Sims, Pat and Aline

Lea County Families and Histories, "Then and Now", Vol II, 1984

Submitted by: Aline Sims

     I, Aline Smith Sims, came to Eunice to teach business in 1947. A book saleman to of a vacancy here when I was a graduate student at SMU. Teaching positions were plentiful but neighbors from my hometown of Vera, Texas, had moved to Eunice in the 30's and told us of its wonderful school system. Also, teacherages were provided and New Mexico salaries were higher than Texas. I called the superintendent, Mr. H. C. Conway, and was hired by phone. Recruiters on the campus that spring spoke glowingly of other schools, but I never considered another position.

     Clarence and Arthur Brookings, my great uncles, had homestead in Lea County in the early 1900's on what is now the Linam Ranch, but they moved farther west after eight years. Their is still a house on their home site, and the Linam's call that area of their ranch Brookings.  My uncles typify the hundreds of settlers who homesteaded when the territory was opened and almost starved or died of loneliness as they tried to farm land unsuitable for farming, or to ranch on too little land to support a family. These people moved on when they lived out their claims and sold to ranchers for a few dollars, enough money to repair the wagon and get to Arizona or California.

     My family brought me and my few possessions to Eunice shortly before LAbor Day 1947. The town appeared desolate. My 12 year old brother giggled and pointed, I swated him, until we found the school. It was beautiful and well kept, there was no more teasing. My father had to locate the Methodist church and tell the minister to look after me.; he had to talk to a grocer and be sure I could have a charge account.

     The first person we met was Mrs. Edith Fanning, a beloved teacher in Eunice for many years. Her brother, Thorton Davis, came by and she introduced him, He said, "I never did like teaches," and continued on his way. I later learned he was a colorful eccentric but was kindhearted Old Timer n Eunice.

     The teacherage that helped lure me to Eunice was only being built, and and another teacher and I were assigned, to live in the home economics department until the house was ready. We slept in the model bedroom and cooked in the kitchen laboratory until Thanksgiving when our teacherage was completed. We didn't even have to pay the $15 monthly rental until we moved into our house. Bit I had never before, or since, been so neat, getting that model bedroom back into a model and the kitchen spotless before classes began.

     Mr. Conway was superintendent of schools in Eunice as Eunice boomed during the rapid oil development, and he kept the schools stable and well disciplined. He seemed to rule both faculty and students as a stern but loving father.

     He stopped into the classrooms of new teachers almost daily and strictly enforced his rules of no gum chewing, no paper on the floor. At first, I invariably had both but soon reported to my roommate in the home economics department that I could spot gum by the set of the student's jaw and catch paper dropping carelessly from a student's hand before it hit the floor.

     Mr. Conway told gory tales of a few of the teachers he recruited during World War II and had learned to ascertain personally whether a new teacher hired by phone or letter belonged in a classroom or in a backroom counting books over and over until her contract expired.

     Mr. Julian Caton, high school principal also too special effort with his new teachers. At our first faculty meeting, he explained that students in boomtown Eunice were more mature than we were accustomed to, hat they found jobs easily, owned cars, had attended many schools. He told of discussing the importance of education with a 16 year old moonlighting roughneck, and the student asked him, "Why should I go to school, Mr. Caton, when I can make more money than you do.?" I heard Mr. Caton tell this story at the beginning of six more school years, and after Pat Sims and I married in 1958, he told me that Pat was a that student. Someone did impress Pat about education because he finished high school and attended the University of New Mexico. He worked conscientiously for many years for soil and water conservation in Lea County.

     For recreation in those years, young teachers visited each other after school and attended the school activities. Mr. Conway was fond of faculty pot luck dinners; the women muttered about rushing home from school and cooking but we enjoyed them. A favored social affair was cooking Mexican food together, and a coveted invitation was to cook Mexican food at Miss Mettie Jordan's. She was the elementary school principal, and she used her organizational ability to form an assembly line in the kitchen and turn out most delicious food and hilarious fun while doing so.

     No one ever told those young teachers not to smoke in public or frequent the four or five bars in Eunice, but we knew it simply wasn't done.

     In 1954 I was offered a position as a professor at SMU in Dallas, a professional advancement I couldn't refuse. I taught there four years. After marrying a naive Lea Countian in 1958, I taught in Hobbs, another eight years. Our son, George Patrick Sims, Jr., was born in 1967, and I retired. Pat Sr. died after an industrial accident in 1977. Young Patrick loves Lea County as his father did, and we feel that our toots here are deep.