Deemer Does Dallas

Here I am some sixty years ago, around 1947, being a typical kid in Dallas, Texas, where my dad was the Naval Recruiting Officer at the time. I'm posed in front of the revamped WWII billets that were married officers' housing. Our home movies include scenes from parties in the common lawn area between the rows of buildings, with adults passing bottles back and forth and looking like they are having a grand old time. I remember that a few kids (not I) rode horses to George Peabody Elementary School, and when the weather was warm enough, some came barefoot. Those days are long gone. I sounded like a southern kid in those days. A few years later, after we'd moved to Pasadena, the Southern California Accent Police would convince my parents that I needed extensive speech therapy in order to speak like a human being. They tried but I still say BYOO-tee-full. Screw the accent police.