History
A BASEBALL LIFE
Part One Baseball was a very large part of my life as a boy growing up in Bonham, a small town in Northeast Texas, during the 1950’s. Whether playing catch with my older brother Ray, or playing a game we called “flies and skinners”, or tossing up pebbles and swatting them with a home-made…
HOW THE SCREW TURNED
There was no training manual for new hires in the Dallas County jail when Ethan Caldwell first began working there in the summer of 1964 as a “relief” jailer. At the time, all full-time jailers were required to take their annual 2-week vacations during the months of June, July and August each year. During those…
Rupert at Rest
Ethan Caldwell was in New York on business on this particularly warm June day in 1990, representing American South Bank as legal counsel. The occasion for the trip was a meeting of a syndicate of 15 banks from around the world to negotiate the final terms of a $750 million credit facility for News Corp,…
Parallels With the 38th
Along with some friends, Beverly and I rented a vacation home in Vail, Colorado in early December of 1979, hoping to beat the holiday rush at this popular resort. On the morning of the second day of our stay, I answered a call at the house from a real estate agent, saying that Jerry Ford…
The Accidental Spelunker
Where I grew up, in a small town in north Texas, if you called someone a pugilist you were pretty well assured of turning him into one on the spot. If you called someone a thespian, you might just as well spit in his face. But if you called someone a spelunker – I cant…
My Jail Time
For four summers, bridging my last two years of college and my first two years of law school, I worked as a Deputy Sheriff in Dallas County, serving as a jailer in the county jail. The full-time jailers were required to take their vacations during the summer months while students, like me, and some teachers…
THE GREATEST
My first job after finishing law school was to work as the law clerk for Judge Ben C. Connally, the Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, in Houston. Like most law clerks, my principal duties were assisting the Judge with legal research and writing. But unlike most law…
JONES FIELD
I lived at an airport for almost 3 years. I made one flight during that time and it lasted about ten minutes. The impression it left has lasted a lifetime. Jones Field is an airport situated about 2 miles north of the town square in Bonham, a rural town in Northeast Texas. It opened as…
CHAPTER ONE
The three boys were wearing masks of the type used by bandits in many western movies, except these were not made from true bandanas; they were handkerchiefs borrowed from their dads, white and barely large enough to be tied behind their necks. In fact, one of the boys was unable to secure a fast knot…