The Cold Days of Summer - Episode 12
Another woman disappears and Drew’s school days become a bit more challenging.
Previously in The Cold Days of Summer there is a temporary peace between the hoods and Rick and Drew, but then the hoods get even. Rick shows a side that Drew doesn’t expect or understand. For all of the details see Episode 11 - A temporary peace; The hoods get even.
A murderer walks among us
This time it got a lot worse, because this time every woman in West Texas realized it could happen to them.
The September 17, 1970 edition of the Winkler County News published the article “Woman Sought.” The police had narrowed down the time of her disappearance to be between 9:30 pm Tuesday when she answered an uncle's phone call and 12:45 am Wednesday when her husband returned home.
“Hunt Continues For Missing Kermit Woman” was on the first page of the September 21, 1970 edition of The Winkler County News. The Texas Rangers, Highway Patrol, Winkler Country Sheriff’s Department and the Kermit Police Department were all actively involved in the search. Foul play was feared as clothes were found.
Three days later The Winkler County News reports that the trail has gone cold. Officials have noticed similarities between this and other cases in Texas.
On September 28, 1970 The Winkler County News reports that Nancy Siler Mitchell’s disappearance remained a mystery.
Other things did happen that first month
Clearly the most exciting that that happened in that first month was our incident with the hoods and the disappearance of Nancy Siler Mitchell, but other things did happen. Not as exciting or as frightening, but some of what did happen had relevance in the long term scheme of my life. For example, I did manage to get out of the Reading/English class.
In the third week the teacher finally got around to testing me. I was ready. The test consisted of reading three paragraphs from one of our reading/literature books, or as much as you could read in three minutes, then answering five questions about the reading. Three minutes was plenty of time to read the three paragraphs over and over. Three minutes was long enough to memorize the three paragraphs. The teacher asked me five questions about what I had read. Each question I answered by quoting the appropriate paragraph.
She looked at me for a minute and said “You memorized the paragraphs, didn’t you?”
I answered “Yes.”
“You don’t belong in this class.”
“I know.”
“I’ll get you transferred.”
“Great.”
“You can go back to your desk now.”
The next Monday I was transferred to an honors English class. I may have over reached myself. I was used to being smart, but not too smart. I could always coast, and every once in awhile work hard and catch up. No more, I was now tagged as smart and as I looked around the classroom I saw the kind of people I used to sit behind. Now I was sitting with them and I might have to get in the habit of studying. But I was not alone. Art Kilmer was also in the honors class. When I walked in I swear he had a look of relief on his face. As we walked to our next class he gave me a quick rundown.
“Shit, I do not know how I wound up in that class. These are some smart-ass people. They're so damn quick in answering questions that I thought they were just making them up. But then, a few moments later I would catch up with them and I would realize they weren't making things up, they were just that damn smart.”
I didn't say anything much, just mumbled as we walked down the hallway.
“Man, I was glad when you walked in. I'm no longer alone. But, man, don't worry, we'll figure it out, we'll do all right.”
I didn't realize then that Art was a real optimist, he believed in the goodness of the world. That was sometimes a challenge for me, but it was also a help. Sometimes when all I could see was the darkness of the world, Art's optimism was like a light in the dark, something to walk towards, something to believe in.
I had learned my lesson from showing off to my first English/Reading teacher. When it came to being tested in my math class I proved to be competent and a good fit for where I was.
Rick was in all honors class and cursed me every day on the way home. On most days I completed my homework before my last class. The only class that I ever had homework in was English. Rick, on the other hand, had homework every day and every weekend.
The day we received our report cards we talked about our grades on the way home. We walked the alleys again, with Jake and the other hood gone the alleys were safe, at least for awhile.
“You’re smarter than that. What are you doing in that math class? I saw some of the other kids in there. Hell, some of them can’t add well, much less anything else. And English, well, at least you got out of the reading class, but a ‘B,’ man, that’s ridiculous; you ought to ace that class.”
It was bad enough that I would hear that kind of talk from my Mom when she got home that evening. I really didn’t need to hear it from Rick, too.
My Dad didn’t care about my grades. He had his own way of figuring out what I knew. He would give me little tests. One of the tests involved mowing the lawn. He would watch me mow the front lawn for ten minutes, then stop me and ask how long it would take to finish the front lawn and mow the back. First couple of times I didn’t answer the question in the way he wanted, he didn’t say anything, but I could tell I had done something wrong. One day I realized he was asking for an estimate. The next time he asked I looked at how much I mowed, guessed it was about ¼ of the front lawn, so I thought I could mow the rest of the lawn in about thirty more minutes. The back yard was a little less than two times the size of the front lawn, so that ought to take about an hour and fifteen minutes. I added in a little time for sweep up, filling the lawn mower with gas and putting things up when I was done. I told my Dad I would be finished in about two more hours. He asked me how I came up with two hours. I told him. He liked the answer and said “All right, do it, and we’ll measure it.” I finished in one hour and fifty-five minutes (and I’ll admit I was determined to finish in less than two hours). I didn’t realize it that day, but Dad was teaching me how to work with numbers and at the same time testing me to see what I knew. He did things like that all of the time, he always seemed to know how much I knew and understood and he did it without ever looking at a report card.
“You listening to me?”
I was and wasn’t.
“Rick, look, it’s just not that important to me to kill for grades. I know what I can do, I keep up and every once in awhile I work hard just to remind the teacher why I’m there. This is school, it’s not a job and I just don’t feel like working all that hard.”
“Man, you can do better, you know that.”
“What about you? I thought Robert was the smart one and here you go making straight A’s and you’re in all honors classes.”
“Robert isn’t the smart one anymore so I decided to step it up. Maybe I’m the smart one now. Robert, hell, he’s just the stoned one. You better watch out, don’t get too lazy or you might find yourself slipping away like he has.”
Again, I didn’t need to hear that from Rick. I would hear enough of that from my Mom. I knew what I knew and I was doing fine.
Little did I know the transformation had already begun. I was changing and taking on characteristics of my Dad. Just as he believed, I believed it was more important to know something useful and be able to do something with it than it was to make a good grade. I was learning but I already believed grades were just a measure, someone else’s measure of me, that I didn’t have to accept or trust. Hell, I learned that in the first grade, when Mrs. Chalton initially marked me as a slow one, and I learned it again in the seventh grade as I dealt with the mark Mr. Hastings put on me.
Go ahead, grade me. I don’t care. Your grades don’t mean a thing to me.
Author’s note: Most of my research on the disappearances and murders of women in west Texas was accomplished on a July 2010 trip to Odessa. I spent a few hours at the Ector County Library skimming microfiche of The Odessa American newspaper from 1969 to the early 1970s. As I found articles related to the disappearances and murderers I took photos of the relevant articles and photographs with my iPhone 3. A lot of the photographs are out of focus and hard to read but I did have the key information I was looking for. When I decided to serialize The Cold Days of Summer I knew I needed to find better copies of the newspaper articles. In a few cases I was able to peruse the archives of The Odessa American but the best reference I have found so far is The Portal to Texas History provided by the University of North Texas.
Episode 13 is now available: Episode 13: Drew hears voices that one else hears; another woman is missing.