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Chapter 4 Hill Hall I got a full scholarship to UT plus $10 a month from the UT athletic department to cover my laundry. That was a good thing, because my dad sure didn’t have any money to help pay for my education. His drinking had gotten him into financial trouble. To bail him out, Mama sold a section of her land, but she didn’t get near what the land was worth. In fact, she practically gave it away to my cousin C. T. Hill, the roper. When I got to Austin in the middle of August 1950, coming from Graham it seemed like a big city to me, but at the time it had only about 145,000 people. The state government and the university—with around 13,000 students plus faculty and staff—kept the city going economically. Most of the UT athletes lived at Hill Hall at 204 West Twenty-first Street, but I got put in the Hill Hall annex, an old World War II barrack. I had three roommates—Chester Bradley, C. A. Rundell, and Charlie Thomas. They were three of the greatest guys a fellow could ever hope to be hooked up with. Chester and C. A. were distance runners. They were also a little more refined than Charlie and I. We were sprinters and both of us were as country as a gourd dipper. We took our meals next door at Hill Hall, which Mrs. J. M. Griffith ran. The food was good, but when I could afford it I also loved eating at the Night Hawk restaurant, a twenty-four-hour joint on the drag. It had the best peach pie with whipped cream, and I sure did eat my share of it. Not long after I got to town in 1950, I went over to Buck Steiner’s saddle shop on Lavaca and got reacquainted with Buck and his son, Tommy , whom I’d first met at the rodeo in Graham. By this time, Tommy and his wife, Beverly, had started producing their own rodeo. When I could, I would go riding with Tommy. Buck had some land near Camp Swift in 46 Cowboy Stuntman Bastrop County, but he lived in that old saddle shop just a few blocks south of the UT campus. He always carried a gun in the top of his boot. A big, tall guy, he was quite a character, a page out of the Old West. I was a cowboy at a university not known for its cowboys. Except when I was on the football field or running track, I always wore Levis, handmade boots, and a cowboy hat. I’d been wearing boots since I was a kid. I got my first handmade pair in 1941 or 1942, from Sam Caldwell, a boot maker in Graham. They were black with green tops. Mama paid $15 for them. I was mighty proud of them, but the first damn day I had them, I jumped a four-foot fence and ripped the top of one of them. I got it repaired , of course. In Austin, I bought boots from Buck Steiner’s store. The Korean War had broken out earlier that summer. I was eighteen with a 1-A draft classification, so I joined the Air Force ROTC. As for my major, I probably should have signed up for the school of drama. But at that time, if you went into drama, people thought you were a sissy. So I was in the school of education. Coach Littlefield didn’t want me to, but I went out for football and made the freshman team. I weighed only 160 pounds and stood five feet, eleven inches, but I figured my speed could make up for that. The UT freshmen played five games that year: SMU, Baylor, Rice, TCU, and A&M. I played halfback and scored a couple of touchdowns against A&M. That year the Texas varsity team under Coach Blair Cherry was doing pretty well and drawing good crowds, though Memorial Stadium was a lot smaller than it is now. UT students received two free tickets and could purchase four more. I made a little money on the side scalping tickets and also sold programs at the home games. The biggest game of the year was November 4, 1950, when Texas beat SMU, the number one team in the nation. They played in Austin and UT won, 23–20. I sold all six of my...

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