The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 92, July 1988 - April, 1989 Page: 106
682 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
would like me to do to conform. He replied that it would be best for me
to go ahead and do it my way, letting me know that I could expect no
help from him. So I did it my way, and my way was more systematic,
though not necessarily better, than his.
About 125 students registered and came to class the first day. When
they saw that somebody they had never heard of was there in Dobie's
place, they began to drop out. Enrollment fell to about 75. Then the
word got out that the class would be bearable, perhaps even fun, and
they began to come back in. As I remember it, we ended with 95. We
had a good time, and I still hear occasionally from two or three of those
students, now elderly, distinguished, and retired. When Dobie was back
in town, I even asked him to come and talk to the class-and he did. In
the course of his remarks, he spoke of me as "your beloved professor,"
which astonished me and made me look closely to see if his tongue was
in his cheek. If it was, it didn't show.
I went back to Austin, on two weeks' notice, in the spring of 1939,
trading houses with Professor E. Bagby Atwood, a specialist in Texas
dialects who was glad to teach for a semester at Texas Western and pur-
sue his investigations in West Texas. Working in a big department was a
revelation. I was painfully aware that the competition was intense and
that my colleagues were scrambling over each other's backs in the race
for distinction and promotion. Regional literature was not much re-
spected and my specialist friend Mody C. Boatright was well aware of
it. "I want to be promoted so bad I can taste it," he said to me. My pres-
ence, of course, had to be a potential threat to him, though he never
allowed it to interfere with our friendship, and it must have been a re-
lief to him and several others when I was out of the picture. My re-
moval came not long after my second professorial visit, when I was in-
vited to take Dobie's classes again.
"I will do it if you will give me a permanent appointment," I told Dr.
Lloyd L. Click of the Budget Council. "I have cabbages of my own to
hoe back at TWC, and I am not going to hoe yours any more unless I
move here permanently."
There was actually a vacancy that I could have filled. An eighteenth-
century man was needed, and I had the right background. The trouble
was that I had done no scholarly work in the field.
"Sonnichsen," said Professor Click, after conferring with his peers,
"the Budget Council thinks you have ridden off in all directions and
they won't make you an offer." A man named Ernest C. Mossner got
the job. He had stuck to his last as I had not.
Dobie and I were on friendly terms for years. I used to go to see him
when I was in Austin, which was quite often during the brief life of the
systemwide graduate school, when I was graduate dean. He talkedio6
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 92, July 1988 - April, 1989, periodical, 1989; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101212/m1/133/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.