The Opaque Projector Adventure
If I were to ever write a book about my life, this is Chapter 1
“Son, wake up.”
I had become used to this nighttime ritual by the middle of my fourth-grade year. Two or three times a week, my father would nudge me gently and ask me to get up several hours before breakfast, then make sure I was tucked back in just before my mom woke for the day.
I never was quite sure what he wanted, even though the pattern had become somewhat predictable. Maybe he needed me to sit in the carport on the rusty freezer, holding a piece of masonite in place as he tried to cut and bend it into a 3-D sculpture. Or perhaps, in those pre-cable/pre-VCR days, he wanted to watch an old movie on Channel 13, the ABC Houston affiliate that showed classic films at 2 a.m.
Not tonight. This time we were going on a little trip. And upping the ante was the fact my dad was going to drive.
Several months earlier — the timeline is a little fuzzy, especially looking back more than 50 years — he was diagnosed with spasmodic torticollis, a neurological disorder affecting the muscles of the neck. My dad’s head turned and locked in place, the spasm so strong I could not make it move.
In 1974, no one seemed to know what had caused it. Speculation at the time centered on a motorcycle accident he’d had several years earlier, although much later it was traced to a genetic defect (dysplasia). Even worse, no one knew how to treat it.
At this point, my dad was on a pharmacological cocktail that left him sleeping more often than not. Except, it seemed, in the middle of the night.
A ‘Simple’ Plan
“Dad, are you sure you can drive?”
“It’s not that far. Don’t worry about it.”
The plan, as my father explained it, was simple: Drive the car from our house to my mom’s school, go to her classroom, get the opaque projector, and find some way to put it in the trunk. After the drive home, he would load the projector with the mural he’d been working on and sketch it out on the living room wall.
It seemed so simple to him. It was not so simple for his 9-year-old sleep-deprived accomplice.
Mom’s school — Roosevelt-Wilson Elementary — was just over a mile from my parents’ house on 22nd Avenue. Given that my dad’s neck was twisted at just less than a 90-degree angle, I was more than a little concerned about him driving.
Fortunately for my father, not much happened at 2 a.m. on a school night in Texas City, the last place on the mainland before you cross over to Galveston Island. The skies were half lit by the petrochemical plants that lined its south side, a constant reminder that Texas City calls itself “the town that would not die” despite the worst industrial accident in U.S. history (aka “the blast”).
My parents moved there just before I was born, fresh out of college and building a life together as a young family. At the time, in the mid 1960s, the Texas City/La Marque area paid the highest teacher salaries in the state. Part of that, I’m sure, was considered hazard pay.
The Texas City Disaster took place on April 16, 1947, when an open cargo hold containing ammonium nitrate fertilizer ignited. Two ships exploded, killing 581 people and injuring more than 5,000. Entire blocks of homes were destroyed and people in Galveston — almost 15 miles from the site — were knocked to their knees by the explosion’s force.
Today, the blast is cited as the “foundation for disaster planning for the United States.” The threat, and periodic reminder of what can happen, still rules, however, thanks to the petrochemical refineries that continue to line the city’s south side. I remember them by the names Amoco Chemical, Amoco Oil, Marathon, Monsanto, and Union Carbide, although most have changed hands since.
My Hometown
Texas City is organized on a grid of streets and avenues. Bay Street was the easternmost point because it ran next to the waterline; a hurricane protection levee was added after Hurricane Carla flooded homes and businesses in 1961. The levee, of course, turned the city into a big bowl, so a pump station with gigantic screws was installed on the north side to suck out the water from the Gulf storms that roll into the city.
Imagine, if you will, water draining out of your bathtub. That’s what it’s like on the streets where I grew up after a big rain.
To the west was State Highway 3, the road that connected Galveston to Houston (until Interstate 45 was built) and served as the dividing line between Texas City and La Marque, a neighboring town of 15,000.
Prior to the blast, Texas Avenue was the dividing line between north and south. To the south were tract homes that have since been torn down in an effort to create green space between the industrial plants and residential areas.
The Matthews Tire Company, a family-owned business that is still in operation, is at the corner of Texas and Sixth Street and serves as an informal crossroads. Owned by neighbors who lived across the street from us, it was the place where everyone got their automotive work done. Today, much of its business comes from local industry still in need of tires that are larger than most middle school children.
When Texas Avenue’s stature as the city’s business hub declined, Sixth Street became the downtown business district, starting at the Food King on Third Avenue North and eventually extending all the way to what became Loop 197. It was a mix of mom-and-pop businesses — Mainland Pharmacy, Fork and Spoon, King’s Jewelers, Rocks, Simpson’s Shoes, the Showboat Theater — and chain department stores that still managed to have a down-home touch (J.C. Penney and Weiner’s).
The town’s grid accommodated other major cross streets that, because of a lack of zoning, attracted businesses as well — Ninth Street and 14th Street from north to south, and Fifth and Ninth Avenue east to west.
Sixth Street started its slow fade, like other downtowns across the nation, in the mid to late 1970s and early 1980s. Development — and the growth of franchised stores — moved westward toward I-45, which was the gateway to Houston 35 miles to the north. A number of attempts have been made to revitalize the area to some success, but it is no longer the force it once was.
Ninth Avenue became, and remains, the primary entry point into the city, although for some reason — still mysterious to me all these years later — its name changes to Palmer Highway near the high school and the Emmett Lowry Expressway before you get to I-45.
Fourth Grade Struggles
Fourth grade sucked that year for any number of reasons. Mom, with a 9-year-old and a 3-year-old, was trying to make ends meet amidst a never-ending stack of medical bills, not knowing whether her husband would ever be OK or what piece of strange art would greet her the next morning.
I didn’t understand what she faced at the time. All I knew was that change was all around, and I didn’t like where things seemed to be going. I was living a dual life of school during the day and excursions late at night with my pharmaceutically addled dad.
Fourth grade was the first time we switched classes during the school day, which meant that I had to go to Miss Givens’ math class, which also proved to be the source of much consternation. Miss Givens, fresh out of college, was the subject of my first crush. I wasn’t sure whether it was due to the onset of puberty or just a terrible case of sleep deprivation, but I was swooning. All I knew is I sure as heck couldn’t talk to my parents or any of my teachers about it.
Further complicating matters was the fact my homeroom teacher was my mom’s best friend. Rita — or Mrs. Boykin as I had to call her while at school — made it a point to let me know she already knew most of my tricks.
This was the height of the Elmer’s Glue “second skin” phase that kids went through. You put glue on your hand, spread it as thin as you can, then peel it off. The result, if you do it right, looks like a snake that had lost a layer.
I loved doing this, but one day I forgot to close the glue, which meant the little white tip no longer sealed off the orange cap. Shoved sideways onto the top drawer of my turquoise-colored desk, the glue spilled and proceeded to become attached to the Roger Staubach Scholastic biography that Mrs. Boykin had loaned me from her reading library.
Terrified, I couldn’t figure out a way to get the book out of my desk without tearing it apart, so I told her I had lost it at home. So here I was, telling a fib about a 50-cent paperback and driving with my dad to steal an opaque projector. At 9, I was having an existential crisis, worried that I was beginning a life of crime.
The Long Short Drive
The two-door Cadillac rolled slowly out of the carport, and thankfully Mr. Matthews had kept his truck in their driveway. Our street was narrow, with curved curbs that you had to park on with two wheels to leave enough room for other cars to pass. I seriously doubt my father would have been able to get the Cadillac successfully out of the driveway if the truck had been parked in the street.
It was my dad’s lucky night. Glassy-eyed, he was brimming with confidence. “This shouldn’t take long,” he said.
Right shoulder turned facing the windshield, he took things slowly. After successfully maneuvering the driveway, we turned right onto Ninth Street, then left onto 19th Avenue, which for some reason I could never fathom was only one block from 22nd.
So far, so good. But as he executed the turn onto Sixth Street, another question crossed my sleep-deprived mind.
“How,” I asked, “are we going to get the projector from Mom’s classroom into the car?” Then, still not fully grasping the gravity of the situation, I added helpfully, “If the light bulb breaks, she’ll really be mad at you.”
Roosevelt-Wilson, at that time, spread across three city blocks — 14th to 16th Avenue. The Wilson building, on 14th Avenue, housed the second and third grade. The Roosevelt building, on 16th Avenue, was for the fifth and sixth grade. Both opened in the fall of 1947 — just after the blast — and were connected by a long, narrow sidewalk with several large breaks and buckles in the cement. It was not exactly what you needed for the smooth transport of a 50-pound, hulking opaque projector on a rickety cart in the middle of the night.
Two other buildings, built to accommodate the post-World War II population growth, sat between the classrooms named after the dead presidents. On the Roosevelt side was the gym, the dreaded fourth-grade classrooms that were the bane of my then-existence, and the library. On the Wilson side, and closest to a separate cafeteria, was a long 1954 building that accommodated kindergarten, first grade, and the school’s administrative office.
Four of the six classrooms in that building — Rooms 3 through 6 — were not enclosed, meaning they opened directly onto a covered porch and grassy area where the smaller kids could have recess. My mom’s classroom was Number 5, which was good news as my dad saw it.
“We’ll just hop the curb,” he said.
Making It Work
Thanks to its proximity to the Gulf of Mexico, Texas City generally has three seasons: early summer, mid-summer, and late summer. We saw snow once during my childhood — in 1973, the year before the projector heist — but went to the beach as often as not at Christmas.
In addition to the bugs and the smell from the petrochemical plants (“That’s money,” my parents said, almost in unison), the persistent humidity always left dew on the grass in the middle of the night. Going outside in the morning, you inevitably would end up with wet feet and grass stains on your shoes.
To my 9-year-old brain, the dew presented another problem: When the 5,000-pound Cadillac hopped the curb and crossed over to my mom’s classroom, which was located where 15th Avenue should have been, it would smash down the grass and leave ruts. Wouldn’t that leave evidence in case the police tried to find us?
Again, my father wasn’t worried. He obviously had a master plan, which I could only surmise.
His solution: Drive slowly without headlights and hop the curb at the east end of the Wilson building. Dad took his foot off the accelerator and let the car idle along at 4-5 mph in drive. He also managed to do a reasonable job of parking near the front door to my mom’s classroom.
Loading the projector was tough, but we managed somehow to get it into the trunk of the Cadillac — itself big enough to house a family of four — without anything breaking. The only remaining issue, as my father saw it, was that he’d forgotten to bring rope to secure it in the back.
He asked: “Would you mind riding in the trunk and holding it?”
At this point, my existential crisis turned into elation. What 9-year-old child wouldn’t want to ride in an open car trunk at 2:30 a.m. on a school night, holding on to an opaque projector so it wouldn’t fall out and splatter across the street into a million pieces?
I was thrilled. In that moment, I had purpose. If not in life, then at least for the next few minutes.
This isn't a book, this is a movie! Part 2 asap.
I hope there’s a part 2 coming soon! What a cliffhanger! I love the way you combine memoir with the history of your childhood city. It’s truly seamless and gives me a vivid portrait of what your young life must have been to experience.