Yesterday, Dec. 16, would have been my father’s 97th birthday. He was born Dec. 16, 1914, in a house in Wood County near Quitman. He was the youngest child of Joseph Thomas and Beulah Moore Hail. They named their third child Truman Preston, baby brother to big sister Saba Irene and brother Vernon Ray.
The family moved around a lot in his early years, from Wood County in East Texas down to the Beaumont-Port Arthur area on the Gulf Coast, and back to Central Texas where they lived at various times in San Saba, Lampasas, and Kempner. My grandfather had worked as a blacksmith, but the family mainly worked as sharecroppers, and even the children were expected to work. When it was time to pick cotton, the children, too, pulled those heavy bags up and down the rows.
In many ways, life was pretty primitive for them. When Daddy was just a little boy, the family went out to Scurry County to visit relatives, traveling by covered wagon and camping out in fields along the way. When a tremendous thunderstorm came up, they took refuge in a church until the storm ended.
Because of the family’s frequent moves and the fact that the children were needed to work, none of the children spent a lot of time in school. But because he was the youngest, Truman’s schooling ended after the second grade. He would start second grade in one school, then the family would move and he’d be out of school for a while, so when he reenrolled, he’d be put back in second grade. Finally, after this happened several years, his parents decided that his time for schooling was over.
His lack of education was something that he would regret for the rest of his life, although he did try to learn as much as he could on his own. He figured out some way to do basic math. He’d learned addition and subtraction in school, then memorized multiplication tables and learned some basic division on his own. Years later as an air conditioning and heating contractor in the booming housing market around Fort Hood in the 1960s, he developed his own forms of algebra and geometry to be able to figure the size and amount of air conditioning duct work necessary for the size and configuration of the house and the air conditioning unit and amount of air to be moved. I watched him do it and still don’t understand how, just from his measurements and his careful consideration of what looked to me like random pencil marks on a scrap of paper, he could come up with the exact amount needed for the job.
His one chance to see the world came in the 1940s when he joined the army in World War II. After some time in England, he took part of the invasion of North Africa, spending some time in Tunisia where he picked almonds from the trees. Later he went to Italy to take part in the liberation of Rome. He was in Paris when the end of the war came. From his time in Italy he told stories of swimming in the clear water of the Mediterranean and of seeing the Italian countryside including the Roman ruins. When my sister DJ was in college and I was a young reporter for the newspaper in Copperas Cove, we were all visiting in Arlington one weekend when the Pompeii Exhibit came to Dallas. DJ and I planned to go, but we couldn’t persuade Mom and Dad to go with us. It was a cold winter day, and we were going to have to stand outside in the cold in line for a while to get into the exhibit, so they decided to stay at DJ’s apartment while she and I went to Dallas. When we returned home later that day, Daddy proceeded to describe in detail everything we had seen. Finally, I asked him how he could possibly know what was in the exhibit, and he said he had already seen it. “Where?” I asked. His answer—Pompeii.
Probably because of his own history, he wanted his children to do well in school and to go on to college. Consequently, all three of us earned college degrees, and he was so proud of that. Like any proud father, he was quick to boast about his kids’ accomplishments. That continued on to his grandchildren, too.
Daddy loved joking with people, and he could also tell some entertaining stories. He enjoyed talked to people and would strike up a conversation with just about anyone. We made several trips to North Carolina in the 1960s and ‘70s to visit friends there, and every time he stopped for gas, he would get back in the car knowing a portion of the life story of the attendant who waited on him or another traveler he had run into while we were there. Once, on the last family trip to the East Coast he was able to make, we spent a weekend in Washington, D.C. He wasn’t able to walk for any length of time then, and we were planning to go to the FBI Building for the tour. Mom had always been a fan of detective stories, and she was excited about seeing the demonstration where the FBI agents fired a machine gun like those of the 1930s gangster days. Daddy couldn’t hold up for all that walking and standing in line, so we dropped him off at the Old Post Office, which was by then a collection of souvenir and specialty shops. He would sit there and people watch while we went to the FBI exhibit. However, the crowds were bigger than usual, and we were gone much longer than I had anticipated. We all thought he was going to be upset that we had been gone so long. Instead, he greeted us with descriptions of all the people he had met and the stories he had heard that day. He was apparently thoroughly entertained by the complete strangers whose lives intersected with his for a few minutes that day.
Daddy was a country boy at heart. He wasn’t comfortable in heavy traffic and large crowds unless there was someone else who would drive so that he could just watch the scenery. He really didn’t care much for big cities, although he did take us to Dallas occasionally when we were young, and he took me to the zoo in San Antonio before I was a year old. Still, the first time I mentioned Washington or Philadelphia or especially New York, he didn’t have much to say about the proposed trip. In the early 1980s I took a trip to all three of those cities, and Daddy and Mom came with me. He liked Washington, as he had been there in 1976 for the Bicentennial while I was in grad school in North Carolina. He liked Philadelphia, too, because there was so much to see. Because he had missed out on high school, his knowledge of American history was spotty, but he soaked up information on trips to museums, and Philadelphia had many sites he did know about, including the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, so he enjoyed Philadelphia.
But he was more than a little anxious about going to New York City. I finally got him to agree to go if we didn’t drive all the way into the city, so we drove from Philadelphia to Trenton, N.J. where we took the commuter train into Penn Station. When we walked out onto the street with the tall buildings and traffic and hundreds of people on the sidewalks, I think he was ready to turn around right then and go back. As we crossed the street, a large man who was leaning against the building suddenly turned to face us and blocked our way. From the way he was dressed, he could have been a gang member or street thug. At that point, even I was thinking, We’re about to be mugged. But he grinned, pointed his finger at Daddy, who, as usually, was wearing his summer straw Stetson and his big Texas belt buckle, and said, “Let me guess. Texas, right? I have some friends in Houston, and I was at Fort Hood when I was in the army.” That was all it took. Daddy had made another friend, and he stood there on the corner of a busy New York street chatting about home while busy New Yorkers bustled past the tourists stopping to talk. That was the start to what was an exceptional day, and by the end of the day, Daddy had met a fair share of New Yorkers, a security guard at the Statue of Liberty, some people on the subway, and even a couple in line at the Empire State Building who lived on the next street over from my home in Austin.
Daddy enjoyed hunting and fishing, and our menus when I was young were sometimes supplemented with venison steaks cooked like chicken friend steak or with catfish he’d caught on a fishing trip. He had a favorite fishing hole over near San Saba, and he used to there with his brother, my Uncle Ray. Uncle Ray’s grandson Danny tells about a time when as a young man he went to that fishing hole for an afternoon of fishing. He took some time getting set up, then tossed his line out a few times only to hear a gruff voice say, “Hey, boy, you’re scaring off the fish.” It was Daddy and Uncle Ray, who had been watching him since he arrived.
For all of his strength and outdoorsmanship and his intense physical labor all his life as a cotton picker, farmer, street department worker, railroad track maintenance worker, school bus driver, mechanic, electrician, and air conditioning contractor, Daddy was also a family man, and he loved his children and grandchildren. When Casey, the youngest grandchild, wanted Papaw to play with her in her Little Tykes kitchen, he would go sit in a little chair and let her fix him numerous cups of “coffee” and plates of pretend food. He also enjoyed going to Little League games of the two grandsons, Corey and Graham. But he didn’t have to go anywhere or do anything special if family were involved. He was just as content sitting there watching TV with one of us. Being together was more important than what we might be doing. He always looked forward to our visits and hated to think about us leaving. When he was in the hospital and nursing home in his last months, he still looked forward to having company as often as possible. He loved his family and friends, and almost anyone could be his friend if that person were willing to sit and talk “a spell.”
Next July will mark the 10th anniversary of Daddy’s death, and yet in many ways it seems as though he is still with us. Our memories are especially strong this time of year, but he’s here in other ways, too, as in the values he taught us and in the relationships I see between my brother and his children and grandchildren. One of Daddy’s long-time friends, Marvin Moore of Devine, died shortly before he did. Those two grown men, when I was a child, were always up to mischief when they were together. And if there was water around, one—or maybe both—of them would eventually be going in, usually fully clothed. Both were Christians, so I’m sure the last ten years have been pretty lively in heaven. And if there’s water there, that “crystal sea” mentioned in some of the old hymns, I suspect that they’ve met up with some of the other fishermen there, from apostles to other family members, for some time out on the water, where most likely, laughter fills the air and someone is going to get wet.
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