Ray Hawkins

Ancestors

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Ray Hawkins [send private message]

Biography

I was born in Houston, Texas on September 19, 1947. I was the first of 7 children born to my parents, Ray and Lee Hawkins. The first few years of my life were spent in Houston and in cities throughout southern Texas, including Palacios and Brownsville.

By 1952 the family, now with 2 children (my brother, born in Houston in 1951 and me) and 1 on the way was in New Orleans, LA. Here my sister was born in 1952 and here my mom and dad decided to separate. We children went with Dad to his parents in Arkoma, Oklahoma, out in the country. I loved it, although I missed my mother. Grandpa Hawkins was 77 at the time and still raised his own chickens for eggs and meat as well as rabbits for their meat. They had no indoor plumbing, drawing water from a well and the ubiquitous outhouse out beyond the chicken pen. Here I ate peaches fresh off the tree and at freshly killed chicken and rabbit. I remember that I didn't like to see Grandpa and Grandma kill the chickens and rabbits, but I sure did like Grandma's cooking! We spent the 4th of July there. It was the first time I remember having fireworks, although they were only sparklers and Roman candles and firecrackers.

I celebrated my 5th birthday there, with photos from a studio and a visit to a popular children's radio program in neighboring Ft Smith, Arkansas. My aunt had told all her friends to listen since I was quite the talker. I remember sitting in the studio with her listening to the theme music "Teddy Bear's Picnic" and then the host came out to interview me. I don't remember what I said, but my aunt told me that instead of being the talkative young man she had told her friends about, all I did was reply "Uh-huh" and "Unh-huh" to his questions. So my first public speaking appearance was a disaster, at least for my aunt.

Winter came and with it the first snow I had ever seen. I was delighted. My Dad had to go to Little Rock for some reason and he took me along for company. The snow was very heavy and we had some trouble with driving, with Dad pulling over frequently until the latest gusty snow had passed. But all in all it was a magical time. . .all that snow.

Not long after Christmas, Mom and Dad got back together and we moved as a family to Ardmore, Oklahoma. I don't remember much about Ardmore, except the kids' bedroom had Mother Goose floor tiles, which I loved. The thing I remember most is my first tornado warning. Mom was scared to death. Dad wasn't home and we had no basement (which in Oklahoma should be a criminal violation of building codes,) so we went next door to a neighbor's house and sat in her front room, next to a mother-in-law's tongue plant (funny the trivial things you can remember when just letting things pour out) and listening to the crackling radio giving us the latest info. Well, no tornado happened there, thank goodness. But it did give me a taste of what living in "Tornado Alley" was going to be like.

By the summer of 1953, we were living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I began school just before my 6th birthday. My parents had to go to the school board and convince them to let me start in the 1st grade instead of kindergarten, as most 5 year olds do. I had been taught to read at a primary level by the time I was 4 and knew my numbers and such and they felt that I would not get the type of educational support I needed in kindergarten. They also said that since I would turn 6 just two weeks after the start of the school year, it was kind of silly to not let me start in the 1st grade. Their reasoning convinced the board to let me enter 1st grade at 5. I never regretted their decision.

In the years that followed, we moved several times around the Tulsa-Sand Springs area, rarely staying in one house for a year. Why this was I don't know and my parent never told me. A sister was born when we lived in Sand Springs in 1954. After a brother was born in May 1955, we moved back to Houston, Texas. There we again moved around the Houston area, including Kashmere Gardens, Jacinto City (where my youngest brother was born in 1956) and not long after the last of my sisters was born in 1957, Galena Park, where Dad and Mom bought their first home. We stayed there less than a year, but longer than most places we lived. In the fall of 1958, we were back in Tulsa, moving from place to place, as usual. In the spring of 1959, we moved to a lovely home on the outskirts of Sand Springs. It had a huge front yard, acres of land in the back, with some run down sheds and chicken coops and a field full of blackberries! It was a perfect place for a family that now boasted 7 children, ranging in age from not-quite-two to not-quite-twelve. But Dad once again had "Gypsy feet" and went to St Joseph, MO, looking for a better life for him and his family. He rented an old home in a very small town and farming community outside St Joseph, Amazonia, and we all piled in a pickup and a station wagon and moved there in the dead of winter, February 1960.

Looking back over the past 56 years of winters in Missouri, I have to say without question that was the worst winter I've ever experienced. For one thing, the moment we arrived at our new home and I stepped out of the pickup, I was almost waist deep in snow that had piled up in the ditch in front of the house. And I was 6 feet tall by that time. Another thing was the house itself. No running water, just a pump and an outhouse. And a coal furnace that had to be manually fed, nothing automatic. And icicles like I had never seen before nor since. They stretched from eave to ground like ice bars around the houses, some as big around as my arm is now or bigger. And the cold and snow and ice lasted until well into March. Add to that the fact that Mom came down with a horrible case of flu on the way to Amazonia, so she was unable to do much there for a week or more. Her illness spread to Dad and to most of the kids quite rapidly and I was left with a sister and brother to take care of these sick people. Fortunately Mom and Dad recovered their strength just about the time I got sick. As it was, from moving in and all the sickness and cleaning up a place that was filthy, we didn't start school until the end of March.

Despite the rocky start, we kids loved our new home. Spring came and the gentle breezes and fresh country air was energizing. Walking down the country lanes outside the main hub of town (all 4 or 5 blocks of it east and west and two blocks north and south) was an education in country living and lore. We finished the school year and were enjoying our summer when (you guessed it) we moved to St Joseph, MO into an old Victorian home at 16th and Charles, with a mansard roof, a butler's pantry, pocket doors, an entry vestibule, a waiting area and a huge front bedroom upstairs with two closets, one as big as most modern bathrooms. Our next door neighbors, an elderly couple who had lived in their home for some 60 years, told us that when they moved there, these houses were prime real estate, that the horse-drawn streetcars had run right down Charles and that our home was probably built in the late 1880's as was theirs. 16th Street was still paved with brick and the house across 16th from ours still had a cast iron hitching post out front. St Joseph still has brick paved streets, but the hitching posts for the most part have been sold or stolen as the demand for such things increased in the 1970's and later.

Amazingly enough, we lived there for 3 years. I finished grade school and started high school and all my siblings save one began school. My parents then built a home in a new addition called Chestnut Hill, off Pear Street on 31st Street. Each home had a chestnut tree planted in the front yard. . .most or all of which died within a few years, as I recall. Our home was an "All Electric" home, which was the gold standard in 1963. It was a very typical suburban American neighborhood, not much different from scores of working class suburban neighborhoods across the nation. And I switched from Central High School to Benton High School, from which I was graduated in 1965. I figure that with all the moving my family did, I attended something like 14 different schools in 12 years and 11 of those schools before the 8th grade!

As a result of all that moving, I was never able to form lasting friendships from childhood. I had one childhood friend that I kept in touch with until the 1960's and another that I visited when I went back to Tulsa in 1969 to visit my uncle and his wife. But they were exceptions and after the 1960's I didn't keep in touch with anyone that I knew back then. Some have asked me if that didn't bother me. I can answer truthfully that it didn't. What I lacked in lasting friendships, I more than made up for in the invaluable education that was provided by traveling and living in different areas and meeting all these different people.

• First-hand information. Entered by Ray R Hawkins at registration.