John Durward Lane (2) - Struggle with Cancer

Durward had a long struggle with cancer and died on April 3, 1956. He was highly regarded by all who knew him. When my mother suffered from mental illness, he took the lead in trying to find medical help for her. Several years after his death, I mentioned him to Ralph Starling, who preached Durward's funeral Ralph Starling, a Church of Christ minister from Stephenville, conducted the funeral. I asked him if he remembered Durward Lane. He said that he still owned a pair of tin snips that Durward had given him.

During the time of his illness Durward was hospitalized in the old Hico hospital, which is now a nursing home. My mother was institutionalized in a mental hospital at the time, so Daddy and I drove to Hico to visit him. That was my last visit with him.  I remember him laughing and cheerful.  He put up a courageous fight.   I owned a 1947 Studebaker Champion. It was a strange car. It would get 26 miles per gallon on gasoline, but then I had to put a quart of oil in the car in the morning when I left for school in Abilene. We only lived about 15 miles to the campus. As you can tell the Studebaker was quite an oil burner. I would then have to put another quart in the car on the return trip. I finally started buying oil in the bulk. An old man ran a service station at Elmdale. He would draw up a quart (or a gallon) from a 55 gallon drum and put it in a fruit jar for you. The price was ten cents a quart. I hated paying it, because I could have bought a coke for that kind of money.

For some reason, we chose to make that trip to Hico (100 miles each way) in the Studebaker. I remember the trip because of the adventure we had on the way home. We were somewhere east of Rising Star, as I recall, when the universal joint gave way and the drive shaft fell to the ground. My father was a resourceful man. He always carried a pair of pliers. He cut some wire off a barbed wire fence and wired the U Joint back together. He got behind the wheel, put the car in high gear and we started off. He never allowed any slack on the drive shaft, even though he had to drive about 30 miles an hour and run all the red lights. I think the only one we saw was in Cross Plains. We made the 50-mile trip home without incident.