THE TOWN

Louella Bryson was walking down Main Street when she bumped into her young friend, Darrell Royal, coming out of the barbershop where he had just finished holding forth at his shoeshine stand. The two visited a few minutes before Maydean Broaddus brushed past the two of them without speaking. Behavior like that was a cardinal sin in Hollis, Oklahoma. Louella leaned over close to Darrell's ear and whispered, "That old bag hasn't spoken to me since she got that high-falutin' job down at J.C. Penney." Of course, there might have been an additional reason why Maydean wasn't acknowledging Louella. Louella was, after all, the town bootlegger.

By 1938, Hollis was surviving the double whammy of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression as Okies do — with steel resolve and a prayer for rain. The town had lost, however, about a third of its local population; many had little choice but to pack up and head west to California. Farm foreclosures, joblessness, and respiratory ailments from inhaling dust were the root causes of despair. Louella and Darrell were largely unaffected by these tragic circumstances.

Louella had all she needed, thanks to her twice-weekly trips across the Red River into Texas, where she would "invest" in as much cheap whiskey as she could pack into the trunk of her DeSoto. Such an enterprising woman would also acquire moonshine when it was available from some of the farmers in Old Greer County. Inventory and demand were both very good.

Darrell had never known a life of plenty, thus doing without came naturally. He was only fourteen years old, yet everyone from all over town knew him as a budding star on the athletic fields of Hollis and the surrounding towns.

Louella knew everything there was to know about Burley Ray Royal, the widower, his four boys, and the wives who paraded through his bedroom, but not his kitchen. John Steinbeck would publish his novel, The Grapes of Wrath, in 1939, telling its iconic story of struggle and sacrifice through the eyes of the members of the Joad family of Oklahoma. The Joads could just as easily have been the Royals. Darrell, at age fourteen, was much like Steinbeck's character, Winfield Joad, the youngest male of the family — "kid-wild and coltish."

Burley Ray Royal had married a local girl, Katie Harmon. They started a family and made do on the various short-term employment opportunities Burley found across town. Burley was an industrious sort, believing in the Christian work ethic of an honest day's work for a full day's pay. Depending upon the times, he was an automobile mechanic, a carpenter, a fence-builder, a hay-baler, and a jailer at the county jail. Burley had to be resourceful. But then, everyone in Harmon County had to be. He had been born in Indian Territory in 1888, a full nineteen years before Oklahoma became a state. Katie Harmon was born a year later, ironically, in what would become Harmon County, Oklahoma.

Burley and Katie produced two daughters, Mahota and Ruby, and four sons. In order of age, they were Ray, Don, Glenn, and Darrell. All were outstanding high-school athletes. It was no surprise, then, that the "Royal boys" were known and embraced by nearly every one of Hollis's 2,400 townspeople. Ray would later become a mechanic in town. Don, a fine high-school football player, would graduate from college and settle down the road at Tipton, Oklahoma, where he would become a coach and teacher. Glenn, a left-handed football passer and baseball pitcher, would also attend college and become a teacher. Thirty years later, when the administration of the University of Texas at Austin took the provocative step of awarding academic tenure to its head football coach, Darrell defended the decision from intense faculty criticism by declaring, "I'm a teacher too, just like the classroom teachers!" In light of his family's background, Darrell must have been speaking with conviction.

The first of Darrell's family tragedies occurred when his mother, Katie, passed away within weeks of his birth. Because Darrell would never know his mother, the family added the letter K to his name. Not an initial. No period. "K" to carry with him the rest of his days.

Burley Ray Royal was a man who had to have a woman in the house. He felt compelled to reconcile this need with his religious nature, which included leading the singing at the Church of Christ. Burley insisted that the new woman in the house, whomever she might be, be married to him. Perhaps. But there was a regrettable thread of consistency to the women passing through the Royal home. They were, more often than not, suffering from a wide variety of illnesses, which left them unable to tend to the household chores. One of Darrell's lifelong friends, Donnie Fox, later remembered visiting the Royal home when Burley called Darrell into the kitchen for a private conversation. The news amounted to yet another announcement of impending marriage. Donnie heard Darrell wail, "Please, Daddy, don't marry another one that's sick!"

Burley's marriages, believed to total five, were so numerous that names, places, and durations had been largely lost to history. Records reflect one other wife, Winnie Wooley Royal, who, fairly or not, is remembered as a hypochondriac who rarely left her bed.

Many often said, "The town raised Darrell Royal." Burley was gone from sunup to sundown, working or looking for work. While working as a jailer, a prisoner grabbed him through the cell bars, whereupon Burley drew his pistol and shot the man in the leg. This surely constituted one of the few times a jailed prisoner has been shot while inside his cell. Because there was little enthusiasm on the part of Burley's wives for cooking and cleaning, the Royal boys were assigned these chores. Louella Bryson felt sorry enough for Darrell that she would occasionally come over to the house to wash the sinkful of dirty dishes while she ordered Darrell outside to play. It was on fall Saturday afternoons in the mid-1930s when, according to Darrell, he would move the RCA Victor radio near the living-room window so he could listen to Oklahoma Sooners' football games while he re-enacted the game in the yard. Years later, he recalled hearing the OU band play "Boomer Sooner" and dreaming the band was playing just for him.

As Darrell matured, so did his remarkable athletic talent. Despite being a shade under five foot ten and weighing 150 pounds, he was muscular, lacking a single ounce of fat. His jet-black hair and broad grin suggested a future as a charismatic adult. He could play any sport with skill and confidence.

A tall water tower stood squarely in the middle of town. It provided water pressure for the town's citizens, but it also served as an informal line of demarcation between east and west Hollis. When Darrell was in the eighth grade, he played little league baseball for the east team, sponsored by the Kiwanis Club. Donnie Fox played for the west team, sponsored by the Rotary Club. Donnie later recalled one particularly intense game between the cross-town rivals when Darrell was pitching for his team. The plate umpire, a surly and rotund fellow, reduced the strike zone to the size of a postage stamp. Darrell complained loud enough for everyone in the stands to hear. Finally the umpire yelled back, "You can kiss my ass!" Darrell instinctively and instantly replied, "Well, you'll have to mark a spot because you look like all ass to me!" The formidable wit that Darrell would exhibit all his life was already manifesting itself.

Difficulties at home continued. One of Darrell's stepmothers resented having boys to deal with, taking particular umbrage with young Darrell. One afternoon, knowing that Darrell had saved up his shoe-shining money and had bought a new, leather baseball glove, she turned on the yard hose and soaked the glove as it lay in the grass. "That'll teach you not to leave your things lying out in the yard," she bellowed. Nothing, however, would alter Darrell's love affair with sports. The playing fields gave him comfort and a sense of belonging. Even as an eighth grader, he played on the junior-varsity football team composed of boys one or two years older.

In the spring of 1940, Burley could not ignore the incessant siren call to join the mass migration of God's children to the promised land of California. The parched, drought-stricken Harmon County had left him weary and broke. Darrell had just completed his freshman year at Hollis High School. Once again, the young man was traumatized. Of course, he didn't want to leave his support group: his friends, Doctor Will Husband, and Dean Wild, his football coach. Burley argued, "There's work out there for all of us, son. We've gotta eat!"

Just as WPA photographers so vividly captured in their black-and-white photos, families just like the Royals loaded up everything their old cars could carry and headed west to the land of plenty. All the excess weight on the old balloon tires led to many flat tires along the way. Darrell became proficient with the patch kit and the hand pump. The Royals landed in Porterville, California, due north of Bakersfield in the San Joaquin Valley. Steinbeck described those days in the Grapes of Wrath through the eyes of Tom Joad: "Okie used to mean you was from Oklahoma. Now it means you're a dirty son-of-a-bitch. Okie means you're scum. Don't mean nothing itself, it's the way they say it." Like his industrious father, Darrell held a variety of jobs as a common laborer over the summer of 1940, painting figs hastening them to ripen, and pouring concrete.

Some said war was coming. People on the streets of Porterville talked about what they'd heard on the radio about the Germans' blitzkrieg of London. Despite that distant threat, Darrell looked forward to enrolling at Porterville High so he could play football and make some friends. More importantly, he wanted to earn respect. After a few August practices, the coaching staff at Porterville informed Darrell he was "too light" for varsity play and directed him to the junior-varsity squad. Darrell was devastated. Because he was fiercely competitive and understood the game as well as his coaches, he knew he could contribute mightily. The coaches' decision was really another form of discrimination. He was the Okie. The migrant laborer. He didn't measure up. Burley heard his son's pleas and felt the sting of rejection himself. Burley had received a handwritten letter from Coach Wild back in Hollis that was orchestrated by Doctor Will. It said that if Darrell were allowed to return to Hollis, he could live with his Grandma Harmon and the community would take care of him. Almost overnight, Darrell packed his belongings in a rigged up Victrola box and hitchhiked across country to Hollis. He was home.

Doctor Will Husband could have appeared in the television series Gunsmoke playing the part of a frontier doctor. Indeed, that's precisely what Doctor Will was. He made house calls. He delivered babies in farmhouses. He set broken bones, sutured cuts, and diagnosed life-threatening illnesses. Moreover, he was dearly loved by the citizens of Harmon County. Doctor Will was trusted so much that no matter what he wanted to do, he was fully supported around town. In many ways, Doctor Will loved his life. He knew the lifeblood of the community he served was high school athletics. Thus he adopted the red-and-white-clad Hollis Tigers. Doctor Will looked after the players' and coaches' best interests in every way. He watched the Royal boys grow into outstanding high school athletes. He knew everything about their difficult home life. In fact, he had delivered Darrell. It was no surprise, then, that he found a way to encourage Burley Royal to allow Darrell to return home. Darrell had multiple part-time jobs waiting on him there. After school, he was to sweep out the high school gym. After that, he was to race down to Cecil Sumpter's barber shop to man his shoeshine stand. Donnie Fox once said, "Some days I'd sweep out the gym for Darrell so he could get on down to the dozen pairs of shoes left at his shoeshine stand." Yet there was another hurdle to Darrell's settling into his familiar routine at Hollis High School. Because he transferred from Porterville High, he was ineligible to play for Hollis during his sophomore season. The 1940 Tigers were going to be very good. Coach Wild needed Darrell's special talent to contend for a state title. The away games posed the biggest threat to victory. Coach Wild and Doctor Will concocted a plan to address the challenge. Darrell played away games under an assumed name — Bill Husband. Bill was Doctor Will's young son — and not an athlete. No one would ever challenge the name "Husband" on this matter nor any other. The ruse was successful.

Darrell fell right back into his friendships with his teammates, including Donnie Fox and Ted Owens. Fox recalls that running around town with Darrell had its benefits: "I always liked going to eat with Darrell down at Bess Felder's Café. Eating alongside Darrell on stools at the counter meant Bess would speak with us and more importantly, that Bess would put more meat in our stew." Down at Sumpter's barbershop, the men of the business community left their church shoes for Darrell to shine before Sunday services. Business was so good that Darrell had a key to the shop so he could get down there early on Sundays to catch up. Every Sunday morning about nine o'clock, Doctor Will would stop in to pick up his black brogans. A shine cost 50 cents. And every Sunday morning without fail, Doctor Will would hand Darrell a folded 20 dollar bill.

To say that the Hollis townspeople took their high school football seriously would be an understatement. Leon Manley was a hulking kid who excelled on the offensive line. Leon Heath was a muscular youngster who could run with the football and was almost impossible to tackle. Ted Owens was a speedy defensive specialist, and Donnie Fox manned the tight end and defensive end positions. The local harvest of players was truly outstanding. But the team could be further improved. Doctor Will's avocation outside of his medical practice was recruiting football players for the Hollis Tigers. Hollis is located in the far southwest corner of Oklahoma, less than five miles from the Texas state line. At that time, the governing body of Texas high school athletics had a regulation that no high school student over the age of eighteen could participate in high school athletics. On the other hand, in Oklahoma, the regulation stated that participation was allowed through age 21. Doctor Will saw an opportunity. He scoured the west Texas towns of Childress, Vernon, and Quanah, among others, for talented athletes that were ineligible to play in Texas but still eligible in Oklahoma. Academic standing was irrelevant. For Doctor Will, locating quality athletes was the easy part. The bigger challenge was arranging for the families of these mercenaries to relocate to Hollis, finding them a place to live, and finding jobs for the heads of household. Doctor Will's labors produced a bounty of quality athletes. Hollis was a powerhouse in high school football at a time when there were no divisions among high schools of vastly different sizes. Thus when playoff time rolled around, Hollis was pitted against much larger towns. Doctor Will educated Darrell on team building. Today, the Hollis Tigers play in Doctor Will Husband Stadium — on Darrell K Royal Field.

Life at Grandma Harmon's house was not exciting. The only available entertainment was listening to the radio which Grandma always tuned to ministers preaching hell, fire, and brimstone, or the gospel music hour. Down on Main Street, however, things were more interesting.

Public schools were segregated in Hollis just as they were everywhere in the 1940s. Black students attended their own school across town from Hollis High. As a result, Darrell never played an athletic contest against black athletes in any sport while he was in high school. That didn't mean he didn't pitch pennies and shoot dice with young black men of his age and economic standing. He certainly did. Darrell wasn't incorrigible. He didn't look for trouble. But if trouble found him, he wouldn't walk away from it. His brand of mettle, strength, and agility were packed into a sliver of tendon and gristle weighing 150 pounds.