9880 Marlin Drive

I have only two vague memories of life before my family moved into a red-brick home in far east Dallas in the summer of 1957. In the first, I was quite young—maybe one year old? I was in a crib, and there were a number of adults in the room. They took turns picking me up, passing me around and putting me back in the crib. I observed what seemed to be two kinds of people. One was taller, more angular in both body and face, and had relatively deeper voices. The other was shorter, rounder and spoke in a noticeably higher range. My perception was about gender, although I still did not know to which group I belonged. The second memory is of an older couple babysitting my brother and me at their home in Oak Cliff. I remember nothing else prior to taking up residence at 9880 Marlin Drive, about 4 1/2 years after my birth at Baylor Hospital.

Cindi and other friends

Our home had a single bathroom, a one-car garage and just over 1,000 square feet. It was new, as were all the others in the neighborhood. In fact, there were still some vacant lots in mid-’57. Of course, I knew nothing of real estate development or how land was being gobbled up in the name of progress or at least that of making a quick buck. Across the street was the Williams family, one of whose daughters, Cindi, was my first sweetheart. I sometimes played with her, Reba Jordan and Maureen Ward, but mostly I was in a male setting. Ronny Anderson and his brother Jerry, Mike Moore, Ray Boshart, Paul “Bubba” Polk, David Posey, Johnny Young, and Bruce Boog and Mike Stockton from around the corner were my best friends in those days. We played football, basketball and baseball, and improvised other games. I was in Cub Scouts.

On Halloween nights, I recall going out on trick-or-treat excursions with Cindi that were all too productive. We came home loaded with shopping bags full of candy and stuffed ourselves over the next two weeks until every last bit was gone.

Just on the other side of our school, Edwin J. Kiest Elementary, was Harry Stone Rec Center, usually accessed by bicycle. Oh, the hours we spent playing games there. I do not mean to portray myself as such a hard-core jock at an early age, but this was my nature. Harry Stone did have non-athletic offerings. When a friend (not in my usual cohort) informed me that he liked going there and partaking of the arts and crafts classes, I was surprised if not staggered. That stuff was for girls and old folks, was it not?

Major collision at first base

I could reminisce at length, but I will relate just one other anecdote about Harry Stone. Some of us had put together a sandlot baseball game one hot summer day. I was playing first base, and the aforementioned Mike Moore was at bat. Mike was at least three years older and thus bigger and faster—a key fact. The pitcher wound up and fired, and Mike hit a dribbler straight to me. I caught it and had only to run a few feet to get him out, but I saw that he had other ideas. Mike was barreling down the first-base line although he knew he had no chance of being safe. By doing so, he forced me to hurry and not just touch the base but go past it. Clearly, he sought to intimidate me. Was I such a wimp that I would concede first base? Impossible. I got there first, all right, but he made me pay a very high price with a collision that sent me sprawling 10 feet at least. I got up with the ball firmly in my hand.

Marlin Drive in the late 1950s and early 1960s was entirely European-American or “white” as we were once called. It took me many years to understand what racial segregation was, and injustice and oppression, Texas history, Southern history, American history. I learned, however.

I happened to witness a rather explosive scene next door in 1962 when Susan Ward and her husband Skip got into a screaming argument. But really, there was no violence or crime that I can remember. No drive-by shootings, and if that means I had a plain-vanilla childhood then so be it.

Some of the more sociable parents threw backyard parties with food and recorded music. I wish I could say people played instruments and sang or that some danced, but that did not happen. Looking back, we were a fairly tame bunch.

I can tell you another thing. We all spoke with thick southern accents—none more so than yours truly. Yet we fancied ourselves somehow better than those people just one block east. They lived in Mesquite, and we were in Dallas, the big city, and thus somehow superior. We regarded them as “country hicks,” and I regret to admit that is the term we used.

Hand-cranked ice cream, movies and a haunted house

Sometimes our family invited relatives—Dot, Gary, Dennis and Shannon on my father’s side or Dub, Sandy, Allen, Cathy and Linda on my mother’s, plus the respective grandparents—to our house for a get-together. Invariably, chicken was cooked on the grill with charcoal briquettes underneath. And for dessert? Ice cream, but not what you could buy at a store. This came from an old-fashioned hand-cranked machine. One of the grown-ups would pack the ingredients (milk, fruit, eggs and sugar) with ice on the outside of a metal cylinder. That fit inside a wooden bucket. Us kids did the cranking, naturally. We grumbled, but the result was the most mouth-watering ice cream. Delicious, succulent. In all the subsequent years, I have had nothing better.

I referenced Johnny Young earlier. His father was kind and generous, and used to show movies in the family garage during the summer. There would be about 25 kids gathered around, watching whatever fare he could provide. The only two I remember are The Babe Ruth Story and The Incredible Shrinking Man. The former inspired me, and the latter scared the living daylights out of me.

At the end of the street, where Marlin intersected with Oates Drive, you would find a big field of approximately 200 acres. There was a pond close to the street and further south was an old, abandoned 3-story mansion astride a cemetery. This was the Motley Mansion, source of many stories. Built in 1903, it burned 64 years later, when my family had moved to a different part of Dallas. We all said it was haunted, just as we talked about some mysterious lady who lived in or around White Rock Lake. (That’s a very familiar myth, also appearing in the Philippines, Brazil, Estonia, Malta, the Netherlands, you name it.)

The descendants of Zachariah Motley sold the property to Dallas County, and in its place Eastfield College (the derivation of that name should be clear) was erected. This was where I took Freshman English in the summer of 1971 before heading off to UT.

I’ve been back to Marlin Drive quite a few times. Sure, it shows some wear. The street and sidewalks are ramshackle, and there are some busted-up cars sitting in driveways. The trees, newly planted back then, have grown. The houses, including the one at 9880, must have been built sturdily because the old neighborhood is no slum. I would say it looks OK more than a half-century on.