Stories from my father - First Things

At the age of 93, my father set out to write down some of the things that he remembered over a long and active life. My brother transcribed these recollections, and I share some of them with you now.

"I was born on July 15, 1907 in a small, two room box cottage located one and one-half miles northeast of the Johnson County courthouse in Cleburne, Texas. The location was on what was then called the Old Grandview Road. By a box construction is meant the cottage was a single wall board and batten house with no two by four frame. It was the home on a fifteen acre sandy loam vegetable and fruit farm. My father supported our family of four by growing and selling fresh vegetables from house to house. I had one sister who was three years my senior.

A first toy I remember was a cloth elephant. It was stuffed with sawdust. When we at last wore a hole in the small toy, all the sand seeped out and I only had an elephant skin left. I also remember a doll I played with. It had a black China head on a sawdust stuffed cloth body. My sister played dolls so naturally I also did.

I received a small toy lantern for a Christmas present about 88 years ago.  It is a real working unit with a glass globe and a wick that is adjustable with the turn screw.  The small red fount was designed to hold kerosene.  But the lantern was dangerous because the oil seeped out of the seam in the fount.  Mother let me light it a few times but feared I would get burned or possibly set the house on fire.  So I kept the lantern as a keepsake for many years before passing it on to my grandson, John.

An aunt gave me a toy train when I was about 6 years of age.  It was a pull toy with an engine and 2 or 3 red cars.  I was disappointed because it was not a mechanical train on a track.  But when the aunt would visit I would get the train out and play with like I really liked it.

Our nearest neighbors were the Curtis family. A father who was a civil war veteran, and the mother who baked good cookies, and a spinster daughter, Miss Emma, who taught school in small county schools. Parker and Rio Vista were two of the schools. She was the friend who gave me the glass egg that is now packed in a box in the apartment closet labeled "Pop's glass egg".

On the other side lived the Richardsons. Mr. Richardson was our rural route postman.

My father's vegetable growing business must have prospered because in a few years he bought the adjoining fifteen acres the Curtis family formerly lived on. We moved to the larger house on that property. The two room cottage was sometimes rugged but most of the time it was used as a store house for different products. Dad's draft animals were a horse called Prince and a small red mule named Kate. Prince pulled the peddling hack that was filled with vegetables ready to sell. He was also the buggy horse and later drew the family surrey, one with fringe around the top and fancy carriage lamps on each side. This surrey was used to go to church in Cleburne.

I started to school in Cleburne in the fall of 1914 after I was seven years old in July of that year. My first grade teacher was named Miss Green. The school was a wooden two-story building known as the South Ward. The yard around the building was filled with large post oak and blackjack oak trees. Similar trees are now in that same school yard. There was a caterpillar type of insect on some of those oak trees. We called it a tree asp. It had a bite or sting which was very painful. The teachers kept bottles of some solution that helped ease the pain of the tree asps.

The second grade teacher was a Miss Yeager. I remember some of my classmates. One was named Fred, another Tommy, and a girl called Benny Creed Frio. She died of pneumonia during the Christmas holidays of that year. She sat across the aisle from me.

When I was small it was traditional for all boys and most girls to go barefoot through the summer months. Walking through hot sand and getting into grass burr patches were hazards we accepted in exchange for the freedom of not wearing shoes. We could run from one shade tree to another to get through the hot sand.

One of my favorite play things when a small boy was a piece of rope, any rope, the longer the better. I used it to help climb trees, to tie loads of junk on my little red wagon, and yes, as a lasso. Once I roped our small weaning calf. The calf did not want to play and ran through a wire fence. I had to turn it loose to avoid being also drug through the fence. Then, how to get the calf back in the pen and retrieve my rope became a problem. I do not remember how I solved that problem but it must have been with mother's help, with a spanking as a bonus."