Dad and Me
1939
Who My Dad Was To Me When I Was Very Young
1) He was the guy who stood tall in my first vivid memory of anything back in 1939, before I was even two years old, On a Sunday visit to see my Mom’s folks in San Antonio, my Uncle Albert fell from a tall tree in my grandparents’ back yard, but his neck caught in a limb fork and he was left hanging there, with his arms and legs dangling in desperation. I’ll never forget Uncle Albert’s scary moaning in the heat of danger. As a young teenager himself, at that time, he had put himself in a deadly spot, but that’s certainly not an analysis I was capable of making back on that day. All I could do is be scared for him.
The next part of this special first memory was seeing my dad tearing off his shoes and racing to that tree for a quick climb of his own. He brought Uncle Albert down under his arm, safe from death on that day. Mom and my grandma were both what I now recognize as hysterical, but my brief trauma memory ends with my visions of Uncle Albert staggering around the yard and spitting up. Even at that tender age, however, I did recognize that he was safe because of my dad.
2) He was the guy who took me to my first baseball game at the Bee County Fair Grounds in Beeville, Texas in the summer of 1941. At age three, I saw Dad in uniform for Beeville as the right fielder, even though I had no idea what was I was viewing at the time from the right field grandstands where Mom sat and I walked constantly up and down the wooden seat planks. I do remember one of his teammates yelling, “You’re the baby, Bill,” when he came to bat the first time, but I have no memory of what he did. My only game action memory of Dad that day was seeing him field what I now understand was a one-bounce base hit to right field and then seeing Dad throw the ball to what I only much later knew as second base.
3) On Sunday, December 7, 1941, my dad was the guy who told me to go out the kitchen door to play in our backyard. Other family and friends were showing up to listen to the radio with Mom and Dad, but it made no sense to me. At 24 days short of my fourth birthday, it made no sense to me, but the departure from our normal Sunday schedule from that time was strong enough to register as a memory of mystery and curiosity.
4) Sometime in the summer of 1942, once I was beginning to get the idea that we were now “at war” with some people who didn’t like us, I followed the lead of some older kids in our Beeville neighborhood and went out into our dirt grade streets to look for metal we might collect on “Scrap Iron Day” in our town. I remember finally getting tired of digging empty holes with my little play shovel. I laid down in the road beside our house, trying to make sense of why some other people could hate us so much that they wanted to kill us. – I called upon the only person that Mom and Dad already had told me had the answer to everything and just laid flat on my back, looking up at the cotton candy clouds of summer that drifted overhead. “God,” I asked, “if you are up there behind those clouds today, could you please tell me why these people from far away want to kill everybody in Beeville?”
About that time, I heard Dad’s shrill lip-whistle to come on inside for Saturday lunch. I always obeyed Dad, even though this time he had interrupted an important conversation I was having with God. I told Dad that I hoped God didn’t get his feelings hurt because I had not waited for his answer to my question. “It’s like I’ve been telling you, Billy,” Dad said, “God is everywhere. You can finish that talk with God after lunch when you are laying down to take your nap.”
5) On my fifth birthday, December 31, 1942, Dad moved the entire McCurdy family, which now included my one-year old brother, John Carroll McCurdy, to Houston. Dad had been disqualified for military service for medical reasons, but he still wanted to contribute to the war effort and he had taken a welding job at the Brown Shipyard in the Ship Channel area. We checked into the Alamo Courts Motel on South Main upon our twilight arrival in Houston from our auto trip from Beeville. Shortly thereafter, that same day, Dad took us to Prince’s Drive Inn at South Main and OST for our official new and forever Houstonian baptisms. I turned out to be the only “Born Again Houstonian” who has remained that “saved” – and I probably owe my lifelong loyalty of 72 years as a faithful adopted son of our great city to the Prince’s special burger sauce.
6) When I was seven, Dad was the guy who moved our family from renter status in the Heights to home ownership at 6646 Japonica Street in the Pecan Park neighborhood of the Houston Southeast End in January 1945. Across the street was the little city-owned sandlot that would become the principal shaper of so many childhood memories and dreams about a hopeful tomorrow. Thanks for the good move, Dad.
7) When I was nine, Dad took me and my five year old brother John to see the 1947 Houston Buffs play baseball at beautiful old Buffalo Stadium on Cullen Blvd., near the University of Houston. What a game-changer move in my life that one came to be. It turned on a switch that will never go out.
My love of the game has shaped any other worthwhile thing I’ve ever tried to do, whether I got there or not. Like baseball, life is an even longer season of rolling, often uneven success and intermittent morale assaulting disappointment. But totally like baseball, we have to hang in there in life and always fight back for the fulfillment of dreams that stir our souls. Whether we ever get there in some worldly self-measurable way is not the point. The points are – “hang in there and keep fighting back until you breathe your last.” – Anything less is death itself.
Thanks, Dad, for everything, from early on. Everything I ever learned about fighting back, and adapting to new circumstances for the sake of love, I first learned from you!
Happy Father’s Day, William Oscar McCurdy ll !
Tags: Fathers Day 2015
The Pecan Park Eagle 
June 21, 2015 at 8:13 pm |
A beautiful tribute to your dad Bill! Most of our dads at the time had grown up with strong religious beliefs and through adverse times which would shape our lives as we grew up. I was born in 1934 and lived fairly close to you at that time. Between 1939-1946 my dad had a grocery store with living quarters in back at 2605 Telephone Road(at the intersection of what is now Telephone and the Gulf Freeway).My memories of the war are mostly from the comic books, movies and radio programs of that time and the 6 older cousins who were in at and who, by the grace of God,returned home safely. Don’t mean to ramble but just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your post.
June 22, 2015 at 2:52 am |
Thanks for writing, Roy. – Your dad’s store was, or became, Jacobsen & Yellen’s, right?
June 22, 2015 at 12:27 am |
Many years ago I gave my dad a t-shirt for Father’s Day that read, “Anyone can be a father. It takes someone special to be a dad,” Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there.