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Growing up Midland: 'It was a great place to be a kid'

3/18/2011

6 Comments

 
Jack Swallow and Craig Hubbard have grown up to be notable Midlanders through their community involvement and work. While many know them today, the time they spent here as adolescents was a bit more nondescript. Their running buddies consisted of a quaint little group of about 100 -- in just one square block. In spite of the amount of friends they had, the way Hubbard and Swallow grew up was not atypical. And the routine adolescence that they, and no doubt many others, experienced says a lot about what kind of place Midland was.

Both men grew up in the same neighborhood in the 1960s, along Cuthbert and Storey, near Hill Park. They rode bikes, made the grades, chased girls, went away to college and came back to continue the legacy their parents had established for them a generation earlier. Those growing up years show that a kid didn't have to stand out in order to be an integral piece of the bigger Midland picture.

"We grew up in an interesting neighborhood," said Swallow. "Within a one block radius of our house, from 4 years older than I was to 4 years younger, there were 120 kids. It was a prolific neighborhood."

Water balloon throwing was a favored pastime, but it was tossing water balloons at cars that was the undisputed shenanigan of choice, and Hubbard remembered one Easter weekend when the country cousins came in for a visit and were indoctrinated into the ritual.

"It wasn’t a good day until somebody in one of those cars started chasing you," Hubbard recalled. "My grandparents came in for Easter one year, and my cousins from Borden County came with them. We were out in the front yard. We hadn’t done anything yet, but my cousin John threw a water balloon at the first car he saw and it was an unmarked police car. And we all scattered. We knew where to go because we all knew where the hiding places were. But my country cousins, they were running around like chickens with their heads cut off because they didn’t know where to go. I ended up under the porch of a neighbor's house until I thought the crisis was over. I looked up after 20 minutes, and right outside sat a police car with my cousin John in the front seat."

Swallow and Hubbard shared a good laugh over the memory at a lunch recently, and although that was the only water balloon memory shared, it doesn't take much to see that there were many others much like that one.

Both men also remembered well the flood of 1968, when they were teenagers.

"They were planting trees out front of the Midland High Youth Center," Swallow remembered. "Even though it was raining like crazy they served lunch that day, and I remember we were all standing in the trophy room at the front of the school and we were all watching the rain come down and we were dumbfounded because of how hard it was raining. We watched two guys take off running toward the youth center. And remember, they had dug holes for those big trees, but they hadn't put the trees in the them yet. And all of a sudden you saw these two ... both of them hit those holes and they went in over their heads. The completely disappeared for a minute. They were just gone."

Both men are unapologetic in his love for Midland. Swallow almost gushes at his boyhood memories and continues to this day to be one of the town's most outspoken champions. Hubbard, though quieter, is not far behind in his admiration of a town that was good for him as a boy, and is now good to his family.

"We rode our bikes from one end of the town to another. And we never worried about anything but whether or not we'd be home before dark," Swallow said.

Hubbard and Swallow both said that as bike-riding preteens, they never worried about crime, quite simply because there wasn't any.

"I know it sounds corny," Swallow said. "But I love it here. It was a great place to be a kid."

6 Comments
Missy Donnell Moscoe
3/18/2011 05:59:46 am

I was of the same era as Jack and Craig. Our favorite neighborhood game was to all line up on the fence as a dust storm came rolling through town. The last one inside was the winner. Of course our mother was waiting for us, dust cloths in hand, to wipe off the window seals. It was a great time and a great place to grow up!

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Kelly Coleman
3/18/2011 06:27:27 am

Ah yes. Midland in the 60's. Not many trees so my dear Dad built me a first class 'treeless tree house'. It had a trap door and offered a great view of the nearby Midland Air Park. Unobstructed in those days because there was not much civilization between our house on Stanolind and Lamesa! We had an active neighborhood too and dug an extensive network of tunnels and large holes in the vacant lots to play in. We threw our share of water balloons at passing cars too, as well as dirt clods, rocks, plums and everything else that would fit in our grimy little hands. No wonder I needed those cortisone shots in my shoulder last year!

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Tommy Grace
3/18/2011 09:36:13 am

Yes, Midland in the sixties was an awesome place to grow up. We moved to a new house in Jan of '62 on Stanolind right off of Midland Drive. I believe it was the Scotsdale Addition. There were 26 houses on the block that had between 60 and 70 kids all about the same age. You could go out with a buddy to throw the football around and before you knew it there was a full-fledged game going on. Playing in the fields behind the houses or hunting for horny toads all day and coming back and comparing your catch. We built forts in the field and had a maze of tunnels and fox holes, we even built a lookout tower. During one of the infrequent snows we decided it would be fun to throw snowballs at cars coming down Midland Dr., we didn't have any run ins with upset drivers though. Riding our bikes down to the Alamo Park pool for a summer swim, man we had some fun. We would also go to the Chief drive-in and watch the movie from behind the fence, we really thought we were getting away something. I could go on with more stories, but these just go to show that kids from our generation did'nt need video games and the media to have fun. We used our imagination to have a blast growing up in an awesome time.

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Katie McAbee-Spriggs
6/7/2011 12:43:05 am

There aren't too many Midland children (now old and grey as we are) that won't remember..... wait for it.... DECORATING YOUR BIKE FOR THE JULY 4 PARADE! No matter how careful you were in putting the crepe paper through the spokes, either your brother would sabotage it the night before - or it would shred in seconds after one of the DAR ladies would give the "Go" signal. I began a long life of "not very ladylike language" at aged four as a result. Fabulous.

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Scott Wemple
8/4/2011 12:16:09 pm

I along with my brother and two sisters were some of those 120 kids Jack Swallow spoke of along Cuthbert and Storey, near Hill Park. We lived on the east side of Hill Park on Kansas Street. Yes, waterballooning was a favorite and mischievous childhood pastime on the other side of Hill Park. Winter after an occasional snow, ushered in snowball throwing. Yes, I would agree with Craig that it wasn't a good day unless you were chased by an occupant in a car. After a good rain the frogs from Hill Park would seranade you to sleep at night, before a pump was installed in the early 70's to drain off the water down Storey street. I remember playing football at Hill Park with the Swallow and Hubbard brothers a couple of times. We used to fly our bat kites at Hill Park and have dog fights in the air. I still remember a couple of kids hiding in the bushes in the park with their BB guns attempting to shoot down our kites. One of those ace sniper kids still owes me a bat kite. I think I remember one of the kids saying to the other, "Good shot Jack!", but I may be mistaken. :0) Yes, it was a great place and time to be a kid. Scott Wemple

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Minette Velvin Strader
8/14/2011 09:57:37 pm

I grew up in Midland, along with my brother Trey and my sister, Genie. Our dad was JC Velvin, Jr. We lived on "C" street and went to Bowie Elem. Growing up there was wonderful. My dad started the self serve gasoline business and the preset console you see in all of the service stations now was his baby, I watched him build the prototype in our kitchen in Midland. He also had the idea for a credit card to open hotel room doors but was laughed out of the room>>>>>Who would have guessed 60 years later that is what we would be doing.

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    Welcome, and thanks for your interest in what will be a rewarding trip through our shared past. This "History of Character" blog is only the beginning. A book by the same name -- "A History of Character: The Story of Midland, Texas" -- will be published September 2014. Through this blog you'll be able to track the progress of the project and learn along with the book's author, Jimmy Patterson. If you have stories to share that you think deserve mention in the history of our city, drop an email to historyofcharacter@gmail.com.

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