I had a difficult time with school. I couldn’t read. When I was in the elementary school up through fourth grade, I couldn’t see the blackboard. I seemed to always get things wrong. My parents had taken me to a chiropractor, Millie Bogardus, to help with my eyesight, but she was unable to do anything about my sight. They finally took me to Las Vegas to see an eye doctor, Sam Davis. He checked my eyes and made a prescription for glasses. A week later we went back and he had the glasses. 
I was not all that excited about wearing glasses. I was afraid that I would be called "four eyes," and I was, but for the first time in my life, I could see. I had never seen leaves on trees or blades of grass or birds in the trees or flying. It was marvelous to be able to see, and I was willing and ready to fight anyone who called me "four eyes." I thought it was funny though that sometimes a guy would say, "Take your glasses off and we'll fight." Why in the world would I do that? Take my glasses off so I couldn’t see didn't make sense, so I left them on. I don’t remember ever losing a fight and very few were really willing to fight a Stubbs because if you won you would end up fighting another one. I think our families may have been a little bit like the Herdmans in a Christmas story we used to read. I know that we spent a lot of time going into Las Vegas to get my glasses straightened or repaired in some other way.
My younger brother and I
At any rate now I could see but I still couldn’t read, I had missed out on too much in the earlier grades and I had a little dyslexia, but life seemed a little better. At any rate when I entered high school my parents and I were brought into the office for a visit with the counselor, a Mrs. Honeycutt. I mowed her lawn and the lawn of her rental. Today I would be surprised to be in a meeting like that with parents and child. The gist of the meeting was that they would need to make arrangements for me for when they were no longer there. I was going to need taking care of after they were gone. I would never be able to take care of myself because I was retarded. That was a really hard thing for my parents to hear and difficult for me too. I knew I couldn’t read, but I didn’t know I was stupid. It was very shameful to me and I didn’t want to go back to school.
It was about that time that I met Billie Bates. My dad had made arrangements with her to try to teach me to read. She did that and much more. With her help and tutoring I was able to graduate from high school and enter college.
I still feel the shame and know that I am not quite like other people around me. I can now read though I don’t enjoy it like my children do or my wife, but I can read.
I now have a disease of the brain called Alzheimer's, and the longer I have it the closer I come to what Mrs. Honeycutt said I was. I don’t remember things as well now, so in the end she will probably end up right. I will have lost my ability to reason and will be what she said I was so many years ago.

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