Our Trip in Search of Jobs

We knew once we graduated, we would leave Lubbock.  There was no doubt in our minds.  That involved going on at least one job hunting trip. 

Zan and Carolyn were job hunting also, and had gone to Shiprock, New Mexico, to see about teaching on an Indian Reservation.  They were impressed with it.

So Bill and I set off on a trip to check it out, among other places.  We were driviing the Porsche, of course.  The road through the Reservation followed a creek, with lots of twists and turns.  More than once, as we rounded a curve, we came upon vehicles parked in the middle of the road, with the drivers having a “pow wow.”  We weren’t use to people not pulling off the road to have a chat.

Bill said there was no way he would take the Porsche there to live.  From that day to this, we have called it Shipwreck.  When people correct us, we tell them we’ve been there and we know what we are talking about.

We continued our journey to the Four Corners area where New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and Arizona meet.  While in Cortez, Colorado, we toured Mesa Verde National Park.  It was an amazing place to see.  

We toured one of the cliff dwellings, which involved climbing up a very tall ladder, with a drop off of several hundred feet.  I had never had a fear of heights until that day.  About half way up the ladder, I froze.  I couldn’t move.  Two little boys in back of me were poking me to go on.  I was finally able to get to the top, but suffered the effects for many years.  

I have learned to deal with my fear as the years passed, but I’m still not comfortable being off the ground.  When at Mesa Verde with JP and Natalia several years ago, I was able to climb the ladders without having a panic attack.  I must report, though, that things are safer now.  The climbing is still up ladders, but not over a huge drop-off.

On our job hunting trip, we saw many beautiful places, but none as beautiful as we remembered the San Isabel/Rye, Colorado area.  So after applying and getting jobs with the Pueblo County School District, we began making plans to move.  I was hired to teach second grade at the elementary school in Rye and Bill was to teach Social Studies and photography at County High School east of Pueblo. 

Our friend, Ann Smith, had given us a puppy.  Her parents raised Wire Fox Terriers and she wanted us to have a puppy because we had done so much for her while she was in college.  We named him Mister.  He was adorable, walking on his tip toes.

We put our house on the market, thinking we would have time to do the necessary cleaning out and packing.  No so!  The house sold very quickly and we were forced to move into an apartment, using the second bedroom to store our “stuff” until it was time to actually move out of the area.

Mister, being from a championship line, needed to have his ears taped a certain way when he started teething.  Ann showed us how to tape them.  In the apartment complex were several snooty dog owners who looked down on our pup.  When we explained that the ears were taped for show purposes later on, he was allowed to play with the their dogs.  Of course, we had no intentions of showing him.  He was just Mister.  But it was fun seeing the change in attitudes!

It was tough, with last minute exams, etc. for Bill and me finishing Graduate School.  I was also hired as a teaching assistant for an art ed class in the Art Department at Texas Tech.  But we really enjoyed the carefree life of apartment living.  With most of the packing already done, we had lots of time to swim in the pool and cook out with other residents.

We chose not to go through all of the graduation hoopla, but to get out of town.  At the time, some singer had recorded a song saying that the best view of Lubbock, Texas, was in the rearview mirror.  It became our theme song!

Neither one of us remember much about the actual move, but I’m sure my mother went along to help, with her car packed to the brim.  She did that for us on several occasions.  Maybe that’s who we learned it from!

Even More of a Hodgepodge!

While teaching second grade at Rush Elementary in Lubbock, I had a variety of “critters” come to the classroom for Show and Tell.  Clay’s parents had been to Florida.  At that time, baby gators could be bought and taken home.  And taken to school, it seems!  The tiny thing was on my desk as all the children crowded around to see a real live alligator.  Nothing would do, but for Mrs. Dane to touch the creature.  When I touched his back, he quickly turned around and bit my finger.  Another experience to add to my long list...I’ve been bitten by an alligator!

Someone brought a hamster.  He was cute and fuzzy.  The kids loved him.  So did I, until he used my grade book for a bathroom.  Not pleasant!

And then there was Charlie!  Joel brought his pet crow in a cage.  Charlie was perfectly happy to be in the classroom.  There was so much for him to see.  The only problem was when we left the room to go to lunch, Charlie spoke his one word loudly...”Help!  Help, help, help!”  Staff members raced to the classroom to see who was in distress!  Charlie was happy to see new faces, but when they left, he started yelling again!  Needless to say, Charlie had an early dismissal day.

After changing principals and going from a great situation to one barely tolerable, I went to teach first grade in a small farming community about 25 miles west of Lubbock.  Ropesville had a lot of non-English speaking students.  We referred to them as illegal aliens, because that’s what they were.  Now that isn’t politically correct...they are undocumented visitors or something like that.  But most of them would be there for a few weeks and then disappear as the crops would change.

The children in my class were sweet and respectful for the most part, but occasionally I would hear one say a “bad” word.  My Spanish was extremely limited, but I soon learned both good and bad words.  When I would tell them “no” to certain words, they would look surprised.  All of them believed I was bilingual.

One of the main, but most unpleasant, duties I had was to check for head lice.  Ugh!  Usually, it wasn’t a very difficult task.  One day, though, I needed some additional assistance so I took a little girl to the principal for help.  Her hair was very crusty, probably because it hadn’t been washed in months.  When we spread her strands of hair apart with throat swab sticks, lice were running around.  The little pests didn’t like being in the light.  I thought Mr. Redford was going to pass out!

In spite of unpleasant tasks like that, it was a great year after the stress of the previous year.  I remember four students specifically.  Orelia Cordoba was a cute little girl, with very dirty clothes and head lice.  I adored her!  I told Bill I wished I could bring her home, clean her up, and take care of the lice problem.  Bill turned ghost white.  He thought I was really going to bring her home.  Of course, that wouldn’t have been possible for many, many reasons, but his reaction was classic.

One day, a new little girl was brought to my room and her sister, a little older, was taken to the first grade room next door.  Each time I talked to her, she would cry and say, “No!  Hermina.”  I didn’t know what that word meant, but I finally figured out the problem.  The principal had given me the wrong enrollment card.  The child’s name wasn’t Hermina.  It was Cryselda.  Once I called her by the correct name, she was fine.  Poor little thing!

And I remember Frank and Joe, cousins, who were in my class the entire year.  Frank’s father worked for a local farmer full time.  Frank was bright and inquisitive.  Joe, on the other hand, was somewhat dull, but a very sweet little boy.  Several years later, someone told me that Joe had died of a brain tumor.  I was sad at this news and I’m sure Frank missed him very much!

I was originally hired to teach second grade in Ropesville.  The first day of school, there weren’t enough students for three second grade classrooms and I would be put in a room with first grade non-English speaking students who came and went like a revolving door.  The principal was very apologetic about the switch, but I was happy.  I was just glad to be there!  

Between the head lice and switched enrollment cards, plus a few other minor things, the first few weeks were interesting, to say the least.  When it came time for report cards, I was ready for the task, only to discover my cards weren’t printed correctly.  The inside part was printed upside down.  I checked with the other teachers and discovered I was the only one with the misprinted cards.

One of the second grade teachers. Imogene, was the wife of the principal, Terry Redford.  I ask her to go to the office with me to see what was going to happen.  With a very serious face, I said, “Mr. Redford, this is the last straw.  I didn’t mind being changed grade levels, and the head lice and wrong enrollment cards worked out OK, but this is the limit.  I am the only teacher who got upside down grade cards!!!!!”  I thought the poor man was going to have a heart attack, until his wife and I burst out laughing.”  It was one of my greatest moments!

Knowing we would be going elsewhere to teach when we both got our degrees, we sold the race car.  In need of a second car, Peewee, who worked for a foreign car dealer, suggested that I try out an Italian Alfa Romeo Zagatta they had for sale.  It was a high powered thing of some sort, with kilometers instead of MPH.  I wasn’t familiar with that, but thought it was about doubled.  I got to school quickly that day, so I found the figures I needed and calculated my speed.  97 MPH! No wonder it was such a fast trip.  On the way back home that afternoon, I drove the speed limit that I had calculated.  The car wouldn’t run at that low a speed.  I was in second and third gear all of the trip.  We told Peewee “Thanks, but no thanks!”

We still needed a second car, so we bought a Mini Cooper from our friend, Buddy Adams.  Buddy was a state senator so the license on the Mini had a State Official (SO) designation.  At that time in Texas, the license plates stayed with the car.  We could park anywhere we wanted to.  It was exempt!

Our Mini was red with a white top.  Our friends, Zan and Carolyn Smith, bought a green Mini, also with a white top.  When we would go to church, whoever got there first would pull up in an angle parking space, and whoever would get there last would park right in back of the other one.  And we still took up less space than the Cadillacs, which were the status symbol in Texas at the time.

Hodgepodge! (Dictionary definition...”confused mixture”)

During the next two years, a lot happened in our lives.  Bill quit his job with the City of Lubbock and enrolled at Texas Technological College to continue working on the degree he had started years before.  Since we were going to be tied down (as much as the two of us could be tied down), I decided to enroll to work on my Masters Degree.

We also bought a house.  It had three bedrooms and one bath.  A single car garage had at one point in time been unattached, but a previous owner had connected the garage to the house with one big room.  The house was too big for us, but we often had sports car friends there.

The garage was good to have, but sometimes limited on space to work on our cars.  We often took parts into the house and worked on them in the living room.  My specialty was the carburetor.  I worked them over to get more gas to flow through, but not so drastic we would get caught cheating.  The main engine work was done by Bill, but if there was a job requiring small hands, I stepped up to the plate.

The neighborhood kids thought the Porsche was a good slide, but Bill trained them very quickly that it was not a piece of playground equipment.  The Sprite was a different matter.  If you are familiar with the body style of a Bug-eyed Sprite, you know there was a space behind the two seats.  It was the trunk, but there was no “lid” to it.  Several times, we found little kids playing back in that area.

If we had to carry something big, we would put it on that back deck, Bill would hold on to it, whether it be a lawnmower or something else like that, and I would drive.  We were a sight to behold going down the city streets.

No matter what the weather was like, the cloth top was always off the Sprite.  In fact, I’m not sure we even knew where it was.  And we kept the windshield wipers in the side pocket.  When changing from the regular windshield to the racing windshield, it was easier to not have the wipers to fool with.  One time we were driving with our friend, Ann Smith.  I was riding on the transmission hump.  Rain started to fall.  I reached across Ann, grabbed a wiper, and stuck my hand over the windshield to wipe a place for Bill to see out of.  Ann just shook her head and said, “You two!  I never know what to expect!”

We decided a radio in the Porsche might be nice.  We were parked in back of the installation store and witnessed a dog being hit by a car.  The dog was severely injured, with no control of his front legs.  While waiting for Animal Control to get there, the dog was in mortal pain.  He was foaming at the mouth.  Someone yelled “Mad dog,” as suddenly, propelled by his back legs, he came ripping toward us.  I was frozen to my spot when Bill grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the building.  Just before getting to us the dog hit a curb and couldn’t get over it.  He was at the spot where I had been standing.  He stopped about three feet from us.  Bill truly kept me out of harms way that day.

World’s Fair Trip...continued...to Colorado

We left Wyoming on a back road and crossed into Colorado.  We drove to Colorado Springs and toured the Garden of the Gods.  It was an amazing place to drive through.

We took the Gold Camp Road to Cripple Creek, an old gold mining town on the southern side of Pikes Peak.  The road was a challenge with many curves and one lane tunnels and cuts through the mountains.  It was a road made for two young people in a Porsche, but it must have been a challenge back in the mining days.

Cripple Creek was an interesting place to visit.  Lots of very old houses, miner’s shacks, old churches, and a main street out of a western movie, complete with board sidewalks, hitching posts, and a dirt street.  We enjoyed poking around in some of the old shops and saloons.  It was all very interesting and quite colorful.

We went through Victor and onto an unpaved County Road 67.  It was a great road to head south on...a beautiful drive.  When we got to the Florence and Wetmore area, the road was paved, but still a pleasure to drive in a sports car.

We drove through the San Isabel National Forest to Lake Isabel on Hwy. 165.  It was an incredibly beautiful drive and the lake was picture postcard perfect!  We camped at the edge of a crystal clear stream, working its way over big boulders and small, and down to the lake.  We woke up with snow on our heads.  

The next morning, we drove on down the mountain to the little town of Rye.  It made a lasting impression on us!

All too soon we were on the last part of our journey.  We headed back to Lubbock and reality!  It was a shock, but we had so many great memories of our adventure.

As a footnote, I will report that we traveled 4,320 miles.  Keep in mind the low cost of gasoline in those days and the Porsche got great mileage.  We spent $36.00 on fuel for the entire trip!  Now that’s a story from “back in the good old days.”