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When
I was younger, I could never quite understand how anyone could be
devoted to the town where I was born. My birthplace was a farm house
five miles south of Saltillo,
where our post office and school were located. When I was a teenager,
Saltillo also
had three groceries and two service stations. The largest commercial
building contained a drugstore, a barber shop, and the post office.
These buildings were located on U.S. Highway 67, a two-lane road,
originally known as the Bankhead Highway and then as the “Broadway
of America.” There was also a Cotton Belt depot north of the highway
that stood until 1956 when passenger service was discontinued on
the route. Obviously lacking was a motion picture theater, which
even Larry McMurtry’s otherwise deprived Archer
City had until the late 1950s.
A row of dilapidated brick buildings a few yards north of the highway
reminded us that Saltillo had once seen better days. The roofs of
two of these buildings, which once housed a bank and a newspaper
office, collapsed before I was born.
Most of my
classmates at the high school yearned for the time when they could
leave Saltillo.
The majority went to the burgeoning cities of Dallas
and Fort Worth to
seek employment; three or four from our graduating class went away
to college. My assumption was that only a few of the elderly were
the only ones devoted to the town. It was not until I became acquainted
with Clyde Horne, who married my oldest sister, that I learned about
a younger person’s devotion to Saltillo.
Except for these remarks about Clyde, I am not certain anything
else has ever been written about him. However, Veterans Administration
documents probably contain brief records of his military service
and the treatment he received for his war injury.
During
World War II,
Clyde was a member of an infantry battalion that saw action in Italy
and later in Normandy. After he was discharged, he never found a
niche for himself in civilian life. Clyde’s parents moved from Saltillo
to Fort Worth during
the time Clyde was overseas. He lived temporarily with them and
his older brother in Fort
Worth. When President Truman ordered the deployment of troops
to Korea in 1950, Clyde re-enlisted. “I hated to see them green
kids th’own into battle against the Commies without goin’ again
myself to show ‘em how the U.S. infantry fights,” Clyde told my
mother years later.
On Hill 598 Clyde fell on an exploding grenade. South Korea litter
bearers took him to a mobile neurosurgical unit in the valley. When
the surgeons removed as many bone fragments as they could from Clyde’s
skull, they inserted a plate of tantalum under what was left of
the skull.
After months of hospital stays in Japan and later in the States,
Clyde returned to Texas. The government provided him with a pink
Mercury sedan equipped for a driver with his particular handicap.
He rented a room in Saltillo
from an elderly widow who lived near the stores.
Clearly
Clyde displayed a devotion to the town. He faithfully attended annual
memorial services held at the community churches where cemeteries
were located. Each community chose a different day for the ceremonies
to avoid conflicts. Clyde particularly enjoyed going to the Old
Saltillo Church grounds each July. The men of the community were
responsible for killing and dressing squirrels so that they could
become the main component of a stew cooked outdoors on the premises.
Clyde enjoyed the camaraderie existing among the men as they went
about their business in the early morning hours of the service.
A favorite
fishing spot was a camp on White Oak Creek about three miles north
of Saltillo.
Several local men liked to take seines and drag them through the
creek in order to net the catfish. They also liked to take beer
or whiskey with them. Clyde was not able to drag the seine through
the muddy water, but he could take beer or whiskey to the men. He
enjoyed drinking with them, sometimes in excess. In a conversation
with my mother, a veteran of several South Pacific battles during
World War II,
once remarked, “If there was ever a man who had an excuse to drink,
it’s Clyde Horne.” When Clyde started taking my sister Juanita to
the movies, she was attempting to recover from the effects of a
second divorce. She was living with my parents and working sporadically
in a garment factory in the county seat. After several weeks of
going to movies in nearby towns, Clyde and Juanita decided to marry.
Because Juanita was a divorcee, it was difficult for them to find
a minister to perform the ceremony. Eventually they found a retired
Baptist minister who agreed to marry them.
After their marriage, Juanita and Clyde moved into a rental house
located near a pond. The house was located on a graveled road that
had very little traffic. The owners had built attractive flower
beds in the front yard, some of which were bordered in red brick
and others in flagstone. Daffodils, hyacinths, and irises grew in
the beds. A serene atmosphere prevailed.
Sitting before
the television in the Hornes’ living room on spring evenings, I
remember hearing the croaking of the American toads on the banks
of the pond. On occasion, the blue light from the television screen
was the only light in the room. I began to associate that light
with my visits to the Hornes’ house. Over the sound of music and
dialogue from Gunsmoke or The Untouchables, the music building in
volume prior to a climactic scene, Clyde would tell Juanita and
me about talking that day with a visitor to Saltillo.
Usually, the person was a man who came from Dallas
or Fort Worth to
visit relatives and friends.
“You couldn’t
guess who I saw today at the drug store. T. Young drove down from
Dallas for the day,” Clyde
would say. Or he would tell us that a man Clyde’s parents had known
when they lived near Saltillo
was back to check on his property. “Dade Sparks’ lespedeza will
soon need to be mowed and baled,” Clyde would say.
Over
the next few years the evidence of Clyde’s devotion to his birthplace
accumulated. But it was not until my father told me of the first
time Clyde came back to Saltillo
after he was discharged that I gained insight into that devotion.
At dusk one summer evening my father and I were sitting in the family
room of my parents’ house. He mentioned Clyde’s abuse of alcohol.
“It’s a shame,” my father said. And then he went on to say that
he admired the principles Clyde lived by. We both knew that Clyde
charged purchases at local businesses, but we also knew that he
always made his debts good.
As darkness came on us that evening, my father also told me that
Ike Horne, Clyde’s uncle, was waiting at the Saltillo
station the morning that Clyde returned from the veterans’ hospital.
Ike reported that after the train stopped, a porter got off first
and placed a stool on the gravel beneath the steps of the coach.
Next Clyde came down the steps, assisted by the porter. Clyde was
wearing an aluminum brace on his right leg, partially hidden by
the leg of his trousers. His right arm dangled from his shoulder,
just as it did the first time I ever saw Clyde. The arm reminded
me of the broken wing of a quail.
The porter
placed two bags beside Clyde. Then he quickly boarded the train
just before it pulled away. Ike saw that Clyde was having some difficulty
keeping his balance. Clyde dropped to his knees, and there in the
midst of small mounds the ants had built from the red soil, he bent
over to kiss the ground.
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