What's in the Water in Midland, Texas?

Written by David B. Edwards

September 1961 I had recently turned thirteen and thought my happy life was over.  I needed a way out of my predicament and wasn’t finding one.  The eldest of four children, each separated by two years from the next, I at length concluded my only out would be by means of self-help.  No one seemed to understand the problem, and I couldn’t well articulate it.  I began eighth grade at San Jacinto Junior High School that month, and I didn’t like anything about it.  In the summer, Dad had moved our family to Midland, Texas, population 55,000, from Odessa, a rival town 22 miles to the west, population 80,000.  I had seen enough by late September to know I loved Odessa and hated Midland.  How can a boy be expected to stay in a place he hates?  For me, it was a maximum-security prison from which I had little hope of release or escape.  And my maladjustment was only worsened by my observation that the other five family members liked Midland. 

To that point, Mother and Dad had reared us four through our school years in Odessa.  In the oil fields of the Permian Basin, a large region of primarily sedimentary geological formations in the Southwest, Midland and Odessa were patently strange but interdependent bedfellows.  Midland was the buttoned-down white-collar collection of wealthy oil and gas executives who orbited around their wheeling-and-dealing clubhouse, christened the Petroleum Club.  Their wives were high-society matrons and their daughters were debutantes.  Refinement was de rigueur in Midland.  San Jacinto was something of a factory for producing future prep-schoolers and ivy league denizens.  Midland County was dry, alcohol sales-free, and blue laws were strictly enforced.  Odessa, in adjacent Ector County, was its barebacked uncouth cousin, unkempt and gauche, in contrast to Midland’s manicured precincts.  Oilfield roughnecks, liquor, and heavy, dirty rig equipment were the stuff Odessa was made of.  The oft-repeated truism was you lived in Midland to raise kids, and you lived in Odessa to raise hell. In my early adolescent wisdom, I preferred the grime to the shine.

My sixth- and seventh-grade years in Odessa’s Burnet Elementary and Bonham Junior High schools were promising years for me.  I was a straight-A student and among the best track runners. At Bonham I was in all the advanced academic classes available and was first chair cornet player in the beginning band most of the year.  When mid-year I couldn’t run track because of an Achilles tendon injury, the school counselor put me in the school choir, where I learned to sing while contending with a voice descending with resolve from high tenor to baritone.  The choir teacher, Mr. Foster, called my parents and told them I exhibited leadership qualities he would like to help develop and asked them to encourage me to sing in choir the next year. I would have chosen track instead, but I was touched by his call.  Bonham’s principal, Mr. Whitehead, had been one of Mother’s teachers at Odessa High School in the 1940s.

But amid all the positives, my parents spotted a growing problem to which I was oblivious.  Bonham was a good school but was saddled with a thuggish faction among the students, especially among the ninth-graders. They and many trainee eighth-grade boys took delight in hazing, they called it initiating, the terrified boys in my lowly class. I would observe my peers crawling down sidewalks while pushing coins with their noses, others shining their tormentors’ shoes, and still others paying their lunch money as tribute upon demand.  For my part, I had a simple strategy―I ran.  Whenever I faced a pack of them, and they always sought prey in packs, approaching me I quickly turned and ran the opposite direction.  Instead of pursuing me they characteristically would focus on an easier victim nearby, lower-hanging fruit for picking as it were.  The thugs were largely identifiable by their greasy duckbill haircuts and black leather jackets.

On Halloween night 1960, I secured parental permission to trick-or-treat with a few, three or four, Bonham pals.  As we went house-to-house in the dark I became increasingly horrified.  Early on, I realized their primary intent was not to collect candy but to commit acts of vandalism.  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  We would ring the doorbells of kindly homeowners and cry “trick-or-treat!”  After they made the deposits in our bags and closed their doors, these guys would write vulgarities on their window or door screens, walls, or porches with bar soap, and they would mutilate their flowers, bushes, and trees.  I began to lag behind, and when they conspired to set fire to a nearby dry lake bed filled with dead tumbleweeds and flammable trash, I quietly turned and went home early.  The next day I learned the Fire Department had been called that night to extinguish the conflagration.

As the year wore on I developed friendships with other boys of questionable character.  To look cool and distinct, most of them peroxided their long hair.  In that department I was disadvantaged in two ways.  First, my dad was a military man and demanded I keep my hair short, and my mother was my kitchen-stool barber to ensure compliance.  Second, I had no idea how one peroxides his hair.  But I also figured I had a couple of things working for me.  Mother would give me a short butch cut, but she granted my plea for a small mercy in allowing the front of the cut to be a bit longer than the rest.  The longer hair, together with my observation that there was a bottle of peroxide in the bathroom medicine chest became the elements of my plan.  With dispatch, clandestinely I took a cotton ball every day, soaked it in the peroxide, and applied it liberally to my front fringe hair.  I was skeptical it would do anything at all, but to my surprise over several days that hair began to get lighter.  Predictably, when the light color became apparent, Mother asked me what I had been doing to my hair.  I told her, and my next visit in the chain of command was with Dad, who took me on a long drive while he interrogated me on why I had done such a thing.  Of course, I could offer no satisfactory answers.  The longer hair came off the next day, and the peroxide bottle was removed to an undisclosed location.

Toward the end of the school year, unknown to me, Mother and Dad held a private parental conference.  I didn’t learn until I reached adulthood about that critical talk, in which Mother convinced Dad to move the family in the ensuing summer to Midland, mainly because of the dark clouds she could see clearly on my horizon. Dad agreed and looked for employment in Midland, finding it within a short time. He commuted to work there until school was out, when the announcement of our move came to us kids. To involve us in this big change Mother would take all four of us to look for our new house in Midland.  I was game for that and enjoyed the hunt.  Little did I realize how big the change would be for me.

At first thinking Midland schools would be an approximation of those in  Odessa, I expected San Jacinto to be similar to Bonham, but in the early days of the school term I was shaken awake out of that dream. From the first day, I observed how the girls, with few exceptions, would flock about in gaggles of four to six, and the boys would do the same.  It was as if these groups were impenetrable cells without receptors to allow anyone new in.  They were set in stone.  In time I learned two new words, “clique” and “cliquish,” and realized their harsh reality in my new life. 

The band was my greatest disappointment.  The Bonham band had been large and powerful.  The competition was stiff, and the members wore smart uniforms.  They marched and played at football game halftimes.  They played many concerts and had a groovy swing band I wanted to be part of.  Hap Murray, a ninth-grader, was first chair cornet in the concert band and trumpet soloist in the swing band, and I aspired to be as good as he but wasn’t at all confident I could.  I eagerly had looked forward to full participation in that great program, one which had the added virtue of keeping a lot of kids off the mean Odessa streets.  Mr. Crain was the director, and I had the highest respect for him.  In stark contrast to Bonham, the San Jacinto band in my view was a ragtag outfit.  No uniforms.  No football game marching.  No serious competitiveness.  No swing band.  Awful cacophonous sound, like sunrise on a chicken farm.  For me, there was nothing to pursue, no great goal to reach.  I took first chair in the beginning auditions and kept it all year.  Dr. Webel, an accomplished college music professor and genuinely nice man, had taken over the directorship that year.  He knew music well, but I suspected he had lost a few marbles in his descent from college to junior high. 

I was placed in the advanced Language Arts class, and I should have excelled in it, but I had become phlegmatic and uninterested.  I only halfheartedly completed my assignments if I did them at all.  When we had to give prepared speeches to the class, I would not prepare well for them but would scribble something on paper the night before and talk enough to fill up the required time in class.  We had to read David Copperfield and write essays on it. Even Dickens I read with disinterest and only went through the motions required to pass.  On occasion I allowed myself to be interested in an assignment and usually scored an “A” when I did.  At one point we were assigned to write a short story.  I had no initial interest in writing one and gave little thought to it.  When Dad learned about the assignment from my casual mention of it, only two or three days remained before the due date.  It had been assigned three weeks before it was due.  Dad asked me what I would write about.  I had no idea.  He suggested I consider writing something about ESP and explained what it was.  I got interested in it and started to work on the story.  I finished it quickly, and Mother typed it out for me the night before I had to turn it in.  The short story I submitted was 40 typewritten pages.  My teacher, Mrs. Lowe, was almost incredulous, but she gave me a happy “A.” She wanted to put my story in the school literary magazine, but it was too long to include.  Mrs. Lowe told Mother toward the end of the year she could not understand why I ran hot and cold.  She recognized my high ability while lamenting my low performance generally.  I believe Mother told her I never recovered from our move to Midland and I was one who could only be impelled by self-motivation.  Mother was right.

Sometime in late September or early October I reached the depths of my frustration and asked my parents whether I could live with my maternal grandfather in Odessa.  Mother and Dad were sympathetic and even empathetic to my plight, but they raised two points which were probable roadblocks to my proposal.  First, my dear grandmother had passed away five months earlier and would not be there to look after me, and Granddad had to work and could not alone take adequate care of me.  The added burden of having to care for me would be too much for him to handle.  Second, he did not live in the Bonham district, and I would have to attend a different junior high school.  Both were reasonable and valid points, and I could not argue with them.  Yet, my heart ached, and I remained disconsolate. 

Still in despair, a few nights after my talk with my parents, I took it upon myself to leave home and walk to Odessa.  After the family went to bed and were asleep, I opened the bedroom window where my brother was sleeping soundly and crawled through to the outside.  Having only the clothes I wore that day, I began my walk to Odessa.  I had made a mental list of friends in the Bonham district, and my ill-considered intention was to show up at their houses in turn until someone would take me in.  In two or three miles from home I reached Highway 80, the straight artery to Odessa.  I walked in the ditch along the highway, and when I had gone nine miles to the Midland-Odessa airport, a State trooper spotted me from the highway and pulled onto the shoulder next to me.  I stopped and faced him as he approached.  He quite pleasantly asked me where I was headed, and I answered to a friend’s house in Odessa.  He then asked me who I was, who my parents were, and where they lived.  He asked for their telephone number.  I truthfully answered his few questions.  He asked me to come with him to the airport, where he had a Continental Airlines pilot friend who would be happy to show me the inside of his cockpit.  I had never been in an airplane, and I eagerly assented.  He left me with his friend while he called my home.  Within a few minutes Dad and Mother were there.  When the trooper brought them to me I wanted to cower from them, but their tone was gentle and their words to me were not condemnatory.  After thanking the trooper, we drove home, and upon arrival, we three sat down and talked.  They, of course, wanted to know my thinking in leaving home.  I told them.  After a few minutes of debriefing, they calmly and lovingly directed me to go to bed, telling me we would talk more about it the following evening.  I felt undeservedly relieved they did not castigate me and slept in peace.

The next day I attended school as usual.  Dad came home from his work in the early evening, and after supper we three sat down to talk again.  They had a proposal for me to consider.  During the day, knowing my great respect for him, they had contacted Mr. Crain and, after explaining my dilemma, asked him whether he would come to our home and counsel me.  He was more than happy to do that.  They arranged a day and evening time for him to visit with me.  When asked if I would be willing to talk with Mr. Crain, I was overjoyed at the prospect and gave it my enthusiastic vote.  A couple of evenings later Mr. Crain came, and I was so very glad to see him.  The four of us sat down and talked openly, particularly about my disappointing band experience. 

Mr. Crain first asked me to explain as much as I could what problems I had encountered with being in Midland instead of Odessa.  I headed immediately to the band fiasco.  After hearing me out, he acknowledged the junior high band program in Midland was significantly behind and inferior to Odessa’s.  But he explained that it didn’t mean I couldn’t excel in my cornet-playing any less in Midland than in Odessa.  He said he had given me a solid music foundation to build on, which he was confident I could do.  He recommended to my parents that they buy for me the definitive Arban’s Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet, which would teach me everything I needed to know about the subject.  The book cost five dollars.  They could not well afford it, but they committed to getting it for me, and they quickly did.  Further, Mr. Crain told me if I worked hard and patiently with that book’s guidance for the rest of the year I would be well-prepared to compete in the Robert E. Lee High School band as a ninth-grader the next year.  He added that the Lee band was as good as any in West Texas.  In those few minutes, Mr. Crain showed me a positive way forward when I had seen none.  I told him and my parents I would commit to this way in Midland.  Dad asked me to look at the situation from another perspective.  He said Dr. Webel had come far down from the college level to that of junior high, and he was doing the best job he could in his circumstances.  Dad told me disappointment would present itself throughout my life and if I learned how to deal with it then, the lesson would serve me well into old age. From that night, I stuck it out with a positive outlook through the remainder of the year and practiced hard using the Arban’s book my dear parents gave me.  I ran on the school’s track team in the spring and was one of the top sprinters in the city.  My track coach thought so much of me that he told my parents he would be glad to drive me home every school day after track practice to save their having to pick me up late.  Having three other school children to care for in their individual schedules, my parents were much helped by his kindness.

So, that was how my young life was broken and then fixed by loving parents and caring teachers.  As something of a footnote, in my sophomore year, I auditioned and was seated as second chair in the All-Region Band and first alternate to the All-State band.  That year a senior, Hap Murray, my model player at Bonham and now first chair at Permian High School in Odessa, earned fifth chair.