Early Life
Couch was born in tiny Calhoun in Columbia County in southern Arkansas. During his youth, he assisted his parents and younger siblings with the endless work associated with a small cotton farm. As his father's health deteriorated, the family moved to nearby Magnolia, the seat of Columbia County. During this time, he was taught by future Governor of Texas Pat Neff at Southwestern Academy in Magnolia. In 1898, Couch successfully passed a correspondence course test, qualifying him to enter the Railway Mail Service, sorting mail in one of the many railway post office cars which criss-crossed the nation. Couch initially worked on a railway post office route on the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railroad between St. Louis and Texarkana, then a Memphis and Texarkana run over the St. Louis Southwestern Railway, before getting an assignment south into Louisiana out of his home town of Magnolia.
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Famous quotes related to early life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)