Mrs. Marion (Myrtice Robinson) Moon, Longtime Petrolia School Teacher
MYRTICE MOON – (Interview with Mrs. Marion (Myrtice Robinson) Moon August 8, 1993, by Lucille Glasgow, friend and fellow teacher.)
The first week we were out here in 1924, my sister came with me so she could finish here so she wouldn’t have to take entrance examinations. When I went to college, I had to take entrance examinations, because Chico, where I graduated, was not accredited.
We got an apartment right across from the school. Louise, my sister, was a pretty girl. About the first week we were here, Carl Ikard met her somewhere and asked her for a date to go to the picture show. He came walking up and asked me to go with them, so I did. We came out of the picture show and went into the drugstore to get something to drink.
This young man came in, laid his car keys on the counter and walked out without saying a word. Carl knew what it meant, that he could take us girls home in his car. I asked Carl who the young man was and said I’d like to go out with him.
The next day when Carl saw him (Marion Moon), Marion said, “I’m going to marry that school teacher.”
We had one date with someone else to a picnic given by the PTA. They had arranged dates for the young ladies from a lot of single men that worked for Lone Star Gas. The rest of the winter Marion and I had a date almost every night and we married in March, 1925. We celebrated our fiftieth anniversary in 1975 and Marion died in 1977.
I was young, innocent, ignorant about what you were supposed to do for a date. Since Marion had worked in the oil drilling business up to this time, he was interested in what was going on. His idea of a good date was to drive around nearly every night and check on the progress of each well being drilled in the area. I tagged along as he talked to the crew about how deep they were and what kind of showing they were getting. We also went to the picture show in Wichita Falls some. There was a picture show here in Petrolia on Friday and Saturday nights.
Marion’s dad was a carpenter and contractor and so was Marion. Mr. Moon built bridges and buildings. I think he put down the first brick paving in Wichita Falls and built several two and three-story buildings up there. When they didn’t have roads to build or other work, Marion roughnecked in the oil fields.
When Mr. Moon came out here, he quit the building mostly and went into farming and had a dairy. He bought this place and then the pasture where Bill Holland lives now. He raised mostly grain for his cattle.
When I started out teaching here, I taught third and fourth grades. The first 12 years I taught in the lower grades, with one grade to a room. I came the same year Mr. Bock came. He was a well-liked and respected Petrolia Superintendent for many years.
After 12 years, Robert was born. After that, I taught departmental work. Then I began to teach music and gradually worked with music until it was mostly music. Then I began to teach more and more science classes because nobody else wanted to teach science. Pretty soon it was all science and no music.
I remember the musical programs I put on with the music classes. I remember writing an operetta, “The Wedding of the Flowers,” for one program. I had the girls each bring me a slip onto which I sewed crepe paper ruffles while I listened to the first graders read aloud.
The boys were flowers too with crepe paper collars. I remember Doug Holland tried to refuse to be in the program, but his mother insisted otherwise. I still remember how he was so mad that he came out on the stage clump, clump with six or seven other little daffodils. One of Ella Mae’s little girls was the bride and I think Ray Mayo was the groom, or the preacher one. That was one cute program that I had.
Every year my music classes would put on a Christmas program. I remember one in the sixth grade. We had the music of “The Nutcracker” on records, so we decided we would act out the story. Jo Ellen Overstreet was one of the principal characters and the Mayo twins, Lonnie and Ronnie, did the little Russian dance where they squat down and dance. I showed them how to do this one; the rest just did what they wanted to, free.