GENTLEMAN JIM IN HOLLAND
You may never have had a phone call from Holland. I have. Last week. In the never-ending search that Phillip Fry and I are conducting for Texas country singers, I looked up the Jim Reeves fan club. As all of you know, Gentleman Jim Reeves was born in Panola County, Texas, so naturally his fan club is in Holland. I emailed Ari den Dulk, the secretary, one Sunday, and he called me on the phone an hour later. I was amazed, for the longest distance I have ever talked was to Texarkana. Ari sent me all the newsletters of the club, which was started in 1975 by Ari and Bert Bossink. There had been a British version of the Jim Reeves Fan Club until 1977, but it folded. Ari and Bert started doing their club in Dutch, but after the British club folded, they went to English. Good thing, too, I could never have managed the language, but Ari was an ace in English. He sent me this photo, which Fry and I will use in our celebrated book. In case you want to write a letter to the JR Fan Club, here is the address:
Jim Reeves Fan Club
Postbus 66
2280 AB Ryswyk
The Netherlands
Phone 0031613844105
FINISH THIS LINE
"Buck wheat cakes and Injun batter. . . ."
SKETCH NUMBER TWO: GEORGE ELLIS FORTENBERRY
When George Fortenberry was born, Woodrow Wilson was president of the United States. It was Wilson's last year in office, but by that time he was--like Shakespeare's Old Norway--"impotent and bedrid." And the country was being run by Edith, his wife. George was born in Childress or somewhere up close to the Red River, but his hometown of memory was Mineral Wells. He had gone to eight different schools by the time he was in the eighth grade, but he did high school in Mineral Wells. He was a soda jerk in the drugstore on the first floor of the famous Baker Hotel. This was back in the heyday of the Baker and the Crazy. In George's days, big name bands and singers came to the roof garden of the Crazy. The rest of a thirsty nation got the radio broadcasts and could order the Crazy Water Crystals by mail--just add tap water. (By the way, you can go to Mineral Wells today and buy Crazy Water from the spring just off the square. Don't!)
Somebody talked George into joining the National Guard in 1938 or 39, and he wound up serving with the 112th Cavalry all through WWII, the one Dobie Gillis's father called "the big 'un." George trained at Fort Bliss and Fort Clark down at Bracketville, and then he rode horses for 1,500 miles during the full-scale maneuvers the Army conducted out of Fort Polk, Louisiana, just before the war. George is the only person I have ever met who actually served in the horse cavalry. When war broke out, George and the 112th went to the South Pacific--not Mary Martin's "South Pacific," with all that "Bali Hi" stuff--but the one where people shot other people. George was at New Caledonia, Woodlark Island, Goodenough Island (which was famous for wild dogs), and finally New Britain. George was a medic, and when the enemy blew people up, George, like Kipling's Gunga Din, had "to tend the wounded under fire." The horses that were sent to the 112th from Australia were subject to malaria, a fact unknown the Army way back then. So the horses were sent off to India, and one shipload of horses went down when the Japanese sank the transport.
After the war, George came to Fort Worth and took a bachelor's and master's from TCU. One day he saw the horse he had trained with at Fort Clark and in Louisiana tied to a watermelon wagon on University Drive. The little horse was tied behind the wagon that was being pulled by two mules. George could tell by the horse's gait that it was "his" horse. Sure enough, it was. He stopped the man with the wagon and read the brand--S417--that the Army had put on it five or six years before.
While at TCU, George worked as a union carpenter--a trade he had learned from his father--and built his own house from scrap lumber. After graduation he taught for a year at Santo, and then at Azle, Riverside Junior High, and Paschal. Finally, he got a job at a two-year school called Arlington State College and stayed with it until it became the University of Texas at Arlington. He retired in 1982. I met him in 1957--Lordy, that was fifty years ago!--when we were graduate students at the University of Arkansas. We took Old English together and were no good at it. I had had it before and was so bad that I was auditing to get ready for BEOWULF. George faded out, but I managed a B in Beowulf. George took Old English again and managed to pass BEOWULF at the University of Arkansas, where he got his Ph.D. He and I commiserated over German for several years, and oftentimes when we were struggling with it, George would say, "You know, there are little kids not more than five-years-old who talk this stuff." Well, maybe. I am not sure of that.
George was married to a woman named Ruth, and they had two children. Then Ruth died, and George married another woman named Ruth. He says it keep him from ever calling Ruth 2 by the name of his first wife. It seems that George has achieved wisdom in his 86 years on earth. Look at the photo of George Fortenberry. He could pass for 60 in the dark and 65 in the bright light of day. I hope to outlive him, but I can't count on it. George was a war hero, though he will probably deny it. Or would if he knew how to reply to this blog.
SPEAKING OF WOODROW
What did Colonel House call Wilson after WW became president? House was Wilson's Karl Rove. Sort of.
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