Texas State Historical Association - My Texas

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My "Teen" Years

When I was thirteen I started dating L. C. Covington. On the first few dates Mom wouldn't let me go unless my sister Gwen was allowed to go along to chaperone. She played her part to the hilt. At breakfast the next morning she told Mom and Dad everything we had said and done. They would make me sit there and listen. One of the first movies we went to see was Blue Hawaii. Gwen's version was, "On the way home Lowell Ray said, 'Wouldn't you just love to go to blue Hawaii?' and L. C. said, 'I would if YOU were there!'" She related this with her chin in her hand, face tilted up, a silly grin on her face, and her eyes batting like a dying cow. I could have died! Of course, Mom, Dad, and Don were doubled over laughing. What a family!

After a few dates, I told Mom that it was no wonder I didn't have but one boyfriend, because since Gwen was always tagging along, my date had to pay her way to the show and buy her popcorn and cold drinks just like he did me. So Mom said that Gwen didn't have to go with us any longer. What a relief!

One July Sunday, about four couples went to the swimming pool in Greenville. L. C. was three and a half years older than I was and he smoked cigars. The other girls took puffs from their boyfriends' cigarettes and said, "You've got to take a puff from your boyfriend's cigar." I said, "O.K.," pulled in a mouthful of smoke, and blew it out. Laughing, they said, "No, that's not the way to do it! You must inhale!" I inhaled about three big puffs of that cigar smoke--and I thought I would die! I was sick all over everything. The other kids laughed and laughed, but one good thing came out of it: I've never smoked. When I got home that night, shaky, pale, and still a little green around the gills, Mom asked, "What's the matter, honey? You look pale." And I lied: "I ate something that disagreed with me."

That same summer, Mom had a quilting bee at our house. She had pieced the top, and had even let me piece some of the blocks. Some ladies, including Granny Coney, came and spent the day. Dad had hung the quilting frame from the ceiling in the living room. Our chairs were placed around it. I wandered through the room, and stopped to look--just look!--then decided that it looked like fun. I asked Mom if I could quilt. She said yes. I sat next to Granny Coney. She taught me to do my first quilting. My stitches were very long, and were nothing like even, but she just kept encouraging me. I quilted for about an hour, then decided to go back and play with the visiting kids. Mom left those stitches in the quilt. What a thrill! I had done some quilting.

Another swimming trip when I was fourteen almost ended in disaster. L. C. was on one side of me and my cousin Scott McDonnold was on the other. We were swimming to a log raft in Bonham Lake. Just a few feet from it L. C. asked, "Are you doing O.K.?" I opened my mouth to answer him, and under the water I went. When I came up I was grasping at anything within my reach. L. C.'s arm was there so I started climbing him like he was a telephone pole. If Scott had not been there, both L.C. and I would probably have drowned. But Scott caught me from behind and pulled me free of L. C. They both worked to get me on the raft. I've never really learned to swim, I just dog-paddle, and I am still afraid of being in deep water.

This was 1939, the year I was fourteen. We moved from north of Grandpa's up to the old Gore place close to Pecan Gap. Dad rented the place in the summer of 1939, and we were to move to it on December 31. Mom and Dad didn't want Gwen and me to have to change from Yowell School to Pecan Gap School in the middle of the year, so they made arrangements with Uncle Doug McDonnold and his wife, Aunt Tommie, to keep us and send us to school. They had two boys still living at home, Drew and John T. Drew was in the junior class and would be a classmate of mine. Since L. C. Covington was not in that town, I began dating other boys during the spring semester of 1940.

That summer an evangelist held a revival in an old church building near Yowell School that had been vacant for a number of years. I was visiting some of my old classmates who invited me to go with them. I did, and in that meeting I accepted Jesus Christ as my savior, making a big change in my life. The following weekend I was baptized along with several others in a pond near Ladonia. I wore a white dress, and had my hair all clean and curled. After the baptism I was a muddy, soggy mess, but I didn't care. My soul felt white as snow!

A week later, we went to Jot 'Em Down to see my maternal grandmother, Lela, who had suffered a heart attack, and L. C. was there. His Dad had taken the job of running the store for Uncle Dion, and was also renting Uncle Dion's farm. They had moved there the first of that year. L. C. asked if I'd like to go to the movies at Cooper. I asked Mom and Dad, they said "O.K.," and. L. C. and I were a couple from then on.

Lowell McCormack
Gainesville, Texas
Published: November 14, 2005