Pinkie and the Banner

One of the things I was looking forward to about Junior High school was that I wouldn’t have to take classes like reading.  I had been reading since I was four and did not really see any point in continuing what I perceived as an instructional class on the subject.

But once again I found my self in yet another class called reading. It wasn’t the elementary type of DEAR  (Drop Everything And Read) reading like we use today.  We had to read the stories before class..like homework..and then discuss it.  

My teacher’s name was Theo Granville Powell.  He was a tall man, probably 6' 7”.  Had he been any taller he would have had to duck through the doors. His stature was large with a shape similar to that of Alfred Hitchcock. He wore his trousers pulled quite high with his belt buckle like a crown on his vast stomach.  He always wore a short sleeved  white shirt with a tie.  What hair he had left was blonde, fringing around his very pink bald head.  His most outstanding feature however was his very bright pink complexion earning him the nickname of Pinkie Powell.

Being rather reserve he tended to only speak when something needed to be said.  During passing period he always stood like a giant pink column in the hall beside his door.  He never yelled at anyone or called them down, but just his presence made everyone careful about what they said or did. In reality he knew what girls and boys were going steady on any given day.  He also knew that we all called him “Pinkie”.

We sat in alphabetical order in his class which put me in the next to the last seat on the second row.  Right in front of Nan.

Nan seemed to know about everything.  She told me if I didn’t know an answer to look down at a book on my desk and I would not be called on.  Since Nan was so worldly wise, I spent a fair amount of my time turned in my chair facing her.  Then right as class started, before I even had a chance to turn around,  I would hear this booming, “Jan would you please turn around and pay attention!”

Each day he would assign us something to be read before we came to class. This was especially hard for me since I could read something the day before, and completely lose all of the details since I had slept.  And then there were the days I completely forgot to read the assignment at all.

Mr. Powell expected everyone  to take his class seriously, he accepted no excuses for not having read the assignment. When he got upset or seemed nervous, you could see the muscles in his jaw flexing back and forth. I found it so hard to remember to read the assignments since nothing had to be 

turned in. No one was ever too excited about discussing what we had read.  As sure as someone held up their hand and made a comment, there would be giggling and snickering in the room. The thought of making a comment and having someone giggle or snicker mortified me.

When no one volunteered, Pinkie would begin to stride up and down the isles of desks, looking to see if someone was writing a note or goofing off.   If he caught someone, bingo the next volunteer!  Fridays were an especially dreaded day in Pinkie’s class because we always had a poem to memorize.  Then each  of us had to recite it...alone...in front of the class.  

The first few weeks I had it memorized perfectly held up my hand eagerly and was one of the first to recite.  Then Nan pointed out to me how unbecoming being so eager was. She said I didn’t need to waste time memorizing it at home when if we could manage to be one of the last ones, we  could have it memorized after hearing it 10 or 12 times.  I tried her suggestion and it worked really well.  We would sit with our heads in our books, looking studious, then would manage to be on of the last ones called upon.  Fridays in his class were always the longest class of the day, hearing the same poem droned over and over for an hour. My patience would be gone by the time the bell rang.

As the year went by each of us seemed to put less and less time into memorizing the poem...more and more of the class had figured out Nan’s theory of listening to others say to memorize it in class.   Pinkie of course was no newbie to this theory, having taught school...almost forever.

One Friday we had the dream poem to memorize, The Star Spangled Banner.  Everyone knew that, a slam dunk..no studying at all.  

Failing to see Pinkie walk in the room, still turned around talking to Nan, his voice boomed, “Jan turn around please, and since you are so busy talking you can be the first to recite.”  My brain immediately went on lock down.  All I could think of were the words to American the Beautiful...which had slipped out before I could think.

“Jan—please sit down,” Pinkie's voice boomed.

As I turned to sit down I  saw all the anxious faces, I realized they realized they did not know the words either, and everyone was sweating.  Instead of snickering as usual I saw real concern on those faces, that scared me even more.  I stumbled past a couple of desks and noticed that Nan had her head completely down on her desk.  “Does anyone actually have The Star Spangled Banner memorized or were you all planning to be the last one chosen like Jan?”, his booming voice questioned. 

Silence...total and complete silence covered the room like a blanket, not whisper, not a cough...nothing but silence.  He stood there looking at us, flexing his jaw as he did when he stood in the hallway.  

He turned, strided to his desk, pulled out his chair with a long scraaaaape and sat down.  We were all frozen, afraid to move or say a word.  He had never sat down at his desk during class before.  His eyes were still fixed on the class.  

Finally he said, “Put everything away and clear your desk, I am going to tell you a story.”   He slowly stood pulling up all of his six foot seven frame to its full height.  Crossing his arms over his vast chest, and flexing his jaw, he slowly scanned the entire classroom, looking into each of our eyes.

“Francis Scott Key was a respected young lawyer living in Georgetown just west of where the modern day Key Bridge crosses the Potomac River. He made his home there from 1804 to around 1833 with his wife Mary and their six sons and five daughters. 

At the time, Georgetown was a thriving town of 5,000 people just a few miles from the Capitol, the White House, and the Federal buildings of Washington. But, after war broke out in 1812 over Britian's attempts to regulate American shipping and other activities while Britain was at war with France, all 

was not tranquil in Georgetown. The British had entered Chesapeake Bay on August 19th, 1814, and by the evening of the 24th of August, the British had invaded and captured Washington. They set fire to the Capitol and the White 

House, the flames visible 40 miles away in Baltimore. 

President James Madison,his wife Dolley, and his Cabinet had already fled to a safer location. 

A thunderstorm at dawn kept the fires from spreading. The next day more buildings were burned and again a thunderstorm dampened the fires. Having done their work the British troops returned to their ships in and around the 

Chesapeake Bay. 

In the days following the attack on Washington, the American forces prepared for the assault on Baltimore that they knew would come by both land and sea. 

Word soon reached Francis Scott Key that the British had carried off an elderly and much loved town physician of Upper Marlboro, Dr. William Beanes, and was being held on the British flagship TONNANT. The townsfolk 

feared that Dr. Beanes would be hanged. They asked Francis Scott Key for his help, and he agreed, and arranged to have Col. John Skinner, an American agent for prisoner exchange to accompany him. 

On the morning of September 3rd, he and Col. Skinner set sail from Baltimore aboard a sloop flying a flag of truce approved by President Madison. On the 7th they found and boarded the TONNANT to confer with Gen. Ross and Adm. Alexander Cochrane. At first they refused to release Dr. Beanes. But Key and Skinner produced a pouch of letters written by wounded British prisoners praising the care they were receiving from the Americans, among them Dr. Beanes. The British officers relented but would not release the three Americans immediately because they had seen and heard too much of the preparations for the attack on Baltimore. 

They were placed under guard, first aboard the H.M.S. Surprise, then onto the sloop and forced to wait out the battle behind the British fleet. 

At the star-shaped Fort McHenry, the commander, Maj. George Armistead, asked for a flag so big that "the British would have no trouble seeing it from a distance"  The flag was so large that it had 400 yards of best quality wool 

bunting. The stars measured two feet from point to point. Eight red and seven white stripes, each two feet wide, were cut.  It measured 30 by 42 feet .

At 7 a.m. on the morning of September 13, 1814, the British bombardment began, and the flag was ready to meet the enemy. The British had said that when the flag fell that would signify the American’s surrender. 2,  The bombardment continued for 25 hours,the British firing 1,500 bombshells that weighed as much as 220 pounds and carried lighted fuses that would supposedly cause it to explode when it reached its target. But they weren't very dependable and often blew up in mid air. From special small boats the British fired the new Congreve rockets that traced wobbly arcs of red flame across the sky. The Americans had sunk 22 vessels so a close approach by the British was not possible. That evening the connonading stopped, but at about 1 a.m. on the 14th, the 

British fleet roared to life, lighting the rainy night sky with grotesque fireworks. Key, Col. Skinner, and Dr. Beanes watched the battle with apprehension. They knew that as long as the shelling continued, Fort McHenry had not surrendered and the flag was still there.   Its pole was standing at an odd angle but standing none the less. But, long before daylight there came a sudden and mysterious 

silence. What the three Americans did not know was that the British land assault on Baltimore as well as the naval attack, had been abandoned. Judging Baltimore as being too costly a prize, the British officers ordered a retreat. Waiting in the predawn darkness, Key waited for the sight that would end his anxiety; the joyous sight of Gen. Armisteads great flag blowing in the breeze. 

When at last daylight came, the flag was still there!  The men at ft. McHenry had refused to let the great flag fall.  They had held the pole with their hands and when those men had died holding it, others took their place, and then others—

and in the end the flag had been held up by the soldiers and the bodies of soldiers who had fought for their country. 2.

Being an amatuer poet and having been so uniquely inspired, Key began to write on the back of a letter he had in his pocket. Sailing back to Baltimore he composed more lines and in his lodgings at the Indian Queen Hotel he finished 

the poem. Judge J. H. Nicholson, his brother-in-law, took it to a printer and copies were circulated around Baltimore under the title "Defence of Fort McHenry".  It was printed in a newspaper for the first time in the Baltimore Patriot 

on September 20th,1814, then in papers as far away as Georgia and New Hampshire. To the verses was added a note "Tune: Anacreon in Heaven." In October a Baltimore actor sang Key's new song in a public performance and 

called it "The Star-Spangled Banner". Immediately popular, it remained just one of several patriotic airs until it was finally adopted as our national anthem on March 3, 1931. The flag, our beloved Star-Spangled Banner, went on view ,for 

the first time after flying over Fort McHenry, on January 1st,1876 at the Old State House in Philadelphia for the nations' Centennial celebration. “ 1.

I learned all four verses of the Star Spangled Banner.  Everyone in our class did.  I have never seen the flag or heard the song, that I wasn’t proud that Mr. Powell 

had required us to learn it.  I wish I had been thoughtful enough to tell him that.

Mr. Powell never married or had children.  He spent his entire life teaching seventh graders reading and having them memorize poetry.  He touched my life in a very meaningful way.

Note:  Mr. Powell knew everyone call him Pinkie....and was quite proud that he had a nickname.  Once, when my mother taught with him, she asked him if it offended him.  He said, “No. Quite the opposite....after all they don’t have have a nickname for you do they?”

In Ocotber 2014 I have been asked to give a presentation on the Star Spangled Banner for the Daughters of the American Revolotion (D.A.R.).  I plan to use this for the presentation.

1.National Flag Foundation website

2. Unknown source, included in the story told by Mr. Theo Granville Powell

Texas City Sun

Published December 28, 2003

Theo Granville Powell

Theo Granville Powell, 78, of Texas City, passed away Friday, December 26, 2003 at Mainland Medical Center in Texas City.

Funeral services will be 10:00 a.m. Monday, December 29, 2003 at First Baptist Church in La Marque, Texas with Rev. David Smith and Rev. Grayson Glass officiating. Burial will be 1:00 p.m. Tuesday, December 30, 2003 at Evergreen Cemetery in Lipan, Texas. Visitation will be from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Sunday, December 28, 2003 at Emken-Linton Funeral Home.

Mr. Powell was born December 9, 1925 in Lipan, Texas. He was a retired school teacher for La Marque Independent School District, and a Deacon Emeritus for First Baptist Church in La Marque, Texas.

Survivors include his sisters, Dorothy Powell and Vera Allen both of Lipan, Texas and Helen Powell of California; numerous nieces and nephews and other relatives and friends.*

* And hundreds of students whose lives were made better for having had him as a teacher.

ABOUT A BLOG

My daughter, a professional writer, commented to me about my blog.  She told me that blogs should not be about personal experiences but rather should be a way to inform others about a topic. She said, “You should not being writing a blog unless you are an authority on that subject. A blog should be professional  writing."

She has a degree in English from the University of Oklahoma, is a published author, has been a television director, producer, a magazine editor, a wife and mother of three,  her writing pays the bills each month.....she is definitely a professional and an authority on writing.

I felt stupid... I had been writing, telling stories I thought were funny, notable, talking about people, because I wanted them to be remembered....and to know now, it was wrong.  I find out I shouldn’t have written about those things...those people?  

I tried to think of something I knew more about than anyone else.  Nothing....I am just ordinary.  I have never been good enough at anything to have ever been an authority.  There are many things I would like to be an authority on....(and perhaps thought I was), but no...I never qualified.  

And my daughter, an authority, reading what I had written, how she must have laughed, no scoffed, at my stupidity.  At that point, I quit writing.  For two years every time I felt the urge to write...I just scribbled notes, knowing nothing was noteworthy, I was not an authority on anything.

 But as time went by, I started to think about the experiences I have had in my life, unique to only me.  Over the course of the past forty years I have worked as a buyer, a mother, a wife, an advocate for Parkinson’s Disease, a church staff coordinator, a teacher, a volunteer, a docent, and a curator of a museum. Museums.....all museums are authorities, telling a the history of something. One saying, common to museums is, “All history is local history.” That is true. Some local history becomes more famous or noteworthy than others, but it is all local at some point. Then I started thinking about stories. Stories like history, are all personal at some point.

People write books because they have a personal story in their heart that they, or someone has lived.  It has changed their life, made them look at things differently or altered the course they were on.  It happened to only them.  Sharing it made another person’s life better.

I thought about my father fighting in World War II,  all the stories he told, unique to him, the ones I heard and sadly, the ones that died with him. The realization that the man fighting beside him, experienced the same battle and had a story too. A totally different one, yet at the same place and same time.  How many times have I read a story, only to realize that someone else was like me, their feelings were the same as mine, though their lives and experiences  were so different.....but most importantly, that we had the same questions and same struggle.

One little tragic love story.....ROMEO AND JULIET....made someone else tell their tragic love story. Herman Melville told a story about a fish...MOBY DICK. Stephen Crane, about being afraid, A RED BADGE OF COURAGE. A little girl told the story about her tiny, limited little world in an attic.....THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK.  They all have one thing in common....when they told their story, my world was broadened by the  experience they shared. It was a personal story, that became a universal story.  It made me understand a new perspective I had not envisioned.  They wrote about their story because they had those experiences.  Most of us are authorities on only one thing....our personal journeys.   

My daughter is an authority on so many things, breastfeeding, natural childbirth, baby wearing, writing, television directing, production, magazine editing and more that I even don’t know about.  I will never have her knowledge or her experience at any of those things. She will always be smarter and have more experience than me. I respect her knowledge and her intelligence. I envy her success at such a young age. I am embarrassed to note, that at my age I have not achieved  authority about anything in particular.  I do wonder though....does wisdom ever trump authority?

The Dike

The Dike

Unless you grew up in Galveston County, you would think this post had something to do with Hans Brinker.  But in Galveston County....everyone knew about The Dike.   It is a long pier-like road that goes five or so miles into Galveston Bay.

When my parents first married and moved to Texas City from Oklahoma, being close to the water was an incredible novelty.  Their first house was four houses down from the original seawall.  Mom said she would take me, as a small child, for walks along the seawall.  She found the water to be wonderful and calming.  It was not unsual for us to get in the car in the evening and drive to the end of the dike and back just for fun.  I learned about the birds, watching seagulls and pelicans fish in the bay.  I still feel nostalgic going out there.

My dad had been in “304 days of Combat” during World War II.  That also was rephrased to say, “I went on a picnic  for 304 days”, “I went camping for 304 days,” and so on, all meaning that he would never do those things again.  So I was pleasantly surprised when Mom announced that we were going on a picnic on the Dike with our friends the Faulks.

Mr. Faulk had been in WWII as well, but in the Navy. According to my dad, sailors always had a bed, and meals. Dad made WWII in the Navy, with bombs blowing up ships and sinking them in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, seem generally very comfortable.  

Dad had agreed to go on the picnic at the Dike because the Faulks had chairs and a table from camping.  And for the first time we packed up the picnic basket Mom had gotten when they first got married.   My next door neighbor, Jimmy, was going with us too.  Dressed in our swimsuits, slathered with smelly suntan lotion, we packed the car. Jimmy had blown up his air mattress float before he came over.  Dad made him press the air back out, to fit it in the car.  As we drove over the seawall, Dad told us to be on the lookout for the Faulk’s 1959 red chevy stationwagon.

When we spotted them, Mr. Faulk had already set up a tent, a table, chairs and had the grill going ready for hot dogs.  Their son, Butch, had gone further down the beach with some friends from school.  Their daughter, Judi, was three years older than me, and was stuck with us two little kids.  Grudgingly she helped us blow up the float.  We pushed it on the water as we walked away from the beach.  I wore a life vest since I couldn’t swim, while, Judi and Jimmy held on to the sides of the float.  We had been playing for 30 minutes or so in the water, when Jimmy realized if he let go of the float, he could no longer touch the bottom, Judi told him not to be afraid, it was just because he was short.  Judi tried to touch the bottom and discovered that she couldn’t touch the bottom either.  

Jimmy could swim, but not for very long.  Judi could swim but she didn’t swim in water over her head.  At first I started to cry, but Judi quickly told me, “You’re the one with the life jacket, it is Jimmy and me that will drown!”  We started waving our arms and yelling but our parents couldn’t hear us.  They were busy talking, never dreaming that the water was over our heads.  Judi started talking about how if we floated out to sea, a boat might pick us up.  That was it for me, and I started crying again.  Judi then decided that if we all yelled at the same time someone would hear us so we started to yell together.   

About that time we noticed several men wade fishing just to the side of us and they were standing on the bottom.  Judi once again tried to reach the bottom to no avail.  The fisherman saw us and yelled for us to paddle towards them. By this time, Dad and Mr. Faulk had seen us.  As they ran through the water to us, it was like they stepped off a cliff and disappeared under water, bobbing up, having to start swimming.  As we paddled over to the fisherman, suddenly our feet were once again touching the bottom.  Feeling sort of silly for making so much commotion, we walked the float back to the beach.

As it turned out  the city had dredged out the area where we had been floating to add sand to the beach, leaving a deep hole that you couldn’t see in the water.  We got back to our camp where hamburgers and hot dogs were waiting.  We were starved, and spent the whole meal talking about our adventure of Being Adrift at Sea. I commented I couldn’t wait to tell my friends what had happened, when Judi quickly reminded me, “You are the one that shouldn’t have been afraid, because you had the life jacket.”

Most days of my childhood days ended with my Daddy saying to my mother,  “Honey (or Dear), you wanna go for a little drive?” to which my mother would reply, 
“Let me get my purse.”  

Then, we would get in the Buick and head down Palmer Highway, make a little jog to the right at Bay Street, over the seawall and on to the bumpy road of The Dike.  With my back window down I could feel the salt air on my face, hear the ever scoffing calls of the gulls and the lapping of the water as it hit the big, square, granite ballast rocks, that lined the road. We would make the loop around at the end, where the pelicans floated lazily, after a long day of fishing, and experience it all again as we headed home.

I can still feel the comfort of climbing into bed, with those soothing sounds and smells lulling me to sleep.

*If you want to share your memories or comments about "The Dike" please scroll down to the “comments” section at the bottom of the blog.  They will be included for everyone to enjoy!

Reference for the following information:www.texascity-library.org/history/growth/dike.php

The Texas City Dike juts out into Galveston Bay on the easternmost end of Texas City. The dike is parallel to and north of the 50-foot deep, 600-foot wide Texas City Channel, which allows shipping traffic to access the Port of Texas City. The dike's structure consists of a 28,200-foot-long (approximately 5.34 miles) pile dike paired with a rubble-mound dike that runs along the south edge of the pile dike (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 2007). The Texas City Dike was built to protect the Texas City Channel from cross currents and excessive silting, although the channel must still be dredged frequently to prevent shoaling in the waterway.

Originally authorized by the River and Harbor Act of 1913, construction of the dike was sponsored by Texas City but was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Galveston District. The first version of the dike was timber pile construction, built for a cost of $1.4 million and completed in 1915. After construction, material collected from dredging the Texas City Channel was repeatedly deposited on top of the timber pile dike, but it eventually washed back out into the water; to prevent this problem, the Corps added a rubble-mound formation to the supplement the existing dike in 1931-1932.

Col. Hugh Moore and other Texas City leaders continued to try to convince the Corps of Engineers to build permanent bulkheads that would prevent washout and allow the dike to be used as a public beach and recreation area. The Corps of Engineers was not amenable to his requests, so Moore's wife, Helen Moore, who was a member of the Texas House of Representatives, took up the issue with the Texas Legislature. In 1931, she gained passage of a state bill that patented a 1,000-foot-wide strip of land with the old U.S. Corps of Engineers timber pile dike at its center to the City of Texas City. The patent included all submerged lands and tidal flats located within the 1,000 foot strip.

In the late 1930s the Works Progress Administration paid for some dike maintenance and built a roadway on the dike. Colonel Moore continued to lobby the Army Corps of Engineers to improve the dike so that the city could use it for recreational activities, without much success. The City of Texas City and the Works Progress Administration continued to patch the dike, at times filling in eroded areas with scrap automobile bodies, rock, broken brick, and waste from the city dump in an attempt to break wave action and prevent further erosion to the dike, but their efforts were only temporarily successful.

An application to build a new retaining wall and dike was submitted for review in September 1945 because of the continual erosion on the north side of the dike (Texas City Board of Trade, personal communication, September 1, 1945).

In 1957, the City of Texas City leased approximately 13 acres of land on the eastern tip of the dike to Clyde Ragsdale, who formed the Texas City Dike Corp. for the purpose of developing the area. A lighted fishing pier, a bait camp, a warehouse and a refreshment stand were eventually built in the area. In 1963, the Texas City Dike Corp. was sold to the Texas City Dike and Marina, Inc., when Mr. Ragsdale died.

There were continual renovations made to the dike over the next three decades, including patenting an additional strip of land at the eastern point of the Dike in 1963. In 1977 a plan was put forth to widen the channel from 100 feet to 1,200 feet; deepen it from 34 feet to 40 feet; and widen the entrance from 250 feet to 400 feet (Vander Bosch, 1977, p.2). By 1995 there was a 600-feet lighted fishing pier that offered "some of the deepest water pier fishing on the Texas coast" (Acker, 1995, p. 21). Many tourist advertisements claim the Texas City Dike as the world's largest fishing pier. The Texas City-La Marque Hurricane Flood Protection System, an interconnected system of levees, pump stations, dike and seawall sections, was dedicated in 1987. On March 25, 1995, a historical marker was dedicated at Anchor Park for the Dike.

On Sept. 13, 2008, Hurricane Ike made landfall at Galveston (Drye, 2008, n.p.). The storm travelled up Galveston Bay with 110-mph winds and a 25-foot storm surge. Although the Texas City Dike remained structurally intact and was cleared of debris immediately after the storm, the recreation and business facilities were washed away by the storm surge. The pilings for the dike remained, but much of the road and shoulders were washed away. Texas City and Galveston County worked with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to obtain federal funding to repair and renovate the Dike and surrounding areas (Tompkins, 2008, n.p.). The Dike was closed to the public for two years after the storm while the structure was repaired.

On Sept. 11, 2010, the Texas City Dike re-opened to the public. A $5 entry fee for non-city residents was instituted to assist in defraying the cost of maintenance and future improvements to the Dike. The cost of the effort to clean up storm debris after Hurricane Ike totaled $1.5 million. City staff restored many of the boat ramps and picnic shelters at an estimated cost of $250,000, while the $4.1 million cost of repairing the dike road was covered jointly by FEMA, Galveston County and the City of Texas City. Subsequent to the storm, Galveston County signed over all rights and ownership of any easements and rights to the road to the City of Texas City.

The dike currently boasts four boat ramps, ten concrete picnic shelters and one wheelchair accessible pier. The city installed solar-powered lights and performed additional repairs on piers and ramps with the assistance of a grant from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Prior to its closure after Hurricane Ike, the Dike's Samson-Yarbrough ramp was the busiest on Galveston Bay (Aulds, 2010), and the dike as a whole was the second-busiest boat launch site in the state.