Henrietta, Texas, 1955. Before Marty Robbins, before Elvis, before Bill Haley and the Comets. I was 11.
Sometimes my classmates walked to lunch at the Dew Drop Inn. A holdover from the 30’s, a rundown shack painted white with lots of small windows, on the main road, built when that main road sported wagons, and horses.
Dew Drop Inn. The name was painted vertically in black letters on the white posts holding a roof over …
The porch high above the elevated sidewalk. Proprietor: Derley Davis, also dressed in white (apron, pants, and shirt). Famous for his chili. Derley Davis had a secret recipe.
Served steaming in thick white bowls with a blue stripe. Rich reddish-brown chili, thick and spicy. No tables, just red-topped stools on a u-shaped counter on three sides opposite the front door. Tobasco on the counter for the very, very brave. Saltine crackers, of course, to be crumbled properly. Beans? Yeah, but not many. Now that was some chili.
Eating a lunch there one day, “There’s a leaf in my chili!” I told Mr. Davis. He peered into my bowl.
“That’s a bay leaf,” he said, “Just seasoning.” Nodding my head wisely, 11 years old. Hmmm, I thought. A bay leaf.
… Nine years, two automobiles, and several girls later, for the first time cooking for myself, in college. No dorm for me, wild free spirit and all. And so, cooking for myself. Pity I never paid any attention to what my mother actually did in the kitchen.
But the first time I decided to make chili, I knew just what to do. I went shopping for chili powder, and a secret ingredient.
Six or eight large bay leaves, I think it was.
That was when I learned that a little bay leaf goes a long way.
Hello, Bloggard:
I am another Henrietta veteran of the Dew Drop Inn.
That main road through town (Omega Street) was once the main drag for people on the way to and from California, so lot of non-locals dropped inn. The Bloggard forgot to mention that Derley Davis was missing one hand and forearm. One day a lady was watching him make up hamburger patties on his marble table, mashing down each one with his half-arm. “Is that sanitary?” she asked. “No, ma’am,” said Derley, “it’s marble!”
Hello, Jim Crisp,
Long time, no hear. It is I, the Bloggard, Arthur Cronos, whom you knew as Richard French, once upon a time, long ago. I hope you are well.
Dear Richard:
Actually, it is “Dickie” by which your friends and admirers knew you best, and indeed it has been a long time.
Since I last consulted the Bloggard oracle, I’ve received the blessing of a granddaughter, now 6 years old, who to my amazement wants constantly to hear stories about Henrietta — most specifically about the many “Beeler Marble” adventures and incidents involving me, Jody Beaty, Jimmy Kelley, Kenneth Evans (AKA House Ape), et al.
Jody’s mother, before she passed away by dropping dead in the A&P grocery line (a fate my own mother admired, and then did Ms. Beaty one better by dying in her bedroom in the middle of the night) told me I should write a novel about the Great Beeler Marble Caper — maybe I will someday, but I’m still a working historian at present. I’ll be fully retired in a year or two, so maybe then.
It’s good to know your still blogging.
Cheers,
Jim C.
Beeler Marble?
The Great Beeler Marble caper began when some of Mr. Beeler’s PE students found out on a rainy day (when they were playing board games in his classroom and the gym was in use by the basketball team) that the little plastic marbles from the Chinese Checker game bounced at about a 90% rate — in other words, they would bounce and bounce and bounce when dropped, and carom wildly when thrown.
The students also discovered that the bouncing marbles drove Mr. Beeler (the math teacher) NUTS.
Thus followed the swiping of the marbles and the throwing and dropping them for weeks, in many classrooms, until all had been recaptured by teachers and confiscated.
Our response: to sneak into the closet in Mr. Beeler’s room and steal the instruction sheet from the Chinese Checker game, which included the address of the Acme (or whatever) Chinese Checker Company.
We pooled our dollars and sent off for a new supply, and about four months later, David Parsely (the chosen addressee) showed up at my back door with a box of marbles from Acme!
What followed the next day was pandemonium — there are several dramatic scenes that I could recount, and will do so if asked.
The disruptions lasted a few weeks, and it got so bad that Mr. Mitchell (the principal) announced that random hall checks would be conducted, and anyone found with a Chinese Checker would be expelled for three days.
The most dramatic scene occurred when Jimmy Kelley confronted Mr. Beeler in the hallway and threw a “Beeler Marble” in his direction.
I was watching this transpire, and I at first thought that Kelley was going to be killed; then I thought that I was going to be killed.
If you want to find out what amazing event happened next, ask and I’ll put it in my next post.
Over and out,
JEC
OK, you got me.
Let’s hear it.
Pretty please.
🙂
OK.
As soon as Parsley showed up at my house with the mail-order marbles, calls went out to the usual suspects: Larry LeFevre, Tommy Burnside, Jody Beaty, Jimmy Kelley, Billy Paul Isom, David Schick, etc., etc.
Being the ringleader, I showed up early at the high-school parking lot the next morning, doling our one or two precious marbles to each willing participant, and cautioning them to keep them under wraps until the 9 AM bell rang to start the first-period classes, and then we were all going to let them loose at once.
However — Mojo, AKA Jimmy Kelley, as soon as he had his marble in hand, said “Screw it, I’m going after Beeler right now,” and he took off down the long hallway past the band hall.
I chased after him, making the turns behind him to the left toward the principal’s office and then the right toward the math and English rooms.
Kelley stopped just past the principal’s office and yelled “Hey, Beeler!”
Not “Hey, MR. Beeler” but HEY BEELER!!!
An immediately angry Howard Beeler came out of his classroom, and Kelley just as immediately launched his Chinese Checker in Beeler’s direction.
Beeler started running full speed toward Kelley, and I thought at once he was going to smash him.
But he passed up Kelley, and now was hurtling toward ME, so I though he was going to smash ME!
But no, he passed me without a second look and rounded the turn down toward the way we had come, but instead of continuing, he took a hard left into the Teacher’s Lounge, leaving the door open so that I could see what he was doing.
He grabbed the left back side of the Coke machine with both hands and pulled it away from the wall, reached up into the innards of the machine, pulled out a large coffee can, and the look on his face when he looked down in it (and saw that his precious captive marbles were all still there) was a combination of confusion and dawning realization that we little bastards had put our hands on contraband!
Things got pretty hectic that day, and sometime before noon the PA system in my classroom came on with Mr. Mitchell’s order that the teacher send me to the Principal’s Office.
I sat down across from his desk, and Glen Mitchell said that he understood that I had been throwing a few marbles that morning.
No sir, I answered, TRUTHFULLY.
After seeing Kelley risk his life and limb, I had carefully avoided touching a marble once I was inside the school building.
I did, I admitted, give some Chinese Checkers to some of my friends outside of the schoolhouse, but I had not touched one inside the school, where I recognized that they were not exactly welcome.
“I’m going to get you, Crisp,” said Mitchell. “I don’t know when, and I don’t know how, but I’m going to get you.”
He never did, even when he announced the random hall checks for marbles, with expulsion from school the punishment for so much as being caught with a Chinese Checker.
That was the most exciting day, but there were many others.
Let me know if you’d like to hear about the day that Mr. Beeler and Kenneth “House Ape” Evans were the only people in the classroom who didn’t know that a Beeler-marble-booby-trap had been set under Mr. Beeler’s desk, just waiting for him to start to call the roll.
Interested?
JEC
God, I feel like Shahryar, begging Scheherazade for the next installment of the 1001 Tales. It’s like the Saturday serials at the Royal and the Dorothy Theatre, wondering if Tarzan will ever escape falling through the trap door into the hidden lake filled with sharks!
Or rather … yes, if you please. I would very much like to hear about then day that Mr. Beeler and House Ape Evans who didn’t know …
OK, Bloggard:
We were in the midst of the first Beeler Marble epidemic, when we were tossing, thumping, throwing, dropping, and otherwise casting Chinese Checkers about the classrooms of Henrietta High School, causing trauma and upset among the teachers, especially Mr. Beeler.
For instance, when Mr. Beeler’s back was turned to the class one day (after all, he was a math teacher writing equations on the board), someone (perhaps Gene Franklin — he had a great throwing arm) let one fly against the far side of the room (away from the door and hallway).
“Who thwew that?” demanded Mr. Beeler.
By prearrangement (among the usual suspects and me), we all pointed out the door and across the hall, to where Mr. Ireland, the other math teacher, was holding class.
Mr. Beeler bolted across the hall, and into the other classroom, where the unfortunate Jody Beaty happened to be seated near the door.
Jody wasn’t guilty this time, but no matter — he had a lengthy rap sheet of giving Mr. Beeler a hard time, so Jody was summarily grabbed, taken down to the Principal’s office, and given the standard punishment: whacks across the buttocks with a very large board.
I have no idea what transpired between Misters Beeler and Ireland after this episode, but it must have been interesting.
I tell this story in order to establish in your mind the reality, nay the near inevitability, of corporeal punishment in that day and age.
So . . .
One fine day I saw that Mr. Beeler was still a good distance away from his classroom, just before the tardy bell was going to ring.
I took a marble from my secret pocket hiding place, stood before the class holding the marble up high for all to see, and then carefully wedged it under Mr. Beeler’s desk drawer so that when he pulled out the drawer to get his class roll, the marble would drop — and bounce — and bounce — and bounce . . .
What I didn’t notice is that House Ape (the great Kenneth Evans) was also almost late getting into the room before the bell, so that as it rang, everyone in the room knew about the Marble of Damocles — except, of course, Mr. Beeler and Kenneth Evans.
I need to extend the suspense here to explain that an integral part of the Beeler saga at HHS is that Mr. Beeler had a slight speech impediment, somewhat reminiscent of Elmer Fudd’s Wascally Wabbit.
That is, his r’s came out like w’s.
Thus, Tom Burnside would ask Mr. Beeler on a weekly basis whether an imaginary number was rational or irrational.
“Tom,” Mr. Beeler would say with impatience, “I’ve told you before that an imaginary number is neither wational nor iwwational!”
You get the picture.
So, back to House Ape and the Marble of Damocles.
Wearing the pained face of a man who was getting it from all sides those days, Mr. Beeler pulled open the desk drawer.
Ping . . . . ping . . . ping . . ping . ping ping ping ping.
From the class as a whole: the silence of innocent lambs — not a peep.
But from House Ape, a strong slap of his knee with his hand and a laugh that can only be characterized as “YUK, YUK, YUK!”
Mr Beeler looked up at Kenneth, and you could see that he knew he had his man. (Sort of like Ferris Bueller’s principal.)
“Kenneth, come with me,” he said, starting toward the door and the walk of doom to the Principal’s office and the “school board.”
“Wait! What did I do?”
“Kenneth, I have weason to believe that that marble came from your diwection.”
It was all the rest of us could do to hold it in until they had left, with the saintly House Ape preparing to bear the sins of all of us on his rear end.
He actually came back into the room with a big smile on his face — he was, as he knew, our new hero — another warrior in the unending wars of high-school students against boredom.
Here I must append an encomium to Howard Beeler.
After just a few years of teaching high-school, he wisely moved on to other vocations in Henrietta, made peace with those of us who had tormented him, took in good spirit our ribbing at subsequent high-school reunions and rodeos, and reacted with mock terror when we pretended to throw small objects at him.
His children and grandchildren live in Henrietta, and I know that one of his grandsons, whom I met when I spoke at my alma mater a few years ago in my role as college professor and historian, has won numerous academic and other prizes.
(Mr. Beeler came to my talk as well.)
For those of us who were in Henrietta High School that year — probably 1962-63 — the Great Beeler Marble Saga is a fond memory that bears retelling from decade to decade.
If I ever write the Great Henrietta Novel, it will be a major chapter.
Along with the story of why Jerry LeFevre was driving with his eyes closed when he wrecked the Studebaker.
Yours truly,
Scheherazade (AKA Jim Crisp)
You have a real evil streak, you know that, right.
OK. I know the Studebaker. And the 57 Chevy that came after.
I know Jerry …
https://bloggard.com/the-shirtless-shirt/
https://bloggard.com/in-the-shadow-of-the-space-needle/
https://bloggard.com/stephanie-barbacaine/
https://bloggard.com/ram-das/
https://bloggard.com/inferior-decorating/
But I do NOT know how Jerry wrecked the Studebaker.
Let’s hear it. (Think of it as practice for the GHN.) OK?
(Choke. Gasp.)
Moan ….
(sounds of withdrawal symptoms …)
Allright, but this may be my last one for awhile.
Also, I need to warn you that you may need to censor this for your “family-oriented autobiography” — that’s how you put it in one of your Jerry LeFevre stories.
But your stories make me think I’m right that the protagonist in this tale was really Jerry.
OK — this is a story about sex education in Henrietta.
No, we had no such courses at Henrietta High School, though I vaguely remember our health class suddenly one day divided into all-girl and all-boy classes meeting separately, in which we were shown not-very-graphic drawings of our reproductive systems.
It was painfully boring.
But this is not where sex education occurred at HHS.
My sex education course in my freshman year was conducted at a table in the study hall where Richard Plumlee and I (being two of the very few boys who didn’t take Vocational Agriculture that year) ended up sitting at Wayne Klein’s table.
Wayne was a very large, very handsome upperclassman who was very talented when it came to ladies.
We learned a great deal about ladies and their tastes and predilections from Wayne that year.
Wayne had a somewhat less-than-perfect reputation with parents like mine, and the following year they were somewhat appalled when I told them that Wayne was coming over to study biology (seriously, biology) with me one night.
However, Wayne Klein absolutely charmed them, especially when he picked up my sister’s guitar and played a couple of tunes. (Judy was still in Junior High at the time.)
That was the only time Wayne came over, but I remember vividly both my mother and sister being charmed by this very smooth dude.
Anyway, it was from upperclassmen, like Wayne Klein and Jerry LeFevre, that freshmen learned about sex in Henrietta.
But how did Jerry wreck the Studebaker?
I THINK it was Jerry, and I think his pupil and passenger was James Green, but I got this story second-hand and I can’t be sure of the principals, but I am sure of the plot.
I don’t remember hearing the words “oral sex” in Henrietta, but “eating pussy” was something talked about constantly by hormone-infested boys, especially those who had not experienced this exotic activity.
I was told that Jerry was explaining to James some of the fine points of this amorous exercise, as he was simultaneously driving down the road in the Studebaker.
Jerry got really into his vivid and life-like description of technique, and as he did calisthenics with his tongue, he naturally closed his eyes as well (perhaps as an aide-memoir).
Anyway, you know what happened next. Crash of Studebaker.
If any of your readers from Henrietta can attest to the actual identities of the driver and passenger in this story, I will stand corrected.
But this is my story, and I’m stickin’ to it!
But compared to Ronnie Burleson’s sex-related athletic feat on the Future Farmers contest trip to Stephenville, the Studebaker episode was tame stuff.
Going on that (and several other) trips with the FFA made me glad that I decided in my sophomore year to take Vocational Agriculture, after all!
That’s all for now,
JEC
Durley Davis was my great grandfather. I never met him and I’ve never been to Henrietta, but I’ve had his chili. My Grandfather, Durley B. Davis used to make it on special occasions. My mom has one picture of my grandad and his brothers in front of the store “the dew drop inn”. I thoroughly enjoyed the post. Made me feel like I was there.
Why thank you for your kind words. Those are old, and dear, memories of that once upon a time. He also sold a few toys and candies that kids really liked. I got a kind of imitation mouse with a hard-to-see string so you could make it appear to run up your arm. He sold something like of like coolaid, except you poured some into your mouth from its paper packet, and it went all fizzy in your mouth. Other things, too, that I cannot well remember. But they seemed important and precious then, and maybe in remembering I can recall that feeling. Thanks for reminding me!
You will find a lot of other micro-stories here, about Henrietta once upon a time, and about other places. I hope you’ll find others that you might enjoy. — Arthur
I’ll be in Texas next month and plan on visiting Henrietta. Can you tell me exactly where the Dew Drop Inn was located? I’d love to visit the site if possible. Thanks
Well, I can only describe it in terms of landmarks which have changed. And I’m also stumbling around on Google Maps. Here goes:
Omega runs through town east to west. (West: Wichita Falls; East: Hwy 82 to Ringgold & Nocona.)
Mid-town, Omega is crossed by Bridge, which runs south to north. South: Methodist Church and Phone Company bldg. North: Past the courthouse to the left, on past homes, the water tower, the Pioneer Grounds, reservoir, north on FM to Hurnville.)
If you were travelling east on Omega, at the corner of Bridge, to your left once was The Steakhouse, and on far side of the street, was the St. Elmo hotel and coffee shop. If you’d stopped at the intersection, then to your right was Olsen Stelzer Boot company. Just beyond the intersection of Omega and Bridge and just beyond the St. Elmo ran a south-north alleyway. Just beyond this alleyway, on Omega, was the Dew Drop Inn, which had a high sidewalk, left over from horse and buggy days and dirt roads. Now, by the time I got to high school, the Dew Drop Inn had vanished, and it was then replaced by a Gulf gas station, where I worked for a time in the late 50’s.
Now, the 2-story St. Elmo building is gone. And the 1-story business on the corner of Bridge at Omega seems to be named “The Corner.” Across Omega used to be the First National Bank, but now I think it may be an appraiser’s office. Continuing east past the Bridge intersection, the south-north alleyway is still there, and what looks like the remains of a gas station, which then borders the next south-north street, which is Clay Street.
The Dew Drop Inn was located next to the alleyway, on Omega, between Bridge and Clay streets.
Does that help?
Yes, it does help. I’ll be there this Thursday evening.
Thank you
Those days – when bouncing marbles across the classroom called for corporal punishment – sound like benign, good-natured fun. No shots rang out and no student or teacher was harmed.
True that. 🙂
We are driving from Dallas to Portland after a stop in Henrietta, we wondered about the history of the town. A quick Google and lots of reading later, it’s more than safe to say we have been thoroughly informed and delighted by your blog all the way to Amarillo (and we’re far from finished). Please for the love of all that is good in this world, tell us you and Jim are writing a masterpiece together. Thanks for keeping us entertained!
Why, thank you, travelling strangers!
Jim Crisp and I have no joint-literachure plans, and I wish he’d post some stories. They’re good!
Have a good time in Amarillo, folks!