Cowtown Memories; Backup Master (stereo)

Production of Cowtown Memories is made possible in part by Burlington, Northern Railroad. Proud to support the arts as part of Fort Worth's pioneering spirit. By the Fort Worth Star Telegram, today's Star Telegram, our news hits home. And by Lockheed Fort Worth Company, a national asset passed present and future. There are lots of reasons we can be call cowtown. But what makes this a hometown is a matter of stories.

Thousands of stories about who we are, where we came from, and how we spend our days. West Texas, for 75 years, Fort Worth is used as slogan where the West begins. And that's almost true. It's not quite true, it's almost true. You can make a pretty good case that Fort Worth is the spiritual home of the West. The trade area for Fort Worth was West Texas, something like 350,000 square miles out there. The only place people in West Texas knew to come was Fort Worth. It's very difficult to talk about the history of Fort Worth without involving the Star Telegram. The journalism historian once said that he didn't know of any newspaper history. That was so involved in the growth of the town and a territory of any West Texas in the Star Telegram.

And it was because of the publisher and owner, Amy Carter. He considered his life work to sell and build Fort Worth and West Texas. The eyes of Texas are upon you, they'll give the world to you all. West Texas. West Texas. There were three or four periods in Fort Worth history. One of a lot of people from West Texas moved in here. Around the 1900s when the meat packing plants moved here, the people came to work in them. The muscle industry. Around the 1920s when it was an old boom at Ranger and Borger and in West Texas. And Fort Worth became an all supply town, huge boom in town. The 1940s, when Lockheed, then General Ninah, earlier General Ninah,

and consolidated Bill Key, was built, they came to work there. They came in the 50s and 60s for other reasons. But there have always been an influx of West Texas and it's like a period diaspora in the sense that people brought with them, this grace of a small town and the pace of a small town, the more days of a small town. Looking back on those early years, we can see how the iron horse have put our countdown on the map. Railroads brought people, cattle, and lots of business to Fort Worth. Within a few years we weren't even a town anymore, we'd become a city. It all started in the 1870s when it was obvious by the cattle that were coming up the Chisholm Trail that they needed to rail here because they were taking cattle all the way from South Texas into Kansas and even further north. So when the Texas and Pacific came across East Texas, the good citizens of Fort Worth said, let's get the railroad to Fort Worth and believe me, they did.

They went out and volunteered, they cut trees, they laid ties, they laid rail, they either women even fixed the picnic lunches for the men. Well with the railroads came the cattle business naturally, the meat packing business, banking, jeep, brain, feed, machinery, manufacturing came to town. And since then it's become the railroad center of the Southwest. Just as the people of Fort Worth had rallied to get the railroads in 1901, they donated more than $100,000 to encourage swift and armor meatpacking companies to build plants here. Fort Worth's dream was to become the meatpacking center of the Southwest. And let me tell you, it really paid off. It didn't take long for word to spread even as far away as Europe, that there were plenty of jobs in the stock yard area. The north side became its own little metropolis.

Well the reason we had such a mixture of ethnic groups was both swift and armors. While they work in petitors, businesswires in the meatpacking industry, they also owned a third of the stock of the Fort Worth Stockyards Company. And when everything kind of kicked in in 1902, they had agents working for them in the Galveston area, who hired immigrants right off of the ships, put them on trains and sent them here to the north Fort Worth area to work in the packing houses. My father and some more Russian people came over from Odessa, Russia. They had worked at the cement plant there. And they had heard the United States was a land of opportunity. And they tried to figure out a way to get passage to, well they called it America.

When he came into Fort Worth, there were a lot of Russian people here. And a lot of them were Jewish people, but they could speak the Russian language. I was born in North Houston in the Stockyards area. And I lived there, I guess, till it's about five years old. We lived in a little community that all the children spoke the language of their parents. Actually, most of the people that lived in that area worked at the packing houses. My in-laws were George and Katie Papagom. Originally, they came from Asia. And they were Greek descent. Their son was my husband Steve. When my father died, my son died.

My son died. My son died. My son died. My son died. When my father-in-law came over here, he worked at the packing plant. And then he went into farm business. And most of the, not most of might say, but a lot of the Greek people went into farming and some of them into restaurants. And he liked farming, so he took farming up. We're right downtown. And the farm is here, and I enjoy it. So I fell in love and fell for the farm, too, at the same time. Well, according to my brother, who's older, and he was about seven or eight years older, so he remembered better than I did. He said, we came in a covered way. I get all the way from Nackadotches to Fort Worth in 1950. But on my mother's side, the man chakras,

they've been in Texas since 1795. And in 1836, we appear on the first Texas census track. Also, a lot of people came from the northern part of Mexico, because that's where my father came from, while we left. Many of the people came here when Pancho Villa had the revolution going, so maybe I'm left. Mexico and came to the United States. With no intention of staying in the United States, they thought after the revolution, they'd go back, but most of them stayed. But I'll tell you now, if anybody worked at the Pagan House, it was very hard work. You would start at seven o'clock in the morning, and if they had so many cows and so many hogs and so many sheep bought, you would work until all that work was done. Sometimes they'd get off at three, sometimes at four, sometimes at five.

But it was a meat processing business, and you were able to get employment. The Pagan House experience gave many employees ideas about heading out on their own. On July 4, 1935, Jose Tafoya Garcia and his white hazusa, known as Mama Zeus, opened a family restaurant with help with their children. Together, they created a Fort Worth institution, Joe T. Garcia. You'd get up with a sound of the cows. A lot of people thought it'd smell like cow town on the north side. Well, they did because we had a slaughter of... I couldn't sell it in the morning. ...hide house where you used to have right now. On 22nd Street, all the people around, they said, people aren't going to come out here and eat. Of course, Daddy started with barbecue. They call it Joe's barbecue in Mexican dishes. And he decided that he'd go ahead and fix a barbecue

and let Mother fix all the Mexican food. Like Hope said, she was tremendous cook. Everybody loved her. Everybody come from all over. We used to have long tables before we put the round table. And this group called my daddy one time. And they said, we've got a group of doctors. We want to have a banquet around 12 o'clock. And that's when this picture was taken. My daddy is standing right here at the door. And I'm standing right over here. And I'm in the kitchen. And Hope's in the kitchen cooking with Mother. I think that what I enjoyed so much... ...and I've never told you this... ...is going to the Packing House on roller skates. I used to do that. And bringing the meat back to the restaurant. I used to do that with roller skate all the way to Armor and Company. And back. I like to meet business. She helped my daddy a lot at grocery store too. And cut up half of the cow.

And where you want it. You know it's pretty clear that cattle, as well as pigs, goats, sheep, mules, and horses... ...brought big money to footwear. The livestock show in rodeo let us promote what we were doing... ...and enjoy ourselves at the same time. The rodeo and stock shows one of the oldest in the country. It goes back a little over 100 years. Certainly was the first indoor rodeo at the North Side Colour Stand here. Cities do what our symbolic of their trade area is. The trade area for what worked was Texas... ...and the trade, the market, the product... ...were cows, ranches, livestock. So you served whatever that need was... ...and a stock shows everything perfectly. Everybody loves a blue ribbon. So what they did was they began to have livestock shows. And also we were trying to get away from the longhorned cattle... ...into a fatter breed of cattle... ...hence the original fourth fat stock show. And it was called the Texas Fat Stock Show.

It had different names. Finally, feeders and breeders show. And by 1917 it was a Southwestern exposition in Fat Stock Show. The day they saved the livestock. Over the years, rodeos have kept alive memories and myths... ...about the American frontier. The annual stock show in rodeo is legendary... ...among those who travel the rodeo circuit. When I started rodeo and the stock show was the rodeo... ...if you could win the rodeo at Fort Worth at the stock show... ...people just thought you were just really a... ...basically kind of like being a Dallas Cow more than a day. If you could go win, like say you could be champion build auger... ...you could win a go round in the build auger... ...bronk ride and bear back ride in the build auger... ...or a cage rope. And all year long, everybody said, ...oh, that old boy, he's a good hand. He won money at Fort Worth Stock Show. Fort Worth in the very early days in the 20s...

...was winter quarters for the rodeo people. And the reason it was was because of the railroad system. If 20 cowboys and cowgirls got together and wanted to go to a rodeo... ...and in those days you didn't go horse and trainer, it was railroad. They would give you free... ...passage for your horses. So, forward, there were an awfully lot of cowboys and cowgirls... ...that settled in the Fort Worth area in the 30s. And that's how my mother and dad got down here from Nebraska. My mother's name was Ted Lucas. She was eight years' world champion cowgirl... ...trick rider and lady saddlebrunk rider. She was raised on a ranch in Cody, Nebraska. And the last child of 24 children in those days... ...a lot of the trick riding was done by the Russian cosacs... ...that the Wild West shows had brought over. And she learned a lot from them.

And the very first time she took me to the stock show... ...I was three months old and she put me in her head... ...and rode me around the arena to show me to her fans. And I've never missed a year. I've been going to the stock show for 66 years. I was six years old. And she taught me tricks and we trick road together... ...and we were a team from then on. Until I quit in about 20 years. And I'm not bragging. But Mitch and her mother were always in the back. They all wanted time. She was head show with above all of them. I mean, after we were married... ...and I don't know how old Ted was... ...she was in her late 40s early. And they had a lot of... ...got to have quite a few old girl rodeos... ...and I would go there and I would work. And I picked up Bronx and worked to arena. I was a man working. I picked my mother off of Buckinghorse. It's quite a few of them after we were married. And that's kind of unbelievable. But I don't guess you ever knew what the word scared was.

And Mitchy followed her footsteps great. So there it is. That's the way it was. Now in 1936, Amon Carter lobbied successfully for WPA money... ...to build a new Coliseum. He named it after his close friend, Will Rogers. Mr. Carter saw this as a great new home for the stock show in rodeo. But it took the flood of 1942 to get others to agree. That flood tore up the old Northside Coliseum. So in 1944, Mr. Carter's dream came true. In 1947, I had just come back from service in the Marine Corps... ...and I got a call one day from Mr. Edgar Dean... ...who at that time was the... ...he was the general manager of the stock show. I don't know whether it was Roy Rogers... ...or one of the big cowboy singers at that time... ...who within two weeks of the stock show had gotten a film... ...and could not make his commitment here to come and sing at the rodeo. So Mr. Dean called me up and he said, Melbourne, I would like...

...would you like to sing at the rodeo this year? I said, I sure would, Mr. Dean. He said, well, I've got a Palomino horse out here. I want you to come get used to it. She's a gentle horse. I want you to go to the center of the ring... ...and we'll drop a mic and the band will play... ...and I'd like for you to sing three or four songs for us. And he said, fine. So I tried that. I got thrown off the horse right quickly. The cowboy said, get up and get it back on for you. You lose your nerve, but I lost my nerve or something. Anyway, it wound up that I walked to the center of that arena... ...that year for those 18 or 20 shows and sang. But this was the hat I wore, the actual hat in 1947. So it's an oldie, but I still like it. Hats and horses. Whether you wear them, ride them, or just talk about them... ...it's all part of being from Kata. Well, the TNP Depot, of course, is on the opposite end of downtown...

...from the courthouse. The courthouse is one center of activity. The depot was the other. And all other activities fell in between. Saturdays, I'd get my allowance. I'd come downtown on the bus along with some friends of mine. And we'd go to the movies. And as soon as the movie would bet out, we'd walk from downtown... ...out to the train yards. Either over to the Santa Fe, or down here to the T-P. Our greatest thrill was when the Texas Eagle would come in in the afternoon... ...because it was such a majestic train. And the Barlington Zephyr, some of the big name trains... ...just still bring back chills to it. A lot of famous people came through this station... ...and Fort Worth residents loved to greet them. Franklin Delano Roosevelt liked to visit his son and daughter-in-law. They were living here at the time. Whatever the occasion, Amon Carter was on hand doing what he could to promote the city. Fort Worth had felt the presence of an assortment of industries throughout the years.

There was cattle, railroads, flower mills... ...yet the business had seemed to create the most wealth, the most characters... ...and the most stories was oil. The hotel lobby, the Westbrook lobby, was a center of buying and selling these leases. And a lot of it was done on a handshake. They didn't have time to have lawyers around their lobby. And so Mac tells a story about this one man who made a quick profit in the lobby. What was it, Mac? Yeah, he did. He came in and bought a lease as he walked into the lobby. He had this great glass and clothes lobby. And as he often did, he patted the golden goddess and rubbed her for good luck. And kept walking by the time he got to the entrance at the other side of the lobby. He sold his lease that he had just bought for almost a hundred percent profit. So, of course, that set the atmosphere and the goddess after that could do no wrong.

Well, I was teaching at Pasco and my next door neighbor said, John Farrell, who is an independent oil man, is looking for an executive secretary. And I thought perhaps that you would be interested. And he employed me much to my surprise. And I got the whole sum of $175 a month, which was enormous. And of course, when I began working from Mr. Farrell, this was a mecca for our business. We had golf and Texaco and Sinclair. And lots of times we would stay up all night waiting to see what the results were going to be. And sometimes they were very sad because they would be the driest hole in the world. And I remember one time I decided that I'd put my little dab of savings in one in Mahaya. And it was the powder house dry.

So, after that I didn't invest. I decided that I was too scotch. With all the activities stirred up by all and the other industries, Fort Worth was a place rich and opportunity for small business owners. I was just on a boy and we lived in the back of the bakery. And there was no machinery in those days. The bread was mixed by, those were mixed by hand and troughs. My mother also did the bacon and they had one baker hard. And my father went out and sold it. He sold it to saloons that they gave free lunch. The saloons all had great big trays of sliced meat like ham and cheese and things like it blown in. For a nickel mug of beer, you can eat all you wanted. There were many success stories among Fort Worth small businesses. One happened to a couple of brothers, Marvin and O.V. Leonard.

They opened a little shop back in 1918 that eventually grew into a retail complex for millions and took over six city blocks. They went from food to clothing and then later to hard lines. And then they went to drugs and they went to children's clothing, men's clothing. They made their own television sets and they made their own refrigerators, sewing machines. They had every item that you'd want to buy. You could always buy and find it at Leonard's. Leonard's was, I don't know, it's hard to describe. It was like a city into itself that set in the heart of downtown Fort Worth. If you didn't go to Leonard's on weekends, you just didn't go anywhere. So generally you would go downtown and go to Leonard's because you'd buy anything you really wanted or needed in one store. Leonard's was the first department store to bring in the escalators. And that was our avenue of entertainment as well. We could go there and, of course, that was the day when we had water fountain separate on the part for blacks and for whites.

But we could go to Leonard Brothers and ride the escalator of nothing else and walk back home. Leonard Brothers was that place where we could go as children as well to get our popcorn, to get our chocolates, to buy our ready to wear. Memories of Leonard stretched back to the sights and smells of Christmas, as well as the thrill of riding the M&O subway. The M&O caused quite a stir when it became known as the first private subway in the world. Obey Leonard even appeared on to tell the truth and gave panelists a chance to guess which man was the owner of such a wonder. Leonard's proved to be a good client for many local businesses. Benny Rubin and his wife Gertrude sold their dresses to the store. On this balcony they put all the dresses as you came up the escalator. And I got the first racks in there for my dresses and had a little sign on made in Fort Worth by Maybell. And I would merchandise that every morning at 8 o'clock I'd be there to take sizes and colors that I would have to fill.

And that got pretty big. And the Leonard's themselves were happy to do business with my Mr. Marvin, Mr. Obey Leonard. We would take our produce, we would gather all day long, and then we'd wash it, get it ready and load it up. And then early in the morning two or three o'clock in the morning we would take it to the market. And the wholesale bars would buy it or the people that bought it for the stores. Leonard brothers or the Fort Worth wholesale different places would buy the produce. Fort Worth residents felt the depression like everyone else in the country. Banks struggled hard to convince depositors that their money was safe. Some say that one banker, who also was a powerful force in state politics, used the strength of his institution to back up others. Going to school we'd walk up to Tarot to get the bus. And I was able to see a beautiful mansion on Tarot and Forest Street.

And that what they told me was the home of Bill McDonald. And that Bill McDonald ran a bank in Fort Worth and that he was a first black millionaire. The strength of his bank came from the fraternal organization. The Masons and the Heritage of Jericho and the Eastern Star. And they collected monies for membership and for premiums, for insurance purposes and all. When other white banks were closing his bank survived the depression in the Wall Street crash and all that. His bank kept right on rolling. During the segregated years, downtown Fort Worth was segregated too. Segregation however caused quite a few black businesses to exist. Nice street from the Greyhound bus station to the tracks was black owned.

There was a movie house. Three hotels small though they may be. Two cafeterias of Bouland. The Jam Hotel had a cabaret type of section in which entertainment and meals were served. And then a visitor who came to Fort Worth if he was black wanted to go and visit the Jam Hotel. It may come as a surprise that east of downtown there used to be a small community known as the Rock Island Bottom. It lay between the Purina Mill and the Trinity River reaching north to the Bellnap Bridge and south to about 4th Street. And it's peak about 500 families lived here. Fort Street was our connecting link with the rest of the world if you will.

It was the strip, it was the, it was our downtown because all of our, all of our needs were here in terms of the Washingtonia, the grocery store, the cafe, the chicken and the basket. All of our entertainment was right here on Fort Street. I am sitting on the, some of the foundation of the world famous Masonic mosque. The Masonic mosque will always be a cherished part of the Rock Island Bottom and the city of Fort Worth. They would come here in June for their conference or their conclave, whatever. But then when they left, we would use it as our entertainment capital. All of the major stars have come here to perform and to name a few Mahalia Jackson, the Cloud Ward singers, BVQ. Just whomever, you name it, they were here. And then during some parts of the year, the church would use it for their musicals, for their plays that they would put on.

The Masonic mosque was absolutely truly the on that held the bottom together. The flood of May 17, 1949 hit the west side of the city very hard. Water levels rose to the mezzanine of Montgomery wards. But east of downtown, the currents also damaged homes in the Rock Island Bottom. That experience plus the construction of I-35 caused most families to move away. Well, if you're from Fort Worth, you know we've had a history of competing with Dallas. When the state legislature chose that city for the Centennial celebration in 1936, Aiman Carter and his friends declared that Fort Worth would put on a show of its own, the Frontier Centennial. People could go to Dallas for education, but they should come to Fort Worth for entertainment.

The Frontier Centennial buildings and stages were located near the Will Rogers Coliseum. What happened here was a wild mixture of entertainment for all ages and tastes. Aiman hired Billy Rose from New York, who was a Broadway producer, and brought him in to produce the shows. And paid him $1,000 a day for 100 days. And it just made everybody hiccupin' for wars when that money, when his fee was announced. This battle between Fort Worth and Dallas is right up my alley. And if you people string along with me, I'll make Texas the biggest state in the Union. The original Casamagnana was the crown jewel of the Frontier Fiesta. It was a giant outdoor dinner theater that could seat 4,000 people. I remember seeing several performances of that in 36 with my mother.

We didn't eat because it cost too much at that time. I think $1.75 would buy you a steak and everything you wanted. But that was pretty expensive in 1936. So we just saw the show sitting upstairs. We enjoyed it, we loved it, as did thousands of other people. So much so that instead of just lasting for one year, it lasted the second year and the third year. And it was going to go into this fourth year until the war came along. I was 16 years old in 1936 and had the opportunity along with a number of others, black kids, to be bus boys. And we, as bus boys, had the privilege and opportunity of seeing the show and handing all of this fine food and meet each other that we may come from different sides of town. We formed good friendships among ourselves and had a happy experience with Casamagnana in 1936. There was an announcement in the newspaper that girls were needed dancers and tall girls.

The tall girls didn't have to know how to dance. I had graduated midterm. I was a valedictorian. I had $200 to go to college. And my father, this was during the Great Depression. And now some men jumped off of buildings. He didn't do that. And then he's the branch office of the Western Union that he was the manager of when it was abolished. And he was giving a small pension. He had a nervous breakdown. And so these were hard times. So this came up and the pay was $25 a week. So it was just irresistible. But my mother didn't like it. And so she started phoning my teachers and asking them, I wanted to do it. And my teachers that she talked to, they knew I had to have the money to finish out my college education. And so they convinced her that I could survive it and make the money.

And so I did. I went down and we had triumphs. There were eliminations. And I made it through the eliminations. And they had to teach us how to walk. There were girls from New York that already knew this showgirl walk. Actually it's like dancing. That's all we needed to know. We needed to be there to move where they wanted us to, when they wanted us to. And keep smiling at the audience. It was a beautiful show. It's an amazing show. And the costumes were fabulous. It's all you can say. One of the big features of the 1936 Frontier Fiesta was a thing called Sally Ran's Dude Ranch. Except they struck through the first D and put an N above it. And it became Sally Ran's nude ranch. Sally had all of these young girls around in their halters and their panties and their six shooters on their hips.

And cowboy hats and bandanas and that sort of thing. And a group of them went out and got a bunch of little pull-it chickens too. And anesthetized these chickens and pulled out most of their feathers. And they were running around in this nude ranch as well. In 1936, when they celebrated the 100th Centennial, my dad and I worked at a show called The Last Frontier. And it was produced and directed by Billy Rose. And then Dallas also had one. They had a rodeo and mother went over there and worked. And I was just nine. It was really a ball. We had two performances a day, all summer. I saw all the shows at Casa Manana. I suppose that my fondest memory was Everett Marshall who sang The Night Is Young and you're so beautiful. Everett Marshall was a huge man and very handsome. And of course all the ladies swooned when he walked around.

This song is a good example of how necessity is the mother of invention. Billy Rose and his artistic director, John Murray Anderson, met over dinner at the Worth Hotel. They needed a special production number. Casa Manana was about to open. Even though it was after midnight, they headed upstairs to see the songwriter. They got on the elevator and went up to Dana's Swiss room, rang the bell. She came to the door with hair curlers and a chanille bathrobe on, like this. Now this story is told to me by Sally Rand in 1968. So I'm assuming it must be right. So they said, honey, we've got to have a song. She said, Billy, look at your watch. It's one of the talk in the morning. And he said, honey, listen, The Night Is Young and he passed her by in the other sarcastic. Because then you're so beautiful, you know, looking there. Well, in three hours, they had sat down. Billy Rose had written the words and she had written the music to the song that became the hit and became the theme song really a fort worth.

The Night Is Young and you're so beautiful here among the shadows, beautiful lady. And you could hear that song all over Arlington Heights. It was projected all over the people that lived out in here. You're loved to hear that song The Night Is Young and you're so beautiful, yeah. Fort Worth caught the flying bird along with the rest of America. Residents had a chance to see many types of flying machines. In 1925, the city bought land to build the Meetsham Field Airport. It was the same year that private contractors began carrying air mail from Fort Worth to Chicago. One of the most interesting things about Meetsham Field were these colorful characters that always cropping up.

Before and after the Lindbergh flight, there was a rage to break records. Kelly and Red Robbins, I helped them. I told it a lot of the gas order where they would fill up from another airplane. Red Robbins was probably one of my closest friends and guide and instructors in a way. A boy kind of liked me. And of course, I never would let him, you know, back in those days, girls didn't kiss boys.

You didn't, it was a no-no. So anyway, we went out to Lake Worth and they were, you could go up in a plane for $40 a piece. So that boy said, would I go up in the plane with him? I told him, yeah, I wasn't playing, I'd always wanted to ride in the plane. This boy had told that pilot that when we get over Lake Worth, there's the dam, I want you to let it drop. And he did. And when he let it drop, well, this old boy grabbed me. Of all the kids that he did. And that was the only time I've ever been in the plane and have been in one sense. In the 1930s, Fort Worth based American Airlines was heavily promoting the safety and comfort of air travel. However, in Europe, it became clear that another war was about to begin and attention shifted to the military use of our power.

The government had decided to build an aircraft plant. And Amon, because he had been a friend of FDR since time began back in the 20s, warned it for Fort Worth. The military did not want to put it into Fort Worth. They favored either Tulsa or Atlanta. Well, when the NASA finally came, it was announced that Tulsa got the plant. And Amon was just furious. And Amon furious was apparently something to behold. Because he blistered Washington with wires and this and that. And he called FDR personally. The announcement was held up for a few days. And when they finally announced it, they announced that there would be two airplane plants built, one in Tulsa and one in Fort Worth. And he still wasn't finished. Because there would be identical plants, except that wasn't good enough for him. He went back to the architects and made them put an extra 10 to 15 feet on one. So he could have the largest airplane plant in the world in Fort Worth, Texas. In 1943, I began doing flight test work here at the Fort Worth Consolidated Plant on B-24s and shortly thereafter B-32s.

And it was awesome to see how many people were required. And I believe we reached eight airplanes a day, production or assembly during World War II. The first B-36 flight occurred August 8, 1946 and involved the prototype B-36 known as the XB-36. While the B-36 known as the piecemaker never actually flew in the war, many people remember seeing this huge plane in the sky over Fort Worth.

The wards started, the men were shipping out. Women were becoming taxi drivers if you can. I mean, that was just unheard of for the woman to come out of home. My mother went to school so she could go to work at the bomber plant. My mother was one of those rosy the riveters, you know. But of course, when the war was over, my mother was laid off along with thousands of other women across the nation and had to go back home. We never quit rodeong during the war. In fact, probably more than we did. And it was not easy in those days because everything was rationed, tires, gas and in order to travel, you had to get special permission for extra gas stamps and try to find a tire if you had a stamp, which was really hard. But we did a lot of entertaining in camps. And there weren't that many men left. That was when the all-girl rodeos became very popular.

I can remember coming home in my uniform and my bars, everything and feeling proud to be defending my country and fixing to go overseas and all that good stuff. And decided that I was going to go and use the big waiting room down at the T.P. station. During the days of segregation, you couldn't go to the white waiting room to catch a train. And it didn't take them long before I was out of the big waiting room. I made a stink, but it didn't of itself create any changes. And I guess I caught the train from the little waiting room. In the midst of its segregated years, Fort Worth was home to the only high school for black students living in a 17-city area. While lacking in the kind of resources found in most white schools, I am Terrell, provided an extraordinary education and became a beacon of hope, as well as a source of pride for his faculty, students and their families.

The school started in 1882 as the East Knight Street College School. It was given the name I am Terrell in 1921 when it operated at East 12th and Stedman. In 1938, it moved to the present location on the southeast corner of downtown. My day was a member of the first school body at I am Terrell. And it was a member of the first graduating class from I am Terrell. And my baby brother was a member of the last graduating class of the old I am Terrell building. And so I say that my family is paying the entire life of I am Terrell and so far as the building was concerned. The building is still staying as the school is no longer there, but believe me, all these people now are making incredible contributions as Dr. Brooks has made, and his father made, as all of those people, many of those people who went through I am Terrell, are made to this community.

Memories of the faculty at I am Terrell continued to inspire its graduates. Mrs. Hazel Harvey Peace was a tiny little teacher who weighed hardly over a hundred pounds, graduated Columbia University, and Howard University, spoke as proper as anyone in the world, and who brought drama and classics. And things that they said we didn't need to know about, that we ought to be learning how to work with our hands, not learning the classics, and not learning drama and debating. But she brought all of those good things to us, which I am sure enriched our lives, but made us better able to compete in an integrated society. And then she brought all those other teachers, she brought expectation. If you don't expect much from young people, you won't get much.

She expected a great deal from us, not only in terms of how well we learned, but in terms of discipline in our actions. And even though she was very small, is very small, as Dr. Brooks said, all she had to do was say young man to the roughest kid, and there was silence, there was order. Well, when the busing orders began to come down, the solution was we need to close those high schools. And I am terrible, and two other predominantly black high schools became the victims of integration, because they didn't want to send white kids to those schools. They wanted the integration to go the other way, blacks would have to go into predominantly white schools. And we lost it, and I feel partly responsible for letting it die that way. But still, interesting integration, thinking it was going to be the best thing for us at the time, we accepted it. I take a trip every evening, I journeyed down memory lane, strolling again those familiar paths, living those days again.

My marry was written by Stuart Hamlin, but everybody around Fort Horace, Milton was one of the first ones to do it, and he was one of the first ones to record it. Burwood and Milton Brown, my two brothers, were original light crushed doughboys. They went to work for Burris Mill, an elevator company selling light crushed flour, along with Bob Williams and Herman Ironspiger. In September of 1932, they left the doughboys and organized the musical brownies, and it was called Milton Brown and his musical brownies. They always carried a young person to go along to keep the guitars strung up at the dances and on the radio program. At the summer of 1935, I got a chance to go, be that young person to go along, and I was 14 years old. They were just an instant success.

He was the first one to have a jazz piano player in his band, and that was Fred Calhoun. He was the first one to have twin fiddles, which played the twin fiddle-style harmony, and then he was the first one to have an amplified instrument. They were the first steel guitar, the first amplified instrument in the western string band. He was only going through in half years, but he recorded four times, and of course he had his automobile accident, and died. He lived five days after the accident. Milton Brown and the musical brownies had such wonderful music, and they were very versatile. And you could just dance any waltz, or jitterbug, or two-step double shuffle. It's anything. And I did it all, and enjoyed it. It's one of the most pleasant periods of my life.

Dancing was a passion shared by a lot of people. Whether moving to the music of the jute box, or trying to outdo the competition at Crystal Springs, or even swirling to the beat of the big bands at Lake Worth, casino, our memories of dancing are among the happiest and most tender we have. We grew out in dance, you know, for a dime of dance, and it had famous orchestras come here. And Gertrude and I would go out there and dance, and this night we decided we'd go on a boat instead of going to the casino. We got on this boat. It'd go all the way around to the dam on Lake Worth, and they had an orchestra, and we'd dance. And that's when I was singing these songs to Gertrude, because the songs were called Brown Eyes, Why Are You Blue? And I'll be loving you always, and she enjoyed that. Aiman Carter created WBAP Radio as an extension of his newspaper.

It stood far, we bring a program, WBAP. The natural way to fill the airways was with musicians. And everything in those days was live entertainment, and because they had to be musicians and vocalists and one had to fill up the airtime, you not only did book work and, you know, media labor things, you also were a performer. And I came in 65, and I'm looking over this application, which was kind of strange. And it said, what instrument do you play? Didn't say, do you play an instrument? They said, what instrument do you play? And what part do you sing? I put down Gertrude, lead vocal. Never had to prove it, thank God. For a long time, WBAP and WFA shared two frequencies, 570 and 820. And when you were on radio side, when the announcer was on the radio side, the identification for WBAP either 570 or 820 was a cowbell,

which hung under the microphone stand. And when WFA 570 would sign off, for instance, then we'd wait 10 seconds, ring the cowbell. Good afternoon, you're listening now to WBAP 570, Fort Worth. In 1948, WBAP expanded to include television. The station on Broadcast Hill, now KXAS TV, was a dream come true for many a musician and performer. Now that the room has everything to do, when they call my name. Everyone was experimenting, trying to produce shows that would attract viewers of all ages. I listen very closely to you.

And do you think you know what he said today? I know. Today our talking clock was telling us to share our toys. Share our toys, share our toys. In 1955, when Channel 11 first went on the air, we didn't any of us know what we were doing about television. Everybody was live, and we all worked in the same studio. It was one big room. And Eki Twerp was there with Slam Bang Theater, and Starlight Theater was there on another side of the room. And Cam Schwabi was on another side. Eki Twerp, that's the one that everybody remembers with great fondness. And his name is Bill Camfield, and he was also a promotion manager of KFJC. We all got more of a lot of different hats. My earliest members of TV was the fact that, except for very few people who looked like me, it didn't represent me, even though we got caught up in it.

But I really lived through the Civil Rights Movement via TV. If I had to tell one incident where I was most proud of a city, it was in 1964. It was 30 years ago, the day after Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Bill. I went to one of those white theaters, a Hollywood theater, and got there early. There were a few people in line, fully expecting to be a more taunted, called names, and then have the police come and remove me from the line. And I'm there alone, this is not a group, this is not a major demonstration, this is me. And I got there, and they sold me a ticket. And I went in, still waiting anxiously for somebody to come and take me away, because I just knew that was going to happen, but enjoyed the movie. I was very proud of the people who stood in line with me that day.

All young whites, the young girl who sold me the ticket. And then when I started coming back the next day, it was just done. That's where a lot of the segregation ended, it ended very quietly. It just happened. Music Countdown memories cover many decades and many changes. Even as we continue to learn and grow, it's our history together that binds us. That can inspire us, make us laugh, and make us cry. So continue to share your memories. Every story of yesterday adds to the wonder of living today in this place we call counting. Music

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