By Laura Kestner, Editor

His name is Lloyd Dixon, and when asked, he said Lloyd is spelled with two L’s. “It looks more important that way,” he laughed.

Dixon was born February 3, 1908, in Victor, a tiny community these days, but a thriving town back then. He currently lives in DeLeon.

“If I make it to next February 3, I’ll be 100,” he said recently. “A lot of people say, ‘Oh, you’ll make it’ but I don’t know if they know what they’re talking about.”

He still drives -- but “just a little bit.”

“I don’t get out on the road from here to Dublin, or here to Gorman, or anything like that,” he said, “unless I have to.”

Dixon said his daughter -- Ellen Kea -- has offered to drive him wherever he needs to go, but that other family obligations make it difficult for her. So for errands just around the immediate area, he drives himself.

GETTING READY FOR LUNCH. Lloyd Dixon, 99, visits with Lona Henderson while waiting for lunch to start at the DeLeon Senior Citizen Center last week.

“My daughter calls me every morning to see if I’m doing OK,” he said, “and she tries to call me in the evening, about 8 o’clock, to see if I’m still doing OK.”

He also talks a bit about Ellen’s brother, Roy Smitherman.

“They’re both actually my stepchildren,” he said. “I told them they were the best stepchildren I ever heard of, and they said I was the best stepfather they ever heard of.” His wife, Travis Dixon, passed away some years ago.

Dixon said he moved into town about 15 years ago, but memories of his childhood in Victor are still vivid.

“There were three stores there in Victor,” he said. “One of them was a little more than a grocery store, they sold a little bit of everything, like a general store. My mother bought a sewing machine from them.”
Dixon said there was also a blacksmith shop, a cotton gin and a drug store. There were also two churches -- a Baptist and a Methodist.

“The first house we lived in was a log house,” Dixon said. “I don’t remember living in it, we moved out of it when I was about two or three years old. They built a new one beside it, and the old one sat there for several years.”

According to Dixon, the new one was a 14 foot room, built out of 1x12 boards, that had a lean-to on the north side, which was the kitchen.

“We lived in it about seven or eight years, until 1918, that was when the Desdemona oil boom started,” he said. “We got rich then, and we built us a better house.”

Dixon was born in the little log house. “My uncle, Bob Dixon, who was 15 years old at the time, rode a horse to Highland, about six miles, during the night, to get Dr. Murray to come out and spank me,” he laughed. “Dr. Murray lived at Highland and he had a drugstore there -- a little lean-to against the grocery store. We had a drug store at Victor too, but, at that time, we didn’t have a doctor.”

Dixon said his parents were very young when they married. “My mother was 15 and my father was 18,” he said. “And my grandfather had bought the place (log house) for them, so they would have somewhere to live. My father farmed that place until about 1915, and he was really doing good at farming, so he bought it from my grandfather for $25 an acre -- it was 60 acres. He was going to pay so much a year -- they made a whole bunch of notes -- and he’d pay one at the end of the year. He had just made one or two payments when this oil boom hit, and then he leased it, to someone who thought he was an oil man, for $125 an acre.”

The first school memories come from around 1914.

“The school was in a two-story frame building,” Dixon said. “There were two teachers, one for the little folks and one for those who thought they were smart. They had this big cast iron bell there that they would ring when it was time for us to go in. During the noon hour, or when we came in from recess, they would ring this bell just one ‘clink’ for us to come back in. They had to go upstairs to ring this bell. When I would see the principal going toward the school building I knew he was going to ring the bell and I would dash up and ask if I could ring it, and he let me.”

That principal, Luther Moore, left a very vivid impression on Dixon. He was related to O.H. Moore, a prominent Victor figure.

“Luther Moore was the best school teacher we ever had out there,” Dixon said. “He was hard, but he really did a good job.” Luther Moore also served as principal for a time.

“O.H. Moore taught there when my father and mother -- M.L. and Etta Dixon -- were going to school,” Dixon said. “There were more students than they could teach, something like 100 students at the time. O.H. wasn’t quite old enough...so the principal at that time had to pay him out of his pocket.”

Other teachers that Dixon remembers include Florence Day (his first teacher), Mrs. Buchanan, Maude Brown and Mabel Day, Florence’s sister. “Then the first World War came up,” Dixon said, “and they had to hire a lady principal -- Miss Star. Then Ben Macon, who taught before World War I, and then again after he got back home. And the next one was a Mr. Savage, and Jack Knox was the last teacher there.”

After the Victor school closed, students were sent to DeLeon schools, where Lloyd Dixon graduated in 1928.

“I had to furnish my own transportation to DeLeon,” Dixon said. “I had a worn out T Model Ford. It would run sometimes, and sometimes it wouldn’t. It’s interesting to tell people that I walked from out there (Victor) to the DeLeon school, but that was only one time out of a month or so, whenever the car wouldn’t run. But I did walk it. It was seven miles.”

Classmates listed with Dixon on a DeLeon graduation program for 1928 include Amizone Mohon, Adell McKelvy, Coale Nance, C.L. Kinchen, Edwin Brown, Estell Noel, Ethel Vaughan, Faith Eliott, Gladys Ashton, Hazel Huddleston, Hezzie Dean, Howard Baker, Huron Polnac, Julia Havis, John Carl Haskins, Kenneth Finklestine, Lofton Bishop, Louise Lester, Lorene Lightfoot, Lucy Mae Merritt, Mary Pilcher, Marjorie Swagerty, Myrtle Upshaw, Modess West, Murry Toland, Mollie Gray, O.L. Thomson, Orvall Ross, Paul Holleman, Ruth Farrow, Ruel Lock, Roy Nabors, Ray Harvey, Willie Mae Jetton and Zora Baker.

For the past few years, at the DeLeon School Reunion each August, Dixon has received special recognition as the oldest DeLeon graduate. He’s also the last surviving member of the Class of 28.
Chores were a regular feature of Dixon’s life.

“When I got in from school, I had to chop wood and gather the eggs,” he said. “I would also draw water out of the well with a rope and a bucket to water the milk cow. I’d also get feed for the milk cow. My mother milked.”

One of Dixon’s more vivid memories is of helping his mother “roll the quilt up” when she stopped quilting for the day. He also remembers helping his mother “wind up” the quilting frame so that it was stored near the ceiling until she needed it again.

Dixon remembers when the Duke Oil Well blew in just three miles, straight across the country, from where they lived.

“That happened at night,” he said, “and the fire just lit things up all over the countryside.

Dixon remembers that he and his father, after dropping his mother and sister at the train depot in DeLeon, gave a ride to a man who was walking. “We told him we were going out to see this burning oil well,” he said. Because of recent heavy rains, the mud made for a difficult trip. “There was water all over the country out that way,” he said. “This hitchhiker said, ‘I’d like to see that (burning oil well), I’ll just go with you.’ Well, when we got to the Duke place, they had put the fire out, and had a lock on the gate and wouldn’t let anybody in. So all we could do was go home to Victor.”

Oddly, the hitchhiker went with them.

“The hitchhiker stayed with us,” Dixon said. “Victor is right on the bank of Flatt Creek. And Flatt Creek had a lot of water in it. It had rained so much all over the country. We happened to have a good wagon and team. But we almost went down stream. The wagon was floating, and the mules were swimming, and we got out on the other side -- but not in the road -- it was up a ways. We got plenty wet. Me and my brother, father and the hitchhiker in the wagon. Now, when I tell this, I tell people that my father couldn’t get rid of that hitchhiker, and he thought if he drove off in that creek, he could get rid of him. That hitchhiker went on home and stayed all night with us. His clothes were soaking wet, and that was all the clothes he had. But we built a fire in the fireplace and dried him out, I guess.”

Dixon said that now, the highway department has built a road across that particular part of Flatt Creek.

“They put in a good concrete bridge there, on Hwy. 2156,” he said. “I tell people that’s the Dixon Bridge. It took me about 85 years to get that bridge built,” he laughed, “but I didn’t give up.”

The oil boom in Desdemona, translated to a boom for many surrounding areas, including Victor.

According to Dixon, hauling oil field equipment to Desdemona was one of the more lucrative endeavors.

“Wagons would be coming from DeLeon,” he said, “after getting freight from freight cars. Wagons would also be coming from Dublin. And they would be coming from Victor too. A lot of times the drivers of these wagons would camp there in Victor. And everything was mostly hauled by wagon then, trucks had not gotten that popular.

Dixon did not come from a large family, and he’s outlived most all of them.

“I had a brother, Ira, three years older than me,” he said, “and a sister, Grace, four years younger than me.” Both are now deceased.

When asked what he did for a living, Dixon replied, “A whole bunch of things.”

“I went to Tarleton and got out (with a degree in civil engineering) during the depression,” he said. “I couldn’t get a job at that time, doing anything. There were a few years there that I didn’t do anything. Just walked here, and walked there, trying to find a job.”

Dixon said he finally got a job with the Soil Conservation Service.

“I worked for them for about three years,” he said. “Then in World War II, I was single, and both my parents were in good health so I knew I would get drafted, so I beat them to the draw and volunteered. I got in the Air Force and it took five years to win World War II.”

Dixon said he next tried farming.

“I tried to farm at Victor,” he said. “I bought a farm with money I’d saved up out of World War II, got it for $8 an acre, and sold it for $100 an acre a few years later. It was owned by a bunch of heirs who didn’t get along, and they sold it (cheap) thinking they were getting back at their brothers and sisters.”

Dixon later moved to Odessa.

“I worked for the state, doing highway work, out there,” he said. Then I went to work for the post office in Odessa. I worked there for 17 years, I believe. I retired from there. They didn’t pay as much for working in the post office as the oil field workers were getting, and a lot of people in the post office would say, ‘I’m going to get out from here and get me a good job’ but I was ‘dumb’ enough to stay with the post office, and the retirement I get now is good.”

Dixon said he enjoys going to the Senior Citizens Center here in DeLeon three times a week and visiting with friends.

He said that some of the more “modern” conveniences he’s enjoyed include automobiles, paved roads, and, “people in the country getting electricity.”

Though not particularly a fan of television, Dixon said he does like to watch “Wheel of Fortune” and sometimes a baseball game. “I’m a Ranger’s fan,” he said.

When asked what he believed to be the chief reason for his longevity, Dixon pondered on it for a moment, before answering honestly, “I don’t know.”

He remembers that hot biscuits were a fixture every morning at breakfast, and that hot cornbread was the bread of choice at the other meals.

“And we always had a good garden,” Dixon said, “and we can see now that was what we needed. And I didn’t smoke cigarettes, and I didn’t get drunk.”