Avenue Elementary School there until a polio scare prompted the family to return to Vernon. Orbison's father gave him a guitar on his sixth birthday. He recalled, "I was finished, you know, for anything else" by the time he was 7, and music became the focus of his life. His major musical influence as a youth was country music. He was particularly moved by Lefty Frizzell's singing, with its slurred syllables, and he adopted the name "Lefty Wilbury" during his time with the Traveling Wilburys. He also enjoyed Hank Williams, Moon Mullican and Jimmie Rodgers. One of the first musicians that he heard in person was Ernest Tubb, playing on the back of a truck in Fort Worth. In West Texas, he was exposed to rhythm and blues, Tex-Mex, the orchestral arrangements of Mantovani, and Cajun music. The cajun favorite "Jole Blon" was one of the first songs that he sang in public. He began singing on a local radio show at age 8, and he became the show's host by the late 1940s. According to The Authorized Roy Orbison, the family moved again in 1946, to Wink, Texas. Orbison described life in Wink as "football, oil fields, oil, grease, and sand" and expressed relief that he was able to leave the desolate town. All the Orbison children had poor eyesight; Roy used thick corrective lenses from an early age. He was self-conscious about his appearance and began dyeing his nearly-white hair black when he was still young. He was quiet, self-effacing, and remarkably polite and obliging. He was always keen to sing, however, and considered his voice memorable, but not great. In high school, Orbison and some friends formed the band Wink Westerners. They played country standards and Glenn Miller songs at local honky-tonks and had a weekly radio show on KERB in Kermit, Texas. They were offered $400 to play at a dance, and Orbison realized that he could make a living in music. He enrolled at North Texas State College in Denton, planning to study geology so that he could secure work in the oil fields if music did not pay. He then heard that his schoolmate Pat Boone had signed a record deal, and it further strengthened his resolve to become a professional musician. He heard a song called "Ooby Dooby" while in college, composed by Dick Penner and Wade Moore, and he returned to Wink