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My Place In The Sun

by Dollie Anilee Watson

The following three chapters of "My Place in the Sun" were submitted by Dortha Wren. They were written by her mother, Dollie Anilee Watson, in 1972. She was the daughter of James Benton Watson and Prudence Earl Hilliard b. 1891 in Cisco Co, TX. Prudence was the great-granddaughter of Jesse William Rogers b. 1812 in Tennessee. He was the son of Jesse Rogers b. 1791 and the grandson of John "the Powder Maker" Rogers b. 1757 in VA. These three chapters are actually part of a book written by Dollie for her family. Dortha was been very generous to share this material that gives us a glimpse into life in a past generation. Thanks Dortha!

On a cold frosty winter morning just at sunrise, on December 10, 1910, I entered this world, the eighth child of a poor cotton farmer. Until the day before I was born, the family lived in a one room log cabin, but on that day they finished a shed room on the side. My mother climbed up on a chair to hang some curtains and fell off thus hastening my arrival. I was supposed to be a Christmas present. I am sure there were many things they would rather have had for Christmas, but they got me, just another mouth to feed.

No pink nursery awaited me, no lovely bassinet welcomed me. My layette consisted of one dozen flannel diapers and three gowns. My resting place was the far corner of a bed so no one could sit on me. Our room was fourteen by fourteen feet, and it held two beds, plus the rest of the furniture. The shed room served as kitchen, dining room, bed room. A bed had to go on the floor each night, and I was the little victim who slept between two others. I got too hot, and crawled from under the covers, then got croup, bumped my head on the bottom side of the bed rail trying to raise up, got dragged out by a leg or an arm and was given kerosene on sugar to stop the choking. I did not know what it was to sleep on a bed until I was five years old. Certainly it was not a spacious setting. We struggled to survive. We all had to go to bed at the same time and get up at the same time or get stepped on. There was not much floor space with made down beds. How I hated that kerosene and sugar remedy, but I took it every single night until I was five years old.

This was not so different in life style as it sounds. All the rural people were poor. Some lived no better. But by this time, many families had remained settled and improved their farms, built three to five room houses, had good barns for their livestock, and good poultry houses for their fowl. And because they had settled and worked they prospered to a degree.

We were located in Clay County, Texas, just South of Red River, in a community known as Deer Creek. Numerous small towns were here and there; Joy, Shannon, Bluegrove and others where we could do our shopping, with Henrietta as the county seat. Deer Creek had a school and church, and was a farming area. All prairie, sandy, and as I remember was just a sun beaten hot dusty spot where we eked out a living, fighting weeds, grass and pests.

And so I started life thus with the Watson family. My father was James Benton Watson, known as Uncle Bent. He always signed his name J. B. Watson. He was the son of Abraham Watson and Matilda Hobbs Watson, both of whom were born in year 1815, he in Indiana and she in Tennessee. They lived in Missouri in 1841, but came to Texas soon after with a group of settlers known as the Mercer Colony, and were given a section of land with a cabin in Hunt Co., Texas. This was a part of the Spanish Land Grant after Texas won its independence from Mexico, and proved a great inducement to migrants to settle in Texas.

Henry Watson, who I believe to be the father of Abraham, was with them and also a member of the Mercer Colony, and also received a section of land. He immediately sold it to Abraham, so the Watsons as early as 1853, and the same year in which my father was born, became extensive land owners, for twelve hundred and eighty acres was a good deal of land. But take another look. It was not a ranch roaming with white faced cattle, but a wilderness of forests, acres of turf weeds and grasses never having been touched by plow or human hands, and growing profusely along the Brazos River and its banks.

These are the provisions under which my grandfather sat down to take on such a task with a wife and four children to make a new life in a new world: Not to give, sell or in any way furnish to an Indian any spiritious liquors, nor any gunpowder, lead or firearms, or warlike weapons. To pay the sum of five dollars toward the building of a school house, and to occupy a house or suitable cabin, and be supplied with a good rifle, yager or musket, and a sufficient supply of prime ammunition. It took courage, back breaking toil, and endurance for this family to face such a task. And in so short a time, they were faced with the Civil War and its ravages. Both Abraham and William, the oldest son, fought in it, which left my father, a nine year old boy, as the man of the family. And by this time, three more children had joined the family.

They stayed there until 1866, then sold a part of this and bought farm land in Benton County, Arkansas, where they stayed until both died in old age, and where Abraham sleeps today in the beloved soil that he loved so much. Grandpa was the first postmaster of Nebo, which later became Gravette, Arkansas. It was located on this home site. So in his period of growing up, my father knew only two homes, both well established and providing a good family life.

But somehow my father did not inherit that contentment or satisfaction. He seemed to long for frontier days, hated to see civilization ruin it, and seemed to feel he was being fenced in by progress. He tried to hang on to that part of the past and help to keep the frontier, which was fast disappearing, a part of him. He was constantly on the move. He married once at age thirty-two to a Nancy Ann Woody, but the marriage went on the rocks the same year, leaving a daughter he never saw. After that, he was a wanderer, a lone wolf and a restless man, never staying long anywhere, and as all of us know a rolling stone gathers no moss. He moved at the end of each year, but was never a sharecropper. He bought and sold as he went. He spent much of each year looking another location for the following year. And always, it was a farm without a good house or improvements. A cabin, half dug out, or shack, and as the family grew it became increasingly difficult to cope with. So in 1910, they had would up in the log cabin where I was born. He was a good man, a hard working man, and in his way loved his family. But he never seemed to find himself, even tho he searched a life time for contentment without avail. When he was forty years of age, he and my mother were married.

She was born in 1877, and was sixteen at the time of their marriage. She was the daughter of a Baptist Minister, Albert Allen Hilliard, born in 1845 in Georgia, moving to Texas at age of nine. He married Mary Angela Roberts in Lee County, Texas in 1873. She was born in 1854 to a farming family near or in Milam County, Tex. Her parents were settled people, staying on one farm to raise a big family, but never prospered to any degree. But Albert Allen Hilliard inherited none of the contentment his family knew. He was a circuit preacher and went from church to church, keeping him from home much of the time. He was a good man, but a poor provider, and his family knew nothing but want and destitution. This, of course, my mother was a part of, and being among the oldest of the children to survive to adulthood, she carried much of the burden.

Grandpa did not understand the suffering he imposed on the family, for as a minister, he was entertained in the best of homes, and the best of food was always prepared when the minister came, so he fared well. I am sure he received little money and in some instances probably none, so he had nothing so send home. As time went on, he became so callused to the pleas of his wife (grandma) that he did not hear the. So in desperation she wrote her family for help. The family lived in and around Milam County, and were prosperous so far as farmers of that day were, and she explained that they had nothing to eat, and asked the relatives to help. In a few days she received word that a barrel had come into the depot. She, with the help of neighbors, got it home and on the floor. She expected it to contain flour, meal, syrup, and was hoping for a ham, for she knew they butchered hogs. When she opened it there was a hundred pound sack of sugar, and packed around it was cookies. She sat on the floor and cried. What could she do with sugar? Sprinkle it on their dry bread made from flour and dirty creek water, for that was all they had. She had envisioned how she would be able to put some meals together, thinking they would respond with farm staples. Only the hungry know the pangs of hunger. They did not know how to respond to her plea.

Soon after this she took measles and died, leaving seven little children, and baby only two years old, and the oldest thirteen. Her strength was gone having had babies every two years or less, and her body was so devastated from malnutrition she had nothing to fight with, so death over came her. This was in Cisco, Texas in the year of 1891. Grandpa took the children to Archer County, and simply abandoned them, leaving nothing to help them survive. He left them to fend for themselves, and this they couldn't do. My mother tried to hold them together, and feed them by stirring water from the creek into flour, but when the flour ran out, she had to go to the neighbors. They came in and found homes for the over the community. No two were taken to the same home, but the people were kind and kept them in touch, and when they were grown, they became a close knit family and remained so until death. This was probably the reason my mother at sixteen married a man of forty. The laws of nature frowns on such a union.

So the contrast in life style completely reversed itself in the marriage of my parents, Papa, who had known a stable home could not build one for himself. Mama, who had never know such, longed for a home and a settled life comparable to that of her neighbors, but it would be years before she was to have one. In spite of poverty, she was a homemaker, and with seemingly nothing she created beauty within the four walls. She added tatting, crochet or embroidery to the pillow cases, scarfs and curtains, The walls were covered with mottoes, and many of them were done in needle work by my mothers hand. One reading "Christ is the head of this house. The unseen guest at every meal. The silent listener to every conversation." pointed its finger at me when I did wrong, and served many times to guide me right. It was a great inspiration in the home. Another
"I am but one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. What I can do, I ought to do, and what I ought to do, God helping me, I will do." gave us strength many times, and I am sure it guided her. She was a good cook, a good manager, and a good mother. A good Samaritan in the community, and a Christian example wherever she went.

My father, J. B. Watson, and my mother Prudence Earl Hilliard, were married in Knox County, Texas on May 25, 1893, but before Coke Oliver was born on September 16th, 1894, they had moved to Baylor County, Moneta (Nete) was born on October 21, 1896 in Archer Co, and Zenada (Nade) on March 19, 1899 in Shawnee, Seminole County, Oklahoma. Port Arthur on February 22, 1901, Simeon Reed (Spud) somewhere in Oklahoma on January 10, 1904. Then back to Texas and Clay County they went. Scott Buster was born near Shannon on May 19th, 1906, Lillie Mae at Deer Creek on July 17, 1908. I was born on December 10th 1910, and Willie Theron on August 30th, 1914. The three of us at Deer Creek. Port was born at McCloud, Oklahoma. This should give you some idea of what I mean by a rolling stone. We were to stay here until I was five years old. Then we moved again every year for six years before we settled again. But that comes as I tell my story.

My early years must be recounted. I raised up in my made down bed so many times and bumped my head on the bottom side of a bed rail that I was called knot head. We survived by home remedies, and seldom saw a doctor. We soaked our feet in hot mustard water to break up colds. If we got a chest cold with cough, we made a poultice of home made lard, turpentine and camphor, and in this mixture we saturated a wool sock, and placed the sock on our chests. We were glad and willing to get well over night, for nothing was more repulsive than the thought of having to wear that stinking thing a second night.

In those days we knew nothing about home canning, and refrigeration was unheard of. We had good fresh vegetables in the growing season, and fried chicken in the spring. We baked or boiled hens in other seasons, and had delicious chicken and dumplings, or chicken and dressing. Now and then the old rooster was called upon to make the supreme sacrifice when he got too old to be cock of the roost, and went in the pot. In winter, we butchered our hogs and from this had our hams, shoulders, sausage, and bacon until it was all used. This also provided our lard for cooking, and our lye soap for washing our clothes and dishes. You may wonder how. I will tell you in a minute. We raised nice yams, irish potatoes, beans which we dried and stored, and when the fresh things were gone, that was our ration. I bet if we could have had a blood test in late summer our blood would have tested 90% "Tater juice," we ate so many of them in dry seasons. Hot biscuits, syrup, and butter for breakfast, and beans and or potatoes for dinner and supper. Now, we call them lunch and dinner.

Work on the farm was tiring, continuous and never ending. We must wait until the weather was freezing or near that to butcher or hogs, so the cold could draw the body heat out overnight. Otherwise, it would spoil. Then we packed the hams, shoulders and side meat in coarse salt to preserve it. We, and every other farmer had a big meat box built somewhere near the house to keep the meat. Ours was at the end of the house, on the shady side, and on top of this was my playhouse.

I spent many happy hours there. In the summer time it was shaded, and from sunrise to sundown I could be found there. I loved to make mud pies, and would listen for a hen to cackle, telling the world she had just laid an egg. then get it to stir into my mud pie. I loved to see the yellow streak thru the brown, and was fascinated by it until I got caught. I suddenly lost my appetite for egg based pies. I found I was doing so many other things that would annoy the adults. I never could figure out why they did no let me do my thing and they do theirs, so we could all be happy.

I was always a happy child. I lived my life to the fullest. I played every awaking moment, but was lazy as a bum when it came to work. Created my own entertainment, built my own toys. I preached so many sermons from the top of the meat box, I wonder that every member of the family and all the near neighbors weren't saved. They could hear it from wherever they were. I led the song service, all the prayers, and then went into the sermon and preached fire and brimstone by the hour, exalting sinners to turn from their wicked ways. My audience was Papa. He always sat outside under a shade tree in hot weather, for air conditioning was not known then. He used to laugh until his sides would shake at my antics. I did not know we were poor, and looking back now, I wonder if we really were. We had food and something to wear, and that was as much as any poor rural family had at that time. Our needs were so much less then. We did not have to keep up with the Jones.

We were a church going family. Never missed a service. When all of us climbed in the wagon, it was a wagon bed full, but when the church doors opened, the Watsons were there. I thank God for that heritage today. I hear so many people say"I was forced to go to church when I was a kid, and I always swore that when I got old enough that no one could make me go, I would never go again." Bosh what an excuse. That was the thing that instilled into us the true meaning of values, gave us courage in later years when we needed it most, and built the characters upon which our adult years were based. It instilled into us the meaning of God and his plan for our lives. We were a praying family, and always took time to bow our heads and thank God for our food. We held evening devotional services and read our Bible before going to bed. I grieve today to see how we have wandered so far from God, neglected our children and their spiritual training. We have let them drift without the knowledge of the spiritual values we knew, and now we wonder why our nation is suffering from moral decay, and our children are drifting aimlessly without purpose in their lives.

We kids did not always live by these principles, and did so many things to be ashamed of, and make our parents ashamed of us. We drifted and many quit going to church because they were so busy but that still small voice was ever present in our conscience, and in the end it won out. Every one died with a strong faith in God and without fear in their hearts.

I was very small when we got a new organ. It was a beautiful thing, mahogany with carved trim, an inset mirror and a lovely rich tone. It was a typical old pump organ with stops to pull in and out for tones and sounds. Nete and Nade both learned to play, and we had some of the greatest singings in our home. Coke led with the melody or baritone, Nade alto, Port bass, Spud tenor, and Nete with Soprano, with the rest of us adding to the various parts, and we would often sing until midnight, all gathered around that old organ. Life's Evening Sun Is Sinking Low was one of our favorites, and I can almost hear it now. That organ stayed in our home long after all the kids except me were gone. I wonder where it is today. I somehow feel it may have found its way to heaven along with the family, and I wonder if they gather around it and sing the songs I love. I hope so, for someday I will sing with them again, and when I get there, I want to sing "No tears in Heaven". We don't need any more. We have had enough here on earth.

I seem to remember things at a very early age. I am three and one half years older than Theron, and I remember well when I saw him for the first time. I put my hands on the bed and kicked my feet up as high as I could and yelled to the top of my voice that we had another little baby. I also remember hitting Lillie over the head with my doll the morning after Christmas and breaking its leg off when I was three years old.

Our farm was infested with bull nettles. That is a weed that stings on contact, and I have never known anything to hurt worse. Papa always chewed tobacco and was seldom without a "cud" in his mouth. When we got into the nettles, he would give us a chew to rub on the sting. I don't know if there was a substance in the tobacco that healed, or if it was simply the cold, but it helped. If he was anywhere near the house, we would run like a deer to get to him, but one day I got in them and I could see him plowing on the back side of the forty. I knew I could never reach him, so I went into the house and got a chew myself. I got it into my mouth then completely forgot about the sting. It was no longer my major problem. Chewing tobacco and breathing at the same time can be very difficult for a four year old, as I found out. One day Papa sent Lillie and me to the house to get his monkey wrench and bring to him in the field. He needed to fix his plow. On the way back, we passed a water hole, and being good religious girls that we were, stopped to baptize the wrench. Lillie was to perform the ritual, and just as she said "I baptize you in the name you in the name of common sense, and in the hole you go", which is what we thought the preacher always said, she dropped the wrench, and in the hole it went. Now, in our family there was no room for errors such as this. The Bible plainly states that to spare the rod, you spoil the child.

My parents were faithful Bible readers, believed and practiced every word it said, so there were no spoiled children in our family. We had to retrieve the wrench, and we had to find some way to do it, so I lay down with my head near the water and my hells back up on the bank. Lillie held my heels and I went under water and got the wrench. I was probably four and Lillie six. We did not know that I could drown.

I was only five years old when I gave my first reading, or my "speech" as we called it then. I was so small they stood me on a table so the crowd could see me, and I remember saying "I'm a temperance girl, see my ribbon blue. Don't you think it's pretty, then you wear one too." and with my blue ribbon in my hair, and the crowd cheering, I made my debut into society.

I was the ugly duckling of the family, and even tho the family meant no harm, they let me know it. We really can't know the importance of what we say to children, or how their minds can be warped, and their spirits crushed by the wrong words. The first time they took me to church, which was when I was nineteen inches long, and weighed eight pounds, Coke remarked when we got home that he did know I was so blamed ugly until they got me out among folks. They were all ashamed to show me off. My aunt Lillie Epps told me when I was nine years old that when I was small, I was so ugly she used to wonder if I had good sense. Well, they said and forgot, but these things lingered in my mind and impressions were deep and lasting. I suppose I was born with a complex, but if not, this certainly gave me the material to develop one. I felt so inadequate, so inferior to others, and so unimportant that my decisions must be made by others. I did not realize that we are all individuals, and each has our own personalities, and it is human that some of them clash. I was crushed if I thought someone did not like me. The fault was always mine for, I must please.

I was so timid as a young teenager, I could not mix with crowds. Even tho I was only five feet six inches tall, I was too tall, I thought, and felt gauche and ungraceful. I recognized my talent for writing at an early age, and knew that my very nature was that of creativity, but timidness smothered my desire to develop them and lunge into a career that might lead to success. I am sure the poverty in which I was born smothered desires for ambitions and gave me a feeling of inadequateness. I was self conscious in a crowd, naive in actions, and suffered from inner conflicts in school, church or wherever I was exposed to people. I do no place the responsibility for this altogether on the remarks made to me in my childhood. I was born with these traits, and my environment did not give me the grace or opportunity to overcome them. But in talking to other people in my adult years, I am convinced most of us look back and remember when our lives were seemingly under the same bondage.

Christmas in those days was a bit different to ours today. It was a tradition that the entire community meet for one common tree. Every body had a part. The men would go into the timber and bring in a tree. It would have to be quite large. Then the young people would spend the day decorating it, by placing strings of popcorn, colored berries, sprigs of cedar, and colorful things on it. We lived nowhere near pines, spruce or decorative trees, but many people had cedars in their yards, and these produced a colorful trim, and made it Christmas. It was a gala affair. Families came in wagons, and in most cases big families and the wagons left with loads of hilarious children who had just seen Santa Claus. It was not uncommon for some child to discover that Santa Claus was wearing shoes just like his dad's shoes, and always for some reason, that dad could not come to the party until late. The little kids helped Santa pass out gifts. No one ever received more than one gift, and the giving was confined to children only. Most parents made a sacrifice to give that much and nobody thought of exchanging among adults. I looked forward from one Christmas to another, for I knew I would get an orange. I never saw one any other time of year. And on few occasions, I would also get a banana. We held the service or party in the church or school. In many rural communities, the school served as the church as well.

I was about four when I saw my first automobile. About a mile from our house was headquarters for the Webb Ranch, and they were among the first to get one. On summer nights our doors were open because of the heat, and we could hear the motor start at their place, and when we did, we kids ran like something wild to climb up on a fence post to see the lights throw the beams in to the sky, and watch them travel thru the night. Each of us had our own fence post to get us three feet higher, and even tho I was the smallest I could run just as fast as the others, and there was blood in my eyes that easily spilled over onto them if someone got my post. It was a barbed wire fence, and many times I tore my dress off trying to climb down, but it was worth a few good dresses to get to see the lights of an automobile. It was still many years before I would have opportunity to ride in one.

This year saw many changes in our home. Nete married Daniel (Dan) Cribbs, and they went to live in another part of Texas. Coke was grown young man, and lived with a Newton family near Joy, and worked on their farm. I was old enough to begin trying to dress myself, I got my heels on top when I put my socks on, shoes on the wrong feet, and always forgot to pull out the tongues before I put them on. Then I started a chase after some older brother or sister who happened to be around, trying to get them tied.

At this time our living conditions were about to improve. In the summer, Mama and Papa went looking at farms around Bellevue, a small town in the South part of Clay County, and about twenty miles from Deer Creek. They decided on one and the following Sunday went back to buy it, but when they got there, a Mr. Walter Shahan had beat them there and was closing the deal for it. So they went on and bought another in the Little Hull Community, about four miles from Bellevue.

In the winter we moved to it. We had won a victory over the crowded conditions in which we had lived. Our greatness was not in having been born in a log cabin, but in getting out of it.

To us this was a giant step forward. I remember the move so well. It was my first, and most exciting. We loaded all our worldly belongings in the wagon, tied our net wire chicken coop to the rear to take our hens, and tied the milk cow behind the wagon. The boys rode the saddle horses and led the extras. We started before daylight, and at noon, stopped by the roadside, built a fire and cooked our noon meal. We had bacon, or as Papa called it, sowbelly, fried potatoes and home baked bread. It was so much fun eating this from our tin cake tins, and better yet, I did not have to wash dishes. We kids ran and stretched our legs and had a ball. We arrived in late afternoon, and the wagon had not
come to a stop when we little ones hit the ground running, and by dark had explored every creek, meadow, field and pasture, and I had dragged to the house every piece of junk I found for my playhouse.

We found a three room house, barn and buggy shed, and a beautiful location. I shall never forget the many huge oak trees in our yard, the creek flowing thru the forest, creating rich bottom land to grow massive watermelons. Coke was back with us now that we had room and needed him in the farm work.

All the kids who were old enough started to school at Little Hull. Coke was too old, and Theron and I too young. The law would not allow a child to start until they were six years old, and I was only five.

It was just another year until I could go, and I was so excited I skipped all the way to school, and really I have not stopped yet. On my first day, I got a brain storm and started for the front. Nade saw me coming, and grabbed my dress tail as I went by, but I kept going, and walked up and looked right into the teacher's face and said "Teacher, I just can't read a bit." She said "That is exactly what you came to school for, to learn to read."

Soon, the family became a part of the community and everybody was happy.
Coke went sweet on Denna Bee Stillwell, and Port was madly in love with Lillie Weatherford. Nade met Elmer Chenault, they went together five years and married. It was a singing community, and we were a singing family, so we fit right in. Lee Lovelandy was a singing teacher, and we attended his school each summer. We used to go miles in the wagon or hack to all day singing conventions. Everybody brought baskets of food and spread at noon time. Today, we call it pot lucks, but then it was singing all day and dinner on the ground.

We had prospered enough to buy a buggy and a hack, or to some it was a surrey. A buggy is a one seated vehicle and could be pulled by one horse. A hack was a two seated buggy, and it took two horses to pull it. As the family grew to adulthood, our lives were so enriched, and we were active in all community affairs. We were only four miles from Bellevue, and then news traveled only by word of mouth, but somehow we got it. World news could be weeks old, but it got there. Then, people cared about people, and where there is friendship, there is communication. Newspapers came into Bellevue, and the boys went there often, so they brought news home. We never saw one as I recall.
Our minds were not boggled by radio and television, for non existed so we had time to think and talk.

Our little school building served as a church on Sunday. Many were the
times I play pop-the-whip, tag, drop the handkerchief and jump the rope on that
little old school ground, and it is fresh in my memory today, for that was the
turning point in my life from a baby to a little girl.

We did not have a big supply of clothes as we do today. In the spring we got a new Sunday dress, new Sunday slippers, and wore our old ones for every day. In the fall, we got a new Sunday dress, two school dresses. WE wore one for a week, then changed to the other for a week, and that one went into the washing and ironing. We got a new pair of shoes. Some who were more prosperous could afford two pairs, one for Sunday and one for school, but we were not so lucky. Our money did not reach that far. We made our bloomers from pink sateen, gathered full and with a band just above the knee. We must have long handled underwear, long socks of cotton or wool, of course high top shoes. In summer we went barefooted. About this time they came out with flowered flour sacks. We bought our flour by the hundred pound bags, and made clothes with the bags. One bag would make a pair of bloomers, and it was not uncommon for my dress to blow up, and printed right across my fanny was Bewley’s Best, or Texas Rose, or some other brand name of flour.

One thing we had here was a fighting bull, Buster. Lillie and I had to walk thru the pasture to get to school, and along the cow trail were some huge boulders. That monster would hide behind them and wait until we passed, then he would jump out and come for us bellowing and pawing the ground. We were about one hundred yards from the nearest fence, and we would take off with all the steam we had and just make it to the fence, hit the ground and slide on our stomachs under it. We wore the ground slick under the fence and each one knew our spot and took the same one, no two ever trying to use the same one, for there was no time for error in this game. I wonder if he ever intended to hurt us, or was just playing a game and laughing up his sleeve all the time. That is, if bulls have sleeves. Well anyway, whatever his purpose, he did it. I am not just shooting the bull on this story.

We also had a gentle pony named Dude. I think she belonged to Coke. And in our yard was a huge oak tree with a limb growing straight out, and about six inches above her back. We would rope old Dude, and one lead her while another rode. Lillie just loved to get me on the horse and lead her under the limb dragging me off behind. She never kicked or tried to hurt me as I slid over her rump, and I sometimes wonder if it was also a game with her, she too was laughing at the act. And I guess horses laugh, for I have heard of people getting a horse laugh.

Our year here was the year of 1916, and in the spring after we moved in, we had a rainy day. We lived in a tornado area, and especially did we fear them in the spring. Big clouds would form, usually in the west, and roll in with all its fury, black forms twisting, boiling and rolling, and we could never tell until it struck what was in it. We had storm cellars dug below the ground and ether got inside or near the door as we watched the viciousness of it. It always came with gusts of wind and rain. And if it contained a tornado, it would precede the rain. So as soon as the rain set in, we felt the tornado threat was over. Someone would look out, and if our house still stood, we would dash thru the pouring rain and get to it. It was the consensus of all that after the rain became steady, we were not under any threat and could relax. But on this rainy day, a tornado cloud formed in the west.

The Shahans were home just as everyone else was, and as was our nature, were relaxed and gave no thought to the cloud. Then suddenly it struck, and was one of the most devastating things anyone had ever seen. The Shahan home was directly in its path, and when it was over, not a plank remained intact of their house, barn or fences. Not an animal remained alive. Mrs. Shahan was found in a tree, her body decapitated, and a fourteen year old boy in another tree. Chickens plucked clean of feathers were strewn all about. Mr. Shahan, Lillie and Bill survived, but were unconscious for days, and suffered nightmares, horrors and headaches all their lives. When the neighbors arrived, all they found was mute testimony to the force of destructive winds in a tornado. It wiped out many homes, one of them being the Sidney Johnson home, but they saw it coming and all except one boy made it to the cellar. He was too far away, so he grabbed a sapling (young tree), and it bent to one side, then the other taking him with it and whipped him as if he were a baseball, but he held on and survived. When they looked out, not a trace of their house stood. The hill was swept clean, and where their house had stood, the cows were standing. It destroyed all of Bellevue, and left only one house standing or undamaged. A man was getting a shave in the barber shop with one side of his face shaved. They never did finish the shave, for there was no barber shop. We stood in our yard and watched. We could see trees, animals, houses, windmills whirling in the air, and as the general merchandise store emptied, bolts of yardage unrolled in the air like ribbons. I have wondered so many times where we would have been that day had Mr. Shahan not beat us to that farm, for we would have been living there. I am sure God was protecting us, but where was he when the Shahans needed Him?

It was a whole community who turned out to help in a time like that. As soon as the tornado passed over, the country roads would fill with people on horses, in wagons, running on foot or any way to get to the scene of the disaster, hoping to reach the dead and injured and maybe be able to lift objects off them or rush them to doctors. Wherever you saw a horse, it was in a dead run and some one trying to make them go faster. I've seen wagons filled with people, and the team running so fast it was almost impossible for the ones sitting in the bed to hang on. A wagon bed is flat with a sideboard about twelve inches high around it, and people would bounce so high that you could see underneath them as they rose up and came down, only to rise and fly again. Or should I say we, for I have taken more than one such ride. I marvel that the wagon going so fast did not did not sometimes run out from under them while they were in the air. It was a terrifying thing to go thru this. The dead and injured must be cared for, and the homeless must be housed until neighbors could go in and assist in rebuilding their homes.

The spring turned to summer and summer to fall. We made a good cotton crop, but it was an obsession with my Daddy to have it all mortgaged before we started gathering it. I believe if someone had come along with a load of priveys and said to him "You can pay for them when you gather your cotton crop, he would have bought the whole load". Of course boll weevils, drought, hailstorms or pestilence could destroy an entire cotton crop even after it was white unto harvest, and we would lose it all and have no cotton to gather, we still owed for the priveys. This kept us debt ridden and afforded no chance to prosper.

We were only twelve miles from Bowie, Texas, our biggest shopping center, and every fall the Ringling Brothers circus would come to town. This was our first circus, and we picked cotton like fury to get a bale out so we could go to the circus. We loaded the cotton wagon full, and to hold a bale of cotton, we had to put on sideboards four feet high. On circus day, we were up long before dawn, in fact, soon after midnight to milk the cows, feed the hogs, cook our breakfast and be on our way to Bowie. It took us four hours to travel there, and get our cotton sold. We kids bedded down in that fluffy cotton to keep warm and sang all the way there. By nine o'clock we were on the streets, ready to watch the parade. It is nostalgic to go back to Bowie today and see the same old brick streets where I stood that day, and walk the same old board walks where I walked some sixty one years ago.

This year of 1915 came to an end, and we moved about two miles from this farm to Hamms Ranch. This was the first, last and only time Papa ever lived on a farm he did not own. He bought and sold as he went, but he owned the farm where he chose to live. We leased this one, and it was the best year of our lives, and I might say it was a long way back to our log cabin and Deer Creek. We had a dairy ranch, milked cows and sold cream and butter, with enough milk left over to feed out many hogs and chickens for market. We had a big milking barn, good poultry houses, a good barn to store our grain in which we raised to feed our livestock. And a nice bit four room house with huge porches to live in. For the first time we had screens on the doors, and a fireplace. We had rich bottom land along the beautiful creek that bisected the farm, and raised a bountiful watermelon crop and sold many. For the first time in our lives we had luxury. To us, that meant having our needs. I you have never tasted a home grown watermelon fresh from the vine you have never tasted melon. And until you have gone into the patch on a hot day, burst one and washed your hands with its heart so you could burst a big one and gouge it's heart out and eat while the juice dripped off your elbows, you have never know the ecstasy of country living.

We could afford so many things this year of 1917, which heretofore had been beyond our reach. We bought a new cream separator that turned with a crank, a new fangled churn that turned with a crank to make our butter, and a fruit peeler.

Another thing I remember was a dish cabinet, called a safe, with glass doors in the top section. In this bottom shelf rested our plates. I had a terrible habit of pouring too much syrup, for I usually finished by noon meal with bread, butter and syrup as my desert. Nothing was wasted in our house. It was too hard to get so I had to eat my left over syrup for supper, and they always set it in the plates where I could see it thru the glass doors. As a matter of discipline also, we had to eat our leftovers, I went many times during the afternoon to see how thick the crust was getting on my syrup, and by supper, it was pretty heavy. I tried doing without my supper to escape, but it stayed there until I ate it. Oh, how I hated to eat that crusted stuff, but you know, the next day I would do the same thing all over again. Kids never learn.

Since we stayed in the same community of Little Hull when we moved to Hamm's
Ranch, it was not really a move, just a step forward. We had our same neighbors, school, friends and church. I spent many hours roaming those creeks, playing in the groves of trees, and picking flowers in the meadows. I loved nature, and still do. Evening found me in my playhouse, and I can still hear the call "Dollie come to the house, its supper time" I watched as the sun sank lower and the evening shadows began to creep in, for I knew soon I would those words. I'd skip with delight, and always tried to get by without washing my hands, then the ten of us would gather around the big home made table, and I'd climb upon the home made bench, stand on my knees so I could reach the food, bow our heads and thank God for our food, and dive in. Son as I swallowed my last bite, I'd jump down and within five minutes, I'd be to the top of some tree, or maybe straddle of a yearling calf, trying to show somebody I could ride it.

The boys got some old hound dogs for hunting coons and opossums, and on winter evenings they lighted the kerosene lanterns, took their hounds and guns and roamed the creeks. It was a delight to hear the dogs chasing an animal, running and howling, then when the animal escaped up a tree, how they bayed at the base of it, attempting to keep it in command until the boys could get there. Often, just about the time the boys would reach the tree, the animal would leap, hit the ground, and the chase was on again, running, baying and howling in an effort to tree it again. Often the boys would bring in nice young squirrels or rabbits for the table. Some people at opossums, but we did not.

I saw my first telephone when we moved to Hamm’s Ranch. It had one installed, the wall type that you turned a crank to ring out. But we could not afford such a luxury, and had no earthly need for such a thing, so we did not keep it. Some other neighbors had one, but they were scarce through the area.

I am sure I had the meanest bunch of brothers on earth, and how they did love to tease me. I was six now, Lillie eight or nine, Buster eleven, Spud fourteen and Port about sixteen. This gave them quite an advantage over me. It was the boys’ duty to pile the cow manure in front of the milking stalls, and the pile would get eight to ten feet high. Eventually, they would haul it to the fields and spread it for fertilizer, but in the meantime it dried out, got real spongy, and became almost like dust. We kids had a ball climbing up on the shed and jumping off on the pile. I would sail thru the air barefooted with my dress tail flying, hit the pile and slide down. One day Port and Spud found a soft pile of manure spread about fifteen inches wide at the base of the mound. They sprinkled it lightly with powdered manure to make it look like it was a part of the old mound, then dared me to jump from the roof and try to land at the base. Of course I tried it, and made landing, right in the middle of it, slid down and sat right in it. I went to the house screaming and dripping. They had to fire up the wood cook stove and heat water to clean me up. I don't know where the boys got their supper that night, but I think they had to sleep in the barn. They weren't very welcome in the house.

I don't know why everybody got so upset over this. As I write, time is fleeting and I find we have moved into the year of 1976, our nation is two hundred years old, and we are in the midst of a hot presidential election race between Gerald Ford and Jimmie Carter. They have been slinging that stuff all over America now for months, and are getting less reaction than my household did when I sat in it. But if they don't clean up their act, it is going to take more than soap and water to kill the effects of it.

My daddy never had much money in his hands except in the Fall when we sold our cotton. He would always get anxious when we started picking, and when we got about five hundred pounds ready, he took off to town to sell it in the seed. It was almost traditional, for we knew he would bring home a bushel of apples, and a case of catsup. Why the catsup, we never knew. We never had it any other time of year. We kids went thru it like it was seven up.

I guess the funniest thing that ever happened in our house was during the Christmas holidays. The boys brought in fireworks for the holidays, and among them were powerful roman candles. My mother had such a horror of them she would not even watch them fire. To save matches, and we saved every penny we could, we all stuck our firecrackers, sparklers and such in the fireplace to light them, then ran outside to let them fire. One day all the boys were gone from home when Lillie got the sudden idea she would like to fire a roman candle, so she slipped it out, lit the fuse, then got scared and threw it in the fireplace and ran. Mama saw her, and had to go into action. No time to lose, so she grabbed it and as Nade opened the screen, Mama started running toward the door.

The first shot went off and thru the door, and as Mama went thru the door the second shot fired. Then she took off down the road with the thing in the air, and each time it fired, she ran that much faster. By the time the last shot was expended she was running so fast, she did not even know it had stopped firing, and just kept on running. Nade was behind her trying to catch her, I was behind Nade, and little fat Theron was trailing way behind trying to catch all of us. Lillile wasn't in the race. She probably ducked under the bed which was about the only safe place for her right then. We got Mama stopped about a quarter mile from the house. Port was always good for a joke and I can still hear him laughing when he got home and heard the story.

The news from Europe began to sound bad this year. It appeared a war was about to begin, and sounded as if the United States might get involved. News was sometimes weeks old before we heard it, but we knew of the anxiety of it all. I could not understand why people could be so upset over something so far away, and with a great big ocean between us. I thought they were excited for nothing, and so long as I did not know what or where Europe was, nor did I know what an ocean was, I promptly forgot all about it and went back to my playhouse. There I could talk to my created images of people; they knew nothing of such a war.

Summer was fast fading into fall, and we were busy picking cotton, harvesting grain, and getting the storehouse filled for the winter. We kids were back in school, and everybody was happy. That is except Papa. I guess he could no stand the affluence of a good comfortable living, progress was fencing him in again, and restlessness gave him the urge to move, so he went looking for a new location and believe me he found it, right down in Bean Creek Hollow.
He came home and announced he had found the ideal location down in Jack County, Texas, South of Clay County. It was a farm of about one hundred acres, four miles from a public road, four miles from school, four miles from a mail box, four miles from church, four miles from a grocery store, and four miles from hell. A rock pile so infested with rattlesnakes that you had to step over them to get to the house.

The house was small, just three rooms, but no porches, and did have a barn and chicken house, but no cow shed. It lay between two mountain ranges, and the only way you could see was straight up. One of the mountains was a part of our property, leaving us very little farm land. We had two deep creeks running thru the property, both of them between our house and Joplin, which was the little town where we had to go for everything. They could be vicious when it rained and the water got high.

The farm was literally infested with Johnson grass, and had very little soil. The only value the farm really had was a hundred paper shell pecan trees growing along the creek beds. I believe when God was distributing his rocks over the land, he grew tired and just decided to dump them in one pile and go. Well, he just happened to be over Jack County, Texas and Bean Creek Hollow, when he made the decision. Our yard was rocks, our field was, rocks, our road was rocks, our farmyard was rocks.

I don't know how Papa managed find this spot, and would almost swear he parachuted in, except we did not have parachutes then. The pasture was mesquite brush, and had very little grass. We had to cross thru three other peoples property to get in and out to our farm, which meant every time we left home, we opened four wire gates and crossed two creeks, rain or shine, summer or winter. Well, he looked, he found, he bought, and at the end of the year we moved. Thus at the beginning of the year of 1918, we began our life at Bean Creek, and our associations at Joplin. It was forty miles or more from Hamm’s Ranch, and too cold to camp on the move so we left soon after midnight and drove until long into the night to reach the place. So Papa had his utopia, the frontier, and the rest of us had hardships and memories of the good things we left behind.

The winter was long and cold. We kids started to school in Joplin. Lillie, Buster and I had to walk the four miles over mountains, thru three other people’s cattle ranches, crawling under fences to get from one to the other. We carried heavy book satchels swung over our shoulders, and each of us had a little half gallon syrup bucket for our lunch pail. I was just seven years old. Because of distance, we could not move the feed for the stock, so our grain all had to be sold. We reached there with no money, no cow feed, and our cows were starving. Our pasture was full of prickly pears, so each morning, we went to the pastures and built a big fire, then with pitch forks we held the prickly pears over the fires to burn off the stickers, then fed them to our cows. The deeper the snow, the bigger the project, and the more the North wind howled thru the mountains and canyons, the more we had to combat the smoke and cold to keep the cows alive. At night, the poor cows had to stand in open pens and shiver in rain, snow, hail and sleet. We had to milk them night and morning under the same conditions without even a wall to get behind. The dirty water would run off the cows’ sides and drip down into our milk buckets, and there was nothing we could do to keep it out.

There were neighbors in the mountains, but we could see none of their homes. One thing remained to remind us that somewhere there was a civilization, and that was the trains that passed our house. The railroad ran just behind our house, and the fence for the cow pen was also the right-of-way for the railroad. It curved around a mountain and upgrade to pass our house, and day and night heavy freight trains heaved and puffed and struggled to get around the mountain. They made no more than five miles per hour and many times stalled, had to go for more engines and put on three or four to move the train. It was mournful sound to hear the whistles resounding thru the mountains, and the puff-puff-puff of the engines seemed to reverberate thru the valleys long after the trains had made the grade and gained momentum as they roared off down the hills and thru the mountains until they finally disappeared into the stillness of the night.

The yard had no fence, and absolutely no soil. Mama and Nade carried rocks to border flower beds, and carried soil from the fields to fill them, and on top of all this hopelessness, planted flowers and watered them to keep them growing. Just another desperate effort to hang on to something.

The war was raging in Europe, the war clouds grew darker, and it was becoming more ominous that America was getting involved. Coke was in the age bracket to be called, so the family was very concerned. Well, America got involved, Coke was called, and we found ourselves in the throes of World War One. He left in May and trained in Florida, arriving overseas in France on Armistice Day, November 11, 1918. The fighting had ceased, so he never went into battle, but was there many months on occupational duty. This was a year of many sacrifices as are all war years. Rationing was in effect on many items. We could by very little sugar, and flour was at a premium. Many people ate cornbread for breakfast. We ate it only one time by presidential request, to leave more flour for overseas shipment. But pies and cakes, we did not have. We had no means of earning a living, so in late summer Papa took Port and Spud to Oklahoma and all of them worked on the pipelines.

Spud was only sixteen, jus a little boy who should have been in school, but was forced to take his place alongside of men and swing a pick and shovel like one. They sent enough money home to buy our necessities, but they had to live also, and wages were small, so we got by on very little. Our pecan trees along the creek did not bear this year, so we had no income there. We planted a small cotton crop, but the boll weevils ate it before it opened, and we did not pick on boll or make one dollar. We were not in a cotton country, so we could no go out and pick for the neighbors as we had done in Clay County. Destitution seemed to stalk us on all fronts. We would have had a hard time paying for the priveys that year. It was a cold hard winter.

One of the things that is so vivid in my memory of that year were the troop trains that passed our house. In spring and summer the weather was warm, and this was the months that so many of the boys left for overseas. They opened the windows to the trains, and as long trains of passed daily, they would be hanging out the windows, waving and shouting their good-byes, all on their way to war, and all of them knew that some good-byes would be final, but of course held hope it would not be they who remained to sleep forever in foreign soil. My mother always wore a cook apron, and many times was out about the yard when they passed. She waved until they were gone, then buried her face in the apron and cried until it was drenched in tears. Coke was not on that train, but some mother's son was, and her son was on another, all going in the same direction and all going to war. In critical periods like this, boys belong to all mothers. We always ran when we heard a train coming, so if it were a troop train, we could wave goodbye to the boys. I did not understand it then. I knew Coke was somewhere very far away, doing something very heroic, but is a seven year old supposed to understand war and its horrors? I knew everybody was singing, "Over there, Over there," "When the boys come marching Home" and "They won't be home till it's over over there" but I could not know the impact of all this until many years later when I saw my own son, Ron, leave for Viet Nam, and I too sat beside El Camino Real in Redwood City and cried until I could not see to drive my car to work. It was then that I knew why my mother's apron was drenched in tears, and it was then I understood whey they all cried when Coke left.

We got many bums along the railroad track. They walked the, and stopped along at houses asking for meals. Mama never turned one down. There was little work and no money, and people were broke and hungry. Maybe we had little, and we did, but she shared. She knew Port and Spud were somewhere probably broke and hungry also, and she always said "If I feed some mothers boy, maybe someone will feed mine." She always said to the boys and men who stopped at our house when they left, "If you see my boy, tell him we love him and miss him."

It came winter and time to butcher the hogs, and the men were all gone. Buster was too small, only fourteen, and did not know how to butcher a hog. He could not shoot a gun, and we did not have anyway, so Mama and Nade had to resort to the brutal method of trying to knock them in the head with a single bitted axe. Papa always used the broad side and hit them right between the eyes, then cut their throats. Each of them had an axe, and Mama tried, but they were no seasoned to such brutality, and they only stunned them. Each got in a lick, but the hogs took off squealing and running with Mama and Nade right behind them. They got in licks as they could, but in reality, they literally beat the hogs to death. Soon as they fell, their throats must be cut to bleed the. Don't forget, this must all be done in freezing or near freezing weather so the cold would draw the animal heat out overnight, or the meat would spoil. It was a long hard days work to kill hogs. Soon as the hog was bled, it must be dipped into a forty gallon barrel of scalding water, then taken from the barrel, placed on a board and all the hair scraped off. We stood ready with our knives to begin work, for it could not cool or the hair would set. It must be done with precision timing, for if the water was too hot, it would cook the skin, if too cold, the hair would not come off.

The day began long before daylight, by placing the forty gallon wash pot near the scene, filling it with water from the well, and heating it. Every gallon of water was dipped with buckets. Imagine my poor mother and sister handling those hogs which weighed two to four hundred pounds each, in freezing weather, early in the mornings. Each of them weighed about one hundred pounds, stood five feet two inches tall, and wore a size three shoe. And they worked in long dresses. It was a no no for a woman in our family to wear pants. We could be called on to work like men, but we must no look like one. Soon as the hogs were scraped, they were hung by the hind legs and lifted so the head would not touch the ground, slit down the middle and gutted, then removed to a table and cut up. Off of them would come the hams, shoulders, sides of bacon, and the trimmings. The backbone was trimmed of its lean, and delicious sweet meats made from it. I think that is our pork chops of today. All scraps of fat were saved and rendered for lard, and that supplied our cooking oil for the year. The cracklings or skins that came from the fat were combined with lye, and soap made from that. About all that was wasted from a hog was the squeal. We made mince meat and souse from the heads, and even ate the tongue, liver and heart. Yes, we scrambled the brains with eggs and they were delicious. In later years we had sugar cure preparations for treating our meats, and many more modern ways of doing it, but not yet. We would shiver and shake for at least three days and nights getting the hog killing done. Soon as this was done, there was more wood to be chopped. Mama and Nade worked like men. I cry for them now as they lay silently in their graves. Its no wonder that they both died young.

We kids studied long into the night in winter months, for schools assigned much home work. We left every morning with our syrup buckets packed with a baked potato, cold biscuit and meat, fried fruit pie, and cookies, and with the heavy satchels on our shoulders, we trudged four miles over mountains, thru cow pastures , crawling under barb wire fences. Some times the ranchers turned strange cattle into the pastures that were unfriendly toward us, and we had to watch for them and chance that they would not catch us too far from fences where we could seek safety. Then in the evening, make the same trip home. Mama knew how long it would take for us to come thru the mountains, cross the creek and come round a certain curve, so she always placed herself in the window and just as we rounded the curve, the sun would cast a reflection on the syrup buckets, and in the three flashes, she knew we had safely reached Bean Creek, and were on our property.

But one day a big storm was approaching from the west and we kids could tell it was raining. We knew if we did not reach Bean Creek soon, water would be so high we could not wade it, because the creek flowed to the east, and we would be stranded.
We had run all the way to beat the cloud, which put us ahead of schedule on the curve, and because the sun was not shining, Mama had missed the signal, but she kept her face pressed to the window. She knew we were three little kids, frightened and running somewhere in the storm, but where she did not know until suddenly she saw us coming thru the field. We had waded Bean Creek to our knees and just in time, for within ten minutes it would have been to our waists, then we reached home. The quickly got a big fire going, and we had to be stripped of our long underwear, high top shoes, long stockings, big bloomers and outer clothing. Coats and all had to be dried. We had many many evenings such as this, for every time it rained, the creek would rise. We had sat many times more than an hour waiting for it to run down, or waded it to our waists to get home. The next morning, we left for school again, and in the afternoon Mama was keeping her vigil in the window. She must have spent many dreadful hours sitting in that window when storms were approaching or raging, praying that we would come in sight and make it home.

As we struggled to survive in this lonely God forsaken place, we thought many times of our comforts on Hamms Ranch, and our bitterness grew because we were forced to leave it. No one ever passed our house, for we were the end of the line. We could go out another way and travel to Perrin, another small town five miles from us, but others reached it from a different direction, Jacksboro was our county seat, and was twelve to fourteen miles away.

Soon as we kids could find a warm sunny day in the spring, we went exploring the big mountain behind our house and just across the railroad tracks. It had massive boulders, piles of huge rocks and we noticed many of them had dens running under. We spent hours jumping from one to the other, chasing each other over them, and all this time could hear strange hissing, buzzing, and whistling noises from underneath them. It became so loud, finally got down and looked under but could get nothing to stick its head out. We told this at the supper table, and Papa suspected it was rattlesnakes. He and a friend got dynamite the following day and blew up the rocks, and it rained pieces of snakes for one hundred yards, some as big as a man's arm. I can't estimate how many may have been under the rocks, but where once rattlesnakes reigned, they now rained.

The Lillie and I had a similar experience the following summer. We had walked four miles thru the mountains to the home of John and Nellie Roper, and on our way home we sat down on a big log to rest. Suddenly we heard the same noise coming from underneath it, but this time we jumped, and we did not have to be told to move. Papa also went after that den, and it proved to be diamond back rattlers. We soon learned there was not a poisonous snake native to Texas that was not on the farm. Copperheads, water moccasins, spreading adders, black rattlers, brown rattler, you name them, we had them. And if we did not, we could whistle and they would come. In the course of three years, we killed thirteen big ones scattered over the farm, one only a few feet from the barn. In fact, I was stepping over this one thinking it was a big cow chip, when I heard it rattle. I put my already lifted foot higher and jumped over it and Lillie, who was walking behind me went back the other way, and the snake in trying to decide which way it would strike, missed both of us.

In the spring, a tornado struck Joplin. No one was killed, but much damage occurred. Worst hit was the Baptist church where we attended. The roof lifted, and then the walls spread letting the roof come down on the interior and the only thing that could be salvaged were the piano and the pulpit. Don’t ask me how they survived. I don't know. Many houses were damaged, and the grocery store (only one in town) that was owned by Jim and John Hinsley was gutted. The doors blew open, and the store emptied right into the street, stringing and unwinding rolls of ribbons until the spools were empty. For weeks, the weeds were decorated with bright colored ribbons. Again, we stood in our yard and watched, but all we could see was a dark cloud rolling and churning on the other side of the mountain. It moved with such velocity we were certain it was a tornado, so as soon as we saw it was going to bypass us, we climbed in the wagon and headed for Joplin. It had struck as we suspected right in town.

This was the year the killer flu hit the nation, and people were stricken like flies. Hardly a household escaped. Not one of us took it, but we used a homemade remedy that might have saved us. We heated a flat iron on the stove, dipped a cloth in kerosene and spread it over the iron, then placed a lamp chimney over it to carry fumes up thru the chimney. We would line up and take our turn sniffing the fumes. I do not know if it helped. I only know we stayed well. Mama and Nade went day and night nursing the sick and laying out the dead. Whole families were down with flu. One of them would come home nights to stay with us kids, and keep our home going, and the other would go from home to home, washing, cooking, milking cows, and caring for ones who could not care for each other. Thousands died throughout the nation, but again God was good to us.

With news, being days or weeks reaching us, we did not learn for months that Coke had arrived in France on Armistice day. Nor did we learn for months when he would return home, or even get back to the states.

I think this was the year I began to grasp the meaning of life. I knew in a small way what we were enduring. I learned to love and appreciate a large family, and from them I learned much. As I write this, my eyes are blinded by tears on this October day in 1976, for I have just returned from Bowie, Texas where Buster was laid to rest. He was the last remaining brother. Now only Lillie and I remain. I have written so much about how Lillie, Buster and I were a team of three. Age span separated him from Port and Spud, and kept him a boy while they became men. Also age span separated Theron from us, and kept him a baby while we became kids, and fought the battle together. Then in later years we were to again become the team of three, for Theron left us ten years ago, and as all the older ones were gone, it became again Buster, Lillie and me. How I am reminded of all we went thru to survive, and how Buster always led the way, with Lillie next and me bringing up the rear, as we ran thru mountains, rivers and forests together. Now he has joined the family, and the Watson saga will soon be over on this earth, to be completed again over there. As we followed him to his last resting place down the streets of old Bowie, and I saw again that brick street where we stood as kids and watched the parade go by, I said in my heart, "Memory is one gift of God that death cannot destroy, and at least we have that. "This I guess is my last vision, Buster first, Lillie second and me last as we went down the street. Again, Buster has gone first.

Where does time go? I am following two periods of time, the past and the present. As I write this, time has slipped into 1977, our nation has passed its second century birthday. The centennial parades are all over, and we have begun our third century for the life of a great nation.

I have left Redwood City and am now living in Paradise, Calif. and I have come to realize that painful memories can be overcome by putting them where they belong: in the past. The things that loom so large at the time shrink down to size if you let them, so I will pick up my story where I left off and tell you more about my life.

And I was telling incidents of 1918. This was the year also that things that I was learning in Sunday School began to impress me, and I was pondering them in my heart. I knew that God had once destroyed the earth by flood, and promised that He would never again send another flood. I also knew that God had promised to destroy the earth by fire. To a seven year old, these things are beyond understanding, but frightening. So, it was not surprising that one evening while I was playing on the west side of the house, I looked up to see the world on fire. A cloud had banked low in the west, and the sun was setting behind it. A big glow shone above it in a brilliant orange, and as I watched, flames began to lick into the sky. Of course it was jagged clouds, catching the sun's rays and changing formations, but as the sun sank lower, the flames licked higher, became a brilliant red, and with the dark clouds framing the glowing fires, it was a spectacular scene. I was terrified and began to cry. I look at all those rocks that comprised the fertile soil in our yard, and wondered how God would ever make them burn. If you sifted a bushel of whatever our yard was made of, you could not come out with enough dirt to fill a teacup, and now it was ready to burn to ashes. I questioned how, but I believed God could do it. I heard the call to supper, but I was afraid to go in, for fear the world would burn while I was in the house. Finally, Nade came looking for me, and assured me it was the clouds and sun. I went in with no faith that she could be right but managed to eat a few bites anyway. When I looked again true the fire had died down and gone completely out. But how could I know it would not flare up again. I was taking no chances, so I stationed myself in the window where I spent most of the night. I knew there was no place to run and hide even if it did, but still I watched.

We attended church in Joplin, and by this time Theron was not a baby anymore, but a chubby little boy of three, and on August 30th became four. One day he wandered out of church, and couldn't find his way back, so he went to a house and asked them where his Mama was. They did not know him, so asked his name. Reply, "Mama's pretty boy." He really did not know he had any name other than that or baby. Never has there been a closer relationship between mother and son than between my mother and Theron. And that bond continued until the day she died, and reached beyond the grave many years later. He was the pride and joy of the entire family. After Port and Spud left home, Port said many times he got so homesick to see the baby, he came home just to see him. He brought a camera when Theron was three, and took his picture on a horse, then forgot to roll the film, and took one of a spotted calf. It was a perfect picture of Theron and the horse except the front legs, but it put the calf's legs on the horse in a perfect position. He took it back to Oklahoma and showed it, telling them our farm possessed an animal, a crossbreed between a horse and a cow. A migration was about to begin from Oklahoma to Texas to see the freak. If Port was awake twelve hours a day, he was no doubt involved in some kind of a joke then of them.

We had good neighbors' in them thar hills, but the nearest were two miles away. About two hundred yards from us was a house with three people, but you could hardly call them neighbors. Two sisters, Liza and Sara, both in their seventies and Sam, the son of Sara, in his fifties and severely crippled. They were true hillbillies, had never been out of the hills. In fact, I think they were all born on this place. About twice a year, they made a wagon trip to Perrin to get their annual staple supply, and once a month they walked there to pick up snuff, tobacco and such. During the spring of the year, their stock, both horses and cattle began to appear in our fields, and it became an every morning thing. No fences were ever down, nor was there a gate open, but when asked about it they could not imagine how they got in. We became suspicious, so one night Port and Spud laid wait, and about eleven o'clock they drove them to our gate and let them in, then closed the gate. The boys rounded them all up and drove them to a big ranch about five miles away and turned them loose. The poor old people were days finding them, then more days getting them rounded up and home. In fact, we were such good neighbors, Port and Spud went and helped them bring the livestock home. Needless to say, they never (broke?0 into our fields again.

One day Liza was churning in the old dasher churn, when the cat reared upon the side. She hit at it, uprooted it and it fell head first into the churn. Liza grabbed it by the tail, held it up and stripped the milk off, then finished her churning. When they killed hogs, they always brought us some fresh meat, but we threw it away soon as they left. The meat could not possible have been dirty on the inside, but it was the thought. Truly, I don't think I could have eaten an ear of fresh corn if I knew it grew in their field. We were friendly with them, but recognized them as people who lived near, not neighbors.

Now this sounds like a lonely existence, and in on way it was, but we were typical rural people of that area. Many families lived in those mountains just like us. We had our peaceful moments also, and some ways solitude was bliss. At least we had freedom, clean air, and health, and so long as we had never known anything but country living, we did not miss the hustle and bustle of the city. I can remember the quietness of the evenings as the farm settled into the darkness, and went to sleep for the night. It was thrilling to see the cows coming home in the evening, and watch them strike a trot, then a run as they neared the pens, lowing to their baby calves who in turn were bawling for their supper. And to see the mother hens coming in for the night with baby chicks all around them, or to hear them clucking as they gathered their brood under their wings, and see them gently spread their wings over them to keep them safe for the night gave one a feeling of belonging to nature. I you have never heard the call of the whip- poor-will from the meadow below, or the cooing of a dove from a nearby tree, and most of you haven't , you have missed something that we hold precious to our memory.

We looked forward to the quiet evenings when the labors of the day had ended, and we could settle before a roaring fire with a good book, or just sit and concentrate. Then, we could do that. No radio blasted to interrupt our thoughts, for none existed. No television to display murder scenes and strike fear into our hearts. We were not afraid to open the door to a stranger and invite him in. Murders occurred, but they were provoked, not done for thrills. On cold winter nights when the boys were home, they would light the kerosene lanterns, take the hounds which were trained to hunt, and head for the hills. Many nights, we could see the flicker of the lights and hear the baying of the hounds as they chased coons up and down the banks of Bean Creek, and hear the echo of voices as the boys ran, chasing with them and trying to keep pace. Then they would come in, bringing coons to skin, or squirrels to dress and we would declare it bedtime. We lived with nature in its fullest. There was a tranquil quiet up and down Bean Creek Hollow as we lit the kerosene lamps, the flames flickering in the evening breezes, and the fire crackling as we watched its glow, the hound dogs sitting in the yard baying at the moon, and everywhere peace and quiet. We lived a simple life, unafraid.

But as if to remind us the animals too kept their lonely vigils, the howl of a coyote would echo hru the hills calling to its mate, and often we heard an answer from another lonely coyote, or a pack, and each cry brought them closer together until they joined ranks, then crept off into the mountains in search of food. Yes this was the good old days. We knew real contentment.

Christmas came, and Papa and the boys came home for the holidays, but it was bleak. The fighting overseas had ended, and World War I was over, but we still suffered privations and want, for the effects of the war had in no way begun to be erased. We had no sugar to bake a cake or pie, no money for gifts or extra food, but we ate our beans, potatoes, and meat and thanked God for them. And we did have some home baked bread, and the best, for no one could surpass my mother when it came to baking bread. In the afternoon, Port saddled old Ben, his favorite saddle pony and went to Joplin. He brought home a banana for each of us, and that was our Christmas. That was the only year that I can remember that we had nothing. But we did not complain, for our soldier boy was alive and well and would be coming home, and when we realized how many others would never come back, our hearts grieved for them and their families who sat in sorrow this Christmas, for they would never have another reunion.

When I think of the serenity of which I spoke just a page back, and the contentment we had on the farm, I wonder where it has all gone. You kids know nothing of such a life. But you did not destroy it, we did, our fathers and their fathers. Your generation bears no fault for this invention brought us much, and prosperity moved us forward, but in so doing, it has robbed you of so much that today we hold dear, that you will never know. Rural life as I described has just about disappeared. In some remote mountainous regions in the East, some few live in this manner. I am glad that none of you have had to suffer the hardships that we knew, or the privations that were part of our earlier days. I am glad that you were not deprived of an opportunity for an education. Yet, with all the advantages of modern day learning, our education was much more basic, for we studied the rudiments of the three R's, reading, writing, and arithmetic. Nothing was handed us for good sportsmanship. We earned everything that was awarded us by burning midnight oil. And possibly we grasped more knowledge in our short school terms than some of you did in your long terms. But we grew up in one world, so to speak, and you have grown up in another.
Nete and Dan lived on a fruit farm eight miles from us. They got an urge to go West, but did not wish to sell the farm, so we arranged to take it over for the following year. In the fall, Dan needed some help to begin moving his livestock to the new location, I think Scurry County. Buster was only eleven years old, but he rode the many miles with Dan on the horse drive. They encountered rain storms and howling wind storms. In one they managed to find an old shed and herded the horses under it until the storm abated. Buster described this ride to me just before his death, and in his southern Texas drawl, he said "Why I was just a little bitty squirt, but I hung right in there." He remembered that they stopped and spent a night with Uncle Bide and Aunt Gellie Hearn, near Levelland. My map tells me they traveled more than four hundred miles round trip. It took them weeks.
Christmas was over, and Papa and the boys did not return to the pipelines, for it was time to move to the fruit farm.

So January 1919 found us moving, and this location made a new life for us. We were still four miles from Joplin, but in the opposite direction. It made no changes in our community living, but we kids had a good road to walk on to get to school. We had other neighbor children to walk with and play and visit with. Every time we traveled from farm to farm, we passed directly thru Joplin, right down Main Street, which was also a dirt road, with a possible fifty homes, one store, two churches, a blacksmith shop, a school and various other things. Just a small village with the mountains to the north where Bean Creek lay, and level farms to the south where the fruit farm was. So we had no mountains or creeks to cross to get to school, and this was heavenly in winter when the storms came.
Only one problem presented itself in moving our belongings from Bean Creek to the fruit farm, and that was the donkey the boys owned, better known as a jackass. It was the stubbornness thing alive. It would not walk, it would not travel even with someone riding it, and there was no way we could haul it. It took more patience and tolerance to move this donkey than it did for all else we moved. It would stop right in the middle of the road, stick those long ears up and bray loud enough to split the atoms. Port, Spud and Buster inherited the job of taking it the eight miles, and finally after we arrived, unloaded and settled in, Buster who was the last rider, and the donkey got there. Someone suggested we sell the stubborn thing, and not one descending vote was cast against it.

We had a good house, a big barn, many other improvements, but most of all, we had soil that would and did grow everything. The farm was abundant in every type of fruit, grapes and berries that was native to that area, and we had a yield that came only every few years. I suppose we made more money in this year of 1919 than at any time of our lives. In the spring, the garden produced all types of vegetables, and we ate and dried everything possible. At that time, we had only learned to can fruit, but it was much later that we learned to can everything. Our corn, our cotton and grain just burst at the seams, and even old Bean Creek came thru with flying colors, and bore more than six hundred pounds of the most upgraded paper shell pecans that the market had ever seen. We worked from long before daylight to long after dark, but not a man, child, animal or fowl went hungry this year.

As soon as the fruit began to ripen, mama opened a market in Jacksboro, the largest city near, and about ten miles from home, and for weeks we made six trips a week there. We had a team of big black horses, Belle and Nig, two of the most kind and gentle servants any man ever had. Belle was our buggy horse, they were our saddle horses, and they were our wagon horses. Each morning about four o'clock mama and two kids left, and by eight o'clock we were in Jacksboro with a covered wagon loaded with fruit. Usually Lillie and I went, for we could do less work on the farm than the older ones. I was eight, and she was eleven that July. Theron was five in August, so he always went just to be cared for. Lillie and I each took a side of the street, knocking on doors to sell fruit. Soon people learned us, and engaged it for the following day. They learned to watch for us, and would come for blocks and gagn around the wagon, trying to pick the choice fruit. Lillie and I carried pecks, half bushels or bushels of fruit all day long, until our wagon was empty. Then came the long trek home. We would get there long after dark. The family had another load picked and ready to load, and by lantern light they loaded while we ate supper. And at four o'clock, we went again. Belle and Nig stood all day if told to , walked a few feet if told to. Patience is not the word for those beasts. While we were selling town, the family worked the fields, while Nade made jams, jellies, preserves, and canned fruit. We often sold our fresh vegetables too, and the people grabbed for the big ripe tomatoes, green beans, peas, and things that were perishable and could not be preserved for our consumption. We bought a fruit peeler that was a great asset in preparing the fruit. It was one of the few mechanical things we owned up to this point. Soon as the fruit season was over, we gathered corn, headed maise, picked cotton, and that done, we went to Bean Creek to gather pecans. Too much time would have been wasted to travel back and forth to work Bean Creek, so when we went there, we took pallets and necessary things, cooked on the wood heater, and stayed until the mission was completed.

I shall always be grateful to our parents for the independence they taught us in money matters. When it came time to harvest pecans, each of us was allowed to keep our pecans separately, and the money they brought was ours to spend. We bagged them in one hundred pound burlap bags that we called tow sacks, and when we had a wagon full gathered, we loaded them, climbed on top of them and headed for Jacksboro to sell them and have our big day. We must buy our own clothes, but with their supervision, were allowed to choose and select them. And for once, we could have a Sunday pair of shoes and a school pair, and not one little foot walked on the bare ground because the shoe sole was worn thru under them. I could select the material for my dresses, and choose the color of sateen I wanted to make my big bloused bloomers. I always chose pink. We could also spend some of our money as we wished, such as ice cream cones, candy and even a banana or orange, even tho it was not Christmas. I remember so many times I went to church humiliated because my shoes were run over at the heels, or my toes kicked out, but not this year, boy, we dressed in style.

With all the work done, we started to school in Joplin. I always looked forward to getting back to school in the fall, and seeing my school friends. We exchanged stories about our summer experiences, all of us having tall tales of what we had done thru the summer.
Our school terms were so short we only got four to five months per term in one year, and that perhaps accounted for all the homework we had to do. Our education would have been very limited, but I am sure that we got as much material covered and absorbed as much as students do today in a nine month term.

We were farm people, and the children were the main source of laborers for harvest in the fall. If the crop was abundant, that meant the school would start later. Then when time came to plant the crops for the following spring, school ended so the kids could help in the planting.

This reminds me of the story that I heard about a man named Little, who had a big family of children. Someone asked him how he made a living for all those kids, and he replied "Every Little helps", so that was the story of the farm families. WE all helped.
As soon as we got into full work, we began to formulate plans for our Spring Exhibition at the close. It took weeks and weeks of practice, for every student in school was encouraged to participate.

I shall never forget my disappointment this year. One of our skits was Little Red Riding Hood, and I was the star. I was she. Just before the program was to start, I became deathly ill, and could not even sit up. Another little girl had to read the part which did nothing for the act. Just as the program ended, I began to urp, and up came a fly. I guess I had eatne it in food or maybe just swallowed it. But I felt good again and went home in great shape. I never got over the disappointment of not getting to act my part. We had drills which required precision marching, and enhanced them with tableau lights, and did some outstanding performances.

We got word that Coke had landed on this side of the water on July 19, and a month later, he got home. We went somewhere to meet him, probably Jacksboro, I don't remember, but I recall all of us went in the wagon, and it got dark before he came in. I got sleepy and lay down in the wagon and went to sleep. All of a sudden all kids of yelling, shouting and crying broke loose and it awoke me and startled me. I jumped up and shouted "What is all this yelling and crying about. Is somebody dead?" Then I saw Coke and the other boys. A bus load had come in, and all the relatives were there, but family was louder than the Watsons. It all seemed kinda silly to me. They cried when he went away, and they cried when he came back. I said to myself, now which is it? I wished they could make up their minds. I felt so long as he was home and had not been killed, there was nothing to cry about. I guess the innocence of a little child is bliss.

I did not understand it until many years later when one day I went to the post office in Belmont, California to pick up the mail, and got a letter which read as follows:

UNITED STATES FORCES, VIET NAM
ISSUED IN SOLEMN WARNING, THIS ____2___ DAY OF JULY, 1968 TO THE FRIENDS, NEIGHBORS AND RELATIVES OF RONALD W WILSON

PLEASE REFRAIN FROM SENDING ANYMORE CARE PACKAGES TO THIS, HIS PRESENT ADDRESS, VIET NAM, AFTER JULY FOR HE IS LEAVING FOR THE WORLD IN 22 DAYS 10 HOURS AND 15 MINUTES.

Future mailing address will be Mr. Ron Wilson 2836 San Juan Blvd. Belmont, Calif 94002

SUGGESTION Fill the refrigerator, stock the bar, fill the car with gas, turn on the radio, television, stereo, take the phone off the hook, roll back the carpet, put out the cat and open the door' cause the "Kid is comin' home!!!!!!!!!!!

I ran to the car when I saw I had a letter from Ron, and read it, then started home. Usually I am extremely inhibitive, but as I drove, I became unglued. Even tho I knew the letter was a form thing that someone in their spare time had thought up, and the boys would secure copies and fill out, the message itself was authentic. He was really coming home. All the emotions that had been suppressed for fifteen months were released, and I had absolutely no control of myself, the car or or the surroundings. I was going west on Ralston Ave., a busy two lane street, facing the sun, and crying so hysterically I could not see to get off. How I ever got to the side of the road, I will never know. BUT BELIEVE ME, I KNEW WHY THEY ALL CRIED WHEN COKE GOT HOME.

June 15 2010 08:04:14