Chapter 12

Texas is Home

There must have been something magic about Texas that wove its spell about us, for all those who came with us, except Rufus Moore and family, went back that first year.  Anyway, we stayed.  We still had each other and faith in God that things would be better.  Texas was home and still is.  We love it.

After we came to Texas, Harrison and Mary Carter lived in Grandpa Elder’s old home.  Grandma wrote us that Harrison had plowed up all the shrubs and flowers in the yard, and planted cotton up to the door.  Said it made her cry.  We cried too.  Grandpa’s beautiful old home, our last home in Alabama—just next to heaven in my memory.

Some years after we left there was a company came and tapped all the pine trees on the mountains and hills and in the valley, and drained from them the sap—their life-blood, for the turpentine stills.  Then came the saws and axes.  Most every able-bodied man living there worked at it, and every pine tree, and large tree of any kind was cut down for lumber.  Papa so hoped they wouldn’t take the giant pine at the cemetery gate.  But they did, also the one in front of the schoolhouse that it took seven of us little girls to reach around.  The virgin forest, all the tall trees gone.  The valley’s beauty ravaged, ruined!  Then most of the people moved away to Oxford, Anniston, Florida and Georgia, leaving Shinbone Valley in desolation.

We stayed at this place in the Agee community three years.  In the meantime Easter started to school, and at the Christmas program she stepped onto the stage and said:

“Do you know why old Santa Claus Hided all day long from me? I tired all out jus’ sittin’ still With nothin’ ‘tall to see. So I jus’ laid my headie down, And didn’t say my prayer, But all the same I went to sleep In Papa’s big arm chair. Then somethin’ wiggled, and I jumped And saw wight in my lap The cutest doggie Santa bringed Jus’ while I had a nap.”

And on January 3rd Clarence, the sweetest and dearest little baby brother was born.  Rufus and Dona Moore had moved here from Haskell.  They ad three children now: Clealis, Lois, and Allen.  We enjoyed them.  It rained and we made good crops and Papa was still minister for the Fairy church, but he thought he could find a better place to live, and started looking.

Almost everybody owned their homes and the few who didn’t stayed where they were.  The nearest place he could find that he though was better was in Bosque (pronounced “bos-ky” or “Bos-cue”) County.  He showed us from our front yard, a light spot on a mountain, and said, “That’s Bee Rock, not far from where we’ll love, about thirty miles from here, near Clifton.”  Later we looked at it through binoculars from Mr. Kavenaugh’s front porch.  So we moved there, for miles from Clifton.

J. D. Strickland had come to Texas and lived with us part of the time and when not living with us, working for someone nearby and spent weekends with us.  He was like a big brother to us and we loved him in that way.  Like the rest of us, J.D. loved to sing and had a grand bass voice.  Chester learned to sing tenor and I learned alto, so with Papa leading, we had a quartet.  Elsie and Easter joined in on the soprano in our home singing.  They both had much better voices than mine, but they didn’t sing alto and I couldn’t sing soprano

When we were moving from Hamilton County to Bosque County, before taking out the telephone, Papa called the McClintock’s, who then lived west of Hamilton, about twenty miles away, to tell them goodbye.  They wanted us to sing “Mother and Home”, so we all gathered around the phone and they around theirs and we sang it.  Then, tearfully we all said goodbye, and left our neighbors all crying, even Mr. Porterfield.

The people at the new home were not strangers for long.  Easter, my little sister, came down with spinal meningitis shortly after we moved.  Drs. Glass and Moore said there was no hope for her recovery, but they stayed in there and did what they could.  The neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Horn, Mr. and Mrs. Frank, and Mr. and Mrs. Ed Stapp took over and nursed her until she was well.  Everybody was wonderful and we soon loved it there and had so many friends we didn’t want to live anywhere else.  We still loved Hamilton County, and visited there every summer with our relatives and the Porterfields, Kavanaughs and Blacklocks, and they visited us.  The Porterfields spent weekends with us.  Emme stayed a week once.  Mr. and Mr. P. visited us here in Meridian as long as they lived, and how we did love them!  Ike is the only one living now.

This place was better in many ways, a better, larger house and water at home.  There was the Bosque River at the back of our field.  Papa bought half interest in a boat so we could fish, swim, boat ride and have a good time.  And there were wood which I enjoyed.

A short time after we started school at Clifton on a Monday morning in chapel while we were singing, the principal of the school kept walking around over the auditorium, finally stopping behind Chester.  When the song was ended he told Chester, “Come with me.”  Taking him on the stage, he said, “I’ve found a diamond in the rough.”  Then, introducing him to the audience, he said, “This young man has the sweetest voice I have ever heard anywhere.”  Soon he was directing the singing in chapel, and, before we had gone there a month, I had been chosen for the alto in the literary society quartet.  I was surprised and never knew why they selected me—though I knew it wasn’t because I had a strong voice.  Before I learned to sing alto, sometimes when I sang, Chester would say, Mama, I want you to make Vista hush.  She’s bursting my eardrums.  I can hear her across the room.”

We attended singing schools after coming to Texas—three in Hamilton County and two in Bosque.  We went back to Agee and attended singing school two summers after moving away, studying the rudiments of music, voice, harmony and composition.  As long as our family was all at home, in the evening after the day’s work was done and supper eaten, Papa would say, “Get the song books and let’s sign a song or two.”  It was usually an hour or two.  It was hard to find a stopping place.

We never owned a piano, but we had an organ and usually a French harp and down through the years, at different ties, there was in our home a violin, guitar, steel guitar, ukulele, and sheet music all around—and later a trombone, television and radio, and always, music, vocal and instrumental, sacred and popular.  Our economic circumstances were always difficult, but we had music and were happy.  As Clarence grew up and he and I were the only ones left with Papa and Mama, we sang duets together.  I have never heard sweeter voices than those of Chester and Clarence. 

One day in 1972, I met a woman from Valley Mills, I had not seen her since we were young girls, and had never known her very well.  She told me about a children’s day program she had attended once with Clarence and I sang a song “Beautiful Home Somewhere”.  I remember the occasion very well and still have the printed program.  She said she would never forget how pretty that song was.  That made me feel good and I could hardly wait to tell Clarence and see if we could still sing that song together.

We always had a lot of company.  Often on Sunday our home was running over with laughing, rollicking youngsters.  Even the banker’s daughter in Clifton would come out and spend weekends with us, and we with her.

We loved to read, an especially favorite pastime of mine.  Like Papa, I read everything I could get my hands on.  We couldn’t buy many books, but our friends let us read theirs.

If someone came along looking for work or some place to stay while, Papa took them in, and somehow, we always shad plenty of good food for everyone.

One time an old man came by, looking for work.  Papa put him to hoeing cotton.  He was almost blind but he stayed with us until all the cotton was hoed and then he went on his way.  The next year he came back, driving two burros to a wagon and said he wanted to live with us.  Papa and Mama talked it over and told him he could.  So, he sold his burros and wagon and stayed with us as long as he lived.  His name was Mr. Lee Farris.  Mr. Farris was almost totally blind at that point, but he cut and sold cordwood as long as he could see at all.  When he could no longer see, Clarence, my little brother, was his eyes, leading him wherever he wanted to go, doing things for him and listening to his stories.  He was an old trail driver having driven cattle up the Chisholm Trail to Abilene, Kansas, and had many interesting stories to tell.  He was red haired and freckle faced and I can, in imagination, see him as a young cowboy out on the range.

Mr. Farris learned the truth while living with us and wanted to be baptized, so a group gathered on the banks of Childress Creek and he was baptized and lived a Christian until he died of lung cancer.  We were all saddened by his death for we had learned to love him.  He was buried in the Fairview Cemetery in Bosque County.

We came to Meridian in 1938 and found a good home there.  Meridian has been good to us.  There was no Church of Christ here then, but Papa worked until one was organized in October of 1938, and it soon grew to be a strong, dedicated church and still is.  Papa held office in the county court house a long number of years and was happy there and with the church work.  Mama was happy gardening and raising flowers and houseplants.

Meridian is still home and I would say with a song, which was one of Papa’s favorites, “I Love (these) Dear Hearts and Gentle People who Live and Love in my Home Town.”

I love to drive on the little back roads where nature still holds sway—to drive up to Meridian State Park and lake, home of the golden-cheeked warbler, where deer hide in the cedars, and where we go for picnics, and on the way back stop at the roadside park at the edge of the mountain overlooking Meridian, with the Bosque River, fields and mountains curling ‘round it.  Looking at it and knowing that God is over it all, then I can sing “O Lord my God!…how great Thou art!”  and bow my heard in humble adoration to Him who created all the splendor and loveliness for us to enjoy.