The Beginning of My College Career

Fall 1972

Wayland Baptist College

In spite of the fact that I have spent over 30 years in higher education, I didn’t start out with much college potential, if any! I would rather have been outside working than inside studying or reading. I didn’t really have a grasp of Algebra, not in high school and not in my first years of college. I could never understand why they mixed numbers and letters together. This pretty much eliminated my chances of becoming a veterinarian, one of my childhood ambitions. Nobody told me I had to know math or that I would be working with people too. I attempted algebra 4 times in college before finally getting it. It was not until I took my first physics class that algebra started to make sense. I was 24 at that time, in my second year of marriage, and was starting my second year of enlistment in the United States Air Force. Two of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Up until that time, I had only one real college experience as a full-time resident student. It was memorable but not very profitable.

It was 1971 when I graduated from high school. I had a lottery number for the Vietnam war and a small agriculture scholarship at the local community college, due to the efforts of my favorite Agriculture teacher in high school. It was something I could do while living at home. Because it didn’t really cost me anything but time, I decided to do it. I spent the summer working and signed up for the usual foundation classes for the fall; English 101, Psychology 101, Algebra 101 and a surveying class in the technical department. I dropped psychology, failed algebra, and did miserably in English. I did pass the surveying class and thought it might be something I could do. It led to a later job in west Texas surveying oil well sites and dragging a surveying chain, for those of you who know what that is. However, I just couldn’t seem to get the motivation for college, besides, the Rapture was just around the corner, as I was being told, and I didn’t want to waste time on something that would not matter after that. I would rather have been doing some outside job and using my free time to travel around the U.S., which I did.

Over the next few years, I spend time in Oregon working as a welder’s helper for the El Paso pipeline project, working in the local cotton gins, working as an irrigation farm hand and driving tractor, bug testing cotton crops, working as a hods boy in Yuma, Arizona, building barbed wire fence in west Texas, building fireplaces in west Texas, pouring concrete and laying block on small local projects, working on my dad and mom’s house, and taking a college course here and there for fun, like welding. I also took a Ferrier course (another great story) and tried shoeing horses but could not get past the first horse. Actually, I could not get past the first half of the horse. I left the hind legs for a better Ferrier.

I often find it interesting to think that I teach in an institution in which I have only one semester of experience as a full-time resident student, and it was a disaster, except for one thing, my weekend cowboy experience in South Dakota. I spent one fall semester at Wayland Baptist University, more of an effort to get back to my west Texas roots than to get back to college. I think it was my second year after graduating from high school. We were already into the semester a few weeks, and I was already failing chemistry (my first one ever) and all my other classes but art. We had an interesting chemistry teacher with two distinguishing facts. He served in General Patton’s 4^th Armored Division during WWII and at one time he taught Jerry Reed, a popular country western singer and actor (I liked his music). He also had a daughter that was kind enough to tutor me in Chemistry, to no avail. I seemed to know the material until the test, at which time I would freeze up and then hand in a blank paper. Sad for me and sad for the tutor that worked so hard. I think the only thing that kept me from going home was the fact that I liked living in the Texas panhandle and that I enjoyed art. The art class led to a couple of drawing jobs during the semester which made me a little pocket money for traveling around on the weekends, when I should have been studying. I also played a little ping pong with some of the guys and one tall redhead on the Wayland Baptist Flying Queens basketball team. It reminds me of a phrase in the movie Love Laughs at Andy Hardy, You will platonic her, and I can guarantee she will platonic you.”

One morning, before class, I happened to see a bulletin posting where a local businessman and state congressman, I think, was looking for a few strong college boys to work with him on his ranch for a weekend. I jumped at the chance; it would certainly be better than studying chemistry. I called him immediately. As it turned out, he selected me and two other students. One was a tall Texas boy I met when I first arrived. He made the best venison stew with a popcorn popper, and dried venison jerky right in his dorm room. The other was a young man with no agriculture experience at all, but eager for the adventure. Don’t ask me why one is called Texas boy and the other young man, it is just a natural vernacular expression.

I didn’t know until later that the job was going to take us to South Dakota in the employer’s private plane. That Friday afternoon we met the man at the small-town airport, threw our bags into his V-tailed Bonanza airplane, and headed for South Dakota. On the way, we made one stop. We landed in a Nebraska cornfield to visit his mother who lived close by, then we made a short flight to the ranch or farm in South Dakota, whichever was more appropriate. I need to say at this point that one of my other dreams was to become a pilot. I think it started when I met my oldest cousin’s husband who grew up on the Spade ranch (not farm) in west Texas. He got his pilot’s license when he was 16 and bought a small piper cub airplane. He and his brother would spend time flying around the ranch and sometimes shooting crows out of the plane. Needless to say, this sounded great to me. He actually gave me about 2 hours of instruction and a logbook to log my time, something that became useful later.

The South Dakota town was very small, it might have been Onida. I don’t think the streets were even paved. We were staying in an old hotel or boarding house with a common bathroom and spring beds with feather mattresses. We had our breakfast and supper meals at the small hometown café, lunch was provided at the work site. The chicken farm scene in Napoleon Dynamite always reminds me of that experience, and many others I hate to admit. We woke early on the first morning, ate breakfast at the café, where we were introduced to the café owner, a woman who seemed to be in her early forties, an important part of this story, later. We then drove to the ranch where we were introduced to the ranch hand in charge of operations. I don’t think he was an educated man, even up to high school, however, that was not a requirement for the kind of work we were undertaking. We had at least three days of work castrating, dehorning, and inoculating young calves.

Now is the time to dispel any of the romantic notions of cowboy life, at least at that time. I might also change the word ranch to farm, cattle farm. We didn’t ride horses, and we didn’t do any roping. The cattle were in a large pasture. They had to be herded through a gate located somewhere in the middle of the fence, which seemed odd to me. It was like trying to work one of those dexterity games where you tried to get the balls to stay in place while you moved one into place. The owner drove a pickup truck around the field, and we ran around like cow dogs. Once the owner jumped out of the truck to catch one calf by the tail and left the truck in gear. He just barely caught it before it went through the fence. We ran our legs off, but we finally got them in the working pens.

The rest of the time we took turns on different jobs. One would push the calves into the chute using a wooden panel to avoid being kicked in the shin while the others would dehorn, castrate, and inject the calves with medication. It was a hard and bloody job, and you couldn’t help but feel sorry for the calves. I grew up in an agriculture setting and castrated many of my goats while in high school, so this was not new to me. However, I can’t help but think of Temple Grandin and wonder if there could not have been a better way of doing all this. None the less, I was getting paid and had a job to finish before flying home.

One of the unique things about this trip was that we were staying in a small town where everyone knew everyone else. The local café even agreed to cook up some mountain oysters, if we would bring the oysters. Now, if you don’t know what those are, you may need to watch the movie, Temple Grandon. It is a great movie about autism and will inform you about mountain oysters. Of course, you can always google it. You have probably figured it out by now. That tall Texas boy with us dug in and ate more than his share. The rest of us finished our quota and were ready for bed.

It was a long weekend with three long and hard days, working from sunup until after dark when we would work by floodlight. It was all we could do to eat, take a shower, and crawl into bed at night. No matter what they say, feather beds are for the birds, literally. We left for college on Tuesday, a day longer than anticipated, and had not been in the plane for long when our employer got sleepy. “Have any of you had any flying experience?” he said. “I have two hours,” I blurted out. “Then get up here!”

I moved into one of the front seats and he gave me a quick rundown of what was required. All I had to do was keep it flying straight and wake him up if anything happened. Needless to say, I was thrilled. It was like the time my dad let me drive the camper and I almost ran out of gas because I didn’t want to wake him and lose the driving time. I didn’t wake our employer up until we got close enough to the ground to see the cows below us scattered. He took the controls and pulled us up to a respectable altitude, then gave the controls to another student. Soon after he took control and flew us back to the university.

Other than making a trip to Mule Shoe, Texas to check on a parade wagon and team of mules being advertised for sale, it was a pretty uneventful semester, but not completely. Others are coming to mind, but I will save them for later. I finished the semester and went home for Christmas. That was my only semester at Wayland, they put me on probation. It was a good decision for them, the best thing for me, and most certainly good for my parents who financed it. They never financed another college course for me after that, and I am very thankful for that. It was much better when I did it myself.