Believe it or not, Bill had moved five times by the time he was about 4 or 5 yrs old!! Born in Wichita Falls, his folks then moved to Oklahoma, then to Iowa (Des Moines), then back to Wichita Falls, and then Childress. And this basic pattern continued through Bill's childhood. Moving was not only conducive to work (construction) and perhaps part of his dad being in the SeaBees, but it was also apparently something his parents just enjoyed! I doubt Bill enjoyed being that rootless though. In fact, one of the moving events happened without any forewarning for Bill. He was visiting relatives. When it was time to leave, he was told "oh you're not going back there. Your parents moved." Can you imagine?!! I'm sure this had big influences on Bill's development as a person - how could it not?!
Talk about a walk down Memory Lane! Since Bill was so young when here last, you can understand what a challenge it was for him to locate anything!
Like with so many older towns, there's a new part and an old part. The new part has stuff like Walmart and is paved with stop lights and all. The old part has many of the original buildings still and is paved with bricks!
This town, incredibly, had TWO movie theaters! Here is one that Bill remembered "going to." He has NEVER been much of a movie-goer, so when his mom or folks would go to a movie, Bill would go read a comic book in the car! Hmm, sometimes not much changes...!!
Billy's grammar school (well, one of them)!
Built almost the same time Bill was!
Still a really nice-looking, well-kempt facility. And yes, more bricks!
The cotton gin, where Billy used to be his uncle's little helper!
Bill was surprised to see a new lake in the area and was thinking at first that the home he once lived in may have ended up underneath it!
Bill was, of course, too young to be attending high school then, and his parents moved him again way in advance of him being ready for it, but this school was here when he was here.
And again, more beautiful brickwork!
We're not sure if we found Billy's old home or if it might have just fallen down and disappeared, but in the process of looking, we found this nice guy! We thought his house might be the one so we stopped and asked if we could photograph it. The current owners think that Bill's building may indeed be gone, but it was still really neat to meet this fellow!
One of my favorite flowers (and colors!!) - cornflowers. The bugs love them too, apparently!
More potato flowers.
Bill admires a car collection in an old building...
Neato court house (or "municipal building").
Some cars in that collection Bill was checking out...
While now defunct, the building that this display lives in was once a Ford dealership.
Childress, a "few" years ago...(and really, in the scheme of things, it really was just a few years ago!)
I just loved the special hood ornament adorning this old beauty!
Hanging out with another neat guy... (had been buddies with the now deceased owner of the cars. He was just driving by and saw Bill looking in the windows and stopped to let him in to see the cars!)
Car decor.
The owner had had a lot of these.
Love this devil of a taillight!
Hints of the past...
Billy got to live in Childress for a whole 3 or 4 years, before getting shipped off to Lubbock for another 4 or 5 years, and then on to Odessa, then to Houston, and then back to Odessa, where he actually got to live long enough to finish his 3 yrs of high school! Just an example of how hard all this moving had to have been on Bill: at the end of a Christmas visit with some relatives, a still pretty young Billy was told he would not be returning to his old home in Lubbock - instead, his parents left him with the relatives, went back to the house, got all the stuff, and then came back for Bill and moved to Odessa!!!!
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