Oliver Smith
Thoughts on Phoenix
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Thoughts on Phoenix
My memory of Phoenix is rather clouded by my youth and the rapidity
with which my parents moved. Repeated questioning of my parents
haven't divulged the level of detail that I would like, but I do
have a number of fragmented images that I am working on connecting
within the framework a narrative of my time there.
In my January 2001 interview with my dad, it became clear that our
arrival in Phoenix in January of 1957 was the result of a festering
conflict between my parents, who had vastly different perspectives on
how their individual lives should be conducted, and the general path
that the family should be taking.
Their marriage, which began in Three Rivers, Texas (see
Thoughts on Three Rivers), was
wildly spinning out of control by the time they arrived Phoenix from
Decatur, Texas.
According to my dad, the family moved to Phoenix because Helen Marie,
my youngest sister, was having difficulty with asthma and they thought
that Phoenix would be a better climate for her. My dad also said
that they thought the job market would be better. According to my
mother, my dad just suddenly quit school at Decatur Baptist College
and decided to move to Phoenix and attend Grand Canyon Baptist
College there. She said that this occurred just after Thanksgiving,
when she "came down with a terrible flue and was really sick". In
her version of the time in Decatur, my dad expected her to teach and
help him with his studies, without even trying to find work on
Saturday. She said that "we just couldn't get by financially".
This notion of my dad attending college during this period is of
particular interest, because anyone who knows my dad would
understand immediately that he is not one with either the
temperament, drive or skill to attend a college and navigate an
academic curriculum. My dad had this to say about the experience, "I
just wish I would have forgotten that, but that was a bad decision,
and I was not college material and should have stayed in the working
field."
He also admitted that he was basically satisfied with his life in
Banqueti, Texas which is where we were living when we moved to
Decatur. He had a good job working for the United Gas Pipeline
company, at the Agua Dulce plant, just down the road from Banqueti
and would have been happy to continue working there, but my mother
was constantly trying to get him to go into the ministry and he
finally just got fed up with the pressure and quit his job to go to
college in Decatur.
According to my mother, though, my dad "decided he wanted
to go to college to become a preacher", so "we sold everthing we had
and moved to North Texas." Since my mother harbored many of the same
expectations for me that she did for my dad, I became all too familiar with
what what she is like to live with. As a result, I am not at all
surprised that my dad embarked on such a hopeless mission, in the
hope of obtaining some peace of mind. Very
early in my life I was learning to capitulate to the strong will of
a woman to whom I felt bound. It would be many years,
including a twenty five year marriage, before I would break this
familial pattern of behavior.
As far as I can tell, my dad only attended one semester at Decatur
Baptist College before the decision was made to move to Phoenix. That
was the fall semester of 1956. The following January, they bought an
"old trailer" in Decatur and pulled it to Phoenix.
The End
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