 
reverie of sorts....

In my dream it was a nice spring day...I was at the old
    BLURBLY WATER FOUNTAIN---out front of
    old La Casita...drinking...and suddenly a line of kids,
as out of the mists of time were coming toward me and 
    passing by, old friends from the late-thirties and forties... 
I raised my head and looked, but I was mute and 
    so were they...
But each one as he/she passed, smiled or nodded or 
    winked...and I got a coupla "thumbs up..." too..

In the haze of my dream, I recognized and remembered
    them all...some were first grade faces and some 
older grades---it didn't matter...

There leading the  pack was Joe Bert Trimble...
    Followed by Audrey Jean Cole...and Jimmy Blair--
(my first grade desk-mate); there was Ramona Garcia,
    Wilma Foster, Jerry and Robert Roberts (two of
the smartest kids); here came smiling Jim Whatley
   and Donald Todd...there was Albin Covington,
Cleijo Cherry, Arthur Snipes, Sue Barnett, and
   Christine Barris...

Why that was Eugene "Hooky" Fulgham who just
   passed, a boy with gravitas before the word 
was ever heard. Jerry Crook and Alvin "Pike"
   Jordan went by with a wink...no doubt remembering
those rough football games on the HARD playground!

Look at who just passed by--it was Fawnette Pike
    and Betty Hillhouse, clowning already, as they
were to do in Jr.High! Geraldine Edwards, one of 
    my first school friends. was right behind.

The twins Newton and David, from the fourth grade 
    were next, and then came Frank Blackburn,
and some who were once in LC and left, like Clayton
    and his sister (who sang "Catalina Magdalena"
at a second grade talent show---and Eldon Langford
    whom I doubt that anyone remembers., a 
curly-haired kid.

Donald Mardis came ambling along, with that congenial
    grin...already a warm friendly guy...walking with
him was R.G. Snipes and  Frank Blackburn.

Seemingly an endless line of friends...already showing
    zest,  love of life, and determination to
tackle the world head-on...even at their young ages...

Unbelievingly, I shook my head and threw some cold
    water from the BLURBLY FOUNTAIN
into my eyes...thinking to clear out my mind's
    photo camera...

I looked up again and lo---a distinguished line of
     adults were coming down the sidewalk
behind the kids...it was the best group of
school teachers ever assembled on the planet..

They all smiled a bit---Ms Tennyson, Ms. Norris,
    Ms. Bledsoe, Ms. Isaacs, Ms. Holloway,
Ms. Galloway, Ms. Ballou,  Mr. Stalcup, Ms.
    Davis, Ms. Gustin, and our old friend, 
the janitor...ruddy-faced...khaki-clad Mr.Warren!

Ah, but also coming along thru the mists, a few steps
    behind, a thin graceful man, wearing a
dark business suit---carrying a walking stick---
     like a sort of symbolic herding stick...
As if to say; "These people ahead of me are
   mine and my responsibility. Don't mess
with them!"

This man, this slender purposeful, dedicated-
    looking man, bringing up the rear---was
obviously the leader...and underneath his 
    strict-looking demeanor...If you'd  known him---
was a benevolent streak and a heart of gold.

The mists cleared a bit and I realized, 

HE WAS DOC GATTIS!!

(A few years ago, a girl in that line of kids
     mentioned above, now a grown woman,
said to me one day--- something like this:

"You know, I've been to quite a few schools
in my life, but sometimes I feel that old La Casita
School is my TRUE ALMA MATER.")

I think maybe, she might be right.



******BY MIL******
February 13, 2015