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In
1961 my father had accepted a job as a electrical mechanic at one
of the [Cold War] missle silos near Altus, Oklahoma. Having 5 children
to support, he searched around the area and decided Quanah,
Texas was the best place to move.
I was starting the 10th grade and very disappointed to leave Tulsa
where I grew up. Upon arriving in Quanah
I recall the culture shock of leaving a brand new high school in
Tulsa and attending classes in an old two-story brick school. One
with rickety stairs and old seats in the auditorium. Little did
I know at that time how much I would eventually miss my times in
Quanah.
The kids were pretty kind to me and my older brother who was entering
the 11th grade, actually, a little too kind for the city slicker
with an attitude about thinking he was a little too good for the
small town country kids. A few days after we moved into a rented
house (destroyed in a fire several years ago), a neighborhood girl
invited my brother and I to attend a party at her large two-story
house a few blocks east of ours. I casually mentioned to her that
I could "bop dance" which caught everybody's attention. They had
never seen a city boy dance like that and took great interest. Later,
during the Saturday night dance at the youth recreation house on
the east side of the street dividing Quanah,
I started dancing, generally by myself with the kids circling me
to catch the moves. Soon afterwards, all the kids started dancing
the city 'bop.'
I had never been to place where the whole town celebrated whenever
there was a pending football game and where the kids would fan through
the downtown merchants stores full of high school spirit. It was
spell-binding and a experience I never forgot. That year Quanah
went to the state championship game against Donna,
Texas, a game Quanah
eventually lost but it will always be remembered as "the year we
went to state." I never forgot my worship of Blackie Wade the little
halfback and the other team members.
One day, while eating in the school cafeteria (a unique experience
only possible there), I witnessed Blackie Wade spreading butter
on one side of his bread from the one pound butter tub in the center
of the cafeteria table. He carefully folded the bread over into
a sandwich and to this day, I still eat my bread that way. I also
patterned my basketball game from Blackie who was a terror on the
court; running after the ball and otherwise interfering with the
other teams offense. Blackie Wade went on to play football in college
and I was very saddened to learn years later that he had passed
away.
I turned 16 and ran the wheels off my father's 1961 Pontiac Catalina
driving the main drag in Quanah.
The envy of all us boys during those years was the guy living in
Eldorado that owned a 1957 Chevrolet. It was black with a black
and red interior, floor shift, dual quad carburetion, and the fastest
car in the county.
Another thing I never forgot was the smell of the cotton being milled
in Quanah. It took me several
weeks to find out what caused the smell until one of my friends
enlightened me. The whole experience in Quanah
was etched in my soul and although we only lived there one year
before returning to Tulsa, I still feel Quanah is my town.
© Darrell Gilliam, Tulsa, Oklahoma
"They shoe horses,
don't they?" November
15 , 2007 Guest Column
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