Riding the Southern Pacific

Daddy started coming home with a severe headache. He went to see a doctor. This was in the early days in California and some of the doctors were incompetent. His doctor gave him a strong narcotic which caused him to hallucinate. I was standing at the foot of the bed when Daddy refused to get in it. "There are ants all over the bed," he said. I could not see any ants and neither could my mother. She was a proud woman but finally she swallowed her pride and called Grandpa Sam Moore in Dallas. "Hell, Omega, bring him to Dallas. We have the best doctors in the world," he told her. Grandpa Sam owned some valuable property in Dallas and was on the board of the hospital. We got on the Southern Pacific and went to Texas. Grandpa Sam met us at the station and took Daddy to the hospital. The doctors said it was a tumor and they would have to have a signed release before they would operate. It was located between his eyes and in the middle of his forehead. When Daddy was younger he played baseball with a minor league team in San Angelo. In those days baseball was played in the afternoon. He was playing center field when the sun got in his eyes and a baseball hit him in the forehead, knocking him cold. Later he seemed to have recovered. But this was the origin of the tumor. The doctors removed the tumor and it was benign. Within a few days Daddy was his old self. Grandpa Sam gave him $25,000 and he used the money to establish an automobile agency at Big Lake, 75 miles west of San Angelo.