Ronnie and I were both 10 years old when we met and started fifth grade at Bethel Elementary School.  Bethel School and the Bethel Community Center were both on a plot of land that touched Ronnie’s farm on the north side.  Ronnie was my height and build but a whole lot better looking.  His hair was shiny and soft as if he washed it every night in Breck Shampoo – always combed.  If Elvis Presley ever needed a stand-in, we knew where to find one. 

Ronnie mowed Highway 19 during the summer with his dad and several others on a Ford tractor with Bush Hog in tow.  Keeping the tractor working made him a great mechanic.  When he wasn’t mowing, he was on his horse.  Mowing, cars, horses and his family defined much of his life.

Bethel School gave us both a great education. We benefitted from that education all our lives.  At Bethel, a great education was the number two priority – just behind recess.

Recess was before school, 45 minutes between second and third period, after lunch, 45 minutes between fourth and fifth period and finally after school until the busses arrived to take us home to do the chores we had put off while we were at school.  At recess, we would play softball, play mumbley-peg with our pocketknives, fly kites, play marbles with tops, sling bricks a hundred yards with our David-and-Goliath slingshots and play softball. 

Softball was important.  Ronnie was the pitcher.  Every Friday in the spring, we would go to Murchison to play ball or Murchison would come to Bethel.  Sometimes we would win.  Sometimes they would win.  Our skills were about even. 

Left field was downhill from the boy’s outhouse.  We’d splash through the grass and throw the soggy ball back to Ronnie.  The moisture gave us immunization to any disorder that might arise from swimming in stock tanks during the summer.

Softball was almost as much fun as taking field trips through the back of Ronnie’s farm.  We would go over the fences and up the hill into the trees.  The only thing most of us remembered learning was how to find huckleberries and how to eat them.  It was even better than the fall when the eighth grade would rescue watermelons that had fallen off passing trucks. Iced-cold was not an adjective for describing a rescued melon – but they were good eating anyway.

There were 12 of us in the eighth grade.  Nell Walker was the tallest girl.  Sue Cave was the shortest.  Patsy Dykes was in the middle in between.  Patsy was brunette.  Sue was blond.  Nell was in the middle in between.

Gary Carmichael, Wayne Morris, and Dullus Womble all lived in Van Zandt County.  Mr. Carol Buford would pick them up with his school bus every morning and drop them off after school.  Riding the school bus sometimes pushed a good education down to third priority.  Dullus lived just beyond Sand Hill.  The approach to his house was down a long sand road with a wooden plank bridge at the bottom.  The few of us on the bus would all get in the back most seat.   Mr. Buford would shove the accelerator against the floorboard and we’d come down that hill like gravity had some kind of completion.  When the bus hit the bridge, the force would catapult the occupants of the back seat upward – the winner was the one who hit the roof the hardest.  Then we would pick up Dullus and his sister Beatrice.  Beatrice and Dullus seemed to have the world’s supply of chinquapin acorns.  They would munch on them throughout the day.

The six other boys – Ronnie, Kenneth Green, Robert Henson, Kenneth McGlaun, Don McLemore and I – lived in Henderson County along with the three girls.  All of us graduated from Bethel and went to Athens High School.

Athens High School was fun.  Everyone knew everyone.  Ronnie was president of the Distributive Education Club our senior year.  Being president did not keep him from standing in the back row of all the photos.

Between 1960 and 2000, Ronnie had fabulous years of riding, roping, racing, and dating.  He won many riding and roping contest.  He was legendary in car racing.  He eventually won an award for being the contractor who worked for the State of Texas the longest.  The first impression I had of him at the 40^th Reunion of Athens High School was that he was a lot taller than me – and everybody else.

Beginning in 2003, some of us from the 1960 Class of Athens High School would meet every month at the Athens Marina that Judy Buford and Peter Gould ran.  Ronnie came to a few of these. 

The first he attended was in August of 2008. Jimmy Kittles, James Burgamy, Jim Hickman, and Ronnie recalled racing in high school.  Ronnie had a black two-door Chevrolet with red upholstery that he lowered almost to the ground.  James remembered Ronnie stripping out so many Chevrolet synchronizers that the parts company said they wouldn’t honor any more warranty exchanges.

Ronnie recalled double dating with Jan Larkin Carrico and Raymond Sifers.  “Jan got me a date with a really cute cheerleader, but the cheerleader was so short that she had to sit on my lap during the whole movie to see over the people in front of us.”

Ronnie skipped a moth and came back in October.  We looked at Ronnie’s bright red pickup that he had purchased that day from Bacon Motors in Frankston.  The new pickup was why Ronnie didn’t bring his big white crash truck – the industry calls it a truck-mounted annunciator with arrow board.  

 “We have 150 acres, but I rent out half of that for cattle.  We don’t raise any commodity crops – peanuts, tomatoes, cucumbers. There’s no place to sell commodities anymore.

He told us of his wife, Helen.  “She’s a Godwin.  She’s not a Godwin from the Highway-19 Godwin’s that went to Bethel.  She’s a Godwin from the Leagueville-Highway Godwins.  She went to Athens High School, but she’s younger than us.  When we were dating, I’d turn off the Leagueville Highway onto the dirt road to her house.  She’d hear me make the turn and start getting ready.  I’d creep along slowly.  I had to drive on top of the ruts because my black 1959 Chevrolet was suspended so low that I couldn’t drive over a beer can without knocking it over.  By the time I got to her house, she was ready.”

“I hope to go to Heaven so I can see my 1959 Chevrolet.”

In March of 2009, Ronnie recalled the time during high school when he was in a terrible accident that threw him from a pickup truck, covered him in gasoline, and knocked him unconscious.  The ambulance took him to the hospital where he stayed for several days.  “They didn’t do anything.  They didn’t clean me up, they didn’t change my clothes, and they didn’t wrap me with anything.  But they did put up a NO SMOKING sign.”

In May of 2009, Ronnie was the first to arrive.  He had recovered from the respiratory distress that kept him from attending the April luncheon.  His voice was chipper and strong although an occasional cough worked its way out.   “There wasn’t anyone here at 11:00.  I went in and waited but was afraid that the Marina would throw me out for not buying anything. “

Ronnie’s last visit was in September of 2010.  Ronnie, James Burgamy, and Kay Garner King recalled the days when Donald Starr had his roadster.  “It had a big stock Buick engine and could really burn rubber.  Some people thought it wasn’t safe because it had a shimmy around 100 miles per hour.  But it sounded so good, and it looked fantastic.” 

“Lana, what kind of car did you drive at the junior college?” James inquired of Lana Lee Sheets from Larue.

 “I didn’t have a car at the junior college,” she answered.

It’s hard for a young man to relate to a person not having a car.  A car is like a middle name – like James Red-1957-Chevy Burgamy.

Ronnie did not return to the luncheons.  We mailed him a letter each month describing who was at the luncheon that month and what we said.  Eventually, he moved from his farm to the rehabilitation center with his wife. 

Dot and Jim Hinderer