During close to a century of being alive, W.T. “Ted” Scheets has seen a lot.
And obviously, much of what the 99-year-old Houston resident (whose 100th birthday is Nov. 6) sees nowadays bears little resemblance to what he witnessed many decades ago.
After moving to Houston in 1940, Scheets owned and operated a downtown hardware for 45 years, along his wife Lorene. He was the City of Houston fire chief for 17 years, Houston Rural Fire Department chief for four years, and served on numerous boards, including the Houston City Council, Board of Rural Development, Cookson Hills Children’s Home, and Houston Senior Housing.
More recently, Scheets was honored with a resolution from the state House of Representatives in May of 2012, and was recognized by the Houston Area Chamber of Commerce with a “Lifetime Achievement Award” in February of this year. He has also been active for more than 60 years at First Christian Church in Houston.
Last Friday, Scheets was the guest speaker at the Texas County Genealogical and Historical Society meeting at St. Mark’s Catholic Church. He spent 2 1/2 hours reminiscing about the Houston area, describing changes in the community over the years, and telling stories about his experiences. He also took some time to share some general observations about the differences between several aspects of life now versus when he was young.
•Transportation
“When I was young – I mean a pre-teenager – it was either walk, ride a horse or a buggy or wagon. That was it – there were practically no automobiles. When I first moved to Houston in 1940 and opened my business, you could pretty near shoot a gun down Main Street and not hit anybody. But on Saturday night, the town was full.”
•Music
“Music back then was something that I could enjoy, but I don’t care for most of the music today. I like country and western, but as far as knowing music is concerned, that bus passed me by. I don’t much about music, but I do love good country singing.”
•Politics and politicians
“I think most of them today are a bunch of crooks. I heard a man on TV the other day who said we have a bunch of people in Washington D.C. who have a lot of book learning, but they don’t have any common sense. It was different when I was young. Back then, when they told you something you could depend on it. They didn’t tell you they were going to balance the budget and cut the deficit in half before their first election, and then have the budget go clear out of sight and almost double the deficit. (President Obama) also told us in the last election that he wasn’t going to bother our guns, and now he’s doing everything under the sun to take them in. Chicago has one of the strictest gun laws and they won’t hardly tell you how many murders they have. It’s the murder capital of the world.”
•Apparel
“The way women dress goes in cycles. There will be periods when they dress decent, and then at times they seem to wear as little clothing as they can. I’ve seen women with shorts on way up short, and a coat.”
•Wildlife
“(When I was young), there was more of some and less of some. Up until World War II and shortly after, we had lots of quail. Quail are scarce today.”
•“Made in America”
“I bought three or four boxes of stuff at an auction a while back, and I got a whole bunch of men’s socks – about three dozen pair, brand new. They had a tag on them that said ‘made in the USA.’ About three or four years ago, my wife was having therapy and I took one of those tags to the hospital and showed the receptionist. I said ‘I found an antique – I mean a real antique.’ I showed her the sign, ‘made in the USA.’”
•Being young
“Back then, us young people worked. The year I was 14, I put in a corn crop by myself. And I had been working much longer than that. I worked many days when I was a teenager for a neighbor who was a pretty good farmer and had five daughters and no boys. I worked for him several days for 50 cents a day and my dinner, for 10 hours. I did a man’s job.”
•Education
“Schooling is a wonderful thing, but a high school education or college graduation doesn’t give you a job. I got a seventh-grade education. The year I was going into the eighth grade, they took my dad to the hospital. We got things lined out and he got to feeling all right, and in October I got off to go to school. I went three days and had to quit, and I didn’t go back. I was just lost.”