Start on page 5 We bought a car from Uncle Jim when Thel was discharged from the army in 1945. He had a couple setting at his filling station. There were very few for sale. There hadn't been any new cars sold, except to the military since 1941. I still have the canceled check for $450. Oct 6, 1945. It run good for years, we drove it to see Thel's folks in Oklahoma. Then on to Fort Worth to start our life again.
Uncle Jim was my Daddy's youngest brother. They were both short and people got them mixed up. He was a union carpenter and lumber was short during the war.
I worked at Alexanders Creamery and made ice cream when Thel was overseas; and later in their ice cream store. I saved all our allotment money.
Uncle Jim's daughter Minnie Alice was exactly a year older than me. My sister Alicea was exactly ten years younger than me. She was 6 or 8 when she figured it out that I would 'never be as old as Minnie Alice'. We teased Minnie Alice, she got me back by always telling me 'the bad things that I had ahead of me, the next year'. She was good natured about it. Alicea died at 39 of a 'thyroid storm'and Eldridge at 60 of heart trouble, brought on by alcohol. Minnie Alice at 80, of CDIF.
I always thought that Minnie Alice was beautiful, she went to the beauty shop a lot. Something about her eyes reminded me of Elizabeth Taylor. Stanley thinks so too. She worked at Louis Dyches jewelery during High School. She got a job in Fort Worth and soon got a desk job when the Army base opened in Abilene. She met Bill Card from Tennessee, he was handsome and friendly and we all liked him. He was a musician in an army USO band. Billy was gone on a long tour and Minnie Alice come out with a beautiful purse. “Billy would have wanted me to buy that.”
Every time we went to Breckenridge, they were there. Billy never could repair or help do anything, just music, he never had a job; just playing in the army band.
One time he figured how to make money raising chinchillas. They were so soft and pretty, looked like big real short fat rats in the rack of tiny cages that Uncle Jim built behind his house in Breckenridge. No one remembers how they come out, but them and the cages were gone before long.
Billy never worried about money, Minnie Alice did, she had to budget for his speeding tickets. Billy had him a little band, on a short trip, they had a problem. Billy had to use everything in Minnie Alices bank account. She checked and was told there were two ways that she would not be liable for his debts. Have him committed or divorce him.
Billy moved back home to Tennessee. “I just couldn't afford him.” He died in a few years, his second wife had him cremated, before his sisters knew that he was dead. One of them called Minnie Alice, crying on her shoulder.
Trudy said, "Was she thinking--"He's not going to get any more of my money."
The last time Thel drove to Breckenridge, before he went overseas, we drove into Uncle Jim's yard. Uncle Jims two car garage there was running over with scrap lumber.
Imogene and James V were there in the yard, in his PFC khaki uniform. He had been drafted. Thel had on his officers cap, the fancy one with the hard bill. We hugged and Imogene told James V that she wanted him to get one of those fancy caps. He told her that he wasn't allowed to wear one. Thel told him that he could wear it off the base, not officially. Thel knew that he was going overseas and couldn't wear it there.
So he sold his fancy officers cap to James V for $5, lovely blond daughters, Candy, Mitzy and Yvonne.
Jeannie Waynette was their first child, beautifull blond, that soon turned chubby.
Uncle Jim had a filling station and they brought her cookies and candy. The cookies had to have filling, or she wouldn't eat them. The Doctor thought that she might be getting to much sugar. They come to see 'Tootie', a book, no candy, "Ma Maw, you and Papaw got no more money?" She cried. They cried.
Uncle Jim had a Lake House, 'Shilow Retreat' on Lake Hubbard. It wasn't big enough to 'sleep' us all. We brought campers and cots. We brought Benjamin and Gina, She was six, she brought all her dresses and modeled and showed them off. Benjamin was walking down some wide rock steps to the lake. Dora was right behind him, she saw that he had stepped over a rattle snake. She grabbed him up, hollering, "Snake Bite! see it, right here on his leg."
He calmly said, "That's chocolate, I didn't get snake bit." He still remembers it.
Another year, everybody brought food. Tommy picked up a piece of pie, he didn't like it. He held it and walked outside down toward the water. He pitched it over in the weeds and grass. He heard a rattlesnake rattle. He stayed right there and called his Daddy. They hunted, found it and killed it on the rocky shores of Hubbard Creek Lake. The only two snakes that I remember.
Eldridge brought Mama and Daddy from Arkansas to the reunions ever summer. Dora and Burl loved to trot line fish. We worried that they would turn over in their small boat. They had permission to fish in all the good places and caught lots of fish, big cat fish. They loved to cook it for us in the big black wash pot of grease. They wouldn't eat any fish. The rest of us felt real bad, we ate it all.
Our family always had corn meal 'fish gravey'. It was Wonderful. I can't forget Uncle Jim whispering over my shoulder, "Louise, always remember to brown the cornmeal, real brown." Then put in water, cook and stir slowly untill it is thick. It needs some milk to make it look better. I brown rice and then cook it--to go with it too.
I have been asking for years; no one ever heard of 'corn meal gravey'.It was a tradition in the Knight Family. Uncle Jim always had a building project waiting for the men to help work on, and they all pitched in.
Jimmy Hellinghausen come along three or four years later. He was so nice and we all liked him. They had a house in Abilene and Breckenridge too. He painted houses for Uncle Jim, he liked to buy and sell guns and things. He had bought an old sawed off shotgun and had it laying in his pick up seat. He was very concious of gun safety, and the last owners had assured him that the gun was unloaded and couldn't shoot anyway. His friend had it for a few days and gave it back to him.
Aunt Zenna Mae and Minnie Alice were at their house and needed a few groceries. Jimmy went to the store for them. He come back from the store and got out of his pickup and walked around to the other door. He pulled the paper sack with the groceries toward him. It hung on the gun and he was shot in the chest.
He fell straight back, still clutching the bag of groceries, his eyes open, staring at the Sunday evening sun. His friend had left a shell in the gun. His parents had been visiting them from Arlington, where they lived. They had already told Minnie Alice and Jimmy, "By" and would soon be on their way back home, to Arlington.
Aunt Zenna Mae rushed for someone to find them before they left Breckenridge. She said, "I am not going to be the one to tell that woman that her son had been shot." Someone else found them and told them.
An unloaded gun is the most dangerous kind. You all remember that!!
His parents were very kind and good to Minnie Alice.
She worked at Abilene until she retired and then owned several nice houses.
'Maw' Harding was Aunt Zenna Mae's mother, she was especially nice. She got old. Aunt Zenna Mae was 40, she drove to school to Throckmorton and got her R N license, so that she could take good care of her mother.She mostly worked at the hospital
Richard had a problem, Aunt Zenna Mae said, "Don't you worry about it. He will grow up to be a fine person." And how right she was!
Minnie Jeanne remembers that "Any time they got sick, they always called Aunt Mae, to find out what to do. When her husband, Darrel was in the hospital, they decided to send him to the hospital in Fort Worth, where they amputated his leg.
(Darrel was working in a machine shop. The employees had a kind of game where they would shove a big heavy bucket along the floor. When it come at you--you were supposed to jump it. Darrek didn't jump in time and he had a sore on his leg that got infected.
She was with him in his room and she didn't have any clothes to take with her to wear. Aunt Zenna Mae handed her car keys to her, "You go home and pack you some clothes". When she got back, Aunt Zenna Mae was still in his room. She handed Minnie Jeanne a $50 bill, "Take this, you will need it."
Uncle Jim used Minnie Alice as a helper and they kept his old houses rentable for several more years.Then he was house bound. Minnie Alice had Meals on Wheels delivered to his door. He was bad, to not open the door for them.
Uncle Jim loved the Dallas Cowboys, on his first TV. He called them 'the Wow Boys.' (now 2015, I watch them and feel like that Uncle Jim is setting here, right beside me. )
Finally a nursing home, I thought he wasn't going to talk to me.
“Isn't this a heck of a place for a man to have to be.”
She ended up with a nice old two story home on on East Hullum, practically 'down town'. She sold nice big hand paintings for a friend. Several of them were left.
There was plenty of good furnishings for it, to many. she used several of the nicer furniture pieces of Uncle Jim's. There was a nice big real old buffet from Uncle Chocks. There was a car shed for four cars, she didn't need four car spaces She stored things in two spaces, it got full and then she stored things in the other two spaces. Then she parked her own car on the street. She always locked it's doors every time she got out of it, even in front of her own house. I try, even now, to follow her good example.
I'll tell right now that Uncle Jim was a pack rat. Watch out, it runs in the family!Mama watched Daddy about it. At Breckenridge, she drew a line, west of the house, about 250 feet. Daddy was not to park a plow or anything, on this side of it. It worked and our back yard always looked nice and big.
Uncle Jim was a union carpenter and never wasted anything. Piles of lumber and several storage sheds on his seven acres on Patterson Hill, the southeast part of town. They always milked a cow. Stanley remembers the time that he went up there with Daddy and one of his sheds was full of bailed peanut hay. He set and ate peanuts off the hay.
Aunt Zenna Mae burned trash in their barrel one day, and went on to town. She did not watch it long enough, the fire got out and burned everything but their house and garage. We suspected that the neighbors had burned it, it was so trashy and piled up.
Ima Jeanne and James V had Trudy, Buster and Bill. Tudy and Creepy had three girls. Ima Jeanne had a heart problem and had several spells and suddenly died.
Ida and I were the only ones that could get off to go to her funeral. Aunt Zenna Mae called me and asked if we could come a bit early. We did and she had us drive her to a Drs office and she went in alone. She come out and had been crying, but was relieved. She said that when Ima Jeanne had died in the hospital- she had jumped all over the Drs and nurses and blamed them for not saving her. She went in just before her funeral and apologized. She knew that she did all that they could do for her. They told her that it was all right and they all cried.
Buster was a good football player. He went on to college, had a wife and a boy and a girl and a good job as a chemist at Uncle Ben's Rice in Houston. He gradually lost it all, from drinking. He was back in Breckenridge, batching in Uncle Jim's old house. He told his sister Tudy that he knew when to stop drinking, before he got to much.
Stanley said that everyone who drinks, they say that.
He had cirrhosis of the liver and kept drinking. He was years old.
We come to the reunion one year and Aunt Zenna Mae talked a little slow and slurred, like she was drunk. We knew that could not be true. She had a nephew who was a Doctor at the big Scott and White hospital in Tyler. There they soon found that she had ALS or Lou Gehrigs disease. Her nerves and muscles degenerated. There is still no medicine for it. She had no pain, lived about six months.
Trudy took good care of her at home. There was a canvas lift to help get her from the bed to the chair. Trudy told her that she would call the school cafeteria and tell them that Trudy wouldn't be working there, next year. Her Granma told her that she would be 'gone', before school started. And she was. She liked all company and she crochet on the end of a little face towel for everyone. Mine is still hanging on our oven door.
There was a man on the other side of town that had the disease at the same time. They never could find any connection between them.
Then Uncle Jim brought his good power saws in to his house. Soon there was a trail through the hall and into each room. Then each room filled up. The house burned in 2013, vagrants?
Minnie Alice dabbled in machine quilting and when she found a 'good buy', she might buy a bolt or two or three. There was plenty of room to store things in her upstairs, until it got full, even the stairs. She had a nice electric organ, and drove to Arlington for lessons, we all liked to listen to her. She was a widow for 20 years. She could cook good and bake wonderful pies. She had a nice group of friends, Bill Golden met her and her friends told him that she wouldn't date anyone.“Well, she will have to say 'No' a lot of times,” He won. We all really liked him.
Uncle Jim was gone before this Bill come into the picture, he would have liked him, too. Minnie Alice said, "And these are supposed to be 'our Golden years?"I felt sorry for him because he has vertigo, like I do. Minnie Alice bought a health insurance policy for him. “I don't want to have to pay his doctor bills.”
Near her end, she told Trudy, "There's worse things than living without a man."
Minnie Alice was in the hospital and got CDIFF and died quickly.
When we moved into the pine forest in New Mexico, Annie Louise was 8 months old. Our homestead was eight miles south of Carona. It was a valley on the road to Roswell. On one side was a clift and a small mountain on the other.There were bigger mountains in the distance that had snow all year. Our choice was a mile off the highway, a mile from the big TOT ranch.The first winter we lived in a nice little house on the TOT ranch and Ben worked for Armstrong.
One of Annie Louise's first little stunts, was to mock a woodpecker that she could watch from her window. She would bow her little head like the bird.
One morning Ben walked in and handed me a little handfull of doves and went on to work. I poured scalding water on them and started picking out their feathers. I had never seen doves cleaned, before. When he come in for dinner, I was setting there, crying, still picking out the little feathers. If I had got them cleaned; I wouldn't have known how to cook them. He grabbed them and with one lick, he jerked the skin off.
He cut them down the back and pressed them in the hot skillet.
The United States Land Office 'gave title' after you lived on your land for three years; built a house and had land in cultivation. We got an exemption from the cultivation because our land was too rough. There was a whole bunch of people trying to live on their land until they got a clear title. You had to have it surveyed and fenced too.
You couldn't hardly get surveyors. Then you went with them and they marked where you thought your lines were.
You borrowed someones fence. You took down their two strands of 'bob', barbed wire. You put up your own fence. You stapled it on trees that were kinda on the property line. There were lots of trees, few post holes had to be dug. It was a long way around 320 acres. The inspector 'passed' your fence and you took your wire down. No telling how many times that wire had been used.
Ben cut a tree part way thru, about ten foot off the ground. It fell over but it didn't come off the stump. He dug a shallow trench, six foot out and along both sides of the cut tree. He cut smaller treesand put the thickest end in the shallow trench. They wouldn't slide out of place. Then leaned them against the cut tree. Tree limbs piled against them,made a good dry shelter. We used it for a barn.
By spring he was working on our cabin. Oh we were so thrilled, we were going to stay forever. He started two great big rooms; when it should have been some little lean-to. We were living in a tent to be closer. He sold our car and bought a team. He would cut a log from our land and drag it to our spot, and then another and another. Our cabin began to take shape. It was hard to make the logs stay up there, he notched the corners. There wasn't a sawmill around, no lumber to buy. He bought used doors and windows.
Sometimes he worked for the county, hauling gravel for their roads, in our wagon. He worked at a little garage in Corona. Sometime he would be going to work on Sunday. I would remind him. He would say,"God knows when my ox is in the ditch." He would cut a log off our land and put his mark on it. Neighbors would do the same and when there was a load, a big truck would haul them to the sawmill and we got some money.
I couldn't do much with watching you and expecting the new baby. Ben would mix some morter and I would fill the cracks between the logs. I could stand on a bucket and reach the second log from the top, inside the house. Then go outside on the same crack and smooth it. It kept wanting to fall out, it got harder as it got higher. Ben had so much to do. I don't know how in the world we did it. It didn't bother us that we were poor and had nothing. We were on top of the world. It sure never bothered you.
We were expecting a new baby by Christmas and we wanted to get the room ready to move into. Ben worked so hard with the axe that he got a blister that turned into blood poisoning. That held us back.
We moved in that room and it seemed so big. We ordered a stove from Sears.
A couple were getting a divorce and selling their furniture. Nobody had any money.
We got all that we wanted for $20. (Daddy always seemed to have a little money tucked away.) A couch that made a bed, dresser, two big wooden rocking chairs and two cane bottom chairs. (One of the rocking chairs sets on our porch, right now. It still has the original springs, you set in it and you'll see. 2016.)
There was a big red ant den just out our back door, it may have been a hundred years old. It was the biggest one that I have ever seen. You learned to scoot back out the door and you played in their nice gravel all winter. One warm spring day--they come out and you thought they were pretty and played with them. They started stinging you. You had never been bit before. You started screaming like wildfire. I poured coal oil, kerosene, it looks like gasoline, the pure stuff, in my hand and rubbed it on you. We poured a lot down the hole. In about three weeks, they come back out again. You had forgot and got in them again. We never did get them killed out.
We bought coal oil by the five gallon can, used it to start the fires, to burn in the lamp and lantern and to put on a string of cloth to tie on the table legs, to keep the little sugar ants off, wherever we lived. To bring the thin coal oil home, at the store, they stobbed an irish potato over the little pouring spout of the can.It would have sloshed out.
For a chest cold or stuffed up head, I put a little meat grease and coal oil in a pie pan on top of the stove. Watch it that it don't burn and when it gets hot, lay a six inch flannel rag in it and quickly lay it on your chest. Nobody likes the smell, but the next morning, you feel better. Before long, Vicks salve come out and that was a big help.
There were some Indian ruins close to us.One time we went there in the wagon. We just got there and picked up some pretty pottery pieces. You turned the water jug over. Daddy said that we had to go back-- before you started to call "dink dink."
We never got to go again, I always wanted to.
I felt so sorry for the Indians. This all used to be their land. They let the Whites come in and the Whites turned on them and drove them out.
December 19, 1924, it come the first blizzard of the year, it was bad. I knew that the new baby was coming. Ben went about six miles, one way, for a nurse that we had already spoken for. She had a phone and called the Doctor. He and his wife started in 8 inches of fresh snow. Ben had to meet the Dr at the road, in our wagon. His car couldn't travel off the highway, in that much snow that was on our little road to our house. The road to our house was really just a big cattle trail.
By the time the Doctor got to our house, it was to late. The cord was in such a way that our baby had died. We didn't have any money, but if we had known that was going to happen, I would have been in the hospital. Ben took our baby and went back with the Doctor and his wife. He buried him in a cemetery in town. Later we put up a tombstone for him, we forgot to put the date on it.
That same night a rancher was riding his horse, looking after his stock in the blizzard. His horse come back to the house and he wasn't on it. They found him, frozen, days later. He is buried right next to our baby and his stone has the correct date on it.
(My sister Alicea, on her way to visit friends in Arizona 55 years later, she located the homestead and her first little brothers grave. She wanted to move that baby to Texas. Aunt Etta talked her out of it- "There just wouldn't be anything left.")
'Louie Benjamin', named after an army buddy of Ben's.
After he died, it ended our thrill of wanting to live in New Mexico.
We wanted to 'prove out' our homestead claim, and sell it. We wanted back in Texas.
I had to go outside and I set your oats and milk on the apron of the wood stove for you to eat. When I come back inside, you had the frying pan and had raked some coals down on the grates and was frying yourself an egg. You said. “Mama I cooked one egg and it was good and I am cooking another one.”
I remember wanting my Daddy to 'blindfold' me an egg. That started me to knowing that he was so smart. My Mama couldn't do that.
Water was a problem, there were no tanks or wells. There wasn't much rain and it come in short little dashes and the little creek dried up quick. Ben dug a cistern by the side of our house and the water run off the roof, into it. He dug another one by the creek and we ditched water into it. There was more snow than rain. We throwed snow into the cisterns. Ben could always haul water from the TOT cistern's when we needed it..
It was winter and the grass was gone. We didn't have money for feed. We had a hillside that was covered with prickly pears. Ben would build a fire and chop the prickly pears into bunches, with his axe. We would stick a pitchfork through them and hold them over the fire, until the stickers had burned off. They were heavy and would want to fall off the pitchfork. My face would blister, whichever way I would stand.
I would get stickers in me, no matter how careful that I was.
The cows would eat them like candy, There was always some old late cow, that would run up 'bellerin'. Sometimes we would haul the cack to another place to burn them.
(Now 2014, Stanley makes his cows eat the cack without burning the stickers off.)
Everyone had a cow, they were all branded and roamed together. The ones that were milked, they were tied out where they could get grass,and be given water at noontime.
We built another room on. I was afraid that you would be timid, raised by yourself. There were lots of people working on their claims.
We let another couple move in our second room. They had a little boy, just older than you. Jack would sometimes get the best of you. You would get mad but get over it quick and be playing again.
We were outside and you went back in the house. You must have got to close to the stove. Your short skirt caught fire and you were flipping at it with your fingers. The woman in the other room smelled it and come in and put it out.
God was watching over us.
The next summer we went in our wagon to west Texas, wherever it was that Kelse and Hettie were picking cotton. It sure did take a long time to get there. We could get longer 'picking time', camping right there in our wagon. You played along with the pickers or rode on Ben's cotton sack. You were playing up ahead, saying “Bugadee, Bugadee". That's what you called everything that moved. Ben looked and didn't see anything and kept picking. He got closer and saw that you and a rattlesnake was looking at each other. He eased up closer and grabbed it by the tail and jerked and popped it's head off. God was watching out for us.
You were taking a nap under the cotton wagon, sometimes I would tie a string on you. The owner of the place was an alcoholic, he had taken a wagon load of cotton to the gin. He brought that empty wagon back and parked it. He was hooking onto the wagon that was full of cotton, that you were sleeping under. The other pickers were hollering at him. Me and Ben were running. Ben got to the wagon and he jerked you out from under it; just as the owner slapped the reigns on the mules backs. Oh we kept God busy.
Kelse and Hettie decided they wanted to move to Mexico too. They wanted to build another two rooms on to our cabin and us live together. Knowing how they changed their minds, we told them that we wouldn't have the money to pay them for the two rooms, if they decided to leave. They said that in the unlikely chance that they would ever want to leave, they would give us the two rooms.
They moved and liked it there. Two more rooms were built on. Dora remembers that “a big log fell on Aunt Anne's little white dog and she cried and cried.”
Adelle was such a tiny thing and always so smart, she and Dora did good in school. Silas was just two years older than you.
Hettie got sick and it just hung on. We thought that she would die. Someone sent a colored nurse to our house. She walked in at the door, “My Lord, you is killing this woman.” She opened the doors and windows. Dora remembers that "she even made Papa take the hot coals out of the stove."
Fort Sumner was established years before, to protect the settlers from the Indians. They turned it into a tuberculosis hospital. The only cure for TB, was bed rest.
They sent Hettie there. We all took it hard. One day she overheard two nurses talking. “The only reason that Hettie is here; is so that we will get more money, because that bed is filled. The scars on her lungs are from the pneumonia that she had last year.”
Hettie caused a commotion and got out of there.
You always liked to eat red beans. You would eat all that we thought you should have. We would put something else on your plate. “No No Beanies”
Then you would crawl down from our table and out our door, and up the steps to where Kelse and Hetties family was eating supper. When they would put something else on your plate; “No No Beanies.” They are still your favorite.
Dora was in the second grade. She was friends with every one. One special little boy was a Mexican. Uncle Kelse explained that she wasn't to have any thing to do with those people. Dora couldn't see any difference, she liked him. Kelse had a fit! He was not going to have that.
They packed their things in their wagon and headed back to west Texas, “Back to our own kind!” There were no Mexicans working in west Texas, then.
His Dad had two big cotton farms. Dora remembers, that when we went there, to his house, he was real strict. "He told us over and over, not to play in the fire.
So when he left the room; that was the first thing that we did.
He caught us and Wow, we got a thrashing."
I had a hard time keeping up with you, there was no yard fence. If I called you, I couldn't hear you answer. Some time I could follow the trail of your stick horse, dragging in the dust. The road in front of our house was really just a big cattle trail.
There were wild horses that we could sometimes see in the distance. There was a little colt playing around with them. You said that it was yours.
One day I heard a noise and couldn't see you. A herd of horses come running down the road. I got a glimpse of you, running right to the middle of the road, waving your arms to stop them. I thought those horses would never pass.
There you lay, all drawed up, covered with dirt, top to bottom, not a bruise.
Not a scratch on you.
You were mad because your little colt wouldn't stop! God was watching over us.
You learned early to talk loud and to let me know when some one was coming.
I was very deaf because of ear infections when I was a child.
We were going to 'prove out' our homestead, that took three years, and live there forever. But when Louie Benjamin died at birth, we 'lost our thrill', during that first terrible snow storm.
I wrote to Mama often. She sent little magazine pictures and tiny swatches of material of dresses that she was making, for Etta and Ludie. And little zig zag letters from JM. When I was in the cotton fields of West Texas or the pine forest of New Mexico, I could open my tiny box and be comforted. I still have it. In my trunk I kept Daddys wool army uniform and his black wedding suit. I kept my wedding dress and my bathing suit. It had a big sailor collar and a pleated skirt that went nearly to my ankles.
It was heavy cotton, white and stiff, it turned such a dingy yellow that I threw it away.
I, Anne Louise, was the first grandchild. 'Granny, Granpa, all those names had been used. What was I to call my Grand parents? Mamas sisters, Etta and Ludie, 8 and 11, they figured out 'Mama Gill and Papa Gill'. Mama told me stories and talked about them all, a lot. Some day I would get to see my good 'Mama Gill and Papa Gill.'
A couple wanted to buy our place, they gave us their pickup as down payment.
We drove it to west Texas where Kelse and Hettie and George and Fannie and their children were, picking cotton. Hettie and Fannie were Ben's sisters. Juanita was twelve, always had the most beautiful golden wavey hair, like George's. He was likeable, big and slow. George Everett was 3½ and you were five weeks younger and you had a big time playing. We were all picking cotton. I knew that Fannie didn't feel good. She was 'straight as a post,' I couldn't tell that she was pregnant.
They asked if she could borrow my 'rags,' I gave them. Every woman had her own collection of thin cotton rags of different sizes. They were folded, pinned into our underware and used like our 'sanitary napkins'. Then soaked in cold water and hand washed, to be used again, 'next month.' Sanitary napkins were not sold untill the 1940s.
Fannie made me a rope of tiny red beads that were finished to pencil size, about 45 inches long. I gave them to Juanita years later. She didn't have them when she died.
I wanted George Everets girls to have them.
She and Hettie had been taught by their Mother, Alice, how to do all sorts of plain and fancy sewing,embroidery, hemstitching and crochet. They both could and did, sometimes support their families by sewing.
Hettie had a baby, Stanley who died at birth and then a female operation and she wasn't stout enough to work in the cotton patch. She did all the other work and cooked. She brought dinner to her family in the cotton patch. She carried filled bowls that stacked on top of each other.
Ben had to go back to Mexico on business about selling our place. While he was gone, Fannie died. Nov 17, 1926 What a sad thing, there was left two little children. They all started to Mineral Wells. Communication was bad, but Ben got back and Fate, Woodrow(son of Sterling Lafayette Pierce, His Mothers brother) and Tobe, his cousins, come the day that he got back.
We started driving, it had rained and the roads were bad, there was no pavement, not even gravel. We had to get out and push in places, we had to get there for that funeral. No one there in Mineral Wells knew about Fannies death and none of my folks were at the Willow Pond cemetery for the funeral. My folks were so close, and I didn't get to see them. It was three miles to my home and we drove right past Granmama's house. Fate, and Tobe had to get back home.
Several years later, George offered to let us raise George Everett. Oh we wanted to- but he wouldn't let us adopt him. We knew that he would be wanting him back, and that wouldn't work.,
We got back to New Mexico and the couple had backed out on buying our place. They had a baby to die and they buried it in the same cemetery as our baby.
They took their pickup back.
Frank E Hodge, a rancher from the big TOT ranch had come to look about closing the deal to buy our homestead. They had wanted it all the time, he paid us cash. You were setting with them in our Ford touring car. The cloth top was up. It could be folded back, down level with the bottom of the windshield. Frank Hodges wanted to look at something else, around back of the house.
Ben told you to 'set right there' on the seat, you didn't. You slid down on the floorboard and pushed on the pedals, stop and go. The car started rolling down a long grade. I saw it out the window and started hollerin'.
Ben saw it and started runnin'. He got to the car about the time it come to a stop, under the low spreading branches of a big old cedar tree. He dug you out and you were setting on the floorboard and didn't have a scratch. The cedar tree had flattened the cloth top down, level with the bottom of the windshield, it wasn't hurt. It made Ben sick, he had to come into the house and lay down.
We got our money and moved back to Texas. June 1927 We had the same little trailer and the different car was loaded too. I had to leave so many things, the couch that made a bed was the worst. I had made you a teddy bear out of an old army blanket. You had wagged it until it was loosing it's stuffing. I left it and was going to make you another one at the first place that we stopped for a few days. You bawled for that bear. I made you another one and you never would have a thing to do with it. It lay around for years. (I think I can remember it laying around. I wasn't going to touch it.)
You could say quite a bit of Spanish. All that is left; is a call that you use before meals, 'Poka Tempa Comelia'. Everybody understands it, they all come running to eat.
We got back to Breckenridge and left the trailer and some big things. We got to Aunt Jennies', Dad's sister at Palo Pinto, the middle of the afternoon. I had stayed with them when I was in the nineth and tenth grade. She wanted us to wait until the next day to go on to my old home, so that Uncle Aaron could go with us. She knew that Dad had ridden all night, the day that we got married, hunting us, with a gun. And that he hadn't spoken my name in the five years that I had been gone. I did not know that.
I wouldn't wait, I wanted to see Mama. We drove up to the house just after dark. They were all sleeping out on the big south front porch.Ben hollared, “Hello, the house.”
Dad called, “Who is it?” “It's Ben, Anne and Annie Louise.” Dad called, “Come on in.”
We stepped up on the porch and Dad grabbed all three of us in a bear hug!
Everything was all right! Ben was always welcome. Mama lit a lamp.
You weren't afraid of him and started calling him 'Papa Gill', the first time that he had heard it. He had 14 later grand kids and twenty eight, great grandchildren who called him that. He called you 'Priss', and most of the folks in Mineral Wells did too.
My five brothers and two sisters come out of the shadows; they had been scared of what Dad might do. They started playing with you, You weren't afraid of them.
“Mammy you better make them some beds, they are tired.” Everything was all right.
I didn't know that my Papa Gill was like his Pap. He never seemed to care for his grandkids, never held them or played with them. My Mama had taught me to love them all. I felt like I knew them. I had waited so long to see my Papa Gill and he was the only one that I had. My Granpa Knight died 6 weeks before I was born.
Mama said that she loved all her folks at Mineral Wells, but she knew they would get along better; if they didn't live to close together. So we lived at Breckenridge.
It wasn't long until we were back down there for Christmas. Mama Gill had cooked about ten cakes, (I can still see them, they lined the wall, on the floor, behind the big dining table.) They found me crawling along them, eating the pecan goodies off their tops. Aunt Etta and Ludie grabbed me and run, so that Mama couldn't spank me.
No wonder I loved Mineral Wells and them all. From the time I was about ten, I spent a week there in the summer. They watched me like a hawk, I seldom got to go swimming or to the river. Daddy managed to take me and I loved it. From age 14 on, it was two weeks.My brothers and sister were bashful and never stayed with them.
During one of my visits, Papa Gill was going to town, he went a lot. Any time he didn't have something to do at home, he went to Mineral Wells. He always stopped on the way and saw his Mama and his Pap at their house. I never rode in a wagon or buggy that I can remember. He rode his horse and went alone. If someone else went or we needed groceries, he took the wagon. We, Gills never had a buggy except Granmamas old wore-out one. Gills never had a car for years, Dad never learned to drive.
Dad never sold any corn or hay. It was kept untill a dry year and used then.
Mama Gill and some of the kids carried the heavy metal corn sheller out of the barn and set it on a big stump. They brought dry ears of corn out of one of the four big cribs.
They shucked it and and shelled the nubbins off onto the ground for the squacking chickens to eat, They turned the handle, shelled about seven pounds and put it in a bag.
Papa Gill tied it onto the back of his saddle.
((Now Papa Gill was like his Pap. He was not friendly with kids. I never saw him hold one of his grandkids. That was just the way that they both were and we never thought anything about it. He was my Granpa, the only one that I had. I thought that he was the best.
Etta said that the only time that she ever remembered touching her Grand Pap Gill, was once. He let her feel of the shotgun pellet in his upper arm. Mama said that he let her feel it too, once. He got it when he was wounded in the Civil War.))
He saddled his horse up at one of the big barns and stopped by the house. He asked me what kind of candy that I wanted him to bring me. That one time is all that he ever asked me. I was tickled and told Papa Gill that I would like some of that new kind, of candy- 'dough with flour on it'. Sure enough he brought back some marshmallows.
He brought the corn back, it has been ground at the mill that was nearby the jockey yard. He always told them to 'take the toll out.' That was the fee for grinding the corn. That fresh ground corn with the husk in it, made the best cornbread that you ever tasted.
Mama Gill always wanted us all. Nearly the first thing that she asked any body that come, "Have you et yet?" She fixed a meal for the 'grown ups' or gave us kids a biscuit with something good in it. Her pretty short cupboard always had leftover biscuits
There was no dog food to be bought, they ate a lot of cornbread. They had a lot of dogs, to many, sometimes one apiece. For years Papa Gill kept greyhounds. They were so tall and skinny. Mama Gill worried because they were the only dogs they ever had, that she couldn't 'fatten up.' They would chase after a rabbit and then jump up and look around to see which way that rabbit went. Sometimes change directions, so pretty.
The other time that I was close to him, was before the Democratic election. No one else was around. Their radio was in the kitchen behind the big wood box. The car battery that run it, was about down. We were listening to the big Democratic convention, we all knew that Roosevelt would be re-nominated for president. We wanted John Nance Garner to be nominated for vice president. We listened and they marched and cheered. We cut the radio off, to save the juice, we turned it on and they were still cheering. Finally we had our ears down, nearly on the radio.
John Nance Garner, a Texan had been nominated for vice president! And he would have been a good President; if Roosevelt hadn't hung on. John Nance Garner said, "A Vice President is of no more value than 'a bucket of warm spit.' He got the nickname of 'Cactus Jack' because when he was in the Texas Senate, he wanted the cactus bloom to be the state flower. The bluebonnet was chosen, it is not native to Texas. After Franklin Roosevelt died in office, a law was passed that limited the president terms to two.
Theodore Roosevelt Gill was my brother. He had asthma. The chaff off the corn that dried, made it worse. As he grew up he had coughing fits, his face would turn black. He was a young teen ager and he climbed up in their tallest tree to jump out and end his mizery. Ludie was so scared, she run and told her Mama that he was going to jump out. I asked him,years later, "Well why didn't you?
"Mama, she wouldn't let me, she made me climb down." The last year they had 105 wagon loads of corn that they brought in from the field. The corn chaff made his asthma worse. Next year at gathering time, he got on his horse and went the other way.
Truman was Black, or T, Theodore and Leona's only child. Truman was just a toddler, they had a few chickens that run around in their yard. Truman followed them around. When an old hen squatted down to lay an egg. He squatted down and waited for her. Then he proudly carried the egg to his Mama. He never broke a one.
He wanted to play their Victrola. Aunt Etta had won it at a drawing some place, there was nearly a dozen records with it. They told him to wait a while, untill Papa Gill went to the barn. Truman couldn't wait long, "Papa Gill, why don't you go to the barn so that I can play the Victrola?" He cleared his throat loudly and walked up to the barn.
Mama Gill raised turkeys to sell. One Christmas the 'old Tom' that she cooked for us, it weighed 36 pounds, that was what Eldridge weighed. They couldn't sell the real big one very good and we were proud to eat the biggest, every year.
Moving back from New Mexico, Mama and Daddy paid down on 100 acres of pore, mosquite covered, unimproved land 3½ miles SW of Breckenridge. It was in the Post Oak community.
The first thing that I ever remember was standing in the road and seeing our house being pulled down that little hill from the south. It was the biggest thing I ever saw, I was nearly four. The house was set down on rocks and was always steady.
A half mile of it, fronted on a dirt road. There was no gravel on the roads, after a rain the ruts would be deep and hard to drive in, cars would get stuck. It was rough, when they dried out, until the grader went over it. I remember watching the driver guiding the team of two horses pulling the road grader. The drivers' Model T Ford was being towed. Years later the road grader was built onto a tractor. The car was still being towed behind
Mr Wragg was our mail carrier, he lived behind Aunt Hettie in town. He brought our mail if it was possible at all. Mama could leave three pennies on top of a letter, and he would stamp it for her. We always took the weekly Breckenridge American, The Farm and Ranch magazine and Cappers Farmer. I remember them taking a chicken, for pay sometimes when Daddy wasn't there to pay the money. Or didn't have it, when they come to collect. I looked at the pictures and later read them, anything that I could get my hands on. Route 1, Box 18. The only book that we had in the house was Mama's bible. Once I told Mama that I was bored. She told me to go and read the bible. Oh I wish there was one of the newer versions, so that I could have understood it.
The first thing that Daddy built was a storm cellar. We didn't 'run to the cellar' like some people did. We never had any bad storms and weren't scared. Oh, we went sometimes. He dug it about five feet deep and it had a humped roof of heavy oil field timbers that always stayed solid. It had dirt steps so that there was less danger of snakes, we never had any. The door was sloped, we learned better than to slide on it.
It had dirt on top of the cellar, to be cooler. Mama planted cactus on it to keep us from playing there. On top she planted a prong horn cactus, to remind her of Mexico. It had other cactus and pretty rocks on it.
Stanley remembers one time, Mama was scared and got us all in the cellar. Daddy kept going to tend to something else. When Mama finally got him in the cellar; he stood on the steps, looking at the clouds and never would shut the door.
Then Daddy dug a cistern, for our drinking water, just outside the back door. He plastered it and it held water for a few years. Then it would crack and have to be re plastered. I sure did want to climb down the ladder into the cistern, when he was working on it. Daddy wouldn't let me. He built an enclosed top, three foot high. It had a rope, pulley and a water bucket, that we could draw the cool water up to drink. He built a porch over that cistern, 7X8 and screened it in. We enjoyed that porch. Years later, he built a bathroom onto the north end of it. He built a good foundation under it, because he built a brick bathtub in it. It was cemented nice, over bricks and painted smooth, like the one that Aunt Hettie had built. It replaced the wash tub that Mama put by the kitchen stove, for our baths, every Saturday night.
There was no water wells in that area, the only water in that cistern was what run off the house or what Daddy dipped out of our stock tank. When the 'cistern got low' Daddy hauled water on the two runner sled. Old Dynamite pulled on the barrel on the sled the to the house and he poured in it. Mama named all our animals. Old Dynamite was stumbly and slow. When Daddy used him to plow the garden, he managed to step on all the good lllllllittle plants.
He built a 2X2 foot cement box for all the water going into our cistern. He burned some wood and made charcoals for a filter. I never could figure out, how that black charcoal could clean the water. Water off the porch and the house roof run into it. It seemed like drouth was always bad and and there was very little rain for the tanks or the crops or grass.
When it rained we always made sure that our 'rain barrel' was setting under the drip of the house roof. That fresh rain water was 'soft'. I never could figure that out either, but it was so much better to wash our hair in. Our home made soap, mixed in our cistern water, sometimes it looked like buttermilk.
There was a small stock tank down the little hill below where Daddy built the cow lots and barns. It had perch and pollywogs in it.
Daddy was always working on our old car. I never saw one that he couldn't fix. He took a corespondance course and got a book with diagrams of automobile wiring. He studied them and every year when a new model come out; he studied what changes they had made. Every year, they cost a little more.
He was pouring a little gasoline, from a small can, into the carbarator. I was right there watching him. It backfired and flamed up and singed the hair on his arm and eyebrows. I jerked my bonnet off and beat it out. He bragged on me and I was proud.
All women and girls wore slat bonnets. Slats were stiff pieces of cardboard that were cut an inch wide and slid in spaces that had been sewed into the brim of the bonnet. The bonnet stuck out, about an inch further than my nose, and its 'tail' come down over my ears. It had a ruffle that went down over my neck. The sun could not touch my skin. There was to be no suntan. I had much rather wear a hat. Mama wanted her girls to be pretty and white. She blistered easily, all her life.
In her 90's her cheeks 'broke out' with a little rash. She thought that it might be from lack of sun. She walked in the sun for a few days. Her cheeks broke out worse. The Doctor said that she was allergic to the sun. So I guess that she always was.
Daddy tore down an old house,for the lumber, It was across from the high school. I could drive the nails out and straighten them. Some of them were square nails. There was a fireplace and chimney. One rock had the year 1868? carved on it. We took that rock and Daddy cemented it on the outside of our own fireplace that we built in our living room. We did not use the fireplace or living room, very often. Our kitchen stove and the wood heater in Mama and Daddys bedroom, was enough.
The yard sloped a little, to keep it from washing, me and Daddy laid flat rocks from the house to the garage. The walk was almost three feet wide. The garage had no store-bought 2x4's anywhere. Daddy cut the straightest oak trees, and covered it with old tin. We were proud that he could do it. Years later he built our big hay barn the same way and painted the crinkled tin, that he had got from a burned barn, red.
Daddy built two rooms on, with my straightened nails. We started 'rocking' the house. I would look and look and finally find the rock that fit best in the next place. Daddy would cement it in place. Twelve years later it wasn't finished, but it always looked nice. He built a small cement front porch with arches. The house looked like a show place, from the road, it still does.
The first plastic that I knew about was 'celuloid.' When I would find an old comb, I would burn it, carefully, to watch it explosivly flare up.
We usually milked three cows, Mama named everything, Demont and Highkicker. Daddy usually milked them. He milked before breakfast and we drank the warm milk for breakfast. He milked before supper and we drank the warm milk for supper. I was married before I found out that everybody didn't do that. Mama milked when Daddy come in to late. She couldn't 'strip the tits' good and the cow gradually gave less milk. She untied the calf and let it suck, the cow would 'let down' some more milk.
I never could milk good and I didn't want to learn.
She sometimes sold a pound of butter, mostly we ate it all. We always had cottage cheese. Mama slowly heated clabbered milk, on the back of the stove. She put it in a clean flour sack and hung it over the clothes line -to drip the whey off of it. She put a little fresh cream and salt and pepper on it. We can't make it now with pasturized milk.
He built a sled that had two, 2x4 runners and a metal barrel set on it. He would step out on a big rock and reach out and get a bucket of water out of the tank that was below the barn. The barrel needn't be more than half full, the rest would slosh out, being jerked along by Old Dynamite, up that rocky hill. He was our plodding old horse. Daddy couldn't use him to plow the garden. He would step on all of the little plants. The next morning, mud and trash in the water had settled and he poured it into the filter to go into our cistern. That was our good cool drinking water. Mamas family was always afraid that we would get sick from drinking that water. That may be the reason that I can always drink any water that I am handed, except that tasteless bottled water. My Mama didn't teach me to drink out of a bottle.
There was a smaller 'slush pit' just behind the barn, there had been an oilwell there The water was oily for years and the mud was soft and creamy. They didn't worry about me swimming in it alone, I didn't want to. It never was over two feet deep. I built me a little 'diving board'. Dora and Silas swam with me once. She dived in and her head stuck in the mud. I pulled her out but we couldn't ever tell it.
Daddy built a smoke house for our home killed meat. The only 'smoke' was in the curing salt and later in a needle to cure the hams. He could do a better job than anybody. Silas wrote from Montana, years later and wanted Daddy to tell him how that he could always make his home cured meat taste so much better than any body else. Silas had smoked to many cigaretts, to ever taste that good flavor again.
Daddy built a shed roof off the smokehouse. It made a covered place for Mama to wash, out of the sun. She always washed on Monday; or 'the first pretty day', when clothes would dry. He always hauled two barrels of water, the night before, so they had time to 'settle.' Daddy always filled the wash pot with water and built a fire around it. He hauled a barrel of water on Saturday, for our baths. I got the first one, then the rest of the kids and then Mama, and Daddy last. Two inches of water in our biggest, No 3 wash tub, started the baths. About a pint of hot water was added before the next one one of us got into the tub. Mama saved the bath water to scrub the floors. Daddy was always thoughtful of Mama and helped her. He called her “Hun.” He was especially nice to all women, he used a 'different tone' talking to them. Mama just laughed and said he was being nice. She watched him and helped when she could. Maybe that's why I was a “Daddys girl'. I learned to help him because Mama always did. I thought he was the smartest man in the world, he knew it all. (When I married, anything that I could help with, I did. I always cleaned the car and mowed the lawn, while Thel was busy on something else. I was always on the other end of everything that Thel did. We did it together, it was fun.)
Daddy always had indigestion and he couldn't breathe deeply. He never complained. One time his brother Bill took him to the VA hospital in Dallas. They said that they wanted to keep him and treat his lungs. They could not give money for his family, so he come on back home and bailed more hay. Fifty years later he was in the VA hospital in Fayetteville with pneumonia. A Doctor come in, with his class trailing him. “Now this is a classic example of what smoking will do to you.” Daddy drew himself up, “I never smoked a cigarette in my life. I was gassed in France in WW1.” Mama never could build a good fire, quickly, I couldn't either. Mama had an old knife and shaved some of her home-made lye soap into the water in the wash pot. The dirty white clothes were put in and boiled and punched. Then they were lifted out with the punchin' stick into a metal bucket and carried to the metal wash tub. (It was 60 years before plastic buckets come along) Then the colored clothes were put in the hot water, but not for long or their color would be gone. The greasy sweaty work clothes were boiled last. Mama had poured coal oil on the greasiest spots. That punching was the kids job, the stick was the right size for a stick horse “You kids put my punchin' stick back where you got it. I liked to have never found it, when I washed last week.” At first it was all on the rub board, no one had any other way to wash clothes. Mamas knuckles was rubbing the dirty spots in the clothes- hard onto the rub board in the hot soapy water. Then pushing them up and down in the first rinse water twisting and wringing the water out of them. Mrs Stewarts Blueing was bought in a bottle and a few drops was poured in the last rinse water, it made the colors brighter and the whites whiter.
We made our first starch out of flour. We mixed flour with water and poured it into boiling water and stirred it good. It made good starch if you mixed it just right. We dipped the clothes in it and squeezed them good. It made the clothes a little stiffer and look better when they were ironed. But we were glad to buy the new Faultless Starch when it come out. Crystal White and P&G were the first laundry bar soaps, that Daddy could buy. They were white, not tan like our lye soap.. I remember me and Eldridge always took a bath outside in the leftover warm wash soapy water, after Mama finished washing. It was deeper than our Saturday night bath water was. Then we stepped over into the cooler rinse water. I liked it but I was embarased. Mama used the soapy water to mop the floors, in the house. She carried the rinse water to put on her flowers. She always managed to have a prettier yard than anyone else. Friends exchanged seeds and 'starts' of all kinds of flowers. She never bought any seeds or plants. All water was carefully used. Even the dirty greasy dishwater, it went into the slop bucket, for the hogs.
The sun bleached the white clothes too. The colored clothes were brought in, as soon as they were dry. They all had a nice fresh smell that our clothes dryers can not have. Womens' under clothes were always covered by a cup towel, on the clothes line, so they could not be recognized. I couldn't understand why the mens' underclothes didn't matter. There were no paper towels, we used lots of 'cup towels'. All the dishes, had to be hand dried. It was a hated job, because us kids had to do it.
The heavy work clothes were usually laid over the fence to dry. If the cows could get to them, there was usually some old cow that would wander up and start chewing on the wet clothes. The first loud pop pop motor on Mamas washing machine was wonderful. She didn't have to bend over that rub board any more. It had a clothes wringer too. It was fun, at first, when we turned a big crank and it squeezed the water out of the clothes as they went between two rubber rollers. Any gasoline motor could be hard to start and would sometimes die. Me and Mama never could start a motor; any better than we could start a fire.We would have to go and get Daddy out of the field, to start it again, lots of times. He never fussed at us. The next used washing machine that Daddy bought was much quieter and it had an automatic wringer. We were afraid of it. One woman got her hair to rolling up in it. We were afraid that it would pinch our fingers and maybe roll up our arm, as we were pushing wet clothes into it. We would gather the clothes off the line and put the clean sheets back on the beds. Fold the other clothes put them away, and sprinkle the starched clothes and roll them to be ironed, tomorrow. The heavy 'sad irons' had to set on the wood stove to heat. It took a hot fire, a woman had two irons so that one could always be heating. Most families had a roof fire from sparks that come out of the stove pipe, from such a roaring fire, we never did. Soot from the wood fire could come between joints in the stove top and get on the bottom of the iron. Before the iron touched the clothes to be ironed, there was a white rag that the iron was rubbed on, to be sure there was no soot on it. The iron could be 'to hot.' That cloth would show 'scorch', brown, if it was. Mama would wet her finger in her mouth and touch it quickly to the bottom of the iron. She could 'tell by the sizzle', if it was the right temperature. When I would get mad, Mama would wet her fingertip in her mouth and touch my arm—to see if I was hot enough 'to sizzle'. That made me madder; but I had to hold my tongue.
Daddy got Mama a gasoline iron. It had to be pumped up, the flame roared and scared me, I never liked to use it. She couldn't hear it loud enough to be scared.
All our clothes were cotton, very little wool, we had no silk or linen. There were no synthetics. Mama would 'warp the work clothes around the bedpost' to get some of the stiffness out of them.
The pasture was covered with mosquite trees. Daddy hired a man to 'grub out' two acres. That tree is said to 'have more wood under the ground than above it'. The man would grub an acre for $5. We all agreed that was the hardest way to make a living.
The mosquite tree was called 'the devil with roots.' It gave little shade, had sharp thorns and took up more water than other trees.
I was five, Uncle Kelse and Aunt Hettie come back from picking cotton, and wanted to buy ten acres off the back of our hundred. Daddy sold it to them and dug them a small dirt tank, for water. They had a good garden spot and a cow. They built three small rooms and shedded off a kitchen. They had a wind-up Victrola, made by the Victor company. They had several 78 records to play on it. Uncle Kelse wouldn't let us play, “Turkey in the Straw” on Sunday. It was the one that I liked best.
There was a winding road through our pasture. That was the only way for them to 'get out', to the county road that run along our east front.
Daddy would drive our Model T to the gate in the barbed wire fence that was between us and get out and open it and stand there. I pulled myself up to the steering wheel and pushed on the GO pedal. The Model T went through the gate and then I was to push on the STOP pedal. But one time I didn't take my foot off. I drove a 50 foot circle through the mosquite trees. Daddy was running to cut me off, hollering, “Take your foot off.” I did, about the time he got to me. I did not hit a tree. Daddy told that proudly, for years. I was five.
Aunt Hettie had a Model T, she drove to town to work for Mrs Reishman at the bakery, and then later, for Mrs Nannie in her sewing room. The Model T had to be cranked to start it. If the spark lever was turned to far, it would 'kick' and the crank, that was always attached, would fly backwards. Sometimes it would kick anyway. You had to learn to jerk your arm back out of the way.
One morning it 'kicked' back and broke Aunt Hettie's arm. Daddy took her to Dr Webb to get it set. Aunt Hettie kept moving. He said, “Be still you old fool, you ought to have known better than to try to crank a car.” Daddy spoke up, “You don't know her, Doc, she cranks that car every morning to drive to work to support her family.”
Adelle, Dora and Silas walked across pastures, a half mile south to school. It was a good active community and school. They took me to school with them one day and I loved it. They put me on their school program, for Friday night. Mama and Daddy didn't know it. They dressed me like a doll, and painted my cheeks. Adelle wound a key in my back. I stiffly walked across the stage, saying “Ma, Ma Ma” I turned and on the way back I said “Da, Da, Da.”They clapped and I wanted to start to school right then.
In 1931, Uncle Kelse needed the money to get back to west Texas and they sold their place that was on the back of ours, to some old lady. About 1936 they bought a house in Breckenridge, 1211 West Hullum. This time Aunt Hettie managed to get her 'name on the papers'. The only time that I ever knew of her 'crossing' him, was every time that he wanted to sell that house 'to go back to the cotton patch.'
It was a three room 'shotgun house', one room right after the other. There were few houses around, they had chickens and a cow that they staked out in the vacant lots around. At noon they carried water for her. A new brick housing addition built around them and in a few years the cow had no place to graze. Soon the chickens 'had to go', and the outside toilet too.
She built a bathroom on the side. She built the bathtub too, bricks that she put cement over, smoothed off and painted white. Me and Stanley remember taking a bath in it. She built a bedroom next to it. She got two old radios, that had burned out and used their cabinets to built a nice looking china cabinet. She started a salt and pepper collection, and built a nice looking rack for them. We all helped her collect, she had a lot. She put our name on them and we had to take them all back, when she 'broke up house keeping'. That was her only 'frivolous' thing that I can remember.
Aunt Hettie was a wonderful cook. When she brought potato salad, She made a mound and cut a bell pepper so that it was legs for a spider. It had a head and eyes too.
Her buttermilk pies were renown and I am very sad that her tea cake recipe is lost.
She had a sewing shop in her home and could even make fancy dancing costumes. She ironed for people,until she was past 80. One customer complained that she charged a penny to iron handkerchiefs. She sugested that they might want to iron them theirself.
Helen Burl and Hugh Garland would visit them. Uncle Kelse would tickle them, Helen Burl especially. Aunt Hettie would warn Uncle Kelse that she would wet on him. Helen said that one day she did, just wet all over him.
He would go in the other room to take a nap after dinner and want them to 'talk normal'. When they whispered, he would hollar at them to talk louder.
I told Minnie Alice that I loved Uncle Kelse and never did see any thing that he did wrong. “That shows greater credit on your part, than his.”
George Everett said that Uncle Kelse used to 'throw a big drunk' about every three months, before he joined the church, and sometimes after. I never saw that, or heard of it Our Daddy and Mama would never have told that. They always helped them.
Uncle Kelses last years, he mowed lawns all over the west side of town, pushing his mower down the streets. Stanley said that he worked for him, one day. He was 'going to town' on a church lawn. Uncle Kelse, “Don't mow so fast, they will expect me to do it that fast, all the time, He would push the lawn mower and take two steps and push it again and take two steps.
An addition of new brick homes grew up closer around 1211 West Hullum. Their little house was out of place. She lived there till Uncle Kelse was gone, in 1959.
She wouldn't sell until she had to go and live with Dora.
Stanley said he went by there in 1998 and couldn't find any sign of where it had been.