3. THE PATTON KIDS

THE PATTON KIDS: LELA MAY, GEORGE, AND PAUL

As a child, I discovered that most of what I told to "believe in" was a crock.  Most people hung labels on themselves, such as "Christian", "Jewish", "Republican","Dixiecrat", "Chicano".  "White", so that they could be in the 'right' tribe.  A tribe that used the same grouping of labels to set themselves apart from the other 'tribes' who were to be viewed with suspicion.  Although the labels stuck, the meanings behind them did not.  Most affiliations were in name only.  So many Christians had never read any of the gospels on their own.  The only things they knew about the teachings of Christ was either the platitudes and implied threats in church sermons, or sound bytes from radio preachers.

Thus, I carefully observed human behavior and made my own decisions based on research.  It quickly became apparent that 'good' and 'evil' actually exist.  Good acts are those which are made to benefit others with no expectation of recognition or other rewards for that action.  Evil acts are those which cause pain (mental or physical) on any living being.

THE GOOD SON:  GEORGE

This puts the brothers, George and Paul Patton, in focus, stripping away all the extraneous details:  George simply was a "good" man.  He tried to help, encourage, and sustain others.  An infinite amount of kindness, patience and compassion was his hallmark in life.  And like many 'good' guys, he was sometimes bullied, mistreated, or ignored by others because they knew they could get away with it.

He was quite young when his father, Alf Patton, died.  His mother, Fern Miller Patton, packed up her three children (Lela May, George, and Paul) and moved them all from Arlington, Texas to San Antonio.  There she took the $500. Life insurance policy payout she received after Alf's death and used it to make a down payment on a large old house on Broadway Street in San Antonio.  She promptly turned it into a boarding house and put the three children to work, helping with the cleaning and cooking.  

Lela May was the oldest (about 12 at that time) and she bossed her two younger brothers, George and Paul, into doing the bulk of the house cleaning.  She did not put up with any insubordination:  Grandma used to love to tell the story about being in the kitchen of the boarding house, preparing dinner, when she heard Lela May screaming, "HELP!  Mom!  HELP MEEEEE" and loud thumping and banging coming from the top of the stairs.  She ran up the stairs and discovered Lela May, sitting on top of her brother Paul (about 8 years old), gripping his shoulders and slamming his head against the floor repeatedly.  Grandma pulled Lela May off of Paul while he ran for his life and hid under the stairs.  She asked Lela May why she was the one screaming for help when it was obvious that she was the attacker.  Lela May calmly replied, "I didn't dare let go of him unless you were here."  In short, Lela May could be a real bitch sometimes.

George, on the other hand, was smarter than the rest:  as soon as he was a teenager, he convinced Grandma he was worth more to the family if he got work after school in one of the local businesses and brought home a paycheck.  He got a job as a car hop (not on skates, at that time) at a local root beer stand on Broadway.  His personality was so sweet and charming, that he was making as much in tips as in hourly wages very soon.

THE HEADSTRONG DAUGHTER:  LELA MAY

Lela May had an IQ that was off the end of the bell-shaped curve.  She was so far ahead of all the other students that the school system decided to put her in high school when she was only 11 years old.  She would ride the bus each day across town to Brackenridge High School, a southside school in a tough neighborhood, populated by poor whites and Mexicans.  Not much was expected of students in this diploma mill, so she graduated from Brackenridge when she was only 15 years old - with no job skills but with a full scholarship to North Texas State College in Denton, Texas.

Grandma declared that Lela May was needed at home, to work in the boarding house, and that she was too young to go away to college on her own, anyhow.  She didn't intend to make the same mistake with George, so she sent him to Tech High School in San Antonio, a high school that was almost completely devoted to vocational training.  She had already taught Lela May how to refinish wood, hang wall paper, sand floors, and paint interiors.  She wanted George to learn carpentry.  And she eventually would turn Paul into an electrician.

An important point is that Lela May was 14, finishing her last year in high school, and still grieving for the death of her father, Alf Patton.  She was tiny - about 5 feet tall, maybe 90 pounds in weight, physically undeveloped, looking like a 10-year-old child.  She also had a chronic case of acne that made her fear rejection and ridicule by boys her own age.  To make things even tougher for her, she had a brilliant mind and wide-ranging interests in learning about the world.  She read the classics in every spare minute she could squeeze out but had no one around her with whom she could discuss anything.

CONFLICTED SON:  PAUL

It would be too easy to call Paul an 'evil person', without taking into account the events that helped make him the hardened, embittered, cruel man he became.  In 1933 a new high school opened in San Antonio:  Jefferson, which positioned itself (along with Alamo Heights) as a 4-year "college preparatory" high school.  Paul Patton was accepted as a student there but found himself ridiculed by the more affluent students for being 'poor white trash'.  Paul as a short, skinny, wiry little kid with pale blonde hair and blue eyes.  For clothing, he got whatever George grew out of or boarders left behind when they checked out.  He would put twine around his shoes to keep them on.  He quickly became a "hater/emulator" - he tried to emulate the bullies who tortured him while cultivating a deep hatred of them.  He also became totally bigoted, needing a societal 'pecking order' to keep himself from feeling worthless.

Paul also felt like the odd man out in his own family.  Unlike this dark haired, dark eyed brother and sister who looked like clones of their father, Alf Patton, Paul looked like no one else in the family.  I half-jokingly asked Grandma one day if Alf was really Paul's father or was she carrying on with one of the other men in Arlington.  She refused to answer; telling me to mind my own business.