Does anyone remember the time the gasoline truck hit the train?  We lived close by and didn't realize anything had happened until we heard the "booms" from the tires exploding.  We looked out and saw the big fire and everyone was being evacuated to the end of the street near Jolly Drug.  This was probably about 1957, maybe even earlier.

   Jolly Drug had the best cherry cokes around.  Mr. Jolly always watched us if looked at the comic books  - didn't want us reading them unless we bought them.

   I can remember Earl Smith tying a hood of a car to the back of his car.  It was turned upside down and we rode in it down Phillips Ave.  It was more dangerous than we were aware of at the time as the hood would sway back and forth, somtimes near the rear wheels of his car.

   Some of us girls got to go to Enid with the band while we were in the eighth grade since we were twirlers.  We were wowed with the attention when D. L. Malicoat showed us how to play poker in the hall.

   I can remember Miss Noel in biology class imitating an amoeba with her mouth and of course, Mr. George shedding tears when Stonewall Jackson died.  He always said that God had Stonewall Jackson killed so the North could win the war.  He also would warn us about marrying someone who had low standards.  Miss Dynes said we shouldn't get married - that anyone could get a man.  We wondered where hers was (didn't realize that wasn't an option to her). We were always amazed that Mrs. Thompson could cut the straightest line with her hands shaking like they did. Mrs. Forbus was the best math teacher ever.  Miss Harrell was always so nice to me, helping me to find a book she thought would interest me.  She and Mrs. Patman visited me in the hospital after I graduated and brought me a gift.  I was so fortunate to have Mrs. Sparks for English in the eighth grade - a very good teacher.  Mrs. Adams was so patient in teaching bookkeeping and shorthand.  I can remember Miss Moore in the fifth grade calling Cheryl Adams, Virginia Pirtle and me in after class and making us aware that our private "PAB" club made other girls feel left out. 

09-2: The video of Phillips Before and After is outstanding! 

I read several memories of the black dusters in the fifties, and I remember them well.  I'm guessing that they happened some time between 1953 and 1955.  We had these dusters two years in a row.  I especially remember the second one because it started raining during that one.  I think I was in Mrs. Willis' fifth grade classroom (about 1954) when the mud balls starting hitting those tall classroom windows.  You don't forget something like that.

09-3: We were taking a test in Mr. George’s class one day and he left the room for a few minutes, as he often did.  Ms. Noel came down the hall to get a mop out of the janitor’s closet in the hallway near Mr. George’s room to clean up a spill in her lab.  She whips open the janitor closet door and lo and behold, Mr. George was standing over the sink with it “whipped out” and was taking a wiz in the sink in the janitor’s closet, as he often did, so he wouldn’t have to walk all the way to the boy’s restroom and be gone from class too long.
I was a ’69 Sr. and the night before leaving for Colorado Springs for our Sr. class trip, R. W. and I were out looking for mischief, as we most usually were, and may have even have had a few brewskis, as we often were known to do.  Well, “Hollywood” Hawthorne had been assigned to be the chaperone  (i.e. “watchdog”) on our bus the next day on the way to C. Springs.  R. W. and I decided it would be funny if we could somehow make Hollywood miss the bus the next morning.  We decided to wait until well into the late night after the Hawthorne family was in bed and lights out, and we would go throw the switch on the outside main power box to Hollywood’s house.  We did, and the next morning everybody was on the bus, early as I remember, and ready to go, waiting on Hollywood.  Our hope was that we would leave him behind, but, one of the other teachers went inside the school and called Hollywood.  In about 15 minutes, Hollywood shows up as you might guess, with his always immaculately combed and greased hair extremely disheveled and looking like he had just gotten out of bed and thrown on his clothes.  He was pissed!!!  However, he never figured out exactly who turned his power off that night.  He just kept looking out over the bus that day on the way to C. Springs with a suspicious and “I want to get even look” in his eye.  We loved it!  I don’t think he ever found out who pulled that prank.  What fun!

09-4: I had forgotten about Coach Harris teaching.  I am sure I had him for some subject, but I have forgotten what it was.  Maybe World History.  I just remember him being the head football coach.  I would have liked to have seen him after I matured.  He was a good and wise man, I am sure.  Unfortunately, we ended our relationship on a bad note.  In the pre-season, just-before school started, summer football workout sessions of my senior year, I quit the team over a girl.  
I was the heir apparent starting offensive and defensive left tackle that school year (‘68/’69).  At the time, late summer ’68, I had my head in the clouds and was pretty seriously involved with a young lady.  Every time I made a mistake running a play in the late summer, pre-season, two-a-day football practices, Coach Harris would grab me by the front of my uniform and pull me into his face and get eyeball to eyeball with me and ridicule me over the “girl friend” and blame her for my making mistakes.  Well, as one might guess, most of us young men absolutely dreaded the long, strenuous, hot and miserable summer workouts.  In addition, I lived just south of Stinnett, 1 block inside the Plemons/Phillips school districts, so I had to be bused into Phillips and then back home twice a day for football practice.  All of that misery strung together just made the entire football practice ordeal almost intolerable, especially with my being “in love”.  So, all that coupled with Coach Harris’s harassment had me pretty much maxed out on the ol’ misery and stress scales that summer.  Well, one day I made a mistake on a play in practice, again, and Coach Harris kicked my rear end, literally, (can you imagine what would happen to a coach today that would try that?) and told me “You are gonna have to pick football or that girl, because you can’t do both. Now what’s it gonna be?”  I said, “The girl”, and turned and walked to the field house and dressed and went home, regrettably, never to return.  The heck of it was, I broke up with the girl two weeks later, wouldn’t ya know, but my youthful pride and stubbornness would not allow me to go back and ask Coach Harris if I could come back to the team.  I spent every Friday night home-game sitting out at the end of the football field (on Whittenburg Ave.??) in my car watching the games through the south end bleachers, too proud to go sit in the stands with the other fans and watch.  I would sit there alone and watch the entire game, full of regret for quitting and wishing I was on the field, for I knew I had blown a potential chance to play college ball at the University of Texas, which could have changed my entire life. 
I had gotten enough playing time during the ‘67/’68 school year football season that I guess I showed a lot of promise, because during our spring practices of ’68, or it may have been during the pre-school practices that fall, I don’t really remember for sure, but Coach Darrell Royal from the University of Texas showed up at practice one afternoon and visited with me and a few other guys on the team about possibly coming to Texas to play for him after we graduated. His visit was published in an article about Coach Royal’s recruiting efforts in Texas Football magazine that year.  Had I played ball that fall, it probably would have changed my entire life.  As it was, however, I ended up graduating PHS in the Spring of ‘69, getting drafted into the military about a year later and saw service in the Vietnam war and the 1973 mid-east war.  Fortunately, and by God’s grace and mercy, I survived both wars and was honorably discharged, and then with God’s divine guidance and a tremendous amount of my father-in-laws wise and gentle, persistent nudging, I took the opportunity to go to college on the GI bill.  It took me five arduous years, with a wife and two babies in tow, to get my Bachelors degree from the Dept. of Agricultural Engineering at Texas A&M University.  For it, God has blessed me with a financially rewarding and very interesting, good and comfortable life.  I have often wondered, though, how my life might have been different had a I played football my Sr. year at Phillips High School for Coach Harris.  You know, I eventually got over the hurt of the incident with Coach Harris and can honestly say, I never harbored any ill feelings toward Coach Harris, and as an adult, I could see the wisdom in what he was trying to do for me and the stupidity of the flash decision I made that late summer day in Chesty Walker Stadium.  I wish I could have seen him and visited with him as an adult.
Incidentally, Coach Harris was inducted into the Texas High School Coaches Association's Hall of Honor in July 1996, and retired from Tascosa High School in Amarillo.  Sadly, he passed away Feb. 28, 2007.  This link http://files.usgwarchives.net/tx/potter/obits/2007/030207.txt will take you to an obit for Coach Harris.