THE PIONEER MAN

A popular cartoonist of the thirties and forties often used the theme, “Born Thirty Years Too Soon.”  In the late sixties a friend remarked that Ken was born thirty years too late.  The person said that Ken would have either saddled his horse and rode west or he would have put his family in a covered wagon and moved.  About the same time, one of his students at the University of Arizona remarked that he would have made a good pioneer in an earlier era.  Through the years a few others have agreed.

Our marriage began as a blend of a status quo person and a risk taker.  I soon learned that his risks were logical and well thought out and that he always had a Plan B to fall back on.  He remains unafraid of change to this day.

I have gone along with most of his risks except homesteading in Alaska.  We had all of the information and his argument was that we would only have to live on the land for 6 months of the year.  I was sure that I would end up in the snow frozen to death.  I told him that he would not need a large cabin for only one person.  Now that I have been to Alaska, I would consider it if age were not a factor.  Had he persuaded me to go, we would probably still be there.

Another risk that was scrapped was to buy a moving van.  When we moved from Tucson, Arizona, to Harlingen, Texas, he recommended two people who would be graduating from the rehabilitation program at the University of Arizona for the facility in Harlingen.  They were hired and another graduate student took a job as a rehabilitation counselor in Harlingen.  They would be moving within three months of our move.  All of the men would be state employees so there was no monetary allowance for relocation.  A moving company in Tucson had a van for sale.  Ken’s idea was to buy the van, move all four families and then resell the van.  The other three guys were not as enthusiastic as Ken, but they all went to look at the van.  It looked good and seemed to be O.K. mechanically.  Figures were put on paper including insurance and possible repairs.  Everything seemed sensible except the time and expense of empty miles back to Tucson after each move.  All of us went back to plan A and individually rented U-Haul trucks to move.  We hired a moving company employee to supervise and friends volunteered to help.  Three of our friends held a Ph.D. in their field.  That surely gave us a little class.

Ken was born in Oklahoma the fourth of six children and was an adventurous boy.  At age two he pulled a pan of boiling jelly off the stove onto his head.  His mother grabbed a towel and started wiping it off.  One side of his face was badly burned and scarred.  As he grew older the skin became less and less discolored to the point that our granddaughters had never noticed it until we told them the story of his accident.  He and his older brothers were mischievous and kept his mother busy cutting switches.  He started working as a paper boy at a young age in Ada, OK.  He learned o drive on an ice delivery truck in Breckenridge, TX.  He did farm labor.  He delivered milk for my Dad.  He worked at the Palace Theatre in Breckenridge and at 18 he started working in the oil fields as a roughneck on drilling rigs.  He was on a drilling rig in San Angelo, TX, in January of 1952, in subzero temperature.  He was driving nails into a piece of sheet iron on the rig floor.  He took a break and went into the dog house to get warm.  He removed two pairs of gloves he was wearing and discovered that he had been hitting his thumb.  He had lost feeling in his hands from the cold.  He made the decision that he needed to get an education and do something else.

He entered North Texas State College (Now University of North Texas) in the fall of 1952.  He worked in the library for 30 cents an hour to help meet expenses.  He had been making up to $1.50 an hour on the rigs.  He got a break during his last semester.  Four large oil companies joined in a venture and started drilling a deep exploratory well just west of Denton.  He went to work as a roughneck on the morning tour.  (Tour is pronounced tower and the hours are 11PM to 7 AM.)  He had a philosophy class at 8 AM.  The teacher was notorious for punctuality.  Ken went in and talked to him about what he was going to do.  The professor told him not to worry if he was late.  The crew was gracious to the college boy and would tell him to nap or study when he wasn’t needed on the floor.

He graduated on May 26, 1955, and we married on May 28, 1955.