1935 - The Year of My Nativity

In 1935 Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific when she piloted her plane from Honolulu to Oakland, California.   John Steinbeck’s book Tortilla Flats came out that year.   The lie detector machine was first demonstrated by Leonard Keeler.  Mussolini sent troops into East Africa.  Robert Sherwood’s play, The Petrified Forest opened on Broadway with Humphrey Bogart and Leslie Howard in the lead roles.  The Detroit Tigers defeated the Chicago Cubs in a six game World Series. Jay Berwanger won the first Heisman award.  In June of that year Congress passed a law making it possible for immigrants to the United States, who were otherwise ineligible for citizenship, to become naturalized citizens if they served in the United States military services during the World War (later to become thought of as World War I).

I arrived on June 21.  Mama and Daddy were living in an old farmhouse in what was then known as the “Paramour Place.”  In 2002 I visited the church in Hico, Texas and talked with a person who has lived her entire life in Hico.   She said, “You were born down near Langston Crossing weren’t you?”   Well as a matter of fact I was.  Langston Crossing is a low water place where the road crossed the Bosque River.  I was surprised that anybody would know that much about me.

 Like most babies who were born in 1935, I was born at home.   Those were depression days.  Very few people could afford to give birth to babies in a sterile hospital environment.  The old time doctors made house calls and did the best they could with whatever was available.  When it was time my Daddy called Dr. A. N. Pike from Iredell.  He probably went to town and got him because they didn’t have a telephone.  When Dr. Pike filled out the birth certificate, he identified Iredell as my place of birth.   However, my parents lived on a Hico mail route, so the place of my birth has been up for dispute as have a lot of other things about me.  When I applied for a passport a few years ago, I just gave Bosque County as my birthplace.  How's that for not knowing where you were born?