I stepped out of the screened door at the front of my home and onto the porch of the house where my father was born. I grew up there and felt wonderfully comfortable in the old Barker family home. I loved that old house even though it had not been maintained very well. It’s physically gone now, but not from my mind. I still have dreams that I’m walking around in it.
I had just returned home the day before from a one-year tour in the Army, Thailand, Southeast Asia. I was in perfect health (maybe the best of my whole life) and feeling very unencumbered, wearing jeans I’d worn in high school, a T-shirt and tennis shoes with no socks. As always, I had my pocket knife my grandfather gave me before I left for the Army. My dad Fred Barker, my son Cole Barker, and I would always, when asked if we had a knife, reply, “I have my pants on, don’t I?”
A friend asked me, when I went back to college, “What was the worst thing about being away from home for a year?” My answer was simply, "My parents looked so old when they picked me up at Love Field, and the Interstate had bypassed my hometown.” My dad was 46 and my mother 45 years old.
The fading light of the June day was soothing, and the heat felt normal; as nowhere seemed hotter than Thailand, I'll also mention I felt bulletproof as well. The blacktop oil dirt road gave off heat, but it felt good and reminded me of my childhood in the 50s playing and riding bicycles with friends on that same street, which is now part of Little Creek Park. I wasn’t exercising or laboring and almost had a floating feeling of freedom. After all, I had a 30-day leave until reporting to Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, and Panama for Jungle Training. Those 30 days seemed like forever.
I enjoyed studying the houses as I passed, reminiscing about days gone by. Just 2 blocks to Highway 67, Main Street, Mt. Vernon, Texas. My Granny Barker called it the “Broadway of America” when anyone asked where she lived. I believe it does run from coast to coast.
It was not until I reached the corner of Hwy 67 and English St. that I realized what I was witnessing: no cars and big trucks! Actually, no nothing, not a soul moving. I turned east towards downtown Mt. Vernon at Lowery’s big pink house and realized what I was or wasn’t seeing. The giant concrete sidewalk (Interstate-30) had stolen our lifeblood of traffic, almost every last car and truck, or so it seemed to this 22-year-old soldier on this summer day.
From age 15 years old, I worked on I-30 for 5 summers and never realized the results that would come from my endeavors. Wow! Just wow! I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing. Lowry’s big red sign, such a landmark, was dark. Once, at 14 years old, I was flying Braniff home from a visit with my sister Nancy Barker Mays in Washington, DC. I calculated the time outside of Dallas Love Field. Doing the math and figuring I was over Mt. Vernon, I looked out and actually saw the Lowry's sign from the Braniff airplane lowering its flight path for landing. One of the strangest feelings ever I’ve had: so close, yet so far away. The stewardess was not interested or impressed with the excitement of this 14-year-old kid seeing his small hometown business from her airline. However, I’m still amazed at the sighting. Had the plane been 200 feet to the south, I would have missed it. What were the odds? Thanks, L.D. Lowry.
As I turned the corner headed downtown, I took in more of the same. More absence of activity, people, and businesses open to serve the seemingly endless caravan of cars and big trucks coming east and west up and down Highway 67. Suddenly I had a sinking feeling and a void in the pit of my stomach. Downtown Mt. Vernon truly looked like a ghost town you might see in an episode of The Twilight Zone.
The Humble Station that had been open 24 hours a day for as long as I could remember was empty, dead, closed, and barren of life or any sign of life. Looking up Main Street, the single caution light was still blinking as if sending out an SOS for help from anywhere or anyone. Help, help, help, the light seemed to cry out. I felt like crying, but soldiers don’t cry. In Southeast Asia, I had a buddy, a fellow soldier, die in my lap the second week I was there, and this was almost equally traumatizing. I wasn't weak. My hometown was dying in my lap, and there was nothing I could do.
Texaco station closed, Millers Café across from the Humble station closed, and that’s when it hit me: the “Music had Died”. Millers’ Café, a once sophisticated eating establishment, at least in the eyes of this country kid, had closed its doors. Well, it had changed to Fine’s Fine Food a few years back, but it was still the same concept as the Miller Café hangout. The jukebox was always playing loudly with whatever the latest and greatest new songs of the time. This sad place was now missing the sounds of kids, car radios, loud hot rod exhaust, and traffic passing through the heart of our town, my town that I had left bustling and thriving just one year earlier. Maybe I really “was” in the Twilight Zone? Life, I decided, was what the town was missing! The traffic which had been the heartbeat of our city’s existence had disappeared. I had never had a feeling of loss like I was feeling.
I kept walking and more of the same. Zachary’s Mobil station, Brown’s Grocery, where I had been a sack boy for 50 cents an hour in grade school. Later I moved to Hometown Food for a raise to 60 cents per hour. But soon RB Carr, who owned Hometown Grocery, could not compete with the $1.35 paid on the interstate construction. The Texaco station, abandoned; our first Piggly Wiggly building empty. There was definitely a major change in the works, and I did not approve.
That balmy June day in 1968 was an awakening I did not want to confront. The Ford dealership was gone, and there was no sign of life. My Grandad, Jack White, had once worked as a salesman there. Oh, the excitement of those beautiful new cars, coming to the showroom every year! That showroom was empty, with dirty windows. However, on the other end of town, Teague and Son Chevrolet Dealership had managed to stay alive with no sons, only Carolyn and Marilyn to continue the name. I kept walking to the center of our forlorn city.
Buildings on the corner of Main and 37 had been torn down and replaced by the new First National Bank, leaving the old building vacant and just a shell of itself. McKellar’s dry goods, where we had dropped in to pick up our graduation gifts, was empty. Many more buildings empty and vacant that had once been breathing life into downtown Mt. Vernon.
I was troubled by this thought for years. And as President of the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce in 1976, at the yearly banquet with Congressman Sam Hall as guest, I spoke of the second set of pioneers to Franklin County. My wife Sue Scott Barker and I were part of that movement. Some friends never left, and some were trickling back. Davey and Debi Norman, Dave and Michell Elliott, Lanny Ramsay and later Kitty, Derwood Banister and Mary, Randy and Vicky Newsome, Ronnie and Marybeth Davis, Waymond and Diane Newsome, Ed and Marilyn Joyce, Mike and Janet Jorden, Harold and Dorie Cason, Greg Carr, Thomas and Laurie Ramsay, and many others kept coming back.
With this new beginning, new blood and life breath, Mt Vernon, Texas began to rise and fly once again like “the Phoenix”, the mythical bird that rose from its own ashes to live and breathe once again, soaring to new heights.
It would take too long and too many words, certainly more than allowed in these articles, to keep describing my day, June of 1968. And way too many words to describe the rise once again of Mt. Vernon, like the Phoenix, to what we are enjoying now in my hometown.
I’ll not write part 2 of this story. Someone else can do that. I will only leave you with my story of returning home from war only to find my town sadly changed. It was truly the day “The Music Died for Me”. And I remember it like it happened yesterday.
Mt. Vernon, Texas, has truly risen from its own ashes and taken on a new life. I’m proud to have been a part of it.
Next Writer Please!
