After moving from Stockdale in ’52, Tucker Irwin would take me to Catholic School & always played old country-western music on the way. (We didn’t listen to much music in our home, although Dad was a great singer & yodeler, & he often sang Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Lefty Frizzel & Hank Snow songs, but esp. those of Hank & Jimmie. … We did listen to WOAI radio farm reports.)
In 1st grade, the nuns made me choke down an old dried peanut-butter sandwich in frt of the class, which they’d found under my desk. (I was crying as I did this.) … Sherry Poore* (non-Catholic) & I competed to be the 1st in our class to memorize the prayers.
Arriving at the public school across the street from St. Joseph’s to start 2nd grade … under a little tree in front of where DISD Central Office is located now … Jerd Hamilton began bullying me the 1st day. Lillian Sauter, neighborhood leader of the Sauter/Pettibon/Irwin/Martin gang from the canal district where we’d lived briefly, saved me & sternly told Jerd, “Lay off of him.” (I learned to mostly get along with bullies after that.)
At the Hwy 173 ca. 4-acre place we lived for most of my yrs in Devine (where the access rd/the motel/Triple-C are now), we Alton-&-Louise-Martin kids milked a cow, fed chickens, hogs & calves & tended a large garden, during school mornings & evenings & wkends. … Esteban & Alejandro Peña taught me some Spanish & uses of wild plants, & their Dad provided us honey from his bees from time to time. I learned about piñatas at their BD parties … & good homemade tortillas. This is the period I first played with Adolph Chapa & other MX-Americans. (I also noted how beautiful E&A’s sisters were!) … In elementary school, Uncle Peggy & Aunt Jo Bailey provided us work-for-pay opportunities mowing their yard & caring for their fruit trees & landscape, irrigating, & in their caged laying, parlor hog, & cattle feed-lot operations.
The Peñas & others taught me numbers & the alphabet in Spanish, names of animals, & some phrases, but to this date (despite having a state teaching-certificate for high school Spanish) I still have much to learn. … I did get in trouble with the nuns near a swing at St. Joseph’s school in the 1st grade for saying “¡Cállate la boca!” to a MX-Amer. girl. … Later when working on the field house for Mr. George Wilkerson (digging ditches/tying steel along w/ Tommy/Weasel Campsey), an older MX-Amer. taught me the word, fundillo. A pretty MX-Amer. lady drove up & got out of her car. I quickly blurted out, “Man she has a good fundillo!” My co-worker/Spanish teacher coldly retorted, “Yeah! She’s my wife.” (I might mention that I did really think some of the “pachuca-girls” in Devine & at school were really attractive.)
In 2nd grade Mrs. Marshall encouraged us to join the National Audubon Society.
In late elementary, Jimmy Weber began to teach me a bit about sex (He had an older brother, Jerry. … I had no older siblings from who to learn.). (Dad really taught us nothing down these lines. … Mom read Catholic books for youth about fish, birds, & other organisms “doing it” & we saw such in the farm environment in which we were raised. However, I am “slow” & never put 2 & 2 together.)
During this period, Dad began to put us on Mr. Tony Cruz’s farmworker crews (99% MX-Amer.) in the summer. We picked green beans & southern field peas, & later in junior high & early high school we pitched watermelons & hauled hay for Mr. Cruz & Salome Gallegos. (Robert Cruz—a classmate & a very lovely person!—treated me like a father & taught me how to cope w/ the hard work in the fields. … In junior high & high school I also began working at the Devine Mill & Elevator (later the Co-op) (I used to love watching the beautiful Chapa girls walk by the Mill.), driving mechanical bean pickers, & cking fields of bean/pea/mung bean/other crops (all jobs directly or indirectly under Uncle Peggy). And I worked at the cotton gin. … Brother Lawrence & I would often compete in: who could work the hardest (e.g., pitching peas to keep them cool) or welding, etc. … Lawrence would always win! … At the mill one summer, Marvin Bendele would pitch!! 110 lb sacks of salt off of the semis, and I would catch them!
We had many good times at the Jasiks at their diversified truck farm, & I grew addicted to poppyseeds & poopyseed pastries. Greg taught us how to have a good time. … There were also some very special times at Chacon Lake, & later at Garner Park! … Over at Dooner Keilman’s once, Dooner, Ray Navarro, Lawrence & I were playing chase in a big live oak tree. I was running away from Ray along a big horizontal trunk, slipped, & gouged the back of my left leg on a picket fence below.
Sarah Jean Howard tried to teach me to dance at a sock hop in junior high without success. To this date I’m not much of a dancer, though I love to dance w/ wife, Betsy! [I remember watching Chucky Miller & Becky Ulbrich (brother Charlie married her sister), and Ronnie Schott & his girlfriend beautifully dancing our freshman yr at a Solidarity sock hop at St. Joseph’s.]
Mr. Bohl (math), Mrs. Cox (geography), Mrs. Josephine Bain (swimming), Father Pascyn (sp.?) (positive human relationships; “Vere ders a vil, ders a vay!”), Mrs. Whitfield [Spanish as a freshman w/ a bunch of seniors where I also learned lots from the likes of Tony Petri, Jr. (horsing around)/Albert Gallegos (about condoms)/Alamar Cubriel (beauty)/Ronnie Schott & Chuck Miller (studs on campus)/Glen Hines (being studious); Mrs. W also counseled me to go to A&M vs. A&I)], Coaches Comalander & esp. Gustafson (athletics/sports), Mr. Moss (many basic skills/agriculture), Mrs. Allen (writing) especially influenced me in very major ways.
I was in my share of fights. … What follows are accounts of most all of them: Lawrence & I fought a lot of tough fights before & after school over who was going to milk the cow/do various chores. We would also box w/ light gloves. (Uncle Peggy, who lived next door, once said he thought we were going to kill each other before we had the chance to grow up.) … Big Ray Briscoe was picking on me in the gym, I shoved him down the stands with my feet & legs & he fell hard, and I ran to biology class. Big Ray caught me and wrestled me into a head lock. Bill Bain hollers at me to “Hit him in the huevos!” (But he didn’t say “huevos”.) I hollered back, “I can’t reach them.” … Coach Gus matched me up in the boxing match in P.E. with an older but smaller Morales boy from Bigfoot, & he really delivered a flurry of punches on me. … Bill Bowling & I got in a fight at the field house, he tried to wrestle me & I just stood back & pounded his head. The next day Coach Gus kidded with me & said “I hear you’ve been beating on one of my lineman.” … Johnny Mabary & I got in a quick fight before a math class, & Mr. Petri really shamed me for hitting a fellow w/ glasses & even knocking them off. … In our college yrs, classmates like to tell of a very inebriated paul martin challenging then bulked-up, Rice football-athlete George Alexander, to a fight. They say he just ignored me. (I don’t remember this, but perhaps I thought I could get in a punch & then outrun him!??!) About this same period, I was beaten to a pulp!! by a fellow (a Lorentz, I think, who had just gotten bk from Vietnam) who after a drunken challenge to a fight, pulled my jacket over my head as I was going through the door at the Warhorse & proceeded to beat on my head under the jacket (I never got in one punch.). Most of my friends just watched, but Greg Jasik broke it up about the time police perceived as maybe arriving. I was thrown into the car of my opponent, he threw me in the grass at our house, I slept there for a while & then made my way to the house, & woke up the next morning with a pillow covered w/ dried blood. (My Mom truly is an angel w/ what she dealt w/ from me & brother Kenny et al. over the yrs.) … This beaten-to-a-pulp one was basically my last fight! (I did do judo for recreation later in life & competed in some tournaments.)
Once as a senior I complained to a team-mate in the field house about not having my girdle pads washed, not knowing Coach Gus was on the other side of the screened area where we stored our equipment. Coach Gus shouted out in quick response, “O.K. Martin, I’ll get right on it!”
Dennis Stewart woke me up in solid geometry, & pointed out the error in Mrs. Stoddard’s explanation in proving a theorem. I got up in the front of this small class which included only John Ward, Raymond Bendele, maybe George Alexander, Marijean Graham, & Wade Pierce, Dennis & I … and vehemently argued with Mrs. Stoddard over this theorem. She quickly gave me a very hard slap on the face, I was stunned, & I quickly shut up & sat down.
After 6th grade experiences in mostly playing pick-up football on Horace Folds (sp.?) recess team (tackle on the hard & bare old football field at the school across from St. Joseph’s), George Alexander asked me if I was going to come out for football the nxt yr. And I won a sprint in organized competition in the 7th grade. Mostly because of George & winning that sprint, I participated in track & football thereafter.. … Bobbie Bendele shouted at me to run faster at the 330 mark of the 440 yd dash in regional prelims at A&I, which got me into the finals & a miracle of qualifying for the State Meet along w/ Bobbie. … Dad used to make me walk to 2-a-days in August (“You’re going there to exercise aren’t you!”) But I’d usually get picked up on the way. … My freshman year I got my right knee hurt badly in 2-a-days. Coach encouraged me to keep practicing. I was very light in weight, & it healed over time that yr. Some yrs ago after an MRI, the sports medicine physician I was seeing told me that I have no ACL in that knee.
In summers in high school in south Texas, Honey Grove (east TX) & Lamesa, Uncle Peggy gave me lots of responsibility, & I learned a lot about: work, capitalism, life & people (hard cussing of truckdrivers, driving a semi & wrecking one twice in one night, big ag, the bracero program (It was over, but I saw where they were isolated & “shacked”–& heard browns & whites talk about it.) & harsh conditions of farmworkers, cheating the farm program system, the good taste of Prieto’s steak in a flour tortilla, the only gringo other than cops in a big dance hall in Lubbock & dancing with older chicanas), etc. … I witnessed the hard work, perseverance & intelligence of Andrew/Butch Zapata out in that west Texas area!
John Ward felt sorry for me, I suppose, & used to try to fix me up with girlfriends, including Linda Pringle.
I had trouble getting Dad to let me use the family car. I’d always ask Mom for the keys. One Saturday I’d asked my steady girlfriend Kathy Wilkinson to go to the track meet w/ me, & I asked for the car keys. Mom said Dad had taken them w/ him; he didn’t want me using the car! … I grabbed the bob-tail hog-truck keys, picked up Kathy, & we went to the meet in this lovely farm vehicle. … I invited Donna DiRusso over for Sunday dinner once, & she made note of the pig smell. Dad quipped, “Smells like money to me!” (Butch Roberson & Clyde Abbott provided us with some good swine genetics back in the 60s!)
A lot happened during our senior year!!! (The Wilkinsons, Campseys & Belews were esp good to/for me!)
During the 20-year period after graduation, I …
- was covered with cottonseed hulls in an accident (Lacy & Gene Haywood/Don Lawrence et al. saved me.),
- started going across to Mexico,
- did quite a bit of hitch-hiking from A&M,
- was poisoned with a pesticide neurotoxin & almost kicked the bucket,
- graduated from A&M (B.S./M.S.),
- spent a short stint in Naval Air & learned to fly two different planes (Mr. Petri basically counseled me into joining Naval Air when I was going to get drafted into the Army in 1969.),
- almost crashed twice in those planes & went up in a “downed” plane once,
- wrecked my Pontiac LeMans on Gene Bendele’s parents land,
- married a wonderful woman from Rio Medina who I met a Quihi,
- went to Univ. FL (ph.d.) & had our first child (for <$1000; we had no health insurance),
- lived for 2 yrs in far-western Brazil with wife Betsy & 3 kids & spent considerable time in other areas of Latin America & Poland,
- came close to not making it off a Ukrainian mountain,
- have had the opportunity to work with some famous biologists, including E.F. Knipling, the “eradicator” of the screwworm,
- bought the 140-acre Alton Martin-family farm in Stockdale,
- went on through a life of entomology/biology research, consulting, & teaching, and sustainable ag & sustainable community.
These are some stories … & I’m sticking to them.
…………………….
*Spellings & facts are from memory & may be somewhat erroneous.
