1963

In 1963, we moved from Haltom City to Euless in North Texas.  Do you remember when you first had memories?  Between ages 2 and 4, my memories are still a bit sketchy but once we moved to Euless in June of 1963, I could recall more and more.

The memory of the move I have is of driving in my Granddaddy Taylor's pickup truck. He was my mother's father.  He was driving, I was in the middle, and my Dad was in the passenger seat.  Back then, a 4 year old could climb all over the car without restraint since there were no seat belt laws.  So, I would turn around onto my knees and look at our stuff in the bed of the pickup.  We were driving down what is known now as Highway 10, a little one lane road that took us to our new neighborhood in Euless.  My interest was mainly in my kitchen riding back there.  I had a cardboard kitchen with a sink, stove, oven, and refrigerator.  It was pink and yellow.  While I was watching, the little pink plastic sink flew out of the truck onto the side of the road.  I may have yelled or cried but I know I told my daddy what happened.  Not sure who convinced my Granddaddy, but he stopped and my daddy walked back to where the sink lay and got it for me.

The new house was on a block with no other homes around it at first.  Our front and back yards were dirt, no grass.  There were no fences either.  At some point, a small bulldozer fixed our backyard so there were two levels to the yard.  We watched out the patio door as it moved the dirt around.  Not sure of the time frame at all, but eventually houses were built around us, grass came in, and sometime after I started to elementary school, we got a cyclone fence put in.

Timmy and I got our own bedrooms at the new house.  My room was gigantic!  I had my twin bed on one wall and my kitchen on the opposite wall.  I had a built-in vanity that I was too small to appreciate then but later it was really cool.  My bedroom was in the front of the house, Timmy's in the middle of the hall, and our parents' bedroom was at the back of the house.  We had a formal living room with nothing in it because we didn't have that kind of furniture.

My parents added on to the house later, so it is hard for me to recall exactly how it looked when I was little.  But it was a big move for us to be in the middle of the Dallas-Fort Worth area.  Daddy worked in downtown Dallas so it made a lot of sense to move to Euless.