Cousins are just the best playmates when you're a kid!
Tonia, Sandra and Michael (not born yet in this 'snapshot') are cousins on my Dad's side. Their parents were my Uncle Leon and Aunt Earlene and they lived in Dallas as we did when we all were little. Most of my memories playing with them was on Harlandale Street in Dallas where Granny and Grandad Hogan lived. 
That place had a certain mystery to me. It was an old house, and I remember being a little afraid of the closets -- that's kind of funny now! What fun we had playing in the expansive back yard, just playing the simplest of kid games: chase, Simon says, or something we made up. Did you ever play Doodlebug? The ground under the carport cover was unpaved and soft sandy dirt just right for doodlebugs. You would see those distinct round shapes in the dirt that only a doodlebug can make. Take a small stick, stir it around in the circle and say, "doodlebug, doodlebug, come out, come out! Your house is on fire!". And then you watch the little creature begin thumping the dirt out of his tiny house once again. What? You never played that? At five years of age it's great entertainment!
I loved Tonia and Sandra a lot, maybe because I had no sisters. Or maybe just because we were cousins. Tonia Ann was a year older and had an early motherly instinct that included me. When I started to school in the first grade at Roger Q Mills Elementary School she was a grade ahead of me and would accompany me on the walk home in the afternoons. (Yes, we were allowed to walk alone to and from school at that young age!) Tonia's duties, she felt, also included giving me an occasional kiss, something I was not used to! I reported this daily activity to my Mother, who talked to Aunt Earlene who told Tony to please stop kissing Gary -- he doesn't like it! When I see her to this day we laugh.
Carol and JR were cousins on my Mother's side. Aunt Gladys and Uncle John lived on a dry-land farm in Littlefield, which is out in the table mesa of the Texas Panhandle. It's so flat out there you could stand on the roof of your car and see the next county. Of course, in those days the steel in the cars was heavy enough you could actually do that -- if you were a kid.
I'm standing on the bumper here of my dad's '49 Pontiac, JR's in the middle, just a year younger than me and Carol just a year older. I loved my time with these cousins, especially if we were visiting them in West Texas. We lived in Dallas, and there all sorts of attractions on the farm: tractors, tools, and wide open space. Make all the noise you want! Throw rocks! No problem!
David is actually my half uncle, born late in life to my maternal grandmother who we called Ma and her husband who was Pa. David was about JR's age, just younger than me so we were raised like cousins. They lived in nearby Lubbock, so the four of us often spent time together. David is on the left in the photo, with JR underneath and Revis on the right. Revis was the only child of my Uncle Alvin (one of my mothers brothers).
Certain alliances form quite naturally when you put four of five kids together, and Carol and I were buds and JR and David would inevitably team up as our opponents. One time we decided we needed a swimming pool. Now if you know anything about that part of Texas you understand there is no dirt -- just sand and lots of it. So we grab shovels out of the shed, pick a nice spot nearby and start digging. After we had dug a hole big enough to bury a Volkswagen we began to wonder whether it would hold water. Ha! So much for planning!
Anyway, we ended up with a pile of really nice dirt clods, because as you dig deeper you get into wetter soil. Someone decided a dirt clod fight would be fun, so it did not take long to choose sides: Carol and me versus JR and David. We built some sort of shelter about throwing distance from each other, gathered a pile of ammunition and started chunking. Red dirt clods were flying! It was the mother of all backyard wars. Carol had a pretty good arm, being a farm girl with experience at chopping cotton and such. Before long one of us nailed David right in the head and he went in the house crying and ruined the whole thing. The mom's came out and put an end to the contest. It was about then they noticed a gaping hole located more or less in the driveway. Apparently we should have chosen a better site. Plying our shovels to fill in that monster hole we dug was not near as much fun as digging it!
JR, David and Revis are all gone much too soon, as is Michael who died just a couple of years ago after a cancer battle. Wish I had another day with each of them. And I need to stay in touch with my girl cousins!
