Alvis Grant

One of Boys Ranch’s First Boys Lives an Active Life in Dallas

The Great Depression destroyed many lives and brutalized countless families. In the early 1930’s Alvis Grant’s family was extremely poor. They were living in East Texas when his father heard there was work in Amarillo. So in 1933, the family made the long trek to West Texas. Alvis remembers the move well. He said “it was like the Grapes of Wrath,” John Steinbeck’s novel about the infamous depression-era Dust Bowl of Oklahoma and Texas.

“We pulled bolls to get to Amarillo,” he said. “Pulling bolls” is a term used to describe picking cotton. Alvis was eight years old when the family weathered the long drive in a Model A automobile. In 1934, Alvis’ Dad found work building a dam in New Mexico. He worked during the week and drove home to Amarillo on weekends. “According to my mother, Dad never sent any money,” Alvis said. Sadly, Alvis and his mother were distressed after Alvis’ father left for work one day and never came back. “I was 10 years old at the time,” he said. “I didn’t know what was going on.” His mother couldn’t work so they lived with his aunt and uncle in downtown Amarillo. The house was near a vacant lot where the boys from the Maverick Club ran every day for exercise. Alvis decided he wanted to play at the Maverick Club too.

The Maverick Club was formed in 1934 to help keep boys from drifting into delinquency because no one was at home to supervise them. There he met the club’s executive director, Mr. Ralph Dykeman, and one of its founders, Cal Farley. The various athletic activities offered by the club kept many boys like Alvis off the streets. At the club, Alvis learned to wrestle, box, play handball, and compete in a variety of other athletic activities at the club. Mr. Farley spent quite a bit of time at the club. One day he placed some money on a bulletin board and said that the first boy who could beat him in handball would win the money. “I was the first to beat him,” Alvis said.

Alvis stayed active in the Maverick Club for several years. It was his home away from home. “Ralph Dykeman changed my whole life,” Alvis said. “He’s one of the keys to the success of the Maverick Club and Boys Ranch.”

Mr. Farley believed that the Maverick Club was helping 90 percent of the boys, but there was about 10 percent who needed something more. “If we could get these boys somewhere out in the country,” Cal told a wealthy rancher, “away from the pool halls, let them work in a garden, raise a few vegetables to keep them busy, it will at least be a start.” The rancher was Julian Bivins, and he donated the property that Cal Farley used to found Boys Ranch. According to Alvis, Cal Farley wanted to start the Ranch with a few Maverick Club boys, boys who weren’t in trouble but could help give the Ranch a respectable start. Mr. Dykeman selected the boys to help start the Ranch. “He picked the kids who needed it,” Alvis said. “He picked the stable kids. It was a volunteer thing. We weren’t there for any reason other than to help start the Ranch.” Seven of the first nine boys were from the Maverick Club and they were between the ages of 10 and 15.

The boys arrived at the town site of Old Tascosa in 1939. “We all lived in the courthouse, upstairs where the jail was,” he said. Alvis has fond memories include harnessing the animals, removing moss from the swimming hole, and enjoying the brief time he was at the Ranch. He also remembers that Frenchy McCormick was still there. “She was living by herself in an old adobe hut with a dirt floor.” At age 92, Frenchy was a Tascosa legend who linked the former town with its colorful Old West past. More than twenty years earlier, when her husband died at Tascosa, she swore she would stay near his grave as long as she lived.

Alvis lived at the Ranch for about three months. His sixteenth birthday was looming and his mother needed him to go to work. So he moved back home to Amarillo. “When I left, there were about 14-15 boys living at the Ranch.” After his sixteenth birthday, Alvis quit school. His first job was at the Maverick Club. Alvis was a pretty good artist, and in his spare time he drew a lot of sketches. A local businessman noticed his talent and offered him a job painting signs.

Alvis shared a one-room house with his mother. “There were two beds in one room,” Alvis said. “The places we lived never had a bathroom of their own.” A year later, when he was 17, Alvis tried to join the marines, but his mother wouldn’t sign the papers. “So I had to stay out.” The following year he quit the sign business to make bombs at Pantex. The war was raging overseas and he felt that the war would pass him by. “The war’s going to be over and I’m out here (at Pantex) making bombs,” he recalled. “I quit my job and went down and joined the Marine Corps.”

Alvis served in the Pacific theater of the war as a jeep ambulance driver. “It was an open jeep,” he said. “It could only carry two patients on stretchers. I had a corpsman on the back to protect me.” He was a member of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines Regiment, 4th Marines Division. Alvis and his fellow marines participated in four invasions in one year that included Kwajalein Atoll in February 1944, Saipan in June 1944, Tinian in July 1944, and Iwo Jima in February 1945. He was honorably discharged in December 1945. Ironically, he arrived in Amarillo on the same date he joined three years earlier, December 3. On his second day in Amarillo he met a woman who lived next door to his mother. A week later they were engaged and in January 1946 they were married.

Alvis returned to his former occupation: painting signs. He visited the Maverick Club when he could. Mr. Dykeman remembered that Alvis enjoyed playing handball, so he suggested that Alvis play in an upcoming Dallas tournament. Alvis thought it would be fun, so he and a buddy drove to Dallas to participate. They each lost, but the organizers must have recognized some raw talent in Alvis because they offered him a free membership in the club if he’d move to Dallas and play for their team. In 1950, Alvis and his wife moved to Dallas.

He began working for a sign company, but the economy soon put Alvis on the street. “I was forced to go to work for myself,” he said. “I didn’t have a choice. It was a rough 10 years.” Most of his work came through word of mouth. His biggest account in the early days was in Sherman, Texas. He said that at the time, sign companies had difficulty finding quality sign painters. “You have to find a guy dumb enough to climb 50 feet in the air,” he said. “But once he gets up there, he has to be smart enough to paint the picture.” Alvis met both requirements and he soon began making a good living in the business. “I worked for myself for 43 years.” Alvis retired in 1994 at age 72. “I couldn’t climb the ladders anymore,” he said. “It would kill me.” Several years ago Alvis had surgery and now he has two artificial knees. “They were ruined climbing signs and playing handball,” he said.

Alvis has enjoyed two major hobbies throughout his life: handball and oil painting. His oil paintings have earned recognition and many hang in homes and businesses, the United States Handball Association Hall of Fame and a military base. As for handball, playing the game has been a lifelong love. “Although I never won the national championship,” he said, “I was the fifth best player in the nation at one time.” He also won 17 national titles in his age division, six times in the 50-year-old division. Two years ago he won the 80-year-old division and he was in the finals last year. Today, Alvis is an 83-year-old retired sign painter, artist, father and avid handball player. He continues to play handball at least three times a week. “I’m still in pretty good shape for 83 years old.”